Los científicos tratan de persuadir a sus colegas y, en última instancia, al conjunto de la sociedad, para que acepten sus tesis, descubrimientos y propuestas. Desarrollan para ello una serie de estrategias que pueden ser estudiadas como un"juego de persuasión" en el que intervienen, además de los procesos de argumentación formal e informal típicamente estudiados por la lógica y metodología de la ciencia, aspectos tradicionalmente considerados "sociológicos". En este artículo se analiza el debate sobre la ciencia del cambio climático como un juego de este tipo, desde un enfoque inferencialista, sobre la base del esquema presentado en Zamora Bonilla (2006a).Scientists try to persuade their colleagues, and ultimately the whole society, of the acceptability of their claims, discoveries and proposals. In order to reach that goal, they develop a number of strategies that can be studied as a 'game of persuasion', in which, beside the processes of formal and informal argumentation typically studied by logic and methodology of science, there are also 'sociological' aspects intervening. This paper analyses the debate on climate change science as a 'persuasion game', from an inferentialist point of view, according to the lines of Zamora Bonilla (2006a).

La primera recepción española de la obra epistemológica de Gaston Bachelard tuvo lugar en las décadas de 1940 y 1950. José Pemartín y especialmente Carlos París y Roberto Saumells fueron los filósofos españoles más relevantes que leyeron y utilizaron los escritos históricos y epistemológicos de Bachelard. Estos fueron utilizados para respaldar un realismo ontológico más sofisticado pero no incompatible con el realismo escolástico que prevalecía en la filosofía académica española de esa época. En este artículo exploramos el contexto de esta recepción desde una perspectiva sociofilosófica.The first Spanish reception of Gaston Bachelard’s epistemological work took place in the 1940s and 1950s decades. José Pemartín and particularly Carlos París and Roberto Saumells were the most important Spanish philosophers who read and made use of the historical and epistemological writings of Bachelard. These were used in order to support an ontological realism more sophisticated but not incompatible with the scholastic realism prevailing in the Spanish academic philosophy of the time. We explore the context of this reception from a sociophilosophical scope.

Some recent scholarship on Kuhn emphasizes his unconscious contribution to logical positivism—a consequence of Kuhn’s superficial knowledge and criticism of that school of thought. In this paper I argue against that thesis on the basis of an unpublished text: The Quest for Physical Theory (1951), his lectures at theLowell Institute, Boston, and an early version of the point of view of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Ciertas interpretaciones de la obra de Kuhn subrayan su contribución inconsciente al positivismo lógico, lo que es consecuencia de un conocimiento y una crítica superficiales de dicha corriente por su parte. En este artículo critico dicha tesis a partir de un texto inédito de Kuhn: The Quest for Physical Theory (1951), sus conferencias en el Instituto Lowell de Boston y una primera presentación del punto de vista de The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

El objetivo de este artículo es describir los argumentos a fortiori en el marco de una teoría de los esquemas argumentativos de corte toulminiano. Una argumentación a fortiori comporta la comparación de la fuerza de dos o más argumentos, y requiere que esos argumentos involucren inferencias escalares. Se pueden distinguir dos órdenes de argumentos a fortiori, en función de si esa inferencia media entre las premisas y la conclusión o entre el respaldo y la garantía de los argumentos. El primer patrón corresponde al a fortiori retórico y el segundo al a fortiori jurídico.I offer an account of a fortiori arguments in the context of a Toulmin-style theory of argumentation schemes. A fortiori arguments contain a comparison of the strength of two or more arguments involving scalar inferences. We can distinguish two kinds of a fortiori arguments depending on whether those scalar inferences connect the premises and the conclusion or the backing and the warrant of the arguments. The first pattern has been studied by rhetoricians and the second pattern by legal argumentation theorists.

El tratado hidrostático fue uno de los primeros textos de Descartes, fruto de su decisivo encuentro con Isaac Beeckman. En este artículo, analizaremos cómo fue concebido y los motivos que llevaron a Descartes a cuestionar alguno de los aspectos fundamentales de la física matemática de Beeckman. Este episodio está íntimamente relacionado con la independencia de las disciplinas matemáticas y su aplicación a cuestiones propias de la filosofía natural.Descartes’ hydrostatic treatise was one of his first text, fruit of his crucial meeting with Isaac Beeckman. In this article, we will analyse how it was conceived and the reasons which leaded Descartes to question some fundamental aspects of Beeckman’s Physico-mathematics. This subject is closely connected with theautonomy and implementation of mathematical sciences to typical matters of natural philosophy.

En este trabajo, critico una estrategia argumental que ha sido utilizada para defender la concepción de la rigidez para expresiones predicativas entendida como identidad de lo designado en los distintos mundos posibles. Se trata de una estrategia basada en la suposición de que las descripciones tendrían la capacidad de designar individuos inusuales (“abundantes”) en la misma medida en que ciertas expresiones predicativas (supuestamente) descriptivas serían capaces de designar propiedades inusuales. Señalo que esta suposición no es compatible con ciertos principios que gobiernan el funcionamiento semántico de las descripciones y con la verdad intuitiva de ciertas predicaciones que las incluyen.In this paper, I criticize an argumentative strategy that has been used in the literature to defend the view according to which rigidity for predicative expressions should be understood as identity of designation across possible worlds. It is a strategy that is based on the supposition that definite descriptions could designateunusual (i.e., “abundant”) individuals just as well as some (allegedly) descriptive predicative expressions are able to designate unusual properties. I point out that this presupposition is at odds with some principles governing the semantic behaviour of definite descriptions and with the intuitive truth of some predications that include them.

