ABSTRACT
This chapter explains conceptual tools that might help put discussions that focus on rules and norms on a firmer ground and underpins a comprehensive general account of the nature of rules. In Jaroslav Peregrin's Inferentialism: Why Rules Matter the concept of rule plays the central role. Peregrin focuses his attention on rules which shape our social world and our linguistic practices in particular. In modern societies diverse kinds of social subjects are able to get bound by regulative relationships—to occupy the positions of a Prescriber or a Doer. Regulative relationships are commonly established by a concurrence of corrective reactions of different kinds. The conceptual and terminological distinctions point in the direction of a relatively simple and at the same time systematic solution to the so-called ontological problem of norms that is discussed by von Wright in his classic work Norm and Action.
