Legal Philosophy à la carte

2019 ◽  
pp. 221-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Toh
Keyword(s):  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
The Way ◽  
A La Carte

Recent philosophical thinking about the nature of law has been hampered by a systematic conflation of the goal of identifying the facts or considerations in virtue of which legal claims are true, and the goal of identifying the facts or considerations in virtue of which a community of people have a legal practice, including discursive aspects of that practice. This chapter diagnoses the source of this conflation, and argues that new avenues of theorizing about the nature of law would be opened up by being clear-headed about the distinction. Some influential recent contributions to the literature, including that by Brian Leiter, are scrutinized and criticized along the way.

Epítetos e insultos de grupo en español: Sobre una ambigüedad y sus implicaciones sintáctico-semánticas

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-205
Author(s):  
Andrés Saab ◽  
Eleonora Orlando
Keyword(s):  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Syntactic Ambiguity ◽  
Structural Ambiguity ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
Expressive Content ◽  
Conventional Implicatures ◽  
Expressive Dimension ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Proper Analysis ◽  
The Way

Abstract In this paper, we further elaborate on a syntactic ambiguity between slurs and epithets first noticed in Orlando, Eleonora & Andrés Saab. 2020b. A stereotype semantics for syntactically ambiguous slurs. Analytic Philosophy 61(2). 101–129. Here, we discuss in detail the large theoretical implications of such an ambiguity both for the proper analysis of binominal constructions in Spanish (e.g., el idiota de Juan) and for the way in which it is advisable to model the expressive content slurs and certain epithets (those deriving from slurs) have. As for the first aspect, we contend that mainstream approaches in terms of predicate inversion for binominal constructions cannot account for why slurs lose their predicative import when occurring as epithets in binominal environments. In consequence, we propose a new analysis for epithets both in simple occurrences and in binominal constructions. This analysis derives the above-mentioned ambiguity as a type of structural ambiguity, according to which certain slurs can occur in predicative and in non-predicative positions. When they occur as predicates, they have a mixed semantics (McCready, Eric. 2010. Varieties of conventional implicatures. Semantics & Pragmatics 3. 1–57) reflected both in the truth-conditional and the expressive dimensions, but when they occur as epithets, the truth-conditional dimension is lost and only the expressive content survives. As for the second aspect, we defend a stereotype semantics, according to which stereotypes are modeled as Kratzerian modal bases (i.e., set of propositions) in virtue of which stigmatizing theories of human groups are reflected in a parallel, expressive dimension of meaning. This way of modeling some kinds of expressive contents explains how different slurs and epithets manage to communicate different theories about particular human groups, which are the target of derogation.

scholarly journals Law and aesthetics: critical note

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 631-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Satie
Keyword(s):  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Law ◽  
Legal Form ◽  
Critical Note ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Conservative Approximation ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

It is thought in the theory and philosophy of law, aimed at discussing the conditions of possibility of rapprochement between the art form and legal form. The text investigates, dialectically, the implications for the legal philosophy of the impossibility of such approximation, and the problems in a conservative approximation. It follows that: 1) would be a loss for a reason and therefore to legal philosophy, not to communicate between art and law; 2) the relationship between legal and aesthetic standards should be guided by the critical, especially in terms of Adorno's thought. It is by overcoming the dichotomy between possibility and impossibility, opening on the idea of constellation of methodological categorical fields of law and aesthetics in their current forms, paving the way for understanding the legal form as a tragic way.

The nature of law as an interpretive practice and its associated modes of inquiry

Legal Studies ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 576-591
Author(s):  
Nathan Gibbs
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Critical Survey ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Legal Research

The paper provides a critical survey of certain methodological debates in the field of legal philosophy in order to assess their implications for legal research in general. Underpinning this survey is a concern to establish the independence and integrity of both legal practice and legal research in the light of the risks posed by preponderant forms of instrumental rationality. Thus, Brian Leiter's recent call for a ‘naturalised’ jurisprudence is criticised for the instrumentalist basis upon which he claims to privilege forms of legal research apparently ‘continuous with’ the natural and empirical social sciences. As against Leiter, it is argued that there are in fact a range of distinct but interrelated modes of legal research. In this respect, the work of HLA Hart is interpreted as an example of a distinctively theoretical mode of inquiry into law. In addition, an account of the nature of a distinctively practical mode of legal inquiry is developed from a critique of Ronald Dworkin's excessively ‘theoretical’ reading of the interpretive character of legal practice. A constitutive practical feature of both modes of inquiry is their capacity to take up a certain distance from any exclusive concern with instrumental or pragmatic action.

