In the so-called “Spin-Echo Experiments” the behaviour of a spin’s system seems to violate the second law of thermodynamics. For this reason the “Spin-Echo Experiments” are considered of particular interest for the Foundations of Physics. Interventionists have provided a classical explanation (Blatt 1959; Ridderbos & Redhead 1998) and a quantum-based explanation (Hemmo & Shenker 2005) of these experiments. Here both interventionist explanations are assessed by means of the Manipulability Theory of Causal Explanation (Woodward 2003). It is argued that interventionism would (...) gain explanatory depth by providing functional relations and predicting relaxation times. En los llamados “experimentos espín-eco” el comportamiento del sistema de espines parece violar la segunda ley de la termodinámica. Por esta razón, los “experimentos espín-eco” son considerados de gran interés en Fundamentos de la Física. Los intervencionistas han ofrecido explicaciones clásicas (Blatt 1959; Ridderbos & Redhead 1998) y explicaciones basadas en mecánica cuántica (Hemmo & Shenker 2005) de dichos experimentos. Aquí ambas explicaciones intervencionistas son analizadas mediante la Teoría Manipulabilista de las Explicaciones Causales (Woodward 2003). Se argumenta que el intervencionismo ganaría profundidad explicativa si proporcionara relaciones funcionales y realizara predicciones de los tiempos de relajación. (shrink)

This book explores the future of critique in view of our planetary condition. How are we to intervene in contemporary constellations of finance capitalism, climate change and neoliberalism?

In this article, the author compares two Spanish translations of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Taking into account that Spanish is a language in which words referring to human beings have a feminine and a masculine form, and grammatical gender corresponds to sex, all translators must interrogate the sex of the referent in order to translate gendered words. They are thus compelled to assign sex to genderless forms in the source text. Patriarchal translation has a long tradition of (...) devaluing and excluding the feminine in this process, as the author demonstrates here by revealing how Jorge Luis Borges translated the pronouns you and we in Woolf’s essay. In contrast, in her feminist translation of the essay, María Milagros Rivera-Garretas not only chooses the gender which most accurately represents the likely intended meaning of the source text, but recovers its message and legacy. (shrink)

The distance, as the crow flies, between the two poles can be covered in twenty hours. Thanks to cartography, telecommunications and the precise measurement of distance, we have exhaustive knowledge of the globe. Nevertheless, we are still so removed from each other that everything, or almost everything, remains to be discovered. Just as the past is not clear to us when it takes the historical route, the present brings us no understanding of human ways. The more we advance in knowledge (...) the more proof we have, as Pascal said, that we know nothing. (shrink)

Albert the Great extracts the best contributions of Neo-Platonism and Aristotelism. He examines the Aristotelian doctrine on the desire for truth present in human nature and the science of Metaphysics, which allows for an inkling of the source of such desire, but this desire is examined more in-depth by the Pseudo-Dionysius, being Theology the science that grants more answers and the most universal because it enables for greater perfection, not just intellectual but of the whole person.

The Escuela Feminista de Teología de Andalucía [the Andalusian School of Feminist Theology], held a conference titled ‘Feminine Mysticism and Counterculture: A Rebellious Genre’ October 15-17, 2009 at the University of Seville. This annual seminar is held thanks to an agreement between the University of Seville and EFETA, with the direct support of the research group ‘Escritoras y Escrituras,’ whose principal researcher is Mercedes Arriaga. The guest of honour at this year’s conference was Lisa Isherwood, who kindly presented EFETA (...) with the opportunity to publish some of the seminar’s papers in Feminist Theology, and who we here in Spain thank wholeheartedly for her contributions. Before presenting the texts that were selected for this edition, we would like to take this opportunity to explain a little about the EFETA project. (shrink)

Research has stressed the importance of universities in developing entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) and their possible social and economic impacts on society. Concerning this commitment, social entrepreneurs (SEs) favor university actions that facilitate the improvement of their individual capital. However, research on this topic has received little attention. This study investigated how universities contribute to the advancement of EEs. It also examines the mechanisms that universities employ to support SEs. Two survey instruments were administered: one to 418 SEs, and the other (...) to 494 people affiliated with universities. The results indicate that universities can be key actors in EEs because they can mobilize resources aligned with their institutional commitments, including training, facilities, and contact with several stakeholders. Additionally, SEs rely on training opportunities and connections with other stakeholders to implement entrepreneurial initiatives. Accordingly, our study highlights the critical role universities play in the development and survival of SEs. (shrink)

