Ross, Alf. On Law and Justice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959. xi, 383 pp. Reprint available December 2004 by the Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
Norms conferring public or private powers, i.e., the competence to issue other norms, play a very important rôle in law. But there is no agreement among legal philosophers about the nature of such norms. There are two main groups of theories, those that regard them as a kind of norms of conduct (either commands or permissions) and those that regard them as non-reducible to other types of norms. I try to show that reductionist theories are not quite acceptable; neither the (...) command-variety (Kelsen, Alf Ross inOn Law and Justice), nor the permission-variety (von Wright, Kanger, Lindahl) provide a satisfactory account of competence norms.Among the authors who maintain that competence norms are different from (and hence not reducible to) norms of conduct are Hart, Ross inDirectives and Norms, and Searle. Ross and Searle distinguish between regulative and constitutive rules as two radically different kinds of rules and classify competence norms among constitutive rules. This distinction runs parallel to von Wright's distinction between rules that are prescriptions and determinative rules. While the first regulate actions (by commanding, prohibiting, or permitting them), determinative rules define certain concepts. To view competence norms as (partial) definitions of certain legal concepts (like those of legislator, judge, etc.) seems to open interesting perspectives and to shed light on at least one aspect of these elusive norms. (shrink)
I shall compare two views of legal concepts: as nodes in inferential nets and as categories in an ontology (a conceptual architecture). Firstly, I shall introduce the inferential approach, consider its implications, and distinguish the mere possession of an inferentially defined concept from the belief in the concept’s applicability, which also involves the acceptance of the concept’s constitutive inferences. For making this distinction, the inferential and eliminative analysis of legal concepts proposed by Alf Ross will be connected to the views (...) on theoretical concepts in science advanced by Frank Ramsey and Rudolf Carnap. Consequently, the mere comprehension of a legal concept will be distinguished from the application of the concept to a particular legal system, since application presupposes a doctrinal commitment, namely, the belief that the inferences constituting the concept hold in that system. Then, I shall consider how concepts can be characterised by defining the corresponding terms and placing them within an ontology. Finally, I shall argue that there is a tension between the inferential and the ontological approach, but that both need to be taken into account, to capture the meaning and the cognitive function of legal concepts. (shrink)
A review of the scanty Gestaltist literature on motor behaviour indicates that a genuine Gestalt theoretic approach to motor behaviour can be characterized by three research questions: (1) What are the natural units of motor behaviour? (2) What characterizes the self-organization in motor behaviour? (3) What are the conditions for invariance in motor behaviour? Tentative answers to these questions can be found by analysing the parallels between Gestalt theory and Bernstein's theory of motor actions and by showing that Gestalt theory (...) can be regarded as a specific approach to non-linear dynamics as exemplified by synergetics (Haken, 1991). The congruence between the Gestalt theoretic approach and synergetics becomes apparent in the analysis of how a complex motor task is learned [1]. (shrink)
We develop a new notion of independence (þ-independence, read "thorn"-independence) that arises from a family of ranks suggested by Scanlon (þ-ranks). We prove that in a large class of theories (including simple theories and o-minimal theories) this notion has many of the properties needed for an adequate geometric structure. We prove that þ-independence agrees with the usual independence notions in stable, supersimple and o-minimal theories. Furthermore, we give some evidence that the equivalence between forking and þ-forking in simple theories might (...) be closely related to one of the main open conjectures in simplicity theory, the stable forking conjecture. In particular, we prove that in any simple theory where the stable forking conjecture holds. þ-independence and forking independence agree. (shrink)
According to the received opinion there is a theoretical incompatibility between Herbert Hart's The Concept of Law and Alf Ross's On Law and Justice, and, according to the received opinion, it stems above all from Hart's emphasis on the internal point of view. The present paper argues that this reading is mistaken. The Concept of Law does not go beyond On Law and Justice in so far as both present arguments to the effect that law is based on a shared (...) understanding between participants in a project perceived by every participant to be a project in common. The paper demonstrates that there are substantive parallels between Hart's combination of “acceptance” or “acknowledgement” and a “critical reflective attitude” and Ross's combination of “motivation” or “feeling” and a “coherent whole of meaning and motivation.” The main conclusion is that the views of norms and normativity put forward in The Concept of Law and On Law and Justice are very close in essential respects, and, more specifically, that the two works are at root identical in their representation of the basis of normativity in reality. (shrink)
When our measurement instruments sample from only a subspace of the domain that we are seeking to understand, or when they sample with uneven sampling density from the target domain, the resulting data will be affected by a selection effect. If we ignore such selection effects, our conclusions may suffer from selection biases. A classic example of selection bias is the election poll taken by the Literary Digest in 1936. On the basis of a large survey, the Digest predicted that (...) Alf Langdon, the Republican presidential candidate, would win by a large margin. But the actual election resulted in a landslide for the incumbent, Franklin D. Roosevelt. How could such a large sample yield such a wayward prediction? The Digest, it turned out, had harvested the addresses for its survey mainly from telephone books and motor vehicle registries. This introduced a strong selection effect. The poor of the depression era, a group that disproportionally supported Roosevelt, often did not have phones or cars. Observation selection effects are an especially subtle kind of selection effect that is introduced not by limitations in our measurement apparatuses but by the fact that all evidence is preconditioned on the existence of an observer to “have” the evidence and to build the instruments in the first place. Observation selection effects have only quite recently become the subject of systematic study. As well as being of philosophical interest, they are important in many scientific areas, including cosmology, parts of evolution theory, and the foundations of thermodynamics and quantum theory. There are also interesting applications to the search for extraterrestrial life and questions such as whether we might be living in a computer simulation created by an advanced civilization.. (shrink)
Though media ethics has emerged as a strong topic in recent years, the discussion may be of little value in helping improve ethical performance of the media until owner ethics becomes a major topic. This case study explores the conflict of interest problem for owners lobbying for special interest legislation and eroding independence of newsrooms.
