Th e basi c pu r pos e o f thi s w or k consist s o f eliminatin g som e o f th e m yth s an d paradigms tha t cu r rent ly info r m th e assessmen t o f scienti f i c e vidence . I n orde r t o accomplis h this object i v e , th e autho r sta r t s fro m th e (...) premis e tha t thes e m yth s an d paradigms , produce d with th e d ev elopmen t o f forensi c science , ar e minimizin g th e rol e o f judge s i n judicia l proceedings fo r th e bene f i t o f e xpe r ts . Thi s ca n lea d t o a violatio n o f du e proces s an d n e glectin g that judicia l processe s ar e aime d a t resolvin g conflicts . Th e autho r refer s speci f ical l y t o th e m yth o f in f allibilit y an d th e pa r adig m o f identi f ication , accordin g t o w hic h scienti f i c e vidence ca n posit i v e ly identif y a n ind i vidua l o r objec t throug h p h ysica l traces . B y ana l yzin g the recen t doctrin e o n th e assessmen t o f scienti f i c e vidence , th e autho r conclude s o n th e need t o adop t th e pa r adig m o f likelihood . Thus , th e judg e stil l hold s th e rol e i n th e ev aluation o f e vidence , an d guarantee s tha t th e goal s o f th e proces s wil l b e respected. (shrink)

It filled me with pleasure to be asked by Problema editor-in-chief Sandra Gómora Juárez to lead a discussion on the theories and doctrine on precedent in our context alongside Prof. Marina Gascón Abellán. Besides the undeniable and recognized prestige of the Problema journal, there was also the possibility of working with Prof. Marina Gascón again and with Sandra Gómora for the first time. It was also an opportunity to discuss issues regarding precedent with old friends (...) like Flavia Carbonell, Fabio Pulido and Silvia Zorzetto, and exchange opinions with new ones like Rodrigo Camarena. On this occasion, I would like to comment specifically on the works of Prof. Fabio Pulido Ortiz and Prof. Silvia Zorzetto, both of which are of unquestionable quality. The article by Prof. Pulido Ortiz of the Universidad de la Sabana in Colombia is a work of analytical finesse and subtlety that discusses some fundamental problems of legal theory from the standpoint of the theory of precedent. Prof. Silvia Zorzetto from Università Statale di Milano has conducted an analytical and metalinguistic survey of the use of precedents in Italy, particularly at the Italian Sezioni Unite Civili della Corte di Cassazione. This work is priceless not only in terms of its value as a study of (internal) Italian legal culture, but also because the analysis can be generalized, at least in part, to explain how precedents are used in civil law systems. (shrink)

Cuando la profesora y directora de la revista Problema, Sandra Gómora Juárez, nos propuso a la profesora Marina Gascón Abellán y a mí llevar a cabo una discusión acerca de las teorías y doctrinas del precedente en nuestro contexto, no me pude sentir más contento. Al indudable y reconocido prestigio de la revista Problema se sumó la posibilidad de volver a trabajar con la profesora Marina Gascón y hacerlo por primera vez con Sandra Gómora. Además, (...) surgió la oportunidad de volver a discutir con viejos amigos —como Flavia Carbonell, Fabio Pulido, Silvia Zorzetto— sobre cuestiones relativas al precedente, y poder contrastar opiniones con otros nuevos, como Rodrigo Camarena. En esta ocasión, me corresponde comentar, en particular, los trabajos del profesor Fabio Pulido Ortiz y de la profesora Silvia Zorzetto. Ambos trabajos son de una indudable calidad. El del profesor Pulido Ortiz, de la Universidad de La Sabana de Colombia, es un trabajo de finura y sutileza analítica que entra a discutir, al calor de la teoría del precedente, algunos problemas fundamentales de la teoría del derecho. La profesora Silvia Zorzetto, de la Università Statale di Milano, ha llevado a cabo un reconocimiento analítico y metalingüístico de la práctica de los precedentes en Italia, con especial atención a le Sezioni Unite Civili della Corte di Cassazione italiana, de incalculable valor. Ello no sólo por el valor que pueda tener para el estudio de la cultura jurídica (interna) italiana, sino porque su análisis puede ser, al menos en parte, generalizado para dar cuenta de cómo son usados los precedentes en los ordenamientos de civil law. (shrink)

