En el nombre de hormigueros y colmenas: Una investigación sobre el concepto de los derechos de la naturaleza y su razonamiento

In this paper, I first investigate rights of nature legislation in Ecuador and Bolivia, namely the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador 2008, Bolivia Law of the Rights of Mother Earth 2010, and the Framework Law of Mother Earth and Integral Development for Living Well 2012. I apply a two-pronged analytical approach to these legal texts, which investigates the characteristics of such rights and the logic of the supporting reasoning. By reading into the legal texts, I argue that: (a) the characteristic of rights of nature as codified in these legislation is human (fundamental) rights; and (b) the main reasoning to support such right-status is spiritual reasoning that is largely based on the indigenous cosmovision. I then turn to some iconic declarations on human rights and natural rights theories, which shows the concept of “human rights” is almost impenetrable when it comes to the idea of “human”. I conclude this paper by indicating that in order to give rights of nature a solid ground in our current legal systems, we have to rethink the ground of human rights.En este artículo, doy cuenta en primer lugar de la legislación sobre derechos de la naturaleza en Ecuador y Bolivia, a saber, la Constitución de la República del Ecuador de 2008, y las leyes de derechos de la Madre Tierra de 2010 y la ley Marco de la Madre Tierra y Desarrollo Integral para Vivir Bien de 2012 en Bolivia. Se aplicó un doble enfoque analítico a estos textos jurídicos, con el propósito de investigar las características de tales derechos y la lógica de razonamiento que los apoya. 146 Como resultado del doble análisis realizado, en segundo lugar, sostengo que: (a) lo que caracteriza la codificación de los derechos de la naturaleza en estos textos jurídicos son los derechos humanos (fundamentales); y que (b) el principal razonamiento para apoyar dicho estatus de derechos es uno de tipo espiritual basado en gran medida en la cosmovisión indígena. En tercer lugar, presento algunas declaraciones icónicas sobre los derechos humanos y las teorías de los derechos naturales, que muestran que el concepto de "derechos humanos" es casi impenetrable cuando se trata de la idea de lo "humano". Concluyo este artículo indicando que para dar a los derechos de la naturaleza una base sólida en nuestros sistemas legales actuales, tenemos que repensar la base de los derechos humanos

Rights of Nature and Indigenous Cosmovision: A Fundamental Inquiry

In this paper, I ask whether we can weigh and balance indigenous cosmovision—the reasoning used as the main source of legitimacy in some rights of nature legislation—within a secular legal system. I examine three barriers that rights of nature and their corollary spiritual reasoning are likely to encounter if they are invoked in secular courts: (a) spiritual reasoning is non-defeasible (Part 3) and (b) irrational (Part 4), and (3) the current concept of human rights as a universal legal norm is based on a circular logic (Part 5). In order to overcome these barriers, I draw inspiration from Dworkin’s ‘rights as trumps’ thesis and the proportionality principle (5.2), and propose that for rights of nature and their spiritual connotation to be operational in a secular court, we need to create an exception—a meta rule for these legal concepts—and subject them to the proportionality principle

Particular Reasoning versus universal human rights: A case of China

In this paper, I argue that there is objectivity in the international human rights law, against which the justifiability of arguments can be determined and the universality vs. relativity of human rights debate could be taken a step further. I propose an optimising approach for treaty interpretation, point out that there is epistemic objectivity residing in this approach, and analyse China’s relativism arguments on Article 1 of the Convention against Torture to elaborate above points

The justifiability of particular reasoning in constructive dialogue between China and international human rights treaty bodies

