Abstract

Mainstream accounts of conceptual norms depict them as a specific kind of (sub)norms in as much as they establish a certain equivalence without making reference to an action-type, which implies also that they lack a deontic modalization. However, such non-prescriptive explanation raises some serious problems, mainly when it is assumed that the introduction of a conceptual norm into a normative system changes the content of the system. Those problems pave the way to contrast such explanation with a prescriptive alternative according to which conceptual norms are regulative in character, though with the peculiarity of addressing the mental action of qualifying something in accordance with a given equivalence. All-things-considered, from such contrast it seems to follow that the prescriptive explanation is less problematic than the non-prescriptive one.