Abstract

Promising is a norm-guided affair. The question is wherein rests the authority of promissory standards? The chapter argues that it entirely rests in promissory practices, a position The chapter calls _the exhaustive practice position_ (EPP). EPP claims that promising is a practice and nothing more, normatively speaking, and denies that the relevant standards embodied by promissory practices have any practice-external authority. The chapter discusses what implications EPP would have for our promissory commitments. The chapter addresses the worry that accepting EPP would make it harder for us to remain loyal to those commitments—that if we cannot safely consider promissory standards to be sanctioned by a practice-external authority, we shall be unable to sustain those commitments. The chapter argues in opposition that acceptance of EPP need not prompt practically engaged agents to think any lower of their own promissory commitments. We can first-personally and self-reflectively stand by our promissory commitments even if, normatively speaking, we came to see them as part of practices and nothing more. The chapter also contrasts EPP with two competitors. First, with regards to the view that promissory norms are grounded in morality, the chapter argues that (1) this view encounters difficulties in accounting for the significance of promising in the right way, and that (2) often promissory and moral demands diverge. The chapter raises structurally similar worries with regards to a second view that promissory norms are grounded in self-interested reasons. In the final part, The chapter acknowledges that EPP offers a revisionary interpretation of promissory practices, but argues that this presents no problem.