Regulation without propositions

What is it about?

In thinking about regulating human behaviour, one generally imagines a regulation stated through norms linguistically formulated in sentence. Constitutions, civil codes, criminal codes and traffic codes are all instruments of this kind of regulation. However, this image of regulation is very reductive and does not capture the extent of the phenomenon. There are without doubt cases of non-linguistic regulation and, a fortiori, non-sentential regulation. In other words, we have examples of regulation not implying speech acts. In this article, however, we will not limit ourselves only to investigating the forms of regulation that are not sentential; more specifically, we propose to examine whether there are forms of regulation that are also not propositional. In this regard, we will advance the hypothesis that there are indeed cases of “non-propositional regulation”. We propose to call “non-propositional regulation” any regulation that is independent of propositions and propositional contents. An example is represented by speed bumps to slow traffic.

Featured Image

Photo by henry perks on Unsplash

Photo by henry perks on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The discovery of non-propositional regulation opens up a new perspective of investigation on regulation.