bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Geometry of Temporal Structure
Authors: Yust Jason
Published: May 2018

The associahedron is a geometric object, a multidimensional solid, whose vertices can be understood to represent the possible temporal structures on a given number of events. We can use it to relate temporal structures, such as two temporal structures on the same events in different modalities. Comparison of disjunct tonal and formal structures can be understood, for instance, as structural appoggiaturas or anticipations depending on which direction they point within the associahedron. This is illustrated with a number of analytical examples from previous chapters. A more symmetrical solid, the permutohedron, is embedded within the associahedron, and distance from the center of the permutohedron can be used as a measure of evenness for a temporal structure.
The United Kingdom
Authors: McCabe Joshua T.
Published: May 2018

Chapter 5 examines how in the UK the Blair government’s promise to end child poverty translated into the introduction of the Working Families Tax Credit in 1998, which was subsequently split into the Working Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit in 2001. The UK follows the Canadian case in terms of tracing the dominant logic of income supplementation to the cultural legacy of family allowances and ends up with the same combination of refundable tax credits. When the Labour government reached the limits of income-testing, the Treasury quietly turned to fiscalization as the solution to expand benefits in the face of pressures for austerity. The Family Income Supplement was simply converted into the Working Families Tax Credit. While its predecessor had been classified as spending, the Working Families Tax Credit was classified as revenues not collected. The limits of fiscalization were soon tested, as the Office of National Statistics called the government’s reclassification into question.
The United States
Authors: McCabe Joshua T.
Published: May 2018

Chapter 6 looks at how the National Commission on Children brought attention to the problem of child poverty in the US, leading to the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit in 1993 and the introduction of the nonrefundable Child Tax Credit in 1997. In contrast to the cases of Canada and the UK, the growth of these tax credits, tracing their legacy to the dependent exemption in the tax system, was premised on the logic of tax relief rather than the logic of income supplementation. Originally, the National Commission on Children released recommendations for a fully refundable Child Tax Credit as the best way to tackle child poverty. This served as a successful springboard in Canada and the UK. This was not the case in the US, where the logic of tax relief remained dominant. Initial attempts to introduce a fully refundable Child Tax Credit quickly failed. Policymakers and the public deemed poor children undeserving of tax credits because their parents were not technically taxpayers.
Conclusion
Authors: McCabe Joshua T.
Published: May 2018

Chapter 7 reviews the evidence presented in the previous chapters. It summarizes the support for my theories of fiscalization, presents an extensive discussion of alternative arguments, and explains why these other theories are wrong or cannot explain as well as my theories do the timing or the shape that fiscalization took in the US, the UK, and Canada. It concludes with a discussion of the theoretical implications of for the study of culture and political institutions and its practical implications for reform-oriented advocates interested in the politics of tax and antipoverty policies. This discussion includes a detailed blueprint for a politically viable consolidation of child-related tax benefits that would bring the US’s child poverty rate down in line with other liberal welfare regimes.
Comparing Post-communist Authoritarianism in Russia and China
Authors: Chen Cheng
Published: May 2018

The studies of post-communist Russia and China have traditionally been dominated by single-case studies and within-region comparisons. This chapter explores why the CAS of post-communist Russia and China is difficult, why it is rare, and how it could yield significant and unique intellectual payoffs. The cross-regional comparative study of anti-corruption campaigns in contemporary Russia and China is used as an example in this chapter to argue that a well-matched and context-sensitive comparison could reveal significant divergence in the elite politics and institutional capacities of these regimes that would otherwise likely be obscured by single-case studies or studies restricted to one single geographical area such as “Eastern Europe” or “East Asia.” By breaking Russia and China out of their respective “regions,” the CAS perspective thus enables us to better capture the full range of existing diversity of post-communist authoritarianism.
Gaining by Shedding Case Selection Strictures
Authors: Saylor Ryan
Published: May 2018

Advice on case selection often emphasizes selecting on some set of similar traits for controlled comparison—but without attention to regional contexts. This chapter highlights the benefits of unconventional cross-regional comparisons within the framework of comparative area studies (CAS), at least when analyzing the impact of natural resource booms on political institutions. Prevalent views on the resource curse see commodity booms as usually enervating institutions. However, a cross-regional comparison of African and Latin American cases can be employed to generate an alternative argument. Where resource booms simultaneously benefit exporters within and outside of the ruling coalition, threatened coalition insiders have responded with institutional fortification. This is true of the period of “dual enrichment” in Argentina (1852–86). In contrast, booms that exclusively benefit exporters within or outside of the ruling coalition do not create such existential threats and allow institutions to remain weak. This is evident in Colombia (1880–1905) and Ghana (1945–66).
Common Law Constitutionalism
Authors: Nelson William E.
Published: May 2018

