scholarly journals Law’s Humility: The Possibility of Metajurisprudence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Triantafyllos Gkouvas
Keyword(s):  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
First Order ◽  
Slow Pace ◽  
The World ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Foundational Work ◽  
Legal Normativity ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Alternative Idea

This thesis propounds a metatheoretical regimentation of legal claims that can accommodate theoretical disagreement across the board. The solution explored does not question the incommensurability between the descriptive and the normative variants of first-order disputes about the grounds of law. What it targets instead is an unpronounced agnosticism about the possibility of a more inclusive type of metajurisprudential disagreement that does not take for granted either the existence of legal facts—construed either as descriptive or as normative facts about what the law requires—as the trivial truthmakers of propositions of law or their potentially reason-giving properties. On the assumption that the fact that for every legal proposition there is something in the world that makes it true is a premise shared by all legal philosophers but those of an expressivist inclination, an unpronounced, primitive division of opinion occurs as early as one ventures to question that our commitment to the possibility of legal truth logically entails our commitment to entities of a distinctly legal kind. The alternative idea that comes out of the rejection of this entailment will be that part of what could explain the slow pace at which the positivism-antipositivism debate is moving beyond the traditional conceptual jargon of 20th century analytic jurisprudence is the fact that we may have been blind to the possibility that our quest for the ultimate grounds of law could have been taking place under the veil of a narrow understanding of the available options with regard to what could legally exist. In virtue of this reconfiguration the prospect of metajurisprudential disagreement acquires definitive shape. At this higher level of abstraction questions about the perspectival character of legal statements, the constitution of legal authority, the relation of legal truth to reality as well as about the nature of legal grounding and legal normativity become available for meaningful contestation. If there is something that could serve as a leitmotiv for this research proposal is that there is no more apt a byword for what it is to conduct foundational work in legal philosophy than that there is no royal way from semantics to ontology.

Gaslighting, First- and Second-Order

Hypatia ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Paul-Mikhail Catapang Podosky
Keyword(s):  
Second Order ◽  
First Order ◽  
The World ◽  
In Virtue Of

Abstract In what sense do people doubt their understanding of reality when subject to gaslighting? I suggest that an answer to this question depends on the linguistic order at which a gaslighting exchange takes place. This marks a distinction between first-order and second-order gaslighting. The former occurs when there is disagreement over whether a shared concept applies to some aspect of the world, and where the use of words by a speaker is apt to cause hearers to doubt their interpretive abilities without doubting the accuracy of their concepts. The latter occurs when there is disagreement over which concept should be used in a context, and where the use of words by a speaker is apt to cause hearers to doubt their interpretive abilities in virtue of doubting the accuracy of their concepts. Many cases of second-order gaslighting are unintentional: its occurrence often depends on contingent environmental facts. I end the article by focusing on the distinctive epistemic injustices of second-order gaslighting: (1) metalinguistic deprivation, (2) conceptual obscuration, and (3) perspectival subversion. I show how each reliably has sequelae in terms of psychological and practical control.

Where do sets come from?

1991 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold T. Hodes
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Object ◽  
Semantic Theory ◽  
Alternative Theory ◽  
Special Relation ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Usual Model ◽  
First Order ◽  
Order Language ◽  
The World ◽  
In Virtue Of

Many philosophers take set-theoretic discourse to be about objects of a special sort, namely sets; correlatively, they regard truth in such discourse as quite like truth in discourse about nonmathematical objects. There is a thin “disquotational” way of construing this construal; but that may candy-coat a philosophically substantive semantic theory: the Mathematical-Object theory of the basis for the distribution of truth and falsehood to sentences containing set-theoretic expressions. This theory asserts that truth and falsity for sentences containing set-theoretic expressions are grounded in semantic facts (about the relation between language and the world) of the sort modelled by the usual model-theoretic semantics for an uninterpreted formal first-order language. For example, it would maintain that ‘{ } ∈ {{ }}” is true in virtue of the set-theoretic fact that the empty set is a member of its singleton, and the semantic facts that ‘{ }’ designates the empty set,‘{{ }}’ designates its singleton, and ‘∈’ applies to an ordered pair of objects iff that pair's first component is a member of its second component.Now this theory may come so naturally as to seem trivial. My purpose here is to loosen its grip by “modelling” an alternative account of the alethic underpinnings of set-theoretic discourse. According to the Alternative theory, the point of having set-theoretic expressions (‘set’ and ‘∈’ will do) in a language is not to permit its speakers to talk about some special objects under a special relation; rather it is to clothe a higher-order language in lower-order garments.

