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Answer by Arepo2
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I don't think there's a perfect answer, but as a heuristic I defer to the logical positivists - if you can't even in principle find direct evidence for or against the statement by observing the physical world and you can't mathematically prove it, and on top of that it sounds like a statement about behaviour or action, then you're probably in normland.

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Vynn
would ontological statements which can't be proven by observation also count as normative statements? e.g. I am real, the world is real, I am not real, the self is not real etc.
Arepo2
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I'm not sure how to interpret 'real' there. If you mean 'real' as opposed to something like a hologram, I'd say the sentence is underdefined. If you mean it as synonymous for a proposition about physical state, such that 'there are two oranges in front of me' would be approximately equivalent to 'the two oranges in front of me are real' , then I think you're asking about any proposition about physical state.

In which case I don't think there's much reason to call them 'normative', no statement can be proven by physical observation, so that would make basically all parseable statements normative, which would make the term useless. Although I'm sympathetic to the idea that it is.

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by Vynn
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PhilosophyMoral philosophy
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Leo

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There's a 'should' either stated or implied.

Arepo1
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'If you add 1 to 1 you should get 2' is not a statement people would necessarily consider normative.

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Vynn
Why is it not considered normative? It follows rules of arithmetic. The operation should be carried out according to "correct" procedure and failure to do so results in something "wrong". So why no count as normative?
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Arepo
You could make a case that it is a normative statement - certainly not everyone would consider it not to be. It would have been clearer if I'd phrased my response as a question: 'would you consider that statement to be normative?' My sense is that you have a pretty good idea of how philosophers use the word 'normative', and you're pursuing a level of clarity about it that's impossible to obtain. Since it (by definition) doesn't map to anything in the physical or mathematical worlds, and arguably even if it did, it just isn't possible to identify a class of phenomena with which you could concretely associate the word. It's a convenience notion moral realists use to gesture at what they hope are sufficiently shared concepts. If you're sceptical that it succeeds, maybe you just aren't a moral realist...
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Vynn
Yup
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Arepo
Self-pimp: http://www.valence-utilitarianism.com/posts/moral-exclusivism
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Emrik
Oh, I like this. Seems good to have a word for it, because it's a set of constraints that a lot of us try to fit our morality into. We don't want it to have logical contradictions. Seems icky. Though it does make me wonder what exactly I mean by 'logical contradiction'. 
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Leo
Aristotle would answer "'should' is said in many ways". I was of course thinking of the normative 'should', which I believe is the first that comes to mind when someone asks about normative sentences. But I'd be highly interested in a different kind of counterexample: a normative sentence without a 'should' stated or implied.
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Arepo
Defining a normative statement as 'a statement with a normative "should"' has certain problems...
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Leo
That's true, but that comment was only meant for you, who seemed confused about what kind of  'should' you should use in a normative sentence. I took for granted that you already knew 'normative', because you had posted a nice and useful answer to the original question.  
Vynn0
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Do "must" and "may" imply a should?

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david_reinstein

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Some confusion in that:

In economics “Normative Econ” often means axiom based approach. State “reasonable conditions on preferences and production functions” derive necessary implications. See… most of books like Mas Colell et al.

In common parlance, maybe in psych, I’ve hear “normative behaviour” used to mean something like “typical, normal, socially acceptable behaviour”

Vynn1
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Can you tell me where "normative behaviour" and "typical behaviour" have been conflated because I'm very sure that's a big no no even in social/psychological sciences

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david_reinstein
Just remembering I have seen it but maybe it was in common parlance but not on social science.

Arepo

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I don't think there's a perfect answer, but as a heuristic I defer to the logical positivists - if you can't even in principle find direct evidence for or against the statement by observing the physical world and you can't mathematically prove it, and on top of that it sounds like a statement about behaviour or action, then you're probably in normland.

Vynn1
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would ontological statements which can't be proven by observation also count as normative statements? e.g. I am real, the world is real, I am not real, the self is not real etc.

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Arepo
I'm not sure how to interpret 'real' there. If you mean 'real' as opposed to something like a hologram, I'd say the sentence is underdefined. If you mean it as synonymous for a proposition about physical state, such that 'there are two oranges in front of me' would be approximately equivalent to 'the two oranges in front of me are real' , then I think you're asking about any proposition about physical state. In which case I don't think there's much reason to call them 'normative', no statement can be proven by physical observation, so that would make basically all parseable statements normative, which would make the term useless. Although I'm sympathetic to the idea that it is.
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