This chapter shows how common law pleading, the use of common law vocabulary, and substantive common law rules lay at the foundation of every colony’s law by the middle of the eighteenth century. There is some explanation of how this common law system functioned in practice. The chapter then discusses why colonials looked upon the common law as a repository of liberty. It also discusses in detail the development of the legal profession individually in each of the thirteen colonies. Finally, the chapter ends with a discussion of the role of legislation. It shows that, although legislation had played an important role in the development of law and legal institutions in the seventeenth century, eighteenth-century Americans were suspicious of legislation, with the result that the output of pre-Revolutionary legislatures was minimal.
The Well-Functioning Empire of the Mid-Eighteenth Century
Authors: Nelson William E.
Published: May 2018

The governmental institutions of the British Empire functioned effectively in the mid-eighteenth century in the interests of royal officials, merchants, and others in Great Britain as well as in the interests of the inhabitants of most of its thirteen colonies. Of course, there were some difficulties—some disputes went unresolved, some taxes unpaid, and some criminals never punished. The main work of the legal system was debt collection, and despite many inefficiencies, the system functioned well enough for the flow of lending and credit to continue. From the perspective of 1750, it was inconceivable that the empire would come apart a quarter of a century later.
Columbanus and Shunning
Authors: O'Hara Alexander
Published: May 2018

Although it is easy to read our patchy evidence about Columbanus as depicting a lone Irish figure with his deviant Easter tradition battling against a continental ecclesiastical hierarchy comprising bishops and the pope, this paper’s close reading and contextualization of the evidence provides a more nuanced picture. It reveals extensive common ground between the high Christian standards of both Columbanus and Gregory the Great, over against the laxity of the Gallic episcopate, and then focuses on the issue of “shunning,” or withholding oneself from relations with Christians one perceives as sinful, although they have not been excommunicated. A second section examines the Insular background to this, focusing on Gildas’s writings. Finally the third section turns to Columbanus’s dealings with the Merovingians, using the Insular tradition of shunning as a way of re-reading Jonas’s account of how relations between Columbanus and the royal court soured, ending in his exile. Encounters between Columbanus and those with whom he came into contact on the continent have been characterized as confrontation and controversy, reflecting one important aspect of his relations with leading figures. This perception of Columbanus arises from the patchy nature of historical sources. This chapter interrogates the few available sources and tries to place them in context and understand the issues surrounding them. First it investigates his relationship with Gregory the Great, raising the issue of “shunning,” or withholding oneself from relations with Christians one perceives as sinful, although they have not been excommunicated. Then it turns to Columbanus’s dealings with the Merovingians leading up to his exile, using the awareness of shunning as a way of re-reading Jonas’s account of how relations between Columbanus and the royal court soured, ending in his exile.
Between the Devil and the Deep Lake Constance
Authors: O'Hara Alexander
Published: May 2018

In his Vita Columbani Jonas of Bobbio provides the earliest instance of an interpretatio Christiana of the Alamannic god Woden, unequivocally identifying him with the devil. The significance of Jonas’s story about Columbanus and the pagan Alamanni does not lie in its preservation of any authentic details of Alamannic ritual, but rather in the fact that this is the oldest instance of interpretatio Christiana in the Germanic-speaking world.
Drinking with Woden
Authors: O'Hara Alexander
Published: May 2018

In a widely known passage of the Vita Columbani (I.27), Jonas of Bobbio introduces the god Woden. This is the oldest mention of the deity in a narrative source. In a very brief chronological arc, two further attestations suggest the new significance assumed by the god in the seventh century. This chapter explores the evolving meaning of Woden up to the the Carolingian period. It suggests that Woden and other markers of barbarism and paganism were not a simple reflection of actual barbarism and non-Christian belief. They were part of a wider repertory of signs and habits used by military elites for self-representation. Following the rise and fall of Woden’s suitability for the barbarian aristocracies from the seventh to the ninth centuries, the chapter frames these evolving strategies of representation in the social and political landscape of Europe.
People and publications
Authors: Nicholls Simon , Pushkin Michael , Ashkenazy Vladimir
Published: May 2018

A critical account, first, of Skryabin’s friend and chronicler Leonid Sabaneyev. Sabaneyev, a close personal associate of the composer, is the commentator on Skryabin most quoted in the West; his ironically sceptical attitude colours much of the comment published in English-speaking countries. His publications during Skryabin’s lifetime, which uncritically promulgate the composer’s music and ideas, are not quoted, however. Sabaneyev’s switch of allegiance on the death of Skryabin, the background to his theory of ‘genius’, and the reaction of his contemporaries to his personality and writing are examined. A background to the publisher of Skryabin’s writings, Mikhail Gershenzon, is then given, looking at Gershenzon’s indirect personal links with the Skryabins and the beliefs and ideas of Gershenzon which would have disposed him to show an interest in the composer’s thought. (129)
Voter Preferences over Bundles of Roll Call Votes
Authors: Buchler Justin
Published: May 2018

