Brian Epstein has advanced a powerful and influential argument for the introduction of a novel relation of metaphysical determination called ‘anchoring’ and, correlatively, against identifying anchoring with metaphysical grounding (Epstein, B. 2015. The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences. Oxford University Press). The argument aims to establish this by showing that they have different modal properties: anchoring is a ‘universal tool’, in that it allows for an anchored kind to be instantiated at worlds where its anchors are (...) absent, whereas grounding does not, as it is ‘world-bound’. In this paper, I provide a novel diagnosis of where the argument goes wrong. Contrary to extant responses in the literature, I argue that anchoring can be a form of grounding even if we grant all of Epstein’s key (if controversial) insights. Moreover, I show that Epstein’s reasoning has stronger dialectical force against the related but distinct view that social facts are grounded in rules. Even in this respect, however, I argue that there are good reasons to resist this negative conclusion. (shrink)

Scott Hershovitz’s Law is a Moral Practice develops a bold, novel, and comprehensive account of law: the moral practice picture. Its central thesis is that legal relations (rights, duties, powers, etc.) are moral. They are real, full-fledged normative relations, connected to genuine reasons for action, and endowed with robust normativity. Nothing less than ordinary moral relations. The account is compounded with a deflationary view of theories in general jurisprudence and of the debates about them. In this vein, Hershovitz recommends that (...) we move away from theorising about law (understood as a set of legal norms), and focus on the nature of legal relations instead. In this paper, I pursue two interrelated objectives. First, I address Hershovitz’s main arguments for the view that legal relations are moral. Second, I take issue with the asymmetry between the deflationary and inflationary stances he advocates for legal norms and relations, respectively, arguing that this different treatment is unwarranted, because the deflationary stance is, and because this very combination of attitudes is unstable. Properly understood, questions about the nature and determination of legal norms and relations can’t but be seen as complementary aspects of a unified legal metaphysics. (shrink)

Volume 15, Issue 4, December 2024, Page 587-593.