bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Retributivism
Authors: Berman Mitchell N.
Published: October 2024

Retributivism is a family of theories that purport to justify criminal punishment by reference to a wrongdoer’s negative desert. Individual members of the family differ from one another on many issues, including what it is that wrongdoers deserve and what is the character and force of the fact that they deserve it. This chapter lays out one retributive theory and sketches defenses of that theory against prominent anti-retributivist objections, including objections grounded in determinism. According to the theory this chapter dubs “prospect retributivism,” culpable wrongdoers deserve to experience their wrongdoing as personally costly to them, and the state assumes a pro tanto duty to cause wrongdoers to experience those costs in virtue of barring retaliation by victims and their surrogates.
War Criminals
Authors: Holmen Sebastian Jon
Published: October 2024

This chapter considers whether consequentialist-minded theories of punishment can justify punishing perpetrators of mass atrocities. It argues that standard consequentialist measures such as reformation, incapacitation, and specific deterrence are unlikely candidates for such a justification because they plausibly will not be effective ways to prevent future mass atrocities. The chapter also highlights that it is currently unclear whether the general deterrence of punishing perpetrators can justify such punishment. Lastly, however, the chapter then provides two alternative ways that consequentialists could attempt to justify punishing perpetrators of mass atrocities and argues that these approaches seem to have important advantages relative to the standard consequentialist approaches.
Punishment and Social Injustice
Authors: Matravers Matt
Published: October 2024

This chapter concerns the problem of doing penal justice in circumstances of social injustice. The chapter begins by identifying the kinds of states with which it deals, and the nature of social injustice. It then briefly examines various ways in which social injustice, and inequality generally, can be reflected in criminalization, policing, and prosecution. The chapter then turns to conviction and punishment. It first considers arguments for and against the idea that offenders who have suffered social injustice are in some way less responsible for their conduct and that this ought to result in a defense or in penalty mitigation. It then turns to the question of whether unjust states have the right—the authority or “standing”—to punish. Finally, the chapter locates the problem in a broad characterization of a liberal regime and suggests some ways forward for doing penal justice in such societies.
Punishment and Discrimination
Authors: Lippert-Rasmussen Kasper
Published: October 2024

Many statistics show that people in certain groups are penally disadvantaged. From this it is natural to infer that such people are subjected either to direct penal discrimination or to at least to some form of discrimination whether that is direct or not. This chapter’s aim is to examine these inferences, not the conclusions they are supposed to establish. Pointing to the important notion of structural discrimination, it suggests that penal disadvantage could reflect structural rather than direct discrimination, in which case the first inference is problematic. Turning to the second inference, it notes that men are penally disadvantaged. On the assumption that men are not subjected to penal discrimination—direct or structural—one needs to be more specific about when penal disadvantage permits an inference to penal discrimination of some kind. The chapter argues that it is difficult to say what, specifically, the inference requires.
Physicians and Punishment
Authors: Walker Rebecca L.
Published: October 2024

Despite orientation to goals that are in deep tension, medicine and state-sanctioned punishment have long cooperated. Involvement of physicians in some punishment practices has led to professional guidance aimed at reinforcing medical morality and eschewing such engagement. This chapter addresses the ethics of the intersection of medicine and state-sponsored punishment. It explicates tensions within the aims of medicine that help to make sense of why physicians sometimes participate in punishment and, in opposition to some guidance from professional ethics, emphasizes the significance of broader moral questions about various forms of punishment in determining what it is ethical for physicians to do by way of their involvement.
Pluralistic Theory
Authors: Husak Douglas
Published: October 2024

My thesis is that only pluralistic theories are able to provide a comprehensive justification of legal punishment. Most of my argument is directed against the retributive monistic view that a state is justified in imposing punishments that conform to a principle of retributive justice. Conformity with this principle, in turn, is said to be secured when offenders are treated as they deserve. My main argument against this monistic view is that value is indeed created when a state conforms to a principle of retributive justice by inflicting a punishment that is deserved, but that the amount or quantum of value that is gained by so doing is not ordinarily of sufficient weight to justify punishment all-things-considered. My essay collects several distinct reasons to believe that the value of achieving retributive justice, even if it exists, is typically too small to allow the state to punish. Thus, an adequate defense of punishment must be pluralistic.
Rights Forfeiture Theory
Authors: Bell William L. , Wellman Christopher Heath
Published: October 2024

A rights forfeiture theory of punishment seeks to explain when and why punishment is permissible. While traditional accounts, such as retributivism or deterrence theory, identify morally valuable aims that punishment might secure, only a forfeiture theory of punishment successfully establishes why a wrongdoer’s rights are not violated when she is subjected to hard treatment. This chapter aims to provide an overview of forfeiture theory, clarify the concept, and discuss a number of puzzles and objections raised by the theory. It includes discussions of weak versus strong versions of forfeiture, objections to forfeiture theory, rights reclamation, and the question of relatedness.
Fluid Dynamics Geology and Evolutionary Physics in Byron
Authors: de Almeida Hermione
Published: October 2024