Both Averroes and Maimonides are concerned with the relationship between philosophy and religion, between reason and faith. Both examine the exoteric and esoteric teachings of scripture and the role of allegory in sacred texts, share the same concern for the apparent contradictions between religious and philosophical truths, try to explain the reasons for these inconsistencies, and look for ways to reconcile both sources of knowledge. But their differences in understanding the role of sacred scripture as a source of knowledge are (...) irreconcilable. Averroes relies on the Aristotelian notion of sign, which enables human apprehension of higher matters and is central for explaining certain kinds of figurative speech found in sacred scriptures. Maimonides is not aware of this epistemological tool, an ability to grasp the truth that pervades our cognoscitive structure and is the only way to communicate the incommunicable. Ignoring its central role in biblical texts leads Maimonides to theoretical agnosticism. (shrink)

El empleo de softwares, aplicaciones y programas especializados ha cambiado la forma de desarrollar investigaciones, por lo que, en el ámbito universitario cobra especial importancia la inserción de estas herramientas en el aula. Así, en este trabajo se presentan dos programas informáticos ampliamente usados en la investigación lingüística y se expone la metodología seguida para su inclusión en una asignatura concreta. Finalmente, se comentan los resultados obtenidos y el grado de aceptación por parte del alumnado, a partir de los cuales (...) se extraen las conclusiones finales. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide an answer to James Woodward’s article “Flagpoles anyone? Causal and explanatory asymmetries”. It will be conjectured that, when causal directionality depends on the experimental design, it is because the variables involved are capable of producing changes in each other. This will be exemplified using the case of ideal gases as opposed to the flagpole-shadow scenario.

In the so-called "Spin-Echo Experiments" the behaviour of a spin's system seems to violate the second law of thermodynamics. For this reason the "Spin-Echo Experiments" are considered of particular interest for the Foundations of Physics. Interventionists have provided a classical explanation (Blatt, 1959; Ridderbos & Redhead, 1998) and a quantum-based explanation (Hemmo & Shenker, 2005) of these experiments. Here both interventionist explanations are assessed by means of the Manipulability Theory of Causal Explanation (Woodward, 2003). It is argued that interventionism would (...) gain explanatory depth by providing functional relations and predicting relaxation times. (shrink)

La presencia de interpretaciones realistas por un lado, e interpretaciones llamadas «ortodoxas» con tendencia positivista y antirrealista, por el otro, es una especie de esquizofrenia que ha acompañado a la teoría cuántica desde sus orígenes. En este trabajo veremos que esto sigue vigente analizando dos interpretaciones actuales de la mecánica cuántica cuyos compromisos ontológicos son radicalmente distintos. Primero expondré algunos argumentos a favor de una ontología de propiedades, compatible con el formalismo cuántico, y posteriormente ofreceré una respuesta que podría elaborarse (...) desde la Electrodinámica Estocástica Lineal, una teoría física que intenta rescatar el realismo y la causalidad en la mecánica cuántica. Desde mi punto de vista, si bien ambas propuestas tienen virtudes, comparten una dificultad pues son incompatibles con los sistemas cuánticos que tienen elementos no diagonales en su matriz de densidad. (shrink)

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01218-9.

One of the sectors for which Artificial Intelligence applications have been considered as exceptionally promising is the healthcare sector. As a public-facing sector, the introduction of AI applications has been subject to extended news coverage. This article conducts a quantitative and qualitative data analysis of English news media articles covering AI systems that allow the automation of tasks that so far needed to be done by a medical expert such as a doctor or a nurse thereby redistributing their agency. We (...) investigated in this article one particular framing of AI systems and their agency: the framing that positions AI systems as replacing and outperforming the human medical expert, and in which AI systems are personified and/or addressed as a person. The analysis of our data set consisting of 365 articles written between the years 1980 and 2019 will show that there is a tendency to present AI systems as outperforming human expertise. These findings are important given the central role of news coverage in explaining AI and given the fact that the popular frame of ‘outperforming’ might place AI systems above critique and concern including the Hippocratic oath. Our data also showed that the addressing of an AI system as a person is a trend that has been advanced only recently and is a new development in the public discourse about AI. (shrink)

A dragon needs the clouds and the wind in order to fly. What happens when we too relinquish individualistic reasoning?

El número monográfico que aquí presentamos, titulado “Escritores en la historia de las ideas filóginas” reúne contribuciones de especialistas en filología y filosofía de España, Italia y Grecia. Se centra en el estudio e intertextualidad de una serie de textos y autores filóginos que abarcan un periodo histórico muy amplio, desde el siglo XV hasta el XVIII.

