bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Raising Education and Skill Levels Will Not Solve Poverty Alone
Authors: Rank Mark Robert , Eppard Lawrence M. , Bullock Heather E.
Published: May 2021

A widely held belief is that poverty can be eliminated by providing individuals with enough education and skills. Chapter 7 discusses the flaw in this belief. While such a strategy works well for any one individual, as an overall macroeconomic strategy it is problematic. The reason is that without increasing the number of opportunities in society, raising education and skill levels of individuals is a zero-sum game in which some individuals are more competitive at the expense of others. The analogy of musical chairs is used to illustrate this process. When poverty rates do go up or down, they do so as a result of increasing or decreasing opportunities at a macro level.
Poverty Is Preventable
Authors: Rank Mark Robert , Eppard Lawrence M. , Bullock Heather E.
Published: May 2021

Chapter 9 addresses the myth that poverty is inevitable. This idea goes back to Biblical times and is often expressed by conservatives. In contrast, this chapter argues that poverty is preventable. Three examples are given in which poverty has been substantially reduced: (1) the War on Poverty during the 1960s and early 1970s; (2) the elderly poverty rate from 1959 to 2019; and (3) single-parent families in Denmark. In each case, poverty has been reduced through social policies. The chapter concludes that the problem is not a lack of solutions. There is considerable evidence demonstrating what strategies are effective in reducing poverty. The problem lies in a lack of political will to implement these strategies. Politicians have used the myth of poverty’s inevitability to reinforce their agenda of a smaller federal government footprint.
America’s Poor Are Worse Off Than Elsewhere
Authors: Rank Mark Robert , Eppard Lawrence M. , Bullock Heather E.
Published: May 2021

Chapter 10 examines the difficulty of living in poverty in the United States. Using the MIT living wage calculator, families in poverty are unable to meet monthly expenses. Furthermore, the distance between the poverty line and median income in the United States has been growing for the past 50 years. When compared with other OECD countries, the United States has higher rates of poverty and more severe levels of poverty. A major reason for this is the relatively weak social safety net found in the United States. In addition, the extent of social exclusion and deprivation is likely higher in the United States as a result of the considerable stigma attached to poverty.
The U.S. Welfare State Is Minimal
Authors: Rank Mark Robert , Eppard Lawrence M. , Bullock Heather E.
Published: May 2021

Chapter 13 examines the size of the social safety net in the United States. Compared with European and other OECD countries, the United States has a fairly small safety net. The amount spent is approximately 2 percent of our GDP. In particular, programs aimed at protecting children from poverty are minimal. These programs have also been reduced over time, especially since the 1996 welfare reform changes. Challenging the myth of the bloated welfare state requires tackling multiple intersecting misperceptions, including erroneous portrayals of U.S. welfare expenditures as exorbitant and low-income programs as driving up the national debt. It will also require shattering myths that legitimize keeping welfare benefits low.
Welfare Fraud Is Scarce
Authors: Rank Mark Robert , Eppard Lawrence M. , Bullock Heather E.
Published: May 2021

Chapter 14 debunks the myth that welfare fraud is rampant. Although this myth is routinely perpetrated by political actors, the reality is that fraud is quite uncommon. Error rates are examined for the SNAP program, showing overall low incidence. There are currently multiple initiatives underway to curb SNAP enrollment that appear to be fueled by unfounded concerns about fraud, abuse, and waste. In addition, the trend toward criminalization of welfare use is discussed. This includes finger-imaging welfare recipients along with drug testing. Finally, research has demonstrated that a number of poverty-stricken individuals and families who would be eligible for various safety net programs choose not to apply in order to avoid the humiliation, frustration, and stigma associated with welfare.
Government Programs Can Reduce Poverty
Authors: Rank Mark Robert , Eppard Lawrence M. , Bullock Heather E.
Published: May 2021

Chapter 15 provides an analysis of the effectiveness of social welfare programs in reducing poverty. Comparing pretransfer with post-transfer rates of poverty across a range of OECD countries demonstrates that poverty can be substantially reduced. The myth that government programs do not work in addressing poverty is simply incorrect. A number of European countries are able to cut their rates of poverty by up to 80 percent as a result of robust social policies aimed at reducing poverty and inequality. In the United States, the Social Security and Medicare programs have been particularly effective in reducing the poverty rate among the elderly population.
Creating the Change
Authors: Rank Mark Robert , Eppard Lawrence M. , Bullock Heather E.
Published: May 2021

Chapter 21 draws a conclusion to the book by discussing the ways in which groups and individuals can create positive change toward alleviating poverty. The creation of the website, “Confronting Poverty: Tools for Understanding Economic Hardship and Risk,” is discussed, along with the poverty risk calculator. The role of social media is also discussed as a vehicle for raising awareness around the issues of poverty and inequality. The authors put forward that diagnosing the scope and cause of a problem is a first step toward creating change. A second step is using that diagnosis to shift the prevailing status quo mentality to one of social action. A third step is building the momentum to leverage a change in how the problem is addressed. The chapter offers several examples of how social and policy change have occurred over relatively short periods of time.
Kurt Weill's America
Authors: Graber Naomi
Published: May 2021

