Epistemic merit, autonomy, and testimony

In this paper, it is argued that both the informer and the hearer in a testimonial situation deserve epistemic merit insofar as they contribute to the collaborative achievement of sharing knowledge. The paper introduces a distinction between the ideals of self-sufficiency and epistemic autonomy. The autonomous exercise of our epistemic agency is very often carried out under strong conditions of epistemic dependence. Testimony exhibits a kind of social dependence that does not threaten the autonomy of the subjects that need to consider their own epistemic capacities. When involved in a testimonial situation, both speaker and hearer declare, at least implicitly, the standings they occupy in an epistemic space and are obliged to recognise certain epistemic requirements

Editor's Presentation. Darwinism and Social Science: Is there Any Hope for the Reductionist?

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Situated practices of testimony. A rhetorical approach

Contrary to most current epistemologists who concentrate on core cases of rather 'spontaneous' (deliberately  de-contextualized)  trust  and  belief  in the  face  of  assertions,  Classical  rhetoricians  addressed  the study of 'testimony' as an (at least) two-acts phenomenon: that of the 'disclosure' of information and that of the 'appeal' to its authority in subsequent discursive practices. Moreover, they primarily focused on this second phase as they assumed that it was such argumentative setting that finally gave 'testimonial' relevance to the first act. According to this 'rhetorical' model, then, it is the dynamics (by means of an in medias res approach)  and  pragmatics  (by means  of  a  deliberate  attention  to  specifically  'situated'  practices)  of  such complex process that is the core issue regarding 'testimony'

Perfectioning trust, reinforcing testimony

Miranda Fricker characterizes the most basic or primary form of epistemic, testimonial injustice by way of  a  set  of  negative  delimitations.  In  this  paper  I  raise  some  doubts  about  how  these  delimitations  are drawn, about the wrongful harms and disadvantages the testimonial injustice is supposed to entail and produce, and about the way Miranda Fricker clarifies the perfectionist character of the corrective virtue on the part of hearers, the ethical and intellectual virtue of testimonial justice

Ecuaciones cuadráticas y procedimientos algorítmicos. Diofanto y las matemáticas en Mesopotamia

En este ensayo presento un análisis comparativo entre los diversos procedimientos creados, respectivamente, por los matemáticos babilonios y Diofanto de Alejandría para resolver ecuaciones de segundo grado. Observaremos cómo los primeros recurrieron a la composición de diagramas mientras Diofanto aplicó un algoritmo abstracto que no consiguió generalizar.In this paper I present a comparative analysis among the diverse procedures invented respectively by the Babylonian mathematicians and Diophantus of Alexandria to solve quadratic equations. We will observe how the first ones appealed to the composition of diagrams while Diophantus applied an abstract algorithm that he was not able to generalize