bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Emerging Technologies: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Authors: Gilli Andrea , Gilli Mauro
Published: July 2018

This chapter investigates the challenges and constraints European countries have faced in the adoption, integration, and production of unmanned aerial systems—also known as drones or remotely piloted vehicles. It illustrates the broader technological transformations that have accompanied the rise of unmanned systems and qualifies their nature and features. It then discusses the various European projects in this field and their outcomes, looking at three periods: the 1990s, the 2000s, and the 2010s. The analysis considers both the more successful cases as well as the more controversial programmes, discussing—when possible—the factors contributing to these outcomes, including the role of bilateral cooperation, of the EU, of NATO, and of industry. The chapter concludes with an overview of the field including the challenges ahead.
Semantic Paradox
Authors: Simmons Keith
Published: July 2018

Chapter 1 presents the aim of the book: to provide a solution to the semantic paradoxes. The solution makes two main claims. The first is that our semantic expressions ‘denotes’, ‘extension’, and ‘true’ are context-sensitive. The second, inspired by a brief, tantalizing remark of Gödel’s, is that these expressions are significant everywhere except for certain singularities, in analogy with division by zero. The chapter lays out two related desiderata for a solution. A solution should recognize that the proper setting of the semantic paradoxes is natural language, not regimented formal languages. And the solution should respect Tarski’s intuition that natural languages are universal, in the sense that they have the potential to say anything that can be said in any language.
Paradox and Context
Authors: Simmons Keith
Published: July 2018

Chapter 2 articulates and defends the claim that our semantic expressions ‘denotes’, ‘extension’, and ‘true’ are context-sensitive. The chapter focuses on three simple paradoxes of denotation, extension, and truth. Two phenomena emerge as we reason through these paradoxes. First, the phenomenon of repetition: in the course of our reasoning, we produce a repetition of the paradoxical expression. This repetition, though composed of the very same words as the paradoxical expression, is semantically unproblematic and has a definite value. Second, the phenomenon of rehabilitation: we can reflect on the paradoxical expression, taking into account its pathology, and produce an unproblematic semantic value for it. Repetition and rehabilitation are explained contextually, drawing on the work of Stalnaker and Lewis (and others) on context-change.
Revenge, II
Authors: Simmons Keith
Published: July 2018

Chapter 9 begins by examining the impact of revenge paradoxes on contextual theories of truth, including those of Parsons, Burge, Barwise and Etchemendy, and Glanzberg. These theories are hierarchical, and so are subject to revenge paradoxes that, roughly speaking, quantify over all levels. But the singularity theory is not hierarchical, and so is not subject to this kind of revenge. This chapter argues that a use of ‘true’ (or ‘denotes’ or ‘extension’) in a given context applies everywhere except to its singularities, and what escapes its reach is captured by other uses of ‘true’ in other contexts. Moreover, any use of ‘true’ applies even to the truths of the singularity theory, since these theoretical truths are not identified as singularities. The chapter concludes that the singularity theory is not compromised by revenge paradoxes, and respects Tarski’s intuition that natural languages are universal, while preserving classical logic and semantics.
What Does it Take to Act for Moral Reasons?
Authors: Hills Alison
Published: July 2018

It is better to give money to charity, say, for the sake of those in need, in response to moral reasons, rather than for reasons of self-interest. But what does responding to moral reasons involve? According to the Rational Guidance account, in order to act for moral reasons you need to be consciously aware of them as your reasons, and be guided by them in choosing your action. But there are several strong arguments against this theory. The chapter argues that to act for moral reasons, you need to treat the moral considerations as a reason. This treating as a reason is explained as the manifestation of a bundle of dispositions to act and draw practical conclusions on that basis. And though acting for reasons does not require conscious awareness of those reasons, a full appreciation of those reasons does involve that.
Beyond the People
Authors: Oklopcic Zoran
Published: July 2018

Who is ‘the people’? How does it exercise its power? When is the people entitled to exercise its rights? From where does that people derive its authority? What is the meaning of its self-government in a democratic constitutional order? For the most part, scholars approach these questions from their disciplinary perspectives, with the help of canonical texts, and in the context of ongoing theoretical debates. Beyond the People is a systematic and comprehensive, yet less disciplinarily disciplined study that confronts the same questions, texts, and debates in a new way. Its point of departure is simple and intuitive. A sovereign people is the work of a theoretical imagination, always shaped by the assumptions, aspirations, and anticipations of a particular theorist-imaginer. To look beyond the people is to confront them directly, by exploring the ways in which theorists script, stage, choreograph, record, and otherwise evoke the scenes, actors, actions, and events that permit us to speak intelligibly—and often enthusiastically—about the ideals of popular sovereignty, self-determination, constituent power, ultimate authority, sovereign equality, and collective self-government. What awaits beyond these ideals is a new set of images, and a different way to understand the perennial Who? What? Where? When? and How? questions—not as the suggestions about how best to understand these concepts, but rather as the oblique and increasingly costly ways of not asking the one we probably should: What, more specifically, do we need them for?
Constituent Imagination
Authors: Oklopcic Zoran
Published: July 2018

