[EN] Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd, set in a ship in war time, exposes the arguments that lead the Captain to execute a sailor, based on the strict application of the law and on a potential threat of mutiny. This morally ambiguous verdict presents a profound question about justice, whose answer is entangled in different topics of philosophy of law such as utilitarianism, the banality of evil, obedience and disobedience of the law, tragic cases and moral dilemmas. Analyzing the events (...) of the story through this philosophical lens, the notion of justice will be examined, exposing at the same time the richness that both law and literature can gain by interacting with each other. (shrink)

In this article, we present results from a literature review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values of nature conducted for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as part of the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuations of Nature. We identify the most frequently recurring meanings in the heterogeneous use of different value types and their association with worldviews and other key concepts. From frequent uses, we determine a core meaning for each value type, which is (...) sufficiently inclusive to serve as an umbrella over different understandings in the literature and specific enough to help highlight its difference from the other types of values. Finally, we discuss convergences, overlapping areas, and fuzzy boundaries between different value types to facilitate dialogue, reduce misunderstandings, and improve the methods for valuation of nature's contributions to people, including ecosystem services, to inform policy and direct future research. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. (shrink)

[EN]In recent decades, problems related to the accessibility and sustainability of science have increased, both in terms of the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge and its generation. Policymakers, academics, and, increasingly, citizens themselves have developed various approaches to this issue. Among them, citizen science is distinguished by making possible the generation of scientific knowledge by anyone with an interest in doing so. However, participation alone does not guarantee knowledge generation, which represents an epistemological challenge for citizen science. Simultaneously, economic and (...) socio-institutional difficulties in science governance and maintenance have grown. To solve those problems, several market elements have been introduced, a solution rejected by those who consider science as a public good that states must guarantee. Alternatively, research and work on the commons are growing worldwide, the concept being extended from natural resources to knowledge resources. In this chapter, we propose science as a commons, underlining the essential role of citizen science. Difficulties also apply to citizen science itself, but the increasing development of a multitude of projects based on cooperation favours the conditions required for its sustainability and quality. Our philosophical proposal is based on empirical knowledge about citizen science coupled with socio-economic concepts, according to a sociopolitical epistemology. (shrink)

The creation of future scenarios is considered a valuable methodological tool for shaping the anticipatory governance of emerging technologies. Although plausibility is presented as a necessary (but not sufficient) criterion for assessing future scenarios, there is no consensus on its meaning or operationalization. The main objective of this paper is to contribute to clarifying the meaning of plausibility and the theoretical role it plays in the application of scenario building practices to technological governance. In particular, I will argue that plausibility (...) can be understood as a methodological criterion and as an anticipatory-enabling ‘epistemic device.’ In this sense, I support the value of theoretically distinguishing between the methodological-limiting and the anticipatory-enabling roles of plausibility in foresight practices. (shrink)

This research explores the transformative role of the Global South in innovative jurisprudence concerning (cultural) collective rights, transcending its conventional perception as a mere recipient of legal norms. Focusing on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), the study investigates the impact of landmark cases worldwide and their potential challenges to the (neo)liberal capitalist system. Through an analysis and categorization of judgments, the research reveals that although the IACtHR has recognized collective rights through innovative interpretations, it falls short of posing (...) a significant challenge to private property and capitalism. Additionally, it emphasizes the need for a collective and concrete vision of rights to achieve meaningful transformation. The study also finds a potential alliance among peripheral regions to foster innovative jurisprudence through court dialogue, which may lead to a more substantial transformational role in safeguarding collective rights. (shrink)

[EN]The heuristic versatility of foresight is increasingly positioning this anticipatory instrument as a key resource to promote more responsible research and innovation practices. In a context where foresight's multiple heuristic potential is sometimes wrapped up in a promissory rhetoric that could lead to its being taken for granted, this article underlines the need to understand the emergence of these heuristics as being dependent on how foresight's dynamics unfold. By acknowledging the existence of more "open" or "closed" forms of foresight (which (...) in turn can articulate more "open" or "closed" anticipations), the article argues that the degree of "openness/ closure" of foresight activities is constituted during the ex-ante, ex-dure and ex-post processes, and according to the relations underlying their constructive dynamics. The main conclusion reached is that a pre-condition for foresight practices to become "instruments for" responsible innovation is to make them "subjects of" responsibility simultaneously. This involves monitoring the socioepistemic relations whereby foresight practices are designed and executed, as well as monitoring how their emergent heuristics are translated into action. (shrink)

[EN]This work will focus on some aspects of descriptive names. The New Theory of Reference, in line with Kripke, takes descriptive names to be proper names. I will argue in this paper that descriptive names and certain theory in reference to them, even when it disagrees with the New Theory of Reference, can shed light on our understanding of non-existence statements. I define the concept of descriptive name for hypothesised object. My thesis being that DNHOs are, as I will specify, (...) descriptions: a proposition expressed by the utterance ‘n is F’, where ‘n’ is a DNHO, is not singular at all; it is a descriptive proposition. To sum up, concerning proper names, the truth lies closer to the New Theory of Reference, but descriptivism is not altogether false. As for DNHOs descriptivism is, in some cases, the right fit. (shrink)

The three main naturalistic approaches to culture the Epidemiological account (Sperber 1996; Atran 1990, 2002; Sperber and Claidière 2006), Memetics (Dawkins 2006 [1976], Dennett 1996) and the Standard Evolutionary approach (Boyd and Richerson 1988 [1985], Mesoudi 2011) reduce it to a set of representational items that are shared by individuals in a population by non-genetic means. Thats why I see those three approaches as versions of what I call the Itemic View of Culture (IVC). I argue that, by that reduction, (...) the IVC is missing a key element in the subject matter of culture: an element that is best captured by the notion of constraints (Barwise and Perry 1983). I call my approach the Constraint-Based Approach (CBA), and I conceive it as an account that situates conventional constraints, and the simple attunement to those constraints by individuals, as the fundamental building blocks of culture. On their grounds, other kinds of attunements can be distinguished, and a natural account of explicit representational items and our cultural knowledge of them can be built. In this sense, the CBA is a necessary fundamental requirement for the IVC. (shrink)

It is not hard to see how two visions of nature are intertwined in Darwin’s Journal of Researches: one vision, the province of romantic authors depicting the sentiments awakened by certain landscapes, the other, the domain of natural scientists describing the world without reference to the aesthetic qualities of the scenery. Nevertheless, analyses of this double perspective in Darwin’s work are relatively rare. Most scholars focus on Darwin, the scientist, and more or less ignore the aesthetic aspects of his work. (...) Perceiving the gradual transformation of Darwin’s world view, however, depends on analyzing the two different modes in which Darwin approached and perceived the world. While one can, on occasion, find commentaries on the beauty of the natural world in Darwin’s early work, the passage of time produces a modification in the naturalist’s manner of perceiving nature. This does not, however, mean that Darwin ceases to find beauty in nature; on the contrary, the disenchantment, in Max Weber’s words, that Darwin’s theory produces should not be understood in a pejorative, but rather in a literal sense. The theory of evolution, in effect, divests nature of its magical character and begins to explain it in terms of natural selection, according it, in the process a new and more intense attraction. In the present work, the metaphysical implications of this new vision of the world are analyzed through the eyes of its discoverer. (shrink)