This chapter addresses Byron’s knowledge and use of the evolution theories advanced by Georges Cuvier, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. The chapter’s focus is on the poet’s late ‘Mystery’ verse dramas of 1821–2. Cuvier’s 1811 theory of an Earth recurringly annihilated serves as the bleak undercurrent of Cain. Heaven and Earth and The Deformed Transformed (written late in 1822) form an open-ended, positive, and multivalent response to Cuvier’s shocking prospect. Heaven and Earth proposes a Lamarckian, natural, and necessary evolutionary mixing of species, and an indestructibility of Matter and its energies or Spirit. The Deformed Transformed describes the fluid dynamics of individual living entities, recalling Saint-Hilaire’s research on embryos’ responses to environmental stresses and their internal dynamics for adaptive changes. Byron’s speculative science in his last, unfinished drama anticipates contemporary scientific research on epigenetics, on rapid intergenerational evolution, and on invisible but organized energies and neural connections.
Text and Time in Don Juan, Cantos IX–XII
Authors: Dyer Gary
Published: October 2024

This chapter argues that Cantos IX, X, XI, and XII of Lord Byron’s Don Juan demand to be interpreted using the history of their composition, revision, proofreading, and publication. Bringing together book history and textual criticism, the essay relies upon information about the development of the texts, some of it unfamiliar, to show how the published text engaged not just with a historical moment but with a sequence of moments, as both the world Byron pondered and the world he addressed changed, and what was once inappropriate became appropriate: the stanzas on the Duke of Wellington that Byron wrote in 1819 were ones he re-purposed in 1822 as the opening of Canto IX where they had different effects from those originally conceived. Moreover, the reading experience evokes this changing history, such as when lines the author wrote appear to have been censored after the printing process began, or when a footnote explains how circumstances differed from when a specific passage was composed.
Uses of the Past in the History Plays
Authors: Schmidt Arnold Anthony
Published: October 2024

This chapter analyses three of the history plays that Byron wrote during his time in Italy in the context of early modern Venetian history, nineteenth-century British politics, and the Risorgimento, the peninsula’s movement for independence. Analysis of Venice’s legislative politics and the conflict between proponents of its maritime and landed empires enriches readings of Marino Faliero and The Two Foscari. Issues of gender identity loom large in Sardanapalus, which, along with the other plays, says much about the Byronic Hero and the poet’s Sisyphean vision of history, in which people act though their deeds come to naught. These three tragedies centre on the failed actions of great men, suggesting the inability of individual agency to affect historical change. On a personal level, however, Byron attempted to affect history by supporting armed insurrection against Austria in Italy and the Ottoman Empire in Greece. Moreover, though he discounted the political influence of his writings, many read Byron’s texts as liberational polemic. A further link connects the poet’s politics with his aesthetics, since these writings often embody Romantic content in Neoclassical form. Analysis shows that by adhering to the so-called Aristotelian Unities, Byron’s hierarchical politics find echoes in the aesthetics of these three tragedies.
‘The Life We Image’ Byron and Sexuality
Authors: McDayter Ghislaine
Published: October 2024

This chapter argues that it is in the creative act of moving across Don Juan’s satiric landscape that Byron tests, tastes, and constructs his shifting economies of desire. Far from being a document through which we can uncover the truth of the poet’s sexual placement, then, Don Juan maps the vagaries and endless categories of sexuality in the different settings experienced by its hero. The ‘exotic’ realms of this poem do not simply function as colourful backdrops to Juan’s sexual development, offering him a fresh lover in every new land. These different locales set the stage for the very creation of the famously mobile Byronic desire. What this study of Don Juan reveals is that the poet was very conscious of the fact that such ‘mobility of desire’ was also highly gendered, mirroring the physical mobility of Regency men who were free to explore greener and more exotic pastures in travel.
Byron Libertine, Friend, and Lover
Authors: Vail Jeffery
Published: October 2024

This chapter describes Lord Byron’s personal relationships with lovers, friends, and sexual partners throughout his life. The complexities of Byron’s psyche, including his sense of shame and his desire to prove his masculine potency, are illustrated through discussions of Byron’s sexual libertinism from his youth till his death in 1824. The chapter then recounts his friendships with Thomas Moore, Percy and Mary Shelley, John Cam Hobhouse, and his Cambridge circle, among others. Byron’s views on women and love are discussed, with particular regard to the two great female loves of his life, Augusta Leigh and Countess Teresa Guiccioli. The chapter discusses numerous quotations from Byron’s letters and poems regarding libertinism, friendship, and love.
Rhotic Vowel Harmony
Authors: Smith Norval
Published: October 2024