Building on the preliminary discussion of constituent imagination from Chapter 1, Chapter 2 clarifies the meaning of moving ‘beyond’ and proceeds to articulate the framework of assumptions behind the anti-imperialist struggles for national liberation, social emancipation, and international solidarity, and to explore three unstated charges behind the verdicts of their historical failure: their jeopardy, futility, and perversity. Rather than accepting these charges, Chapter 2 offers a more nuanced polemical anatomy of the concept of the people; a more elaborate account of scenic, figurative, and conceptual choices that might allow us to respond to the ‘rhetoric of reaction’ differently; the morphology of the ‘affective loop’ of popular sovereignty that will complicate that endeavour; and the features of the imaginary ‘spectroscope’ that will make it easier.
Nephos, Scopos, Algorithm
Authors: Oklopcic Zoran
Published: July 2018

Chapter 5 moves beyond the two most politically consequential understandings of the right to self-determination: attributed to Demos and Ethnos respectively. While normative theorists are not sure how to evoke these figures, this chapter treats them as ensembles that are extracted from Nephos; an even fuzzier and more granular political ‘aerosol’. Against it as a backdrop, the discrete locations of territorial rights will also appear more fuzzified—not as identifiable locations, but rather as Scopos; visual effects of concealed, but nevertheless contestable scopic regimes. Once its holders and objects appear in that light, otherwise incommensurable accounts of the right to self-determination will reveal a denominator they secretly share: a Kelsenian ‘tendency’—an aspiration to increase the degree of constituent attachments across the entirety of the spacetime of a constitutional order whose legitimacy is put in question by a demand for ‘self-determination’.
Constitutional Isomorphs
Authors: Oklopcic Zoran
Published: July 2018

Chapter 8 proceeds from the image of a sovereign state as a flat, two-dimensional surface and re-envisions the process of collective self-government as unfolding three-dimensionally, as a dynamic configuration of tendential responsiveness within the spacetime of a purposive constitutional order—a constitutional isomorph. In allowing us to move beyond constitutional self-government its aim is to dignify the plurality of constituent imaginations, deflate the claims of ethical and practical superiority of the liberal-democratic vision of popular self-government, render the idea of a forward-looking, and concretely purposeful constitutional order more sensible, and challenge the alleged inescapability of imagining the subject of constitutional self-government narratively.
Living on a Pale Blue Dot
Authors: Schrijver Karel
Published: July 2018

Over time, the Earth’s habitability for human beings has changed tremendously, despite the mild, slow changes in the Sun’s intensity and the slight shifts in Earth’s orbit: cycles of “Snowball Earth” put mile-deep glaciers all over the Earth, even into the tropics, whereas longer ago the atmosphere was completely different and impossible for humans to survive in. The interdisciplinary science of planetary habitability is revealing the intrinsic duality of processes that are both beneficial and detrimental to life: sunlight, magnetism, volcanism, chemical weathering, asteroid impacts, and even life around us. With so many processes, the balancing act of our comfortable planet is remarkable, perhaps unique. Ultimately, nature will destroy our habitable home, but not likely for a very, very long time, provided we ourselves do not cause things to derail.
The Theocratic Leviathan
Authors: Olsthoorn Johan
Published: July 2018

Hobbes’s views on church–state relations go well beyond Erastianism. Rather than claiming that the state holds supremacy over the church, Hobbes argued that church and state are identical in Christian commonwealths. This chapter shows that Hobbes advanced two distinct arguments for the church–state identity thesis over time. Both arguments are of considerable interest. The argument found in De Cive explains how the sovereign unifies a multitude of Christians into one personified church—without, intriguingly, any appeal to representation. Leviathan’s argument is premised on the sovereign’s authorized representation of Christian subjects. Authorization explains why, from Leviathan onwards, full sacerdotal powers are ex officio attributed to the sovereign. In Hobbes’s mature theory, every clerical power, including baptism and consecration, derives from the sovereign—now labelled ‘the Supreme Pastor’. Developments in Hobbes’s account of church personation thus explain Leviathan’s theocratic turn.
First Impressions
Authors: Bejan Teresa M.
Published: July 2018

The metaphor of ‘imprinting’ used to describe the process of education in Leviathan has long captured the imagination of commentators inclined to view Hobbes as a harbinger of modern totalitarianism. And yet its significance for recent scholarly debates about a ‘more tolerant’ Hobbes has been ignored. This chapter examines Hobbes’s metaphor in the broader context of his life and works in order to understand its implications for the sovereign’s role in regulating religion, not only outwardly, but in foro interno as well. Doing so reveals imprinting, like all of Hobbes’s metaphors, to have been carefully chosen. As a play both on a Platonic pedagogical analogy and the Pauline maxim, ‘Faith cometh by hearing’, it reflects Hobbes’s sensitivity to the curious moment in which he wrote—a moment in which the rise of a new culture of mass media and older traditions of philosophical and religious reflection on education would collide.
Hobbes on the Duty Not to Act on Conscience
Authors: Lloyd S. A.
Published: July 2018

