Eleven years after Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence, Spain’s position vis-à-vis Kosovo has not only not varied, but it has become stronger, turning Madrid into the leader of the Kosovo non recognizers club within the EU. This paper analyses Kosovo-Spain relations in the last eleven years. More specifically, the paper examines the reasons behind the non-recognition of Kosovo and the approach of the Spanish governments toward Kosovo’s statehood. This is followed by a thorough analysis on how Kosovo’s path for self-determination (...) played a major role in Catalonia’s quest for independence in 2017. The empirical research demonstrates that Spain’s main reason not to recognise Kosovo is based on the country’s internal dynamics; namely, Catalonia and the Basque country. Likewise, the paper argues that the Spanish governments throughout the last eleven years have created an analogy between Kosovo and Catalonia; not in their political statements, but in their political decisions, by worsening the almost inexistent diplomatic relations with Kosovo, when the Catalan path for independence was at its highest peak. By the same token, the paper reveals that this position was enhanced and driven by Catalan separatism, that continuously used Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence as a model to further their own path for self-determination. The data provided and analysed in this paper as well as the statements made are based on desk research and seven semi-structured interviews conducted in Prishtina, Brussels, Madrid and Barcelona in 2018. (shrink)

Recently, the mechanistic framework of active inference has been put forward as a principled foundation to develop an overarching theory of consciousness which would help address conceptual disparities in the field (Wiese 2018 ; Hohwy and Seth 2020 ). For that promise to bear out, we argue that current proposals resting on the active inference scheme need refinement to become a process theory of consciousness. One way of improving a theory in mechanistic terms is to use formalisms such as computational (...) models that implement, attune and validate the conceptual notions put forward. Here, we examine how computational modelling approaches have been used to refine the theoretical proposals linking active inference and consciousness, with a focus on the extent and success to which they have been developed to accommodate different facets of consciousness and experimental paradigms, as well as how simulations and empirical data have been used to test and improve these computational models. While current attempts using this approach have shown promising results, we argue they remain preliminary in nature. To refine their predictive and structural validity, testing those models against empirical data is needed i.e., new and unobserved neural data. A remaining challenge for active inference to become a theory of consciousness is to generalize the model to accommodate the broad range of consciousness explananda; and in particular to account for the phenomenological aspects of experience. Notwithstanding these gaps, this approach has proven to be a valuable avenue for theory advancement and holds great potential for future research. (shrink)

This article puts forward solutions to some of the ethical and legal dilemmas posed in the current discussion on how to program crash algorithms in autonomous or self-driving cars. The first part of the paper defines the scope of the problem in the criminal legal field, and the next section gives a critical analysis of the proposal to always prioritise the interest of the occupant of the vehicle in situations with conflict of interests. The principle of minimizing social damage as (...) a model for configuring self-driving cars is examined in the third section. Despite its apparent plausibility, within the framework of a liberal legal system that recognises humans as free agents who have rights and responsibilities, maximizing the function of social utility does not justify harmful interference into a person’s legal sphere. Therefore, in the fourth part, the author argues the need to program the crash algorithms of autonomous cars based on a deontological understanding of the system of justifications in criminal law. The solution to the dilemma lies in a prior analysis of the legal positions of all agents involved in the conflict, from a perspective of the principles of autonomy and solidarity as the core of the system of justifications. (shrink)