Legislators do not adopt locations in the policy space with a single action. Instead, they cast roll call votes. Thus, rational voters should evaluate legislative candidates, not based on their locations in the policy space, but based on the bundles of roll call votes implied by those locations. Voters with single-peaked, symmetric preferences over policy can prefer a distant candidate to a more proximate candidate when they rank legislative candidates based on the bundles of roll call votes implied by their locations. When the most substantively important votes on the legislative agenda are the votes that divide the party factions cleanly, extreme incumbents from both parties can defeat moderate challengers from the opposing party given the same legislative agenda.
The Costs of Incremental Positioning
Authors: Buchler Justin
Published: May 2018

Since legislators adopt their positions in the policy space incrementally, by casting roll call votes, we must calculate the costs of adopting insincere locations incrementally. When pivotal, the cost of an insincere roll call vote can be unboundedly large, and it will generally be irrational for pivotal legislators to vote insincerely on major legislation, even when they expect to face electoral punishment. This can explain observations about the House vote for the 1993 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, and the Senate vote for the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. However, legislators rarely expect to cast pivotal votes, and nonpivotal votes have no policy consequences. Thus, legislators can usually position themselves anywhere in the policy space, without cost. This begs the question—why do legislators ever adopt electorally suboptimal positions in the policy space?
The Rhetoric of Screen Stories
Authors: Plantinga Carl
Published: May 2018

This chapter argues that screen stories are often didactic; either explicitly or implicitly, they make a sociomoral or political case. They cue spectators to judge, believe, and feel in certain ways toward characters, situations, and other entities, both fictional and actual. They also promote certain moral sensitivities, actions, responses, and beliefs. Stories are like trolley problems more fully narrativized. Screen stories offer evidence and affective incentives to make judgments, and to have sensitivities, beliefs, and responses, cued by the narration. Chief among these incentives are various sorts of affective pleasures that reward spectators for their cooperation and the fact that public narratives may draw on the forces of social attunement. The chapter ends with a discussion of the qualities of stories that make them persuasive, according to contemporary social science.
Conclusion
Authors: Plantinga Carl
Published: May 2018

The conclusion briefly summarizes the argument of Screen Stories: Emotion and the Ethics of Engagement. Stories on screens are rhetorically powerful in large part due to the emotions they elicit. The conclusion goes on to list ten tenets or features of an ethics of engagement that constitute an ethical response to that power. In addition to the claims about emotion, these tenets include an insistence on the consideration of mainstream stories on an individual basis, an affirmation of celebration and praise as well as critique, the avoidance of reductive “lumping” criticism, the claim that the immersive experience may also elicit critical thinking, an affirmation of possible ethical values other than critical thinking, the claim that attention to characters as moral agents is sometimes compatible with sociopolitical analysis, and an affirmation of the importance of form in the determination of ethical significance.
A Guide for a Systematic Qualitative Analysis
Authors: Rosenblatt Fernando
Published: May 2018

This chapter develops in detail the methodological research strategy followed in the study. It describes the connection between concepts and analysis. Most of the evidence used for assessing party vibrancy in Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica came from in-depth interviews with party leaders and an extensive reading of relevant primary and secondary sources on these parties’ and countries’ political and organizational histories. The chapter discusses the basic procedures used in the interview research and the relationship between unit of observation and unit of analysis. The chapter discusses in detail how each of the causal factors was assessed using the interviews, and how their presence or absence was determined, based on the qualitative evidence collected.
Costa Rica
Authors: Rosenblatt Fernando
Published: May 2018

This chapter analyzes the trajectory of the major political parties in Costa Rica: PLN, PUSC, PAC, and, more briefly, ML and Frente Amplio. The chapter reviews the critical effect of the 1948 civil war on the consolidation of Trauma. It also shows how the effect on vibrancy of Trauma—that is, collective suffering—differs from the effect of individual (still, political) suffering. The long-term trajectory of the PLN illustrates the gradual erosion of Trauma and the loss of Purpose. The chapter further discusses how the intersection of Channels of Ambition and moderate Exit Barriers engenders a weaker level of vibrancy. Finally, the analysis of the PUSC is one of the clearest examples of rapid organizational deterioration, and the first years of the PAC as a party organization highlight the challenges of consolidating a vibrant party in the absence of a defined Purpose.
Conclusions
Authors: Rosenblatt Fernando
Published: May 2018

