We present a mathematical approach to defeasible reasoning based on arguments. This approach integrates the notion of specificity introduced by Poole and the theory of warrant presented by Pollock. The main contribution of this paper is a precise, well-defined system which exhibits correct behavior when applied to the benchmark examples in the literature. It aims for usability rather than novelty. We prove that an order relation can be introduced among equivalence classes of arguments under the equi-specificity relation. We also prove (...) a theorem that ensures the termination of the process of finding the justified facts. Two more lemmas define a reduced search space for checking specificity. In order to implement the theoretical ideas, the language is restricted to Horn clauses for the evidential context. The language used to represent defeasible rules has been restricted in a similar way. The authors intend this work to unify the various existing approaches to argument-based defeasible reasoning. (shrink)

En este trabajo se interpreta un breve pasaje de Heidegger sobre la diferencia entre literatura y poesía y sobre el “insondable poder esencial” de la primera. Se argumenta cuáles son los rasgos fenomenológicos de ese “poder” que la distingue de la poesía, mostrando la problematicidad interna de tal distinción. Para poner en primer plano el sentido de ese “insondable poder esencial” de la literatura, se leerá brevemente El curioso impertinente, de El Quijote. La conclusión es que lo “insondable” del poder (...) de la literatura se encuentra en su ambivalencia, que es el medio de homologación y resistencia ante dicha homologación. (shrink)

The classification of ageing as a disease is fundamental to developing new pharmacological strategies that can target said phenomenon. The European Medicines Agency does not do this and maintains a questionable perspective based on the traditional naturalistic argument and the value-free ideal. An alternative is proposed which, inspired by consequentialism, is committed to considering ageing as a disease in European regulatory contexts as long as the ethical consequences are desirable. Within a realistic framework, I show that making this decision would (...) have moderate positive effects such as increased knowledge about antiageing pharmacology or potential greater chances of completing vital projects. Furthermore, we will see that the main arguments used by critics to show that the negative effects outweigh the positive ones are not sound. Therefore, I conclude that it would be beneficial for the European Medicines Agency to change its position on ageing. (shrink)

KOINONIA/ASETT MINGA/MUTIRÃO DE REVISTAS DE TEOLOGIA LATINO-AMERICANAS Teología de la Liberación y movimiento ecuménico: breve reflexión desde una práctica (Liberation Theology and ecumenical movement: a brief reflection from praxis).

The goal of this study was to introduce a model explaining how managers' attitudes, subjective norms, attributions, and the individualism-collectivism cultural dimension affect the way managers' deal with employee bribery in organizations. Twenty-six internal and external attributions related to bribery were identified through a series of structured interviews with 65 subject matter experts. These attributions, together with the other variables in the model, were evaluated by 354 Ecuadorian managers. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that attitudes and external attributions significantly predicted managers' (...) intentions to discipline employees who accepted a bribe. In addition, external attributions mediated the relationship between individualism-collectivism and intent to discipline corrupt employees. Implications for the management of bribery in Latin American organizations are discussed. (shrink)

The meaning that expressions take on particular occasions often depends on the context in ways which seem to transcend its direct effect on context-sensitive parameters. ‘Truth-conditional pragmatics’ is the project of trying to model such semantic flexibility within a compositional truth-conditional framework. Most proposals proceed by radically ‘freeing up’ the compositional operations of language. I argue, however, that the resulting theories are too unconstrained, and predict flexibility in cases where it is not observed. These accounts fall into this position because (...) they rarely, if ever, take advantage of the rich information made available by lexical items. I hold, instead, that lexical items encode both extension and non-extension determining information. Under certain conditions, the non-extension determining information of an expression e can enter into the compositional processes that determine the meaning of more complex expressions which contain e. This paper presents and motivates a set of type-driven compositional operations that can access non-extension determining information and introduce bits of it into the meaning of complex expressions. The resulting multidimensional semantics has the tools to deal with key cases of semantic flexibility in appropriately constrained ways, making it a promising framework to pursue the project of truth-conditional pragmatics. (shrink)