In this chapter a description of four cases of rhotic harmony is provided. These are: (a) Kalasha, a language with a rhotic vowel for each non-rhotic vowel; (b) Serrano, a language with half the number rhotic vowels as it has non-rhotic vowels; (c) Yurok, a language with a single rhotic vowel, in a different place to all the non-rhotic vowels; and (d) Yonghe Qiang, a language with a gap in its inventory corresponding to high, front, unrounded rhotic vowels, a pattern that is often found. These give a fair cross-section of the possible types. How the Serrano rhotic vowel system came to be the way it is, is not yet known. The Serrano system also appears to be complemented by high back rounding harmony. If this is the case, it appears to be an oddity.
Domains of Vowel Harmony
Authors: Kiparsky Paul
Published: October 2024

This chapter deals with domains of harmony and disharmony, and approaches to their formal modeling. It furthermore covers cyclic, directional, and dominant harmony, harmony across word boundaries in compounds, clitics, and phrasal domains. Finally, it discusses a case of discontinuous harmony where phonology interacts cyclically with both the morphological derivation and the syntactic derivation. Because of its unbounded character, vowel harmony is a useful probe into word and sentence structure. It provides empirical evidence for morphological theories that countenance morphemes and hierarchical constituency in words, such as Distributed Morphology and Minimalist Morphology, and challenges theories that posit “a-morphous” or flat word structure, such as Paradigm Function Morphology and Word-based Morphology.
Morphosyntactic Asymmetries in Serviglianese Vowel Harmony Domains
Authors: Calabrese Andrea
Published: October 2024

This chapter deals with the morphosyntactic asymmetries found in the computation of stress and vowel harmony domains in Italo-Romance Serviglianese. A complex system of regressive vowel-harmonic processes characterizes this variety. These processes interact with a morphosyntactic process that cliticizes complement pronominals to verbs. Depending on the syntactic context, the clitics can appear before the verb (as proclitics) or after it (as enclitics). Crucially, there is a three-way distinction in phonological domains involving verbs and clitics: a domain including the verb roots and suffixes, but not enclitics, where stress is computed; one including the verb and enclitics but not proclitics, where harmonic processes are computed; and finally, one which includes proclitics plus the verb where processes such as secondary stress are computed. It is shown that these domain asymmetries can be accounted for by considering the derivational steps employed to construct morphosyntactic structures. A discussion of similar facts in Turkish follows.
The Role of Consonants in Vowel Harmony
Authors: Hansson Gunnar Ólafur
Published: October 2024

This chapter examines the ways in which consonants may interfere with, or participate in, patterns of vowel harmony (VH). Most commonly, consonants may act as opaque segments, blocking the propagation of the harmony feature. The types of consonants that can block VH are diverse and the phonetic motivation for their behavior as blockers is not always evident. Alternatively, consonants may trigger harmony, either on their own or in combination with a triggering vowel. Consonants may also display alternation between harmony contexts, suggesting that they can be undergoers of VH, though some such effects may arise at the level of phonetic implementation rather than in the phonological grammar. Many illustrative examples are provided of these different types of consonantal involvement in VH, and some frequently cited cases are re-evaluated. Finally, consonant harmony and VH are briefly compared in terms of their typological properties and underlying mechanisms.
What Constitutes Privileged Positions in Vowel Harmony?
Authors: Kaplan Aaron , Walker Rachel
Published: October 2024

Vowel harmony systems often grant special status to vowels in particular positions. Such vowels may trigger harmony, resist harmony, or become the endpoint for harmony. This chapter investigates the positions that are eligible for privilege of this sort, what kinds of privilege each position exhibits, and possible sources of that privilege. Privilege may be either phonologically grounded or morphologically grounded: stressed syllables, initial syllables, final syllables, roots, and stems are the primary positions that exhibit privilege cross-linguistically. Some of these positions exhibit the full range of privileged behavior cross-linguistically, while for other positions only a subset of possible privileged effects is attested. Formal accounts of privilege are examined, focusing primarily on the Optimality Theory (OT)-based constraint families of positional licensing and positional faithfulness.
Directionality in Vowel Harmony Systems
Authors: Mahanta Shakuntala
Published: October 2024

This chapter discusses how directionality in vowel harmony (VH) has been analyzed in the literature. We show that phonologists of various persuasions have thought of the direction of harmonic spreading as an epiphenomenon—that is, dependent on phonological or morphological features. But an extensive survey of languages that were previously not well studied shows that directionality is much more independent than it has been assumed to be so far. The chapter then discusses how directionality is seen in epiphenomenal systems as well, apart from the straightforward directionality. There are stray cases of limited rightward directionality as well, even though the regressive direction is more prevalent. Thus, the phonology of VH cannot completely discard the directionality parameter.
Vowel Harmony in Classical Generative Phonology
Authors: Kisseberth Charles W. , Kenstowicz Michael J.
Published: October 2024

