The adoption of a generic contrariness notion in ASPIC substantially enhances its expressiveness with respect to other formalisms for structured argumentation. In particular, it opens the way to novel investigation directions, like the use of multivalued logics in the construction of arguments. This paper points out however that in the current version of ASPIC a serious technical difficulty rel...

A Review of Reviving Rationality: Saving Cost-Benefit Analysis for the Sake Environment and Our Health. By Michael A. Livermore Richard L. Revesz.

RATIONALITY IS ESSENTIALLY connected with norms. In Western philosophy, while there has been much disagreement over what the norms of rationality are, there seems to have been substantial agreement that these norms are narrowly prescriptive; in fact there is a pronounced tendency to see rationality as leaving the agent no scope for choice in matters of thought, belief, inference and behaviour. ...

The author analyzes several issues pertaining to medical practice as related to the technical autonomy characterizing professional activity in this field. She points to the coexistente of a scientific side and an empirical/pragmatic side of medicine, the latter known as the medical art. The article also discusses the complexity of medical command of technological rationality which presides over...

I study the e¢ cient risk-sharing in an endowments economy when enforcement is achieved by the threat of reversion to punishments that may be less severe than autarkic consumption. I characterize (up to a technical condition) the set of allocations that may be interpreted as e¢ cient with respect to some punishment convention. The conditions rationalizing such e¢ ciency are very weak; they are ...

This article addresses archival methods, techniques, and practices for managing documents generated by scientific activity, using field research carried out at an Instituto Oswaldo Cruz laboratory at the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz as a reference. Based on an analysis combining an archival studies approach with elements of the sociology of science, we believe that the models and instruments of archiv...