bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What Are Meanings, That We Might Share Them?
Authors: Richard Mark
Published: September 2019

The goal of this chapter is to sketch an account of meaning as the anchor of linguistic competence—that with which one must be in cognitive contact to qualify as a competent speaker. Meanings supervene on mutual presuppositions among speakers about how people understand one another. When someone uses a word, they can expect others to have these assumptions for making sense of the sentence in which the word is used. The core of this chapter lays out this picture of meaning, discusses how it is related to linguistic competence, and relates meaning in this sense to meaning in the sense of that which a use of a sentence conventionally says. The chapter is bookended with a discussion of philosophical analysis, because a motivation for thinking about meaning in this way is that it makes a case for the importance of something much like philosophical analysis traditionally conceived.
Conceptual Evolution and Reference
Authors: Richard Mark
Published: September 2019

A word’s meaning, according to the argument of Chapter 3, is constituted by certain presuppositions that it is common ground speakers associate with uses of the word. Presumably there can be changes in the things that constitute a word’s meaning from one time to another, without there being change of its meaning—without the word’s coming to have a meaning distinct from that it used to have. This chapter discusses a number of accounts of what might be necessary, sufficient, or necessary and sufficient for change of meaning, though it does not endorse a particular account. Much of the chapter discusses relations between changes in reference and truth conditions and change in meaning, as well as relations among referential indeterminacy, meaning change, and ‘what is said’ by a sentence.
Meaning, Thought, and Thought Ascription
Authors: Richard Mark
Published: September 2019

This chapter continues the discussion of propositions and propositional attitudes begun in Chapters 3 and 4. Section 1 sketches a view of attitudes and attitude ascription. Section 2 addresses how truth conditions and linguistic meaning do and do not help to individuate ‘the objects of the attitudes’. Section 3 returns to the last chapter’s discussion of how the reference of another’s words or concepts bears on the truth of an ascription of saying or thought to her.
Sex and Conversation
Authors: Richard Mark
Published: September 2019

Recognizing that meanings are species-like suggests a range of questions. Meanings seem relatively static in the short to medium term. When meanings change, that is sometimes driven by relatively simple learning processes. In other cases such change looks to be Darwinian: one can see the individuals constituting a meaning as reproducing, with change in the distribution of meaning-relevant properties in succeeding generations determined by the advantages of one’s lexicon embedding one such property instead of an alternative. Whether the processes of meaning change are Darwinian or not, one can ask to what extent they are essentially arational, and to what extent conscious intervention in conceptual change could be an effective way to change what words mean. This chapter discusses these questions. Its goal is not to definitely answer them but to examine ways we might think about sharpening them enough to have interesting questions to which we might find answers.
The Issue Incentive Model of Party System Attention
Authors: Green-Pedersen Christoffer
Published: September 2019

This chapter presents the ‘issue incentive model of party system attention’. This model uses the issue competition literature and policy agenda-setting theory as a platform for building a theoretical framework with individual issues as analytical points of departure, and at the same time, the model focuses on explaining the entire issue agenda and not just individual issues. The issue incentive model explains the issue content of party politics through the incentives that different issues offer to large, mainstream parties. The concept of the party system agenda is a key element in the framework as it is the dependent variable. The model is not focused on explaining party attention at a particular time such as during an election campaign, for instance; focus here is on attention in the medium term such as a decade. The concept of the party system agenda highlights the interaction among political parties and their shared perceptions of which issues are important. The incentives for large, mainstream parties with regard to a particular issue are argued to be decisive; partly because large, mainstream parties are much more flexible in terms of issue attention than niche parties are, and partly because the largest parties traditionally dominate government formation and thus politics. Furthermore, three types of incentives are argued to be particularly decisive for whether large, mainstream parties want to pay attention to an issue: issue characteristics, issue ownership, and coalition considerations.
Data Sources for the Study of the Party System Agenda
Authors: Green-Pedersen Christoffer
Published: September 2019

This chapter presents and discusses the choice of party manifestos rather than media data or expert surveys as the primary data source for studying the development of the party system agenda. It furthermore justifies the use of the CAP coding system rather than the CMP coding system. Comments on the detailed use of the CAP coding system are also provided. How to construct a measure of the party system agenda will likewise be explained. Finally, the chapter discusses which countries and parties are included in the study, and it also provides an empirical classification of the included parties into niche parties as well as small and large, mainstream parties.
Expansion from the Right
Authors: Green-Pedersen Christoffer
Published: September 2019

