How to Do Things With Rules

Abstract

Truth within governing systems can come in two forms: judicial and meta-judicial. Judicial facts arise from verdicts or rulings, whereas meta-judicial facts arise from application of a governing system's standard in a way that does not involve a judicial verdict or ruling. Not all governing systems require that meta-judicial facts exist, but all systems that provide a condition that can be applied in a non-subjective way allow for the more interesting non-subjective cognitivist accounts of meta-judicial fact. Most governing systems we encounter certainly seem to have conditions that allow for this kind of application. The fundamental question regards how this meta-judicial fact arises. I have defended response dependence as the most plausible manner in which meta-judicial fact is constituted, after considering the ways in which the more intuitive account of objective constitution fails.