El Barrio Inglés de Bella Vista es uno de los parajes más enigmáticos de la ciudad de Huelva. El turista que desee pasar una jornada agradable en el suroeste de España, hará bien en privarse de una mañana de playa para transitar sus calles. La experiencia tiene un halo de exotismo. En medio de una provincia repleta de templos católicos y bloques de pisos, el paseante se verá rodeado de diáfanas hileras de casas victorianas, escoltadas por otros edificios curiosos, como (...) una capilla presbiteriana de bella factura y un cementerio protestante. Tan bucólico enclave enseguida le generará preguntas de índole histórica. ¿Cómo llegó hasta aquí esta Inglaterra en miniatura? Si les consulta a los guías turísticos, estos le compartirán un relato convenientemente amable: todo comenzó con la _Rio Tinto Company Limited_, una empresa que adquirió las minas de cobre de Rio Tinto en 1873 y que construyó el lugar con miras a que le sirviese de morada a sus técnicos y trabajadores. El visitante abandonará el paraje con la impresión de que deja tras de sí la huella patrimonial de una historia de progreso compartido, de crecimiento económico y de modernización sociocultural. Lo que no sabe es que el Barrio Inglés de Bella Vista es el testimonio de un pasado mucho más complejo y mucho menos amable de lo que es perceptible en la inmediatez de su paisaje. Tal pasado oculta una relación desigual de subordinación comercial, financiera y geoestratégica. Una relación que puso a la Monarquía española parcialmente a merced de los intereses británicos. El libro _Britain’s Informal Empire in Spain, 1830–1950_, de Nicholas Sharman, nos descubre con asombrosa clarividencia y sistematicidad, las claves de este fenómeno. (shrink)

The Editors express their gratitude and appreciation to the indi-viduals listed below who served as referees for Informal Logic for Volumes 31 (2011) and 32 (2012).

In the fallout from the war on terror is a revived Cold War, with more nuclear players than ever, across even more dry-tinder landscapes around the world.

The papers collected in this volume exemplify some of the trends in current approaches to logic, language and computation. Written by authors with varied academic backgrounds, the contributions are intended for an interdisciplinary audience. The first part of this volume addresses issues relevant for multi-agent systems: reasoning with incomplete information, reasoning about knowledge and beliefs, and reasoning about games. Proofs as formal objects form the subject of Part II. Topics covered include: contributions on logical frameworks, linear logic, and different approaches (...) to formalized reasoning. Part III focuses on representations and formal methods in linguistic theory, addressing the areas of comparative and temporal expressions, modal subordination, and compositionality. (shrink)

Second edition of the introductory guidebook to the basic principles of constructing sound arguments and criticising bad ones. Non-technical in approach, it is based on 186 examples, which Douglas Walton, a leading authority in the field of informal logic, discusses and evaluates in clear, illustrative detail. Walton explains how errors, fallacies, and other key failures of argument occur. He shows how correct uses of argument are based on sound strategies for reasoned persuasion and critical responses. This edition takes into (...) account many developments in the field of argumentation study that have occurred since 1989, many created by the author. Drawing on these developments, Walton includes and analyzes 36 new topical examples and also brings in work on argumentation schemes. Ideally suited for use in courses in informal logic and introduction to philosophy, this book will also be valuable to students of pragmatics, rhetoric, and speech communication. (shrink)

This paper connects information with computation and cognition via concept of agents that appear at variety of levels of organization of physical/chemical/cognitive systems – from elementary particles to atoms, molecules, life-like chemical systems, to cognitive systems starting with living cells, up to organisms and ecologies. In order to obtain this generalized framework, concepts of information, computation and cognition are generalized. In this framework, nature can be seen as informational structure with computational dynamics, where an (info-computational) agent is needed for the (...) potential information of the world to actualize. Starting from the definition of information as the difference in one physical system that makes a difference in another physical system – which combines Bateson and Hewitt’s definitions, the argument is advanced for natural computation as a computational model of the dynamics of the physical world, where information processing is constantly going on, on a variety of levels of organization. This setting helps us to elucidate the relationships between computation, information, agency and cognition, within the common conceptual framework, with special relevance for biology and robotics. (shrink)