This chapter provides an analysis of party system attention to immigration based on the issue incentive model. Two questions are central, namely the general increase in attention to immigration and the pronounced increase in Denmark. Based on the issue incentive model, the issue of immigration shows the importance of problem information. The increased share of foreigners has, combined with the growth of radical right-wing parties, generated more attention to the issue. In all countries, the issue has become an established issue on the party system agenda. The chapter furthermore shows the crucial role of large, mainstream parties’ coalition considerations in explaining how issues can make it to the top of the party system agenda. Only in Denmark has a strong focus on immigration been attractive from a coalition perspective. Denmark is thus the only country studied where immigration has become a central issue in the competition between the large, mainstream parties for office.
Attention to Education in the Post-Industrial Society
Authors: Green-Pedersen Christoffer
Published: September 2019

This chapter provides an analysis of party system attention to education based on the issue incentive model. The analysis shows that large, mainstream parties’ incentives are the key factor in explaining the dynamics of party system attention to education. However, compared to the three issues analysed before, problem characteristics rather than coalition considerations and issue ownership shape the incentives of large, mainstream parties. The fact that education is an obtrusive valence issue relevant to more or less the whole population implies that it is an issue that large, mainstream parties cannot ignore if public debates about policy problems emerge. The increased focus on education and human capital in the knowledge society has thus led to an increased focus on education. This focus has clearly been most pronounced in countries where it has materialized in a debate about the quality of primary schools. In Denmark, and later on also in Sweden, this debate came as a reaction to what was seen as disappointing PISA scores. In the UK, the PISA scores played a limited role in the debate about primary schools.
Contestation Overshoot
Authors: Stephen Matthew D.
Published: September 2019

This chapter surveys the demands made towards the WTO during the Doha Round by rising powers and twenty of the most influential trade-related transnational NGOs. It also compares these to the demands of established powers. Using techniques from qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis, it analyses these actors’ substantive policy demands, and the argumentative justifications that they provide for their demands. It finds that while the rising powers are largely satisfied with the institutional status quo, they are strongly dissatisfied with existing policy content. Their demands reveal a social purpose that can be described as developmental liberalism. In this approach they have found allies mostly in market-critical civil society organizations.
The Contestation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Regime
Authors: Müller Harald , Tokhi Alexandros
Published: September 2019

The nuclear world order, and more specifically the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), represent since their very creation objects of contestation. This chapter argues that it is the institutionalized power inequality between state parties that creates conflict among them over the distribution of security, economic, and developmental benefits. In that respect, states with growing economic importance and heightened security interests are most likely to contest the status quo, but not necessarily the BRICS states as these are not bound by a common interest or agenda within the regime. To analyse the contestation of the NPT, the chapter adopts a mixed method approach. Through a qualitative content analysis of states’ statements at major institutional gatherings, the chapter identifies four central conflict lines and actors’ preferences regarding the nuclear non-proliferation regime. Linear regression analysis is used to assess the relative influence of different actors groups on the intensity and type of contestation. Results show that the majority of state parties actively and constructively engages with the institution by pushing for institutional reform, recognizing in principle the legitimacy of the institution. Voicing criticism and exposing weaknesses of the institution was the least frequent form of contestation.
Conclusion
Authors: Zürn Michael , Wolf Klaus Dieter , Stephen Matthew D.
Published: September 2019

The concluding chapter draws together the findings and compares them across chapters, issue areas, and actors. Three findings are most noteworthy. First, the demands of both rising powers and NGOs can be characterized as in some cases status quo oriented and in others reformist. There are only a few signs of revisionism. Second, the challengers do not constitute a coherent group in international politics. There are very few indications of a systemic challenge with similar positions and coalitions in all cases, as power transition theory suggests. Third, the demands for change are issue-area specific and are mostly directed against either unequal representation in the decision-making bodies or strong forms of neo-liberal or human rights-based intrusiveness.
Introduction
Authors: Dutton William H. , Graham Mark
Published: September 2019

This chapter provides an introduction to this edited collection for all those interested in critical social aspects of the Internet and related digital media and technologies. The chapter explains the significance of multidisciplinary perspectives on the implications of the Internet in contexts ranging from everyday life to governance, and provides an overview of how the subsequent chapters address some of the big questions for study of society and the Internet....
Internet Cultures and Digital Inequalities
Authors: Reisdorf Bianca C. , Blank Grant , Dutton William H.
Published: September 2019