This chapter presents the study’s conclusions. It emphasizes the virtues of an organizational analysis of political parties and the value of a long-term perspective for analyzing the reproduction of party organizations’ vibrancy. The chapter first summarizes the core components of the book and the main empirical conclusions. Second, it extends the theory to other cases: AD in Venezuela, PT in Brazil, and some brief speculations in other regional contexts. The chapter also discusses the challenges ahead for further development of the theory and future empirical analyses. Finally, the chapter closes with a discussion of the relationship between party vibrancy and democratic consolidation, emphasizing the trade-offs and the inherent difficulty of consolidating vibrant parties.
Stravinsky’s Aesthetics of Disability
Authors: Straus Joseph N.
Published: May 2018

The central features of Stravinsky’s musical style, including its formal splinteredness, its harmonic immobility, its stratification into contrasting textural layers, and its radical simplification of musical materials, can be understood as ways of representing and narrating disability, including deformity/disfigurement, mobility impairment, madness, and idiocy. These representations sometimes perpetuate pernicious eugenic-era stereotypes and sometimes are more accepting, even celebratory, of extraordinary bodies. This chapter offers a close look at three musical works from Stravinsky’s early “Russian” period, with particular attention to a few selected passages: the “Russian Dance” from Petrushka (1911), the “Dance of the Young Girls” from the Rite of Spring (1913), and the second of the Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914).
Polarization and Politics
Authors: Campbell John L.
Published: May 2018

Chapter 6 explains how the three long-standing trends described in earlier chapters fed into rising political polarization, especially in Washington. First, the rise of neoliberalism pushed both Republicans and Democrats to the right, with Republicans moving farther than Democrats. Second, as stagflation and globalization unfolded, organized labor grew weaker and its support for the Democratic Party diminished. Big corporations’ support for the Democratic Party eroded too. But while economic issues were pushing both parties to the right, they also polarized them by driving wedges between generations and between men and women on important policy issues. Third, politics became polarized racially. White working-class voters switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party, which insinuated that Democratic policies were threatening white privileges. This sparked a white backlash against the Democrats. Immigration and then the 9/11 terrorist attacks racialized political divisions further.
Getting Told and Being Believed
Authors: Moran Richard
Published: May 2018

This chapter argues for the centrality of believing the speaker (as distinct from believing the statement) in the epistemology of testimony, and develops a line of thought from Angus Ross which claims that in telling someone something, the kind of reason for belief that a speaker presents is of an essentially different kind from ordinary evidence. Investigating the nature of the audience’s dependence on the speaker’s free assurance leads to a discussion of Grice’s formulation of non-natural meaning in an epistemological light, concentrating on just how the recognition of the speaker’s self-reflexive intention is supposed to count for her audience as a reason to believe P. This is understood as the speaker’s explicitly assuming responsibility for the truth of her statement, and thereby constituting her utterance as a potential reason to believe its content.
Illocution and Interlocution
Authors: Moran Richard
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the idea of a “second-personal stance” as developed by Darwall and others, and notes some differences with the notion of “addressing” developed here, particularly with respect to the difference between theoretical and practical reasons. Austin’s distinction between the “illocutionary” and the “perlocutionary” is discussed in connection with Joseph Raz’s idea of the exercise of a normative power. The particular sense of “act” that applies to the perlocutionary status of utterances is illuminated by Jennifer Hornsby’s development of the idea of “reciprocity” as the distinguishing mark of the illocutionary (and hence of acts like telling). The chapter ends with further comparison and contrast between acts of telling and promising.
The Social Act and Its Self-Consciousness
Authors: Moran Richard
Published: May 2018

The chapter returns to the idea of two forms of agential knowledge, as that applies to “social acts of mind,” and act-descriptions which only apply to what is done intentionally (Anscombe). This leads to a discussion of the first person in illocution and the meaning of “hereby,” and Tugendhat’s idea of the “relativization of the distinction between speaker and hearer.” It is argued that the focus of much epistemological work on testimony is exclusively on the “consumer’s” perspective on testimony, which favors the “Indicative” model, but this misses the complementarity of the speaker’s and interlocutor’s perspectives. The meaning of mutuality in communication is examined in connection with the “third clause” of Grice’s formulation, recent criticisms of the need for that clause, and Strawson’s notion of communication that is “essentially avowable.”
Understanding the Issues
Authors: Lafollette Hugh
Published: May 2018

The gun control debate is often cast as if there were two options: we either have it or we don’t. This is a mistake. Our real options lie along five different, albeit overlapping, continua. The first three concern public policy: who should be permitted to have which firearms, and how should we regulate the guns we permit people to have. The fourth and fifth continua concern prudential and moral judgments: whether it would be wise or moral for people to own firearms independently of the how we answer the policy questions. I outline the history of firearms from their inception into the early twentieth century. I explain when and where they were initially used, how they were refined and developed, and why they played a special role in the history of the United States. This history isolates three key facts about firearms that inform the gun control debate.
Evaluating the Empirical Evidence
Authors: Lafollette Hugh
Published: May 2018