Hobbes argued that when subjects conscientiously judge that they should disobey a civil law or sovereign command, they morally ought not to act on their conscience. They should instead obey their sovereign’s command, even though they think the commanded action is wrong or sinful. This is a striking position, which seems to imply a principle repudiated at Nuremberg. This chapter discusses how Hobbes arrives at this suspect principle, and its importance to his larger political project. It offers a limited defence of Hobbes’s principle. The chapter considers whether Hobbes’s argument for the duty not to act on conscience relies on ineliminable theological premises. If so, then considering the centrality of that argument to his political theory, we would be left with the surprising result that Hobbes’s political theory will not be defensible on purely secular assumptions.
A Bridge across the Rhine
Authors: Carrol Alison
Published: July 2018

This chapter introduces Alsace and contextualizes its interwar experience by tracing its longer history. Alsace was gradually incorporated into France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, annexed into Germany in 1871, and then returned to France in 1918 in the aftermath of the First World War and the Alsatian Revolution. Across these years, transfers of Alsatian sovereignty led to movements of the border between France and Germany. This chapter discusses Alsatian experiences of these years, and suggests that their impact was to unify the regional population that was divided by confession, class, gender, and milieu. In doing so it considers the ways in which cross-border contact shaped Alsatian society, while evolving ideas about borders ensured that the boundary was increasingly described as a dividing line between nation states.
Foundation Ownership and Firm Performance
Authors: Thomsen Steen
Published: July 2018

Foundation ownership of business companies is a governance structure which combines philanthropy and business. It is common in Northern Europe, particularly in Denmark. This chapter explains the basic governance structure, including the role of the foundation boards and company boards in foundation-owned companies, as well as the role of foundation law, government supervision and capital markets. It goes on to review the international evidence on the performance of foundation-owned companies, drawing on academic research from Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and the US. The evidence indicates that foundation ownership is a financially sustainable and socially responsive governance model, which could be more widely used around the world. However, successful foundation ownership requires a climate of good governance that cannot be taken for granted.
The Functions of the Stock Market and the Fallacies of Shareholder Value
Authors: Lazonick William
Published: July 2018

This chapter analyses the evolution of US stock markets in terms of five functions: ‘control’, ‘cash’, ‘creation’, ‘combination’, and ‘compensation’. I argue for the centrality of the control function in supporting innovative enterprise in the rise of US managerial capitalism. I then consider how each of the five functions can encourage value creation or, alternatively, empower value extraction, and trace the evolving roles of the five functions of the stock market in major US business corporations over the past century. Drawing upon this history, I conclude by critiquing the dominant ideology that, for the sake of superior economic performance, a company should be run to ‘maximize shareholder value’ (MSV). I indicate how MSV undermines the social conditions of innovative enterprise: strategic control, organizational integration, and financial commitment.
Downward Accountability
Authors: Child John
Published: July 2018

This chapter develops the case for including downward accountability as an essential component of corporate governance. Downward accountability refers to processes by which the senior managers of companies are held accountable to the people at lower levels. These are employees and, by extension, their families who are members of the communities within which the organizations operate. It contrasts with upward accountability through which senior managers are held accountable to higher-level boards of directors representing the interests of corporate principals. The shortcomings of upward accountability are seen to strengthen the case for incorporating downward accountability into corporate governance. The chapter identifies the potential benefits of downward accountability, examines practices through which it can be exercised, and reviews evidence on its performance impacts. While recognizing the limiting conditions and challenges to the successful implementation of downward accountability, these are not considered to be insurmountable.
What Is the (Supposed) Problem about Practical Reasoning?
Authors: Dancy Jonathan
Published: July 2018

This chapter lays out various considerations that have persuaded people, or that might have influenced people to believe, that reasoning cannot ‘conclude in’ action in the way that it can ‘conclude in’ belief. These include a sense that action is so unlike belief that it cannot figure anywhere in a process of inference; one cannot infer an action. Such suggestions are to be rejected in favour of the Aristotelian view that action can be the conclusion of reasoning, just as can belief. The chapter also makes some suggestions about how to conceive of action.
From the Practical to the Theoretical
Authors: Dancy Jonathan
Published: July 2018

This chapter shows how the various forms of theoretical reasoning—in particular, formal and probabilistic—can perfectly well be understood in the sort of way in which we are now understanding practical reasoning. There will be differences between practical and theoretical reasoning, but those differences are to be found in the ways in which we explain the various normative relations that play the driving role in the making of a case for doing, or believing, this or that. The structures are the same, but the explanations are not. This is true whether one thinks in terms of credences or more simply in terms of probability.
Introduction
Authors: Nolan Brian
Published: July 2018

