Charlotte Witt, "Social Goodness: The Ontology of Social Norms" (Oxford UP, 2023)
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What is the central puzzle about the normativity of social roles?
Welcome to the New Books Network.
Hello, and thank you for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy, which is a channel that's part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talese, and I'm professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co-host the program with Carrie Figter, Malcolm Keating, and Sarah Tyson. My guest today is Charlotte Witt. Charlotte is professor of philosophy at the University of New Hampshire. Much of her work engages issues at the intersections of metaphysics, social philosophy, and feminist philosophy. But in addition, I suppose, I'm not alone in knowing her work on Aristotle's metaphysics, including an early book about substance and essence in Aristotle's metaphysics. Now, her latest book has just been published with Oxford University Press.
It's titled Social Goodness, the Ontology of Social Norms. In our day-to-day lives, we're subject to normative requirements, obligations, and even expectations that originate in the social roles that we occupy. For example, professors ought to pursue the truth, while parents ought to be supportive of their children. What's interesting is that these role-specific requirements seem in many cases to just befall us. And that raises the puzzle of what accounts for their normativity. Now, in her book, Social Goodness, Charlotte proposes a novel, I would say intriguing conception of the nature of social norms and the source of their normativity. The centerpiece of her account is the idea that we need to look to various examples of artisanal practices, dispositions and techniques in order to understand the norms that attach to our social roles.
Now, as usual, there's a whole lot to talk about. But also, as usual, we will begin with our guest. Hello, Charlotte. Hi, Bob. How are you
today? I'm excellent. How about you?
I'm doing good. I'm glad to hear that you're excellent. And since you are excellent, tell us a bit about yourself.
Well, let's see. I was born in Helsinki, Finland, because my dad worked for the State Department. So it is a beautiful city. And I've had the opportunity to go back in a philosophical context on several occasions. And I've really enjoyed those visits. And since my dad was in the State Department, my upbringing was pretty, involved a lot of moving from one culture to another. And I actually was reflecting prior to this interview, and I was thinking that I think that that had something to do with my always finding social norms intriguing and somewhat quirky. In other words, having moved from say, the US to Africa, there were different, There were just different sets of norms that you had to be fairly nimble to pick up, especially if you were a student, a child as I was.
So for example, just as one example, I went to a school called St. Cyprian School for Girls in Cape Town through middle school and the beginning of high school. And at St. Cyprian School for Girls, when the teacher walked in the room, you stood up and you were quiet. That's what you did. And if a teacher spoke to you, that's what you did. That's what you ought to do. When I came back to the U.S., I went to Bethesda Chevy Chase High School, which is a large suburban high school. And I can remember the first day standing up when the teacher walked in the room and sort of slowly getting back into my seat and thinking, okay, This is going to be a different set of norms, a different set of ought tos. So one of the interesting things about social norms is that on the one hand, there are things you ought to do.
But on the other hand, they're very local. And I think my early upbringing helped me to have those questions.
Right. And I guess one other way in which your interest in social norms might connect with some of these early experiences is that social normativity is often, although it's operative and sort of structures our behavior, social norms are sometimes very hard to detect in our own case. We don't see them until you've got a contrast class. Does that seem right?
Yeah.
Oh, that's absolutely right. One of the other interesting things about them is that they're fairly tacit until someone does the wrong thing, until someone breaks the norm.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the central puzzle about the normativity of social roles?
0:01–11:22
2
How does Charlotte Witt’s upbringing influence her interest in social norms?
11:22–26:11
3
What distinguishes the “artisanal” approach to social norms from prudential or ethical accounts?
26:11–39:17
4
How does Witt differentiate internalism and externalism in explaining normativity?
39:17–55:36
5
What is the A‑function (Aristotelian function) and how does it capture normativity?
55:36–1:05:17
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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