Diachronic Holism and Dynamic Normativity

My objective here is to motivate certain distinctive forms of dynamic normativity at some level deeper than that of our ordinary usage of ‘norm’ or ‘rule’ in the prescriptive sense of ‘ought’-forms of normativity (viz., interpretive and constitutive forms) not only bound by evolution but ultimately, via the same dynamic process, giving rise to our prescriptive-normative practices. As a theoretical backdrop for this motivation, I give a review of the familiar frog case in the studies of representational content from a new perspective: i.e., try to reveal the diachronic holism embedded (but undeveloped) in Millikan’s teleo-semantic functions via a thought experiment called ‘the frog prince’. Then I will show how such a version of diachronic holism relates to my proposed notions of dynamic normativity.