This chapter sets out the central challenge facing rich countries, on which this volume is focused: how to restore inclusive economic growth and prosperity. It describes how rising inequality in the rich countries over recent decades is now widely seen as undermining growth and even more so the living standards and prospects of ordinary working families. It reviews key themes in the debate about why inequality has been rising, and why this should be such a central concern. The chapter then outlines the approach taken in this book, which is to examine in depth the experiences of ten rich countries, posing the same set of questions about what has happened to inequality and ordinary living standards over recent decades, and why. The aim is to learn from these varying experiences, analysed through a common lens, about how inclusive growth can best be supported.
France
Authors: Askenazy Philippe , Palier Bruno
Published: July 2018

This chapter describes France as apparently one of the few rich countries to have avoided a significant increase in income inequality in recent decades. However, stable average inequalities mask an asymmetric trend of income between age groups, the elderly improving their situation while the young see theirs worsening. Furthermore, it shows that behind this relatively still surface, a general trend of precarization of more and more ordinary workers is occurring. The importance of wage-setting processes and of regulation of the labour market is brought out, together with the way the tax and transfer systems have operated, in restraining the forces driving inequality upwards. Wage growth, while limited, has thus been reasonably uniform across the distribution and together with the redistributive system have kept household income inequality within bounds. However, in response to high unemployment both regulatory and tax–transfer systems have served to underpin the very rapid growth in precarious working over the last decade, representing a very serious challenge for policy.
How Has the Middle Fared in the Netherlands? A Tale of Stagnation and Population Shifts
Authors: Salverda Wiemer , Thewissen Stefan
Published: July 2018

This chapter sets out how inequality and real incomes across the distribution evolved in the Netherlands from the late 1970s through the economic Crisis. Inequality grew, though not dramatically, while wages showed remarkably little real increase. This meant that real income increases for households relied for the most part on the growth in female labour-force participation and in dual-income couples. The chapter highlights the major changes in population and household structures that underpinned the observed changes in household incomes at different points in the distribution. It also sets out key features of the institutional structures in the labour market and broader welfare state, and the centrality of the priority given to wage moderation and the maintenance of competitiveness in the growth model adopted throughout the period.
From Party Politics to Personalized Politics?
Authors: Rahat Gideon , Kenig Ofer
Published: July 2018

The book examines two of the most prominent developments in contemporary democratic politics, party change and political personalization, and the relationship between them. It presents a broad-brush, cross-national comparison of these phenomena that covers around fifty years in twenty-six countries through the use of more than twenty indicators. It demonstrates that, behind a general trend of decline of political parties, there is much variance among countries. In some, party decline is moderate or even small, which may point to adaptation to the changing environments these parties operate in. In others, parties sharply decline. Most cases fall between these two poles. A clear general trend of personalization in politics is identified, but there are large differences among countries in its magnitude and manifestations. Surprisingly, the online world seems to supply parties with an opportunity to revive. When parties decline, personalization increases. Yet these are far from being perfect zero-sum relationships, which leaves room for the possibility that other political actors may step in when parties decline and that, in some cases, personalization may not hurt parties; it may even strengthen them. Personalization is a big challenge to parties. But parties were, are, and will remain a solution to the problem of collective action, of channeling personal energies to the benefit of the group. Thus they can cope with personalization and even use it to their advantage.
Indicators of Party Change
Authors: Rahat Gideon , Kenig Ofer
Published: July 2018

The chapter examines nine of the chosen twelve indicators of party change. This group of nine contains widely used indicators and some that have been proposed and examined only by a few scholars. All these indicators examine the direct and the indirect links of parties with society. The indirect, mediated links include relationships between the extra-parliamentary organization and the “party in government” (party background of ministers and members of parliament); between the party and its members; and between parties and interest groups. The direct links with voters include voter attitudes toward parties (party identification), patterns of voter behavior (electoral volatility, electoral turnout), and the resulting party system (party system fragmentation, continuity of parties/emergence of new parties). The significance of each indicator is explained, its advantages and limitations are examined, and the trends over time for each one are presented.
Perception and the Vagaries of Experience
Authors: Millar Alan
Published: July 2018

An adequate theory of perception would be Direct Realist in that it represents our perception of things in our surroundings to be routinely direct. This paper considers what Direct Realism is and how it constrains a theory of sensory experience. Some Direct Realists—relationalists—hold additionally that, for instance, the visual experiences implicated in visual perceptions of our surroundings are essentially relational in that they are episodes of awareness of mind-independent objects. There are Direct Realists who are not relationalists. This discussion explores what is at issue between these different camps. Relationalists think that non-relationalists cannot make sense of the connection between perception and demonstrative thought. It is argued that the reasons commonly given for pessimism on this score are not good. A constructive proposal on behalf of non-relationalists is sketched. The discussion concludes by briefly considering whether the non-relationalist conception of experience enables us to make sense of empiricism.
Kant’s ‘Transcendental Deduction’
Authors: Stroud Barry
Published: July 2018