This book traces composer Kurt Weill’s changing relationship with the idea of “America.” His European works such as The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930), depict the nation as a capitalist dystopia filled with gangsters and molls. But in 1935, it became clear that Europe was no longer safe for the Jewish Weill, and he set sail for the New World. Once he arrived, he found the culture nothing like he imagined, and his engagement with America shifted in intriguing ways. From that point forward, most of his works concerned the idea of “America,” whether celebrating her successes, or critiquing her shortcomings. As an outsider-turned-insider, Weill’s insights into American culture are somewhat unique. He was more attuned than native-born citizens to the difficult relationship America had with her immigrants, for example. However, it took him longer to understand the subtleties of other issues, particularly those surrounding race relations.
Alienation and Integration
Authors: Graber Naomi
Published: May 2021

This chapter tracks changing norms of gender and sexuality over the course of the 1940s in Lady in the Dark, One Touch of Venus (1943), and Love Life (1948). The first two link the notion of fantasy with an idealized feminine figure, but the onset of war changed the terms of that ideal. The third shows one hundred fifty years of U.S. history through one married couple using vaudeville numbers to illuminate the lessons of the narrative. This chapter also traces Weill’s evolving relationship with Rodgers and Hammerstein. Although a tremendous success, Lady in the Dark was overshadowed by Oklahoma! (1943), and documents around One Touch of Venus show Weill trying to respond quickly. Love Life counters the integration revolution of Oklahoma! with its self-consciously Brechtian separation of elements.
Conclusion
Authors: Graber Naomi
Published: May 2021

Throughout his career, Weill remained optimistic that musical theatre could change the world for the better, all while reaching the broadest possible audience. He strove to write music that spoke to its time and place, but also endeavored to write music that possessed lasting impact and beauty. Although Rodgers and Hammerstein and their influence overshadowed Weill’s influence in his own lifetime and soon after, later Broadway figures like Hal Prince, John Kander, and Fred Ebb professed great admiration for Weill, and incorporated some of his innovations into their work. Weill’s legacy thus remains a part of Broadway to this day.
Shattered American Idealism
Authors: McBride Spencer W.
Published: May 2021

In this chapter Joseph Smith returns to Nauvoo, Illinois, disappointed with his meeting with President Van Buren but hopeful that Elias Higbee can successfully get congressional support for their memorial for redress and reparations. Higbee updates Smith on a three-day hearing of the Mormons’ case before the Senate Judiciary Committee. However, that committee ultimately rules that the federal government has no jurisdiction in the matter and that the Mormons must seek redress from Missouri, the very state that ordered their extermination in 1838. This decision frustrates Smith. With his sense of American idealism shattered, he determines to pursue protection for his people through other legal and political channels.
A City-State on a Hill
Authors: McBride Spencer W.
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines the founding and the incorporation of the city of Nauvoo, Illinois. Joseph Smith works with new church member John C. Bennett to draft a charter that grants Nauvoo an unprecedented combination of powers. Smith and Bennett argue that such powers are necessary to protect the Latter-day Saints from a repeat of the persecutions they experienced in Missouri and that the federal government’s refusal to protect religious minorities made such protections even more important at the local level. Illinois is divided between the Whigs and the Democrats at this time, and both parties are courting the support of the Mormons. As a result, the charter is approved overwhelmingly by the Illinois state legislature.
The Specter of Missouri
Authors: McBride Spencer W.
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines two of the three attempts of government officials in Missouri and Illinois to extradite Joseph Smith to Missouri. In the first, Smith was freed from extradition by order of judge Stephen A. Douglas. The second attempt came in the wake of an attempted assassination of former Missouri governor Lilburn W. Boggs, the man who had ordered the expulsion of the Mormons from the state under threat of extermination. John C. Bennett, who had been excommunicated from the church and left Nauvoo in disgrace, was on an anti-Mormon lecture tour at the time and accused Smith of conspiring to have Boggs killed. Knowing that returning to Missouri would mean certain death, Smith evaded arrest for much of 1842. Then, in January 1843, Smith had a hearing in Springfield, Illinois, in which the court declared that Missouri had no claim on him.
More Conventions
Authors: McBride Spencer W.
Published: May 2021

This chapter follows the events of the contested Democratic nominating convention of 1844 in Baltimore, Maryland. Martin Van Buren entered the convention as the favorite but faced stiff competition from Lewis Cass. After several ballots, a third candidate rose above Van Buren and Cass: James K. Polk. Polk was eventually nominated to run on the Democratic ticket against the Whig candidate, Henry Clay. This chapter also considers the small convention held by supporters of President John Tyler, who had been expelled from the Whig Party two years earlier. Meanwhile, in Nauvoo, the Mormons had a nominating convention of their own and formally nominated Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon to be an independent ticket for the presidency.
On the Road
Authors: Cassibry Kimberly
Published: May 2021