This chapter reviews publications in the early generative literature that addressed the challenges vowel harmony poses for a model of phonology whose archetypical rule changes the feature coefficient(s) of a single segment based on local context. These challenges include the Multiple-Application Problem (how to extend the feature change to multiple points in a harmonic span), the Directionality Problem (how to express progressive, regressive, and bidirectional assimilation as parameters of variation), the Duplication Problem (whether and, if so, how the same feature co-occurrence restriction can be stated over static roots and alternating affixes). Additional problems concern whether attested harmonic changes can be accommodated to a representational system based on distinctive features with consistent phonological and phonetic correlates (the Diacritic Problem) and whether both values of a feature assimilate (the Binarity Problem). Finally, given that harmony is the product of a rule, can later rules obscure its application (the Abstractness Problem)?
Vowel Harmony in Optimal Domains Theory
Authors: Kisseberth Charles W.
Published: October 2024

This chapter introduces and motivates the idea of spans as relevant for suprasegmental phenomena in the area of tone and vowel harmony. This approach is offered as an alternative to the autosegmental view of assimilation as spreading. In the Optimal Domains Theory approach, a feature F is realized within a phonological constituent termed the F-span. A span is sponsored by a single anchor in the unmarked case, but in cases of harmony the span has a wide scope defined in terms of prosodic or morphological constituents. The Expression constraint requires that within an F-span all anchors should be specified for F. However, this constraint may conflict with feature occurrence constraints that restrict the affiliation of F. The ranking of the constraints on alignment of F-spans and the Expression and feature occurrence constraints gives rise to a typology of harmony systems with different properties of transparency and opacity
Phonetic and Functional Precursors to Vowel Harmony
Authors: Rysling Amanda , Kingston John
Published: October 2024

This chapter concerns the potential functional and phonetic bases, i.e., the systemic pressures from language use that may cause languages to develop VH. It begins from a point of consensus: that a necessary precursor of VH in speech production is vowel-to-vowel coarticulation; it then considers several contested points concerning the perception of potentially harmonic vowels. It advances a novel proposal for the perceptual basis of VH, disagreeing with previous proposals in not assuming that, for vowels to be heard as harmonized, listeners must perpetuate perceptual mistakes. The chapter then examines the lack of evidence for perceptual weakness as the impetus for VH, before discussing the psycholinguistic evidence that native listeners of languages with VH use it to facilitate their word segmentation in on-line listening. It concludes that obtaining a comprehensive understanding of when/how usage pressures give rise to VH will necessitate more work on the production and perception of coarticulation.
Vowel Harmony in Contact Situations
Authors: Friedman Victor A. , Joseph Brian D.
Published: October 2024

This chapter examines claims in the literature that vowel harmony (VH) is among the convergent features that serve to define the contact-determined sprachbund encompassing various languages of the Balkans. The interest of such claims is that, if true, they would point to an instance of the spread of VH due to language contact. Ultimately, however, these claims can be dismissed, on both empirical and definitional grounds. Nonetheless, it is argued that there is a different way in which VH of sorts does spread in the region, and other contact-related developments involving VH in these languages, especially the loss of VH, is also discussed.
On How and Why Vowel Harmony Decays
Authors: McCollum Adam G.
Published: October 2024

Drawing on data from a range of language families, this chapter discusses harmonies which show signs of diachronic decay, outlining a number of pathways by which harmony may decay as well as the language-internal and language-external forces that may trigger decay. Both phonetic coarticulation and misperception have been linked to the emergence of vowel harmony (VH). This link, however, does not explain the ways in which phonological VH may change. There exists a multitudinous array of patterns in between phonetic coarticulation and robust, iterative harmony. Further, this link does not address the ways that harmony may decay. This chapter lists four different ways in which this might occur.
Vowel Harmony
Authors: Gordon Matthew K. , Fiddler Michael
Published: October 2024

Vowel harmony (VH) is a cross-linguistically pervasive phenomenon that ranges on a language-specific basis from a highly productive process to a vestigial property reflected in statistical patterns in the lexicon and morphologically restricted alternations. There are several types of VH that differ with respect to the phonological feature that spreads. The typologically most common VH systems operate along the front–back (palatal harmony), height, rounding (labial harmony), and tongue-root (advanced tongue root/restricted tongue root harmony) dimensions, although other varieties of VH are attested, including retroflexion and laxness harmony. Recurring features of VH systems include root and featural dominance, the transparency of neutral vowels, and opacity effects attributed to certain vowels and consonants. Certain types of harmony systems display geographic and/or genetic biases, although evaluation of the lexicons of many languages suggests that stochastic manifestations of harmony may be more widespread than traditionally thought.
Rounding Harmony
Authors: Kaun Abigail , McCollum Adam G.
Published: October 2024