Putative authorities espouse incompatible claims about the costs and benefits of permitting extensive private ownership of guns. In the face of this disagreement, what is a conscientious citizen or legislator to do? I explain how one might determine if a reputed authority really is an authority. I then explore ways to evaluate the experiments and findings of prominent gun researchers. I first discuss the two pillars of the pro-gun arguments and explains why both are wanting. It then evaluates the pro-control arguments. I show why, their claims, although suggestive, are not wholly persuasive. I further, explain why there we also cannot obtain rock solid empirical evidence of the benefits of control.
Properties of dynamical space-times
Authors: Maggiore Michele
Published: May 2018

An introduction to advanced tools of General Relativity, later used in the study of binary black-hole coalescences. Hamiltonian formulation of General Relativity, ADM mass and angular momentum, irreducible black-hole mass, Newman-Penrose scalars and gravitational radiation.
The Common Stage
Authors: Rhodes Neil
Published: May 2018

The emergence of the public theatres in England during the last quarter of the sixteenth century reinvigorated the polemics against fiction which characterized the Reformation era. This chapter focuses on the 1590s, when the ‘private’ theatres were closed, and shows Marlowe in dialogue with Gosson as he strives extravagantly to go beyond the common. It then turns to Shakespeare, whose Venus and Adonis rejects the common, but whose most popular play, 1 Henry IV, created its appeal through its deliberate transgressions of rank, while offering a critique of popularity itself. In Hamlet this takes the form of a critique of the commonplace, as the aesthetic of the common stage is challenged by the reopened ‘private’ theatres. At the end of the decade, anthologies such as Bodenham's Belvedere provide a vernacular echo of Erasmus’ compilations at the beginning of the century as vehicles through which the common could achieve literary status.
Vagueness and Language
Authors: Bacon Andrew
Published: May 2018

Two theoretically important notions are distinguished in this chapter: sentential vagueness and propositional vagueness. While one may acknowledge the existence of both notions, most theories of vagueness take the former to be more fundamental and to thus figure more prominently in the explanation of the puzzles of vagueness. Drawing on the analogous debate between linguistic and propositional theories of modality, the chapter formalizes linguistic and propositional theories of vagueness and highlights some difficulties for the linguistic approach. This chapter also explores possible ways to translate between sentential and propositional theories of vagueness, and examines, for example, the problem of ‘quantifying in’, and Montague’s paradox.
Taming Capitalism before its Triumph
Authors: Yamamoto Koji
Published: May 2018

This study revisits England’s culture of economic improvement between 1640 and 1720, a crucial period of its transformation into a global power backed by strong domestic industries. It is often suggested that England in this period grew confident of its prospect for unlimited growth. Merchants, inventors, and others proposed achieving profit and abundance. Such promises were then, as now, prone to perversion, however. The distinguishing feature of this study is to draw on the early modern concept of ‘projecting’ to explore the darker sides of England’s obsession with improvement. Thriving literary culture under the early Stuart kings gave rise to a predominantly negative public understanding of entrepreneurs or ‘projectors’ as people pursuing the Crown’s and their own profits at the public’s expense. The book examines how this emerging public distrust came to shape the nature of embryonic capitalism in the subseqeuent decades. By criticizing greedy projectors, the incipient public sphere helped reorient the practices of entrepreneurs and statesmen away from the most damaging of rent-seeking behaviours. Far from being a recent response to mainstream capitalism, ideas about publicly beneficial businesses have long shaped the pursuit of wealth, power, and profit. The book unravels this rich history of broken promises of public service and the ensuing public suspicion as early modern actors experienced it to throw fresh light on the emergence of consumer society and the financial revolution towards the end of the seventeenth century.
Introduction
Authors: Yamamoto Koji
Published: May 2018

Early modern England has attracted much scholarly attention due to its precocious economic development. Yet it was not just a society driven by the cheerful prospect of infinite improvement. It demands our fresh attention today precisely because it was a society that was, like ours, deeply anxious about detrimental aspects of wealth creation. The notion of projecting is useful because early modern actors used it to engage with this problem. This chapter defines projecting, and places it within a set of broader themes in early modern historiography. A history of projecting enables us to examine shady aspects of England’s culture of improvement. It thereby unravels the arduous process of taming capitalism as early modern contemporaries experienced it, a story that Adam Smith and his students have long since put aside.
Contexts and Contours
Authors: Yamamoto Koji
Published: May 2018

