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normative theory

normative theory

any theory which seeks to establish the VALUES or norms which best fit the overall needs or requirements of society either societies in general or particular societies, and which would be morally justified. For those who see the aim of modern social science as descriptive and explanatory and not ‘prescriptive’, such a goal for social science or sociology is not acceptable. Hence in these circumstances, the term ‘normative theory’ can be a pejorative term. For others, however, the aim of appraising and establishing values is an important goal, perhaps the most important goal, of the social sciences. See also FACT-VALUE DISTINCTION, VALUE JUDGEMENT, VALUE RELEVANCE, VALUE FREEDOM AND VALUE NEUTRALITY, FRANKFURT SCHOOL OF CRITICAL THEORY, POLITICAL SCIENCE, BEHAVIOURALISM.
Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000
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References in periodicals archive
lack coherence, they jostle uncomfortably together, overlap, correspond, and contradict." (6) An American offers a comparable view: "American criminal law's historical development has borne no relation to any plausible normative theory--unless 'more' counts as a normative theory." (7) The result is overcriminalization, complaints of which are both widespread and long standing--one can find them at least four decades ago, before the recent growth in federal criminal law.
Fortunately, Erskine's thesis is able to draw on other resources, from outside international normative theory. First, it turns to Carol Gilligan's "different voice feminism" for a strong statement of our embedded moral nature.
In little more than one hundred and fifty pages of lively prose Reasons & the Good covers half a dozen fundamental issues in normative theory, any one of which could easily fill a book on its own.
In what follows, I want to engage with some of these criticisms insofar as they continue, as I see it, to misconstrue Habermas's grounding of normative theory and criteriology, which he advances through his conception of the discourse-ethical model of norm validation.
In this sense, moral actions can be said to be a mimesis of the legitimate expectations of freedom.(45) In the context of a more critical theory of normative nature, then, the finis operantis can no longer be relegated to the psychology of action as in a reductive normative theory, but it now plays an active and constitutive role in the determination of the moral object of the act.
Prior even to the publication of the Newcomb's Problem essay, he had written a Princeton University doctoral dissertation titled The Normative Theory of Individual Choice (1963, reprinted in 1990 by Garland Press).
They look at crowdfunding from the perspectives of positive theory, normative theory, and critical theory.
This is to say that the being for account is vulnerable to the notorious wrong-kind-of-reason problem, which has been much discussed recently in other areas of normative theory. (5) In this context the problem is that one can be for bearing some relation to an action without this having any bearing on one's normative certitude; the reasons for being for bearing some relation to an action are in some cases of the wrong kind to capture normative certitude.
Since media ethics is an area of applied ethics rather than a normative theory, it remains unclear why one global view might be needed.
In putting together the collection, he has chosen to emphasize key themes of his career: the role of race and ethnicity in crime and punishment, comparative and American penal policy, sentencing policy in the United States, and the normative theory of punishment that underlies sentencing policy.
Often unwittingly, they have been drawn on to the terrain between empirical and normative theory and inquiry.
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