This paper articulates dignity as relational engagement in concrete care situations. Dignity is often understood as an abstract principle that represents inherent worth of all human beings. In actual care practices, this principle has to be substantiated in order to gain meaning and inform care activities. We describe three exemplary substantiations of the principle of dignity in care: as a state or characteristic of a situation; as a way to differentiate between socio-cultural positions; or as personal meaning. We continue our (...) analysis by presenting cases on dignity in care related to us in focus groups with medical professionals. Our empirical ethical lens is in this paper is to analyse, not the meaning of dignity, but the way in which it emerges in practices where it is pursued, within relationships between people, technologies, places, regulations, and the values cherished by or embedded in them. We show that professional caregivers recognize in the dignity of the person they care for their own dignity; giving up on the one implies no less than giving up on the other. This ‘mirrored experience’ of dignity expresses itself in professional’s engagement with the situation. The value of this engagement, we argue, lies not primarily in realizing the particular content of the values at stake. We point to the importance of engagement itself, even if the values engaged with cannot be realized to the full, and even if competing versions of dignity are at stake simultaneously. In this way the caregivers provide us with interesting examples of moral actorship in situations of conflicting values. (shrink)

Resumen: El objetivo es presentar una propuesta didáctica que permite que los centros educativos sirvan como instrumentos de cohesión social y como lugares de posibilidad de transformación social y educativa. El texto está estructurado en tres partes. En primer lugar, se reconoce la necesidad de las propuestas innovadoras y se alerta del riesgo que pueden conllevar al perpetuar un sistema de desigualdad. A continuación, se propone un cambio en la cultura organizativa de los centros educativos de la mano de las (...) Comunidades de Aprendizaje; tras analizar sus fundamentos, se exponen tres de las acciones didácticas que pretenden lograr la igualdad en los resultados. Finalmente, se repasan las ventajas y desventajas y se presentan las conclusiones. Palabras clave: filosofía, aprendizaje dialógico, democracia, comunidades de aprendizaje, igualdad de oportunidades. English tilte: The Challenge of Philosophy Subjects: Towards Equality of ResultsAbstract: The paper aims to present a didactic proposal which enables educational centres to serve as mechanisms of social cohesion and as places where social and educational transformation is possible. The text is structured in three parts. After acknowledging the need for innovative proposals, I point out the risk of perpetuating a system of inequality that they can entail. Next, I propose a change in the organisational culture of schools brought about by Learning Communities—I analyse its bases and present three didactic actions that aim to achieve equality of outcomes. Finally, I comment on the advantages and disadvantages of this proposal. (shrink)

Dos son los objetivos fundamentales de estas páginas. En primer lugar, analizar la postura de Unamuno ante el avance de la democracia en la Europa de principios de siglo. Esta posición que en apariencia se muestra contradictoria, adquirirá sentido pleno al distinguir entre democracia liberal y no liberal. Y en segundo lugar, rastrear las principales aportaciones que su pensamiento político puede ofrecer hoy en día a la teoría política en general y la teoría de la democracia en particular.

This paper describes the approach of empirical ethics, a form of ethics that integrates non-positivist ethnographic empirical research and philosophy. Empirical ethics as it is discussed here builds on the ‘empirical turn’ in epistemology. It radicalizes the relational approach that care ethics introduced to think about care between people by drawing in relations between people and technologies as things people relate to. Empirical ethics studies care practices by analysing their intra-normativity, or the ways of living together the actors within these (...) practices strive for or bring about as good practices. Different from care ethics, what care is and if it is good is not defined beforehand. A care practice may be contested by comparing it to alternative practices with different notions of good care. By contrasting practices as different ways of living together that are normatively oriented, suggestions for the best possible care may be argued for. Whether these suggestions will actually be put to practice is, however, again a relational question; new actors need to re-localize suggestions, to make them work in new practices and fit them in with local intra-normativities with their particular routines, material infrastructures, know-how and strivings. (shrink)

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

The problem of the time of a killing is often cited as providing grounds for rejecting the action identification thesis favoured by Anscombe and Davidson. In this paper I make three claims. First, I claim that this problem is a threat to the action identification thesis because of two assumptions the thesis makes: since the thesis takes actions to be a kind of doings, it has to assume that agents’ doings last as long as their actions and vice versa. Second, (...) I claim that not making both of these assumptions necessarily leads to another problem, the problem of the acting dead. This means that any theory of action has to choose its poison and face either one of these unresolved problems. Third, I claim that the solution to the problem of the time of a killing can be found by heeding linguistic arguments that ‘kill’ cannot mean ‘cause to die,’ as is commonly assumed, but instead has to have a more complex meaning. I discuss an alternative, more complex proposal and show how it allows us to keep the action identification thesis, fits colloquial usage of ‘kill’ and deals with the problem of the time of a killing. (shrink)

Introduction A Preliminary Look at the Scandal of Radical Realism: Direct and Indirect Knowing • This book is about the nature and scope of rationality, ...

