bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Principle of Distinction and the Role of Consent
Authors: Hathaway Oona A.
Published: March 2021

Arthur Ripstein offers a Kantian response to what he calls “Shawcross’s argument”—the argument that the killing of combatants in war is justifiable only where the war is legal. In doing so, he is seeking to provide a moral justification for what may appear to be an incoherence between the two main pillars of modern law of war: On the one hand, the ius ad bellum provides that states may only lawfully resort to war when they have a just cause. On the other hand, the ius in bello specifies rules governing conduct that apply equally to both sides in a conflict—regardless of whether they are waging a lawful or unlawful war. Hence combatants in an unlawful war are entitled to the same immunities from prosecution as combatants in a lawful one. But how can that possibly be morally just? Shawcross rejects that moral equivalence, comparing combatants in unlawful wars to a “lawless robber band.” In the process, Shawcross—and those sympathetic to his view—threaten to upend the modern law of war. Ripstein comes to international law’s defense, though not in terms most international lawyers would find familiar. Ripstein’s effort to morally ground the international legal rules is admirable. Yet the argument provides a moral foundation for the modern rules of war that is incomplete at best. Moreover, it fails to grapple with the voluntary nature of international law, which allows states to agree to further their long-term best interests even at the price of short-term constraints.
God, Suffering, and the Value of Free Will
Authors: Ekstrom Laura W.
Published: March 2021

This book focuses on arguments from suffering against the existence of God and on a variety of issues concerning agency and value that they bring out. The central aim is to show the extent and power of arguments from evil. The book provides a close investigation of an under-defended claim at the heart of the major free-will-based responses to such arguments, namely that free will is sufficiently valuable to serve as the good, or to serve prominently among the goods, that provides a God-justifying reason for permitting evil in our world. Offering a fresh examination of traditional theodicies, it also develops an alternative line the author calls a divine intimacy theodicy. It makes an extended case for rejection of the position of skeptical theism. The book expands upon an argument from evil concerning a traditional doctrine of hell, which reveals a number of interesting issues concerning fault, agency, and blameworthiness. In response to recent work contending that the problem of evil is defanged since God’s baseline attitude toward human beings is indifference, the book defends the essential perfect moral goodness of God. Finally it takes up the question of whether or not it makes sense to live a religious life as an agnostic or as an atheist.
Divine Intimacy Theodicy
Authors: Ekstrom Laura W.
Published: March 2021

This chapter develops what the author calls a divine intimacy theodicy in response to the problem of evil. It highlights reflections of this theodicy in the thinking of several historical and contemporary philosophers, theologians, and religious practitioners, including some medieval mystics. The central idea is that some occasions of suffering may qualify as religious experiences that serve to promote closeness with God. Despite its value as a strategy a religious person might use for coping with suffering, the author argues that ultimately the divine intimacy view does not succeed in answering the concerns of the non-theist who poses arguments from evil against the existence of God. The chapter closes by discussing prospects for a hybrid theodicy.
Hell and Fault
Authors: Ekstrom Laura W.
Published: March 2021

This chapter addresses issues concerning agential freedom, moral fault, and punishment. It argues that David Lewis is right that there is an especially virulent non-standard argument from evil, which can be seen more clearly by an expansion of his argument. What Lewis calls “the neglected argument” is an argument concerning the rationality of belief in an eternal hell on the part of theists. It is an argument for the incoherence of what Lewis calls the orthodox story concerning God and hell. The argument is not on its own an argument for atheism, since it leaves intact a variety of metaphysical positions, including universalist theism and forms of religiosity other than those involving an affirmation of the existence of a being who is essentially omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good. It stands, nonetheless, as a powerful argument from evil demanding attention from any perfect being theist who endorses the existence of a non-empty eternal hell.
Religion on the Cheap
Authors: Ekstrom Laura W.
Published: March 2021

It seems a natural thought that worshipping God and taking part in related communal religious activities does not make sense if one does not believe that God is real. But not all share this thought: some think it is perfectly sensible to engage in traditional communal religious activities centered on God without believing that God—an essentially omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good agent who creates whatever universe there is—really exists. This chapter argues that certain attempts to make sense of this way of thinking and this way of life, such as those described by Howard Wettstein and Gary Gutting, do not succeed in making sense of them. It further points out that there are real costs associated with not assenting to the claim that the proposition, “God exists,” realistically construed, is true, but suggests that one should be prepared to absorb those costs rather than trying to have it both ways—rather than getting religion (of a particular sort) on the cheap.
Narratives of Success
Authors: Shepherd Laura J.
Published: March 2021

