Piero Mattei-Gentili

This essay defends that Alchourrón and Bulygin were not mistaken in adopting the semantic (hyletic) conception of norms and in asserting that it is consistent with positivist legal theory. However, it is true that they do not provide arguments about how the semantic conception is related to the positivist thesis of the social facts. Therefore, this paper seeks to expose the reasons why the rival conceptions are not satisfactory, and, in addition, conventionalism is proposed as a means of explaining how it is possible to adopt the semantic conception in a manner consistent with an anti-realist ontology concordant with the social facts thesis.