The war in Iraq has reignited the passionate humanitarian intervention debate. President George W. Bush surprised many observers in his second inaugural address when he promised to oppose tyranny and oppression, and this in a world not always willing or ready to join in that fight. Humanitarian intervention is again on the forefront of world politics.

We introduce a herbrandized functional interpretation of a first-order semi-intuitionistic extension of Heyting Arithmetic and study its main properties. We then extend the interpretation to a certain system of second-order arithmetic which includes a (classically false) formulation of the FAN principle and weak König's lemma. It is shown that any first-order formula provable in this system is classically true. It is perhaps worthy of note that, in our interpretation, second-order variables are interpreted by finite sets of natural numbers.

Clinical Research and Good Clinical Practice. More Stories to TellPesquisa clínica e boas práticas clínicas. Mais histórias por contarFor guaranteeing the ethical conduct of scientific research on human beings in which the interest in the health and well-being of the participating subjects prevail, various guidelines, standards, and parameters have been established for the scientific community. One of these regulatory parameters is good clinical practice, which, after its implementation by Resolution 2378 of 2008, has become a highly relevant guide for clinical (...) trials in Colombia. This article relates its origins and versions and goes over its limitations regarding the ethical debate on ethics committees evaluating research protocols.Para citar este artículo / To reference this article / Para citar este artigo Suárez-Obando F. Investigación clínica y buenas prácticas clínicas. Más historias por contar. 2020; 24: 188-204. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pebi.2020.24.2.6Recibido: 29/09/2019Aceptado: 07/06/2020Publicado: 27/11/2020. (shrink)

Prepared with the cooperation and assistance of Sara Timby, Stanford University Libraries, this edition contains papers that were still on C. I. Lewis' desk at the time of his death. Especially noteworthy is the fragment entitled "On Probability" in which Lewis directs his attention to the subject of past experiences, which, although now beyond recall, are regarded as having played a role in the fomation of our beliefs. Also included are notes on thought regarded as action, on the Kantian postulate (...) of the existence of God, and Lewis' own notion of conscious life as "repository of value.". (shrink)

The standard Bayesian recipe for selecting the rational choice is presented. A familiar example in which the recipe fails to produce any definite result is introduced. It is argued that a generalization of Gärdenfors’ and Sahlin’s theory of unreliable probabilities — which itself does not guarantee a solution to the problem — offers the best available approach. But a number of challenges to this approach are also presented and discussed.

Truth is an epistemological concept that sometimes is claimed to have explanatory strength. It is argued, within a realistic view about causality and explanation, that concepts must represent naturalistic properties in order to have explanatory power. The eliminativistic theories about truth fail to account the use of predicate “truth” in explanatory contexts. Many antirealistic explanations of truth are reconstructed in order to sustain that thesis. Specially, we focus on the minimalist theory of truth. As we argue, we cannot eliminate the (...) predicate “truth” in some of the most relevant contexts of science and daily life. (shrink)

Notes by Dr. Robert Gahringer, who was C.I. Lewis' assistant at Harvard, Dr. Francis H. Parker, and those of the editor were used to reconstruct Lewis' lectures in Phil. 130, Kant, as those lectures were presented at Harvard in the late 40's and early 50's. The test of the reconstruction includes a detailed discussion of European epistemology in the period before Kant in addition to Lewis' interpretation of Kant's epistemology, critique of metaphysics, theology, and a brief presentation of his moral (...) philosophy. (shrink)

In "'Yes" and "No'" (2000), Ian Rumfitt proposed bilateralism--a use-based account of the logical words, according to which the sense of a sentence is determined by the conditions under which it is asserted and denied. One of Rumfitt's key claims is that bilateralism can provide a justification of classical logic. This paper raises a techical problem for Rumfitt's proposal, one that seems to undermine the bilateralist programme.