This chapter presents a straightforward structural description of Immanuel Kant’s conception of what the transcendental deduction is supposed to do, and how it is supposed to do it. The ‘deduction’ Kant thinks is needed for understanding the human mind would establish and explain our ‘right’ or ‘entitlement’ to something we seem to possess and employ in ‘the highly complicated web of human knowledge’. This is: experience, concepts, and principles. The chapter explains the point and strategy of the ‘deduction’ as Kant understands it, as well as the demanding conditions of its success, without entering into complexities of interpretation or critical assessment of the degree of success actually achieved. It also analyses Kant’s arguments regarding a priori concepts as well as a posteriori knowledge of the world around us, along with his claim that our position in the world must be understood as ‘empirical realism’.
Concepts of Colour and Limits of Understanding
Authors: Stroud Barry
Published: July 2018

This chapter examines some puzzling reflections by Ludwig Wittgenstein on the possibility of understanding concepts of the colours of things different from those already familiar to us. It begins with a discussion of Wittgenstein’s statement: ‘Someone who has perfect pitch can learn a language-game that I cannot learn’. In particular, it considers how Wittgenstein draws a connection between perfect pitch and concepts of colours and invites us to imagine people who speak of colours intermediate between red and yellow by means of fractions in a kind of binary notation representing different proportions of the colours at each end of the range from red to yellow. The chapter also analyses Wittgenstein’s views on whether the number system and the colour system ‘reside in our nature or in the nature of things’.
The Received Wisdom
Authors: Sullivan Meghan
Published: July 2018

This chapter introduces the reader to future discounting and some received wisdom. The received wisdom about rational planning tends to assume that it is irrational to have near‐biased preferences (i.e., preferences for lesser goods now compared to greater goods further in the future).Thechapter describes these preferences by introducing the reader to value functions. Value functions are then used to model different kinds of distant future temporal discounting (e.g., hyperbolic, exponential, absolute). Finally, the chapter makes a distinction between temporal discounting and risk discounting. It offers a reverse lottery test to tease apart these two kinds of discounting.
Personal Volatility
Authors: Sullivan Meghan
Published: July 2018

This chapter focuses on Premise (2) of the Arbitrariness Argument for Future Neutrality. It considers arguments that various forms of personal volatility license future‐directed personal discounting. The chapter introduces the metaphysics of personal identity by considering wholehearted, half‐hearted, and non‐reductionist approaches to personal identity. The latter two views allow for the possibility of personal discounting: caring less about a future stage of one’s life because of qualitative or numerical changes one will undergo. The chapter considers two strategies by which the non‐reductionist and the half‐hearted reductionist might defend personal discounting. The chapter argues that both strategies for defending personal discounting fail.
The Arbitrariness Argument (Again)
Authors: Sullivan Meghan
Published: July 2018

This chapter presents a non‐arbitrariness argument against future bias: (1) At any given time, a prudentially rational agent’s preferences are insensitive to arbitrary differences. (2) Being past rather than future is an arbitrary difference between events. (3) If you are future‐biased, your preferences are sensitive to when an event is scheduled relative to the present. (C) So, at any given time, future‐biased preferences are not rational. The chapter defends (2) by considering a variety of ways in which being past rather than future might be normatively significant. These include asymmetries in temporal properties, emotional reactions, attachment, control, andmetaphysical possibility. Thechapter argues that none of these asymmetries are normatively significant.
Locke and Descartes on Selves and Thinking Substances
Authors: Hamou Philippe
Published: July 2018

Locke’s construal of selves, persons, and thinking substances is notoriously difficult and the subject of wide controversy. In this chapter, it is suggested that we could go some way towards clarifying it by seeing it in the context of Descartes’s construal of the same or similar issues. The chapter argues that there are both strong threads of continuity (which may appear even stronger in the light of the recent reappraisal of Descartes’s so-called dualism) and a quite obvious (but often neglected) anti-Cartesian strand in Locke’s doctrine of the self. The target is to assess precisely where and why Locke departs from Descartes. The chapter shows, contrary to a common but misconceived view of Locke’s aim in Essay II. xvii, that it is not so much the Cartesian ‘substantiation’ of the self that Locke is arguing against, but rather its disembodiment.
Introduction
Authors: Okasha Samir
Published: July 2018

