Overview

How should we assess the social structures that govern human conduct and settle whether we are bound by their rules? One approach is to ask whether social arrangements, such as our family structures, reflect pre-conventional facts about our nature. If they do, compliance will serve our interests because these rules are not just conventions. Another approach is to ask whether following a convention has desirable consequences. For example, the rule which makes the dollar bill legal tender is a convention, and the great usefulness of having a medium of exchange ensures we follow that convention by accepting paper money in return for things of real value. In this book, David Owens argues that being bound by a convention can also be valuable for its own sake. People need meaning in their lives and conventions infuse acts and attitudes with normative significance, rendering them right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, required or forbidden. Such rules bind us not just in virtue of their usefulness but also because their absence would impoverish our social world. Appreciating this point is essential to a proper understanding of our cultures of neighbourliness and hospitality, family structures, systems of property rights, conventions around speech, the norms governing how we deport ourselves in public, and even the rules of a game.

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9780198925927

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A strikingly original and philosophically challenging book, both in the sense that it must be read with care and that it challenges much received wisdom in moral theory. * Liam Murphy, Jurisprudence * David Owens's Bound by Convention: Obligation and Social Rules is an original and stimulating defense of the intrinsic value of social convention. * Jeff Kaplan, Ethics * Owens book undoubtedly constitutes an important contribution to a strangely neglected topic in recent philosophical work, namely the role of conventions in shaping our rights and obligations. * Laura Valentini, Mind *

A strikingly original and philosophically challenging book, both in the sense that it must be read with care and that it challenges much received wisdom in moral theory. * Liam Murphy, Jurisprudence * David Owens's Bound by Convention: Obligation and Social Rules is an original and stimulating defense of the intrinsic value of social convention. * Jeff Kaplan, Ethics * Owens book undoubtedly constitutes an important contribution to a strangely neglected topic in recent philosophical work, namely the role of conventions in shaping our rights and obligations. * Laura Valentini, Mind * A strikingly original and philosophically challenging book, both in the sense that it must be read with care and that it challenges much received wisdom in moral theory. * Liam Murphy, Jurisprudence * David Owens's Bound by Convention: Obligation and Social Rules is an original and stimulating defense of the intrinsic value of social convention. * Jeff Kaplan, Ethics * Owens' book undoubtedly constitutes an important contribution to a strangely neglected topic in recent philosophical work, namely the role of conventions in shaping our rights and obligations. * Laura Valentini, Mind *

Author Information

David Owens is Professor of Philosophy at King's College London. He has held visiting appointments at All Souls College, Oxford, Yale University, London University, Sydney University, New York University, and the University of Lublin. He is the author of three books: Shaping the Normative Landscape (2012); Reason Without Freedom (2000); Causes and Coincidences (1992); and a collection of papers Normativity and Control (2017).

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