Social conventions are those arbitrary rules and norms governing the countless behaviors all of us engage in every day without necessarily thinking about them, from shaking hands when greeting someone to driving on the right side of the road. In this book, Andrei Marmor offers a pathbreaking and comprehensive philosophical analysis of conventions and the roles they play in social life and practical reason, and in doing so challenges the dominant view of social conventions first laid out by David Lewis. Marmor begins by giving a general account of the nature of conventions, explaining the differences between coordinative and constitutive conventions and between deep and surface conventions. He then applies this analysis to explain how conventions work in language, morality, and law. Marmor clearly demonstrates that many important semantic and pragmatic aspects of language assumed by many theorists to be conventional are in fact not, and that the role of conventions in the moral domain is surprisingly complex, playing mostly an auxiliary and supportive role. Importantly, he casts new light on the conventional foundations of law, arguing that the distinction between deep and surface conventions can be used to answer the prevalent objections to legal conventionalism. Social Conventions is a much-needed reappraisal of the nature of the rules that regulate virtually every aspect of human conduct.

"The essays in Rules and Conventions are of extremely high quality. The concepts are central to aesthetics and the arts of interpretation, moral and political philosophy, philosophy of language, and social theory. Each contributor focuses intensely onthe concepts of rules and conventions and provides original analyses of the concepts in relation to a variety of topics. Cumulatively, they provide systematic perspectives on the cross-disciplinary importance of rules and conventions."--Douglas Kellner, University of Texas at Austin.

Provides a unified, coherent account of machine interaction at the level of the machine designers (the society of designers) and the level of the machine interaction itself (the resulting artificial society). Rules of Encounter applies the general approach and the mathematical tools of game theory in a formal analysis of rules (or protocols) governing the high-level behavior of interacting heterogeneous computer systems. It describes a theory of high-level protocol design that can be used to constrain manipulation and harness the potential of automated negotiation and coordination strategies to attain more effective interaction among machines that have been programmed by different entities to pursue different goals. While game theoretic ideas have been used to answer the question of how a computer should be programmed to act in a given specific interaction, here they are used in a new way, to address the question of how to design the rules of interaction themselves for automated agents. Rules of Encounter provides a unified, coherent account of machine interaction at the level of the machine designers (the society of designers) and the level of the machine interaction itself (the resulting artificial society). Taking into account such attributes of the artificial society as efficiency, and the self-interest of each member in the society of designers, it analyzes what kinds of rules should be instituted to govern interaction among these autonomous agents. The authors point out that adjusting the rules of public behavior--or the rules of the game--by which the programs must interact can influence the private strategies that designers set up in their machines, shaping design choices and run-time behavior, as well as social behavior. Artificial Intelligence series

The articles are based on selected presentations at International Conferences on Law, organized by the Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER) held in Athens, Greece -- Introd.

The Rei(g)n of Rule is a study of rules and their role in language. Rules have dominated the philosophical arena as a fundamental philosophical concept. Little progress, however, has been made in reaching an accepted definition of rules. This fact is not coincidental. The concept of rule is expected to perform various, at times conflicting, tasks. Analyzing key debates and rule related discussions in the philosophy of language I show that typically rules are perceived and defined either as norms or as conventions. As norms, rules perform the evaluative task of distinguishing between correct and incorrect actions. As conventions, rules describe how certain actions are actually undertaken. As normative and conventional requirements do not necessarily coincide, the concept of rule cannot simultaneously accommodate both. The impossibility to consistently define ‘rule’ has gone unnoticed by philosophers, and it is in this sense that ‘rule’ has also blocked philosophical attempts to explain language in terms of rules.

A considered balance of depth, detail, context, and critique, Public Law Directions offers the most student-friendly guide to the subject; empowering students to evaluate the law, understand its practical application, and approach assessments with confidence.

This book aims to provide an in-depth understanding of linguistic meaning, a central theme in twentieth-century philosophy, and its various connections with criteria. Part I examines four major recent theories of meaning, linguistic rules and conventions, and practices. In Part II, after an extended analysis of the concept of criterion against the backdrop of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and the post-Wittgenstein period, various connections between criteria and meaning are revealed in relation to both non-evaluative and evaluative concepts. The last chapter details various sorts of error and confusion in a host of important philosophical views resulting from an improper understanding of criteria, conditions, and evidence.