This condition, "the condition that everyone conforms" is artificial though, it's made up as a way to make sense of the problems created by the category error. There really is no such condition at play here. What is the case, is that we conform because we want to conform, we apprehend conformation as beneficial to ourselves. — Metaphysician Undercover
So I make the decision to drive on the right hand side, based on what I believe others expect of me. — Metaphysician Undercover
My expectation is not that others will behave in the same way as me. — Metaphysician Undercover
Yeah. What's more, you expect them to. — Srap Tasmaner
There is a general expectation that people in the USA drive on the right ...[/quote
Of course such an expectation exists, but this expectation is produced by the descriptive law. That is what is observed, and we expect it to continue. What we are discussing here is the prescriptive rule which tells us that we ought to drive on the right side. This is taught to us in training, by the authorities, prior to them giving us a driver's license. We don't just decide to drive on the right because we expect that others will be doing this, we are trained to do it.
— Srap Tasmaner
Do you really think your choice of which side of the road to drive on has nothing at all to do with other drivers? — Srap Tasmaner
I think that other drivers make this choice in the same way that I do, they are trained to do this, just like me. We are all trained to drive on the right. We all see it as the correct thing to do, and expect to get the privilege of being allowed to drive if we do it correctly, and so we do. — Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think we learn to drive by observing others, and using the invalid deduction "if others are doing it this way, then I ought to do it this way too". — Metaphysician Undercover
You're taught to drive on the right rather than the left just because that's how we drive around here. — Srap Tasmaner
Your argument here is that this must be either a prescriptive rule (your view) or a descriptive rule (what you wrongly take to be my view). I'm telling you it's both and has to be both. It only makes sense to tell people to do it if it's what everybody does. If you lived in the UK, you wouldn't teach your kid to drive on the right. — Srap Tasmaner
You express no understanding of how such a convention could come into existence. — Metaphysician Undercover
The prescriptive rule has causal impetus which the descriptive rule does not. — Metaphysician Undercover
It is the in the nature of conventions that it barely matters how it got started. — Srap Tasmaner
I'd talk of reasons rather than causes here, but at any rate conventions generally are normative. My reasons for following the convention will always be connected to others following suit. If for some reason people start driving on the other side of the road, I had better do that too. — Srap Tasmaner
No, descriptive rules are not prescriptive rules, to conflate the two is category error. That's the point I'm making. — Metaphysician Undercover
All human beings are animals. Objects fall when dropped. These are rules produced by inductive conclusions. — Metaphysician Undercover
But aren't these also examples of "prescriptive rules"? For example, doesn't this prescribe what ought to happen to objects when dropped? — Luke
I think before answering, I'd better ask what you imagine these standards to be. — Srap Tasmaner
That's prediction, not prescription. We use descriptive rules to make predictions. Prescriptions are commands of what one ought to do, predictions are statements about what one believes will occur in the future. — Metaphysician Undercover
So, prescriptive rules ("commands of what one ought to do") are limited only to human actions, whereas descriptive rules are not so limited? Seems somewhat ad hoc... — Luke
Can you provide an example of a prescriptive rule? Who prescribes these commands? — Luke
The model you give, where a prescriptive rule originates from someone recognized as an authority, seems clearly not to apply when it comes to, for instance, language use: here either there is no such authority, or we are all of us the authority. The latter seems preferable, but requires further analysis, which happily is quite interesting. — Srap Tasmaner
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