Otherwise known as the Vicarello Cups, these four vessels have been studied for their engraved itineraries, rather than for their materiality and design. At a time when pictorial maps existed but were rarely used for travel, such itineraries instrumentalized mobility through formulaic lists of destinations and distances. The place names evoke the journey’s multilingual soundscape, while also offering a framework for comparing sites connected by the Roman road system and its milestones (which the cups resemble). The Vicarello itineraries begin in Gades (Cádiz, Spain) and end in Rome, after passing through such famous sites as Tarragona, Nîmes, Arles, and Rimini. The chapter argues that the sumptuous silver cups, rather than being travel tools themselves, commemorate aspirational mobility. The cups’ owners are unknown, but the trajectories of the texts can be connected to a long history of provincial influence on Rome.
At the Games
Authors: Cassibry Kimberly
Published: May 2021

Hundreds of fragmentary glass cups preserve labeled representations of the empire’s leading sports stars, especially charioteers and gladiators. This mold-blown glassware illustrates how imagery common on popular terracotta plaques and lamps was adapted for upright translucent vessel walls. Comparing scenes reveals an important difference: whereas chariots are shown racing around the track’s monument-filled dividing line, gladiators compete without any indication of setting. When the cups are glimpsed at a utilitarian angle (45 degrees), they represent the events as they appeared from inclined stands and conjure the visual experience of spectacular entertainment. Most examples have been documented in the northwest provinces; in funerary, religious, and domestic contexts; and in places that did necessarily possess sports venues. Previously considered tools of Romanization or mementoes brought home from games, they were more likely commodities that found success in a competitive market for tableware by offering virtual experiences of the games in miniature.
Introduction
Authors: Hanhimäki Jussi M.
Published: May 2021

The Introduction outlines the basic paradox addressed in this book. On the one hand, transatlantic relations appear to be in a constant state of crisis; the “death” of the transatlantic partnership has been declared with confidence many times over. On the other hand, the links that bind the United States and Europe together—institutional, cultural, political, military—have so far prevailed. In short, the Introduction asks whether the transatlantic partnership of liberal democracies has become more fragile in the three decades since 1990? The Introduction foreshadows the major argument of the book: that the transatlantic relationship draws its long-term strength from the constant disagreements. Last, the Introduction outlines the book’s structure and defines the conceptual framework used.
Victory and the West
Authors: Hanhimäki Jussi M.
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines the state of transatlantic relations at the end of the Cold War. It takes particular issue with the notion that the Cold War had been a golden age of transatlantic cooperation. The Cold War had witnessed the emergence of a transatlantic community. But that community had been in a perpetual state of inner conflict and disagreement. NATO had almost fallen apart in the 1960s when France exited the alliance’s unified military command. Conflicts over burden-sharing and out-of-area engagements, over national subsidies and trade rules had been frequent. Before the Berlin Wall came down, the alliance had already survived, even thrived, through many internal crises. Paradoxically, when the Cold War in Europe ended, the “West” was at the same time more diverse and more united than at any time in the past.
Guardian of Pax Transatlantica
Authors: Hanhimäki Jussi M.
Published: May 2021

This chapter focuses on NATO, the institutional core of Pax Transatlantica. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has enlarged its membership and ventured beyond its immediate neighborhood. Its significance as a security actor has been enhanced, not least because of the actions of the Russian Federation in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria. By 2020, NATO was bigger and more engaged than ever before, with military capacities that dwarfed those of any of its real or potential adversaries. Yet, the success story was hampered by widespread pessimism about NATO’s future on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, the post–Cold War era had seen numerous inter-alliance crises: the Iraq War of 2003 being the most obvious example. Nevertheless, three decades after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, NATO retained its function as the basic building block of Pax Transatlantica.
Interdependence and Integration
Authors: Hanhimäki Jussi M.
Published: May 2021

The end of the Cold War and the increasingly rapid pace of globalization transformed the transatlantic economic community. This chapter will trace some of the major economic developments of the past three decades, including the impact of regional integration, the Great Recession of 2007–2010, the uncertainties produced by Britain’s decision to leave the EU (Brexit) in 2016, and the Trump administration’s apparent tilt toward economic nationalism. Yet, the history of the transatlantic economic space is also one of deeper interconnectedness and continued accumulation of wealth. After three decades of post–Cold War transformation, the transatlantic economy remains the cockpit of the global economy, the largest and wealthiest market in the world. Indeed, the ultimate paradox of the transatlantic economic relationship may well be that closer economic integration and interdependence has produced more transatlantic competition and closer scrutiny over the other side’s trading practices and labor standards.
2020—Going Viral
Authors: Hanhimäki Jussi M.
Published: May 2021