This chapter examines the “success stories” of the WPS agenda, interrogating how the agenda emerges as a triumph of transnational advocacy, a step forward in the seemingly endless search for strategies to mitigate against gendered inequalities and discrimination, and the prompt for—or ally of—related policy initiatives such as the UK’s Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative or the “feminist foreign policy” commitments of Sweden and Canada. Multiple articulations of success feature in the narrative of the agenda; for the purpose of identifying the fabula, I have organized these into two primary dimensions. First, the narration of the WPS agenda frequently cites the agenda itself as a success. The second dimension of the success story is the narration of moderate successes in implementation of the WPS agenda. These are the moments of change and, by implication, improvement to organizational structure or individual experience that the agenda has brought about. Over time, the ways in which these victories are presented, particularly in the Secretary-General’s reports but also in the contributions to and statements at Security Council Open Debates and even in interview data, rely more and more on quantitative data. Further, in terms of subject specificity, these successes are related increasingly to the prevention of sexual violence and women’s participation in peace processes, while other dimensions of the agenda are less well attended.
Narratives of Tensions and Pressures
Authors: Shepherd Laura J.
Published: March 2021

The WPS agenda is usually described in terms of four “pillars” of activity: the participation of women in peace and security governance; the prevention of violence and conflict; the protection of women’s rights and bodies; and gender-sensitive relief and recovery programming. Over time, however, the emphasis given to each of these pillars has varied, and different actors have supported different initiatives under each pillar, with different political effects. The story of tension evident in the data collected or co-produced is primarily articulated in this chapter in terms of imbalance across the various pillars (which in itself is interesting, as it presupposes the virtue or desirability of balance). Further, tensions and pressure points are politically and strategically deployed as rationales for (limited) engagement across the agenda as a whole by certain actors.
Silences, Secrets, and Sensibilities
Authors: Shepherd Laura J.
Published: March 2021

This chapter explores representations of silence, and perceived absences, in the WPS stories analyzed here. Specific silences and absences have a formative effect on the political affordances generated by the WPS agenda; the “common sense” of WPS is that these dimensions should be left unspoken lest they provide cynics and skeptics with critical ammunition to undermine the agenda. Examining these silences and absences as constitutive of the WPS agenda, and therefore as implicated in both its failures and its successes, reinforces the plurality and polyvalences of WPS as it emerges as a knowable policy agenda through its narration. The suppressed frustrations and the barely detectable influences and influencers are as much part of the formation of the WPS agenda as the indicators, audits, and action plans. This chapter surfaces some of these silences and secrets and describes the sensibilities that emerge through the storytelling.
Resisting Narrative Closure
Authors: Shepherd Laura J.
Published: March 2021

This chapter offers a brief conclusion to the arguments developed throughout this book. It revisits the questions driving the investigation presented here, recapping the logics identified and reflecting on the implications of these logics for the imaginable future(s) of the WPS agenda. It also revisits the contribution that the book hopes to make, both to research on global governance and to research on the WPS agenda. The chapter situates the WPS agenda as a form of international policymaking and international policy practice constituted in and through the stories that are told about it and argues that in order to apprehend WPS as a knowable policy agenda, due analytical attention should be paid to the ways in which it is narrated. Through analysis of narrative and discourse, it is possible to identify the logics that organize and (re)produce meaning in particular configurations and that therefore structure the horizons of possibility around WPS as a policy agenda. The plural logics identified resist efforts to close down or narrow the meaning of WPS as a policy agenda in global politics, and so effective political engagement—the realization of agenda—depends on sitting with, and finding productive potential in, multiplicity, polysemy, and ambivalence.
Fed Power
Authors: Jacobs Lawrence , King Desmond
Published: March 2021

The Federal Reserve, created more than a century ago, is the most powerful central bank in the world. The Fed’s power to alter the money supply, move interest rates, and to intervene to save Wall Street and large corporations helps many Americans, but not equally. Specific industries in finance and large businesses reap lopsided and often concealed benefits while homeowners, workers, and Americans of color slip further behind. The substantial expansion of the Fed’s power circumvents America’s constitutional checks and contributes to economic inequality and racial disparities. The second edition of Lawrence R. Jacobs and Desmond King’s Fed Power extends their decisive account of the Fed’s favoritism toward Wall Street and big business during the 2008–2009 financial crisis to the Fed’s unprecedented responses to the economic collapse sparked by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. In five chapters, Jacobs and King discuss the origins of the Federal Reserve System, its maneuvering to advance its capacity and autonomy to act independent of Congress and the presidency, and unprecedented support for Wall Street and big business during in the crises in 2008–2009 and 2020. Fed Power analyses how the scale of the Fed’s economic interventions since 2008 is provoking public unease, organized protests and advocacy, and congressional pressure for reform. The deadly coronavirus and the Movement for Black Lives are intensifying the push for democratic accountability, stringent regulation of banks, and new policies to reduce economic inequality and Black-White disparities. Fed Power is a corrective to both the Bank’s self-serving claims of serving the public even as it favors the best-off, and the reluctance of researchers to recognize the Fed’s role in America’s racial and economic inequalities.
Robust Peacekeeping Mandates
Authors: Longobardo Marco
Published: March 2021

