Normal People

[logic2006]

The idea that there are normal and abnormal ways for

people to be and to behave is a very familiar one. So also is the idea that abnormality--or deviance--is something regrettable, deplorable, and even, in some cases, punishable. Here, however, my main concern will be to consider what might be meant by the claim that a person is, in some respect, normal. There is, no doubt, an unsophisticated usage according to which what is normal is what is familiar, and the unfamiliar is feared or condemned as abnormal. But since we are all sophisticated this need not detain us. Sophisticated philosophers, though, have often proposed conceptions of human nature, conceptions that presumably have implications for human normality. Currently, I am more concerned with scientific claims to provide universal accounts of human nature. Recently, I have been especially concerned with the claims of neoclassical economists and sociobiologists (or, as they now prefer to be called, evolutionary psychologists).