Exploring the Background: puzzles, afterthoughts, and replies

Abstract

In this paper I review the comments, and reply to the objections, put forward in the commentaries to my essay "Pre-conventions. A fragment of the Background", published in issues n. 30 and 33 of Revus-Journalfor Constitutional Theory and Philosophy of Law. My remarks fall under the following headings: 1. The social dimension of pre-conventions ; 2. Pre-conventions and ordinary habits and dispositions; 3. Whether my examples are mistaken; 4. Reasons and causes; 5. Normative facts; 6. Whether abstract entities can be causes; 7. Are pre-conventions conditions of Lewis-conventions? 8. What can pre-conventions do for legal theory? 9. Whether I discharged my argumentative burdens.