Paper's abstract

Florian Cova, Natural foundations and origins of norms
The idea according to which (moral or legal) norms can be given a “natural” foundation, though ancient and influential, has faced many resistances. However, recent developments in cognitive sciences seem to have resurrected the idea of a possible natural origin of norms. Here, I describe these developments and discuss to which extent they can be seen as providing norms a natural foundation. I conclude that the use of such developments is more likely to be “skeptical”, by allowing us to find out which norms have shaky natural foundations rather than norms that have a firm natural foundation.

Key Words : nature, norms, phhilosophy, psychology, cognitive sciences
tome 55, 2012 : p. 19-46

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