As public administrations adopt artificial intelligence (AI), we see this transition has the potential to transform public service and public policies, by offering a rapid turnaround on decision making and service delivery. However, a recent series of criticisms have pointed to problematic aspects of mainstreaming AI systems in public administration, noting troubled outcomes in terms of justice and values. The argument supplied here is that any public administration adopting AI systems must consider and address ambiguities and uncertainties surrounding two key (...) dimensions: the algorithms’ results, and how public managers make decisions for and about AI systems’ design. The article is based on bibliographic research in institutional theory perspective that relates the design of AI systems and relevant literature on the decision-making process in public policy. The main finding is to explain why autonomous decision systems continue to reproduce ambiguities and uncertainties when applied in public administration and propose a reflection on AI governance in public administration. This article points to the need for design institutions that immerse themselves in understanding the nuances, details, and potential outcomes of AI governance for public administration. Such institutions would reconcile consequentialist logic with a logic of appropriateness to help navigate and mediate ambiguities and uncertainties. (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)

In Frege’s logicism, numbers are logical objects in the sense that they are extensions of certain concepts. Frege’s logical system is inconsistent, but Richard Heck showed that its restriction to predicative quantification is consistent. This predicative fragment is, nevertheless, too weak to develop arithmetic. In this paper, I will consider an extension of Heck’s system with impredicative quantifiers. In this extended system, both predicative and impredicative quantifiers co-exist but it is only permissible to take extensions of concepts formulated in the (...) predicative fragment of the language. This system is consistent. Moreover, it proves the principle of reducibility applied to concepts true of only finitely many objects. With the aid of this form of reducibility, it is possible to develop arithmetic in a thoroughly Fregean way. (shrink)

In finite type arithmetic, the real numbers are represented by rapidly converging Cauchy sequences of rational numbers. Ulrich Kohlenbach introduced abstract types for certain structures such as metric spaces, normed spaces, Hilbert spaces, etc. With these types, the elements of the spaces are given directly, not through the mediation of a representation. However, these abstract spaces presuppose the real numbers. In this paper, we show how to set up an abstract type for the real numbers. The appropriateness of our construction (...) works in tandem with the bounded functional interpretation. (shrink)

Na atualidade, parece não haver nenhuma outra categoria que goze de unanimidade tão generalizada e transversal, quanto o de pessoa. Nenhum discurso que pretenda estar em público de forma teórico, jurídico e politicamente correta coloca em questão sua nobreza, principalmente em seu nexo com o direito. Os direitos da pessoa são justamente sobre o quê não se deve tergiversar. No entanto, há um paradoxo incontornável do nosso tempo: nunca como agora, a nobreza da categoria de pessoa foi tão incensada, mas (...) também nunca como agora, tantas vidas humanas foram tão humilhadas pela fome, miséria, epidemias, exílios, etc. O objetivo desse texto é seguir uma trilha já aberta por alguns pensadores de matriz franco-italiana de crítica a essa unanimidade. (shrink)

Contemporary political theories have made significant progress toward identifying the principles for an egalitarian society. From this perspective, Edward Bellamy's radical and pluralistic egalitarianism can be read not only as a relevant precedent but as a source of sophisticated arguments capable of enriching current debates. Although unfairly overlooked as theoretical works, Bellamy's utopias can be read today as offering insights that bring together and combine key modern ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Therefore, this article argues that Bellamy's conception of (...) equality involves several dimensions and functions as a background condition for effective freedoms; that these liberties are not at odds with voluntary equality; and that fraternity—understood in Rawlsian terms—makes sense in a free and equal soci- ety, as it is guaranteed both by institutional means and by personal decisions. (shrink)

When, on December 7, 2000, the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission proclaimed solemnly in Nice the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, many thought that European integration was practically guaranteed and that the Charter would soon be made into a binding legal text. Since then, the two attempts to enact a European consitution – the Constitutional Treaty for the European Union of 2004 and the arguably less ambitious Treaty of Lisbon of 2007 – both failed. Further (...) efforts at unification have stagnated, in part due to the 2008 economic crisis and the European Union’s inability to coordinate responses to issues as serious as immigration, the refugee crisis, and terrorism. In this paper, I examine a theoretical counterpoint to that bleak perspective for European unification, to wit, Jürgen Habermas’ eurofederalist proposal of the postnational democracy and European constitutional patriotism. (shrink)

Nos dias atuais, o avanço da Teologia da Prosperidade não pode não ser observado tendo em vista o número crescente de igrejas neopentecostais que adotam o princípio de um Deus Cristão diretamente vinculado às questões de prosperidade, uma vez que ser bem sucedido financeiramente requer a aprovação de um deus acionável e subserviente. Assim, surgem questionamentos sobre as diferenças existentes entre a TP e a conhecida Teologia da gratuidade encontrada na Bíblia. Concordamos com Moltmann ao assumir que a ressurreição não (...) esvazia na cruz, mas a preenche de significado. A partir dessa perspectiva, percebemos que a relação com o Pai não é mais marcada pela onipotência, mas pela entrega e solidariedade no abandono, ou seja, a relação não é mais marcada pela disputa da onipotência, não é mais medida e orientada pelo narcisismo e pela privação como renúncia de instintos exigida pelo Deus da ilusão com vista a uma retribuição como justiça final, mas pela analogia. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to provide an overview about Simone Weil’s interpretation of the Good in Plato. The article has two parts. In the first one, we focus on her exegesis of the ancient Greek civilization and of the Pythagorean tradition. We also signalize that her interpretation cannot be confused with the one done in Neoplatonism. After that, we investigate her interpretation of Plato’s philosophy with special emphasis on two dialogues : Republic and Timaeus. In the second part (...) we research two main concepts of Simone Weil’s philosophy, i.e., the notions of value and of lecture and finalize our text with the question of how we should situate her appropriation of the Platonic tradition. (shrink)

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)

We give an elementary proof of the strong normalization of the atomic polymorphic calculus Fat.

