Normativity
The property of being able to count as a reason for action.
What it commits you to
Normativity is what makes a statement of the form 'you ought' different from a statement of the form 'it is the case'. Reductionists try to explain it away as preference, emotion, or social fact, and none of the reductions has convinced most philosophers. For alignment it is the central placeholder: whatever is missing when a system satisfies a metric without any reason to do so.
Which realms lean on this
Philosophy carries the arguments the other four kinds are downstream of — what an agent is, what a person owes, what a rule is for.
philosophy · 8 realms — The Care Weft, The Contractual Court, The Existential Wilds, The Kantian Citadel, The Longview Foundry, The Middle Kingdom, The Pragmatic Wharf, The Sangha Terraces.
See also
Practical reason
philosophyReasoning about what to do, as distinct from reasoning about what is the case.
Hypothetical imperative
philosophyA command that binds only if you happen to want the end it presupposes.
Authenticity
philosophyActing in accordance with what one has actually accepted rather than what one ought to.
Deontology
ethicsDuty-first ethics: some things are wrong regardless of the totals they produce.