Abstract The article addresses three aspects of the humanitarian intervention doctrine. It argues, first, that the value of sovereignty rests on the justified social processes of the target state ? the horizontal contract. Foreign interventions, even when otherwise justified, must respect the horizontal contract. In contrast, morally objectionable social processes (such as the subjection of women) are not protected by sovereignty (intervention, of course, may be banned for other reasons). In addition, tyrants have no moral protection against interventions directed at (...) them. Second, the article addresses the internal legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. It concludes that the liberal state may only use voluntary soldiers (either the voluntary army or mercenaries) to conduct humanitarian intervention. Conscription for that purpose is not permissible. The article shows that the long-standing criticism of mercenaries stems from a romantic prejudice and is thus unfair. Third, the article makes a distinction between intention (the determination to perform an action) and motive (a further goal that the agent seeks with that action) and shows that only intention is relevant for humanitarian intervention. A justified humanitarian intervention requires the intention to liberate the victims, but not necessarily a good further motive. It shows how mainstream doctrine has impermissibly confused the two concepts. (shrink)

Trata-se de uma resenha das obras Sobrinho de Rameau de Denis Diderot, Sobre a Verdade e Mentira no sentido Extra-Moral de Friedrich Nietzsche e A construção das ciências: introdução à filosofia e á ética das ciências de Gerárd Fourez. Os textos foram lidos com base nas seguintes questões: Quais são as bases de sustentação do conhecimento?; O que é a verdade e se é possível alcançá-la de forma objetiva; O que é a ciência e o que ela representa na busca (...) pela verdade e o conhecimento? e Quais as possibilidades da linguagem na busca pelo conhecimento? Concluiu-se que o que Diderot caracteriza como idiotismo aparenta-se com os valores morais seguidos pelo instinto de rebanho nos indivíduos de Nietzsche. Para Fourez observar é sempre representar e na representação nunca se obtém do objeto sua verdadeira essência. Desconstruir conceitos, apreender o aspecto fluido e mutável das coisas e dos valores, seria essa a linha mestra dos textos tratados neste trabalho. (shrink)

We perform an experimental investigation using a dictator game in which individuals must make a moral decision —to give or not to give an amount of money to poor people in the Third World. A questionnaire in which the subjects are asked about the reasons for their decision shows that, at least in this case, moral motivations carry a heavy weight in the decision: the majority of dictators give the money for reasons of a consequentialist nature. Based on the results (...) presented here and of other analogous experiments, we conclude that dicator behavior can be understood in terms of moral distance rather than social distance and that it systematically deviates from the egoism assumption in economic models and game theory. (shrink)

When is humanitarian intervention legitimate and how should such interventions be conducted? This article sets out eight liberal principles that underlie humanitarian intervention, some of them abstract principles of international ethics and others more concrete principles that apply specifically to humanitarian intervention. It argues that whilst these principles do not determine the legitimacy of particular interventions, they should ?incline? our judgments towards approval or disapproval. The basic principles include the liberal idea that governments are the mere agents of the people, (...) that tyrannical governments forfeit their legal protections, that human rights entail obligations for governments, that justifiable intervention must intend the end of tyranny or anarchy, that the doctrine of double-effect should be respected, that intervention is only warranted in severe cases, that intervention be welcomed by those it is intended to save, and that ideally it is welcomed by the community of democratic states. (shrink)

Communication within groups of agents has been lately the focus of research in dynamic epistemic logic. This paper studies a recently introduced form of partial (more precisely, topic-based) communication. This type of communication allows for modelling scenarios of multi-agent collaboration and negotiation, and it is particularly well-suited for situations in which sharing all information is not feasible/advisable. The paper can be divided into two parts. In the first part, we present results on invariance and complexity of model checking. Moreover, we (...) compare partial communication with the public announcement and arrow update settings in terms of both language-expressivity and update-expressivity. Regarding the former, the three settings are equivalent, their languages being equally expressive. Regarding the latter, all three modes of communication are incomparable in terms of update-expressivity. In the second part, we shift our attention to strategic topic-based communication. We do so by extending the language with a modality that quantifies over the topics the agents can ‘talk about’, thus allowing a form of arbitrary partial communication. For this new framework, we provide a complete axiomatisation, showing also that the new language’s model checking problem is PSPACE-complete. Finally, we argue that, in terms of expressivity, this new language of arbitrary partial communication is incomparable to that of arbitrary public announcements and also to that of arbitrary arrow updates. (shrink)

Teson critiques a recent article by John Rawls in which Rawls extends his acclaimed political theory to include international relations.

