Law Library, School of Law
Events at this location
october
09oct4:00 pm6:00 pmSCLP Seminar: James E. Penner (NUS)
Event Details
For the first SCLP seminar of the year, on Wed Oct 9, 4-6pm UK time (in the Law Library), we’ll welcome James Penner (NUS). Penner is Professor of
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Event Details
For the first SCLP seminar of the year, on Wed Oct 9, 4-6pm UK time (in the Law Library), we’ll welcome James Penner (NUS). Penner is Professor of Property Law at the National University of Singapore and co-director of the NUS Centre for Legal Theory, and a leading contributor both to the philosophy of private law and philosophy of law more generally.
Abstract below, and paper can be accessed here.
Click here to join online (hybrid format).
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James Penner – “Are Duties Burdens? An Investigation of a Normative Sensibility”
In this paper I introduce the concept of a ‘normative sensibility’. Roughly speaking, a normative sensibility is an attitude we take to the norms of some kind or the norms of some system, for examples duties in private law, the appraisal of someone’s life, or the rules of a game. To help fix ideas, I shall begin by exploring two opposing or alternative sensibilities: first, the ‘autonomy’ normative sensibility and the ‘role’ normative sensibility in judging the success of a person’s life and, second, the ‘rules’ normative sensibility and the ‘rights’ normative sensibility in thinking about private law in general and the rules of games. I shall then turn to the question of the title, opposing a ‘duties are burdens’ normative sensibility with a ‘duties are benefits’ sensibility. On the former view, which has significant support in the liberal tradition, we should understand duties as constraints or restrictions upon our freedom. Ideally, then, a life is better to the extent that its bearer has fewer duties. A perfect life would be one in which one had no duties at all. On the latter view, duties reflect our rational agency, and fall within the same practical reasoning ball park as decisions; duties have a positive valence, as means by which an individual alone or together with others advances their interests, understood as the achievement of worthwhile goals. The paper gives reasons for preferring this latter view to the ‘duties are burdens’ sensibility.
Time
(Wednesday) 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm BST
Location
Law Library, School of Law
23oct4:00 pm6:00 pmSCLP Seminar: Liat Levanon (KCL)
Event Details
On Wed Oct 23, 4-6pm UK time (in the Law Library), we’ll welcome Liat Levanon (KCL). She is Reader in Evidence Law and Philosophy and works on a
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Event Details
On Wed Oct 23, 4-6pm UK time (in the Law Library), we’ll welcome Liat Levanon (KCL). She is Reader in Evidence Law and Philosophy and works on a variety of issues in criminal law theory, including issues related to justice and issue related to epistemology and evidence (see e.g. her 2020 book Evidence, Respect and Truth: Knowledge and Justice in Legal Trials (Hart Publishing)). She will present a paper aiming to illuminate the general role of epistemic attitudes in the practical domain, by grappling with certain arguments from the recent literature on pragmatic encroachment and doxastic wronging.
Abstract below, and paper can be accessed HERE (soon).
Click here to join online (hybrid format).
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Liat Levanon – “Pragmatic Encroachment and Doxastic Wronging: (Mostly) Critical Reflections”
Pragmatic encroachment, and doxastic wronging as one of its instances, have dominated the philosophical analysis of legal evidence in recent years. The basic thesis is that practical considerations impact knowledge generation: they might justify withholding otherwise justified and knowledge-generating belief. Among other things, this thesis has been used to explain the existence of different legal standards of proof, as well as the legal reluctance to make some legal judgments on ‘naked statistical evidence’ alone. The paper examines the strongest available defence of pragmatic encroachment and doxastic wronging, which has been developed in a series of articles by Mark Schroeder together with Rima Basu and others. While the examination is mostly critical in nature, it opens the door for a theoretical move that highlights the role that epistemic attitudes do play in the practical domain.
Time
(Wednesday) 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm BST
Location
Law Library, School of Law