A survey of rounding harmony (RH) from across the world’s languages reveals certain recurring patterns. These patterns have been described and analyzed in prior typological work, which has generally started with the observation that the simplest possible RH pattern—a vowel must be rounded if it is adjacent to a rounded vowel—is rarely encountered. Rather, phonological constraints on either the trigger, the target, or both are nearly always observed. This chapter summarizes the RH systems of languages that represent the known patterns, including data that have been previously included in typological accounts as well as more recently identified instances of rounded harmony, and suggests certain phonetic factors that may underlie the typological patterns that are known to exist.
Vowel Harmony in Niger-Congo Languages of the Nuba Mountains
Authors: Bashir Abeer M. A. , Rose Sharon
Published: October 2024

This chapter presents the main vowel harmony (VH) patterns of 14 Niger-Congo languages of the Nuba Mountains area in Sudan. These languages are in close contact with Nilo-Saharan and Kadu languages, many of which also have VH. The Niger-Congo languages are mainly characterized by advanced tongue root (ATR) harmony or height harmony. ATR systems in the area have between 8 and 12 vowels, but all are characterized by contrasts among high vowels. Both stem-control and dominant–recessive ATR systems are attested. Height harmony is observed in three languages. The height systems involve vowel raising and show dominant–recessive characteristics, as they can be triggered by suffixes. There is speculation that there may have been a shift from an ATR system to a height system. Finally, there is rounding and front harmony found in Tima, a language with a 12-vowel system.
Vowel Harmony in North American Languages
Authors: Rice Keren
Published: October 2024

This chapter focuses on vowel harmony (VH) in languages indigenous to North America. Marianne Mithun lists 61 Indigenous language families/isolates in North America. This chapter reports on VH phenomena in languages from a representative number of the language families/isolates. It also mentions when no VH was found in families/isolates or when there was simply not sufficient information available to determine if a language had harmony. Overall, the sketches are organized as follows: First, there is a brief introduction to the family/isolate, identifying the traditional homeland of the speakers, the vowel inventory, the consonant inventory if relevant, and morphological structure if relevant. This is followed by a presentation of VH, and the sections generally end with a summary of the harmony, identifying the relevant factors including trigger, target, directionality, and other properties that are frequently seen in VH processes.
Height Harmony
Authors: Goad Heather
Published: October 2024

This chapter examines height harmony across languages. It is shown that alternations between high and mid vowels are robustly attested, where languages display both high-vowel lowering and mid-vowel raising. Alternations between mid and low vowels are less common; further, they seem to be confined to mid-vowel lowering, with low-vowel raising largely unattested. It is further shown that although most languages have more than two heights in their vowel inventories, height harmony patterns are confined to one-step changes (e.g., high-to-mid, *high-to-low), suggesting that a single feature is implicated. In some languages, [ATR] or [tense] is needed to support contrasts on the aperture dimension, but these features are shown to interact with, rather than pattern as, height features. Some consequences for feature theory of the asymmetries observed are discussed—for example, that height harmony does not sanction the feature [–low], or its equivalent.
Vowel Harmony in Nivkh
Authors: Botma Bert , Shiraishi Hidetoshi
Published: October 2024

This chapter examines the synchronic distribution of vowels in Nivkh, a linguistic isolate spoken in the Russian Far East. The data show that vowels in Nivkh roots are subject to what is known as a height restriction: A vowel in an unstressed syllable can be mid or low only if the vowel in the preceding stressed syllable is also mid or low. The chapter goes on to assess the evidence that exists for an earlier system of vowel harmony, some remnants of which can be seen in prefix-root domains. The available evidence is compatible with both a height and a tongue-root harmony system.
Tongue-Root Harmony [Atr]/[Rtr]
Authors: Casali Roderic F.
Published: October 2024

This chapter’s primary focus is on describing major patterns and aspects of typological variation associated with tongue-root harmony systems in African languages. Vowel harmony systems based on a tongue-root feature called advanced tongue root [ATR] occur widely in the Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan phyla of Sub-Saharan Africa. Outside Africa, tongue-root harmony systems have been identified in various other regions and phyla, though not always without controversy. The chapter itemizes the more common vowel inventories in which tongue-root harmony typically occurs, illustrates harmony in its most complete and symmetric form, and discusses widespread asymmetries and complexities that occur, including directional asymmetries and variation in the scope of the harmony domain, asymmetries related to the patterning of phonemically unpaired vowels, and asymmetric dominance or spreading of particular [ATR] values. A brief partial sampling of cases of tongue-root harmony outside Africa, with references to more extensive discussion elsewhere, is included in the final section.
A Stratal Optimality Theory Perspective on Vowel Harmony
Authors: Kiparsky Paul
Published: October 2024

