irrelevantes para el operador legal35.
Naturalmente, la elevación de los conceptos legales a “fines en sí mismos” genera un efecto perverso y a la vez destructivo: la aparición de sistemas normativos alternativos que ofrecen reglas sustentadas en razones de sentido común (económicas o morales).
1 Existen diversas teorías en torno a los conceptos. Una primera teoría (“Classical Theory”) sostiene que los conceptos son “representaciones mentales” de los objetos (esto es, de los elementos de la existencia). Una segunda teoría (“Prototype Theory”) sostiene que los conceptos son “representaciones mentales” de las propiedades estadísticamente relevantes de los objetos. Una tercera teoría (“Theory-Theory”) sostiene que los conceptos son “teorías mentales” que permiten la construcción del conocimiento. Una cuarta teoría (“Ability Theory”) considera que los conceptos son “habilidades mentales” que permiten la distinción de los objetos.
2 “Concepts are vehicles of representation, tools for thinking. They (…) can be combined into structures we call thoughts (…) Typically concepts have reference: for example, nominative concepts typical refer to objects, predicative concepts to properties, and so (…) Some concepts fail to refer but this does not prevent them having a role in thought” (Sainsbury y Tye, 2011, p. 101).
3 Esta idea se basa en la decisión del Juez Learned Hand en el caso United States v. Carroll Towing Co. (1947).
4 En An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Locke sostiene que los conceptos son adquiridos en la medida en que proceden de la experiencia. El filósofo inglés considera que la experiencia, compuesta por sensaciones e impresiones, genera “ideas simples”. En base a tales ideas, la mente elabora conceptos y, por ende, conocimientos. En consecuencia, si bien la mente tiene el poder natural de transformar “ideas simples” en “ideas abstractas”, la mente no tiene el poder natural de crear sensaciones y reflexiones: éstas derivan necesariamente de la experiencia.
5 Procesos cognitivos son todos aquellos procesos mentales (simples y complejos) que permiten adquirir conocimiento y comprensión.
6 “Human beings think in concepts and our minds are stocked with concepts of all sorts –some tangible (the concept of furniture, the concept of meal) others far more abstract (the concept of democracy, the gravity or the gross national product). As concepts become more familiar they often seem more concrete, and one becomes able to think of them in almost the same way one thinks of something one can touch or taste” (Gardner, 2006, p. 10).
7 “A concept is a mental representation of (…) a class of objects that we believe belong together (…) It embodies our knowledge about the category and its members (…)” (Kunda, 1999, p. 16). “Concepts allow us to perceive individual objects as members of a kind, to attribute properties common to the kind to the specific individual object, to communicate about such objects, and so on. Indeed, concepts are often thought of as the building blocks of cognition” (Spalding, Stedman, Hancock y Gagne, 2014, pp. 245 y 246).
8 Mamífero, carnívoro, cuadrúpedo, domesticado, que se caracteriza por poseer sentidos del olfato y del oído altamente desarrollados.
9 El pensamiento abstracto, y en particular el pensamiento ficticio, constituyen dos expresiones únicas de la naturaleza humana. Esas expresiones cumplen un rol trascendental en el proceso evolutivo. En palabras de Harari: “The ability to create an imagined reality out of words enabled large numbers of strangers to cooperate effectively. But it also did something more. Since large-scale human cooperation is based on myths, the way people cooperate can be altered by changing the myths – by telling different stories. Under the right circumstances myths can change rapidly. In 1789 the French population switched almost overnight from believing in the myth of the divine right of kings to believing in the myth of the sovereignty of the people. Consequently, ever since the Cognitive Revolution Homo Sapiens has been able to revise its behavior rapidly in accordance with changing needs. This opened a fast lane of cultural evolution, bypassing the traffic jams of genetic evolution. Speeding down this fast lane, Homo Sapiens soon far outstripped all other human and animal species in its ability to cooperate” (Harari, 2015, pp. 32 y 33).
10 “Categories and schemas are critical building blocks of the human cognitive process. They allow humans to process or at least cope with the infinite amount of information in their environs. Categories and schemas influence every feature of human cognition, affecting not only what information receives attention, but also how that information is categorized, what inferences are drawn from it, and what is or is not remembered” (Hanson y Chen, 2004, p. 1131).
11 “What is the business of concepts? To pick up relevant and useful properties of the environment. Why should they do that? To identify goal satisfying conditions and guide behavior toward them. And why should concepts identify and guide? Because organisms, whatever their complexity, have basic goals (replicate survive, maintain appropriate energy levels by eating and resting, and so on) which they must satisfy (Bogdan, 1989, p. 17).
12 Si en T+1 B advierte que el administrador del restaurante X no permite que C fume un cigarrillo dentro del local, entonces en T+N B no encenderá un cigarrillo dentro de dicho local.
13 “(…) instead of an infinite set of names for colors to identify the infinite gradations in the spectrum, we rely on a dozen or two categories to gather the variation into meaningful, manageable groupings –red, yellow, Green, tan, purple, kaki, and so on. What we might call Green could include a wide range of colors that in most cases makes no sense to distinguish. Green is close enough.” (Hanson y Chen, 2004, pp. 1145 y 1146).
14 “Although our brains have developed exquisite mechanisms for recording specific experiences, it is not always advantageous for us to take the world too literally. A brain limited to storing an independent record of each experience would require a prodigious amount of storage and burden us with unnecessary details. Instead, we have evolved the ability to detect the commonalities among experiences and store them as abstract concepts, general principles and rules. This is an efficient way to deal with a complex world and allows the navigation of many different situations with a minimal amount of storage. It also allows us to deal with novelty. By extracting the essential elements from our experiences, we can generalize to future situations that share some elements but may, on the surface, appear very different. For example, consider the concept ‘camera’. We do not have to learn anew about every camera that we may encounter. Just knowing that the item is a camera communicates a great deal of knowledge about its parts, functions and operations” (Miller, Freedman y Wallis, 2002, p. 1123).
15 Si B sufre lesiones a causa del ataque del perro X, B no requiere informar al médico acerca de todas las características del perro en cuestión (raza, tamaño, edad, etc.). A fin de obtener el conocimiento requerido para prescribir el tratamiento, el médico solo requiere conocer que las lesiones fueron causadas por un perro y no por otro animal.
16 “Sensing grasps what is immediately present, seizes what is here and now. But what happens when this object is put into words? What is