ABSTRACT
Normativity is one of the keywords of contemporary philosophical discussions. Within philosophy of language, there is, for example, an ongoing fierce discussion between 'normativists' and 'anti-normativists' about the normativity of meaning. Stephen Turner, one of the leading figures of contemporary philosophy of social sciences, in his recent book nicely summarized the anti-normativist claims and arguments. Hence social normativism is not fundamentalist in Turner's sense; it does not assume any causally effective non-causal forces and no normative facts independent of the causal ones. In general, Turner is convinced that current normativism in fact continues the legacy of sociologists postulating various kinds of collective objects which he finds mythical. The normativist is convinced that the traditional accounts of meaning and meaningfulness based on relations such as standing for or representing are bound to fail to give a satisfactory explanation of these fundamental relations. 'Normativism' is a rather blurry notion: Philosophies holding norms to be crucial come in very different varieties.