The relationship between China and international human rights law (IHRL) is an often-discussed issue that nonetheless remains peripheral from an academic perspective. The reason that it is often discussed has to do with China’s rapid rise to its global superpower status—economically, politically, militarily, and (in a way) culturally. It remains ‘peripheral’, however, insofar as the common approach situates China as an outlier in the international legal order that must be treated differently. It is this commonly held point of view that first prompted this study. This research focuses investigates particular reasoning–based arguments offered by China in constructive dialogue on specific topics (i.e. interpretation, reservation, sovereignty, and treaty implementation). The purpose of conducting this investigation is first and foremost to examine the justifiability of China’s arguments—that is, to identify those arguments that are in fact justifiable from the point of view of the human rights treaties to which China is a party, along with other human rights instruments it adheres to, versus those arguments that indeed deviate from IHRL. Therefore, it aims to give China’s arguments a fair examination. Moreover, by investigating the arguments in constructive dialogue between China and human rights treaty bodies over time, this research also expounds the relationship between China and the international human rights legal order. In Part I of this study, I consider the question of what counts as a good argument in constructive dialogue. I begin by identifying the characteristics of constructive dialogue by comparing it with legal arguments in the courtroom, which helps me to develop criteria for determining what counts as a justifiable argument in constructive dialogue--a justifiable argument has to be legally justifiable and dialogically constructive. I then investigate the interpretation rules for international treaties in general and IHRL in particular. Finally, I articulate the concept of particular reasoning and its implications for legal argumentation in constructive dialogue. In Part II, I investigate arguments that employ particular reasoning under the four topics identified above. A representation and reconstruction of the arguments is then carried out, in chronological order. The main materials for my analysis are summary records. This research could be situated in three broader debates, namely the relationship between China and international human rights legal regime, the universality versus relativity of human rights, and the (in)determinacy and objectivity of the IHRL. One key observation of this study is: the committees have a greater impact on China than China has on the committees. Specifically, when it comes to topics on which China does not hold a strongly oppositional position, the legally justifiable and dialogically constructive arguments from the committees are very likely to make a positive impact on the process, whereas un-justifiable or non-constructive arguments do not have this effect, or even affect the process negatively. Moreover, this research reveals that the relationship between China and IHRL is rather complicated and may sometimes seem like it has reached an impasse. Nevertheless, it also shows that there is a systemic dialogue between China and the treaty bodies, which has generally improved over time (especially on China’s part). The fact that China has made an effort to offer justifiable or constructive arguments implies that it is adapting to the ‘rightness’ of the rules and principles of IHRL. This adaption to the ‘rightness’ of the regime is, in my view, a process of institutionalisation. In other words, despite its relatively poor compliance record (as some scholars, NGOs, or states hold), China does consider itself subject to the international human rights treaty regime. At last, I suggest that when it comes to IHRL, it is probably the time to go back to basics by taking the legal characteristics of IHRL and argumentation seriously, because forgetting them is as (if not more) dangerous than lack of imagination

Switch-based Active Deep Dyna-Q: Efficient Adaptive Planning for Task-Completion Dialogue Policy Learning

Training task-completion dialogue agents with reinforcement learning usually requires a large number of real user experiences. The Dyna-Q algorithm extends Q-learning by integrating a world model, and thus can effectively boost training efficiency using simulated experiences generated by the world model. The effectiveness of Dyna-Q, however, depends on the quality of the world model - or implicitly, the pre-specified ratio of real vs. simulated experiences used for Q-learning. To this end, we extend the recently proposed Deep Dyna-Q (DDQ) framework by integrating a switcher that automatically determines whether to use a real or simulated experience for Q-learning. Furthermore, we explore the use of active learning for improving sample efficiency, by encouraging the world model to generate simulated experiences in the state-action space where the agent has not (fully) explored. Our results show that by combining switcher and active learning, the new framework named as Switch-based Active Deep Dyna-Q (Switch-DDQ), leads to significant improvement over DDQ and Q-learning baselines in both simulation and human evaluations.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, AAAI 201

FedGSM: Efficient Federated Learning for LEO Constellations with Gradient Staleness Mitigation

Recent advancements in space technology have equipped low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites with the capability to perform complex functions and run AI applications. Federated Learning (FL) on LEO satellites enables collaborative training of a global ML model without the need for sharing large datasets. However, intermittent connectivity between satellites and ground stations can lead to stale gradients and unstable learning, thereby limiting learning performance. In this paper, we propose FedGSM, a novel asynchronous FL algorithm that introduces a compensation mechanism to mitigate gradient staleness. FedGSM leverages the deterministic and time-varying topology of the orbits to offset the negative effects of staleness. Our simulation results demonstrate that FedGSM outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms for both IID and non-IID datasets, underscoring its effectiveness and advantages. We also investigate the effect of system parameters.Comment: 5 pages,6 figure

Cylindrical Cloak with Axial Permittivity/Permeability Spatially Invariant

In order to reduce the difficulties in the experimental realizations of the cloak but still keep good performance of invisibility, we proposed a perfect cylindrical invisibility cloak with spatially invariant axial material parameters. The advantage of this kind of TE (or TM) cloak is that only rho and phi components of mu (or epsilon) are spatially variant, which makes it possible to realize perfect invisibility with two-dimensional (2D) magnetic (or electric) metamaterials. The effects of perturbations of the parameters on the performance of this cloak are quantitatively analyzed by scattering theory. Our work provides a simple and feasible solution to the experimental realization of cloaks with ideal parameters