ABSTRACT
Brandom, following Kant and Wittgenstein, distinguishes between acting according to a rule and acting according to a conception of a rule. In the first case, there are regularities that describe one’s behavior, but one need not be aware of them. In the second case, one’s behavior may be described by a rule precisely because one aspires to adhere to it. In the latter case, an agent’s conception of the rule constrains her behavior, constituting a reason for her to act in one way and not another. This is the idea of a norm. A norm is a rule that agents feel, in some sense, obliged to follow.