The Coercion Thesis and the Content Problem of Legal Normativity

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-202
Author(s):  
Kenneth Einar Himma
Keyword(s):  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Conceptual Truth ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
First Order ◽  
Motivating Reasons ◽  
The Status ◽  
Different Content ◽  
Legal Normativity ◽  
In Virtue Of

Chapter 8 addresses the Content Problem of Legal Normativity, arguing that the content of the only first-order motivating reason to which the practices constituting something as a system of law are reasonably contrived to give rise is an objective motivating reason to obey law as a means of avoiding being subject to coercive sanctions. It rejects one possible solution to the Content Problem, arguing that there is nothing in objective norms of practical rationality that would encourage us, even presumptively, to obey a norm simply because it has the status of law. Since there is nothing else in these practices reasonably contrived to give rise to an objective motivating reason with different content, neither the How Problem nor the Content Problem can be solved without assuming it is a conceptual truth that some mandatory legal norms governing non-official behavior provide objective motivating reasons to comply in virtue of being backed with the threat of a coercive sanction.

NEGOTIATING THE MEANING OF “LAW”: THE METALINGUISTIC DIMENSION OF THE DISPUTE OVER LEGAL POSITIVISM

Legal Theory ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 205-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Plunkett
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Legal Argument ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
The World ◽  
Verbal Dispute ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
In Virtue Of

ABSTRACTOne of the central debates in legal philosophy is the debate over legal positivism. Roughly, positivists say that law is ultimately grounded in social facts alone, whereas antipositivists say it is ultimately grounded in both social facts and moral facts. In this paper, I argue that philosophers involved in the dispute over legal positivism sometimes employ distinct concepts when they use the term “law” and pick out different things in the world using these concepts. Because of this, what positivists say might well then be true of one thing (e.g., law1) but false of another (e.g., law2). Accepting this thesis does not mean that the philosophers engaged in this dispute are “talking past each other” or engaged in a “merely verbal dispute” that lacks substance. I argue that participants in this dispute are sometimes arguing about what they should mean by the word “law” in the context at hand. This involves putting forward competing proposals about which concept the word “law” should be used to express. This is an issue in what I call “conceptual ethics.” This argument in conceptual ethics can be well worth having, given the connotations that the term “law” plays in many contexts, ranging from legal argument to political philosophy to social-scientific inquiry. Sometimes, I claim, philosophers (and ordinary speakers) engage in such argument tacitly by competing “metalinguistic” usages of the term “law”—usages of the term that express a view (in this case, a normative view) about the meaning of the word itself. In such cases, speakers on different sides of the positivism debate might in fact both speak truly, in terms of the literal (semantic) content of what they both say. Nonetheless, they may disagree in virtue of views in conceptual ethics about “law” that they express through the nonliteral content of what they say. These views in conceptual ethics often reflect further disagreements about issues that are not ultimately about words or concepts. These include foundational ones in ethics and politics about how we should live and what kind of institutions should govern our lives. My metalinguistic account of the dispute over legal positivism better equips us to identify what such issues are and to engage them more fruitfully.

Imaginings

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 17-30
Author(s):  
Kelly James Clark
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Fine Tuning ◽  
Intellectual Humility ◽  
First Order ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
Empirically Supported ◽  
Group Violence ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe

In Branden Thornhill-Miller and Peter Millican’s challenging and provocative essay, we hear a considerably longer, more scholarly and less melodic rendition of John Lennon’s catchy tune—without religion, or at least without first-order supernaturalisms (the kinds of religion we find in the world), there’d be significantly less intra-group violence. First-order supernaturalist beliefs, as defined by Thornhill-Miller and Peter Millican (hereafter M&M), are “beliefs that claim unique authority for some particular religious tradition in preference to all others” (3). According to M&M, first-order supernaturalist beliefs are exclusivist, dogmatic, empirically unsupported, and irrational. Moreover, again according to M&M, we have perfectly natural explanations of the causes that underlie such beliefs (they seem to conceive of such natural explanations as debunking explanations). They then make a case for second-order supernaturalism, “which maintains that the universe in general, and the religious sensitivities of humanity in particular, have been formed by supernatural powers working through natural processes” (3). Second-order supernaturalism is a kind of theism, more closely akin to deism than, say, Christianity or Buddhism. It is, as such, universal (according to contemporary psychology of religion), empirically supported (according to philosophy in the form of the Fine-Tuning Argument), and beneficial (and so justified pragmatically). With respect to its pragmatic value, second-order supernaturalism, according to M&M, gets the good(s) of religion (cooperation, trust, etc) without its bad(s) (conflict and violence). Second-order supernaturalism is thus rational (and possibly true) and inconducive to violence. In this paper, I will examine just one small but important part of M&M’s argument: the claim that (first-order) religion is a primary motivator of violence and that its elimination would eliminate or curtail a great deal of violence in the world. Imagine, they say, no religion, too.Janusz Salamon offers a friendly extension or clarification of M&M’s second-order theism, one that I think, with emendations, has promise. He argues that the core of first-order religions, the belief that Ultimate Reality is the Ultimate Good (agatheism), is rational (agreeing that their particular claims are not) and, if widely conceded and endorsed by adherents of first-order religions, would reduce conflict in the world.While I favor the virtue of intellectual humility endorsed in both papers, I will argue contra M&M that (a) belief in first-order religion is not a primary motivator of conflict and violence (and so eliminating first-order religion won’t reduce violence). Second, partly contra Salamon, who I think is half right (but not half wrong), I will argue that (b) the religious resources for compassion can and should come from within both the particular (often exclusivist) and the universal (agatheistic) aspects of religious beliefs. Finally, I will argue that (c) both are guilty, as I am, of the philosopher’s obsession with belief. 

