The social tinkering model proposed by Chater and Christiansen offers a significant theoretical contribution to understanding the emergence of cultural complexity. In particular, the idea that complex social practices can arise from the accumulation of local adjustments, oriented toward solving contingent problems, provides a parsimonious explanation of how shared conventions and articulated social systems form without recourse to centralized design. In this sense, the framework effectively illuminates the mechanisms through which coordination among individuals can stabilize over time and generate increasingly complex cultural structures (Bicchieri, Reference Bicchieri2005; Lewis, Reference Lewis2008).

Precisely, this explanatory power with respect to the genesis and stabilization of coordinated practices, however, raises a further question concerning the status of normativity. While the model convincingly shows how individuals converge on behavioral patterns that facilitate interaction and reduce uncertainty, it leaves relatively indeterminate the manner in which such patterns come to be treated as standards of correctness, open to evaluation, justification, and critique. In other words, whereas coordination can be described in functional terms, normativity appears to involve an additional step, concerning how reciprocal expectations acquire a publicly binding status (Brandom, Reference Brandom1994; Habermas, Reference Habermas1990).

In this regard, it is useful to introduce an analytical distinction between the stabilization of behavioral regularities and their transformation into normative standards. In the former case, individuals align with shared practices by virtue of their coordinative efficacy; in the latter, such practices are treated as criteria against which actions can be judged appropriate or inappropriate. A minimal condition for this second dimension may be the possibility of being held accountable for one’s actions in light of shared standards – namely, of being called upon to justify them in a public context.

From this perspective, one might hypothesize that the transition from coordinated practices to normatively binding ones involves, alongside the tinkering processes described by the authors, the interaction of additional social mechanisms. Forms of public accountability may play a crucial role insofar as they enable the demanding and offering of justifications (Garfinkel, Reference Garfinkel, Alam, Baskin, Bennett, Carruthers, Engler, Flanagin, Garrity, Graf, Imperiale, King, Kleinert, Kulp, Mankowski, Nugent, Pulvirenti, Qualkenbush, Sobiecki, Wainstock, Wilfong, Wold and Yucel2023). Even informal practices of sanctioning may contribute to stabilizing expectations by introducing costs associated with deviation. The structuring of interactions through relatively stable roles may facilitate the generalization and transmission of standards, while processes of internalization may lead individuals to recognize them not merely as external pressures but as legitimate criteria of evaluation. Taken together, these elements can be understood as complementary dimensions of a process through which reciprocal expectations are progressively rendered explicit, stabilized, and endowed with normative force.

A useful comparison for further clarifying this point can be drawn from modern language models. Such systems are capable of generating complex forms of coordination based on exposure to large amounts of data and optimization with respect to constraints of coherence and prediction, without requiring direct participation in situated social practices. In this sense, they provide an example of how conventional regularities can be learned, stabilized, and reproduced even in the absence of needs, social roles, or forms of practical interdependence (Suriano et al., Reference Suriano, Acciai, Fabio, Guerrisi and Plebe2026). However, this very capacity highlights a potential distinction between coordination and normativity (Millière, Reference Millière2025). Although such systems can generate outputs that conform to linguistic and pragmatic conventions, they do not participate in normative practices in the full sense (Barandiaran & Almendros, Reference Barandiaran and Almendros2025). In particular, they are not embedded in contexts of reciprocal accountability, are not subject to socially meaningful sanctions, and are not called upon to justify their actions in light of shared standards. Consequently, their behavior can be described as conforming to conventional regularities, but not as governed by norms in the strong sense discussed above.

From this perspective, the case of language models suggests that coordination, while a fundamental condition for the emergence of shared practices, may not in itself be sufficient to account for the emergence of normativity. Rather, normativity appears to require the embedding of agents within social practices characterized by forms of reciprocal responsibility and the possibility of public evaluation. A more systematic articulation of these conditions could constitute a natural extension of the social tinkering framework, further strengthening its capacity to account not only for the stabilization of conventions but also for their normative status.