The chapter examines the connection between some recent robust mandates and jus post bellum, based on missions operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, and South Sudan. In the framework of robust mandates, peacekeepers’ main responsibilities are to protect civilians and support the local central government in regaining full control over its territory. The author discusses the pros and cons of robust mandates to reach a just and stable post-conflict arrangement. He argues that some recent robust mandates can have some immediate positive effects, but also may make respect for post bellum principles more problematic in the long term. Their contribution to just peace is questionable and requires further study.
Vetting
Authors: Mayer-Rieckh Alexander
Published: March 2021

In the transitional justice literature, vetting has a prominent place and is the most frequently discussed measure to prevent the recurrence of abuses. This chapter situates vetting in the framework of jus post bellum and argues that vetting can contribute to a variety of distinct aims and hence, appeals simultaneously to various concerns and audiences. The chapter moves to describe the many reasons why vetting processes can fail and have failed, and cautions against a myopic approach to vetting that fails to link vetting to related processes. It concludes arguing that vetting can fulfil the high expectations often placed onto it only if basic rights are respected in the process, if done within a reasonable timeframe and with proportionate resources, and if embedded in a comprehensive prevention strategy.
Forensic Face Matching
Authors: Roberts Andrew
Published: March 2021

This chapter considers the use of forensic face matching as evidence in criminal trials. It provides an account of the evidential rules and principles that govern the admissibility of this form of evidence in common law jurisdictions—namely, the requirement of relevance, the prohibition on evidence of opinion, and the exception to that prohibition for those who possess expertise. It explains that notwithstanding differences in approach to the reception of expert evidence across jurisdictions, and despite persistent and unresolved concerns about its reliability, evidence of image-to-image comparison will be admitted. In contrast, because person-to-image comparison is a task that can usually be undertaken in the courtroom by the fact-finder, the evidence of witnesses who have engaged in this kind of comparison will usually be excluded on the grounds that it does not satisfy the fundamental requirement of relevance.
Introduction
Authors: Rostill Luke
Published: March 2021

This chapter introduces the principle of relativity of title and the principle that possession is a source of title. It also introduces the four questions that the book is concerned with: (1) What, for the purposes of the rules concerning the acquisition of title, is possession? (2) What is the nature of the title acquired through possession? (3) What are the grounds of relativity of title? (4) What is the relationship between relativity of title and ownership? The chapter explains why these questions matter and identifies some common answers. It also summarises the book’s main arguments and provides an overview of the other six chapters.
Possession
Authors: Rostill Luke
Published: March 2021

This chapter examines the nature of the possession that gives rise to title. It explains that ‘possession’ is ambiguous, particular senses of ‘possession’ are vague, and that the meaning of ‘possession’ shifts from context to context. It argues that, for the purposes of the rules concerning the acquisition of title, the general rule is that one will obtain possession of certain land or a particular chattel if and only if one has (a) exclusive physical control of the land or chattel; and (b) an intention, in one’s own name and on one’s own behalf, to exclude the world from it.
Ownership and Relativity of Title
Authors: Rostill Luke
Published: March 2021

This chapter examines the relationship between relativity of title and ownership. It is argued that, despite the fact that English law is a multititular system that recognises relativity of title, land and chattels can be owned. But it is a mistake to think that an inferior fee simple or an inferior general property interest has all the incidents of ownership. There are important differences between the legal position of a person who has the best title to a thing and a person who has an inferior title. The former, it is suggested, may have ownership, but the latter does not.
Experience is Knowledge
Authors: Duncan Matt
Published: March 2021

It seems like experience plays a positive—even essential—role in generating some knowledge. The problem is, it’s not clear what that role is. To see this, suppose that when my visual system takes in information about the world it skips the experience step and just immediately generates beliefs in me about my surroundings. A lot of philosophers think that I would still know, via perception, about the world around me. But then that raises the question: How does experience contribute to my having knowledge of my surroundings? Philosophers have given many different answers to this question. In this chapter I offer and defend a different answer that avoids the pitfalls of other answers. I argue that experience is, all by itself, a kind of knowledge—what Bertrand Russell calls “knowledge of things.” So I argue that experience helps generate knowledge simply by being knowledge.
On Characterizing Metaphysical Naturalism
Authors: Chan Lok-Chi
Published: March 2021