Bahá’u’lláh’s Influence on the New York School of Painting: The “Unapprehended Inspiration” of Newman and Rothko

1991 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-89
Author(s):  
Ross Woodman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
New York School ◽  
The World ◽  
Mark Rothko ◽  
The Veil ◽  
The City

As members of the New York School of painters, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko announced not only the passing away of an entire creation but also the bringing forth of a new one. Though unaware that they were living and painting in the City of the Covenant whose light would one day rise from darkness and decay to envelop the world even as their painting of light consciously arose from the void of a blank canvas, Newman’s and Rothko’s work may nevertheless be best understood as a powerful first evidence of what Bahá’u’lláh called “the rising Orb of Divine Revelation, from behind the veil of concealment.” Their work may yet find its true spiritual location in the spiritual city founded by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá on his visit to New York in 1912.

scholarly journals WORLD VOLUME SOLITONS OF THE D3-BRANE IN THE BACKGROUND OF (p, q) FIVE-BRANES

2000 ◽  
Vol 15 (28) ◽  
pp. 4477-4498 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. M. LLATAS ◽  
A. V. RAMALLO ◽  
J. M. SÁNCHEZ DE SANTOS
Keyword(s):  
Differential Equation ◽  
Order Differential Equation ◽  
Brane World ◽  
Invariant Solutions ◽  
First Order ◽  
World Volume ◽  
The World ◽  
Energy Bound

We analyze the world volume solitons of a D3-brane probe in the background of parallel (p, q) five-branes. The D3-brane is embedded along the directions transverse to the five-branes of the background. By using the S duality invariance of the D3-brane, we find a first-order differential equation whose solutions saturate an energy bound. The SO(3) invariant solutions of this equation are found analytically. They represent world volume solitons which can be interpreted as formed by parallel (-q, p) strings emanating from the D3-brane world volume. It is shown that these configurations are 1/4 supersymmetric and provide a world volume realization of the Hanany–Witten effect.

AVICENNA - HISTORY'S PRODIGY

2021 ◽  
Vol 02 (06) ◽  
pp. 16-19
Author(s):  
Shakhnoza Ganieva ◽  
◽  
Professor Kamola Baltabayevna Akilova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Life Experience ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Ibn Sina ◽  
Russian Academy Of Sciences ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
The World ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

The earliest of the manuscripts available in the world, "Kitab al-Qanun fi-t-tibb" ("Canon of Medicine"), by the great Abu Ali ibn Sina (980-1037), dating back to the 12th century, is kept in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. This major work has been the most complete encyclopedia of medicine for a millennium. As early as in the 12th century, it was translated in Europe from Arabic into Latin by the Italian Gerard of Cremona (1114-1187) and then disseminated in many manuscripts. "The Canon of Medicine," Avicenna began writing when he was twenty years old and completed this work in 1020-at the age of forty, when Avicenna's medical and life experience was vast. This article is just an attempt to lift the veil over the mystery of the genius' formation, and how this priceless folio, created in the ancient Uzbek land, came to St. Petersburg.

Montaigne in America: The Political Theory of Judith Shklar

1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-199
Author(s):  
Mark Hulliung
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
Judith Shklar

For three decades Judith Shklar (1928-1992) was one of the dominant figures in the world of political theory. Not many minds can feel their way into romanticism and then coolly turn round to examine legal philosophy, its very opposite, but she did so with exceptional success. After diagnosing the decline of political philosophy, she surprised many onlookers by making herself a major force behind its revitalization. Writing on Montaigne, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Hegel, she both offered striking historical interpretations of their meaning and demonstrated how their outlooks could be lifted from their original contexts and pressed into service by the living.

Rethinking Representation in Ontology and Aesthetics via Badiou and Rancière

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
Rok Benčin
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
The World ◽  
The Veil

The essay discusses a significant shift in conceptualizing the notion of representation found in Alain Badiou’s ontology and Jacques Rancière’s aesthetics. From Heidegger to Deleuze, the artwork was able to express an ontological truth about the world on the condition that it does not represent it. Badiou’s ‘subtractive’ approach to ontology and Rancière’s redefinition of the modern aesthetic break with representation, however, suggest that there is nothing to express beyond the veil of representation. Instead, representation can only be counteracted by the occurrence of surplus representations that subvert the principles of the dominant regime of representation. The essay provides an understanding of this shift by reversing the Leibnizian conceptual metaphor Adorno used to describe the modern artwork. Unlike ‘windowless monads’, whose seclusion from the world enables them to convey an ontological truth, artworks as ‘monadless windows’ reframe the parameters of what is perceived as reality.

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