Este ensayo busca explorar la metáfora visual en una época que critica al ojo y demanda una nueva ontología de la mirada ante la creciente devaluación de la imagen. Lo paradójico de la ceguera del ojo y del pensamiento, en una época que se precia de ilustrada son aquí sondeados. Así mismo, se explora la mirada desencantada de la modernidad ante el rebajamiento de lo humano y la trivialización de la vida.

Substantial efforts have recently been made to reform the physician-patient relationship, particularly toward replacing the `silent world of doctor and patient' with informed patient participation in medical decision-making. This 'new ethos of patient autonomy' has especially insisted on the routine provision of informed consent for all medical interventions. Stronly supported by most bioethicists and the law, as well as more popular writings and expectations, it still seems clear that informed consent has, at best, been received in a lukewarm fashion by (...) most clinicians, many simply rejecting what they commonly refer to as the `myth of informed consent'. The purpose of this book is to defuse this seemingly intractable controversy by offering an efficient and effective operational model of informed consent. This goal is pursued first by reviewing and evaluating, in detail, the agendas, arguments, and supporting materials of its proponents and detractors. A comprehensive review of empirical studies of informed consent is provided, as well as a detailed reflection on the common clinician experience with attempts at informed consent and the exercise of autonomy by patients. In the end, informed consent is recast as a management tool for pursuing clinically and ethically important goods and values that any clinician should see as meriting pursuit. Concurrently, the model incorporates a flexible, anticipatory approach that recognizes that no static, generic ritual can legitimately pursue the quite variable goods and values that may be at stake with different patients in different situations. Finally, efficiency of provision is addressed by not pursuing the unattainable and ancillary. Throughout, the traditional principle of beneficence is appealed to toward articulating an operational model of informed consent as an intervention that is likely to change outcomes at the bedside for the better. (shrink)

The notion of “empire” in Hardt and Negri’s political theory indicates a new postmodern sovereignty, able to lead the capital accumulation in the global market era. With the concept of “empire”, Hardt and Negri want to overtake the imperialism doctrines, considered by the two authors unable to understand correctly the global world. The aim of this essay is to clarify the conceptual contraposition between “empire” and “imperialism” offering a brief description of the international debate raised by the publication of “Empire” (...) by Hardt and Negri, in order to present the different positions and describe strengths, contradictions and aporias. (shrink)

Dos pasajes de las Historiae de Curcio Rufo pueden ser leídos en el marco de la tradición de la historiografía romana de incluir discursos de enemigos extranjeros para expresar visiones críticas del imperialismo romano. El discurso de Darío antes de la batalla de Gaugamela (4.14.9-26) y el de un embajador escita (7.8.12-30) son analizados en este trabajo para demostrar que, detrás de una lectura literal de censura a Alejandro Magno, aparece un fuerte reproche a la expansión imperial de Roma.

Dos ideas fundamentales están la base de Imperio, el libro que he escrito a cuatro manos con Michael Hardt, entre la guerra del Golfo y la de Kosovo. La primera es que no existe un mercado global (en la forma en que se habla desde la caída del Muro de Berlín, es decir, no solamente como paradigma macro-económico sino como categoría política) sin forma de estructura jurídica, y que el orden jurídico no puede existir sin un-poder que garantice su eficacia. (...) La segunda es que el orden jurídico de.. (shrink)

Christopher G. Timpson provides the first full-length philosophical treatment of quantum information theory and the questions it raises for our understanding of the quantum world. He argues for an ontologically deflationary account of the nature of quantum information, which is grounded in a revisionary analysis of the concepts of information.