Law as an Interactive Kind: On the Concept and the Nature of Law

When exploring the relations between the concept and the nature of law, ample philosophical reflection has been dedicated to the relations between the intension of terms (or the content of concepts) and their extension. Much less consideration has been given to the causal relations between concept and thing within socially constructed entities. This paper examines the interactive causal relationship between law and the concept we have of it and reflects on its implications for legal philosophy. First, it explains the causal role played by concepts in processes of social construction and applies this explanation to the analysis of the special case of law. Second, it compares this causal role played by the concept of law to the role assigned to it in the context of externalist theories of meaning and mental content. Lastly, it demonstrates the advantages of seeing law as an interactive kind in answering some contemporary methodological difficulties stemming from conceptual plurality or uncertainty, and in opening new avenues for research in legal philosophy.