Classical epistemic logic describes implicit knowledge of agents about facts and knowledge of other agents based on semantic information. The latter is produced by acts of observation or communication that are described well by dynamic epistemic logics. What these logics do not describe, however, is how significant information is also produced by acts of inference— and key axioms of the system merely postulate "deductive closure". In this paper, we take the view that all information is produced by acts, and hence (...) we also need a dynamic logic of inference steps showing what effort on the part of the agent makes a conclusion explicit knowledge. Strong omniscience properties of agents should be seen not as static idealizations, but as the result of dynamic processes that agents engage in. This raises two questions: (a) how to define suitable information states of agents and matching notions of explicit knowledge, (b) how to define natural processes over these states that generate new explicit knowledge. To this end, we use a static base from the existing awareness literature, extending it into a dynamic system that includes traditional acts of observation, but also adding and dropping formulas from the current ' awareness' set. We give a completeness theorem, and we show how this dynamics updates explicit knowledge. Then we extend our approach to multi-agent scenarios where awareness changes may happen privately. Finally, we mention further directions and related approaches. Our contribution can be seen as a ' dynamification' of existing awareness logics. (shrink)

Epistemic logic with its possible worlds semantic model is a powerful framework that allows us to represent an agent’s information not only about propositional facts, but also about her own information. Nevertheless, agents represented in this framework are logically omniscient: their information is closed under logical consequence. This property, useful in some applications, is an unrealistic idealisation in some others. Many proposals to solve this problem focus on weakening the properties of the agent’s information, but some authors have argued that (...) solutions of this kind are not completely adequate because they do not look at the heart of the matter: the actions that allow the agent to reach such omniscient state. Recent works have explored how acts of observation, inference, consideration and forgetting affect an agent’s implicit and explicit knowledge; the present work focuses on acts that affect an agent’s implicit and explicit beliefs. It starts by proposing a framework in which these two notions can be represented, and then it looks into their dynamics, first by reviewing the existing notion of belief revision, and then by introducing a rich framework for representing diverse forms of inference that involve both knowledge and beliefs. (shrink)

We look at two fundamental logical processes, often intertwined in planning and problem solving: inference and update. Inference is an internal process with which we uncover what is implicit in the information we already have. Update, on the other hand, is produced by external communication, usually in the form of announcements and in general in the form of observations, giving us information that might not have been available (even implicitly) before. Both processes have received attention from the logic community, usually (...) separately. In this work, we develop a logical language that allows us to describe them together. We present syntax, semantics and a complete axiom system; we discuss similarities and differences with other approaches and mention how the work can be extended. (shrink)

This work proposes an understanding of deductive, default and abductive reasoning as different instances of the same phenomenon: epistemic dynamics. It discusses the main intuitions behind each one of these reasoning processes, and suggest how they can be understood as different epistemic actions that modify an agent’s knowledge and/or beliefs in a different way, making formal the discussion with the use of the dynamic epistemic logic framework. The ideas in this paper put the studied processes under the same umbrella, thus (...) highlighting their relationship and allowing a better understanding of how they interact together. (shrink)

Classical epistemic logic describes implicit knowledge of agents about facts and knowledge of other agents based on semantic information. The latter is produced by acts of observation or communication that are described well by dynamic epistemic logics. What these logics do not describe, however, is how significant information is also produced by acts of inference—and key axioms of the system merely postulate “deductive closure”. In this paper, we take the view that all information is produced by acts, and hence we (...) also need a dynamic logic of inference steps showing what effort on the part of the agent makes a conclusion explicit knowledge. Strong omniscience properties of agents should be seen not as static idealizations, but as the result of dynamic processes that agents engage in. This raises two questions: (a) how to define suitable information states of agents and matching notions of explicit knowledge, (b) how to define natural processes over these states that generate new explicit knowledge. To this end, we use a static base from the existing awareness literature, extending it into a dynamic system that includes traditional acts of observation, but also adding and dropping formulas from the current ‘awareness’ set. We give a completeness theorem, and we show how this dynamics updates explicit knowledge. Then we extend our approach to multi-agent scenarios where awareness changes may happen privately. Finally, we mention further directions and related approaches. Our contribution can be seen as a ‘dynamification’ of existing awareness logics. (shrink)

