The norm as deontic state-of-affairs and as deontic noema

The notion of “norm” is a controversial one: notably, it is controversial what kind of entities this notion refers to. Norms are often identified with linguistic entities, such as deontic sentences or deontic propositions. However, in human (and possibly non-human) societies, many norms seem to exist and operate without being created or expressed through linguistic entities. Starting from the consideration that normative phenomena intersect different orders of phenomena, I distinguish seven possible entities the word ‘norm’ may alternately refer to: three are linguistic entities (deontic sentence, deontic proposition, deontic utterance), four are non-linguistic entities (deontic state-of-affairs, deontic noema, deontic behaviour and deontic artifact). Focusing on Amedeo G. Conte’s notions of deontic state-of-affairs and deontic noema, I suggest that norms should be identified with deontic states-of-affairs when their validity (i.e., their belonging to a specific normative system) is taken into account, and they should be instead identified with deontic noemata when their effectiveness or operancy on human behaviour is investigated. The experience of a deontic noema (i.e., the mental representation of a norm) is typically but not necessarily connected to the existence of a corresponding deontic state-of-affairs within a normative system: it is also possible that a deontic noema arises in normative experience independently of any corresponding valid deontic state-of-affairs. Following Ota Weinberger, I suggest, on the one hand, that a proper normative experience of deontic noemata should be distinguished from a non normative experience; on the other hand, I suggest that normative experience may have a nomogenic role: it may contribute to the genesis of new norms either through the spreading of a normative experience or through exerting an influence on nomothetic powers.