The minimal domain of harmony is the stem. Larger harmony domains include words and their cyclic subconstituents, and phrasal units of different sizes. Within such a domain, harmony can apply from the stem outward, directionally from left to right or right to left, or from a dominant feature specification to the entire domain, in each case potentially subject to edge effects. The precise delimitation of the relevant domains may involve morphosyntax and/or prosody: long or prosodically complex words may form separate harmony domains even when they are morphologically simple, and conversely, compound words way constitute single harmony domains when they are non-compositional. Thus harmony offers a probe into morphological and prosodic constituency and phrasing, the stratal organization of grammar, and the nature of morphological and syntactic displacement. A phenomenon of particular theoretical interest is discontinuous harmony, which can arise within words by morphological infixation/introfixation, and in sentences by syntactic A-bar movement.
Stress-Dependent Vowel Harmony
Authors: Mascaró Joan
Published: October 2024

This chapter deals with harmonic systems in which stress plays a crucial role by defining trigger, target, domain, or other elements. The different typological possibilities are examined; they are classified by the role stressed and unstressed vowels play as triggers or targets, the possible domains of harmony, the direction of spreading, and the degree of morphologization. The empirical domain includes the traditional processes of umlaut and metaphony, in which the trigger is a final vowel and the target the stressed vowel, but it also includes all other typological possibilities. In addition to the word domain, smaller domains (the foot) and larger domains (clitic group, phrases) are also considered.
Kant on Substance and Causation
Authors: Leech Jessica , Textor Mark
Published: October 2024

This chapter presents an overview of Kant’s account of substance, causation, and community in the Analogies of Experience in the Critique of Pure Reason, and their role in the determination of objective temporal relations. It draws out two kinds of unity that are operative in Kant’s arguments: the diachronic unity of an absolutely persisting substance; and the relational unity of interaction between many distinct substances. The former plays a role in the unity of experience over time; the latter in the unity of experience across space. This invites the question: why do time and space call for different strategies? The question is reinforced by a striking contrast with Lotze. Contrary to Kant, Lotze argues that a notion of persisting substance undermines our understanding of change over time, appealing instead to law-like relations between states, and that causation should be understood in terms of a (substance-free) monism. The chapter uses this contrast to raise some critical questions for Kant’s account of substance, and to tentatively suggest that the second kind of unity might be the better option.
Kant on Autonomy and Freedom
Authors: Allais Lucy
Published: October 2024

This chapter presents a unified reading of the metaphysical, moral, and political parts of Kant’s account of human free agency: the transcendental idea of a spontaneous causal power, the normative idea of acting under reason’s highest principle, and the political idea of acting for oneself rather than being under the control of another agent. It argues that Kant understands our freedom as a involving a spontaneous causal power that is engaged under the non-optional commitment to reason’s highest principle, and that this principle further commits us to realizing the conditions under which we can all act for ourselves. It evaluates each part of his position in relation to the idea of robust alternative possibilities, and argue that his account requires what is now called leeway freedom. The chapter argues against two main reasons that have been taken as reasons for thinking that his account does not require leeway: the idea that God lacks leeway and the idea that freedom is not lawless. Kant sees moral blame as requiring the possibility that you could have acted other than you did, and sees our recognition of moral claims as involving the awareness that we can act on them or not act on them. The chapter argues that this requires that at the point of action more than one course of action is available to the agent and therefore that action is not a nomologically determined function of previous states of the universe. Rather, we have the causal power to bring about one thing or another, though we cannot positively characterize this causal power in metaphysical or theoretical terms. Our freedom is understood positively in terms of the idea of acting under reason’s highest principle, and we act under reason’s highest principle both when we act in accordance with what it requires and when we act against this.
Kant on Duty and Moral Motivation
Authors: Haag Johannes
Published: October 2024

In Kant’s moral philosophy the feeling of respect may seem to have the role of motivating us to act morally, and thus fulfil our duty. However, this would be a misunderstanding of Kant’s conception of respect. Focusing on the Driving Force chapter of the Critique of Practical Reason, this chapter argues that whenever the moral law objectively determines our action, the feeling of respect just is the moral law qua subjective determining ground of this self-determination. We, consequently, do not act out of duty because of a feeling of respect for the moral law; we have a feeling of respect for the moral law, because we are acting from duty. For only if we meet our duty, we make the respect for the moral law the driving force of our action. Where we do not meet this duty, the feeling of respect for the moral law, while not the driving force of the action, results instead from the consciousness that we have violated our moral duty. In this case the feeling of respect has motivational force only by displaying the motivational force of the moral law itself. According to this reading Kant, in the Driving Force chapter, aims at restricting sensibility’s role in moral action to its determination by the moral law. Sensibility has a voice in the outcome of moral deliberation, but it has this voice only in so far as its determination is, as it were, the subjective mode of determination by the moral law.
Kant on Right
Authors: Hasan Rafeeq
Published: October 2024

