Normative Experience: Deontic Noema and Deontic Noesis

Abstract

What is a norm? A. G. Conte replies to this question by enumerating five possible referents of the word norm (§ 1.). Focusing on the fifth referent, the “deontic noema”, I raise the question (§ 2.): How is the deontic noesis of a deontic noema to be understood? Through a reconstruction in terms of deontic noema of H. Kelsen’s “merely thought norm” (§ 3.), of O. Weinberger’s “Normgedanke” (§ 4.), and of L. Petrażycki’s psychological analysis of normative experience (§ 5.), I propose to distinguish (§ 6.) a genuine deontic noesis from theoretical (cognitive or hypothetical) noeseis of a deontic noema, and I will argue that, in the hypothesis that no normative phenomenon would be possible without a consciousness capable of the deontic noesis of deontic noemata, the concepts of deontic noema and of deontic noesis deserve further investigation.