We explore the possibilities that dynamic epistemic logic offers to model abductive reasoning. We show that many of the problems with formal approaches to abduction based on classical logic can be solved when considering an epistemic agent that reasons and acts.Exploramos las posibilidades que ofrece la lógica epistémica dinámica para modelar el razonamiento abductivo. Mostramos que muchos de los problemas que encuentran los tratamientos formales de la abducción basados en lógica clásica pueden ser resueltos al considerar un agente epistémico que razona y actúa.

The analysis of the concept of orbital allows us to argue that—in opposition to a recent position in philosophy of science—it is impossible to defend the autonomy of the chemical reality in regard to physical reality, appealing to the idea that there is a conceptual rupture among a chemical interpretation and a quantuminterpretation of the concept. This is the case because there are not two different interpretations of the concept of orbital. On the contrary, the concept involved in structural chemistry and in quantum chemistry comes from quantum mechanics.El análisis del concepto de orbital permite argumentar—en oposición a una propuesta reciente en filosofía de la química—que no es posible defender la autonomía ontológica de la realidad química respecto de la física, sobre la base de una ruptura conceptual entre una interpretación química del concepto y otra propia de la mecánica cuántica. Esto es así porque no existen tales interpretaciones distintas del concepto de orbital, sino que, por el contrario, este concepto en química cuántica y en química estructural proviene de la mecánica cuántica.

Suele señalarse la fuerte influencia que la teología natural tuvo sobre Darwin en su conceptualización del fenómeno de la adaptación. La teoría de la selección natural explicaría el mismo fenómeno que los teólogos naturales querían explicar: la adaptación. Recientemente ha sido señalado, sin embargo, que la forma darwiniana de conceptualizar la adaptación es novedosa. Las adaptaciones de la teología natural presupondrían la idea de que los organismos existen para la realización y manutención del equilibrio natural establecido por el creador. El punto de este trabajo discutir esta cuestión, asumiendo el marco del estructuralismo metateórico.The strong influence that natural theology had over Darwin’s conceptualization of the adaptation phenomenon is frequently noted. The natural selection theory would explain the same phenomenon that the natural theologist intended to explain: the adaptation. Recently has been claimed, on the contrary, that the Darwinian way of conceptualizing adaptation is new. The concept of adaptation from natural theology presupposes the idea that organisms exist for realization and support of the natural equilibrium stated by the creator. In this work I will discuss this point, assuming the metatheoretical structuralism frame.

El objetivo del presente trabajo es indagar la naturaleza integradora de la biología evolutiva del desarrollo (evo-devo). En particular analizamos las características temporales de los procesos estudiados por diferentes programas de investigación de evo-devo y las comparamos con aquellas propias de los procesos macroevolutivos, microevolutivos y del desarrollo de los organismos. Encontramos que en los principales programas de investigación de evo-devo se recuperan principalmente características propias de los fenómenos macroevolutivos (planteándose cierta continuidad entre tales fenómenos y los cambios genéticomoleculares y organísmicos), mientras que en la sub-área de eco-evo-devo (biología evolutiva ecológica del desarrollo) se recuperan principalmente características propias de la microevolución.The aim of this study is to investigate the integrative nature of evolutionary developmental biology (evodevo). We particularly analyzed the temporal characteristics of the processes studied by different research programs of evo-devo and we compared them with those of macroevolution, microevolution and developmentalprocesses of organisms. We found that in the major research programs of evo-devo, macroevolutionary phenomena characteristics are mainly recovered (assuming some continuity between such phenomena and molecular-genetic and organismic changes), while in the sub-area of eco-evo-devo (ecological evolutionary developmental biology) microevolutionary characteristics are mainly recovered.

Side by side with legal informatics, understood as the study of the applications of computers in the legal field, computer law, in which numerous legal problems linked to the use of the new technology are taken into consideration, has now developped. Important sectors of research have been identified within the ambit of computers law, among these: the contracts for computer utilitation; the problem of the protection of ’software’; the protection of privacy with regard to informatics; the transborder data flow... In the article are illustred the characteristics of these problems of computer law.

The aim of this paper is to account for the indeterminacy of legal texts brought about by the peculiarities of the language in which they are formulated. From the start, I asume that legal language is a special language, that is, it is an ordinary language with some specific semantical features. On this assumption, the semantical features of legal texts and the syntactycal ones are dealt with separately. In this account, however, I omit the pragmatical function of such language. Concerning the semantical features that give rise to indeterminacy, I deal on the one hand, with the problems raised from legal terms in general, and the other hand, with the problems raised from terms expressing deontic relations at their deep structure. To conclude, an analysis of ambiguity derived from the syntactycal structure of legal sentences is proposed, on the basis of several exampIes.

By the desiyn with the categories of the Doymatics and the “Theory of Law” of an interfase for legal information retrieval, it will verify the consistence of the theories of legal justification suggested by the Jurisprudence. The verification will be in the congruence of the use of automated legal documentation by judges and lawyers in continental countries in their practice.

Three (apparent ) deontic antinomies are discussed: the paradoxes of the watchman and the praiser, as weIl as deontic dilemmas. A paraconsistent deontic logic, Ad, is put forward whose underlying 1st-order calculus is an infinite-valued tensorial logic. Several arguments are offered bearing out be existence of deontic contradictions, while two ways of dealing with conditional obligation paradoxes within the framework of Ad are canvassed. While the aggregation rule and the ought-implies-can principle are upheld, sundry schemata are shown not to obtain which involve iterated deontic operators (most conspicuously: that whatever ought to be obligatory is obligatory; and that it is obligatory that whatever ought to be the case should in fact be the case).