This chapter explains Kant’s theory of Recht—a word that encompasses in translation ‘right’, ‘law’, and ‘justice’. It focuses on two of the theory’s central claims. First, that persons have a right to be independent of others’ control. Second, that independence requires a system of rights, a system which can only be realized through joint membership in the state. Combining these two claims yields an unexpected result: it is the very independence of persons which requires them to become cooperating citizens. In elucidating this idea, the chapter treats Kant’s views on topics such as: freedom of choice and action, the relation between natural rights and positive law, and the role played by both private property and economic redistribution in realizing independence. It also argues that careful attention to Kant’s theory of right warrants major revisions to the traditional understanding of Kantian morality. Against the standard picture of the Kantian moral agent as reasoning entirely on their own, the chapter suggests that for Kant, properly enacting one’s moral duties actually requires collective political institutions. I cannot fulfil my moral duty to aid you unless the law has settled what is mine to give. Kant thus joins an illustrious line of thinkers in treating man as a political animal.
Kant on Transcendental Idealism
Authors: Rosefeldt Tobias
Published: October 2024

This chapter gives an overview of how Kant defines and explicates his doctrine of transcendental idealism, his arguments for this doctrine, and some of the objections that have been raised against it. It then offers the sketch of an interpretation that allows us to combine the advantages of so called ‘two-object’ and ‘two-aspect’ readings of transcendental idealism by assuming a certain ambiguity in Kant’s notion of an appearance. The basic idea is that this term on the one hand designates purely inner-mental sensible contents, which are the results of the affection of sensibility by external objects, but on the other hand these external objects themselves insofar as they are bearers of response-dependent properties that can be defined on the basis of these contents. Appearances in the first sense are distinct from objects that exist and have properties in themselves, while appearances in the second sense are identical to them.
Kant on the State
Authors: Pallikkathayil Japa
Published: October 2024

Kant distinguishes between two kinds of freedom. Internal freedom, i.e. autonomy, consists in freedom from one’s inclinations. Kant famously argues that internal freedom requires being governed by the Categorical Imperative. External freedom, i.e. independence, consists in freedom from other agents. Kant argues that our innate right to external freedom requires the establishment of the state. This chapter begins by explaining this argument. It considers different ways of construing the problems in the state of nature to which the state is supposed to be the solution. It then explores what kind of state Kant takes right to require. How should we understand the requirement that a sovereign represent the united will of its people? The chapter goes on to consider how competing views about the kind of state required by right shape the practical import of Kant’s arguments against a right to revolution. Finally, it observes that Kant’s argument for the state seems to indicate the necessity of a world state. Kant, however, seems to resist this implication of his view, often emphasizing a voluntary league of nations instead. I examine Kant’s arguments against a world state and consider whether a voluntary league of nations could satisfy the requirements of right that were established in his initial argument for the state.
Kant on the Unity of Reason
Authors: Tolley Clinton
Published: October 2024

Kant’s Critical philosophy centres around the examination of the nature and limits of reason. This chapter explores various dimensions along which Kant takes reason itself to be or form a ‘unity’: first, as a faculty of the soul in relation to the three basic psychical faculties of cognition, desire, feeling; second, as to what qualitative unity is supposed to be present (‘distributively’) in each of reason’s activities across its various ‘uses’ and ‘applications’ (such that these are uses of ‘one and the same reason’); and third, as to the nature of the whole which is to be constituted or realized by the ‘collective unity’ of all of reason’s different uses, and its relation to what Kant identifies as ‘the highest complete good’.
Kant on Hope
Authors: Blöser Claudia , Willaschek Marcus
Published: October 2024

The notion of hope is of central importance to Kant’s conception of human reason, in particular to his account of the highest good and the related ‘postulates’ of God and immortality. This becomes most obvious when, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant famously summarizes ‘all interest’ of human reason in three questions: ‘What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?’ (A805/B833). This contribution concentrates on Kant’s answer to the question ‘What may I hope?’ and thus the role of hope in Kant’s account of human reason. After giving a brief account of what hope is, according to Kant, and what exactly he means by the question ‘What may I hope?’ in §2, the chapter turns to Kant’s answer in §3. It clarifies the relation between the highest good and the postulate of God’s existence (3.1) and argues that belief in God is what makes hope for morally deserved happiness rational (3.2). It then provides an account of the psychological role played by hope (3.3) and explains why Kant takes the hope question to be central to the interest of human reason. The chapter closes in §4 by indicating open questions and further lines of research.
Kant on Teleology
Authors: Kern Andrea
Published: October 2024

