How should you decide what to do when you’re uncertain about basic normative principles? A natural suggestion is to follow some “second-order” norm: e.g., obey the most probable norm or maximize expected choiceworthiness. But what if you’re uncertain about second-order norms too—must you then invoke some third-order norm? If so, any norm-guided response to normative uncertainty appears doomed to a vicious regress. This paper aims to rescue second-order norms from the threat of regress. I first elaborate and defend the claim some philosophers have made that the regress problem forces us to accept normative externalism, the view that at least one norm is incumbent on all agents regardless of their normative beliefs. But, I then argue, we need not accept externalism about first-order norms, thus closing off any question of how agents should respond to normative uncertainty. Rather, we can head off the threat of regress by ascribing external force to a single second-order norm: the enkratic principle.

当您不确定基本规范原则时，您应该如何决定该怎么做？一个自然的建议是遵循一些“二阶”规范：例如，遵循最可能的规范或最大化预期的选择价值。但是，如果您也不确定二阶范数怎么办？那么您是否必须调用一些三阶范数？如果是这样，任何以规范为导向的对规范不确定性的反应似乎都注定会陷入恶性倒退。本文旨在将二阶规范从回归的威胁中拯救出来。我首先阐述并捍卫一些哲学家的主张，即回归问题迫使我们接受规范外在主义，即所有主体都必须遵守至少一种规范，无论他们的规范信仰如何。但是，我随后认为，我们不需要接受关于一阶规范的外部主义，从而消除了主体应如何应对规范不确定性的任何问题。相反，我们可以通过将外力归因于一个单一的二阶规范：enkratic原则来阻止倒退的威胁。