The first contribution, by Mercedes Valmisa, begins by repositioning the Zhuangzi 莊子 as a whole within pre-Qin thought under the impact of newly excavated materials. Moving away from the traditional classification of texts according to schools, it focuses instead on varying approaches to life issues. Centering the discussion on life situations and changes we have no control over, including the unpredictable vagaries of fate (ming 命), it outlines several typical responses. One is adaptation, finding ways to go along with (...) what life demands, and even availing oneself of the new opportunities it brings about. Another is a turning inward, a focus on the inner self, holding on to ethical and other standards and making sure on does the right thing regardless of the outcomes of one's actions. While the former appears in several chapters of the Zhuangzi, notably in chapter 6, the latter is central to the Qiongda yishi 窮達以時 (Failure and Success Depend on Opportunity), a manuscript excavated at Guodian. However tempting it may be to characterize one approach as Daoist and the other as Confucian, they both appear within the Zhuangzi together with a third approach to fate, showing the fluidity of philosophical discussion and the futility of thinking along the lines of traditional boundaries. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Based on brain state-dependent behavioral changes, consolidation of sensorimotor memories has been posited to evolve in two different functional stages. Only the second of these stages requires sleep and leads to performance benefits. Recent results, however, suggest that sleep is not always crucial for the expression of delayed behavioral gains but might be critical for enhancing automaticity in the absence of attention, another expression of memory consolidation.

Pensadores griegos y orientales, filósofos antiguos, medioevales y modernos, han tocado el tema de lo corporal de manera fragmentaria que reducen lo corpóreo a mero instrumento. Para evitar este tipo de interpretaciones, queda el expediente de acudir a la síntesis holística; a la versión del "cuerpo total" que somos. La economía imperante es la del "cuerpo poseído". Se tasa, vende y desecha en el mercado la fuerza de trabajo. Se ejerce sobre él una violencia que nos rebasa en todos los (...) frentes; es radical, porque atenta contra la integridad y la dignidad de los cuerpos. Restañar las heridas corporales de nuestros pueblos requiere de la formulación y siembra del conocimiento de la Ética del cuerpo que deberá ir acompañada por un proceso de reconstrucción simbólica de la idea de "cuerpo" en el que todos participemos. Si armonizan necesidades y capacidades corporales propias y ajenas y compaginan nuestras acciones con el respeto al entorno natural, casa del cuerpo, podremos vislumbrar que vamos sobre el camino correcto. The Greek and Eastern thinkers, ancient, medieval and modern philosophers, have dealt with the body only in a fragmentary way that sees it as a mere instrument. To avoid this kind of interpretation we resort to a holistic synthesis-the "total body" version that we really are. The dominant economics is the one of the "possessed body" that can be priced, sold and disposed of as working force. An overpowering violence is applied to it; it is a radical violence as it attempts on bodies' integrity and dignity. The healing of the wounded bodies of our people requires formulating and planting the seeds of the body's ethics that will accompany the reconstruction of an idea of body to be shared by all of us. If we harmonize our own and others' body's needs and abilities, and our actions are in accordance with our natural surroundings, we will be able to make out the right path. (shrink)

Este trabajo analiza la respuesta que el Estado español, como Estado-nación, está dando a la integración del inmigrante como ciudadano. Frente a quienes consideran que la residencia ha de ser la vía de acceso a la ciudadanía ante la crisis del Estado nación y la movilidad geográfica que impone la globalización económica a las personas, aquí se defiende, por el contrario, la relevancia política de la nacionalidad, como parte alícuota individual de pertenencia al poder constituyente, en relación armónica con un (...) concepto flexible de residencia. La investigación está dividida en cinco apartados, en los que se estudia la nacionalidad y el poder constituyente, las vías de acceso a la nacionalidad española, el conflicto Estado o nación, las peculiaridades de la nacionalidad originaria y , finalmente, los criterios que los Estados utilizan para la selección de la inmigración potencial. El recorrido crítico por la legislación española en materia de nacionalidad y ciudadanía acompañado de los debates teóricos al respecto, ha permitido concluir con una propuesta de lege ferenda centrada en una reforma radical en materia de nacionalidad. (shrink)

The most documented juridical studies about hispanic woman in the late Middle Ages, belong to three specialities: political law, civil or common law (matrimonial), and criminal law. It is in the sphere of matrimonial law where the influence of christian principles has been described as prominent, contributing to the juridical conjugal parity, thus recognizing woman a full civil capability.

