Metalanguage as a Procedural Language

from the Semantic Conception of Truth through Critical Rationalism until the Neoinsti-tutionalist Procedural Theory of Law

Abstract

Directed to the Neoinstitutionalist Procedural Theory of Law, mistaken criticisms are made regarding one of its theoretical frameworks, Karl Popper's Critical Rationalism. In these criticisms, it is incorrectly argued that Popper was a supporter of logical positivism, affecting Neoinstitutionalist Theory because both use metalanguage. The purpose of this work is to undo the original misunderstanding of the aforementioned criticism. To this end, it is necessary to return to the path of theoretical influences, starting with the semantic conception of truth proposed by Alfred Tarski, as it is from it that Popper bases the function of metalanguage in his theoretical model. In the semantic conception of truth we perceive a theory of the definition of truth, which uses semantics to propose a satisfactory definition of the notion of truth and its requirements of material adequacy and formal correction. In this theory, metalanguage is presented as the language that will contain the object language, the terms of a general logical nature, the terms and the semantic rules, and, therefore, will allow the argument of the presence of the requirements to satisfy the truth condition of the sentence in the object language. The quadripartite epistemology (technique-science-theory-criticism) of Critical Rationalism takes advantage of Tarski's semantic conception of truth. With the presentation of theories, which are composed of descriptive assertions about facts, a language is needed in which these descriptions can be argued and criticized, and metalanguage is necessary for this. After the Critical Rationalism approach, it is possible to understand the proposal of the Neoinstitutionalist Procedural Theory of Law to face analytical dogmatics by adopting the Popperian epistemological method, conjecturing a legal-linguistic theory that enables the argumentation of logical contents through metalanguage. Thus, legal theories are elaborated through metalanguage, for the demarcation, stabilization and argumentation of the normative meanings and content of basic statements. This metalanguage is then transposed into the process as the language that will enable the assessment of contradiction, broad defense and equality.