The rapid spread of Covid-19 transformed lives all across the world, causing restrictions on individual liberties and cross-border movements. Transatlantic travel came to a virtual halt in the spring of 2020. The coronavirus caused a severe and rapid economic contraction. Its politicization exacerbated existing divides within societies and polities. Yet, in some ways the most surprising effect of the pandemic may turn out to be the limited impact it had on the structural bonds between America and Europe. Talk about NATO’s demise took a back seat and the momentum for increased transatlantic cooperation in science and innovation picked up. In November 2020, Donald Trump’s defeat in the US presidential elections—perhaps the most closely observed political event of all time—signaled a possible return to less divisive public discourse. Even when infected by a virus, Pax Transatlantica endured.
Mutiny and Leadership
Authors: Grint Keith
Published: May 2021

Mutiny is often associated with the occasional mis-leadership of the masses by politically inspired hotheads or a spontaneous and unusually romantic gesture of defiance against a uniquely overbearing military superior. In reality it is seldom either, and usually it has far more mundane roots, not in the absolute poverty of the subordinates but in the relative poverty of the relationships between leaders and led in a military situation. Using contemporary leadership theory to cast a critical light on an array of mutinies across time and space, this book suggests we consider mutiny as a permanent possibility that is further encouraged or discouraged by particular contexts. What turns discontent into mutiny, however, lies in the leadership skills of a small number of leaders, and what transforms that into a constructive dialogue or a catastrophic disaster depends on how the leaders of both sides mobilize their supporters and their networks. From mutinies in ancient Roman and Greek armies through those that were generated by uncaring European monarchs and those that toppled the German and Russian states—and those that forced governments to face their own disastrous policies and changed them forever—this book covers an array of cases across land, sea, and air that still pose a threat to military establishments today.
Picturesque Literature and the Transformation of the American Landscape, 1835-1874
Authors: Evelev John
Published: May 2021

This book examines the central role that the picturesque, a popular mode of scenery appreciation that advocated for an improved and manipulated natural landscape, played in the social, spatial, and literary history of mid-nineteenth-century America. It argues that the picturesque was not simply a landscape aesthetic, but also a discipline of seeing and imaginatively shaping the natural world that was widely embraced by bourgeois Americans to transform the national landscape in their own image. Through the picturesque, midcentury bourgeois Americans remade rural spaces into tourist scenery, celebrated the city streets as spaces of cultural diversity, created new urban public parks, and made suburban domesticity a national ideal. This picturesque transformation was promulgated in a variety of popular literary genres, all of which focused on landscape description and inculcated readers into the protocols of picturesque visual discipline as social reform. Many of these genres have since been dubbed “minor” or have even been forgotten in our literary history, but the ranks of the writers of this picturesque literature include those from the most canonical (Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, Emerson, and Poe) to major authors of the period who are now less familiar to us (such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Lydia Maria Child, Nathaniel Parker Willis, and Margaret Fuller) to those who are now completely forgotten. Individual chapters of the book link picturesque literary genres to the spaces that the genres helped to transform and, in the process, create what is recognizably our modern American landscape.
{ Introduction }
Authors: Evelev John
Published: May 2021

Introducing the book as a whole, this chapter argues that the rise in popularity of the picturesque in mid-nineteenth-century America was a discipline of transforming landscapes to serve bourgeois ideological purposes, not simply a vogue in landscape aesthetics. Centering on the work of Andrew Jackson Downing (1815–1852), whose influential writings and designs shaped the creation of the suburbs, new urban parks, and reconfigured domestic spaces, the Introduction traces the social meanings of the picturesque in late eighteenth-century England and its popularization in the United States in scenery books, aesthetic treatises, and design books in the 1830s and 1840s. Literary landscape genres had a role in popularizing the picturesque and helping middle-class Americans to imagine a new national landscape. In theorizing this role, the Introduction also recovers a literary tradition that has been largely excluded from the dominant narratives about nineteenth-century American literature.
Exile
Authors: Fortini Brown Patricia
Published: May 2021

Girolamo and Giulia sail to Crete, their voyage reimagined from accounts of similar trips in that period. After avoiding attacks from corsairs, they arrive safely in the port of Candia, only to find half-finished city walls and many buildings partially in ruin from a recent earthquake. They soon obtain rental housing and insert themselves into a community of Latins and Greeks. Giulia gives birth to their first child, Lodovico, who dies two weeks later. A healthy second son, Sigismondo, is born, albeit with difficulties. With the Della Torre line now assured, the couple move within a complicated social hierarchy of elites and settle into the rhythms of colonial life. Girolamo collects rents for a Farnese cardinal and is granted permission to carry arms for his defence. The search for his brother’s assassins continues back in Italy, and Bishop Michele becomes a leading figure at the Council of Trent.
The Capitano Grande
Authors: Fortini Brown Patricia
Published: May 2021