Alejandro Tiana Ferrer es catedrático de historia de los Sistemas Educativos de la UNED. Ha ocupado entre otros cargos los de director del Centro de Investigación y Documentación Educativa (CIDE), creador y primer director del Instituto Nacional de Evaluación Educativa (INCE), presidente de la Asociación Internacional para la Evaluación del Rendimiento Educativo (IEA) y, hasta hace unos meses, Secretario General de Educación del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, donde ha diseñado y empezado a implementar una nueva ley de educación. Es (...) pues, la persona más adecuada para hablar de evaluaciones internacionales y sistemas educativos. Porque tiene una visión global y rigurosa de la educación en el mundo, una experiencia en primera persona, desde la toma de decisiones, de la realidad del sistema educativo español y un conocimiento profundo, desde dentro de las instituciones, de lo que son las evaluaciones internacionales y cuál es su sentido para mejorar la educación. (shrink)

Spontaneity is an almost inevitable commonplace in discussions of Daoism, especially the Zhuangzi. The idea that spontaneity is one of the most important values in the Zhuangzi was presented by Angus Graham for the Anglo-European audience, and divulged among Chinese readers by Liú Xiàogǎn 劉笑敢 and Chén Gǔyīng 陳鼓應. Hungarian psychologist Csikszentmihalyi popularly combined Daoist spontaneity with the idea of flow. In the state of flow the person carries out an activity for the sake of the activity itself--autotelically--and acts with (...) complete spontaneity given that none of their movements requires thought or mediation. My study consists of three parts: First, I deal with different definitions of “spontaneous” and of the term that is commonly translated as “spontaneous” in Chinese texts, zìrán 自然 (literally, so-of-itself), as well as its use in the Zhuangzi. I conclude that spontaneity is not part of the axiological project of the Zhuangzi. Instead, we find that the idea of adapting is related to normative human values and behaviors, whereas spontaneity is a term merely descriptive of natural objects. Second, I analyze the famous Zhuangzian stories of skills, which are often quoted to argue for the value of spontaneity. I conclude that the goal of these stories is to develop a new type of vital attitude as “second nature” or “background ability” (John Searle). Since this attitude is mediated and achieved through effort, it is not spontaneous. Third, I explain the confusion between this “second nature” with “spontaneity” in recent scholarship has led to the so-called paradoxes of non-action and spontaneity (Edward Slingerland). I argue that these paradoxes disappear when we understand the different layers of meaning of wú-wéi and zìrán in the early Chinese textual context. (shrink)

Philosophy of action in the context of Classical China is radically different from its counterpart in the contemporary Western philosophical narrative. Classical Chinese philosophers began from the assumption that relations are primary to the constitution of the person, hence acting in the early Chinese context necessarily is interacting and co-acting along with others –human and nonhuman actors. This book is the first monograph dedicated to the exploration and rigorous reconstruction of an extraordinary strategy for efficacious relational action devised by Classical (...) Chinese philosophers in order to account for the interdependent and embedded character of human agency –what the author has denominated “adapting” or “adaptive agency” (yin 因). As opposed to more unilateral approaches to action also conceptualized in the Classical Chinese corpus, such as forceful and prescriptive agency, adapting requires great capacity of self and other-awareness, equanimity, flexibility, creativity, and response, which allows the agent to co-raise courses of action ad-hoc: unique and temporary solutions to specific, non-permanent, and non-generalizable life problems. Adapting is one of the world’s oldest philosophies of action, and yet it is shockingly new for contemporary audiences, who will find in it an unlikely source of inspiration to deal with our current global problems. This book explores the core conception of adapting both on autochthonous terms and by cross-cultural comparison, drawing on the European and Analytic philosophical traditions as well as on scholarship from other disciplines, opening a brand-new topic in Chinese and comparative philosophy. (shrink)