Edward Pols has made it his purpose in this perceptive study to deal with the aspects of Whitehead's philosophy that belong to traditional metaphysics. Mr. Pols closely examines Process and Reality, Whitehead's chief metaphysical work, and uses Science and the Modern World, Adventures of Ideas, and Modes of Thought to clarify difficulties with some of the doctrines in that work. Mr. Pols's primary concern is with freedom, and he uses this single theme to examine Whitehead's metaphysical system in depth.

This paper intends to identify the functions of the French particle “comme” (“like” in opposition to “as”) and “comme si” (“as if”) in the work of French contemporary philosopher Jean-Luc Marion, especially in L’idole et la distance (American translation: The Idol and Distance), Dieu sans l’être (American translation: God without Being), Étant donné (American translation: Being given) and De surcroît (American translation: In excess). The author of this paper focuses on the relation between phenomenology and theology in order to demonstrate (...) its complexity by an analysis of linguistic phenomenology. At the end of this analysis, the “saturated phenomenon”, as proposed by Jean-Luc Marion, becomes an important notion to understand the boundaries of both disciplines, phenomenology and theology. (shrink)

Las libertades de que disponen las personas se encuentran condicionadas por el entorno en el que cotidianamente realizan sus actividades. El territorio se constituye entonces en determinante del espacio de oportunidades entre las que cada individuo puede elegir. Esto lleva a enfatizar la importancia de examinar las capacidades humanas en entidades geográficas específicas.En el artículo se retoma el Índice de Desarrollo Humano Territorial (IDHT), medida elaborada con el propósito de aumentar la validez del IDH-PNUD para dar cuenta de las brechas (...) espaciales a escala subnacional, y se aplican al mismo algunas modificaciones a fin de lograr una aproximación actualizada y más rigurosa al panorama del desarrollo humano en las provincias argentinas.Se detallan en primer lugar los ajustes metodológicos realizados al IDHT y se presentan luego los resultados de su aplicación a las provincias argentinas, describiendo la evolución que ha experimentado el desarrollo humano en dos puntos en el tiempo (2004-2008). (shrink)

Artefacts can influence our actions in several ways. They can be instruments, enabling and facilitating actions, where their presence affects the number and quality of the options for action available to us. They can also influence our actions in a morally more salient way, where their presence changes the likelihood that we will actually perform certain actions. Both kinds of influences are closely related, yet accounts of how they work have been developed largely independently, within different conceptual frameworks and for (...) different purposes. In this paper I account for both kinds of influences within a single framework. Specifically, I develop a descriptive account of how the presence of artefacts affects what we actually do, which is based on a framework commonly used for normative investigations into how the presence of artefacts affects what we can do. This account describes the influence of artefacts on what we actually do in terms of the way facts about those artefacts alter our reasons for action. In developing this account, I will build on Dancy’s (2000a) account of practical reasoning. I will compare my account with two alternatives, those of Latour and Verbeek, and show how my account suggests a specification of their respective key concepts of prescription and invitation. Furthermore, I argue that my account helps us in analysing why the presence of artefacts sometimes fails to influence our actions, contrary to designer expectations or intentions. (shrink)

