Game theory is a mathematical theory of strategic interactions between rational agents. With much success, it has been widely applied in various areas of the social sciences, especially economics and sociology. However, it has been relatively and rarely used in the analyses pursued in legal theory and legal dogmatics. The present collection fills this gap and discusses game theory as a useful tool for legal scholars in solving the various problems of legal philosophy or legal dogmatics. It also includes two (...) skeptical voices regarding the applicability of game theory in legal analysis. The book will be useful for scholars in the field of legal theory, as well as for philosophers and economists. (shrink)

This edited volume explores ideas of legal realism which emerge through the works of Russian legal philosophers. Apart from the well-known American and Scandinavian versions of legal realism, there also exists a Russian one: readers will discover fresh perspectives and that the collection of early twentieth century ideas on law discussed in Russia can be understood as a unified school of legal thought – as Russian legal realism. These chapters by renowned European and Eastern European legal philosophers add to ongoing (...) discussions about the nature of law, especially in the context of developments around our scientific knowledge about the mind and behaviour. Analyses of legal phenomena carried out by legal realists in Russia offer novel arguments in favour of embracing psychological and sociological perspectives on the law. The book includes analysis of the St. Petersburg school of legal philosophy and Leon Petrażycki’s psychological theory of law. This original and multifaceted research on Russian realists is of considerable value to an international audience. Researchers and postgraduate students of law, legal theory and legal ethics will find the book particularly appealing, but it will also interest those investigating the philosophy or sociology of law, or legal history. (shrink)

The contributions in this book deal with the issue of normativity from various academic and scientific perspectives. The reader will learn how phenomena - such as norms, morality, and rule-following - are described and explained in philosophy, biology, psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience. In addition, a discussion of the naturalistic fallacy, from philosophical and ethical perspectives, is included.

The Normative Mind addresses philosophical and scientific issues connected with rule-following and decision-making from the perspectives of philosophy and various sciences. The book examines the diverse relations with rule-following behavior of such phenomena as cognitive control, emotions, decision-making heuristics, and creativity. The contributions-by philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists-also concern the problem of normativity as it is present in logic, moral epistemology, and rational choice theory. Furthermore, the roles of evolution and of neural processes for the emergence of rule-following behavior are analyzed. (...) [Subject: Philosophy, Psychology, Cognitive Science]. (shrink)

The problem of legal normativity is one the most controversial issues in the philosophy of law. It was already a subject of heated debate in the 19th century and, over the last 100 years, the study of normativity has taken many shapes and forms, from Kelsen's dualism, through the reductionism proposed by legal realists, to some nihilistic stances. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the problems surrounding the concept of law's normativity, and this collection is seen (...) as a contribution to that debate. The book will be of interest to lawyers and philosophers, both at the graduate and professional levels. (shrink)

Chciałem Go pożegnać. Kilkakrotnie próbowałem napisać choć parę słów. O Nim samym. Okazało się, że nie potrafię. Udało mi się tylko przedstawić Jego poglądy na reizm Tadeusza Kotarbińskiego, ale uczyniłem to gdzie indziej. Muszę tu poprzestać na ofiarowaniu Mu tego, co napisałem na Jego dziewięćdziesiąte urodziny, w osiemdziesięciolecie naszej przyjaźni.

The article juxtaposes modern skepticism stating lack of the criterion of true beliefs about transcendent reality with respect to their contents, but accepting the assumption about existence and cognoscibility of those contents on the one hand, and — after M. F. Burnyeat — ancient skepticism understood as one that questions this assumption on the other. The doubt as to existence of beliefs — resp. propositions as contents of beliefs — is a link joining ancient skeptics with Wittgenstein. Their skepticism is (...) not - as modern skepticism - an epistemological position, but an ontological one — nominalism — questioning existence of universals that are the conditions of meaning and hence the conditions of truth of propositions. This is why the ancient dispute concerning the truth was in fact a dispute over the problem of universals, i.e. over existence of constant rules deciding which ways of connecting the subject and the predicate in a proposition are right and which are not. Realists referred to such rules, sophists denied their existence, and skeptics stated that without having such a rule at their disposal they do not ha-.: a basis for deciding the dispute between realists and sophists. This does not have much to do either with so-called correspondence concept of the truth or with the modern understanding of conceptual realism talking about \"ideal paradigms\" or \"common properties\" of things. Today\'s typologies of philosophical positions do not fit antiquity. Ch. S. Peirce\'s and D. Armstrong\'s arguments lead to the conclusion that Plato was a... nominalist in the modern meaning of the world. P. T. Geach\'s and N. Wolterstorff s analyses allow stating the same about St Thomas Aquinas. This places under the question mark the statement that the latter could be an advocate of the generally ascribed to him correspondence theory of truth, which also cannot be derived from Aristotle\'s philosophy without any doubts. (shrink)

The article is an analysis of various versions of the correspondence theory of truth and shows that this theory - in all of its versions - rests on two irreconcilable assumptions. First, according to the theory, the relation between the truth bearer and the truth maker - i.e. the portion of reality which makes the bearer true - is a grounded relation, which means that it holds whenever the elements grounding the relation exist, and that each of the elements may (...) exist independently of the other. Secondly, the correspondence theory of truth explicitly or implicitly presupposes that the truth maker always - i.e. necessarily - makes the truth bearer true. The first assumption implies that truth as a feature of convictions, assertions, judgments, etc. is either impossible or by nature unrecognizable. The second assumption is fulfilled only when the alleged "grounded" relation is replaced by an internal relation of identity between the truth bearer and its truth maker. The thesis that the so-called relation of correspondence between thought and reality is essentially their identity follows - contrary to what is commonly believed - from every version of the correspondence theory of truth that does not lead to either nihilism or scepticism. The author illustrates this fact by means of an analysis of the theories of G. E. Moore, B. Russell, H. Field, B. Smith and A. Newman. All of this paves the way for the identity theory of truth, which nevertheless faces its own difficulties in providing a satisfactory explanation of the existence of falsity. (shrink)