This paper introduces and studies a notion of cautious distributed belief. Different from the standard distributed belief, the cautious distributed belief of a group is inconsistent only when all group members are individually inconsistent. The paper presents basic results about cautious distributed belief, investigates whether it preserves properties of individual belief, and compares it with standard distributed belief. Although both notions are equivalent in the class of reflexive models, this is not the case in general. While we argue that an (...) understanding of the concept of cautious distributed belief from first principles is important, cautious distributed belief can be expressed using standard distrbuted belief and we show that the propositional language extended only with cautious distributed belief is in fact strictly less expressive than the propositional language extended only with standard distributed belief. We, finally, identify a small extension of the language making the former as expressive as the latter. (shrink)

The paper develops an interface between syntax-based logical models of awareness and dynamic epistemic logic. The framework is shown to be able to accommodate a variety of notions of awareness and knowledge, as well as their dynamics. This, it is argued, offers a natural formal environment for the analysis of epistemic phenomena typical of multi-agent information exchange, such as how agents become aware of relevant details, how they perform inferences and how they share their information within a group. Technically, the (...) logics presented are all simple refinements of the logic of public announcements. (shrink)

Among the non-monotonic reasoning processes, abduction is one of the most important. Usually described as the process of looking for explanations, it has been recognized as one of the most commonly used in our daily activities. Still, the traditional definitions of an abductive problem and an abductive solution mention only theories and formulas, leaving agency out of the picture. Our work proposes a study of abductive reasoning from an epistemic and dynamic perspective. In the first part we explore syntactic definitions (...) of both an abductive problem in terms of an agent’s information and an abductive solution in terms of the actions that modify the agent’s information. We look at diverse kinds of agents, including not only omniscient ones but also those whose information is not closed under logical consequence and those whose reasoning abilities are not complete. In the second part, we look at an existing logical framework whose semantic model allows us to interpret the previously stated formulas, and we define two actions that represent forms of abductive reasoning. (shrink)

La presente obra reúne los temas imprescindibles de un curso de filosofía política, dirigido tanto a estudiantes como a lectores interesados en la historia, los fundamentos y las implicaciones actuales de esta disciplina. La primera parte trata de la tradición liberal, los socialismos, las dimensiones del nacionalismo, el feminismo como proyecto filosófico-político y la institución de la democracia. La segunda parte aborda en profundidad un amplio abanico de cuestiones, desde la globalización o los problemas de legitimación del poder, pasando por (...) las relaciones entre Estado y nación, los derechos humanos como legado de la Modernidad o la actualidad y perspectivas de la ciudadanía, hasta la multiculturalidad y la inmigración, los movimientos sociales, la ecología o la justicia social. (shrink)

As a new type of epistemic logics, the logics of knowing how capture the high-level epistemic reasoning about the knowledge of various plans to achieve certain goals. Existing work on these logics focuses on axiomatizations; this paper makes the first study of their model theoretical properties. It does so by introducing suitable notions of bisimulation for a family of five knowing how logics based on different notions of plans. As an application, we study and compare the expressive power of these (...) logics. (shrink)

This paper is part of an on-going programme on the study of the logical aspects of social network formation. It recalls the so-called social network model, discussing the properties of a notion of closeness between agents ; then introduces an extended social network model in which different agents might assign different values to different traits, discussing the properties of the notion of weighted closeness that arises. These notions are used to define social network creation operations by means of a threshold (...) strategy. The paper studies the properties of the social networks the updates create, providing sound and complete axiom systems for formal languages describing these updates’ effects. (shrink)

We investigate dynamic operations acting over a knowing how logic. Our approach makes use of a recently introduced semantics for the knowing how operator, based on an indistinguishability relation between plans. This semantics is arguably closer to the standard presentation of knowing that modalities in classic epistemic logic. Here, we discuss how the semantics enables us to define dynamic modalities representing different ways in which an agent can learn how to achieve a goal. In this regard, we study two types (...) of updates: ontic updates (for which we provide axiomatizations over a particular class of models), and epistemic updates (for which we investigate some semantic properties). (shrink)

Abductive problems and their solutions are presented by means of justification logic. We introduce additional meta-constructions in order to generate and compare different solutions to the same abductive problem. Our approach has three advantages: (i) it makes structurally explicit the solution to an abductive problem (as it has a syntactic nature); (ii) it gives a precise meaning to the notion of evidence; (iii) it provides clear definitions and procedures for the comparison of solutions that can be adapted to different needs.

