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There are nothing but hard cases

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Conclusion

I have tried to suggest that two types of hard cases can be distinguished: real hard cases which appear when the game of justice is played and a situation appears which the play does not recognize, and false hard cases which are a part of an argument for a certain paradigm (often in key-concept reasoning). To recognize the latter kind of hard cases, one has to know the rules for the paradigm in which such hard cases function as examples.

The solution of real hard cases can only be found through a study of how the game of justice is played. And to do this, it is also necessary to recognize the false problems which are caused by mixing in arguments from other language games. The investigation of hard cases must concentrate on what is most familiar to the players and try to separate the grammar of the game of justice from the experience that one can get from playing the game itself.

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References

  1. I owe this threefold classification to Sören Stenlund, Department of Linguistics, Uppsala University, Seminar: Winter 1988.

  2. Pär Segerdahl,En Kritik av den logiska ordningen inom pragmatiken (Uppsala: UBOJ, 1988), 133–149.

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  7. In Dummett's sense,supra at n.3.

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  8. Gadamer,supra n.6, at 100.

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  9. Ibid., at 500 note 12.

  10. Supra n.5 at ##109, 129, 133.

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Wennström, B. There are nothing but hard cases. Int J Semiot Law 2, 149–158 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02053531

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