Na carta 12 de sua correspondência, Spinoza expõe sua con-cepção do infinito atual. Nesse contexto, ele desenvolve certos aspectos de sua ontologia de imanência, assim como o significado que para ele possuem os conceitos de eternidade, duração e tempo. Este texto tor-na-se então central para qualquer estudioso da questão da temporalidade em Spinoza. Nosso autor distancia-se da perspectiva cartesiana que, na mesma questão, expôs —não sem críticas— nos Princípios da Filosofia Cartesiana e nos Pensamentos Metafísicos, ambos publicados em 1663. Neste (...) artigo nos propomos estudar a distinção entre duração e tempo, para sublinhar a perspectiva propriamente spinozista da carta 12, e assim mostrar o significado que para Spinoza esses conceitos possuem no con-texto de uma discussão científica sobre o infinito atual. (shrink)

Recent work in formal semantics suggests that the language system includes not only a structure building device, as standardly assumed, but also a natural deductive system which can determine when expressions have trivial truth-conditions (e.g., are logically true/false) and mark them as unacceptable. This hypothesis, called the `logicality of language', accounts for many acceptability patterns, including systematic restrictions on the distribution of quantifiers. To deal with apparent counter-examples consisting of acceptable tautologies and contradictions, the logicality of language is often paired (...) with an additional assumption according to which logical forms are radically underspecified: i.e., the language system can see functional terms but is `blind' to open class terms to the extent that different tokens of the same term are treated as if independent. This conception of logical form has profound implications: it suggests an extreme version of the modularity of language, and can only be paired with non-classical---indeed quite exotic---kinds of deductive systems. The aim of this paper is to show that we can pair the logicality of language with a different and ultimately more traditional account of logical form. This framework accounts for the basic acceptability patterns which motivated the logicality of language, can explain why some tautologies and contradictions are acceptable, and makes better predictions in key cases. As a result, we can pursue versions of the logicality of language in frameworks compatible with the view that the language system is not radically modular vis-a-vis its open class terms and employs a deductive system that is basically classical. (shrink)

Recent work in formal semantics suggests that the language system includes not only a structure building device, as standardly assumed, but also a natural deductive system which can determine when expressions have trivial truth‐conditions (e.g., are logically true/false) and mark them as unacceptable. This hypothesis, called the ‘logicality of language’, accounts for many acceptability patterns, including systematic restrictions on the distribution of quantifiers. To deal with apparent counter‐examples consisting of acceptable tautologies and contradictions, the logicality of language is often paired (...) with an additional assumption according to which logical forms are radically underspecified: i.e., the language system can see functional terms but is ‘blind’ to open class terms to the extent that different tokens of the same term are treated as if independent. This conception of logical form has profound implications: it suggests an extreme version of the modularity of language, and can only be paired with non‐classical—indeed quite exotic—kinds of deductive systems. The aim of this paper is to show that we can pair the logicality of language with a different and ultimately more traditional account of logical form. This framework accounts for the basic acceptability patterns which motivated the logicality of language, can explain why some tautologies and contradictions are acceptable, and makes better predictions in key cases. As a result, we can pursue versions of the logicality of language in frameworks compatible with the view that the language system is not radically modular vis‐á‐vis its open class terms and employs a deductive system that is basically classical. (shrink)

The logicality of language is the hypothesis that the language system has access to a ‘natural’ logic that can identify and filter out as unacceptable expressions that have trivial meanings—that is, that are true/false in all possible worlds or situations in which they are defined. This hypothesis helps explain otherwise puzzling patterns concerning the distribution of various functional terms and phrases. Despite its promise, logicality vastly over-generates unacceptability assignments. Most solutions to this problem rest on specific stipulations about the properties (...) of logical form—roughly, the level of linguistic representation which feeds into the interpretation procedures—and have substantial implications for traditional philosophical disputes about the nature of language. Specifically, contextualism and semantic minimalism, construed as competing hypotheses about the nature and degree of context-sensitivity at the level of logical form, suggest different approaches to the over-generation problem. In this paper, I explore the implications of pairing logicality with various forms of contextualism and semantic minimalism. I argue that to adequately solve the over-generation problem, logicality should be implemented in a constrained contextualist framework. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se propone una síntesis de las necesidades humanas condensadas en los pactos internacionales de derechos humanos (Derechos Civiles y Políticos y Derechos Económicos, Sociales y Culturales) al igual que en los mecanismos emergentes que reconocen los actuales retos en derechos humanos y condiciones de vida de las poblaciones como la Agenda 2030 – Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible. Relacionándola con la teoría de las necesidades expuestas por Maslow de aquellas compuestas por las de carácter radical de mantenimiento (...) y de autorrealización. Se hace lo propio con los instrumentos internacionales de derechos humanos y una relación con lo propuesto en la doctrina jurídica. (shrink)

Through the study of the behaviour of the protagonists in the work of Franz Kafka, we will try to expose the control mechanisms used by the administrative authorities, providing at the same time with an antidote to uncritical submission. A thorough observation of the configuration of diegetic situations will allow to reverse the situations of forced compliance to proffer, in the voice of the so-called secondary figures, a critical understanding to enable the recovery of individual freedom.

