How to Build a Normative Creature

Human individuals often make judgments about what they or others ought to believe or do in a situation. These normative judgments carry with them a supra-individual force, as they purport to take precedence over the individual’s own personal perspectives and preferences. They also carry with them a supra-individual generality, even universality, as they purport to apply not just to the self or other specific individuals but to persons in general (within some parameters).Here we pursue the hypothesis that the supra-individual force and generality of normative thinking and attitudes - both sociomoral and epistemic - is a natural consequence of their source in humans’ species-unique skills and motivations of shared intentionality.