Giulia’s father Gian Matteo is actively engaged in political affairs and cultural endeavours (the Accademia degli Uniti) in Venice. He is Eelected Capitano Generale Grandeof Candia in 1552, he and sails to the island with his wife Marcella for a two-year term and . Hemakes notable additions to the infrastructure of the city. Continuing with the construction of Michele Sanmicheli’s city walls, he brings the first running water into the city, builds a fountain using Roman spolia, and completes new arsenals at the port. Giulia gives birth to Taddea and Giulio. Michele continues to lobby for a reduction of his brother’s sentence. Finally, after the election of a new doge (a close friend of Gian Matteo’s), the Council of Ten votes to allow Girolamo to return to Venice to complete the last five years of his term. The Della Torre and Bembo families sail back to Venice in September 1554.
The Sacrifice
Authors: Fortini Brown Patricia
Published: May 2021

Girolamo completes his sentence in mid-1559, and the family moves into the bishop’s castle in Ceneda, and then on to the castle at Villalta. Giulia furnishes each residence, as well as Palazzo Torriani in Udine, with trappings and furniture suitable to the family’s noble status. Giovanni da Udine embellishes the ceiling of a studiolo in the Castello di Colloredo with grotteschi decoration. While the Della Torre stay out of trouble, their Colloredo relatives keep the blood feud alive. After bearing two more daughters, Ginevra and Elena, Giulia is pregnant again and prophesies her own death. She dies in Ceneda in spring 1562 shortly after giving birth to Giulia II, her tenth child, ‘renewing the major part of the ancestors and herself’. The bloodline was secure. Francesco Sansovino honours Giulia in 1565 with the first freestanding female biography of an ordinary woman to appear in print in Renaissance Italy.
Suitable Alliances
Authors: Fortini Brown Patricia
Published: May 2021

Girolamo marries off all five daughters to Friulian nobles—three to feudal lords, two to wealthy city dwellers—thus strengthening the family network of alliances. Alvise and Giovanni become priests, the latter destined to follow his uncle Michele into high church office. Girolamo’s oldest son, Sigismondo, seeks his fortune in service of the Hapsburgs. His first marriage brings him the feud of Spessa, complete with castle, in Gorizia, and a son and heir, Carlo, named after the archduke. A second marriage into a collateral Della Torre line based in imperial territory ties him ever more firmly to the Hapsburgs. Girolamo expands the castle at Villalta, grafting a seigneurial Renaissance country villa onto the medieval fortress, the complex becoming a metaphor for a feudal family that now embraces Venetian republican values. Michele is featured in Paolo Paruta’s Della perfezione della vita politica (1579), a treatise celebrating politics as civil discipline.
The Cardinal
Authors: Fortini Brown Patricia
Published: May 2021

Michele is named cardinal in 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII and is lauded with extensive, and costly, celebrations in Ceneda and Udine. It is the high point of the Della Torre fortunes and reputation. When the pope dies in 1585, Michele is favoured by many to be his successor, but another cardinal is elected instead as Sixtus V. Michele dies in Ceneda the following year. This is a low point for the family. Girolamo’s son, Giovanni, is in line for a bishopric and there are hopes for the Ceneda post. But Michele Mocenigo, a candidate favoured by the Venetians, is named instead. SadlyMore seriously, Michele’s cardinalate (as well as the bishopric) was a costly honour, and the Della Torre family is deeply in debt. Girolamo becomes embroiled in a lengthy dispute with the pope over funeral expenses and with Mocenigo over assets in Ceneda.
Retrenchment
Authors: Fortini Brown Patricia
Published: May 2021

In 1587 Girolamo sells Palazzo Torriani to Antonio Marchesi, a rich merchant, to satisfy some of the creditors. Marchesi, who has noble aspirations, embellishes the palace with luxurious furnishings, including a ceiling painting by the workshop of Paolo Veronese, and builds new structures on the site. Girolamo ties up loose ends. He verifies the family’s titles and investitures and puts his financial house in order. Mindful of the litigation over Gian Matteo’s estate, he executes a notarized document, dividing his property, and his debts, equally between his three surviving sons, Sigismondo, Giulio, and Giovanni, ‘so that everyone would know his share’. Girolamo’s brother-in-law Pietro Bembo, Bishop of Veglia, dies in 1589. The pope gives the office to Girolamo’s son Giovanni over Venetian objections. Girolamo drafts his testament, reaffirming the property division of 1587. He dies in Venice in March 1590 at the age of eighty-five.
What Matters in Survival
Authors: Ehring Douglas
Published: May 2021

