Abstract

Both aspects of custom, habit and convention, reflect our propensity to behave regularly. When the propensity to acquire habits due to our hypersocial nature are joined to basic principles of learning, convention emerges naturally. But coordinated regularity is not enough: it gives us rule-conformity, but not rule-following. The latter, which is the source of normativity, requires consciousness of rules as rules, and requires conformation to them because they are recognized as rules to which persons are committed to conform. The constitution of epistemic, ethical, and political communities, and membership in those communities who not only conform to, but also recognize, follow, constitute, and enforce rules, require language and metalinguistic capacity. And to deploy these capacities in the context of a society that is already rule-governed in this sense is sufficient for entry into such a community. This chapter presents an account of the ontogenesis of normativity, of how one progresses from infancy to personhood by benefitting from and contributing to a virtuous spiral enabled by language and collective life.