A normative justification is an ontologically grounded justification for an ethical decision. It goes beyond what can be decided purely statistically or empirically — and relies instead on a statement about what the person is and how it must be encountered.
Why normative justification is necessary
In many ethically relevant fields — bioethics, AI ethics, medical law — there is a temptation to answer normative questions through statistical or technical optimization. The impossibility theorem (Chouldechova 2017) shows exemplarily, using the example of algorithmic fairness: several statistical fairness criteria (e.g. calibration, equal opportunity, demographic parity) cannot be optimized simultaneously. A choice among them is unavoidable — and this choice is not statistical but normative.
From this it follows: whoever, in a case of conflict, decides which criterion takes priority must adopt an ontological position — consciously or unconsciously. The question is not whether a normative justification is given, but which norm underlies it.
Normative justifications in the Personhood ontology
The ontology models several normative justifications as their own classes:
- Personalist Norm — the only adequate value-response to the being of the person
- Precautionary Principle — under epistemic uncertainty the stricter condition holds
- Dead Donor Rule — a clinical-ethical basic principle of transplantation medicine
- Principle of Totality — the part is ordered toward the whole
All these norms are ontologically grounded: they follow from the position that the person is to be affirmed for its own sake — not from statistical or utilitarian considerations.
Demarcation from statistical or utilitarian justification
A normative justification in the sense maintained here differs from:
- Statistical justification — this can grasp only correlations and frequencies, but not the value of that which is frequent or rare.
- Utilitarian justification — this maximizes utility without grasping the value of the individual independently of the aggregate. Whoever ties the value of the person to utility can also negate it again.
- Conventional justification — this relies on social consensus, not on the being of the person.
By contrast, the normative justification of the personal ontology is substance-ontological: it is grounded in what the person is, not in what it does, is of use for, or receives recognition for.
Ontological classification
Superordinate concept: Entity
Ontological relations:
- concretized in: Personalist Norm, Precautionary Principle, Dead Donor Rule, Principle of Totality
- demarcated from: statistical, utilitarian, conventional justification
- grounded in: personhood and ontological dignity
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What Is Human Personhood? (German)
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Chouldechova, Alexandra (2017): Fair prediction with disparate impact: A study of bias in recidivism prediction instruments. Big Data 5(2): 153—163. — Impossibility theorem for statistical fairness criteria.
- Bexten, Raphael E. (2017): Was ist menschliches Personsein? Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, dissertation. — The Personalist Norm as an ontologically sufficient ground.