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)

Many contemporary thinkers of the Anthropocene, who attempt to articulate a non-modern and relational ontology, all too readily dismiss critical theory inherited from the Frankfurt School for being anthropocentric, failing to acknowledge certain basic similarities. Instead, this article argues that the scaffolding of Anthropocene thinking—the recognition of the origins of the contemporary condition of ‘loss of world’ and the hope of ‘living on in the ruins’—share much with earlier critical theorists’ recognition that the Holocaust necessitated a fundamental break with the (...) past. In reading these two sets of literatures together, we suggest we can get a better grasp of the stakes involved in the contemporary crisis of critique, and in the speculative framings enabling alternative futures to come into being. (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)

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)

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)

Description: The common western understanding of Buddhism today envisions this major world religion as one of compassion and tolerance. But as the author Droit reveals, this view bears little resemblance to one broadly held in the nineteenth-century European philosophical imagination that saw Buddhism as a religion of annihilation calling for the destruction of the self. The Cult of Nothingness traces the history of the western discovery of Buddhism. In so doing, the author shows that such major philosophers as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, (...) Hegel, Cousin, and Renan imagined Buddhism as a religion that was, as Nietzsche put it, a negation of the world. In fact, says the author, such portrayals were more a reflection of what was happening in Europe at the time-when the collapse of traditional European hierarchies and values, the specter of atheism, and the rise of racism and social revolts were shaking European societies-than an accurate description of Buddhist thought. The author also reflects on how this history continues to echo in contemporary western understanding of Buddhism. The book includes a comprehensive bibliography on books on Buddhism published in the west between 1638 and 1890. (shrink)

After a contrast of the the prima facie complexity of the causality of the rational agent with the received scientific doctrine of causality, it is noticed that the prima facie causal authority of rational action belongs to a macroscopic domain in which all science and philosophy takes place and in which the formal/telic nature of that causality must be taken for granted. Any philosophical justification or philosophical criticism of the status of that macroscopic arena must therefore take place within that (...) same arena. It is then argued that a justification of the ontological status of that arena is possible by an exploitation of the reflexive resource of the rational awareness we exercise within that arena. It is claimed that this resource can be fairly described as the justification of our direct knowing of real beings/entities other than the knower and that such realistic knowing is at the same time an exemplary mode of causality having a complexity that is both formal/telic and hierarchical . In short, the rational agent is also a direct knower, and direct knowing requires a sense of "cause' more complex than the received scientific doctrine of causality provides. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Balanceren. Dat is waar sociale ondernemers onderlegd moeten in zijn: balanceren tussen sociale en economische doelstellingen, tussen empathie en zakelijkheid, tussen bedrijfsstabiliteit en sociale meerwaarde, tussen flexibiliteit en rigiditeit, tussen idealisme en realiteitszin. Sociaal ondernemen is dan ook een complexe uitdaging. Dat mag alvast een conclusie zijn van dit boek en het onderzoek waarop het gebaseerd is. Een andere vaststelling is dat sociale ondernemers, ook in moeilijke omstandigheden, bijzonder gedreven blijven om hun sociale missie waar te maken.0Er bestaat onmiskenbaar een (...) groeiende interesse in sociale en maatschappelijk verantwoorde bedrijfsvoering, die zich vertaalt in aandacht voor het welzijn en de ontwikkeling van de medewerkers, milieubewustzijn, duurzame productieketens, en dergelijke. Dit boek tracht inzicht te geven in welke vlag de lading ‘sociaal ondernemerschap’ dekt, zonder in zwart-witdenken te vervallen.0Het boek bouwt voort op wetenschappelijk onderzoek van de Hogeschool Gent, een samenwerkingsproject tussen de Faculteit Bedrijf & Organisatie en de onderzoeksgroep Sociale innovatie en Ondernemerschap van de Geassocieerde Faculteit Handelswetenschappen en Bestuurskunde. (shrink)

Discussing the workings of technology in care as aesthetic rather than as ethical or epistemological interventions focusses on how technologies engage in and change relations between those involved. Such an aesthetic study opens up a repertoire to address values that are abundant in care, but are as yet hardly theorized. Kamphof studies the problem that sensor technology reveals things about the elderly patients without the patients being aware of this. I suggest improvement of these relations may be considered in aesthetic (...) terms, for instance by developing the affective quality of people’s technological relationships. (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 article analyzes how the recent call for accounting in health care interferes with daily care practice and raises the question of how accounting practices relate to the aim of good care. The most influential accounting methods in the Netherlands suggest ways for professionals to legitimize their activities. The analysis of washing patients in long-term mental health care shows that different styles of accounting evaluate and legitimize care while structuring notions of what good care is. A specific style of accounting (...) enforces certain values but does not tell about the tragic or unexpected effects that come with it, nor does it provide a repertoire to deal with these. Thus, care practices incorporating specific styles of accounting remain dependent on forms of care that are not accountable or ask for new forms of reflexivity. (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)

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)

This paper is the English translation and adaptation of my inaugural lecture in Amsterdam for the Chair Anthropology of Everyday Ethics in Health Care. I argue that the challenges in health care may look daunting and unsolvable in their scale and complexity, but that it helps to consider these problems in their specificity, while accepting that some problems may not be solved but have become chronic. The paper provides reflections on how to develop a scientific approach that does not aim (...) to eradicate bad things but explores ways in which to live with them. Crucial in this quest is the attention to how we conceptualize problems, and whether this is specific enough for addressing present day concerns. I propose an anthropology of everyday ethics as a way to study people’s everyday ways of handling a variety of goods in practice. I draw specific attention to exploring aesthetic values in everyday life amongst these, values that are used abundantly to qualify events in everyday life but rarely theorized in philosophy or social science. (shrink)