Phantasmagoria explores ideas of spirit and soul since the Enlightenment; it traces metaphors that have traditionally conveyed the presence of immaterial forces, and reveals how such pagan and Christian imagery about ethereal beings are embedded in a logic of the imagination, clothing spirits in the languages of air, clouds, light and shadow, glass, and ether itself. Moving from Wax to Film, the book also discusses key questions of imagination and cognition, and probes the perceived distinctions between fantasy and deception; it (...) uncovers a host of spirit forms--angels, ghosts, fairies, revenants, and zombies--that are still actively present in contemporary culture. It reveals how their transformations over time illuminate changing ideas about the self. Phantasmagoria also tells the accompanying story about the means used to communicate such ideas, and relates how the new technologies of the Victorian era were applied to figuring the invisible and the impalpable, and how magic lanterns (the phantasmagoria shows themselves), radio, photography and then moving pictures spread ideas about spirit forces. As the story unfolds, the book features the many eminent men and women--scientists and philosophers--who in the Society of Psychical Research applied their considerable energies to the question of other worlds and other states of mind: they staged trance seances in which mediums produced spirit phenomena, including ectoplasm. The book shows how this often embarrassing story connects with some of the important scientific discoveries of a fertile age, in psychology and physics. Over a sequence of twenty-eight chapters, with over thirty illustrations in color and black and white, Phantasmagoria thus tells an unexpected and often uncomfortable story about shifts in thought about consciousness and the individual person, from the first public waxworks portraits at the end of the eighteenth century to stories of hauntings, possession, and loss of self as in the case of the zombie, a popular figure of soulessness, in modern times. (shrink)

A virtue approach to argumentation would focus on the arguers’ character rather than the arguments. Therefore, it must be explained how good arguments relate to virtuous arguers. This article focus on this issue and attempts to provide an answer to the question: Could a bad arguer produce a good argument? It is argued that, besides the usual logical, dialectical, and rhetorical standards, a virtuously produced good argument must meet two additional requirements: the arguer must be in a specific state of (...) mind, and the argument must be broadly conceived of as an argumentative interaction and thus excel from every perspective. (shrink)

Virtuous arguers are expected to manifest virtues such as intellectual humility and open-mindedness, but from such traits the quality of arguments does not immediately follow. However, it also seems implausible that a virtuous arguer can systematically put forward bad arguments. How could virtue argumentation theory combine both insights? The solution, I argue, lies in an analogy with virtue epistemology: considering both responsibilist and reliabilist virtues gives us a fuller picture of the virtuous arguer.

Harry Frankfurt characterised bullshit as assertions that are made without a concern for truth. Assertions, however, are not the only type of speech act that can be bullshit. Here, I propose the concept of argumentative bullshit and show how a speech acts account of bullshit assertions can be generalised to bullshit arguments. Argumentative bullshit, on this account, would be the production of an argument without a concern for the supporting relation between reasons and claim.

Virtue argumentation theory focuses on the arguers’ character, whereas pragma-dialectics focuses on argumentation as a procedure. In this paper I attempt to explain that both theories are not opposite approaches to argumentation. I argue that, with the help of some non-fundamental changes in pragma-dialectics and some restrictions in virtue argumentation theory, it is possible to regard these theories as complementary approaches to the argumentative practice.

Criticism is a staple of the scientific enterprise and of the social epistemology of science. Philosophical discussions of criticism have traditionally focused on its roles in relation to objectivity, confirmation, and theory choice. However, attention to criticism and to criticizability should also inform our thinking about scientific pursuits: the allocation of resources with the aim of developing scientific tools and ideas. In this paper, we offer an account of scientific pursuitworthiness which takes criticizability as its starting point. We call this (...) the apokritic model of pursuit. Its core ideas are that pursuits are practices governed by norms for asking and answering questions, and that criticism arises from the breach of these norms. We illustrate and advertise our approach using examples from institutional grant review, neuroscience, and sociology. We show that the apokritic model can unify several indices of criticizability, that it can account for the importance of criticizing pursuits in scientific practice, and that it can offer ameliorative advice to erstwhile pursuers. (shrink)

La profusa utilización del concepto de buen gobierno en los discursos políticos y mediáticos puede conducirnos a pensar que estamos ante una innovación conceptual del presente. Pero lo cierto es que se trata de un viejo concepto que hunde sus raíces en la teoría política clásica y se resiste a una definición clara y precisa. El artículo pretende reflexionar sobre los principales cambios experimentados por el buen gobierno y su metamorfosis en gobernanza, analizándolo como una narrativa de transformación conceptual, en (...) la que se ha pasado de una lógica normativa a una lógica tecnocrática. (shrink)

In many areas of the social and behavioral sciences, the nature of the experiments and theories that best capture the underlying constructs are themselves areas of active inquiry. Integrative experiment design risks being prematurely exploitative, hindering exploration of experimental paradigms and of diverse theoretical accounts for target phenomena.

