Though Gibbard discusses a relation between rules of behavior and norms expressing them (70), much more could be accomplished by explicating rules and norms to explain how they might function in human thought.

Consider the statement, "If you want to advance social harmony, and being fair to others will advance social harmony, then be fair to others." For specificity, I'll call statements of this type 'rules', noting that Gibbard uses 'rule' differently -- almost as a synonym for 'norm', but without the imperative force (259). The rule above incorporates a goal, expressed as a want (to advance social harmony), a principle expressing a cause-and-effect relation (being fair to others will advance social harmony), and a norm (be fair to others), all bundled up in a logical structure.

A norm might serve a number of goals; in this case, being fair to others might be undertaken in order to gain respect, to attain righteousness, or to avoid feeling guilty. Each of these goals, when plugged into the logical structure above, yields a different rule related to the same norm.

I contend that people will ordinarily, with such commonplace rules, avoid the difficulty of dealing with the rule itself and instead focus on the embedded norm. They will implicitly accept the goal and the principle as "given", as going without saying. They will presume that their ultimate goal is indeed valuable, and that the action prescribed by the norm in question will indeed facilitate that goal. They will simply say, "Be fair to others."

This rule abbreviation strategy is probably not consciously adopted, and its goals and rules may rarely be consciously entertained. It is pervasive because we have a well established mammalian mechanism for guiding our actions according to feelings -- including the broadly moral sentiments such as benevolence, reciprocity, and respect that Gibbard discusses (255-269) -- and because these feelings are readily attached to norms operating at the simple cognitive level of heuristics. At that level, heuristics and norms can develop merely through the inductive force of repeated experience, and require only very simple concepts. With sufficient experience of negative feelings associated with unfairness and positive feelings associated with fairness, and with the uncomplicated abstract notions of fairness and universal application, we might naturally develop "Be fair to others" as an internalized norm.

Effectively, expressing a norm does the job of expressing the larger (logically complete) rule -- but it does so by using a fragment lacking logical structure. This is dangerous, for only the logical structure ensures that the norms we adopt are both sensible and effective.

A norm is sensible if it aims to promote a desired goal, and it is effective if the prescribed action can promote the goal. (We should also note that goals may be sensible or not, according to whether they have genuine value.) I use 'sensible' here much as Gibbard uses 'rational' -- as a synonym for 'makes sense' or 'is apt'. My claim that goals can be considered sensible contradicts one aspect of the Humean notion of purely instrumental rationality that Gibbard uses as a foil for his norm-expressivism (10-12). For Hume, methods can be rational or irrational, but goals cannot. If my claim for objective value pans out, making the pursuit of maximal, universal, long term value a prime candidate for an ultimate or final value or goal, and we can apprehend the difference between valuable intermediate (and therefore instrumental) goals and valueless or detrimental ones, then instrumental rationality can (and should) include the assessment of goals. Rationality, then, would be instrumental not just in the attainment of goals, but of value.

We can expect rule abbreviation to work well under certain kinds of conditions: (i) the goals they seek to promote are indeed valuable -- at least to the group if not to each individual; and (ii) the logical structure of the rule is such that, given a desire for the embedded goal and an accurate causal relation expressed in the embedded principle, the embedded norm follows soundly as a conclusion; or (iii) the norms, even if they fail to promote the culture's intended goal(s), actually do promote some real benefit.

The benefits of coordination that Gibbard cites would be realized for a culture when norms like these are adopted. The first two conditions work together to promote an intended goal of genuine value, in the way that norms are presumably supposed to work. The third condition promotes unintended benefits that pragmatically "vindicate" adherence to a norm embedded in a faulty rule, by making it adaptive.

It stands to reason that this simple strategy of rule abbreviation would precede, both in evolution and in individual human cognitive development, the vastly more complex strategy of dealing with the rules directly. Gibbard (1995, p. 3) accepts this evolutionary sequence. "What natural selection could have equipped us with, then, is not an implementation of classical rational choice theory, but a set of heuristics: rules that work fairly well and are tractable."

People can follow norms simply by doing as they are told, with no need to understand the consequences of the actions their norms prescribe. The latter strategy requires the full-blown, sophisticated theoretical and logical capabilities of the human neocortex. It requires thinking.

Why would we want to be guided by rules rather than just by the norms they contain? One utilitarian reason offers itself immediately: rules keep our attention on the relevant goals (intended consequences), but norms mask a possibly mistaken connection to relevant goals, beg the question as to whether the relevant goals are genuinely valuable, and might also promote other goals that may or may not be consonant with those that are important to us. Furthermore, norms are often taught as imperatives, isolated from any explanation of how they serve particular goals -- as though they had significance apart from their role in reaching goals. As Gibbard puts it, "we treat norms like rocks and trees, more or less" (249). If we accept norms in such a dogmatic fashion, we may be blind to their consequences. And for both utilitarianism and evolution, the consequences are what matter.