The attitudes and values of Internet users and non-users have frequently been studied, but they have rarely been used to identify broader patterns that could define general cultural orientations to the Internet. This chapter describes these orientations and how they might shape digital divides, such as why some people choose not to use the Internet. Specifically, the authors describe cultural values concerning the Internet in seven nations, and how these patterns of beliefs and values about the Internet can explain digital inequalities in Internet access and patterns of use. Their analysis explains why they believe that “cultures of the Internet” are as important as individual-level factors, such as age, education, and Internet skills, if not more so, in predicting patterns of (non)use of the Internet across all seven countries.
Internet Skills and Why They Matter
Authors: Hargittai Eszter , Micheli Marina
Published: September 2019

Given that the Internet is now ubiquitous in high-income nations, do Internet skills still matter? The authors of this chapter synthesize a body of research that shows how Internet skills, defined across ten dimensions, remain critical, especially as the technology becomes ever more significant and embedded into everyday life. Having the requisite skills to use the Internet and related social media is essential to avoid being excluded from key facets of society. This chapter demonstrates the need to build the study of skills into digital inequality scholarship that seeks to address concerns over online experiences tending to follow and reinforce socioeconomic inequalities. Complementing research by Quan-Haase, Zhang, Wellman, and Wang (Chapter 5, this volume), this chapter challenges stereotypes of young people being tech-savvy, showing that youth are not universally knowledgeable about digital tools and media.
Big Data
Authors: Schroeder Ralph
Published: September 2019

Business and industry, governments, and academia are increasingly using “big data,” such as data derived from social media that is unprecedented in its scale and scope in yielding insights into people’s attitudes or behavior. Increasingly, big data has been promoted as a new tool for evidence-based decisions and policy-making. In this chapter, Ralph Schroeder outlines contrasting theoretical perspectives on big data. He compares Marxists, who demonstrate the ways that big data can be deployed to exploit users of digital media, and free-market thinkers (following Hayek), who believe that in an age of more data, capitalism will continue to lead to more growth. He then contrasts those perspectives with those of the sociologist Max Weber. By contrasting these theoretical perspectives, the author argues that there is a middle ground between Marx and Hayek. From a Weberian point of view, big data need neither be endorsed as an unquestionably positive development, nor necessarily critiqued as inherently exploitative.
Political Turbulence
Authors: Margetts Helen , Hale Scott , John Peter
Published: September 2019

This chapter argues that social media drives change by allowing new “tiny acts” of political participation in support of a social or political cause, such as sharing, liking, viewing, or following. While most of these “microdonations” of time and effort rapidly decay, they occasionally and unpredictably scale up to massive support for a political or social movement campaigning for policy change. Drawing on their computational social science research, the authors see that such mobilizations bring turbulence to contemporary politics. The findings reveal social media platforms as important actors in contemporary politics, shaping political behavior and the practice of politics, challenging political institutions and requiring new political science concepts and research methods.
Social Media and Democracy in Crisis
Authors: Samantha Bradshaw , Philip N. Howard
Published: September 2019

The Internet and social media were originally viewed as democratizing technologies that would lead to a more vibrant digital public sphere. Following the outcomes of the 2016 US Presidential Election and the UK Brexit referendum, however, social media platforms have faced increasing criticism for allowing fake news, disinformation campaigns, and hate speech to spread. But how much bad information was spread? What can be done to address the problem? This chapter examines how social media algorithms and computational propaganda are reshaping public life. The authors explore how modern citizens are especially susceptible to computational propaganda, due not only to the prevalence of disinformation, but also to a political psychology that is often called “elective affinity” or “selective exposure.” The authors use their findings to discuss the responsibilities of both users and platforms for protecting the digital public sphere.
Digital News and the Consumption of Political Information
Authors: Majó-Vázquez Silvia , González-Bailón Sandra
Published: September 2019

The Internet has fundamentally changed how people access and use news. As Dutton and others (Chapter 13, this volume) note, there are concerns that the Internet leads us to get stuck in “echo chambers” or “filter bubbles”—limiting our access to points of view that might challenge our preexisting beliefs. This chapter introduces a network approach to analyzing news consumption in the digital age. The authors explain how we can compare patterns of news consumption across demographic groups, countries, and digital platforms, and determine if there are differences across groups of users and media systems. Measuring news consumption has long been difficult owing to the limitations of self-reported data, so this chapter is notable in offering a novel approach that leverages the digital traces that people leave behind when navigating the Web.
The Internet at the Global Economic Margins
Authors: Graham Mark
Published: September 2019