The concept of a telos or end plays a crucial role in all of Kant’s writings. It is, for example, part of his definition of the capacities whose investigation is Kant’s main concern in his three Critiques. For the idea of a capacity of the human mind, according to Kant, is the idea of a distinctive kind of unity that is defined by three features: it has an end, a form, and a matter. Yet the different capacities that Kant investigates are differently related to the notion of an end. Whereas with respect to the capacity for theoretical cognition, the notion of an end is merely part of a formal account of the capacity, it is the very business of practical reason to cognize practical ends, all of which are grounded in a cognition of the ‘final end’ of human conduct, which Kant calls the ‘highest good’. This cognition of practical ends, however, is not self-standing; it must be conjoined with a cognition of nature in terms of a system of natural ends in order to think of itself as the capacity of a distinctive kind of living being that is the ‘final end’ of nature. This chapter reconstructs Kant’s teleology of nature in order to bring out why, for Kant, the teleology of nature must be grounded in the capacity for practical self-determination and why this account of nature is the necessary basis for Kant’s account of the human as it figures in all of his writings.
Kant on the Metaphysical Deduction of the Categories
Authors: Stang Nicholas F.
Published: October 2024

In ‘On the Guiding Thread for the Discovery of all Pure Concepts of the Understanding’ Kant attempts to derive the complete table of categories from the table of the logical functions of judging. However, he gives little explicit indication of how this is to be done for each function and its corresponding category. This chapter attempts to reconstruct Kant’s derivation of the categories. The key idea in my reconstruction is that we map hierarchies of concepts to manifolds of intuition in such a way that individual logical objects (instances of concepts) get mapped to objects of intuition and (some) concepts get mapped to ‘fusions’ of such objects. It then argues that this mapping induces a mapping from logical functions to structure in objects, from which we can abstract categories as general concepts of objects as standing in such structures. Due to limitations of space, the chapter presents only the mapping from the logical functions of Quantity (universal, particular, singular) to the corresponding categories of Quantity (totality, plurality, unity). It concludes by indicating, briefly, how to extend this derivation to the logical functions and categories of Quality, Relation, and Modality.
Kant on Race
Authors: Ypi Lea
Published: October 2024

This chapter examines the evolution of Kant’s thoughts on race in connection to his analysis of teleology. It explains how Kant’s analysis of the differences between human races is rooted in eighteenth-century biological debates on the unity and diversity of the species. Focusing on Kant’s analysis of the concept of ‘germs’ and ‘predispositions’ to account for human development, the chapter illustrates how the place of these ideas in Kant’s system changes with Kant’s analysis of reflective judgment, and the modified account of natural teleology proposed in the third Critique. This shift has important implications for Kant’s analysis of human races, and helps respond to some of the charges of ‘structural’ racism that his theories have recently received.
Kant on Nature and Freedom
Authors: McLear Colin
Published: October 2024

This chapter surveys the distinction, in Kant’s Critical philosophy, between the ‘systems’ of nature and freedom. It examines the sense in which there is a putative ‘gulf’ between them (as Kant notoriously puts it in CPJ 5:175), and whether or how Kant may aim to bridge such a gulf. As we’ll see, the distinction and division between nature and freedom raises a variety of questions concerning what exactly the ‘problem’ of their division is, as well as how the putative gulf between them may be bridged. The chapter will thus be aimed as much at ground-clearing as it is at a dispositive answer to such questions.
Kant on the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories
Authors: Laywine Alison
Published: October 2024

This chapter tries to shed light on the transcendental deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason by calling attention to its sympathetic resonance with Kant’s early metaphysics, notably the general cosmology of the Nova dilucidatio and inaugural dissertation.
Should the Government Be Paying Investment Fees on $3 Trillion of Tax-Deferred Retirement Assets?
Authors: Landoni Mattia , Zeldes Stephen P
Published: October 2024

Under standard assumptions, individuals and the government are indifferent between traditional tax-deferred retirement accounts and “front-loaded” (Roth) accounts. Adding investment fees to this benchmark, individuals are still indifferent, but the government is not. We show that under weak conditions firms charge equal percent fees under both systems, yielding higher dollar fees under Traditional. We estimate that tax deferral increases demand for asset management services by $3.8 trillion, costing the government $23.4 billion in annual fees. In a general equilibrium differentiated-product model, tax deferral produces a larger asset management industry, higher taxes, and lower social welfare.