In my dissertation, I explore how emotions operate under conditions of injustice. Specifically, my interest is in how one should deploy their emotions in order to combat patriarchally informed, affective ways of making sense of and responding to the social world. My dissertation consists of the following three papers. In the first paper, “Vindictive Anger,” I argue for two claims. First, that anger is not necessarily made morally worse whenever and to the extent that it involves a desire for payback. (...) Second, that in certain cases, anger’s retributive component is precisely what moralizes the emotion. Victims of sexual violence, I argue, paradigmatically deploy their anger as a way of getting their transgressor or, in some cases, the broader moral community, to more fully understand, through affect, the wrongness of their action. One can see this occur in the anger expressed by Chanel Miller in her victim’s impact statement, read aloud during the case of People v. Turner. When anger functions in this way, I propose, it serves to moralize the emotion. In the second paper, titled “Feminism and Suspect Femininity,” I ask how feminists should feel towards women who conform to suspect norms of appearance, and of hyper-femininity in particular. I present a novel type of empathy – proleptic empathy – which avoids treating women as either pitiful victims or as accomplices deserving of harsh moral criticism. Proleptic empathy requires switching back and forth between two types of imaginings: on the one hand, simulating what it is like to be in the woman’s shoes on the assumption that her suspect behavior stems from her will. On the other, simulating what it is like to be in the woman’s shoes on the assumption that her suspect behavior stems from external cultural influences. In the third paper, “Transitional Moral Contexts,” I address how one should feel towards the perpetrators who figure in the cases that have gone by the language of ‘grey rape’ or ‘bad sex’. These cases are ones that are rife with disagreement, especially amongst members of the moral community, who even disagree over whether they ought to count as cases of ‘sexual assault’ or ‘rape’. My suggestion is that the reason we have such difficulty adjudicating individuals’ responsibility for cases of bad sex is because these are instances of transitional moral contexts where what it is to act morally is in the process of being actively negotiated by the moral community. With this analysis in place, I present reasons for and against deploying shame against those who falter in these cases. (shrink)

Se despliegan aquí algunas notas que permiten empezar a entender las notables conexiones entre el pensamiento chino y la obra de Borges. También se ofrecen algunas consideraciones laterales sobre los vínculos con otros aspectos de las culturas de Oriente Medio. En general, se intenta mostrar que conceptos fundamentales del pensamiento chino entran en poderosa armonía con la literatura, y aun con lo que puede considerarse una filosofía, de Borges.

The major social, legal and judicial sensitization on the need to eradicate genderbased violence demands a suitable and effective response from all Public Institutions to safeguard the rights of the women. The principal aim of this article is to highlight the legislative solution given to this problem in relation with immigrant women (third-country nationals). Spanish and EC lawmakers have set out rules relating to gender-based violence for three groups of women: a) Married women or registered partners of European Union, EEE, (...) Swiss or Spanish citizens; b) Women married to third-country nationals; c) Women who are in Spain, married or not, in an irregular situation. The legislation analyzed in this paper regulates only the administrative situation to which women can accede when they are the victims of gender-based violence. That is to say, what types of authorizations can be granted and what possible “benefits” can be obtained, but only in the documentary area. Neither the penal or civil response to gender-based violence is analyzed. (shrink)

An analysis of ms Vat. Lat. 781 reveals ratio and limppiditas as two key notions in Albert the Great's teaching on the possibility of knowing God.

Este artículo reseña: Carlos Ramón FERNÁNDEZ LIESA, Juan Daniel OLIVA MARTÍNEZ, Oscar PÉREZ DE LA FUENTE (eds.), Teoría de las Obligaciones.

Las enfermedades poco frecuentes suelen ser las grandes olvidadas tanto de los sistemas sanitarios como de la investigación. Esto da lugar a que los pacientes y los familiares encuentren dificultades no solo para recibir una asistencia médica adecuada, sino también para conseguir un verdadero apoyo psicosocial. No obstante, se están produciendo cambios muy positivos, como son la creciente presencia del conjunto de las enfermedades raras en las políticas nacionales e internacionales, la evolución en el papel que adoptan los pacientes, los (...) médicos y los investigadores y en sus relaciones mutuas, la creciente sensibilización e implicación social, las oportunidades crecientes de difusión y de sensibilización y la circunstancia favorable desde el punto de vista tecnológico y de comunicación. La complejidad de estos cambios y la responsabilidad que cada grupo de agentes implicados está asumiendo en este nuevo marco son asuntos controvertidos y están surgiendo cuestiones de índole ética. A veces no es fácil responder a ellas y solo se puede explicar el papel que adoptan los distintos agentes por imperiosa necesidad. (shrink)

In this paper I examine three lectures by Paul Ricœur: two about imagination and the metaphor, and a third one about the writing of history and the representation of the past. The objective is to establish the connections between time and word on account of the creative speech; this creative speech is born from the productive imagination and, at the same time, it may be able to express the finite and temporary being that we are. The creative speech, which is (...) expressed through temporary figures, typical of poetry and narrative, is also decisive for historiographic work, both in the process of documentary research, and in the posing of questions about historical events, and, therefore, for the writing of history. (shrink)