This chapter sketches the contours of projecting as a discourse and the concrete activities during the period covered by the book. Combining data drawn from patents for inventions and the English Short Title Catalogue, it identifies two peaks of projecting, first in the 1630s and 1640s, and then from the end of the seventeenth century. The first is related to monopolies and fiscal exactions authorized by prerogative during the Personal Rule of Charles I, the second to joint-stock companies and patented inventions in the age of the financial revolution. Existing accounts have tended to treat them separately. Projects across these evolving circumstances, however, display certain commonalities if we set them against medieval antecedents. This chapter thereby establishes projecting in early modern England as a tangible subject for historical inquiry. It concludes by juxtaposing English and European trajectories.
Conclusion
Authors: Yamamoto Koji
Published: May 2018

The Conclusion to this book returns to the larger question of significance: what might the history of projecting tell us about the nature of incipient capitalism and its evolution? To start tackling this larger question, the main findings of this study will be juxtaposed with the influential visions of capitalism presented by Max Weber, Karl Polanyi, and others. The study ends with a brief foray into Adam Smith’s writing. It was by eliminating projectors from the discussion and obliterating the history of their broken promises that Smith erected his monumental vision of a market society governed by an ‘invisible hand’.
Leges Sive Natura
Authors: Ott Walter
Published: May 2018

The way of laws is as much a defining feature of the modern period as the way of ideas. In one of its forms, it stands as an alternative to the moribund Aristotelian ontology. But the way of laws is hardly without its forks. Both before and after Descartes, there are philosophers using the concept of laws to carve out a very different position from his, one that is entirely disconnected from God or God’s will. This concept of law features in the work of Francis Bacon and comes to fruition in the work of Spinoza. Grasping it reshapes how we read the rest of their metaphysics and opens up a way of thinking about laws that is resolutely bottom-up.
Are People More Important than the Other Animals?
Authors: Korsgaard Christine M.
Published: May 2018

This chapter criticizes the familiar idea that humans are more important than animals. After examining some reasons why we treat humans and animals differently, and showing that they do not imply the superior importance of humans, it argues that the claim of superior human importance is not so much false as (nearly) incoherent. Importance and goodness are “tethered” values: things are only important or good when they are important-to or good-for some creature. To be important or good absolutely is to be important-to or good-for all creatures. One kind of creature could be absolutely more important than others only if the fate of that kind of creature were more important to others than their own fates. Only a teleological picture of the world that made human good the ultimate purpose of the world could support the conclusion that humans are more important than the other animals.
International Trade
Authors: Linarelli John , Salomon Margot E , Sornarajah Muthucumaraswamy
Published: May 2018

Despite significant attention in recent times, the law of international trade has been remarkably resilient in steering clear of compliance with the demands of justice. The history of the law governing international trade is rooted in forms of coercion and violence designed to promote the interests of powerful states and their multinational enterprises. The first norm of international trade law for the modern state, the principle of freedom to trade, was a rationalization to commit atrocities, including genocide, to promote the interests of European powers and their commercial interests. This problematic history of the law of international trade led governments to promote the wrong values in international trade relations between states. The chapter then examines the international trade order put in place when treaties and positive law became more important and industrial forms of capitalism became ascendant, based on notions of promised-based commitment, providing states with a rationale to ignore notions of justice, disparities in bargaining power, global inequality, and other values. With such norms in effect still today, power is permissibly exercised via a transactional model between states. In this model, trade treaties are all about bargaining. A national or mercantilist conception of market took absolute priority, a conception in which markets are divided up according to power imposed in bargaining. The chapter explains how the contemporary trade treaty suffers from various pathologies because of these historical rationalities imposed on it from these prior eras. The result is a failure of contemporary trade agreements to comply with principles of justice and relatively little concern expressed about this failure.
Foreign Investment
Authors: Linarelli John , Salomon Margot E , Sornarajah Muthucumaraswamy
Published: May 2018

This chapter critiques the international law on foreign investment as not properly reflecting considerations of justice and too focused on fallacious notions of improving economic conditions in countries through ultra-high levels of private property protection for foreign investors. It explores how the focus mainly on protecting the investor, with levels of protection even domestic capital do not enjoy, has its origins in a historical progression from an imperial international law imposed in eras of empire and colonialization. It explores how the international law on foreign investment continues to suffer from these normative deficiencies. It offers a review of how the New International Economic Order was a movement by the Latin American, African, and Asian states to make the international law on foreign investment more universally acceptable but how that movement was circumvented with the rise of neoliberalism beginning in the early 1990s despite opposition by these states. Building on Chapter 3, it then deals with the decline of the NIEO and its relationship to the international law on foreign investment. The chapter goes through how investment law and the tribunal jurisprudence that contributes to its development expanded investor protections to produce injustice. It discusses the resistance to the law that has come about, the ongoing changes in investment treaties because of concerns with their imbalances, and the nature of the legitimacy crisis the law now faces.
Conditions of Emergence
Authors: Blacklock Mark
Published: May 2018

