Premium
Fused Modality or Confused Modality?
Author(s) -
Dahlman Christian
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/j.0952-1917.2004.00256.x
Subject(s) - proposition , modality (human–computer interaction) , normative , nothing , epistemology , value proposition , value (mathematics) , class (philosophy) , law , psychology , sociology , philosophy , computer science , political science , artificial intelligence , economics , management , machine learning
. According to Svein Eng there are propositions concerning the law which are descriptive as well as normative, but cannot be separated into one descriptive and one normative proposition. Eng calls these propositions “fused” (“ sammensmeltede ”). In Eng's theory a proposition with “fused modality” is partly descriptive and partly normative, but cannot be classified as a separable combination of a claim about what the law “is” and a claim about what the law “ought to be.” In a “fused” proposition modality is a question of “degree.” The purpose of this article is to show why Eng's theory should be rejected. The introduction of “fused modality” adds nothing of value to legal theory. Eng claims to have discovered a class of propositions not previously accounted for, but this is not the case. The lawyer Eng talks about as making a “fused” proposition is simply a lawyer logically confused.