The human enhancement debate typically centres on moral issues regarding changes in human nature, not on the means for these changes. We argue that one cannot grasp what is morally salient about human enhancement without understanding how technologies affect human action and practical reasoning. We present a minimalist conception of human agents as bounded practical reasoners. Then, we categorise different effects of technologies on our possibilities for action and our evaluation of these possibilities. For each, we discuss whether enhancement technologies (...) have morally salient effects; which technologies show these effects; and whether these differ significantly from those of other, non-enhancement technologies. We conclude that enhancement technologies are morally salient in several respects, that not all enhancement technologies share all those morally salient respects, and that continuities with traditional technologies may be found in all morally salient respects. (shrink)

I argue that Husserl’s notion of horizon and Searle’s notion of background offer a contextual model of perception that significantly reformulates the debate about the conceptual vs. nonconceptual content of perception. I illustrate the model by using a test case: the perception of an ancient Roman milestone—an example given by Husserl—which both Husserl and Searle consider to be a direct and immediate perception without inferences involved. I further differentiate Husserl’s and Searle’s views, arguing that Husserl’s model has the advantage of (...) accounting for the diachronic aspect of perception. (shrink)

J’examine pourquoi et dans quel sens l’imagination est présente dans un récit portant sur des faits ou des événements réels. Je présente le problème tel qu’il est énoncé par Paul Ricœur lorsqu’il introduit les trois genres du « Même », de « l’Autre » et de « l’Analogue » afin d’expliquer comment un récit peut rendre des faits et des événements « tels qu’ils se sont réellement passés ». J’en appelle, pour la solution, à la notion de « phantasma » (...) d’Edmund Husserl, qu’il considère comme le support de l’imagination pure, comme lorsque j’imagine un centaure. Le phantasma joue dans l’imagination pure le même rôle que les sensations dans la perception. Je soutiens qu’un récit comporte un phantasma – ce qu’il nous permet de visualiser et d’expérimenter à la lecture d’un récit – et que ce phantasma est analogue aux sensations de perceptions que les premiers observateurs avaient de ces faits et événements. Il n’y a donc pas, premièrement, de différence radicale entre la perception et l’imagination : toutes deux comportent un moment de « simple présentation » par le biais de sensations ou de phantasma, respectivement. Deuxièmement, la partie imaginative d’un récit nous permet de faire de nouveau l’expérience de faits et événements bruts sur le mode du « comme si ». (shrink)

The essay is an examination of two models that have been used to think what “meaning” or “sense” is. Husserl offers the first model in which there is an exchange between the sense that is made in experience and the meaning that is articulated at the linguistic or logical level. The second model is offered by Paul Ricoeur in his theory of narratives. A narrative has a link to what took place that Ricoeur calls “représentance” or “lieutenance”: the narrative configures (...) but at the same time does justice to what took place. The fiction involved in the “as” of “such as it was” is necessary for the “such” that guarantees an adequacy between the narrative and the action or event. I expand on these two models and offer a model of meaning that I call “translatability”. (shrink)

Following some remarks of Jacques Taminiaux on Gadamer, I examine the permeating presence of history and alterity in interpretation by contrasting Gadamer’s views with Davidson’s notion of “radical interpretation.” I start by examining the debate they held with each other on several occasions. I then analyze Gadamer’s understanding of interpretation as a “hermeneutic experience” and Davidson’s method of “triangulation.” They both agree that interpretation should be free from the psychological turmoil of either divining an author’s intent or projecting the reader’s (...) expectations. The fundamental difference is that, for Davidson, interpretation is an ahistorical process taking place in the synchrony of interpreter and observed subjects, whereas for Gadamer interpretation is a historical “event,” in which something “happens” and contributes to the making of history. (shrink)

As a response to the common criticism that phenomenology is handicapped by its descriptive faith, this article outlines a program for showing what a rational justification can be from a phenomenological perspective. The phenomenological position defended here stands between Rorty's thesis of objectivity in solidarity and Habermas's view of rationality through universal claims. In the first part of the article, I show how a justification of a stance, an action, or a behavior can only make appeal to standards and criteria (...) which derive from a culture; in the second part, I argue that, since justification involves the making of claims, a claim makes both its author and its community accountable and liable for what is claimed; the third part shows how the encounter between cultures and communities exerts a greater scrutiny on claims made in one culture or community, thereby leading to progress in the justification process. Key Words: deconstruction • justification • phenomenology • relativism • validity claims. (shrink)

Following some remarks of Jacques Taminiaux on Gadamer, I examine the permeating presence of history and alterity in interpretation by contrasting Gadamer’s views with Davidson’s notion of “radical interpretation.” I start by examining the debate they held with each other on several occasions. I then analyze Gadamer’s understanding of interpretation as a “hermeneutic experience” and Davidson’s method of “triangulation.” They both agree that interpretation should be free from the psychological turmoil of either divining an author’s intent or projecting the reader’s (...) expectations. The fundamental difference is that, for Davidson, interpretation is an ahistorical process taking place in the synchrony of interpreter and observed subjects, whereas for Gadamer interpretation is a historical “event,” in which something “happens” and contributes to the making of history. (shrink)