Exploring the Background: Puzzles, Afterthoughts, and Replies

In this paper I review the comments, and reply to the objections, put forward in the commentaries to my essay “Pre-conventions. A fragment of the Background”, published in issues n. 30 and 32 of Revus – Journal for Constitutional Theory and Philosophy of Law. My remarks fall under the following headings: 1. the social dimension of pre-conventions; 2. pre-conventions and ordinary habits and dispositions; 3. whether my examples are mistaken; 4. reasons and causes; 5. normative facts; 6. whether abstract entities can be causes; 7. are pre-conventions conditions of Lewis-conventions? 8. What can pre-conventions do for legal theory? 9. Whether I discharged my argumentative burdens.