The disciplinary characterization (DC) is the most popular approach to defining metaphysical naturalism and physicalism. It defines metaphysical naturalism with reference to scientific theories and defines physicalism with reference to physical theories, and suggests that every entity that exists is a posited entity of these theories. DC has been criticized for its inability to solve Hempel’s dilemma and a list of problems alike. In this chapter, I propose a novel version of DC that can be called a historical paths approach. The idea is (roughly) that metaphysical naturalism can be defined with reference to the historical ideas that current scientific ideas descend from. I argue that it is not rendered implausible by the above problems, and hence that DC is more defensible and attractive than it may first appear. I then argue that the approach also provides a useful framework for the naturalization of the philosophy of mind and phenomenology.
Consciousness and Same Consciousness
Authors: Boeker Ruth
Published: March 2021

This chapter distinguishes consciousness that is built into individual mental states from a more complex notion of same consciousness, which additionally involves relations among several mental states. Regarding the former, the author agrees with other interpreters that Lockean consciousness is not a higher order mental state and cannot be identified with reflection, but she questions the view that Locke restricts consciousness to self-consciousness. Locke’s account of same consciousness has been interpreted in a variety of ways: For instance, it has been suggested that he understands same consciousness in terms of memory, appropriation, duration, or a metaphysical fact. Often these proposals are treated as exclusive rival views, which the author takes to be a mistake. Rather many existing interpretations offer important insights into Locke’s understanding of same consciousness, yet they are incomplete on their own. The chapter proposes that his account of same consciousness is richer than commonly acknowledged and involves multiple aspects.
Circularity and Insufficiency Worries
Authors: Boeker Ruth
Published: March 2021

This chapter addresses circularity and insufficiency worries that have been raised against Locke’s same consciousness account of personal identity. The chapter distinguishes different versions of circularity problems and shows that Locke has resources to respond to Joseph Butler’s circularity objection. The more pressing worry concerns the question of whether sameness of consciousness is sufficient for personal identity, which is the so-called insufficiency worry. A response to this question calls for an examination of whether sameness of consciousness can ontologically ground personal identity. The chapter proposes that Locke has resources to accept, on the basis of probable reasoning, that same consciousness that has a metaphysical foundation that most likely has relational structure. The advantage of this reading is that it brings to light that he not merely criticizes substance accounts of identity, but also that he has the resources to develop a plausible—though probable—alternative that avoids circularity and insufficiency.
Locke’s Response to the Problems of his Predecessors
Authors: Boeker Ruth
Published: March 2021

This chapter situates Locke’s account of personal identity in the context of metaphysical and religious debates of his day, especially the debates concerning the possibility of the afterlife and the resurrection. It adopts Locke’s classifications of the views of his predecessors and examines metaphysical problems for material, Cartesian and non-Cartesian immaterial views of the soul, and views that regard human beings as mind-body unions. It shows that Locke is well aware of these problems and argues that the strength of his account of personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness is that it provides a response to the various problems that arise for the views of his predecessors. Furthermore, the advantage of his theory is that it does not require him to prove the views of his predecessors to be mistaken, and it is thereby consistent with their mutually exclusive views regarding the materiality and immateriality of thinking substances.
Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice
Authors: Boeker Ruth
Published: March 2021

This chapter offers a new look at the problem of transitivity. It argues that a genuine question of transitivity arises in the context of the afterlife and a last judgement and that Locke would take the transitivity problem seriously in this context. Recent non-transitive interpretations emphasize that Locke’s account of personal identity fundamentally concerns questions of moral accountability, but they do not give sufficient attention to the religious context of Locke’s view. The chapter develops a hybrid interpretation that combines insights of transitive and non-transitive interpretations. It shows how the hybrid interpretation is grounded in Locke’s account of sameness of consciousness, how it can better accommodate the religious context than competing interpretations without neglecting the insights of non-transitive interpretations. Moreover, it shows with reference to Locke’s writings on religion that his account of personal identity leaves room for repentance.
Locke’s Underlying Background Beliefs
Authors: Boeker Ruth
Published: March 2021

This chapter brings together the results of the previous chapters and shows what role Locke’s moral, religious, metaphysical, and epistemic background beliefs play in his thinking about persons and personal identity. Locke breaks with traditional metaphysical debates, first, by adopting a metaphysically agnostic stance with regard to the materiality or immateriality of thinking substances and, second, by arguing for a kind-dependent approach to questions of identity over time. Locke’s moral and legal conception of a person, according to which persons are subjects of accountability, is informed by his moral and religious beliefs. His thinking about moral accountability can be challenged and has been challenged by his contemporaries. Although Locke has good reasons for distinguishing our idea of a person from that of a human being and of a substance, these reasons are based on his metaphysical agnostic views and his religious belief in an afterlife.
Hobbes’s Argument for the Practical Necessity of Colonization
Authors: James David
Published: March 2021