Chapter 1 describes the disparate conditions for the emergence of higher-dimensioned space as a cultural object. It gives an account of Immanuel Kant’s original work on space, and particularly his thoughts on the dimensionality of space, considering this formulation ‘foundational’ for the nineteenth-century novel. Reading scholarly discussion in British periodicals it identifies the persistent use of analogy as a rhetorical device for explaining the ideas of dimensionality. It identifies, too, the fact that geometry itself is a model of the more abstract form that is space, alerting us to a structural shift between domains early in the life cycle of the fourth dimension, as it leaves geometry—a domain of pure thought—to enter space, a phenomenon of the physical world. It also considers Henry More’s notion of ‘spissitude’, an earlier iteration of the fourth dimension.
Knots
Authors: Blacklock Mark
Published: May 2018

Chapter 2 concentrates on a crucially catalytic episode in the history of cultural higher space and on a particularly pregnant form at the heart of this episode: the series of experimental seances conducted by the Leipzig-based astrophysicist Johann Carl Friedrich Zöllner with the medium Henry Slade and the knot that Zöllner proclaimed as experimental evidence of the fourth dimension. This chapter outlines Zöllner’s theoretical position and its sources; his allegiances and feuds; the experiments themselves and their legacy. Zöllner drew higher-dimensioned space into occultist discourse, a field in which it can still be discerned. This shift requires the mobilization of different resources: attention to the historical phenomenon of popular spiritualism and its discourse networks; consideration of the relations between professionalizing science, spiritualism, and stage magic; and the negotiation of the knot, an object that is thing and idea, form and material, mediator and terminus.
Cubes
Authors: Blacklock Mark
Published: May 2018

Chapter 4 focuses on the work of Charles Howard Hinton, author of the first Scientific Romances and the least well-known yet most influential theorist of higher space of the late nineteenth century. ‘Hinton was an important mediating figure,’ writes Steven Connor, ‘because, like some of the physical scientists who investigated Spiritualism, his grasp of scientific principles was extensive and subtle.’ Indeed, his work fed into the literature of occult groupings, avant-garde art, Modernist poetry and fiction, and also back into geometry and orthodox science. ‘Cubes’ give a detailed account of Hinton’s work, highlighting his acknowledged and implied sources, Kepler, Kant, and his father, before focusing on his invention of a system of cubes for training the subject in the visualization of higher space. This set of cubes are read as ‘quasi-objects’, things that make fluid the distinction between thinking thing and thing thought on, between mind and material object.
The “New Empire of Common Sense”
Authors: Wood Paul B.
Published: May 2018

Although the rise of Scottish common sense philosophy was one of the most important intellectual developments of the Enlightenment, significant gaps remain in our understanding of the reception of Scottish common sense philosophy in the Atlantic world during the second half of the eighteenth century. This chapter focuses on the British context in the period 1764–93, and examines published responses to James Oswald, James Beattie, and, especially, Thomas Reid. The chapter contextualizes the polemics of Joseph Priestley against the three Scots and argues that it was Joseph Berington rather than Priestley who was the first critic to claim that the appeal to common sense was the defining feature of “the Scotch school” of philosophy. It also shows that Reid was widely acknowledged to be the founder and most accomplished exponent of the “school”, whereas Beattie and Oswald were typically dismissed as being derivative thinkers.
Dugald Stewart and the Legacy of Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment
Authors: Bow C. B.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines Dugald Stewart’s (1751–1828) efforts to reform, defend, and sustain the legacy of Scottish common sense philosophy throughout his professional life. The first section discusses Stewart’s enrichment of Reid’s philosophy by developing a modern program of moral education that encouraged scientific innovation during an age of revolutionary change. This campaign to preserve Scottish Enlightenment intellectual and religious culture from modern philosophical skepticism encountered competition at the end of Stewart’s career. Section two turns to Stewart on the endurance of Scottish common sense philosophy in response to the early nineteenth-century Scottish reception of German Idealism and the rise of Scottish Romanticism at Edinburgh University. Considered by many to be the “Scotian Plato,” Scottish common sense philosophy flourished under the care of Dugald Stewart during two of the most transitional moments in the final decades of the Scottish Enlightenment before its displacement in late nineteenth-century Scotland.
The proper treatment of egophoricity in Kathmandu Newari
Authors: Coppock Elizabeth , Wechsler Stephen
Published: May 2018

