Law-making and cognitive sciences

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to show how cognitive sciences can and should change the paradigm of lawmaking in conditions of a saturated with contradictory data and unstable information environment. The prospects for studying the cognitive activity of lawyers are outlined on the basis of methods characteristic of cognitive sciences, as well as the patterns established in these sciences. Interdisciplinary studies of cognitive processes can help identify the acceptable frequency of law changes, which makes it possible to use it as a tool for regulating human behavior, as well as determining periods of time sufficient to develop balanced decisions that have the property of normativity. Interdisciplinary studies of the brain can help determine the reaction of the human psyche to the novelty factor in the texts of normative legal acts, establish age-related changes in the understanding and assimilation of new normative guidelines that occur due to changes in brain neuroplasticity. Interdisciplinary studies of language should contribute to the development of algorithms for linking natural and artificial languages, the development of measures to improve the texts of laws written for humans, allowing them to be adapted to a computer, they can offer a technique for using artificial intelligence to check the texts of laws prepared by people. Cognitive modeling will make it possible to establish the possibility and expediency of using the mode of multimodal submission of regulatory information (combining text and graphics), to establish and reduce the negative impact on the quality of legal decisions of the digital environment in which they are made, to determine the positive and negative consequences of the widespread use of reference legal systems. It is concluded that studies of the patterns of human cognitive activity on the basis of legal material and the study of the reactions of the human psyche to changes in normative attitudes should be carried out mainly by specialists in the field of cognitive sciences. The development of draft normative legal acts should be carried out by teams of lawyers, taking into account data from other areas of knowledge, including the achievements of cognitive sciences.