John Austin and Constructing Theories of Law

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian H. Bix
Keyword(s):  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Viable Alternative ◽  
Theory Construction ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Lack Of Fit ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
The Way ◽  
John Austin

One of the standard criticisms of John Austin’s work is that his portrayal of law, as essentially the command of a sovereign to its subjects, does not fit well with the way law is practiced or perceived by lawyers, judges, and citizens; and since the theory “fails to fit the facts,” Austin’s theory must be rejected in favor of later theories that have better fit. Many influential modern approaches to the nature of law, including Joseph Raz’s exclusive legal positivism and Ronald Dworkin’s interpretivism, while they criticize the lack of fit of theories like Austin’s, themselves unapologetically offer characterizations of legal practice that deviate in significant ways from the way most people practice or perceive law. Thus, it appears that many contemporary legal theorists wish to have it both ways: they use the deviations from conventional understandings as grounds for dismissing some theories by other scholars, but forgive or overlook comparable deviations in their own theories. This article explores what general principles can be learned, or developed, regarding when or to what extent deviation from the way law is practiced and perceived can be justified in a theory of the nature of law by other theoretical gains. Additionally, the article considers whether, in light of the proper approach to fit and mistake in theory-construction, Austin’s theory of law might be a more viable alternative than is conventionally assumed.

scholarly journals Make It New! The Redeeming Modernism of Law and the Collapsing of Its Polarities

Pólemos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-165
Author(s):  
Angela Condello ◽  
Luke Mason
Keyword(s):  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
The World ◽  
Normative Practice ◽  
The Law

Abstract This article argues that law is an inherently modernist normative practice. Constructing a vision of Modernism which is at once an epistemology and an attitudinal disposition to doubt and make anew our assumptions about the world, the authors demonstrate that legal practice encounters the world through individual cases. Through these examples, the law is capable of both interacting with and comprehending that world, while also being forced to question the law’s own precepts and their application. In this manner, the law’s generalisations and abstractions become concrete, and can indeed be upended, through fleeting, impressionistic and highly case-specific examples. This exemplarity within law explains how law is able to navigate its apparently contradictory aspirations and natures which have bedevilled legal philosophy for millennia. In reality, law exists within a series of polarities, rather than contradictions, which are navigated through the law’s encounters with examples from the extra-legal world. The authors conclude that this aspect of the law’s nature also has practical consequences, requiring the law to maintain the fora in which new and novel cases are heard, and through which law’s modernist spirit can thrive.

Obligations from Artifacts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian H. Bix
Keyword(s):  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Coordination Problems ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Recent Approach ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Way

A persistent question in modern legal philosophy is whether or how (human-created) legal rules and legal systems can produce moral obligations for citizens. Contemporary theorists have sought answers to this problem in the ideas of conventions, coordination problems, and plans. Some theorists argue that the law—that all legal rules—create general and at-least-presumptive moral obligations; others argue that the law, at best, occasionally triggers pre-existing moral obligations—some legal rules creating moral obligations for some people. This chapter explores the issue of how and when law creates moral obligations, and also considers a more recent approach to the nature of law which has raised doubts regarding whether the law is in fact artifactual in the way most theorists (and most citizens) believe.

Doxastic Wrongs

Reasons First ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 183-198
Author(s):  
Mark Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Tamar Gendler ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

Chapter 9 extends the arguments of Chapter 8 by defending the view that we can wrong each other in virtue of what we believe about one another, and arguing that this is best and most conservatively explained by Pragmatic Intellectualism. It is argued that cases from Rima Basu, Simon Keller, Sarah Stroud, Tamar Gendler, and Berislav Marušić all involve doxastic wrongs. Though there are two prominent objections to the idea that beliefs can wrong, it is shown that Pragmatic Intellectualism offers answers to each of these objections. And finally it is argued that we have independent grounds to think that the best cases of doxastic wrongs are also among the very best cases for pragmatic encroachment, because of the way that the wrongs they involve are stable over time.

Analyticity Reconsidered1

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Paul Boghossian ◽  
Timothy Williamson
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
A Priori Justification ◽  
Metaphysical Notion ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
The Way

This essay distinguishes between metaphysical and epistemological conceptions of analyticity. The former is the idea of a sentence that is ‘true purely in virtue of its meaning’ while the latter is the idea of a sentence that ‘can be justifiably believed merely on the basis of understanding its meaning’. It further argues that, while Quine may have been right to reject the metaphysical notion, the epistemological notion can be defended from his critique and put to work explaining a priori justification. Along the way, a number of further distinctions relevant to the theory of analyticity and the theory of apriority are made and their significance is explained.

Spinoza’s Symptomatic Theory of Emotions

2019 ◽  
pp. 10-27
Author(s):  
Youpa Andrew
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Qualitative Character ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
The Way

This chapter shows that Spinoza believes that an episode of emotion represents a change in the power of the subject’s body in the way that a symptom represents that of which it is symptomatic. On the reading here defended, some emotions symptomatically represent increases in the power of the subject’s body. Others symptomatically represent decreases in power. Regardless of whether it is symptomatic of an increase or a decrease, an episode of an emotion qua mental item is symptomatic of the state of the power of acting of the subject’s body, and an emotion serves as a symptom in virtue of its qualitative character. It represents a change in power by virtue of the way it feels to experience an emotion. While an episode of the qualitative character of joy signals an increase in the body’s power, an episode of the qualitative character of sadness signals a decrease in its power.

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