ABSTRACT
A philosophical controversy regarding norms concerns whether or not there exist features cognizers qua cognizers recognize in a sense yet to be specified as having justificatory and motivational imprimatur. Preserving some Kantian sense of freedom and dignity requires however imagining agents as authors of their world. What makes Rouse's view of particular interest resides in his focus on the notion of practices, a term that whether despite or because of its elusiveness has enjoyed considerable cachet in contemporary social theory. Appeals to rules generate regresses of explanation, for rules in turn need interpretation. Behavioral regularities presuppose but do not explain perception of meaningful patterns. Normative accounts, by contrast, reject the presence of any such posit; no rule or other sort of representation determines in advance what falls in or out of any putative concept. Rouse posits that an elusive teleology generated by humans in their environments puts in a shared space of reasons.
