Promises are a pervasive and important feature of real-world economic exchange situations. We investigate lay people’s intuitions of promise keeping. We study the effect of mutual promises, the dynamic of promising and performance over time, the effect of continuous as opposed to binary performance decisions, the effect of income, and the role the receipt of a promise plays on promise-keeping. Assuming that law serves as a backstop of moral intuitions, our results cast some light on the mutuality requirement, the doctrine of substantial performance, doctrines of divisible obligations, and doctrines of contract formation.

JEL-Classification: K12, A13, C91, C72

The goal of this text is to pose hypotheses related to use of heuristics in the process of deciding cases related to pure economic loss and making laws governing liability for it. Pure economic losses are a type of injury where the victim only suffers economically, i.e. there is no bodily harm or injury to property, and there is a lack of a contractual nexus between the victim and the tortfeasor. Pure economic losses are, in principle, not recoverable in common law systems and, in principle, recoverable in civil law systems. Pure economic losses are a heterogenic category consisting of a variety of case types, here divided into (1) ricochet loss, (2) transferred loss, (3) loss induced by faulty information. Cases of pure economic loss are usually more complex, compared to physical injuries and consequential economic losses, as they may involve a loss of profits. This paper explores the use of heuristics in the process of deciding pure economic loss cases and in the process of forming general norms related to them.

Psychologists have noticed an interesting regularity consisting in the fact that people are more willing to help so-called identified victims than so-called statistical victims (this regularity has been called ‘the identifiable victim effect’). One of the controversial problems connected with this effect is a normative one, viz. can preferring identified victims be morally justified in the contexts of private decisions (i.e., made by ‘private’ citizens rather than public institutions)? The goal of this article is to defend three claims: (1) that the answer to the above normative question depends on two factors: the strength of the identified victims effect and the assumed view (utilitarian or non-utilitarian) on the normative status of helping; (2) that the proper view is one of the variants of the non-utilitarian approach (called in the paper ‘negative morality’ with elements of positive-partial morality); (3) that (with the exception of the strong variant of the identified victim effect) preferring identified victims is not morally improper.

The research on this article was funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland, National Program for the Development of Humanities, no. 0068/NPRH4/H2b/83/2016. 

The identified victim effect refers to a psychological bias of a much greater willingness to help identified victims, as opposed to statistical ones. The aim of this article is to assess what we morally ought to do in the light of this effect, from the point of view of utilitarian ethics. What decision-making rule ought to be established? Ought we to always help identified victims or statistical ones? I argue for a rule that constitutes a middle ground between the two extremes. Next, using the example of the Polish non-governmental sector and with the rule in mind, I outline legal changes that would result in a much higher overall net utility. The first change concerns the rules of the so-called percentage tax designation mechanism. The second concerns the conditions NGOs have to meet in order to receive public funding of their activities.

The research on this article was funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland, National Program for the Development of Humanities, no. 0068/NPRH4/H2b/83/2016. 

Is it possible to make a binding promise to an unidentified individual, i.e. an individual whose identity is unknown to a promisor? The answer to this question seems to be negative, regardless of the philosophical theory of promises one decides to adopt. Particular autonomy theories consider promises to be one of the tools for enhancing morally valuable relationships through recognizing another party's particular personality, which enables individuals to live a better life. The generic autonomy theories consider promises to be a tool facilitating cooperation between strangers. The utilitarian theories consider the practice of promising to be a tool for increasing social welfare. The premises of each of these theories seem to rule out the possibility of promises to unidentified individuals. Accordingly, reflections on this topic may some shed light on some problems related to the issue of the identifiability effect, which is widely discussed in the psychological literature.

The research on this article was funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland, National Program for the Development of Humanities, no. 0068/NPRH4/H2b/83/2016. 

Analyses of the concept of law rely on certain self-evident truths: truisms (platitudes) about law that people generally share and which reflect their common understanding of this important social concept. General legal theories are products of such analyses. In this paper I argue that every reference to truisms in the context of legal theory building should also take into account inferential processes by which truisms themselves are coined, namely different types of heuristics about law and related phenomena. Since both truisms and heuristics are unstructured, often inconsistent, and even fallible, conceptual analyses are the main means of transforming such “raw” evidence into rationally structured legal theories.

This paper was written as a result of research project no. 2016/21/D/HS5/03839, financed by the Polish National Science Centre. 

The problems associated with understanding law as the regulator of social relations involve many separate issues which undoubtedly constitute intellectual challenges for the philosophy of law. In this context, the philosophy of law inquires, inter alia, about whether law exists as a universal structure of the category of being, and about the possibility of the objective cognition of law as an ontological and deontological category. However, it transpires that this task is by no means easy, when it comes to questions concerning epistemological and ontological issues in relation to law – and consequently its justification (the metaphysics of law), and then its legitimation – unequivocal answers are not forthcoming.

The research on this article was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, no. 2015/19/B/HS5/03114 

The article examines the cognitive, metaphorical dimension of the pure theory of law and demonstrates that Hans Kelsen used metaphorical language in his description of law, and unintentionally created a unique set of cognitive metaphors in order to make a theory of law focused on the abstract “Ought” world comprehensible. The paper argues that it would be impossible for Kelsen to describe norms without metaphors. The paper uses Lakoff and Johnson’s theory as a framework for the interpretation of this metaphorical aspect of the pure theory of law. Hence the following paragraphs will examine the cognitive context of the abstract categories crucial for the pure theory of law, such as: the category of Ought, imputation, basic norms and the dynamic (hierarchical) structure of law. This article is based on the position that an analysis of the cognitive dimension of the pure theory of law might yield promising results which could reveal new aspects of the central categories in this theory. This article is an attempt to explore the possibilities provided by merging these two theories and checking if the result brings some new knowledge about the pure theory of law and legal thinking in general.

The research on this article was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, no. 2015/17/B/HS5/00495

In his theory of adjudication, Aristotle observes that the judicial process should be based on rational and impartial evaluation of the merits of given case and on the application of law. This paper focuses on the bipolar character of the theory of adjudication analyzed from the perspective of the modern dual process theory. It seems that the bounded rationality of judges may create a potential threat to the impartiality and rationality of judgments in complex cases. In this context the hybrid model of categorization adopted from cognitive psychology is to be confronted with the Aristotelian theory of adjudication. The influence of heuristics and biases on judicial decisions is also to be considered. The conclusion refers to the prospects of an Aristotelian virtue-centered model of adjudication following the assumption of bounded rationality.

The research on this article was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, no. 2015/17/B/HS5/00495