Normative analysis
Göran Duus-Otterström,
otterstrom@pol.gu.se
Department
of
Political
Science.
Goran.duus-
Spring 2013.
Session 1. Normative epistemology. Tue 26 February, 13-15. Lilla Skansen
(B340, 3rd floor, Department of Political Science)
Normative analysis is the activity of evaluating, and making, arguments pertaining to
questions of right and wrong. Occupying center stage, therefore, is the soundness of
normative premises – whether such premises can be justifiably held or not. This
lecture offers a brief introduction to the different approaches to normative
justification, in particular the distinctions between theoretical and intuitionist
approaches and foundationalist and coherentist approaches. The essential claim of
the lecture is that appeal to moral intuitions is unavoidable in normative analysis.
The lecture also covers the basics of argumentation.
Exercise: turning natural language into arguments (handout).
Reading:
 Daniels, Norman, "Reflective Equilibrium", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/reflectiveequilibrium/>.
 McMahan, Jeff (2000) “Moral Intuition” in Hugh LaFollette, ed., Blackwell
Guide to Ethical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell). Available for download at
McMahan’s website.
 Singer, Peter (2005) “Ethics and Intuitions”, Journal of Ethics, 9(3-4): 331352.
 Timmons, Mark (1987) “Foundationalism and the Structure of Ethical
Justification,” Ethics, 97: 595-609.
 Weston, A. (2000) A Rulebook for arguments. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Session 2. Normative analysis. Fri 1 March, 13-15. Lilla Skansen (B340)
This lecture covers the basic methodology of normative analysis. The two important
building blocks are intuitions and principles. Put very simply, normative analysis
consists in thinking in a systematic way about how these two building blocks fit in the
questions we are posing, checking for consistency and plausibility across comparable
cases. The lecture will offer concrete examples of such analysis. The lecture also
covers the distinctions between internal and external normative critique and negative
and positive normative analysis.
Exercise: conducting a small normative analysis (handout).
Reading:
 Glover, J. (1990) Causing Death and Saving Lives (London: Penguin), ch. 3.
 McDermott, Daniel. (2008) “Analytical Political Philosophy”, in Leopold &
Stears, eds., Political Theory: Methods and Approaches (Oxford: OUP).
 McMahan, Jeff (2000) “Moral Intuition” in Hugh LaFollette, ed., Blackwell
Guide to Ethical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell). Available for download at
McMahan’s website).
 Rawls, John (1999) A Theory of Justice (Oxford: OUP, revised edition), s. 346, 506-514.
Session 3. Techniques in normative analysis. Tue 5 March, 10-12. Lilla
Skansen (B340)
Previous lectures have introduced normative analysis as an activity that seeks to
evaluate the soundness of normative premises. In this lecture, we will focus
specifically on different techniques that are involved in doing normative analysis.
Special attention is given to thought experiments, but also we will also cover some
prevalent forms of argumentation (e.g., reductio ad absurdum, dilemmas, slippery
slope).
Exercise: conducting a thought experiment (handout).
 Brown, James Robert and Fehige, Yiftach, "Thought Experiments", The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta
(ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/thoughtexperiment/>.
 Brownlee, Kimberly and Stemplowska, Zofia, “Trapped in an Experience
Machine with a Famous Violinist: Thought Experiments in Normative Theory”
[Draft 2, 5 November 2010]
 Nozick, Robert (1974) Anarchy, State & Utopia (Basic Books), ch. 3.
 Weston, A. (2000) A Rulebook for arguments. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Session 4. Paper session. Tue 12 March, 13-16. Lilla Skansen (B340)
Prior to this session, each participant will have been allocated a journal article. At the
session, each participant will present the normative argument that is made in their
article. Special attention should be given do what is, at heart, going in the argument.
I.e., participants should talk about the following questions: what is the major claim of
the article? On what grounds does the author believe that the claim is justified? What
is the basic structure and content of the author’s way of trying to convince the reader
that her major claim is justified?
Each participant should be prepared to speak about 15 minutes about his or her
article. Powerpoint is available but not mandatory. The presentation will be followed
by a short group discussion about the article the presenter has introduced.
Participation in the paper session is obligatory to gain credits for the course module.
In case a student cannot attend the paper session, he or she is required to write her
presentation in the form of a paper. The paper should be 2000-2500 words.
Final paper
Final papers are presented on Wed 27 March. Each participant presents his or her
own paper and also acts as discussant of another participant’s paper.
The final paper should focus either on criticizing an existing normative argument
(preferably one made in the academic literature) or on developing a positive
normative argument for a particular claim.
A note on course content and the reading list
The module focuses squarely on normative analysis as a general method. This means
that the course will not systematically discuss the various normative theories, and
their corresponding concepts, that generate and underpin different normative
principles. For such theories, which constitute the specific substance of normative
analyses, there are many good introductions that the student might want to consult.
For example:
 Rachels, James. The Elements of Moral Philosophy (numerous editions).
Boston: McGraw Hill
 Kymlicka, Will (2002) Contemporary Political Philosophy, 2nd ed. Oxford:
OUP.