Behind every Utopia there is always a territory, but a territory that “is not here”, a territory removed from immediate reality in space or in time. In time, when the Utopia invokes the past of an Age of Gold or a Paradise Lost “illo tempore,” but also when there is a gamble with the hope of a better world to be organized in the future. These are “ideal times” or “longed-for times,” past or future of which philosophers, writers or political (...) men speak. (shrink)

The documents published about sociology in the files between 1990 and 1999 are analyzed. The following topics are observed: distribution for years, countries, languages, types of documents, topics treated and journals in which the studies are published. At the same time the different institution..

O texto faz uma reflexão teórica a partir de Benjamin, Arendt, Foucault e Agamben. Em um primeiro momento faz-se uma análise da assertiva benjamineana de que “tornamo-nos muito pobres de experiências liminares”. Em seguida associamos essa idéia de “aniquilamento das transições” à idéia de homogeneidade e efemeridade da experiência urbana contemporânea. A partir desse ponto o texto articula essa homogeneidade com uma idéia de empobrecimento da esfera do comum, ou seja, do político, em prol de uma “gestão de necessidades”: a (...) gestão como sucedânea do político, que se refletiria na produção contemporânea do espaço e na “construção do comum”. (shrink)

We propose to extend a reliabilist perspective from epistemology to the very concept of rational justification. Rationality is defined as a cognitive virtue contextually relative to an information domain, to the mean performance of a cognitive community, and to normal conditions of information gathering. This proposal answers to the skeptical position derived from the evidence of the cognitive fallacies and, on the other hand, is consistent with the ecological approach to the cognitive biases. Rationality is conceived naturalistically as a control (...) system of the flow of information: reliabilism is the approach that qualifies this system as virtuous. There can be specific-domain devices selected by evolution, although the constraints of the very flow of information can be also represented, even with imperfect means of formalization, and then rationality becomes reflective. Reliable rationality is postulated in conclusion as a more philosophically abstract concept than maximal, minimal or bounded rationality. (shrink)

In this article, the author studies the introduction of technology into the science curriculum. He offers a general framework for analyzing technology as artifact, knowledge, and social practice. This framework provides analytical tools to study the implications of technology in general education. The analysis is framed using two events: (a) the current movement of scientific literacy, which now includes technology literacy such as in the case of Project 2061, a science education initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of (...) the Science and (b) international calls for including technology in the school curricula of developing countries. The primary context of this article is the demand of technology education in Guatemala. (shrink)

El artículo que aquí presento elabora una concepción del colectivo ético aplicable al espacio urbano. Dicha concepción, que se puede considerar post-humanista, es elaborada a partir de una lectura de autores como Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour o James J. Gibson. Esta concepción se extrapola a los espacios de la ciudad, considerando algunas aportaciones de la Arquitectura y la Geografía Humana. El propósito último es contemplar el espacio urbano como la sede donde distintos actores (humanos y no humanos) (...) emergen de consumo, intercambiando tanto sus agencias como sus condiciones de existencia y sus responsabilidades. (shrink)

The “surge in use of finite-state methods” ([10]) in computational linguistics has largely, if not completely, left semantics untouched. The present paper is directed towards correcting this situation. Techniques explained in [1] are applied to a fragment of temporal semantics through an approach we call finite-state temporality. This proceeds from the intuition of an event as “a series of snapshots” ([15]; see also [12]), equating snapshots with symbols that collectively form our alphabet. A sequence of snapshots then becomes a string (...) over that alphabet, evoking comic/film strips. Jackendoff has, among others, objected to conceptualizing events in terms of snapshots ([8]). To counter these objections, we step up from events-as-strings to event-typesas-regular languages ([5, 6]), recognizing the need for variable granularity. Beyond the introduction of disjunction implicit in the step from a single string up to a set of strings, we obtain a useful logic from the regular operations and a careful choice of the snapshots (constituting our alphabet). (shrink)

Social identity poses one of the most important challenges to rational choice theory, but rational choice theorists do not hold a common position regarding identity. On one hand, externalist rational choice ignores the concept of identity or reduces it to revealed preferences. On the other hand, internalist rational choice considers identity as a key concept in explaining social action because it permits expressive motivations to be included in the models. However, internalist theorists tend to reduce identity to desire—the desire of (...) a person to express his or her social being. From an internalist point of view, that is, from a viewpoint in which not only desires but also beliefs play a key role in social explanations as mental entities, this article rejects externalist reductionism and proposes a redefinition of social identity as a net of beliefs about oneself, beliefs that are indexical, robust, and socially shaped. (shrink)

La concepción legalista de la justicia es una doctrina originada en la filosofía política de Hobbes. Para el filósofo inglés, son justos los actos que se conforman a la ley, e injustos lo contrario; lo único que se tiene en cuenta es el hecho del cumplimiento, y no la naturaleza y el fin del deber. Además, en la noción hobbesiana de equidad hay un aspecto fuertemente convencional, ya que el deber del soberano de obrar equitativamente se constituye en un motivo (...) fundamental del pacto acordado. (shrink)