PHILOSOPHICAL EGGS

One of my students was asked by one of his professors to interview another professor about social norms. So he reached out to me with four questions and I responded. I am no expert in social norms which is quite a complicated and interdisciplinary subject. But perhaps some will find my answers interesting.

1) What do you think is the reason for social norms? 

The word ‘reason’ in the question can be ambiguous. It can mean cause, which would require an explanation of what brings norms into being, or it can mean reason which would require a justification for the existence and adoption of certain norms. Here are a few thoughts related to both meanings. 

Social norms are the informal rules that govern behavior in groups and societies. If we seek what causes bring them into existence then we run into difficulties since, as informal, they tend to emerge through human interaction over time without explicit design. Moreover, how norms function now doesn’t necessarily reveal how they came about. For example, contemporary gender relations may be quite different from past ones despite the fact that the latter have emerged from the former. I am no expert on social norms, but these two views strike me as plausible:

a) Social norms emerge in order to achieve some perceived positive goal as far as social living is concerned. Saying hello, please, thank you, and sorry facilitate certain humane relations of mutual respect. Personal hygiene norms make living close to each other more pleasant. And allowing others to speak without interrupting them allows for more coherent dialogue and the exchange of ideas. Social norms in this sense provide the oil needed to keep social mechanisms running smoothly. I suppose the origin of many of these mechanisms can be traced back to evolutionary pressures which, as we developed language, law, history, and so on over time, became objects of critical analysis and development.  

b) Adopting social norms helps people develop a social identity that differentiates them from others and gives them a sense of personal identity as well. We all know what it is like to want to belong to a group through which we hope to gain a sense of self. And in joining a group, we take on certain norms: ways of acting, eating, playing, speaking, dressing, loving, believing, etc. 

However, identifying and explaining the emergence of social norms is one thing and justifying them is another. Of course, some are moral relativists who don’t believe there are any objective moral truths or truths independent of individual and/or cultural opinion. So, since justifications are arguments that present truth claims, moral relativists can’t coherently present arguments. Rather, they will have a set of norms and hold them as opinions rather than truths. But many of us are moral realists who think certain social norms are objectively true or false. I am a moral realist so for me various norms, regardless of how widespread or effective they are with reference to some goal, are false (such as racist and sexist norms). So for me it is important to critically assess norms and see which ones can be rationally justified or not. 

Now, the social sciences typically describe what is the case and thus offer the experimental means by which we can describe which norms exist and what their effects are. But ethics, as a discipline of the humanities and a branch of philosophy that rationally inquires into our moral values and duties, evaluates what is the case. My preferred normative ethical theory is virtue ethics which, in one popular form deriving from Aristotle and Plato, seeks to objectively evaluate existing norms based on whether they do or do not cultivate virtues, character excellences, that dispose us to actualize the good potentials of our shared human nature such as reason, creativity, love, friendship, political engagement, sociability, etc. Actualizing such potentials brings fulfillment and so any norms that thwart such actualization are vices which should be eradicated or reformed accordingly. But it is important to note that we can also employ normative theories such as Kantian deontology, utilitarianism, natural law theory, divine command theory, ethics of care, and others in our efforts to seek the objective truth about social norms.

2) Do you think social norms have more of a positive or negative impact? 

I am not in a position, perhaps no one is, to say whether social norms have had, overall, a more positive or negative impact. The romantic tradition, from lovers in the middle ages to the hippies in the 60s and beyond, has always seen social norms as oppressive, repressive, and, in general, things that smother the creative, spontaneous, and childlike powers of our nature. Social norms or customs are, as Wordsworth puts it in his poem “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” (1803-1806), an “earthly freight” and a “weight heavy as frost” which yoke our freedom down:

A Presence which is not to be put by;

Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

To avoid such frosty souls we must rekindle the freedom, imagination, and sympathy of our inner child through direct or indirect experiences of nature and break with all those social norms that make us into fake, conformist, and hypocritical adults.

However, we can easily see how quickly our inner child would fail to grow up and overcome much of its self-centered immaturity without social norms! Developing virtues takes time, repetitive action, and many supporting factors such as friends, family, education, community, political context, and so on. These supporting factors appear to be inseparable from social norms. So having such norms is necessary if we are to develop as virtuous people. 

I would prefer, then, to recognize grains of truth in both views. There are oppressive norms just as there are norms that help bring out the best in us. If this is the case we shouldn’t generalize about norms having a good or bad impact. We need to be sensitive to context, evaluate them as they come, and be prepared to live with a mixed bag without ever being clear about the overall net balance of good and bad that flows from them.

3) What social norm do you think is the most important in our social system? 

We live in a democracy and so for me the most important social norm is one which allows us to better participate in democracy as a way of life and not just a set of governmental procedures such as voting. This would be the norm of seeing our fellow citizens as deserving of an equal say in the democratic process rather than people who should be silenced, censored, jailed, demonized, threatened, and so on because they hold views different from our own. This one social norm can be justified with the help of an argument from John Stuart Mill in his book On Liberty (1859).

In chapter two Mill defends his prescription that a free society should have the liberty of thought and discussion by using fallibilism or the view that no belief can be supported or justified in a conclusive way. Mill reasons as follows: if we are all fallible people who can make mistakes then we should engage in dialogue, inquire together, and really listen to one another. After all, if we can be wrong then those with whom we disagree may have the truth or a part of the truth. And even if they don’t have any truth, engaging in genuine dialogue and debate can help us better understand the intellectual grounds of our ideas and allow those ideas to become part of our character rather than being held as a set of prejudices. 

Such a commitment to fallibilism is also found in the Socratic method and the scientific method as well. The great scientist and educator Richard Feynman once pointed out that, while we can prove a scientific hypothesis wrong by showing how its implications are not borne out by experience and experiment, we can never prove a hypothesis definitely right. New evidence might come to light which shows that what we thought was true was not true at all or not as comprehensively true as we thought. And it is precisely the fallibility of the scientific method that is its strength: it encourages scientists to avoid dogmatism, enter into a community of inquiry, self-correct, and get closer to truth together. 

Once we lose this sense of fallibility and adopt an infallible dogmatism then the basic norm for which I am advocating our experiment in deliberative democracy is threatened and all the other social norms based on it, such as civic participation, toleration, and forbearance, become ineffectual as well. 

4) If you could create one social norm, what would it be and why?

A social norm I would like to see adopted would be the norm of critiquing norms to generate ongoing dialogue as to their truth and effectiveness. My reasons for adopting this norm are similar to those for adopting the democratic norm mentioned above, namely, such a norm would give us the ability to self-correct, learn from our mistakes, enter into a community of inquiry with others, and get closer to the truth which is ultimately what our society should be based on rather than power, self-interest, sophistry, images, delusions, and many other privations and vices that destroy societies from within.