Hobbes attempts to show that practical necessity and human nature are related in such a way that colonization is unavoidable by virtue of its naturalness. Colonization is practically and historically necessary because unavoidable constraints generated by human nature combine with material and social factors to produce certain inevitable outcomes. Hobbes’s account of colonization can also be understood in terms of his negative idea of freedom. Hobbes fails, however, to provide a sufficient explanation of one aspect of modern colonialism, namely, the existence of national liberation movements, while the role of the sovereign implies a different idea of freedom to Hobbes’s purely negative one. This makes colonization appear less natural and necessary than he suggests. Finally, I explore the implications of Hobbes’s account of the causes of colonization in connection with the possibility of a ‘science’ of history and the idea of historical necessity.
Practical Necessity and History II
Authors: James David
Published: March 2021

Kant argues that constraints generated by social antagonism compel individuals to submit themselves to law and state authority, and that international conflict compels states to form a global legal order. The establishment of legal and political order in turn enables human beings to exercise collective control over their conditions of life. In this way, Kant employs the concept of practical necessity in order to explain the transition to a state of affairs in which freedom and necessity are reconciled while introducing minimal assumptions about what motivates agents. It is shown, however, that although practical necessity here tracks a type of normative necessity, Kant fails to explain how the latter can become the direct object of an agent’s willing. I argue that this implies the need for a different picture of history to the one provided by Kant’s idea of universal history.
Practical Necessity, Ethical Freedom, and History
Authors: James David
Published: March 2021

It is explained how the conceptual order of Hegel’s system of right concerns the actualization of ‘ethical’ freedom, which consists in self-determination and self-constraint. Practical necessity plays a key role in explaining not only how agents come to exercise and thereby develop their capacity for ethical freedom, but also how they act in accordance with a normative necessity whose sources are the social and institutional conditions of this form of freedom. This is shown to explain how freedom and necessity are reconciled in Hegel’s theory of ethical life. I argue that ethical freedom is, however, prematurely displaced by a negative idea of freedom that has expansionary implications, despite how this ‘global’ freedom becomes explicit only later in Hegel’s account of world history. I explore the tension between ethical freedom and global freedom in connection with Hegel’s claims concerning the essentially progressive character of world history.
Wastepaper Modernism
Authors: Rosenberg Joseph Elkanah
Published: March 2021

At the same time that writers were becoming infatuated with new technologies like the cinema and the radio, they were also being haunted by their own pages. From Henry James’s fascination with burnt manuscripts to destroyed books in the fiction of the Blitz, from junk mail in the work of Elizabeth Bowen to bureaucratic paperwork in Vladimir Nabokov, modern fiction is littered with images of tattered and useless paper that reveal an increasingly uneasy relationship between literature and its own materials over the course of the twentieth century. Wastepaper Modernism argues that these images are vital to our understanding of modernism, disclosing an anxiety about textual matter that lurks behind the desire for radically different modes of communication. Having its roots in the late nineteenth century, but finding its fullest constellation in the wake of the high modernist experimentation with novelistic form, “wastepaper modernism” arises when fiction imagines its own processes of transmission and representation breaking down. When the descriptive capabilities of the novel exhaust themselves, the wastepaper modernists picture instead the physical decay of the book’s own primary matter. Bringing together book history and media theory with detailed close reading, Wastepaper Modernism reveals modernist literature’s dark sense of itself as a ruin in the making.
Henry James’s Literary Remains
Authors: Rosenberg Joseph Elkanah
Published: March 2021

In his critically neglected autobiographical writings, Henry James depicts himself as a young boy given to cooing over school notebooks, gazing dreamily at peeling bills, and luxuriating in the grease of theatrical posters. Such tattered wastepaper acts as a kind of material plug with which James fills his many confessed memorial gaps: James, that is, stuffs the blank spots of his memory with paper. But the persistence of a tangible past can be a dangerous thing, as James—a prodigious destroyer of his own literary remains—was well aware. Letter-burning, a recurring motif in his fiction from “The Aspern Papers” to The Wings of the Dove, is for James a surprisingly ethical act of destruction: it not only lays troubled ghosts to rest but, at the same time, re-enchants the past by eradicating its ability to speak through matter, transforming the palpable objects of memory into impalpable objects of desire.
Elizabeth Bowen’s Junk Mail
Authors: Rosenberg Joseph Elkanah
Published: March 2021