ArgumentSeeing a prodigious cure happen and then testifying about it certainly differs from attending an air pump experiment in order to bear witness to it. Yet early-modern saint-making and the “new” or “experimental philosophy” shared juridical roots, and thereby an understanding of the role of testimony for the establishment of “matters of fact” and for the production of legitimate knowledge. The reforms carried out after the Council of Trent, especially during Urban VIII's pontificate, of the juridical procedures for saint-making in (...) the Catholic Church implied a new attitude towards the examination of proposed miracles. Most of these miracles were healings. While the appeal to medical expertise had long been common, and skepticism had often manifested itself regarding cures or extraordinary bodily phenomena, both were now given formal status. Miracle inquests henceforth leaned towards refuting miraculousness by means of natural explanations. The procedure was systematized in a treatise published in the 1730s by Prospero Lambertini. The combination of Lambertini's work with the canonization causes in which he acted as the “devil's advocate” in charge of disputing arguments favorable to a sainthood candidate allows for a reconstruction of the interplay between the juridical and scientific economies of saint-making, and of the role of testimony in the production of trust and evidence. (shrink)

This book gathers case studies presented at the International Conference on Responsible Research and Innovation in Science, Innovation and Society. It highlights European initiatives and projects in various domains and contexts, each of which explores how to create guidelines and good practices for Responsible Research and Innovation and how to promote them among citizens, industry stakeholders, policy and decision makers, research funders and educational institutions to foster their adoption as a potential benchmark in establishing RRI processes. Further, the book discusses (...) gender and ethical issues, which are highly relevant for RRI initiatives in connection with representativeness, risks and in some cases, minority rights. (shrink)

A partir de las críticas que el igualitarismo fraternal lanzó contra el igualitarismo de la suerte, G. A. Cohen propuso un compromiso a través del denominado modelo de campamento. Puesto que dicho trade-off no quedó formalizado, en este artículo se intenta aportar algunos elementos en tal dirección. En concreto, se argumenta: a) que Cohen tiende un primer puente hacia el igualitarismo fraternal al distinguir los aspectos de equidad y legitimidad en una concepción de lo justo, conjuntamente con la afirmación de (...) que la suerte en las opciones nunca preserva la justicia; b) que los principios igualitario y comunitario, que Cohen postula como deseables para el socialismo, operan sobre la base de la distinción equidad-legitimidad, de modo que las desigualdades generadas por elecciones genuinas y mala suerte en las opciones son justas en tanto resultan legítimas pero no son justas en términos de equidad y, en consecuencia, las desigualdades que rasgan el tejido social son causalmente fundamentales mientras que el principio comunitario es normativamente fundamental; y c) que los elementos comunitarios que impulsan el compromiso de Cohen ya están presentes en sus nociones de igualdad voluntaria, ethos igualitario, lectura estricta del Principio de Diferencia rawlsiano y comunidad justificatoria. (shrink)

This article seeks to highlight some elements of the theory of education and communication present in Book I of Plato’s Republic, first in an analytical way, and then in an attempt at synthesis.

In the course of ten short sections, we comment on Gödel's seminal dialectica paper of fifty years ago and its aftermath. We start by suggesting that Gödel's use of functionals of finite type is yet another instance of the realistic attitude of Gödel towards mathematics, in tune with his defense of the postulation of ever increasing higher types in foundational studies. We also make some observations concerning Gödel's recasting of intuitionistic arithmetic via the dialectica interpretation, discuss the extra principles that (...) the interpretation validates and comment on extensionality and higher order equality. The latter sections focus on the role of majorizability considerations within the dialectica and related interpretations for extracting computational information from ordinary proofs in mathematics. (shrink)

El artículo se plantea la posibilidad de abordar la lectura –el leer– como un derecho humano. Para ello se somete a las preguntas que la teoría general de los derechos utiliza para identificar las acciones que contienen los requisitos para ser consideradas como tales: por qué habría de ser la lectura un derecho, a quépropósito respondería, cuál es su naturaleza y a qué límites debería someterse. En esta primera aproximación, el texto presentado se detiene en el objeto de la lectura, (...) en aquella parte del leer que debería ser protegida por el derecho humano, en concreto su perfil como libertad y su carácter de prestación. Para finalizar, y como enlace para un texto futuro, se identifican los sujetos del derecho a la lectura, los titulares, los obligados por ella y los ‘imprescindibles’. (shrink)