This work is about what matters in survival, that is, about what relation to a future individual gives you a reason for prudential concern for that individual. For common sense there is such a relation and it is identity, but according to Parfit, common sense is wrong in this respect. Identity is not what matters in survival. In this work, it is argued that this Parfitian thesis, revolutionary though it is, does not go far enough. The result is the highly radical view, “Survival Nihilism,” according to which nothing matters in survival. Although we generally have motivating reasons to have prudential concern, and perhaps even indirect normative reasons for such concerns—such as a commitment to find a vaccine for the Covid-19 virus—there is no relation that gives you a basic, foundational normative reason for prudential concern. This view goes beyond what Parfit calls the Extreme View. It is the More Extreme View, and is, in effect, something like an error theory about prudential reason as a special kind of normative reason.
Epilogue
Authors: Ehring Douglas
Published: May 2021

In the Epilogue, various possible implications of Survival Nihilism are considered. It is argued, first, that Rational Egoism must be rejected if Survival Nihilism is true. Second, the question of whether Survival Nihilism excludes both the possibilities of compensation and of moral responsibility is examined. The conclusion is that it does but only if compensation and moral responsible require that there some relation matters in survival, but it is uncertain one way or the other that this is a requirement of either compensation or moral responsibility. Finally, the possibility of a purely pragmatic justification for having a practice of prudential concern—organized around identity or some other relation—that cannot be defeated by metaphysical considerations is assessed. It is suggested that, in fact, given the metaphysical reflections of this work, a pragmatic justification for adopting a practice of prudential concern, so organized, would not mean that identity or an alternative non-identity relation would give you a non-derivative or derivative reason for prudential concern.
Making AI Intelligible
Authors: Cappelen Herman , Dever Josh
Published: May 2021

Can humans and artificial intelligences share concepts and communicate? One aim of Making AI Intelligible is to show that philosophical work on the metaphysics of meaning can help answer these questions. Cappelen and Dever use the externalist tradition in philosophy of to create models of how AIs and humans can understand each other. In doing so, they also show ways in which that philosophical tradition can be improved: our linguistic encounters with AIs revel that our theories of meaning have been excessively anthropocentric. The questions addressed in the book are not only theoretically interesting, but the answers have pressing practical implications. Many important decisions about human life are now influenced by AI. In giving that power to AI, we presuppose that AIs can track features of the world that we care about (e.g. creditworthiness, recidivism, cancer, and combatants.) If AIs can share our concepts, that will go some way towards justifying this reliance on AI. The book can be read as a proposal for how to take some first steps towards achieving interpretable AI. Making AI Intelligible is of interest to both philosophers of language and anyone who follows current events or interacts with AI systems. It illustrates how philosophy can help us understand and improve our interactions with AI.
Achilles Tatius and Vergil’s Aeneid
Authors: Jolowicz Daniel
Published: May 2021

Chapter 5 attends to Achilles Tatius’ engagement with Vergil’s Aeneid. The argument focuses on three main lines of enquiry (in all of which it is clear that Achilles is capitalizing on the erotic potential on offer in Vergil’s epic). Section 5.2 argues that Achilles models Melite’s plea for sex with Clitophon (articulated in two speeches) on Dido’s plea that Aeneas stay in Carthage (also articulated in two speeches), thus reducing Dido’s tragic hope for marital-political security to a wish for a single session of sex (Melite is successful in her wish). Section 5.3 takes as its subject the flushed cheeks of Leucippe in Book 1 (to which Clitophon responds erotically) and argues that it is modelled on the famous blush of Lavinia in Aeneid 12 (which fires Turnus with love). Section 5.4 ranges over a number of phraseological overlaps between Achilles and the Aeneid suggestive of a close engagement (especially in connection with the storm in Aeneid 1 and the character of Coroebus in Aeneid 2).
Achilles Tatius and the Destruction of Bodies
Authors: Jolowicz Daniel
Published: May 2021

Chapter 6 argues that Achilles is attracted to the gallery of bodily carnage on offer in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Lucan’s Bellum Civile, and Seneca’s Phaedra, as part of his apparent obsession with the vulnerability of human bodies and their susceptibility to wounding. It makes four distinct arguments. Section 6.2 makes the case that the episode of Charicles’ death in Achilles manifests strong indications of interaction with the accounts of the gruesome death of Hippolytus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Seneca’s Phaedra. Section 6.3 demonstrates that Achilles (or rather Clitophon) exhibits a recurrent interest in bodily dismemberment and reconstitution analogous to that in Ovid and Neronian poetry (especially Lucan). Section 6.4 argues that the decapitation of ‘Leucippe’ in Book 5 not only is modelled on the similar fate of the historical Pompeius Magnus but also combines the accounts of this event found in Lucan and Plutarch. These sections suggest that Achilles is alive to developments in Neronian literature that privilege the aesthetics of gore and bodily destruction, and which reflect the Roman imperial taste for violence more generally (perhaps energized by the institution of the amphitheatre). Section 6.5 elaborates a number of ways in which Achilles is attracted to the arresting style and verbal wit of Ovid, especially in connection with his flood narrative.
The Context Shiftiness Dilemma Generalized
Authors: Simion Mona
Published: May 2021

Most actors in the debate assume that the intuitive variability of proper assertion with practical stakes (the Shiftiness Intuition) motivates the following dilemma: either 1) we embrace a knowledge norm of assertion, and are forced into a view that takes knowledge, or ‘knowledge’, to be sensitive to practical stakes, or 2) we stick to our Classical Invariantist guns, but then the knowledge norm goes out the window and we get practical sensitivity in the normativity of assertion (the Shiftiness Dilemma). This chapter brings this dilemma to centre stage and argues that it threatens to generalize in three ways: to all context-invariant norms of proper assertoric speech, to all constative speech acts, and to all epistemic normative constraints. If this is right, we should be more worried about this dilemma than we’ve been so far.
Pragmatic WAMs
Authors: Simion Mona
Published: May 2021

In light of embracing the Shiftiness Dilemma, the vast majority of philosophers accept Assertion Incompatibilism: given intuitive variability of proper assertion with practical stakes, Classical Invariantism is incompatible with a biconditional knowledge norm of assertion. There are also a few dissenting voices, however: some invariantists venture to preserve both Classical Invariantism and the Knowledge Norm of Assertion (Assertion Compatibilism). There are two varieties of Compatibilism available on the market. This chapter discusses the first of the two: Pragmatic Compatibilism employs a pragmatic warranted assertability manoeuvre to explain away the shiftiness data. The chapter argues that the view has difficulties with delivering epistemic normative independence for cases of shiftiness of assertions that do not involve knowledge attributions or explicitly tabled error possibilities.
KK Compatibilism
Authors: Simion Mona
Published: May 2021

According to KK Compatibilism, the unassertability in the high-stakes contextualist cases can be explained in terms of the subjects lack of higher-order knowledge: although, strictly speaking, all that is needed for proper action—assertion included—is first-order knowledge, when the stakes are high, we tend to find people who act without knowing that they meet the condition for proper action blameworthy for so doing. This chapter argues that (1) the view misidentifies the epistemic deficit that is explanatorily salient in contextualist cases, in that the absence of second-order knowledge is not a difference maker, and (2) on closer look, the account requires normative finessing for extensional adequacy.
Against the Shiftiness Dilemma
Authors: Simion Mona
Published: May 2021

This chapter argues that the Shiftiness Dilemma is a false dilemma: KNA is perfectly compatible with Classical Invariantism. Furthermore, it offers independent reason to believe that if KNA and Classical Invariantism are true, variation in proper assertability is exactly what we may expect. More precisely, the chapter advances the debate in two important ways: (1) it identifies a widely held assumption concerning epistemic norm individuation (Content Individuation), which gets the Shiftiness Dilemma off the ground; (2) it argues that Content Individuation is false, and that therefore the norm at stake in the debate need not be epistemic.
The Epistemic Normativity of Conjecture
Authors: Simion Mona
Published: May 2021

This chapter looks more closely into the epistemic normativity of a particular constative—conjecture—and examines and accounts for the contextual variation of its propriety. The chapter has two aims: (1) it breaks new ground in that it develops the first fully fledged account of the epistemic normativity of conjecture in the literature; (2) it goes sharply against orthodoxy, in arguing that the epistemic requirements placed on us by conjecture are stronger than those governing assertion. According to the view developed here, one’s conjecture that p is permissible only if one knows that one has warrant, but not sufficient warrant, to believe that p.
A Special Case
Authors: Simion Mona
Published: May 2021

This chapter is concerned with moral assertion. In recent years, much attention has been given to the epistemic credentials of belief based on moral testimony. Some people think pure moral deference is wrong, others disagree. It comes as a surprise, however, that while the epistemic responsibilities of the receiver of moral testimony have been closely scrutinized, little discussion has focused on the epistemic duties of the speaker. This chapter defends a functionalist account of the normativity of moral assertion. According to this view, in virtue of its function of reliably generating moral understanding in the audience, a moral assertion that p needs be knowledgeable and accompanied by a contextually appropriate explanation why p.
Literature in a Time of Migration
Authors: McDonagh Josephine
Published: May 2021

Literature in a Time of Migration rethinks British fiction in the light of new practices of human mobility that reshaped the nineteenth-century world. Building on the growing critical engagement with globalization in literary studies, it confronts the paradox that at a time at which transnational human movement occurred globally, on a scale before unknown, British fiction appears to turn inward to tell stories of local places, in which stability and rootedness are rewarded. On the contrary, Literature in a Time of Migration reveals how literary works, from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the advent of the New Imperialism, were active components of a culture of colonization and emigration. Fictional texts, as print commodities, were enmeshed in technologies of transport and communication, and innovations in literary form were spurred by the conditions and consequences of human movement. Works by canonical writers (Scott, Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, and George Eliot), and other popular contemporaries (Mary Russell Mitford, John Galt, and Thomas Martin Wheeler), examine issues that overlap with an agenda set in public discussions of colonial emigration, which they also helped to shape. Debates concerning, for example, assisted emigration, ‘forced’ and ‘free’ migration, colonization, settlement, and the removal of native peoples, figure in complex ways in fictions. Read alongside writings by emigration theorists, practitioners, and enthusiasts, fictional texts reveal a sustained engagement with British migratory practices and their worldwide consequences. Literature in a Time of Migration is a timely reminder of the place and importance of migration within British cultural heritage.
Introduction
Authors: McDonagh Josephine
Published: May 2021

