In a previous post, I introduced non-conventionalism, the idea that for many social conventions—and many more than people typically think—there are no good reasons to conform, and sometimes there are even good reasons to go against them. This contrasts to conventionalism, the view that all conventions in society, or one’s part of it, are justified and worth conforming to—or provide justifications for conforming as such.

As I see it, there are at least seven objections to conventionalism, each of which provide corresponding arguments for non-conventionalism.

The first is highlighted by the fact that for any convention, there is often a counter-convention somewhere or at some point in human history. I experienced a lot of these when I lived in France. For instance, some French think it's rude if guests don’t assist their hosts with the cleaning after dinner, but Americans often think it's rude if hosts let their guests do any cleaning at all. French customers often leave stores 10-15 minutes before their closing time, but some Americans think it's rude to expect this before closing time. And I could give a myriad more examples of conventions and counter-conventions.

This conventional conflict can underscore a dilemma: when any convention has a counter-convention, then either there’s a good independent reason to conform to the convention or there is not.

If there’s a good independent reason to conform to the convention—as safety is a reason for sticking to one side of the road—then a non-conventionalist will conform........

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