In Patel v. Midland Memorial Hospital & Medical Center, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the defendant hospital did not violate the plaintiff's due process rights by suspending his clinical privileges without a pre-suspension hearing, where there were reasonable grounds for assuming that patient safety was at risk. Dr. P.V. Patel, a board-certified cardiologist, brought an action against Midland Memorial Hospital and several of its doctors, alleging that the suspension of his clinical privileges violated his (...) right to a pre-suspension hearing; was the result of racial discrimination; and resulted in anticompetitive behavior in violation of antitrust laws. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas granted Midland's motion for summary judgment. The parties filed cross appeals, Dr. Patel on the ground that there were genuine issues of fact for all of his claims, and Midland on the ground that, with the exception of the civil rights claim, it was immune from all of Dr. Patel's claims under the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986. (shrink)

The point of departure for htis essay is the evaluation of democracy in Latin America, in particular, Colombian democracy following the new, 1991 Constitution. Special emphasis is placed upon the phenomena of violence, corruption and abstentionism, while a solution for these problems is sought in the strengthening of democracy in the specific form of participatory democracy, understood as a more authentic version capable of incorporating diverse cultures, classes and social movements. Recent discussions in contemporary moral and political philosophy help to (...) clarify the meaning of participatory democracy through a reconstruction of the debate between J. Habermas' discourse ethics and radical democracy, and J. Rawls' political liberalism, which has in turn been challenged by the liberal and communitarian critiques of R. Dworkin and M. Sandel, respectively. (shrink)

Comenzaré por aclarar el título, del cual debo la primera parte a la Escuela de Frankfurt, teoría crítica de la sociedad, y la segunda a Martín Heidegger. Trataré luego ―¿tarea imposible?― de reconciliar estos dos modos de pensar, volviendo al sentido del pensar en Kant y a las cosas mismas que pensamos en nuestra cotidianidad de acuerdo con la fenomenología de Edmundo Husserl, maestro de Heidegger y partícipe de la crítica al positivismo de los frankfurtianos, para proponer que la filosofía (...) puede servir para reencantar al mundo de la vida y a la sociedad civil, necesariamente desencantados por los modernos procesos de racionalización. (shrink)

According to Kratzer’s influential account of epistemic must and might, these operators involve quantification over domains of possibilities determined by a modal base and an ordering source. Recently, this account has been challenged by invoking contexts of ‘epistemic tension’: i.e., cases in which an assertion that must\ is conjoined with the possibility that \, and cases in which speakers try to downplay a previous assertion that must\, after finding out that \. Epistemic tensions have been invoked from two directions. Von (...) Fintel and Gillies :351–383, 2010) propose a return to a simpler modal logic-inspired account: must and might still involve universal and existential quantification, but the domains of possibilities are determined solely by realistic modal bases. In contrast, Lassiter :117–163, 2016), following Swanson, proposes a more revisionary account which treats must and might as probabilistic operators. In this paper, we present a series of experiments to obtain reliable data on the degree of acceptability of various contexts of epistemic tension. Our experiments include novel variations that, we argue, are required to make progress in this debate. We show that restricted quantificational accounts à la Kratzer fit the overall pattern of results better than either of their recent competitors. In addition, our results help us identify the key components of restricted quantificational accounts, and on that basis propose some refinements and general constraints that should be satisfied by any account of the modal auxiliaries. (shrink)