In this highly accessible book, a distinguished philosopher says current focus on the brain conceals the real powers of the mind. Edward Pols revisits one of the basic topics of philosophy: what is the distinction between mind and body and what is the relation between them? He disagrees fundamentally with the many contemporary philosophers who concentrate on the findings of neurophysiology and cognitive science and so look only to the brain for the causes and explanation of mind. Pols concedes the (...) importance of such scientific studies but maintains that they focus on the infrastructure of mind and ignore the momentous difference between the infrastructure and mind itself. Pols calls upon the reader to attend to mind itself as a concrete and experientially available reality. This kind of attention, he argues persuasively, reveals mind to be at once causally dependent on the brain and causally effective on the physical processes of the brain and the world. Pols also examines the hierarchical view of mind and causality first proposed by Plato and Aristotle, the supersession of that view by the received scientific doctrine of causality, and the mistaken denial of the power of the mind to know an independent reality—a denial that resulted from the philosophical doctrines about knowing developed in the era that began with Descartes and ended with Kant. (shrink)

Certification for biofuels has been developed to ensure that biofuel production methods adhere to social and environmental sustainability standards. As such, requiring biofuel production to be certified has become part of EU policy through the 2009 renewable energy directive, that aims to promote energy security, reduce emissions and promote rural development. According to the EU RED, in 2020 10 % of our transport energy should come from renewable sources, most of which are expected to be biofuels. In this paper I (...) examine what biofuel certificates are, what they can achieve and what their limitations are. Methodologically, I will evaluate them using the standards of instrumental, practical and communicative rationality. With regard to instrumental rationality, I conclude that the EU RED makes an important but unjustified assumption in demanding certified biofuels for its target: that if biofuel production is sustainable, then biofuel use is too. I also argue that, where the EU assumes that biofuel certification is a sufficient means to achieve the EU RED’s goals, it is at best an insufficient means and at worst not a means at all towards achieving these goals. With regard to practical rationality, I argue that more attention needs to be paid to trade-offs between different goals in the EU RED, particularly with regard to providing investor security and not capping transport energy consumption. With regard to communicative rationality, I argue that the policy-making process of the EU RED has been seriously flawed, and that certification development processes also can improve significantly. (shrink)

I The Question of the Authenticity of Responsibility The Prima Facie Explanatory Value of Rational Action When we act, something comes into being : in the...

While there are many books on the romantics, and many books on Heidegger, there has been no book exploring the connection between the two. Pol Vandevelde’s new study forges this important link. Vandevelde begins by analyzing two models that have addressed the interaction between literature and philosophy: early German romanticism, and Heidegger’s work with poetry in the 1930s. Both models offer an alternative to the paradigm of mimesis, as exemplified by Aristotle’s and Plato’s discussion of poetry, and both German romanticism (...) and Heidegger owe a deep debt to Plato. The study goes on to defend the view that Heidegger was influenced by romanticism. The author’s project is thus both historical, showing the specificity of the romantic and Heideggerean works, and systematic, defending aspects of their alternative mode of thinking while also pointing to their weaknesses. (shrink)

In this brilliant analysis of mind-body problems Edward Pols adds new dimen­sions to the discussion of basic issues. The prisoner is Socrates, who, in a se­ries of actions involving moral decisions, finds himself under sentence of death, and who has now decided to undergo the sentence rather than accept the opportuni­ty to escape provided by powerful friends. Pols takes as his point of departure Socrates’ nai;ve statement of the contrast be­tween a scientific analysis of a moral action and the point (...) of view taken by the agent himself, and his rejection of the adequacy of the scientific analysis. (shrink)

Germany is joining a long list of European democracies that have modified or expressed a willingness to modify their citizenship laws to denationalize first and then prevent the return of or expel those citizens accused of having participated in terrorist activities abroad. The formal labelling of citizenship deprivation as an administrative measure outside the scope of criminal justice has prevented scholars of criminal law from undertaking a thorough scrutiny of its legitimacy. In this paper I seek to fill this gap. (...) Specifically, after demonstrating why deprivation of citizenship is a measure of a criminal nature, I argue against its legitimacy, either as a punishment or as a risk-based measure. Instead I propose that we should understand citizenship deprivation as a paradigmatic response from an illegitimate enemy criminal law. Notwithstanding the foregoing, I claim that states that choose to denationalize terrorists should do it within the framework of a process with the highest (criminal procedural) guarantees. (shrink)

