Normativity and grammar of psychological concepts

Abstract

This essay aims to establish the claim that psychological concepts such as love, desire, depression, etc. have a normative dimension, to then explore the potential source of this normativity. Building on Wittgenstein’s social-constructivist approach, this essay argues that not only the psychological concepts that are available to us, but also our concepts’ normative dimension is a result of our communal life. In Wittgensteinian terminology, normativity should therefore be understood as a grammatical feature of the language-games we play with psychological concepts.