Schelling fait remarquer que la théorie kantienne du mal radical repose fondamentalement sur un acte de liberté, ce qui n’est pas le cas chez Fichte. Dans cet article, nous voulons examiner le bien-fondé de la thèse de Schelling selon laquelle les conceptions kantienne et fichtéenne du mal moral présentent d’importantes divergences. Pour I’essentiel, en effet, la position de Fichte s’éloigne de celle de Kanten ce qu’elle réhabilite une certaine forme d’humanisme en réduisant le mal à l’inertie de l’être raisonnable (...) fini et à l’ignorance dans laquelle il a tendance à se maintenir. Contrairement à Kant donc, jamais Fichte ne pourra admettre que la pleine conscience de la loi morale laisse encore. ouverte la possibilité de choisir délibérément le mal.Shelling contends that Kant’s theory of radical evil, unlike Fichte’s, is fundamentally based on liberty. In this article, we wish to examine the relevance of Schelling’s thesis according to which the Kantian and Fichtean conceptions of moral evil bear important differences. Essentially, in deed, Fichte’s position differs from that of Kant in that it restores a certain form of humanism by reducing evil to the inertia of a finite rational being and to the ignorance in which it tends to persist. Thus, unlike Kant, Fichte could never admit that full consciousness of the moral law allows the possibility to choose evil deliberately. (shrink)
Ecosemiotics represents a theoretical approach to human ecology that can be applied across several disciplines. lts primary justification lies inthe ambition to transcend "Cartesian", conceptual dichotomies such as culture/nature. society/nature, mental/material. etc. It argues that ecosystems areconstituted no less by flows of signs than by flows of matter and energy. This paper discusses the roles of different kinds of hmnan sign systems in the ecologyof Amazonia, ranging from the phenomenology of unconscious sensations. through linguistic signs such as metaphors and ethnobiological (...) taxonomies, to money and the political economy of environmental destruction. Human-environmental relations mediated by direct, sensory and (oral) linguistic communication have tended to enhance biological diversity, suggesting modes of calibrating the long-term co-evolution of human and non-human populations. Economic sign systems, on the other hand, have rapidly and drastically transfonned human-environmental relations in Amazonia to the point where the entire rainforest ecosystem is illlder threat. In detaching themselves from the direct, "face-to-face" communication between humans and their natural environments, flows of money and commodities - and the decontextualized knowledge systems that they engender - have no means of staying geared to the long-term negotiation of local, ecological co-existence. It is argued that the ongoing deterioration of the biosphere can be viewed as a problem of communication, deserving semiotic analysis. (shrink)
Contents: List of Contributors VII; Roberto Poli: Foreword IX-X; Roberto Poli: The Brentano puzzle: an introduction 1; Dallas Willard: Who needs Brentano? The wasteland of philosophy without its past 15; Claire Ortiz Hill: Introduction to Paul Linke's 'Gottlob Frege as philosopher' 45; Paul F. Linke: Gottlob Frege as philosopher 49; John Blackmore: Franz Brentano and the University of Vienna Philosophical Society 1888-1938 73; Alf Zimmer: On agents and objects: some remarks on Brentanian perception 93; Liliana Albertazzi: Perceptual saliences and nuclei (...) of meaning 113; Jan Srzednicki: Brentano and the thinkable 139; Claire Ortiz Hill: From empirical psychology to phenomenology. Edmund Husserl on the 'Brentano puzzle' 151; Serena Cattaruzza: Brentano and Boltzmann: the Schubladenexperiment 169; Karl Schuhmann: Johannes Daubert's theory of judgement 179; Evelyn Dölling: On Alexius Meinong's theory of signs 199; Robin Rollinger: Linguistic expressions and acts of meaning: comments on Marty's philosophy of language 215-225. (shrink)
af Jesper Ryberg (2006). Ross Og Straf. In Jakob vH Holtermann & Jesper Ryberg (eds.), Alf Ross: Kritiske Gensyn. Jurist- Og Økonomforbundets Forlag.score: 3.0