In Elizabeth Bowen’s The Death of the Heart (1938), the novel’s victimized, orphan-heroine Portia is said to cherish a “wretched little escritoire” stuffed full, as if it “were a bin,” with junk mail. Crammed into an overflowing desk, the advertisements and begging letters that Portia collects have been rendered void: they are circulars that have been taken out of circulation. Like Portia’s desk, Bowen’s fiction is stuffed full of letters: letters sent, lost, found, returned to sender, read, unread, buried, and burned. Such letters offer an image of intimate print reduced to wastepaper. In Bowen’s fiction, the degraded materiality of print corrupts the privacy of the epistolary form, mediating the depths of feeling into clutter. And when wrongly re-circulated—as happens to the letters intercepted by the orphan Leopold in The House in Paris (1935), or the mysterious packet left behind by Guy Danby in A World of Love (1955)—junk mail transforms into a menacing remainder that shatters the boundary between the interior world of memory and consciousness and the exterior world of objects and others.
Introduction
Authors: Begby Endre
Published: March 2021

This introductory chapter seeks a preliminary clarification of what prejudice is and why it is a cause of persistent normative concern. It then distinguishes between two normative vocabularies in which that concern can be framed: the moral and the epistemic. When we consider prejudice from a moral point of view, we are concerned with the harms suffered by people who are targeted by prejudiced beliefs, and the moral responsibilities incurred by those who hold these beliefs. When we consider prejudice from an epistemological point of view we are concerned with the cognitive processes by which people come to hold these beliefs. This book is primarily focused on the epistemology of prejudice: the first order of the day is to explain why we should not hope to ground our account of the moral wrongs flowing from prejudice in an account of the epistemic wrongs committed by those who hold these beliefs.
Prejudice from an Epistemological Point of View
Authors: Begby Endre
Published: March 2021

The book’s opening chapter begins by providing a working definition of prejudice in terms of negatively charged stereotypes targeting some group of people, and derivatively, the individuals who comprise this group. It then turns to situating this approach in the larger landscape of contemporary epistemological theory. The study of prejudiced belief falls within the ambit of social epistemology. It should also, it is argued, be considered as a form of situated, applied epistemology. As such, it is recognizably a contribution to “non-ideal epistemology” (a notion to be further elaborated in chapter 3): non-ideal epistemology aims to provide normative guidelines for decision-making under uncertainty. Currently popular “externalist” approaches to epistemology are of no help here. But at the same time, non-ideal epistemology is also not “internalist,” since it routinely holds what we are responsible to a broader subset of the total evidence than is currently in our possession.
The Psychology of Stereotypes
Authors: Begby Endre
Published: March 2021

This book has defined prejudice as involving a certain class of negative stereotypes. In chapter 2, this definition is elaborated further in light of developments in social and cognitive psychology. The human mind is an information-processing mechanism operating in real-time. Its defining problem is that of developing effective algorithms to cope with a threat of information overload. These algorithms distinctively involve compression of information, resulting in a predictable loss of fidelity. But even cognitive processing strategies involving significant filtering and compression can be cognitively optimal, relative to our contingent, “non-ideal” cognitive starting points. The basic cognitive expression of this fact is what psychologists call ‘categorization.’ Stereotyping is essentially just categorization applied to the domain of social cognition. As such, no epistemological aspersions can be cast on prejudice simply in virtue of being grounded in stereotypes. The chapter ends by explaining how this research relates to the currently popular concept of ‘implicit bias.’
Evidential Preemption
Authors: Begby Endre
Published: March 2021

So far the book has worked on the assumption that the confrontation with contrary evidence always requires rational believers to reduce their credence in the relevant propositions. This chapter introduces the notion of “evidential preemption,” which occurs when a testifier, in addition to offering testimony that p, also warns the hearer that others will try to persuade them of contrary views. This chapter argues that whenever it is rational for someone to accept the “ground-level” testimony on offer, it is also rational for them to accept the warning about what others will tell them. When they are subsequently confronted with this testimony, its evidential force has effectively been neutralized, since it is, essentially, information the subject has already conditionalized on. In this way, evidential preemption can serve as a tool for “epistemic inoculation,” all but ensuring that subjects cannot make beneficial use of the contrary evidence to correct their beliefs.
Automated Risk Assessment in the Criminal Justice Process
Authors: Begby Endre
Published: March 2021

This chapter addresses recent concerns about “algorithmic bias,” specifically in the context of the criminal justice process. Starting from a recent controversy about the use of “automated risk assessment tools” in criminal sentencing and parole hearings, where evidence suggests that such tools effectively discriminate against minority defendants, this chapter argues that the problem here has nothing in particular to do with algorithm-assisted reasoning, nor is it in any clear sense a case of epistemic bias. Rather, given the data set that we are given to work with, there is reason to think that no improvement to our epistemic routines would deliver significantly better results. Instead, the bias is effectively encoded into the data set itself, via a long history of institutionalized racism. This suggests a different diagnosis of the problem: in deeply divided societies, there may just be no way to simultaneously satisfy our moral ideals and our epistemic ideals.
A Better Approach
Authors: Begby Endre
Published: March 2021

