Towards a sigmatics of the word 'norm': an ontological turn in the semiotics of the normative

During the twentieth century, the development of semiotics and philosophy of language had a great influence on the investigation of normative phenomena, particularly within the philosophy of law: the analysis of normative language became the prevalent methodological approach among many legal philosophers, and the science of law was frequently understood as an analysis of the object language of law. This approach led to the development of a linguistic ontology of the normative and to a semiotic theory of the validity of norms, in which norms are conceived of as linguistic entities, and their validity is accordingly conceived of as a predicate of normative sentences. However, the resort to a semiotic approach for the investigation of normative phenomena does not necessarily imply the adoption of a linguistic ontology of norms. The semiotic analysis of the possible referents of the word ‘norm’ elaborated by Conte (“Studio per una teoria della validità”, Giappichelli, Torino [1970]1995; entry “Norma” in Enciclopedia filosofica, Bompiani, Milano, 2006) shows that the word ‘norm’ may alternately refer to both linguistic entities and non-linguistic entities, such as deontic states-of-affairs and deontic noemata. Such a “sigmatic” analysis exhibits the relevance of the ontological notion of deontic states-of-affairs, and of the correlative notion of “syntactical validity”. After reconstructing Conte’s theory of validity, we wonder whether validity is necessarily to be conceived of as systemic validity, or also an asystemic and factual validity of norms should be considered.