Amie Thomasson’s latest monograph, Norms and Necessity, defends a normativist position about metaphysical modality statements. As a deflationary approach to metaphysical modality, Thomasson’s brand of normativism is in full continuity with her previous meta-metaphysical endeavors—especially with her deflationary approach to the existence of objects, developed in Ontology Made Easy.
Chapter 1 introduces the author’s main claim, together with relevant historical precedents and some key challenges. The book’s central thesis is that basic modal statements (“Necessarily, p”) are prescriptive or normative, in that they issue instructions as to what one should infer from what. This is a form of nondescriptivism about modal discourse, whereby modal claims are not in the business of describing the world and do not have truthmakers. This view has its precursors in the later Wittgenstein, Gilbert Ryle, and Wilfrid Sellars. In more recent years, it has been maintained by Robert Brandom—according to whom modal claims...