There is a familiar story about the place of teleology in biology that goes as follows. Since Aristotle, biologists have used a teleological idiom to describe living organisms, but the justification for doing so only became apparent with Darwin. Though the process of evolution by natural selection is mechanical and lacks foresight, Darwinism nonetheless licenses talk of function and purpose in nature. In statements such as ‘the polar bear’s white coat is for camouflage’ and ‘the cactus has spines in order to deter herbivores’, the teleological terms (‘for’, ‘in order to’) are really a way of talking about adaptive significance. Natural selection led polar bears to evolve white coats and cacti to grow spines because these traits helped to camouflage bears and protect cacti, so were adaptive. Thus Darwinism supplies a naturalistic basis for at least some of the teleological idioms that biologists had long used....
Grafen’s Formal Darwinism, Adaptive Dynamics
Authors: Okasha Samir
Published: July 2018

A core Darwinian idea is that evolution will lead to well-adapted organisms, with phenotypes that maximize their fitness relative to the available alternatives. Grafen’s ‘formal Darwinism project’ attempts to make this idea precise, by explicitly linking the process of natural selection and the optimality of individuals’ phenotypes. Grafen’s analysis ties in closely with the unity-of-purpose constraint on agency, but does not amount to a general vindication of adaptationist assumptions. Under frequencydependence, the theory of adaptive dynamics shows that natural selection does not necessarily lead to phenotypes which maximize fitness conditional on their being fixed in the population. These results suggest that there is no theoretical principle to the effect that natural selection will tend to produce adaptation. The justification for agential thinking in biology must thus be empirical, not theoretical.
The Evolution–Rationality Connection
Authors: Okasha Samir
Published: July 2018

There are two related dimensions to the evolution–rationality connection. The first is the evolution of rationality itself, thought of as an actual phenotypic attribute of some organisms; the second is the use of rationality-inspired concepts to describe evolved organisms, as in agential thinking. Rationality may be understood either as consistency of choice or as having good reasons for beliefs/actions; these notions have distinct domains of application. The adaptive significance of rationality over arationality is clear; what is less clear is whether evolution would always favour rationality over irrationality. In a simple model, an evolutionary basis for the norms of Bayesian rationality emerges; however, the model relies on restrictive assumptions. The possibility of an evolutionary naturalization of traditional rationality norms, though philosophically coherent, appears empirically unlikely.
Risk, Rational Choice, and Evolution
Authors: Okasha Samir
Published: July 2018

Decision-theoretic ideas arise in two areas of biology: risk-sensitive foraging, and the theory of evolution in variable environments. The former concerns the actual behavioural choices that organisms make, the latter the ‘choices’ made by natural selection. A natural suggestion is that both sorts of choices can be modelled in terms of expected utility maximization, the standard theory of rational decision in the face of risk. However, this is only true under particular model assumptions; it does not hold in situations involving a combination of aggregate and idiosyncratic risk. Mixed strategies further complicate the relation between rational and biologically optimal risk preferences. This implies a limit on the validity of the organism-as-rational-agent heuristic as a tool for understanding evolved behaviour.
The Importance of Being Rational
Authors: Lord Errol
Published: July 2018

The Importance of Being Rational systematically defends a novel reasons-based account of rationality. The book’s central thesis is that what it is for one to be rational is to correctly respond to the normative reasons one possesses. The book defends novel views about what it is to possess reasons and what it is to correctly respond to reasons. It is shown that these views not only help to support the book’s main thesis, they also help to resolve several important problems that are independent of rationality. The account of possession provides novel contributions to debates about what determines what we ought to do, and the account of correctly responding to reasons provides novel contributions to debates about causal theories of reacting for reasons. After defending views about possession and correctly responding, it is shown that the account of rationality can solve two difficult problems about rationality. The first is the New Evil Demon problem. The book argues that the account has the resources to show that internal duplicates necessarily have the same rational status. The second problem concerns the ‘normativity’ of rationality. Recently it has been doubted that we ought to be rational. The ultimate conclusion of the book is that the requirements of rationality are the requirements that we ultimately ought to comply with. If this is right, then rationality is of fundamental importance to our deliberative lives.
The Cosmic Microwave Background
Authors: Saha Prasenjit , Taylor Paul A.
Published: July 2018

The measurement of the acoustic modes of the cosmic microwave background have been perhaps the most exciting new astrophysical territory explored in the 21st century. This cosmological area includes the study of some of the earliest moments of the Universe, such as the significant change in state of going from a gas of ionized particles to one of atoms (called recombination), greatly reducing the opacity for photons, leading to the observable phenomenon of the microwave background today. This chapter builds up to a calculation of the sound horizon and hence the location of the first observed peak in the fluctuation spectrum.
‘Higher then to her no bookes doe reach’
Authors: Vandrei Martha
Published: July 2018