In this paper, we explore the relation between an agent’s doxastic attitude and her arguments in support of a given claim. Our main contribution is the design of a logical setting that allows us reason about binary arguments which are either in favour or against a certain claim. This is a setting in which arguments and propositions are the basic building blocks so that the concept of argument-based belief emerges in a straightforward way. We work against the background of Dung’s (...) abstract argumentation framework, extending it to a new setting in which we can study the formal properties of binary arguments as well as the larger structures they establish. This paper introduces a formal ‘two-dimensional’ language to talk about propositions and arguments, for which a sound and complete axiom system is provided. (shrink)

The paper focuses on a recent challenge brought forward against the interventionist approach to the meaning of counterfactual conditionals. According to this objection, interventionism cannot account for the interpretation of right-nested counterfactuals, the problem being its strict interventionism. We will report on the results of an empirical study supporting the objection. Furthermore, we will extend the well-known logic of intervention with a new operator expressing an alternative notion of intervention that does away with strict interventionism. This new notion of intervention (...) operates on the valuation of the variables in a causal model, and not on their functional dependencies. (shrink)

This manuscript presents a topological argumentation framework for modelling notions of evidence-based (i.e., justified) belief. Our framework relies on so-called topological evidence models to represent the pieces of evidence that an agent has at her disposal, and it uses abstract argumentation theory to select the pieces of evidence that the agent will use to define her beliefs. The tools from abstract argumentation theory allow us to model agents who make decisions in the presence of contradictory information. Thanks to this, it (...) is possible to define two new notions of beliefs, grounded beliefs and fully grounded beliefs. These notions are discussed in this paper, analysed and compared with the existing notion of topological justified belief. This comparison revolves around three main issues: closure under conjunction introduction, the level of consistency and their logical strength. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Acosta, José de (1539–1600) Alberdi, Juan Bautista (1810–84) Bello, Andrés (1781–1865) Bilbao, Francisco (1823–65) Bolkvar, Simón (1783–1830) Casas, Bartolomé de las (1484–1566) Caso, Antonio (1883–1946) Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la (1651–95) da Costa, Newton Carneiro Affonso (b. 1929) Dussel, Enrique (b. 1934) Frondizi, Risieri (1910–83) Gaos, José (1900–69) González Prada, Manuel (1848–1918) Gracia, Jorge J. E. (b. 1942) Haya de la Torre, Victor Raúl (1895–1979) Hostos, Eugenio Marka de (1839–1903) Ingenieros, José (1877–1925) Korn, Alejandro (...) (1860–1936) Lastarria, José Victorino (1817–88) Lemos, Miguel (1854–1917) Mariátegui, José Carlos (1895–1930) Martk, José (1853–95) Méndez Sierra, Justo (1848–1912) Mora, José Maria Luis (1794–1850) Miró Quesada, Francisco (b. 1918) Rabossi, Eduardo (1930–2005) Ramos, Samuel (1897–1959) Rodó, José Enrique (1872–1917) Romero, Francisco (1891–1962) Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de (1499–1590) Salazar Bondy, Augusto (1925–74) Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino (1811–88) Ofelia Schutte (b. 1945) Sepslveda, Juan Ginés de (ca. 1494–1573) Torretti, Roberto (b. 1930) Vasconcelos, José (1882–1959) Vaz Ferreira, Carlos (1872–1958) Villoro, Luis (b. 1922) Vitoria, Francisco de (ca. 1483–1546) Zea Aguilar, Leopoldo (1912–2004) Acknowledgment Further Reading. (shrink)