In egophoric (or conjunct/disjunct) verb-marking systems, a conjunct verb form co-occurs with first-person subjects in declaratives and second-person subjects in interrogatives, and also appears in de se attitude and speech reports; a disjunct verb form appears elsewhere. Conjunct marking also interacts with evidentiality: a speaker who abdicates responsibility for the content of an utterance by means of an evidential marker uses the disjunct verb form despite co-occurence with a first-person subject. Focussing on the case of Kathmandu Newari, Coppock and Wechsler propose that conjunct morphology marks the contents of attitudes de se. They develop a formal treatment of egophoricity, including a dynamic discourse model of the way attitudes de se are communicated. The propositional content of an attitude de se, modelled as a set of centered worlds, is effectively uncentered by its agent, to produce an ordinary proposition that is eligible to enter the common ground.
The incremental self
Authors: Perry John
Published: May 2018

In this chapter John Perry introduces his incremental theory of truth-conditions to account for cognitive differences between I have the flu and Elwood has the flu, both uttered by Elwood. He argues for his view over more traditional accounts of content and truth-conditions, and draws implications for the nature of the attitudes in general and self-knowledge in particular. He ends by contrasting his account with David Lewis's theory of ‘de se belief.
Homer and the Poetics of Hades
Authors: Gazis George Alexander
Published: May 2018

This book examines Homer’s use of Hades as a poetic resource. By portraying Hades as a realm where vision is not possible, Homer creates a unique poetic environment where social constraints and divine prohibitions are not applicable. The resulting narrative emulates that of the Muses but is markedly distinct from it, as in Hades experimentation with and alteration of epic forms and values can be pursued, giving rise to a ‘poetics of Hades’. In the Iliad, Homer shows how this alternative poetics works through the visit of Patroclus’ shade in Achilles’ dream. The recollection offered by the shade reveals an approach to its past in which regret, self-pity, and a lingering memory of intimate and emotional moments displace an objective tone and a traditional exposition of heroic values. The potential of Hades for providing alternative means of commemorating the past is more fully explored in the ‘Nekyia’ of Odyssey 11; there, Odysseus’ extraordinary ability to see (idein) the dead in Hades allows him to meet and interview the shades of heroines and heroes of the epic past. The absolute confinement of Hades allows the shades to recount their stories from their own viewpoint. The poetic implications of this are important since by visiting Hades and hearing the shades’ stories, Odysseus–and Homer—gains access to a tradition in which epic values associated with gender roles and even divine law are suspended in favour of a more immediate and personally inflected approach to the epic past.
Modification of Treaties by Subsequent Practice
Authors: Buga Irina
Published: May 2018

Treaties must undergo transformation and modernization to reflect changing norms and developments in international law. But treaties can be notoriously difficult to amend by formal means. One crucial way in which treaty evolution takes place is through subsequent practice, a well-established tool for treaty interpretation. While its initial aim is to shed light on the parties’ original intention, over time, subsequent practice acquires a force of its own and may come to evidence their contemporary understanding of the treaty. Subsequent practice may even diverge so far from treaty provisions that it can no longer be said to constitute an act of treaty interpretation, but becomes, in effect, one of modification. Furthermore, such practice can give rise to new norms of customary international law, which, in turn, may impact pre-existing treaty provisions. The modification of treaties by subsequent practice extends to all fields of international law, from the law of the sea, environmental law, and investment law, to humanitarian law and human rights. Such modifications can have significant practical consequences, from revising or creating new rights and obligations, to establishing new institutional mechanisms. Determining the point when the ‘switch’ from treaty interpretation to treaty modification occurs, however, is itself an act of interpretation. It poses difficulty to legal scholars and dispute settlement bodies alike, especially in light of the silence of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties on this point, and impacts States’ expectations as to their treaty obligations. This book addresses this insufficiently explored issue of international significance.
Shared fluency theory of social cohesiveness
Authors: Reber Rolf , Norenzayan Ara
Published: May 2018

A shared fluency theory of social cohesiveness is outlined that accounts for disparate phenomena under a unified framework. This starts from the well-known metacognitive feeling of processing fluency (henceforth fluency), which is the subjective ease with which a mental operation is performed. Fluency is extended to the social domain, and the notion of shared fluency is introduced, consisting of two aspects: interpersonal fluency, or the ease with which two people coordinate their behavior, and shared object fluency, meaning that people exposed to the same objects can process these objects more easily. Fluency theory provides new insights in five domains: religious rituals, Confucian virtue ethics, military drill, culturally shared tastes, and place attachment. After a discussion of strengths and limitations of the shared fluency theory, it is concluded that low-level mechanisms, like fluency, may help explain complex social phenomena and open new avenues for feeling-based interventions relevant at a societal level.