This chapter and the following both draw the reader into seventeenth-century understandings of the past, and of Boudica in particular, and makes clear that in a time before disciplines, writers of ‘history’ were erudite commentators, immersed in political thought, the classical world, and contemporary ideas, as well as in drama, poetry, and the law. Chapter 1 shows the subtleties of Boudica’s place in history at this early stage by giving sustained attention to the work of Edmund Bolton (1574/5–c.1634), the first person to analyse the written and material evidence for Boudica’s deeds, and the last to do so in depth before the later nineteenth century. Bolton’s distaste for contemporary philosophy and his loyalty to James I were highly influential in determining the way the antiquary approached Boudica and her rebellion; but equally important was Bolton’s deep understanding of historical method and the strictures this placed on his interpretive latitude.
Introducing the theme of the nations joining the people of Israel (Isaiah 14:1–2)
Authors: Lee Jongkyung
Published: July 2018

This chapter demonstrates that 14:1-4a shows an uncanny resemblance to chs 40-55 both in style and in the pattern of thought. Since there is no compelling reason to date the two lengthy poems (at least their main bodies) for which 14:1-4a currently serves as a bridge-text in the post-exilic period, it seems natural to adopt the view that 14:1-4a was written in the late-exilic period by the same circle of writers who wrote chs 40-55. The main function 14:1-2 was designed to serve in its immediate literary setting was to interpret the imminent fall of Babylon in light of the divine will to restore and establish Zion as a place where the people of Israel return to and where the nations come to join and attach themselves to YHWH’s people – one of the core arguments of chs 40-55.
Who planned this judgement against Tyre? (Isaiah 23:8–9, 11)
Authors: Lee Jongkyung
Published: July 2018

A detailed study of the oracle concerning Tyre shows that vv 5, 8-9, 11 disturb the general flow of the main poem (23:1-14). The original poem was about the fall of Sidon and it consisted of vv 1b-4, 6-7, 10, 12-14. Sometime later, v 5 was added to include Tyre in a poem where many other Phoenician cities also appeared. This led to the ‘false’ identification of the poem by the editor who gave the poem its heading in v 1a. Subsequently, vv 8-9, 11 were added in the late-exilic period as hypothesized by the present study. The closeness in style and thought of 23:8-9, 11 with 14:26-27 and chs 40-49 supports the late-exilic date of the passage. Finally, sometime during the post-exilic period, 23:15-18 was written to express a hope for Tyre’s revival and even conversion (arguably).
Introduction
Authors: Newlands Samuel
Published: July 2018

The introduction opens with a sketch of the state of contemporary Spinoza studies and argues that the time is ripe to return to Spinoza’s own self-described project of integrating metaphysics and ethics. It promises a systematic reading of the core of Spinoza’s metaphysical and ethical projects that tries to do justice to his innovative doctrines, while also treating him as an illuminating conversation partner for contemporary philosophical discussions, especially with contemporary analytic metaphysics. One of the overarching theses of this book is that conceptual relations form the backbone of Spinoza’s explanatory project and perform a surprising amount of work in his metaphysics and ethics. This introduction connects this thesis to Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism and outlines the work Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy does in the rest of the book.
The Desiderata of Perfection
Authors: Newlands Samuel
Published: July 2018

The first chapter opens with a challenge that any serious monist must face, one that Spinoza himself raised: how can a monist account for the world’s apparent diversity? It argues that Spinoza faces an especially sharp version of this long-standing question of the One and The Many, given his commitments to both maximal ontological parsimony and plenitude. After discussing the details of these ontological commitments, it is suggested that they ultimately stem not from the Principle of Sufficient Reason but from Spinoza’s account of metaphysical perfection, one that is similar to views held by the young Leibniz and, surprisingly enough, contemporary metaphysician Jonathan Schaffer.
Spinoza’s Conceptualist Strategy
Authors: Newlands Samuel
Published: July 2018

This chapter lays out in general terms how Spinoza uses the tools of conceptual sensitivity, variability, and identification to satisfy these competing desiderata of perfection. At its core, Spinoza’s strategy appeals to one of the most interesting features of concepts: one thing can be truly conceived in a variety of ways, even when the different ways involve distinctive content. This will be the key to Spinoza’s reconciliation project. If the world’s diversity is conceptually structured in the right ways, then Spinoza will be able to show how diversity is consistent with the various identity theses he also defends. We will then be primed to see how and why many of Spinoza’s central metaphysical views utilize this conceptualist machinery. Having focused on the more familiar cases of attribute and causal structure plenitude here, the rest of the book unpacks the consequences of Spinoza’s conceptualist gambit for his metaphysics and ethics.
Moral Transformation and Self-Transcendence
Authors: Newlands Samuel
Published: July 2018

This chapter shows how Spinoza’s ethics completes his conceptualist metaphysics, arguing that Spinoza privileges some of the plentiful ways of conceiving things over others on broadly practical grounds. It is in the self-interest of agents to conceive other things, as well as themselves, in the broadest, most inclusive ways. Spinoza thinks that the way to become a more virtuous agent is to reconceive oneself, a process that results in fundamental changes in an agent’s self-identity. Drawing on parallel contemporary work by Harry Frankfurt, it argues that Spinoza’s call to moral transformation is ultimately a call to a new self-identity, one that is far more powerful and stable, and perhaps even eternal. Although Spinoza holds out hope for our salvific transformation, he remains deeply pessimistic that we will ever enjoy much of it.
Theodor Mommsen, Louis Duchesne, and the Liber pontificalis
Authors: Franklin Carmela Vircillo
Published: July 2018