Este libro ofrece una imprescindible riqueza de perspectivas sobre el aspecto más problemático -que coincide con el menos tratado por los investigadores. de la obra de F. Nietzsche (1844-1990): la cuestión política. Nuestro reto de cara al Centenario de su muerte fue encarar lo que suele escamotearse. Y, al menos en este país, así ha sido por regla general. bien porque Nietzsche era "apolítico", otra forma más, como en el caso de otros pensadores, de situarlo universitariamente a la derecha, ángulo (...) desde el que se le importaba, ya porque, consigna progresista y transición filosófica, había que poner esta última interpretación en su sitio y demostrarle al mundo que Nietzsche había sido "utilizado erróneamente" por el totalitarismo nazi, el caso es que ya porque nos repugnaba moralmente aquella lectura, ya porque de tanto estar en favor de Nietzsche tampoco lo leíamos, cuestiones fundamentales de su obra y, por qué no decirlo, irritantes tanto para la derecho como para la izquierda, quedaron piadosamente salvadas. Y ahora ¿qué?... Los trabajos aquí presentados, nacionales e internacionales, han sido rigurosamente seleccionados. (shrink)

François Mauriac desarrolló fundamentalmente su producción literaria en la primera mitad del siglo pasado, un periodo marcado por las dos Guerras Mundiales en una Francia en creciente proceso de secularización. Así las cosas, con motivo del cincuenta aniversario de su fallecimiento la pretensión de este trabajo es hacer emerger la figura de Mauriac como apologeta que, desde el ámbito literario, defendió algunos de los principales postulados católicos cuestionados por el alma moderna. En efecto, el premio Nobel de literatura pertenece a (...) esa constelación de autores católicos que, profundizando en las raíces del Cristianismo, intentan dar una salida a la crisis de la Modernidad, cimentada fundamentalmente en el positivismo y el materialismo. De hecho, veremos cómo plantea el problema del mal en el mundo y la solución al mismo desde el ámbito de la caridad por medio de mártires inmolados. Asimismo, asistiremos a la crítica sistemática del novelista francés contra el antitestimonio cristiano o contra el fariseísmo religioso como elementos clave de su pedagogía apologética. (shrink)

Through a discussion with current perspectives in philosophy of history and a rigorous reading of his oeuvre this book highlights the possibilities of the best Marx in terms of his capacity to account for the development of spatiotemporally complex societies.

Fernando Coni Campos é considerado um dos maiores roteiristas da nossa cinematografia, autor de filmes importantes como 'A Viagem Ao Fim do Mundo', 'Ladrões de Cinema' e 'O Mágico e o Delegado'. 'Cinema - Sonho e Lucidez' é uma reunião da reflexão sobre cinema do cineasta, morto em 1988, acrescida de alguns contos que mostram todo o seu domínio em contar histórias.

Nada hay más confortable para el hombre, ni más peligroso, que las certezas. Nuestra mejor defensa es la filosofía, que consiste engran medida en el arte de cuestionarlas, de atreverse a pensar, de interpelar las verdades establecidas y ver qué esconden. En estepaseo por la historia de la filosofía, Fernando Savater nos presenta a los grandes personajes que con sus preguntas, y en ocasiones con sus respuestas, han marcado el pensamiento occidental. Platón, Aristóteles, Hobbes, Tomás de Aquino, Nietzsche, Marx, (...) Ortega, Wittgenstein y hasta dieciocho filósofos más desfilan por estas páginas de la mano de Savater, que con su habitual estilo lúcido, ameno e inteligente explica sus ideas más importantes y resume sus trayectorias. Un canto al irrenunciable ejercicio de la libertad intelectual, este libro es en realidad una invitación a huir de los tópicos y a compartir con los grandes filósofos la maravillosa aventura de pensar. (shrink)

Philosophy affected the birth of Latin America in two ways. First it inspired the famous men who started the independence movements, which led to the definitive liberation from the Spanish yoke. Once the revolution was over, philosophy influenced the development of the legal and political systems that were created to organize the life of the new states.

To begin with -- Genealogy of the cerebral subject -- Disciplines of the neuro -- Cerebralizing distress -- Brains on screen and paper -- Up for grabs.

