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23 - The Law and Cognitive Sciences Enterprise: A Few Analytic Notes

from V - Dissenting Opinions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2021

By
Pierluigi Chiassoni
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

The Law and Cognitive Sciences Enterprise (L&CSE) is a further and relatively recent line of interdisciplinary inquiry inside of contemporary legal culture. Like its ‘Law & …’ sisters, the L&CSE aims at satisfying the call, which is deeply felt among jurists and legal philosophers, to enrich law and legal scholarship with the secure benefits that flow from foreign disciplines in the social or natural sciences. In the case of the L&CSE, as the authors of the essays in the present collection make clear, the purpose consists in bringing to the fore the many ways in which the outputs of the several branches of learning exploring the functioning of the human mind can be put to work in view of carrying over a sweeping renovation of law and legal thinking.

In this chapter, assuming the external standpoint of an analytic legal philosopher, I will consider four issues in turn, corresponding to as many claims made and argued for in support of the L&CSE: first, the relevance issue (are the cognitive sciences really relevant for the law?); second, the metaphysics of law issue (do we need cognitive sciences in view of a renewed ‘metaphysics of law’?); third, the Hume’s law issue (are the cognitive sciences really undermining the so-called Hume’s guillotine?); fourth, and finally, the psychological theory of legal interpretation and legal reasoning issue (are the cognitive sciences useful in working out an adequate model of legal interpretation and legal reasoning?). In so doing, I purport to cast a disenchanted glance on a few of the basic claims advanced by L&CSE supporters, in view of bringing to the fore where it really enjoys of a competitive advantage over traditional legal disciplines, and where, contrariwise, its proposals make no substantive improvement in our understanding of law as a social phenomenon.

Type
Chapter
Information
Law and Mind
A Survey of Law and the Cognitive Sciences
 , pp. 490 - 506
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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