But maybe the relation between morality and epistemology runs in the opposite direction, and it is the range of our epistemic responsibility which constrains the range of our moral responsibility. Initially, this may seem like an unwelcome thought. To the contrary, this chapter argues that it can serve to empower victims of prejudice seeking redress. Moral responsibility is a multi-dimensional concept: while it is plausible that ascriptions of moral blame track ascriptions of epistemic responsibility, other forms of moral liability do not. Drawing on insights from tort law and discrimination law, this chapter argues that victims’ claims to have been wronged in no way depends on their ability to demonstrate that their victimizers were positioned to know that their actions were wrong. This frees victims of prejudice from the substantial burden of having to show that prejudiced believers are—universally, or in any specific case—epistemically irrational in believing as they do.
A Pluralistic Theory of Culpability
Authors: Simester A P
Published: March 2021

This chapter presents a pluralistic theory of culpability. Conventionally, the ascription of blameworthiness in criminal law is thought to rest upon findings of mens rea. And it is certainly true that mens rea elements have a crucial role to play in establishing culpability. Yet how they do so remains obscure. There are many reasons for this; one of the most important is that the grounds of culpability are not unitary. The chapter argues that there are different grounds of culpability, that its material conditions differ between advertent and inadvertent wrongdoing. In so doing, the chapter contradicts the view of many writers that a necessary ingredient in grounding culpability is choice. Inadvertent negligence can reflect a moral vice on the defendant’s part and, as such, can be blameworthy.
Distinguishing Intended from Advertent Action
Authors: Simester A P
Published: March 2021

This chapter distinguishes between intended action and advertent action, exploring the criteria of intended action. Broadly speaking, actions done as ends or means are intended; those done as (foreseen) side-effects are merely advertent. Beyond that, various further categories are explored. The criteria of justifications make it important also to distinguish, within intended actions, between actions done as ends and those done as means. Moreover, in delineating the boundaries of the intended, one needs to consider two special categories, of obliquely-intended and inseparably-intended actions. In oblique intention, the defendant believes that the action is ‘virtually’, ‘practically’, or ‘morally’ certain to be constituted by her behaviour. It may be appropriate to treat such actions as if intended when assessing a person’s mens rea, but they should not be similarly assimilated when evaluating justifications. There are certain special cases of inseparability, on the other hand, that are rightly categorized as intended.
On the Moral Distinction between Intention and Advertence
Authors: Simester A P
Published: March 2021

This chapter discusses the moral implications of the distinction between intention and advertence. Excepting the special category of oblique intention, the criminal law broadly embraces the distinction outlined in the previous chapter, between intended actions and those merely foreseen. That embrace calls for normative defence. One way of defending it is to appeal to what can be called the standard view, that intended wrongdoing is, ceteris paribus, inherently more culpable than advertently risked wrongdoing. However, there are reasons to doubt the standard view. This chapter offers a different, albeit compatible, explanation. On the account presented here, the most systematic difference between intended and foreseen wrongdoing is not measured in degrees of culpability. Rather, it is worked out in terms of what actions may legitimately be invoked to justify pro tanto wrongdoing. In general, foreseen actions do not lend any favourable weight to the justification of intended ones, whereas intended actions can lend favourable weight to the justification of foreseen ones.
Unpacking Justifications
Authors: Simester A P
Published: March 2021

This chapter examines justifications. The common law knows a range of rationale-based defences according to which otherwise pro tanto wrongs may become permitted. By articulating justificatory defences like self-defence and necessity, the legal system adds the interstitial nuance that its prohibitions require. Unlike most other justifications, however, lesser-evils necessity is unconfined by reference to specific contexts, such as protecting oneself from attack or executing an arrest. Its field of application is amorphous and open-ended. The chapter then considers why necessity differs from those other, ‘primary’, justifications. It develops two theses: wrong-dependence and justification-dependence. In wrong-dependence, whether a person’s offence is justified depends on the type of (pro tanto) wrong that offence is. In justification-dependence, whether a person’s offence is wrong (simpliciter) depends on the type of justification that the person has. The chapter argues that cases of lesser-evils necessity are special, in that they are cases of a justified wrong. By contrast, primary justifications such as self-defence do not involve a wrong but only a pro tanto one. The importance of urgency requirements in rationale-based defences is also discussed.
Could NATO (still) defend Europe?
Authors: Allen John R. , Hodges F. Ben , Lindley-French Julian
Published: March 2021