Resumen: En su libro Whose Body is it Anyway? Justice and the Integrity of the Person, Cécile Fabre defiende que, en nombre de la justicia, los recursos de una sociedad deben redistribuirse entre los necesitados y que, entre esos recursos, está incluida la sangre humana, para cuya provisión propone la creación de un servicio civil obligatorio de donación de sangre. Lo que se hace aquí es examinar si, a pesar de lo paradójica que pueda resultar, cabría desarrollar su propuesta en (...) nuestro país. Abstract: In her book Whose Body is it Anyway? Justice and the Integrity of the Person, Cécile Fabre argues that, on behalf of justice, resources of a society should be redistributed to the needy and that, among those resources, human blood is included. For the provision of this material, she proposes the creation of a mandatory civilian service of blood donation. What we propose here is to check if, despite the paradox of his proposal, it could be developed a civilian service of blood donation in our country. (shrink)

Among the advocates of expressive theories of punishment, there is a strong consensus that monetary fines cannot convey the message of censure that is required to punish serious crimes or crimes against the person. Money is considered an inappropriate symbol to express condemnation. In this article, I argue that this sentiment is correct, although not for the reasons suggested by advocates of expressivism. The monetary day-fine should not be understood as a simple deprivation of money, but as a punishment that (...) reduces the offender’s capacity to consume for a certain period of time. Conceived in this manner, I argue that it is perfectly suitable to convey censure. However, the practical impossibility of ensuring that the person who pays the fine is the same person who has been convicted of the offense seriously undermines the acceptability of the monetary fine as an instrument of censure. Minimizing the risk of the fine’s hard treatment being transferred to third parties is a necessary condition for the monetary fine to be considered a viable alternative to lengthy prison sentences. (shrink)

This book is the first complete study of the translations of Machiavelli's Prince made in Europe and the Mediterranean countries during the period from the sixteenth to the first half of the nineteenth century: the first, unpublished French translation by Jacques de Vintimille (1546), the first Latin translation by Silvestro Tegli (1560), as well as the first translations in Dutch (1615), German (1692), Swedish (1757) and Arabic (1824). The first translation produced in Spain - dated somewhere between the end of (...) the sixteenth and the early seventeenth century - remained in manuscript form, while there was a second vernacular Spanish version around 1680. The situation in Great Britain was different from the rest of Europe, as it could boast four manuscript translations by the end of the sixteenth century. (shrink)

This dissertation provides an analysis of both the text and the context of the philosophy of love developed by Judah Abravanel, also known as Leone Ebreo . As a member of one of the most prestigious Jewish families of the Renaissance, Leone Ebreo was born and raised in Portugal, found temporary refuge in Spain and, after the exodus of 1492, lived most of his life in Renaissance Italy as a man-in-exile. His Dialoghi d'amore, which were first published in Rome in (...) 1535, are a conversation of and about love between a man and a woman, i.e., Filone and Sofia . We defend that the work was intended as a parable or diagram about the very nature of Philo-Sophy, and, at the same time, as a profound elaboration of the cosmic or transcendental nature of love itself. The Dialoghi d'amore are, thus, both a dramatic representation of a particular philosophy of love and a demonstration of how philosophy as such constitutes a form of love. ;A detailed analysis of Leone Ebreo's thought, both a major example of Renaissance Philosophy and a model of interpretation, will here be the way toward progress in our own philosophical treatment of love and of the ontological condition it manifests. Since they constitute a paradigmatic example of philosophical eclecticism in the Renaissance, the Dialoghi d'amore will be read as the representative encyclopedia about the culture of sixteenth-century Europe that they in fact are. ;Through a con-textual reading of Leone Ebreo's work we try to illustrate both the philosophical importance and the existential relevance of a text that, located as it is at a crucial moment of transition between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age, is clearly centered upon the Idea of Love and, as such, came to play a significant role in the development of European thought and letters. (shrink)

O texto se propõe a examinar o procedimento desconstrutivo levado a cabo por Jacques Derrida com relação a aspectos da filosofia da linguagem em Edmund Husserl, através especialmente da investigação e crítica da natureza da significação.