Este artículo reconstruye la definición de “forma” ofrecida en La estructura del comportamiento. Luego se evalúan dos interpretaciones posibles: una realista y otra denominada “idealista”. Se sostiene que la primera no logra explicar la originalidad de los distintos tipos de formas y, en consecuencia, tampoco su carácter noemático (ser para una conciencia), mientras que la segunda resulta incompatible con el carácter descriptivo (no antropomórfico) de las Gestalten y conduce a una concepción de la naturaleza que resulta problemática respecto de la (...) posición merleau-pontyana. Se propone una tercera interpretación: el concepto de “dialéctica”, tal como es utilizado por Merleau-Ponty para definir los órdenes físico, vital y humano, justifica una ampliación de los conceptos de “naturaleza” y de “conciencia” que permite conjugar el carácter descriptivo y noemático. Con base en ello, se concluye que las formas pueden ser identificadas con el proceso de fenomenalización de la naturaleza. (shrink)

Relations computed by finite-state transducers are applied to interpret temporal propositions in terms of strings representing finite contexts or situations. Carnap–Montague intensions mapping indices to extensions are reformulated as relations between strings that can serve as indices and extensions alike. Strings are related according to information content, temporal span and granularity, the bounds on which reflect the partiality of natural language statements. That partiality shapes not only strings-as-extensions (indicating what statements are about) but also strings-as-indices (underlying truth conditions).

This article deals with the relation between a theory of law and a theory of legal reasoning. Starting from a close reading of Chapter VII of H. L. A. Hart's The Concept of Law, it claims that a theory of law like Hart's requires a particular theory of legal reasoning, or at least a theory of legal reasoning with some particular characteristics. It then goes on to say that any theory of legal reasoning that satisfies those requirements is highly implausible, (...) and tries to show that this is the reason why not only Hart, but also writers like Neil MacCormick and Joseph Raz have failed to offer a theory of legal reasoning that is compatible with legal positivism as a theory of law. They have faced a choice between an explanation of legal reasoning that is incompatible with the core of legal positivism or else strangely sceptical, insofar as it severs the link between general rules and particular decisions that purport to apply them. (shrink)

Events and situations are represented by strings of temporally ordered observations, on the basis of which the events and situations are recognized. Allen’s basic interval relations are derived from superposing strings that mark interval boundaries, and Kamp’s event structures are constructed as projective limits of strings. Observations are generalized to temporal propositions, leading to event-types that classify event-instances. Working with sets of strings built from temporal propositions, we obtain natural notions of bounded entailment from set inclusions. These inclusions are decidable (...) if the sets are accepted by finite automata. (shrink)

O objetivo do texto é apresentar o interesse e algumas possibilidades do diálogo entre a ética espinosana e a filosofia da educação. Para tanto, propõe-se uma apresentação da filosofia espinosana com ênfase em certos aspectos que possam ser úteis ao estabelecimento desse diálogo, por exemplo o lugar privilegiado da figura da criança em algumas passagens da Ética. Por fim, trata-se de sugerir uma articulação entre o conceito espinosano de alegria e a prática pedagógica, discutindo o problema central do devir ativo.

Inertia is enshrined in Newton’s first law of motion, a body at rest or in uniform motion remains in that state unless a force is applied to it. Now, consider (1). (1) Pat stopped the car before it hit the tree. Can we conclude from (1) that the car struck the tree? Not without further information such as that supplied in (2). (2) But the bus behind kept going. A post-condition for Pat stopping the car is that the car be (...) at rest. To satisfy a pre-condition for the car hitting the tree (namely, that the car not be at rest), inertia requires that some intervening force act on the car (as hinted, for example, by (2)). In the absence of such a force, (1) would appear to suggest that Pat prevented a collision between car and tree. Exactly what bit of physics are we importing into natural language interpretation here? Oversimplified, Newton’s first law of motion says: no change without force. Identifying force with cause, we come to the slogan no temporality without cause, capturing in a phrase the proposal from Steedman 2000 that.. (shrink)