Is a virtue approach in argumentation possible without committing the ad hominem fallacy? My answer is affirmative, provided that the object study of our theory is well delimited. My proposal is that a theory of argumentative virtue should not focus on argument appraisal, as has been assumed, but on those traits that make an individual achieve excellence in argumentative practices. An agent-based approach in argumentation should be developed, not in order to find better grounds for argument appraisal, but to gain (...) insight into argumentative habits and excellence. This way we can benefit from what a virtue argumentation theory really has to offer. (shrink)

This paper develops a largely neglected parallel between prudence and population ethics. Prudence is generally understood to be concerned with the balancing of well-being over time. How, precisely, well-being ought to be balanced over time, however, is a fervently debated question. I argue that developing a standard guiding such evaluations is exceedingly challenging. This is due to an often overlooked fact about prudence, namely that it shares a structural similarity with population ethics: In both contexts, we assess the comparative value (...) of populations of personstages/people, which may vary in number and level of well-being. Based on this analogy, I show that the development of an adequate theory of prudence runs into very similar impossibility results as obtain in population ethics. In particular, I prove that Arrhenius’ fifth impossibility theorem can be applied to prudence. I develop and compare four possible answers to this challenge. First, I discuss the possibility of accepting the very repugnant conclusion intrapersonally. Second, I present and further develop Donald Bruckner’s Minimax Regret approach, which gives up Transitivity. Third, I apply Jacob Nebel’s Lexical Threshold View to prudence and critically evaluate it. Lastly, I introduce what I call the Negative Lexicality View, which is based on Lexical Threshold View but overcomes some of its problems. (shrink)

We offer a new account of the role of values in theory choice that captures a temporal dimension to the values themselves. We argue that non-epistemic values sometimes serve as “inquiry tickets,” justifying scientists’ pursuit of certain questions in the short run, while the answers to those questions mitigate transient underdetermination in the long run. Our account of inquiry tickets shows that the role of non-epistemic values need not be restricted to belief or acceptance in order to be relevant to (...) hypothesis choice: the relevance of non-epistemic values to a particular cognitive attitude with respect to h vary over time. (shrink)

El presente artículo es homenaje sincero a la memoria del Doctor Pablo Posada Varela, fenomenólogo español a quien tuve la suerte de conocer personalmente. Quedé al instante prendado por el misterio de su alma y su aura atrayente y llena de futuro, acogedora. Aquí me he centrado en el estudio que Posada Varela hace sobre un poema de Antonio Machado, descubriendo las «galerías del alma» como los lugares más íntimos de nuestra vida afectiva, que siguiendo a su maestro Richir califica (...) Posada Varela como aquellos que en estratos se abren a diversos niveles en la arquitectura de la subjetividad. Nosotros hemos leído la interpretación que hace el fenomenólogo español de Machado acudiendo a los textos mismos de Richir. Y desde ahí descubrimos que la fenomenología del exilio esbozada por Posada Varela podría comprenderse como un pensamiento de lo que nosotros llamamos ya el «acogimiento mutuo». (shrink)

La reflexión filosófica sobre la justicia para los animales encuentra expresión en una multiplicidad de teorías. Es fundamental la teoría centrada en el sufrimiento y la compasión (desarrollada entre otros por Peter Singer y Carol Adams), la teoría de los derechos de los animales de Tom Regan, la teoría política de Will Kymlicka sobre los derechos de los animales. El artículo identifica tres preguntas abiertas, transversales a las diferentes posiciones que configuran este rico e importante debate. Se trata de la (...) noción de persona, el tema del mal moral gratuito, el presunto principio de reciprocidad entre derechos y deberes. La creencia que subyace al artículo es que un estudio en profundidad de estas cuestiones teóricas podría ser fructífero para consolidar la idea de que la justicia para los animales es un objetivo ineludible para toda democracia. (shrink)

