Seminar with Krzysztof Posłajko (Jagiellonian University in Krakow)

Legislative intentions and the (hard) problem of content

The seminar will be a hybrid meeting. It will be held in room 110 on Bracka 12, Kraków and Teams on January 16, 2024 (Tuesday, 17:30 GMT+1). 

Abstract:

The general aim of the talk is to show how how certain important problems in the general philosophy of mind, related to the problem of content, might bear on the issue of legislative intention. I will define and criticize a view according to which communicative intentions of legislative bodies should be treated in an ultra-realistic way: namely, that parliaments etc. should be treated as capable of possessing functionally interpreted corporate attitudes. I will argue (by referring to the ‘hard problem of content’) that because parliaments are not required to have minimal internal complexity, we cannot see them as capable of generating intentions with determinate propositional content. Consequences for the legislative intent debate and general philosophy of mind will be discussed. With regard to legislative intent problem, I will try to show that a proponent of communicative intention model of legal interpretation is left with the choice between of joint/shared-intentions view and the interpretivist account of corporate intentions (neither of which provides all the theoretical goods.)

This research was funded by the Priority Research Area Heritage under the program Excellence Initiative – Research University at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow