This paper elaborates on conceptual, empirical and practical arguments why corporations need to focus on their social dimensions, in order to further enhance organizational performance. The paper starts with an introduction on the general trend towards inclusiveness and connectedness. It then elaborates on the phase-wise development of cultures and organizational structures. Managing corporate improvement by building cultures of trust is the central focus of this contribution. By showing the cultural dimensions of Great Places to Work and their workplace practices, worthwhile (...) experiences leading to organizational improvement and superior financial performance are demonstrated. (shrink)

How should automated vehicles react in emergency circumstances? Most research projects and scientific literature deal with this question from a moral perspective. In particular, it is customary to treat emergencies involving AVs as instances of moral dilemmas and to use the trolley problem as a framework to address such alleged dilemmas. Some critics have pointed out some shortcomings of this strategy and have urged to focus on mundane traffic situations instead of trolley cases involving AVs. Besides, these authors rightly point (...) out the political nature of the most interesting debates involving AVs. However, in our view, they do not offer an adequate account of the distinction between ethics and politics and still see their proposals as contributions to the ethics of AVs. We argue that many of the interesting questions about how AVs should behave, both in emergency and other situations, are of political, and not moral, nature. This view is based on a conception of politics and political normativity that we have developed elsewhere and that we call “political minimalism.” Additionally, we show that this proposed perspective has significant consequences for the design, management, and regulation of transport systems. (shrink)

I argue for the distinction between presuming that p and maintaining that presumably p. In order to make sense of this distinction, I defend a non-inferentialist conception of presumptions and offer an account of the correctness conditions for both presumptions and presumptive inferences. I characterize presumptions as a type of constative speech-act having certain semantic correctness conditions. In turn, regarding presumptive inferences, my strategy is to provide the correctness conditions for the use of an epistemic modal such as “presumably.” This (...) epistemic modal is characterized as a force indicator for speech-acts of concluding in complex speech-acts of arguing involving presumptive inferences. (shrink)

According to political minimalism, a debate is considered political when it revolves around the question “What shall we do?” This account suggests that certain issues related to human enhancement technologies (HETs), which have traditionally been addressed in the realm of applied ethics, could be better approached from a political standpoint. However, this raises the question of who constitutes the “we” – the communities that face the political challenges posed by HETs. We argue that there is a global human community that (...) directly faces at least some of these challenges, and this fact underscores the relevance of a cosmopolitan perspective. While some authors have already advocated for a cosmopolitan approach in addressing issues such as poverty or climate change, they often do so from a moral outlook, without adequately distinguishing between ethics and politics. In contrast, we assert that HETs present compelling arguments in favour of cosmopolitanism as a political stance. In support of this claim, we consider two cases: the pills that would allow people to eat at will without gaining weight, and the choice between different types of cognitive enhancers. (shrink)

In Giving Reasons: A Linguistic-pragmatic-approach to Argumentation Theory (Springer, 2011), I provide a new model for the semantic and pragmatic appraisal of argumentation. This model is based on a characterization of argumentation as a second order speech-act complex. I explain the advantages of this model respecting other proposals within Argumentation Theory, such as Pragma-dialectics, Informal Logic, the New Rhetoric or the Epistemic Approach.

Both because of the vagueness of the word ‘give’ when speaking about giving reasons, and because we lack an adequate definition of ‘reasons’, there is a harmful ambiguity in the expression ‘giving reasons’. Particularly, straightforwardly identifying argumentation with reasons giving would make of virtually any interplay a piece of argumentation. Besides, if we adopt the mainstream definition of reasons as “considerations that count in favour of doing or believing something”, then only good argumentation would count as argumentation. In this paper, (...) I defend a qualified characterization of argumentation as reasons giving that is shown to be fruitful for shedding light on the practice of giving reasons, and an inferentialist conception of reasons that makes room for speaking of “bad reasons” and, consequently, makes it possible to talk of argumentation as reasons giving even if we are talking about bad argumentation. (shrink)

From 26th to 28th of April 2016, it took place in the University of Granada a conference on presumptions, presumptive inferences and burdens of proof that, joint with other ongoing initiatives, has contributed to renew the interest of the argumentation community in analysing these notions and the relationships between them. This special volume of Argumentation consists of a selection of papers presented at this conference.

a recent paper, Fábio Perin Shecaira proposes a defence of Waller’s deductivist schema for moral analogical argumentation. This defence has several flaws, the most important of them being that many good analogical arguments would be deemed bad or deficient. Additionally, Shecaira misrepresents my alternative account as something in between deductivism and non-deductivism. This paper is both an attempt at solving this misunderstanding and an analysis and criticism of Waller and Shecaira’s forms of deductivism.

En el artículo se caracteriza una clase de relaciones binarias para que éstas puedan representar las comparaciones de enunciados que un agente puede plantear y resolver de acuerdo con su mayor o menor grado de aproximación a la verdad. Con ello se espera poder analizar con mayor detalle el peso que puede terminar teniendo en su evaluación metodológica el grado de aproximación a la verdad de los modelos teórico-económicos. De todas formas, el propósito inmediato del artículo es el de ofrecer (...) una propuesta más general y, sobre todo, mucho más sencilla que las presentadas en otros dos trabajos anteriores del autor. Por otra parte, el concepto de aproximación a la verdad que se maneja es diferente del vinculado con la noción poperiana de verosimilitud.In this paper, we characterize a class of binary relations to represent the comparisons which an agent can make between statements according to their degree of approximation to the truth. This class of relations, we hope, can help to analyse how much can weight the degree of approximation of economic theoretical models in their methodological assesment. In any case, the immediate purpose of the paper is to offer a proposal easier and more general than two other worked up earlier by the author. On the other hand, our concept of approximation to the truth differs from that linked with the popperian notion of verosimilitude. (shrink)

Con este artículo se pretende simplificar la propuesta presentada en un trabajo anterior, prescindiendo como conectiva del símbolo barra de la probabilidad condicionada. Haciéndolo, se consigue reducir a la mitad el número de condiciones postuladas, percibiéndose con ello mejor el lugar central de la condición de superioridad por implicación. También se aborda qué información pueda proporcionar el grado de aproximación de los modelos teórico-económicos sobre lo que vaya a terminar sucediendo en las situaciones empíricas correspondientes, se indican dos formar de (...) ampliar el análisis para incrementarla, y se comenta la aplicabilidad práctica de las comparaciones estudiadas.The proposal about the approximation comparisons presented in an earlier essay may be simplified doing without the bar symbol of conditional probability. In this way, the number of the postulated conditions diminish in a half, and the key role of the superiority by implication property is better perceived. Attention is also paid to what information can be gathered from the approximation degree of economic theoretical models about what may finally happen in the corresponding empirical situations, and to the ways by which this information can be increased. Some comments about the applicability of approximation comparisons are added. (shrink)

Con este artículo se pretende simplificar la propuesta presentada en un trabajo anterior, prescindiendo como conectiva del símbolo barra de la probabilidad condicionada. Haciéndolo, se consigue reducir a la mitad el número de condiciones postuladas, percibiéndose con ello mejor el lugar central de la condición de superioridad por implicación. También se aborda qué información pueda proporcionar el grado de aproximación de los modelos teórico-económicos sobre lo que vaya a terminar sucediendo en las situaciones empíricas correspondientes, se indican dos formar de (...) ampliar el análisis para incrementarla, y se comenta la aplicabilidad práctica de las comparaciones estudiadas.The proposal about the approximation comparisons presented in an earlier essay may be simplified doing without the bar symbol of conditional probability. In this way, the number of the postulated conditions diminish in a half, and the key role of the superiority by implication property is better perceived. Attention is also paid to what information can be gathered from the approximation degree of economic theoretical models about what may finally happen in the corresponding empirical situations, and to the ways by which this information can be increased. Some comments about the applicability of approximation comparisons are added. (shrink)

Cohesion is established in S‐phase through the action of key replisome factors as replication forks engage cohesin molecules. By holding sister chromatids together, cohesion critically assists both an equal segregation of the duplicated genetic material and an efficient repair of DNA breaks. Nonetheless, the molecular events leading the entrapment of nascent chromatids by cohesin during replication are only beginning to be understood. The authors describe here the essential structural features of the cohesin complex in connection to its ability to associate (...) DNA molecules and review the current knowledge on the architectural‐functional organization of the eukaryotic replisome, significantly advanced by recent biochemical and structural studies. In light of this novel insight, the authors discuss the mechanisms proposed to assist interfacing of replisomes with chromatin‐bound cohesin complexes and elaborate on models for nascent chromatids entrapment by cohesin in the environment of the replication fork. (shrink)

I defend a conception of Logic as normative for the sort of activities in which inferences super-vene, namely, reasoning and arguing. Toulmin’s criticism of formal logic will be our framework to shape the idea that in order to make sense of Logic as normative, we should con-ceive it as a discipline devoted to the layout of arguments, understood as the representations of the semantic, truth relevant, properties of the inferences that we make in arguing and reason-ing.

I propose a characterization of the dialectical dimension of argumentation by considering the activity of arguing as involving a “second order intersubjectivity”. I argue that argumentative communication enables this kind of intersubjectivity as a matter of the recursive nature of acts of arguing—both as justificatory and as persuasive devices. Calling attention to this feature is a way to underline that argumentative discourses represent the explicit part of a dynamic activity, “a mechanism of rational validation”, as Rescher showed, which is a (...) practice that presupposes the possibility of attaining objectivity. (shrink)

In “Deductivism as an Interpretative Strategy: A Reply to Groarke’s Defense of Reconstructive Deductivism,” David Godden distinguished two notions of deductivism. On the one hand, as an interpretative thesis, deductivism is the view that all-natural language argumentation must be interpreted as being deductive. On the other hand, as an evaluative thesis, deductivism is the view that for a conclusion to follow, it has to follow of necessity from the premises—or, in other words, that being a good inference implies being deductive. (...) The main goal of this paper is to show that evaluative deductivism is wrong. (shrink)

Following a Toulmian account of argument analysis and evaluation, I offer a general unitary schema for, so called, deductive and inductive types of analogical arguments. This schema is able to explain why certain analogical arguments can be said to be deductive, and yet, also defeasible.

Despite the recognized importance of bodily movements in spatial audition, few studies have integrated action-based protocols with spatial hearing in the peripersonal space. Recent work shows that tactile feedback and active exploration allow participants to improve performance in auditory distance perception tasks. However, the role of the different aspects involved in the learning phase, such as voluntary control of movement, proprioceptive cues, and the possibility of self-correcting errors, is still unclear. We study the effect of guided reaching exploration on perceptual (...) learning of auditory distance in peripersonal space. We implemented a pretest-posttest experimental design in which blindfolded participants must reach for a sound source located in this region. They were divided into three groups that were differentiated by the intermediate training phase: Guided, an experimenter guides the participant’s arm to contact the sound source; Active, the participant freely explores the space until contacting the source; and Control, without tactile feedback. The effects of exploration feedback on auditory distance perception in the peripersonal space are heterogeneous. Both the Guided and Active groups change their performance. However, participants in the Guided group tended to overestimate distances more than those in the Active group. The response error of the Guided group corresponds to a generalized calibration criterion over the entire range of reachable distances. Whereas the Active group made different adjustments for proximal and distal positions. The results suggest that guided exploration can induce changes on the boundary of the auditory reachable space. We postulate that aspects of agency such as initiation, control, and monitoring of movement, assume different degrees of involvement in both guided and active tasks, reinforcing a non-binary approach to the question of activity-passivity in perceptual learning and supporting a complex view of the phenomena involved in action-based learning. (shrink)

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in some populations being confined to their homes as part of infection control measures. This situation can be hard to cope with due to separation from loved ones, prohibition of regular activities, fear of infection, loss of freedom, and so on. These negative impacts cause considerable psychological stress, and all the more so when the situation continues for an extended period, as was the case in Spain. The present study was aimed at investigating the effects (...) of COVID-19 quarantine on the emotional functioning of confined Spanish individuals after 8 weeks of lockdown by means of a cross-sectional study. The possible associations between changes in emotional functioning and demographic variables, health habits, social support, and resilience were also analyzed.MethodsA total of 906 Spanish adults completed an online survey to gather information about their prevailing mood and affects, using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, and other variables related to their habits and protective factors.FindingsAs expected, the data indicated an increase in negative affects and a decrease in positive affects after 8 weeks under lockdown, as well as a general decline in overall mood. The largest increases in negative affects were observed in young adults and women. We did not find any differences between people who were or were not diagnosed with COVID-19. Adhering to a routine, maintaining the same weight, and moderate physical exercise were associated with fewer negative affects, which indicates they are important protective factors, as are perceived social support and resilience.ConclusionIn order to mitigate the psychological impact of confinement, it is important to develop psychoeducational measures that encourage subjects to adhere to health habits and promote social support and resilience as protective factors. A special preventive focus should be placed on the most vulnerable population groups, namely women and young adults. For a public health lockdown to succeed, its negative consequences must be minimized insofar as possible through adequate knowledge of the risk factors and protective factors, and by means of prevention-oriented organization. (shrink)

El miedo ala enfermedad y a la muerte son ancestrales. Por mucho desarrollo científico que se produce en algunas latitudes de la tierra, traducido en grandes avances sanitarios que permiten prolongar la vida de unos pocos, no nos protegen ni del miedo di de la muerte.

El dualismo es una solución religiosa que ha atraído a muchos espíritus religiosos, y que adquirió formas muy diversas en la Antigüedad. Para clasificar estas variedades religiosas , el historiador italiano Ugo Bianchi propuso un modelo interpretativo constituido por tres partes de categorías. Al aplicar al maniqueísmo (religión dualista por excelencia) las categorías interpretativas propuestas por Bianchi éstas muestran en algunos casos su utilidad, pero también sus limitaciones. El presente artículo intenta efectuar una caracterización precisa del dualismo maniqueo mediante la (...) aplicación de cinco categorías que modifican y completan la aproximación del estudioso italiano. A la luz de los resultados obtenidos se examina la piedad idiosincrásica del maniqueísmo. (shrink)