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5 - Law and the Cognitive Science of Ordinary Concepts

from I - Metatheory and Methodology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2021

By
Kevin Tobia
Edited by
Bartosz Brożek ,
Jaap Hage  and
Nicole Vincent
Bartosz Brożek
Affiliation:
Jagiellonian University, Krakow
Jaap Hage
Affiliation:
Universiteit Maastricht, Netherlands
Nicole Vincent
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney
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Summary

This chapter introduces the ‘folk law thesis’, the claim that ordinary concepts are at the heart of central legal concepts. It presents recent empirical work suggesting that a number of subtle and surprising features of ordinary concepts are also shared by the corresponding legal concept – including features of INTENT, KNOWLEDGE, CONSENT, REASONABLENESS, and CAUSATION. This approach to law opens up a range of new and promising empirical research questions: For each legal concept, what are the features of the corresponding ordinary concept – and what, if any, are the distinctive features of that legal concept? It also opens up an equally vast range of new normative questions: For each feature of the relevant ordinary concept, we can – and should – ask a corresponding normative question: should the legal concept have this or that feature? In this way, the cognitive science of ordinary concepts is not only a useful part of legal psychology, but also a critical part of legal theory and jurisprudence.

Type
Chapter
Information
Law and Mind
A Survey of Law and the Cognitive Sciences
 , pp. 86 - 96
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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