Exploring Consequences, the fourth Decision-Maker Move, is about understanding what will happen as the result of selecting any of the various options. Or rather, what is most likely to happen. Keep in mind, both uncertainty (about what occurs) and luck (either good or bad) often play a part in how things actually turn out. Study and do well on the exam, knowing that spending the evening studying won’t be much fun. Don’t study and probably do poorly on the exam but have a good time for a few hours the night before. It’s all about the consequences. Eat the fruit salad or soup special for lunch, feel great in the afternoon and get a lot done. Choose the huge burger and a double order of fries, feel sleepy and get less done the rest of the day. Consequences follow from the choices we make.

Chapter 2 of Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language argues that there are no facts about what anyone means by their words, so meaning is a fiction. But some fictions are useful, and Chapter 3 explains why this one is. One side-effect of that explanation is supposed to be the “Private and solitary language argument,” which says that we cannot, or at least cannot usefully, ascribe meaning to an individual “considered in isolation”; it thereby reveals something essentially communitarian about meaning.

This chapter briefly defends that fictionalist reading of Kripke’s great work before arguing at more length that no communitarian conclusion follows. Even if semantic ascriptions are all false, they may still be useful, even when made by, or applied to, or addressed by, an individual “considered in isolation”– whatever exactly this turns out to mean.

Part III draws together the central threads in the preceding chapters and takes the analysis a step further. Chapter 8 draws particular attention to the importance of context in ECtHR jurisprudence relating to ECHR Article 9, contending that in taking different approaches and reaching different outcomes in ostensibly similar Article 9 cases, the ECtHR is not necessarily being inconsistent. Rather, its approach can be explained by recognising the significance of the facts; the facts help the ECtHR identify what is at stake in a particular case and respond accordingly. In developing this, this chapter explores the importance placed on contextual differences between, and within, Member States by the ECtHR in Article 9 cases, and refers to the major role of the facts in cases concerning other ECHR Articles. Finally, it explores some of the broader cultural, social and political factors the ECtHR may legitimately take into account in Article 9 assessments, and considers the impact of the increased focus on the local context in declarations on reform of the ECHR system on the ECtHR.

Puffery is a concept that purports to be about things consumers ignore and don’t rely on. It is in fact a concept about things courts ignore and won’t rule on. At the moment, marketing and other empirical work has essentially nothing to say about puffery in the courts; puffery consists of precisely the elements of advertising for which courts neither require nor allow empirical evidence of consumer reaction.1 That doesn’t make the doctrine wrong, but it does mean that explanations for the doctrine should not be founded on unsupported, mostly unsupportable judicial assertions about how consumers think and what advertising claims they disregard. Instead, this chapter will argue, puffery should be about what kinds of advertising claims are too difficult to evaluate for their truth in judicial settings. That’s an epistemological determination that judges are actually well qualified to make, unlike the idea that consumers don’t rely on puffery.

Aristotle’s biological treatises are full of explicit commitments to empiricism, expressing both his own views about how one should conduct biological investigations while using observation and sharp critiques of his predecessors for failing to see the facts. This chapter examines some of the most prominent features of Aristotle’s commitments to empirical methods as they can be observed to be at work at the most basic level of his science of biology, that is, at the level of establishing the facts about the parts, activities, lives, and characters of animals as collected in his History of Animals (HA). Specifically, the chapter discusses Aristotle’s methods for establishing and evaluating facts as well as the sometimes all too important role played by folklore, fables, and hearsay in Aristotle’s collection of zoological facts.

Chapter 4 examines the modality of norm formation, the processes of establishing a common frame of reference for future collective behaviour. It revisits classical studies in social psychology that have demonstrated how social conditions guide perceptual judgment and decision making. Sherif’s autokinetic experiments and Lewin’s group experiments are reviewed in light of an appraisal of necessary conditions for group processes that foster the emergence of social norms for the coordination of individual conduct. The chapter expands these notions to concepts of intersubjectivity and inter-objectivity. The former requires an interpenetration of views by which individuals are able to consider claims and propositions from the vantage point of another’s perspective. This ability enables the establishment of norms that are objective entities, frame social interactions and make social organisation possible. This process is also illustrated by the stabilisation of a scientific-technical facts of 'objectification'. Symmetrically, the framing of social interaction happens via inter-objectivity, the shared usage of designed hardware and infrastructure of society.

In Chapter 12, you read and learned quite a bit about the IRAC process of legal reasoning. Hopefully, you have tackled some of the problem questions, which provided opportunity to implement the IRAC process yourself. If not, never mind, you will be using this model (or another like it) for the rest of your time as a student, at the very least!

Issues in copyright law such as the appropriate term of protection, the ability of copyright regimes to embrace (or at least adjust to) new modes of production and new concepts of authorship, and the proper allocation of benefits to authors and the public have generated intense and highly visible debates on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. It may therefore be helpful to take a different perspective and examine a less strident issue like originality to see how it is applied to newer uses like digital media, photographs, news footage, and TV formats. Such was the inspiration for this chapter: to examine the foundational concept of originality in the copyright schemes of Lithuania, the EU, and the United States in order to make some observations about the similarities and differences in statutes and case law in each jurisdiction. The hope is to provide some guideposts for how the respective courts understand the concept of originality and look at how such concepts have been applied in practice when determining whether or not a work is deserving of copyright protection in the first instance. What follows does not claim to be an exhaustive treatment of the subject of comparative concepts of originality. Rather, it is the authors’ attempt to select illustrative and engaging cases (and doctrines) to extract the principles – sometimes clearly articulated, at times less so – that inform views in these respective legal systems, and that may also be common across borders. As practitioners, we also have the modest ambition of providing an analytical frame of reference that may prove useful to fellow lawyers who find themselves tackling questions of whether new types of works or new uses of works are in fact original enough to merit copyright protection.