My aim in this paper is twofold: I will try to clarify what the conditions developed in EN I a discipline or an argument must meet to be assumed as precise are, and, then, try to present evidence that the exam of akrasia in EN VII 3 meets these conditions. In the first part of this paper, I will select passages in which such conditions are displayed, and also distinguish between practical precision and theoretical precision. In the second part, where (...) the analysis of the senses of having but not using knowledge in EN VII 3 is carried on, I will claim that Aristotle’s objective is reaching the adequate statement of the explanandum that will be the subject of causal enquiry of akrasia. My concluding remarks will claim that the conditions displayed in this paper’s first part are met by Aristotelian procedure in EN VII 3. (shrink)

Introduction The paradigm shift to a knowledge‐based economy has incremented the use of personal information applied to health‐related activities, such as biomedical research, innovation, and commercial initiatives. The convergence of science, technology, communication and data technologies has given rise to the application of big data to health; for example through eHealth, human databases and biobanks. Methods In light of these changes, we enquire about the value of personal data and its appropriate use. In order to illustrate the complex ground on (...) which big data applied to health develops, we analyse the current situation of the European Union and two cases: the Catalan VISC+/PADRIS and the UK Biobank, as perspectives. Discussion and conclusions Personal health‐related data in the context of the European Union is being increasingly used for big data projects under diverse schemes. There, public and private sectors participate distinctively or jointly, pursuing very different goals which may conflict with individual rights, notably privacy. Given that, this paper advocates for stopping the unjustified accumulation and commercialisation of personal data, protecting the interests of citizens and building appropriate frameworks to govern big data projects for health. A core tool for achieving such goals is to develop consent mechanisms which allow truly informed but adaptable consent, conjugated with the engagement of donors, participants and society. (shrink)

This work offers an analysis of all the legal and moral issues surrounding humanitarian intervention: the deaths of innocent persons and the Doctrine of Double Effect Governmental legitimacy - The Doctrine of Effective Political Control; UN Charter and evaluation of the Nicaragua ruling; The Morality of not intervening; US-led invasion of Iraq; Humanitarian intervention authorised by the UN Security Council - Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, and Bosnia among others highlight NATO's intervention in Kosovo; The Nicaragua Decision; and The precedents of (...) Panama, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The book's features include: a new framework based on the doctrine of double effect; basic principles of international ethics; outline of the moral argument for humanitarian intervention; explores the morality and legality of military action to end tyranny or anarchy; arguments in a much more detailed and complete fashion than in previous editions; in-depth examination of philosophy of international law; the relationship between custom and moral theory; new discussion of the question of right authority; and a full analysis of recent interventions in Kosovo and Iraq. book addresses a broad interdisciplinary audience of international lawyers, philosophers, and political scientists. In this new edition, the author responds to critics while updating the discussion in the light of the momentous events that took place at the beginning of the new millennium. (shrink)

Why should sovereign states obey international law? What compels them to owe allegiance to a higher set of rules when each country is its own law of the land? What is the basis of their obligations to each other? Conventional wisdom suggests that countries are too different from one another culturally to follow laws out of mere loyalty to each other or a set of shared moral values. Surely, the prevailing view holds, countries act simply out of self-interest, and they (...) eventually consent to norms of international law to regulate matters of common interest.In this groundbreaking book, Fernando Tesón goes against this prevailing thought by arguing, in the Kantian tradition, that a shared respect for individual human rights underpins not just the obligation countries feel to follow international law but also international laws themselves and even the very legitimacy of nations in the eyes of the international community. Tesón, both a lawyer and a philosopher, proposes that an overlapping respect for human rights has created a moral common ground among the countries of the world; and moreover, that such an outlook is the only one that is rationally defensible. It is this common set of values rather than self-interest that ultimately provides legitimacy to international law. Using the tools of moral philosophy, Tesón analyzes the concepts of sovereignty, intervention, and national interest; the contributions of social contact theory, game theory, and feminist theory; and the puzzles of self-determination and group rights.More than simply outlining his theory, Tesón goes on to give detailed examples of international laws, international institutions, and their human rights foundations, putting his ideas to work and addressing legal reforms called for by the theory. He suggests that treaties, for example, should be considered binding if, and only if, the consent to the treaty was given by a genuinely representative government, one that acts out of interest for the human rights of its citizens. Although the theoretical achievement of this book is to challenge received wisdom on the foundation of international law, the practical ambition is a call to reform the international legal system for the post–Cold War era, to substitute for the old order one that gives primacy to human dignity and freedom over state power. (shrink)