The present collection represents an attempt to bring together several contributions to the ongoing debate pertaining to supervenience of the normative in law and morals and strives to be the first work that addresses the topic comprehensively. It addresses the controversies surrounding the idea of normative supervenience and the philosophical conceptions they generated, deserve a recapitulation, as well as a new impulse for further development. Recently, there has been renewed interest in the concepts of normativity and supervenience. The research on normativity - a term introduced to the philosophical jargon by Edmund Husserl almost one hundred years ago - gained impetus in the 1990s through the works of such philosophers as Robert Audi, Christine Korsgaard, Robert Brandom, Paul Boghossian or Joseph Raz. The problem of the nature and sources of normativity has been investigated not only in morals and in relation to language, but also in other domains, e.g. in law or in the c ontext of the theories of rationality. Supervenience, understood as a special kind of relation between properties and weaker than entailment, has become analytic philosophers' favorite formal tool since 1980s. It features in the theories pertaining to mental properties, but also in aesthetics or the law. In recent years, the 'marriage' of normativity and supervenience has become an object of many philosophical theories as well as heated debates. It seems that the conceptual apparatus of the supervenience theory makes it possible to state precisely some claims pertaining to normativity, as well as illuminate the problems surrounding it.

The book attempts to describe and criticize four methods used in legal practice, legal dogmatics and legal theory: logic, analysis, argumentation and hermeneutics. Apart from a presentation of basic ideas connected with the above mentioned methods, the essays contained in this book seek to answer questions concerning the assumptions standing behind these methods, the limits of using them and their usefulness in the practice and theory of law. A specific feature of the book is that in one study four different, sometimes competing concepts of legal method are discussed. The panorama, sketched like this, allows one to reflect deeply on the questions concerning the methodological conditioning of legal science and the existence of a unique, specific legal method. The authors argue that there exists no such method. They claim that the methodologies presented in the book may serve as a basis for constructing a coherent and useful conception of legal thinking.

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 Petrazycki'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.

How does a lawyer think? Does legal intuition exist? Do lawyers need imagination? Why is legal language so abstract? It is no longer possible to answer these questions by applying philosophical analysis alone. Recent advances in the cognitive sciences have reshaped our conceptions of the human mental faculties and the tools we use to solve problems. A new picture of the functioning of the legal mind is emerging. In The Legal Mind, Bartosz Brozek uses philosophical arguments and insight from the cognitive sciences to depict legal thinking as a close cooperation between three cognitive mechanisms - intuition, imagination, and language - and addresses the question of how to efficiently use these mental tools. This novel and provocative approach provides a fresh perspective on legal thinking and gives rise to important questions pertaining to the limits of legal interpretation and rationality in the law.

Are the cognitive sciences relevant for law? How do they influence legal theory and practice? Should lawyers become part-time cognitive scientists? The recent advances in the cognitive sciences have reshaped our conceptions of human decision-making and behavior. Many claim, for instance, that we can no longer view ourselves as purely rational agents equipped with free will. This change is vitally important for lawyers, who are forced to rethink the foundations of their theories and the framework of legal practice. Featuring multidisciplinary scholars from around the world, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the emerging field of law and the cognitive sciences. It develops new theories and provides often provocative insights into the relationship between the cognitive sciences and various dimensions of the law including legal philosophy and methodology, doctrinal issues, and evidence.

Methods of Legal Reasoning describes and criticizes four methods used in legal practice, legal dogmatics and legal theory: logic, analysis, argumentation and hermeneutics. The book takes the unusual approach of discussing in a single study four different, sometimes competing concepts of legal method. Sketched this way, the panorama allows the reader to reflect deeply on questions concerning the methodological conditioning of legal science and the existence of a unique, specific legal method.

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.