This chapter juxtaposes the theory and the practice of philology in the late nineteenth-century race to produce a modern critical edition of the Liber pontificalis. The resulting works, one by the French priest and church historian Louis Duchesne, the other by the classicist and German patriot Theodor Mommsen, showcase the editors’ divergent aims in the application of recensionist criticism, shaped as it was by their scholarly, national, religious, and personal loyalties. Mommsen’s edition adheres to the principles of ‘German’ critical philology and its desire to recover the original text; Duchesne’s two volumes exploit the nature of the medieval papal chronicle as a constantly changing ‘living text’ in order to emphasize the historical significance of its reception. Both editions illustrate the themes of marginality and canonicity as they relate to literary genre and historical period, to religious commitment and national sentiment, and to the tension between classical methodology and medieval texts.
Minor Roman Poetry in the Discipline and in the Profession of Classics
Authors: Edmunds Lowell
Published: July 2018

This chapter takes minor Roman poetry as a case of the marginal and discusses it as such, first in the discipline of classical studies and then in the profession. In the former it was ambiguous: inferior, but also worthy of editions by leading scholars. In the latter, the textual edition of a minor and of a major author were equally meritorious. After the 1960s this model changed and now philology + x was required, where x was some new approach or comparandum from outside the field. So the question arose of what minor Roman poetry looked like on this new model. Could it retain any of its former disciplinary and professional standing in the exponentially increased context of x?
Depth and Resonance
Authors: Clarke Katherine
Published: July 2018

In this chapter Herodotus’ world is explored as a resonant landscape in three main ways. First, through the human emotions of admiration and wonder generated by Herodotus both in his authorial voice and through characters in the narrative in response to both natural and man-made marvels. Here the multiple focalizations bring complexity through their range of responses. Secondly, depth is brought by the dimension of time, as mythological associations of the landscape are revealed, particularly by the progress of the Persian army through locations famous from myth and epic. Finally, additional resonance is brought by Herodotus’ implicit or explicit drawing of geographical parallels, in which different parts of his world reflect their associations on each other.
The Politics of Natural Resource Extraction in Zambia
Authors: Bebbington Anthony , Abdulai Abdul-Gafaru , Bebbington Denise Humphreys , Hinfelaar Marja , Sanborn Cynthia A. , Achberger Jessica , Huber Celina Grisi , Hurtado Verónica , Ramírez Tania , Odell Scott D.
Published: July 2018

By comparing historical periods of high and low social and economic investment related to the mining sector, this chapter explores the reasons why Zambia’s mineral wealth has not been translated into sustained and inclusive development. A political settlements approach is utilized to explore the dynamics of the governance of natural resources. The analysis reveals a level of continuity in political arrangements, a meta-settlement of some kind, which is founded on a long lineage of the power of foreign influence in shaping economic and social policies. While the building of political coalitions proved useful for establishing some level of stability in Zambia, these coalitions have not stimulated development and have tended to push non-dominant groupings to the political margins.
Evil, Feminism, and a Philosophy of Transformation
Authors: Clack Beverley
Published: July 2018

Rather than offering another ‘solution’ to the problem of evil, in the form of, say, a theodicy, the discussion of this chapter is situated within an ethical framework concerned with unmasking the enactment and perpetuation of ‘structural evils’ on the political and social levels. Indebted to the insights of feminist philosophers such as Michèle Le Doeuff, but also Hannah Arendt’s analysis of evil, the novelist Muriel Spark, and Pierre Bourdieu’s work on social suffering, the chapter seeks, not to justify the ways of God, but to critique and transform unjust structures, and to pave the way for alternatives that might best support human flourishing. This necessitates attempting to identify and understand the sources of human wickedness—social and individual—while contending that, ultimately, the only appropriate response to evil and suffering is to commit to a reorientation of the self towards others and the world.
Introduction
Authors: Lewens Tim
Published: July 2018

Many evolutionary theorists have enthusiastically embraced human nature, but large numbers of evolutionists have also rejected it. It is also important to recognize the nuanced views on human nature that come from the side of the social sciences. This introduction provides an overview of the current state of the human nature debate, from the anti-essentialist consensus to the possibility of a Gray’s Anatomy of human psychology. Three potential functions for the notion of species nature are identified. The first is diagnostic, assigning an organism to the correct species. The second is species-comparative, allowing us to compare and contrast different species. The third function is contrastive, establishing human nature as a foil for human culture. The Introduction concludes with a brief synopsis of each chapter.