ABSTRACT“Evidence-based” methods, which most prominently include randomized controlled trials, have gained increasing purchase as the “gold standard” for assessing the effect of public policies. But the enthusiasm for evidence-based research overlooks questions about the reliability and applicability of experimental findings to diverse real-world settings. Perhaps surprisingly, a qualitative study of British educators suggests that they are aware of these limitations and therefore take evidence-based findings with a much larger grain of salt than do policy makers. Their experience suggests that the (...) real world is more heterogeneous than the world imagined by evidence-based policy enthusiasts. (shrink)

Il concetto di relazione è colto come concetto antinomico e il valore è la coscienza di questa antinomia.

It’s widely accepted that normativity is not subject to truth values. The underlying reasoning is that truth values can only be predicated of descriptive statements; normative statements are prescriptive, not descriptive; thus truth value predicates cannot be assigned to normative statements. Hence, deonticity lacks logical semantics. This semantic monism has been challenged over the last decades from a series of perspectives that open the way for legal logics with imperative semantics. In the present paper I will go back to Kant (...) and review his understanding of practical judgments, presenting it as supported by a pluralistic semantics. From this perspective a norm of Law is a logical expression that includes as content a generic description of a possible behavior by a generality of juridical agents, and assigns to that content the assertion of its obligatory character, accompanied by a disincentive for non-compliance. From this perspective legal norms can be syntactically formalized and assigned appropriate semantic values in such terms that they can be incorporated into valid inferential schemes. The consequence is that we can put together legal logics that handle both the phenomenal and the deontic dimensions of legality. (shrink)

This piece contextualizes a discussion by liminal feminists on the identifiers ‘women of color’ and ‘Third World women’ that emerged from some uncomfortable and constructive conversations at the 2015 FEAST conference. I focus on concerns of marginalization and gatekeeping that are far too often reiterated within the uneasy racial dynamics among feminist philosophers.

Review of the books: Jerry A. Fodor. Concepts: Where Cognitive Science went wrong. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998, 174 pp., ISBN 0-19-823636-0. Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star. Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999, 377 pp., ISBN 0-262-02461-6.

Afonso Penna Mascarenhas Júnior Ouro Preto, 26 de março de 2013. Juliano, As coisas, palavras e sentimentos não só começam a fazer sentido, quando já estão em pleno exercício da fé, do amor e da esperança. Você, Juliano, terno/menino/homem e já tão consciente; são nítidas as impressões, um plácido regato, um manso cordeiro. Consciência do saber da beleza que não é mais ilusão, do atávico medo do homem-urbano, do pavor de todos nós... Alinhave tuas palavras, que concretas serãoa nos traspassar (...) a augusta paz nas linhas em louvor à Criação. Juliano ave, De aflito e frenético vôo... Albatroz da paisagem humana, ao norte do simples rural, singelo e puro... Traga-nos sempre em tuas linhas do chão ao céu repleto de intenção em teus/nossos sentimentos que não são mais presságios, mas definitivos. Obrigado, por nos lembrar o que ainda podemos ser; obrigado por teus amarelos sóis que nos fazem afastar nosso medo em reais reflexões outonais; para quem fomos e ou para aonde poderemos voltar... Abraço, Afonso Penna. (shrink)