This ground-breaking collection of essays tackles the philosophical issues at play in cosmology, physics, mathematics, and neuroscience. The book considers topics such as the presence of ontology in cosmological theory and physics. It also weighs the philosophical issues connected with mathematical method, the neuroscience of emotions, and evolutionary anthropology. The contributions look at structuralism in the Platonic philosophy of science and the issue of knowledge and faith. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the philosophy of science and the increasingly blurred borders between the two.

This collection of essays assesses the origins of various rule-based systems, including, but not limited to, morality, rationality, and justice from the perspectives of both philosophy and psychology. The reader will learn about diverse cognitive and neurocognitive phenomena that are responsible for the emergence of normative orders, such as imitation, time preferences, and the dual-processing mind. Furthermore, the essays include different philosophical insights into the genealogy of norms.

How does a lawyer think? Does legal intuition exist? Do lawyers need imagination? Why is legal language so abstract? It is no longer possible to answer these questions by applying philosophical analysis alone. Recent advances in the cognitive sciences have reshaped our conceptions of the human mental faculties and the tools we use to solve problems. A new picture of the functioning of the legal mind is emerging. In The Legal Mind, Bartosz Brozek uses philosophical arguments and insight from the cognitive sciences to depict legal thinking as a close cooperation between three cognitive mechanisms - intuition, imagination, and language - and addresses the question of how to efficiently use these mental tools. This novel and provocative approach provides a fresh perspective on legal thinking and gives rise to important questions pertaining to the limits of legal interpretation and rationality in the law.

A collection of essays dealing with issues connected with Church's Thesis from both the philosophical and logical perspectives. The Reader will learn about the problems present in the theory of computability, with a particular emphasis being placed on the role of Church's Thesis and the various attempts at its proving it. The contributions also concern the intuitive notion of computable functions, the general issue of proving theses, hypercomputation, pseudorecursiveness and the computational modeling of cognition. Moreover, some of them utilize formal means such as the first order theory of hereditarily finite sets or the procedural theory of concepts. Contributors Stewart Shapiro, Charles McCarty, Selmer Bringsjord, Jan Wolenski, Marie Duzi, Pavel Materna, Yuri Gurevich, Krzysztof Wojtowicz, Adam Olszewski, Bartosz Brozek, Naveen Sundar Govindarajulu, Paula Quinon, Paolo Cotogno, Csaba Henk, Stanislaw Krajewski, Marcin Milkowski, Kim Solin, Benjamin Wells.

This collection of essays - written by philosophers, logicians, and theologians - is devoted to the problem of the utilization of logic in theological discourse. Viewed from the perspective of logic, the issues covered include such topics as the logic of miracles, the problem of God's omniscience, the application of non-classical logics to theology, and the relationships between science and theology.

This book examines the fundamental issues in neuroscience from methodological and philosophical perspectives. The reader will learn about the methodological difficulties connected with the use of neuroscientific experiments in philosophical argumentation and about the nature of scientific explanation in neuroscience. In addition, the book includes case studies of several issues lying at the intersection of neuroscience and philosophy, such as theory of mind, self-consciousness, self-deception, depression, and morality.

The present book is the fifth volume of the series Studies in the Philosophy of Law which has appeared since 2001. The previous three volumes had a monographic character, the last one being devoted to the various issues of bioethics, law, and philosophy and the previous one to the topic of the economic analysis of law. Both of these were published in English. This volume is part of a research project "Biojurisprudence" pursued from 2007 through 2010 by the Department of Philosophy of Law and Legal Ethics at the Jagiellonian University and sponsored by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Within the project our team has published many articles, monographs and edited works such as the Studies in the "Philosophy of Law, vol. 4: Legal Philosophy and the Challenges of Biosciences" (edited by J. Stelmach, M. Soniewicka and W. Zaluski, Jagiellonian University Press, 2010). One monograph, entitled "Evolutionary Foundations of Law" was written by Dr. Wojciech Zaluski and was published in both Polish and English in 2009. We have also prepared a joint monograph entitled Paradoxes of Legal Bioethics and which is forthcoming this year.