NATO has been ‘adapting’ for a decade and has made significant progress in meeting the coming challenges to Europe defence. However, power is relative and the nature of future war across the multi-domains of air, sea, land, cyber, space, information, and knowledge, allied to the accelerating speed of war, also reveals profound Allied weaknesses. Whilst the Americans are increasingly overstretched trying to cover the expanding space and technology of warfare, Europeans are decidedly under-stretched, unable, or unwilling to meet the demands of defence, too often seeing defence as a budget to be raided for domestic political concerns. Ultimately, NATO is in the business of deterrence, for if it fails defence seems unlikely, short of a rapid descent into all-out nuclear war. Europeans must thus understand that NATO is essentially a European institution, and it can only fulfil its mission as a defensive Alliance if they give the Alliance the means and tools to maintain a minimum but credible conventional force and nuclear force deterrent.
Hyperwar
Authors: Allen John R. , Hodges F. Ben , Lindley-French Julian
Published: March 2021

Europe could be facing a digital Dreadnought moment when strategy, capability, and technology combine to create a decisive breakthrough in the technology and character of warfare. The future of peace in Europe could well depend on the ability of Europeans and Americans to mount a credible defence and deterrence across the mosaic of hybrid, cyber, and hyper-warfare. Critical to such a posture will be the closing of the growing gap between Europe’s conventional and nuclear deterrents. Rather than match Russia’s burgeoning short and intermediate offensive nuclear systems, the Allies should consider a new concept of deterrence across the conventional, digital, nuclear spectrum. If not, Europeans will remain vulnerable to digital decapitation and the imposed use of disruptive technologies. Only a strategic ‘alliance’ between public policy and private technology will enable the Allies to harness the revolution in (applied) military technology to assure European defence in the face of the gathering (tech-)storm.
Scenario 2
Authors: Allen John R. , Hodges F. Ben , Lindley-French Julian
Published: March 2021

Scenario 2 describes an imagined situation in 2030 where Europe is defended. Dialogue and defence are maintained by a transatlantic alliance in which Europeans have sufficiently mastered the balance between military capability and societal and security resiliency—in which Europeans are sufficiently militarily capable and politically cohesive to ease pressure on the Americans and act coherently as first responders in an emergency in and around Europe. At the core of Europe’s future defence is a European future force able to operate to effect across air, sea, land, cyber, space, information, and knowledge, which can both face down a high-end military threat to the European peace and support European Allies facing chaos: a European defence built on a new transatlantic relationship in which burdens are equitably shared and Europeans are responsibly autonomous.
The Planetary Clock
Authors: Giles Paul
Published: March 2021

The theme of The Planetary Clock is the representation of time in postmodern culture and the way temporality as a global phenomenon manifests itself differently across an antipodean axis. To trace postmodernism in an expansive spatial and temporal arc, from its formal experimentation in the 1960s to environmental concerns in the twenty-first century, is to describe a richer and more complex version of this cultural phenomenon. Exploring different scales of time from a Southern Hemisphere perspective, with a special emphasis on issues of Indigeneity and the Anthropocene, The Planetary Clock offers a wide-ranging, revisionist account of postmodernism, reinterpreting literature, film, music, and visual art of the post-1960 period within a planetary framework. By bringing the culture of Australia and New Zealand into dialogue with other Western narratives, it suggests how an antipodean impulse, involving the transposition of the world into different spatial and temporal dimensions, has long been an integral (if generally occluded) aspect of postmodernism. Taking its title from a clock designed in 1510 to measure worldly time alongside the rotation of the planets, The Planetary Clock ranges across well-known American postmodernists (John Barth, Toni Morrison) to more recent science fiction writers (Octavia Butler, Richard Powers), while bringing the US tradition into dialogue with both its English (Philip Larkin, Ian McEwan) and Australian (Les Murray, Alexis Wright) counterparts. By aligning cultural postmodernism with music (Messiaen, Ligeti, Birtwistle), the visual arts (Hockney, Blackman, Fiona Hall) and cinema (Rohmer, Haneke, Tarantino), The Planetary Clock enlarges our understanding of global postmodernism for the twenty-first century.
Conclusion
Authors: Giles Paul
Published: March 2021

The Conclusion summarizes this book’s thesis, arguing that the complexity of a postmodernism conceived in spherical terms involves principled resistance to flat models of any kind. It suggests that postmodernism is not inherently defined by any specific political or religious position, and that the geography of the Oceania and the Pacific, too often regarded as illegible within postmodern designs, offers a more rounded perspective on this field, one that opens it out to global and environmental issues. With reference to the fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson, Michel Butor, and David Mitchell, this Conclusion indicates that conditions of distance, transition, and reciprocity across different vectors of the world system should contribute to the reformulation of postmodernism according to a more planetary perspective.