Nurses and ethicists worry that the implementation of care at a distance or telecare will impoverish patient care by taking out ‘the heart’ of the clinical work. This means that telecare is feared to induce the neglect of patients, and to possibly hinder the development of a personal relation between nurse and patient. This study aims to analyse whether these worries are warranted by analysing Dutch care practices using telemonitoring in care for chronic patients in the Netherlands. How do clinical (...) practices of nursing change when telecare devices are introduced and what this means for notions and norms of good nursing? The paper concludes that at this point the practices studied do not warrant the fear of negligence and compromised relations. Quite the contrary; in the practices studied, telecare lead to more frequent and more specialised contacts between nurses and patients. The paper concludes by reflecting on the ethical implications of these changes. (shrink)

What role does “discursive consciousness” play in decision-making? How does it interact with “practical consciousness?” These two questions constitute two important gaps in strong practice theory that extend from Pierre Bourdieu's habitus to Stephen Vaisey's sociological dual-process model and beyond. The goal of this paper is to provide an empirical framework that expands the sociological dual-process model in order to fill these gaps using models from cognitive neuroscience. In particular, I use models of memory and moral judgment that highlight the (...) importance of executive functions and semantic memory. I outline each model as it pertains to the aforementioned gaps in strong practice theory. I then use the models from cognitive neuroscience to create an expanded dual-process model that addresses how and when conscious mental systems override and interact with subconscious mental systems in the use of cultural ends for decision-making. Finally, using this expanded model I address the sociological debate over the use of interview and survey data. My analysis reveals that surveys and interviews both elicit information encoded in declarative memory and differ primarily in the process of information retrieval that is required of respondents. (shrink)

Dignity is a fundamental concept, but its meaning is not clear. This paper attempts to clarify the term by analysing and reconnecting two meanings of dignity: humanitas and dignitas. Humanitas refers to citizen values that protect individuals as equal to one another. Dignitas refers to aesthetic values embedded in genres of sociality that relate to differences between people. The paper explores these values by way of an empirical ethical analysis of practices of washing psychiatric patients in nursing care. Nurses legitimate (...) the washing of reluctant patients with reference to dignity. The analysis shows the intertwinement of humanitas and dignitas that gives dignity its fundamental meaning. (shrink)

Science and technology studies concerned with the study of lay influence on the sciences usually analyze either the political or the normative epistemological consequences of lay interference. Here I frame the relation between patients, knowledge, and the sciences by opening up the question: How can we articulate the knowledge that patients develop and use in their daily lives and make it transferable and useful to others, or, `turn it into science’? Elsewhere, patient knowledge is analyzed either as essentially different from (...) or similar to medical knowledge. The category of experiential knowledge is vague and is used to encompass many types of experience, whereas the knowledge of the `expert patient’ may be assumed to have the shape of up-to-date medical information. This paper shows through a case study of people with severe lung disease that patient knowledge can be understood as a form of practical knowledge that patients use to translate medical and technical knowledge into something useful to their daily life with disease. Patients coordinate this with homegrown know-how and advice from fellow patients, weighing different values - of which `taking good care of one’s body’ is but one - that may conflict in a specific situation. These practices result in sets of techniques that may be made useful to others. The paper argues for two alternatives to state-of-the-art medical research to turn patient knowledge into science: ethnographies of knowledge practices and the collection and making accessible of techniques. (shrink)