Cognitive science has been traditionally organized around the individual as the basic unit of cognition. Despite developments in areas such as communication, human–machine interaction, group behavior, and community organization, the individual-centric approach heavily dominates both cognitive research and its application. A promising direction for cognitive science is the study of augmented intelligence, or the way social and technological systems interact with and extend individual cognition. The cognitive science of augmented intelligence holds promise in helping society tackle major real-world challenges that (...) can only be discovered and solved by teams made of individuals and machines with complementary skills who can productively collaborate with each other. (shrink)

El presente artículo intenta probar que «donación» dice «decisión» en la fenomenología de Jean-Luc Marion. Para ello, primero observamos que el término «donación» tiene varios sentidos posibles en nuestro autor, lo cual supone una evidente dificultad de ambigüedad, que tendrá consecuencias en la comprensión por la doctrina del fenomenólogo francés. A continuación, descubrimos que a partir del «don», la involucración del «sujeto» adonado en la «donación» como tal abre a la «decisión», clave para una comprensión más clara de a qué (...) nos lleva la reducción en la obra de Marion. (shrink)

Intentamos aquí el estudio del tratamiento que tiene en Jean-Luc Marion el nóema y, por extensión, la correlación nóesis-nóema, fundamental en la comprensión del “fenómeno saturado”. Con ese fin, retrocedemos a la consideración de tal correlación en Husserl, para saber, en última instancia, su justificación, y, también, comprender el sentido que esta tiene en la obra del padre de la fenomenología. Además, descubrimos el cambio operado en esa estructura por el avance de Lévinas y la “contra-intencionalidad” del Otro –la cual (...) influirá decisivamente en Marion al extender este esa contra-intencionalidad– y la consiguiente puesta en cuestión de la estructura nóesis-nóema, expresiva de la intencionalidad en Husserl, para todo fenómeno saturado. (shrink)

El presente artículo intentar partir de los casos concretos que Jean-Luc Marion pone como ejemplos para la comprensión de los fenómenos saturados, que en la última parte de la obra del autor francés giran a una con-sideración más radical respecto a la implicación en su vivencia por parte del «sujeto». Surgen con ello los «fenómenos de revelación». A partir del estudio concreto de los ejemplos literarios de Baudelaire y M. Proust, descubrimos en el último Marion una apuesta más decidida por (...) un papel activo y positivo del «suje-to» no solo en la manifestación, sino también en la donación como tal del fenómeno. En la Conclusión avan-zamos a partir de todo lo ganado una tesis que aún habrá de esperar para verse cumplida en la obra en curso de Marion. (shrink)

Studies of food waste claim that its main causes are technological and logistical deficiencies in the first stages of the agri-food chain. The present article discusses this statement using a specific case as a starting point: the production of fruit in Lleida (Catalonia, Spain). Since the 1980s, fruit production in this region has undergone a process of innovation and development. However, the agents who participate in the sector claim that the wasted volume of edible foodstuffs is greater than in previous (...) times. This article argues that studies of food waste do not consider the power relations existing within the agri-food chain. When these relations are asymmetrical, technological innovation and logistics optimisation do not improve the efficiency of the system; rather, they help the hegemonic players to monopolise the commercial margin and transfer some of their running costs to the weaker agents. The ethnographic data for the study were obtained between 2017 and 2019 using qualitative research techniques. (shrink)

We explore different ways in which the human visual system can adapt for perceiving and categorizing the environment. There are various accounts of supervised (categorical) and unsupervised perceptual learning, and different perspectives on the functional relationship between perception and categorization. We suggest that common experimental designs are insufficient to differentiate between hypothesized perceptual learning mechanisms and reveal their possible interplay. We propose a relatively underutilized way of studying potential categorical effects on perception, and we test the predictions of different perceptual (...) learning models using a two‐dimensional, interleaved categorization‐plus‐reconstruction task. We find evidence that the human visual system adapts its encodings to the feature structure of the environment, uses categorical expectations for robust reconstruction, allocates encoding resources with respect to categorization utility, and adapts to prevent miscategorizations. (shrink)