The increased extent and rapidity of migration was a world-wide phenomenon in the nineteenth century and forms the context of a dynamic period in the history of the English novel. Although British literature often seems unwilling to represent migration, nevertheless the form of the novel in this period is shaped in the context of the frenetic transcontinental movement of people. The common denominator of migration and fiction in this period is print, which, in this period, through new technologies was cheaper and more easily produced. Print helped to stimulate and sustain migration through the production of information for emigrants. Moreover, the development of printing presses in settler colonies stimulated important new readerships especially for fiction, which flourished as a consequence. Fictions in this period show the impact of increased human mobility in both their themes, and their formal attributes. They interrogate questions that are provoked by colonization and mass mobility, regarding community, freedom, democracy, and displacement; and they develop an aesthetic that is characterized by an emphasis on contiguity, and adjacent relations.
Dickens’s National Novel
Authors: McDonagh Josephine
Published: May 2021

Bleak House is a novel saturated with figures of unsettlement, in which characters uprooted by their social conditions operate within a plot animated by unsettlement, in an affective world dominated by feelings of pity and sympathy for those who have been displaced. Thresholds recur in the novel as privileged sites of heightened emotion. The novel’s preoccupation with unsettlement is best understood in the context of mid-century bourgeois aspirations to reimagine the nation as a place in which all citizens might enjoy freedom of movement. In framing this vision, Dickens draws on two contemporary discourses, one drawn from emigration, especially Caroline Chisholm’s popular ‘family emigration’ schemes; the other from public discussions about the law of settlement in the context of the New Poor Law. The latter were attempts to regulate where the poor could live, in the context of the bureaucratic reorganization of national geography that occurred at this time. Throughout, however, the novel displays profound ambivalence about Britain’s engagement with the wider world, expressed most clearly through its antagonism to overseas philanthropy, which it sees as a misdirection of national feeling. The novel’s vision of the nation, underpinned by its commitment to mobility and an ideology of freedom of movement within, but not beyond, the nation, produces its particular formal features and thematic emphases on mobility and movement, and its preoccupation with thresholds—doorsteps, entrances, and finally national borders—as places at which political decisions about inclusion and exclusion are made.
Conclusion
Authors: McDonagh Josephine
Published: May 2021

Conrad’s 1901 short story ‘Amy Foster’ has influenced postcolonial and human rights critics who link it to post-1945 forms of migration. But the story also reveals its indebtedness to the nineteenth-century novel. Published first in a weekly magazine, surrounded by advertisements for colonial commodities and articles about imperial military campaigns, the story draws attention to many of the same issues, and uses the same techniques, as the fictions explored in earlier chapters of the book. That the story also resonates with the conditions of exile faced by refugees in more recent times suggests that the continuing significance of the nineteenth-century novel lies in the way in which it established, and also interrogated, paradigmatic and persistent assumptions about the relationship between human mobility and freedom. While it bears traces of the colonial regimes in which it was produced, another important legacy of the nineteenth-century novel is that it presents us with an analytical frame in which to understand and interrogate the types and patterns of human mobility on which these were built.
“Society Is a Simple and Beautiful Science”
Authors: Allison Mark A.
Published: May 2021

This chapter investigates British socialism’s symbolic birth: Robert Owen’s unveiling of his plan for an entirely new social order in the summer of 1817. Although Owen has been canonized as a stalwart of the political left, his proposals baffled and enraged partisans across the ideological spectrum. Commentators had great difficulty deciding whether his “Plan” was radical or reactionary—or even if it was “political” at all. Using the vitriolic debates that consumed the Plan as a focal point (and drawing on contemporary commentators as varied as William Hazlitt, Thomas Malthus, and George Cruikshank), this chapter undertakes a revisionary interpretation of Owenite socialism that uncovers its latent aesthetic core. Owen and his followers have long been associated with utilitarian indifference, if not downright vulgarian insensitivity, to the arts. However, Owen’s very ambition to govern citizens without recourse to the state or the Church rests upon an aesthetic substratum. This chapter demonstrates that the curriculum Owen designed to produce human beings who would not require “politics” to produce consensus relies upon extensive training in the musical arts to inculcate the principle of universal harmony. The final part of this chapter locates the origins of British anti-socialist rhetoric at the juncture of Malthusian political economy and anti-Jacobin polemic.