Over the past decade or so, a new interdisciplinary field has emerged in the ground between, on the one hand, computer science – and artificial intelligence in particular – and, on the other, the area of philosophy concentrating on the language and structure of argument. There are now hundreds of researchers worldwide who would consider themselves a part of this nascent community. Various terms have been proposed for the area, including "Computational Dialectics," "Argumentation Technology," and "Argument-based Computing," but the term (...) that has stuck is simply Argument & Computation. It encompasses several specific strands of research, such as: . the use of theories of argument, and dialectic in particular, in the design and implementation of protocols for multi-agent action and communication; . the application of theories of argument and rhetoric in natural language processing and affective computing; . the use of argument-based structures for autonomous reasoning in artificial intelligence, and in particular, for defeasible reasoning; . computer-supported collaborative argumentation – the implementation of software tools for enabling online argument in domains such as education and e-government. These strands come together to form the core of a research field that covers parts of artificial intelligence (AI), philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science, but, increasingly, is building an identity of its own. (shrink)

How are biases encoded in our representations of social categories? Philosophical and empirical discussions of implicit bias overwhelmingly focus on salient or statistical associations between target features and representations of social categories. These are the sorts of associations probed by the Implicit Association Test and various priming tasks. In this paper, we argue that these discussions systematically overlook an alternative way in which biases are encoded, that is, in the dependency networks that are part of our representations of social categories. (...) Dependency networks encode information about how features in a conceptual representation depend on each other. This information determines the degree of centrality of a feature for a conceptual representation. Importantly, centrally encoded biases systematically disassociate from those encoded in salient-statistical associations. Furthermore, the degree of centrality of a feature determines its cross-contextual stability: in general, the more central a feature is for a concept, the more likely it is to survive into a wide array of cognitive tasks involving that concept. Accordingly, implicit biases that are encoded in the central features of concepts are predicted to be more resilient across different tasks and contexts. As a result, the distinction between centrally encoded and salient-statistical biases has important theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

El artículo se propone presentar algunos elementos de la doctrina spinoziana de la idea adecuada y del orden de filosofar en el temprano Tratado de la reforma del entendimiento. Se intentará mostrar que la segunda parte del método de Spinoza consiste, por un lado, en explicar los “medios” disponibles para asegurar la verdad (definición genética), y, por el otro, en concatenar y ordenar las ideas de suerte que la mente pueda reproducir (total o parcialmente) la formalidad de la Naturaleza. A (...) través de ello afirmaremos que esta segunda parte del método, aunque inconclusa, tiene la virtud de presentar dos cuestiones muy importantes para la comprensión de la futura ontología de la Ética: por un lado, la doctrina de la definición genética, centro del more geométrico spinoziano; y por el otro, la reflexión en torno al “orden” en que existen las cosas singulares y a la naturaleza de su deducción. (shrink)

La cuestión de la temporalidad atraviesa toda la filosofía de Descartes. Es relevante para la geometrización de la física que se propone llevar a cabo, así como también en la misma lógica argumentativa que pone en marcha la duda metódica cartesiana. Sin embargo, Descartes es muchas veces ambiguo en la utilización de los términos “duración”, “tiempo” y “eternidad”. En este artículo estudiamos el estatuto ontológico que tienen esos conceptos e interrogamos el papel que cumplen en la filosofía de Descartes, sobre (...) todo en relación con la física, cuyo fundamento Descartes pretende colocar en la metafísica. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el concepto de duración de Spinoza. Mostrando la diferencia en relación con algunas obras anteriores, interesa interrogar esta noción en el contexto de la inmanencia de la potencia y del ser necesario como ser eterno que se siguen de la ontología de la Ética. Nuestro propósito es mostrar que en esa obra la perspectiva de nuestro autor se independiza completamente de la perspectiva adoptada superficialmente en los Pensamientos metafísicos, y que hace aparecer a (...) la duración con otras características y analizada en función de otra problemática, más vinculada a la ética y la correcta forma de vivir. (shrink)

Este artículo estudia algunos problemas relativos a la doctrina de la temporalidad de Spinoza, centrando el análisis en los Principios de filosofía de Descartes, los Pensamientos metafísicos y la “Carta sobre el infinito”, todas de 1663. Con ello esperamos mostrar que la exposición spinoziana de los conceptos de tiempo y duración en la obra de 1663, si bien sigue la conceptualización cartesiana, opera sobre ésta una crítica implícita (inmanente podríamos decir) que lleva al pensamiento spinoziano hacia sus propios horizontes conceptuales, (...) que serán explícitamente definidos en la carta 12. De esta manera, asimismo, este trabajo busca contribuir al estudio del estatuto de la obra de 1663 y del significado de la doctrina de la temporalidad de Spinoza en este período formativo de su pensamiento. (shrink)