El artículo analiza los dos únicos escritos en los que Max Weber emplea la expresión _democracia plebiscitaria_, en 1919/1920, y muestra dos cosas: 1) el fenómeno al que Max Weber denomina _democracia plebiscitaria_, que no es sino la modernización de los partidos políticos como consecuencia de la extensión del sufragio electoral (de acuerdo con una afirmación del propio autor, usualmente ignorada); 2) la ubicación de la _democracia plebiscitaria_ dentro de la tipología weberiana de los tipos de poder legítimo. Sobre esta (...) base se concluye que la _democracia plebiscitaria_ no es para Max Weber una forma de Estado o de gobierno, que suele ser, sin embargo, la suposición con la que se ha operado habitualmente en la interpretación del mencionado concepto. Visto desde la perspectiva de la historia conceptual éste es el caso de una palabra a la que se le ha asociado posteriormente un contenido semántico que el propio autor no le había dado. (shrink)

It seems natural to think that emotional experiences associated with a memory of a past event are new and present emotional states triggered by the remembered event. This common conception has nonetheless been challenged at the beginning of the 20th century by intellectuals who considered that emotions can be encoded and retrieved, and that emotional aspects linked to memories of the personal past need not necessary to be new emotional responses caused by the act of recollection. They called this specific (...) kind of memories “affective memories” and defended their existence. My aim here is to expound the historical background of this debate as well as the characterization and development of the notion of affective memory since its first inception. I aim to show that although the debate was left unresolved and the term disappeared from academy around 1930, many of the characterizations of the nature of emotions and memory done by the advocates of affective memory have reappeared in the scientific agenda and been further developed during the last decades. (shrink)

In this paper we set out the context in which experiences of mental distress occur with an emphasis on the contributions of social and structural factors and then make a case for the use of intersectionality as an analytic and methodological framework for understanding these factors. We then turn to the political urgency for taking up the concept of recovery and argue for the importance of research and practice that addresses professional domination of the field, and that promotes ongoing engagement (...) and dialogue about recovery as both a personal and social experience. To this end, we describe a unique project that sought to deepen our understanding of how recovery is being thought about and applied in the current context of mental health care in Vancouver, BC, with a specific focus on how, and whether, people are taking up and addressing dimensions of power that we see as critical to the operationalization of recovery within a social justice framework. Emerging from our research and discussion is a set of critical questions about whether or not the political moment in Canada with respect to re-invigorating recovery should be embraced, versus a rejection of the concept of recovery as too limiting in its scope and too vulnerable to professional co-optation. (shrink)

La evolución jurisprudencial que el Tribunal Supremo de Estados Unidos ha realizado a lo largo de su historia de la Primera Enmienda de la Constitución, ha ido adaptándose tanto a la visión de la libertad de expresión modulada por parte del Tribunal, como a la realidad de la propia sociedad americana. En este artículo se presentará cuál ha sido la evolución que ha sufrido la protección que en los diferentes momentos que conforman la historia jurisprudencial de la Primera Enmienda se (...) ha ofrecido al lenguaje de odio, con el objetivo de conocer cuál ha sido su evolución y en qué momento nos encontramos en la actualidad. (shrink)

Canguilhem’s contemporary relevance lies in how he critiques the relation between knowledge and life that underlies Kantian rationality. The latter’s Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgment represent life in the form of an exception: life is simultaneously included and excluded from understanding. Canguilhem’s critique can be grouped into three main strands of argument. First, his reference to concepts as preserved problems breaks with Kant’s idea of concepts regarding the living as a ‘unification of the manifold’. Second, Canguilhem’s vital (...) normativity represents life as the potential to resist normative orders that judge the living, relegating Kant’s ‘lawfulness of the contingent’ to a ‘mediocre regularity’. Third, Canguilhem’s introduction of the environment as a ‘category of contemporary thought’ decentres the living/knowing subject and introduces contingency. His idea of the ‘knowledge of life’ leads to the conclusion that life is the condition of possibility of rationality, rather than rationality’s ‘blind spot’. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that the legal protection of children must be recognised as a priority. The moral rights of children are fundamental rights with different degrees of generality. They not only reflect the fact that children merit justice, but are also indispensable for the promotion of justice in society in general, thus allowing other rights, including those of adults, to be safeguarded appropriately. The rule of law and its role in reducing violence go hand in (...) hand with protecting children from harm. A childhood that is free of violence is an essential prerequisite of a just society. (shrink)