규범의 본질에 대한 탐구 ― 조건문의 형식을 중심으로 ―

Norm is a sort of meaning itself and is thus different from statement or sentence which depicts it in words. A norm consists of its constituents through meaningfully putting them together to form the coherent meaning of itself. The conditional relationships among those constituents are themselves the members of the world of meanings, since the typical linguistic form of norms belongs to the conditionals. It may be the case that the linguistic form of conditionals reflects the very connection among those constituents so long as their meaningful association can be called to be done in a ‘conditional’ way. Legal philosophers who investigated the nature of law as an order or system of norms have written that norms are insolubly connected with the form of conditionals. They, however, have not fully checked whether traditional rules of inference could work out as well in the process of practical reasoning where we are supposed to move from the ought-sentences, which simultaneously to be conditionals. This paper aims to review the problem as such. This paper shows that studies of ‘conditionals’ as one of the themes most devoted to the investigations of contemporary philosophy can contribute to the legal sciences and philosophy by explicating genuine issues of law. The new approaches to the nature of conditionals, differently from the classical approach interpreting conditionals as material implications, have developed either probabilistic understanding of conditionals, or the so-called possible worlds semantics, or else. This paper claims that the new ideas as such provide law the fresh sources on the basis of which old issues of law can be taken prudentially.