Normative objects

The photo at the top of this blog shows a boundary stone somewhere east of the Dutch town of Nijmegen. The stone marks there the border between the Netherlands and Germany. The foreground is the Netherlands and on the other side of the stone it is Germany. Once this stone had a compelling force: It told you that without permission it was forbidden to cross the border it marked. Many boundary markers of this kind – besides marking the border – still have this prohibitive function, like those on the border between Lithuania and Belarus. Instead of a stone (or pole) you could put there also a board with a text or a symbolic drawing or a border guard. Just like the board or the guard such a boundary stone has a normative force. It replaces the board or the guard. Therefore we call a boundary stone a deontic artifact: an artifact with a normative intent. The stone prescribes you what to do, or rather what not to do: to pass the stone without permission. Once, this was the normative function of the stone in the photo. Now, in these days of open EU borders, it warns you only that the rules and laws on the other side of the side of the stone are different from those on your side, but it is still a deontic artifact in a sense, for it prescribes you that on one side of the stone you need to obey other laws than on the other side.
Look around and you’ll see that deontic artifacts abound. You see them especially in traffic: traffic signs and lights, lines and symbols on the roads, etc. Examples of other deontic artifacts are hedges and fences that mark out private territory or now in the days of the Covid pandemic arrows on the floor of a shop that tell you how to walk. Deontic artifacts are not only symbolic but they can also force you to behave in a certain way. A roundabout is a typical example. It prescribes you to follow a certain route and to give priority to the traffic on the roundabout. You can ignore the prescriptions, but you will not do so for it is risky.
As my examples make clear, deontic artifacts can be of different kinds. A boundary stone is normative or prescriptive: It informs you about desired or prescribed behaviour. Or better, take a road sign. It tells you what to do, though in many cases you can ignore it, if you want to. On the other hand, a roundabout is regulative: it regulates or enforces your behaviour for you don’t want to have an accident. Another example is a speed bump on a road. It doesn’t prescribe you to drive slower, but you’ll do for you don’t want to damage your car. Because as such a speed bump is not normative, actually we can call it better a regulative adeontic artifact. A fence marking a private territory not only marks what is private and what is public, but if it is high enough it also stops you to enter the private area and so it is a regulative deontic artifact.
A deontic artifact can be permanent or temporarily. Above I discussed already several examples of permanent deontic artifacts, like boundary stones or fences. Once placed, they stay there “for eternity” or at least for an indefinite time. But sometimes we want to mark a place or forbid certain behaviour only for a short time. A row of chairs barring the entrance of a lounge or a bar or a part of a room is a case in point. Normally you can come there for a drink or a meal but the barman has closed the space for a little while, for instance because it must to be cleaned. Another example is a coat left on a chair telling you that the chair is already used by someone else who has left for a moment. The momentarily deontic artifacts just mentioned are informal markers, but markers can also be formal, like the traffic cones used by road workers to mark a hole in the road or the place where they are working. However, we consider a traffic cone only as a marker of danger or as a sign that marks out road works if placed on the road. If you see a few disorganized traffic cones on the roadside, you’ll not see them as markers, so as deontic artifacts that warn you for a danger or that regulate your behaviour. They are just there; left. This exemplifies that a deontic artifact gets its meaning as such only if it is situated: it needs “to be installed in a particular place to exercise [its] function and influence.” A deontic artifact “only performs its function when it is in its place.” (see Source, p. 194)
These are only a few distinctions that characterize deontic artifacts, or normative objects as they can be called as well. If we think of norms that prescribe or regulate what we do, usually we think of texts set down in explicit rules and laws or in cultural habits and customs or in implicit behavioural precepts; that is, we think of something that is linguistic in some way. As we have seen above regulative phenomena of everyday life can and often do have also a material aspect, or they are even fully material (like the speed bump). The material dimension of a normative phenomenon is often as important as its linguistic dimension. 

Source
When writing this blog I have leaned heavily on
Giuseppe Lorini, Stefano Moroni, Olimpia Giuliana Lodo, “Deontic artifacts. Investigating the normativity of objects”, in Philosophical Explorations, 24/2 (June 2021).