Volume 16, Issue 2

This paper discusses Wittgenstein’s conception of grammatical investigations and shows how such an investigation, rightly understood, can elucidate the concept of pain. Philosophical attention to the concept of pain tends to lead philosophers in very different directions. A certain set of examples of uses of the concept might lead your thinking “outwards” towards behaviourism, whereas another set of examples might lead you inwards. I develop an understanding of grammatical investigations that does not hide complexities of language, arguing that grammar is as complex as the phenomenon of pain is. In divergence with e.g. Peter Hacker, I try to show how “grammatical investigations” cannot result in rules for the correct uses of language. The formulation of such rules tends to come together with a ‘one-sided diet’ (PI § 593). In contrast, I argue that what pain can teach us about grammar is that grammar, in Wittgenstein’s sense, is not, and cannot be, regulatory, and that it is the elasticity of a concept, if anything, that is its essence.

The economic theory of competitive markets is widely accepted as a theoretical framework for the construction of real-world global markets. Most influentially, this is apparent in the commonly accepted ideal of global free trade, with WTO as its primary proponent. The virtue of efficiency related to competitive markets is also often deemed politically neutral or, at least, unworthy of too-critical consideration. This paper argues against this contention. The theoretical axioms behind competitive markets assume a normatively and politically saturated core: self-interested agents (individuals, households and firms) who 1) are attached to consequential rationality, 2) must bypass various moral commitments and 3) are committed to specific interpretations of the concepts of freedom and justice. I will argue that attachment to these notions downplays democratic decision-making. As there is no genuine room for so-called procedural decision-making, the prospects for political innovation will be narrowed. For example, those kinds of interpretations of the concepts of freedom and justice that do not fit within the ideal of competitive markets are precluded from politically feasible options. I will argue that taking note of deliberative rationality and democracy would alleviate this problem.

This paper discusses how legal moralism should be defined. It is argued that legal moralism should be defined as the position that “For any X, it is always a pro tanto reason for justifiably imposing legal regulation on X that X is morally wrong (where “morally wrong” is not conceptually equivalent to “harmful”)”. Furthermore, a distinction between six types of legal moralism is made. The six types are grouped according to whether they are concerned with the enforcement of positive or critical morality, and whether they are concerned with criminalising, legally restricting, or refraining from legally protecting morally wrong behaviour. This is interesting because not all types of legal moralism are equally vulnerable to the different critiques of legal moralism that have been put forth. Indeed, I show that some interesting types of legal moralism have not been criticised at all.

According to artefactual theories of fiction, fictional characters are contingently existing abstract entities. One comparative advantage of artefactualism over its rivals is its conformity with our pre-theoretic views about the createdness of these entities. Artefactualism has also its own limitations: there are specific contexts in which it is apparently wrong to think that characters are created abstracta. In this paper it is argued that these limitations can be circumvented if the ontological status of characters is explained in representational terms.