As access to the Internet spreads to corners of the world previously defined by their lack of connectivity, there has been much talk about the potential for digital media to have transformative and revolutionary effects of access to information, services, and markets. The chapter begins by focusing on some key hopes about what the Internet can effect at the world?s economic margins. Anchored in an extensive case study of how new connectivity was, and was not, used in the remote nodes of the Thai silk industry, the chapter argues that many of our expectations about digital change may never be realized. One reason is that hope about what the Internet can do in some of the world?s economic margins often rests on unrealistic assumptions about what the Internet is. By reframing the Internet itself, Graham sees an opportunity to build more effective strategies for shaping desirable and achievable outcomes.
Scarcity of Attention for a Medium of Abundance
Authors: Taylor Greg
Published: September 2019

There exists an almost unimaginable amount of content on the Internet: a volume of content that far outstrips the ability of any person to use or consume even a significant proportion of what is available. Because of this abundance of content, there is an inevitable scarcity of attention that users can spend on the Internet and Web. This chapter brings the expertise of an economist to bear on this issue. By deploying economic theory, the author outlines key forces shaping the emerging attention economy, including platform pricing, network effects, common pool resources, such as attention, and the allocation of attention by markets. Taylor makes these ideas accessible to non-economists and shows how these forces might fail to allocate our scarce attention in a fashion that best serves our interests as members of the Internet’s audience.
The International Rule of Law—Rise or Decline?—Approaching Current Foundational Challenges
Authors: Krieger Heike , Nolte Georg
Published: September 2019

The chapter undertakes a preliminary assessment of current developments of international law for the purpose of mapping the ground for a larger research project. The research project pursues the goal of determining whether public international law, as it has developed since the end of the Cold War, is continuing its progressive move towards a more human-rights- and multi-actor-oriented order, or whether we are seeing a renewed emphasis of more classical elements of international law. In this context the term ‘international rule of law’ is chosen to designate the more recent and ‘thicker’ understanding of international law. The chapter discusses how it can be determined whether this form of international law continues to unfold, and whether we are witnessing challenges to this order which could give rise to more fundamental reassessments.
Complexity Rules (or: Ruling Complexity)
Authors: Broude Tomer
Published: September 2019

This chapter is a comment on the capacity of international law to address complex problems such as climate change, as a complement and response to Jutta Brunnée’s preceding chapter. The comment first questions whether complexity is in fact a special case or rather an all-pervading characteristic of international relations, and by extension, of international law. Second, the comment questions—notwithstanding the current angst that internationalist lawyers feel and express due to what seems like a tidal-scale assault on international law—whether the international rule-of-law management of complexity is a particularly contemporary issue, or just another iteration of recurrent, resurgent, occasionally even refreshing, frictions that characterize international law. Third, the comment asks whether the challenges of complexity maintain a special relationship with international law, or whether these are substantially the same as the interactions of these issues with domestic legal systems.
International Law in Times of Anti-Globalism and Populism—Challenges Ahead
Authors: Zimmermann Andreas , Weiß Norman
Published: September 2019

This chapter comments on Jan Wouters’ analysis of anti-globalist and populist challenges for international law. It offers a threefold approach consisting of recommendations for an effective multilateralism, efforts to strengthen the United Nations, and to include multilateralism in the domestic political agenda of Western democracies. It concludes by submitting that the output legitimacy of international law understood as the very substance of international law, and the advantages it creates for states (and their respective populations) might eventually undo the current populist developments.
The International Rule of Law in Light of Legitimacy Claims
Authors: Marauhn Thilo
Published: September 2019

The chapter looks at legitimacy claims, contrasting them with theories of legitimacy and discussing how such claims may contribute to the ‘rise or decline’ of the international rule of law. The author studies examples from the areas of the ius ad bellum and the ius in bello. He concludes that legitimacy considerations will not allow a proper assessment of ‘rise or decline’ in themselves. Rather it is important to first establish a realistic perspective on what international law can achieve at all. In contrast to expectations that have been raised in particular after the end of the Cold War by many scholars, international law has not become a value-based constitutional arrangement of its constitutive entities, whether these are states or individuals.
Rights and Persons— Hohfeldian Analysis
Authors: Kurki Visa A.J.
Published: September 2019

The chapter criticizes the Orthodox View of legal personhood for being internally inconsistent and simplistic as well as lacking in explanatory power. It focuses on four different formulations of the Orthodox View, and points out various deficiencies in all of them. The main criticism is that all of the formulations—when assessed in light of contemporary theories of rights—fail to explain jurists’ widely held convictions regarding who or what is a legal person. The critique is based on the Hohfeldian analysis of legal relations, which is also presented in this chapter.
The Incidents of Legal Personhood
Authors: Kurki Visa A.J.
Published: September 2019

The chapter presents a new theory of legal personhood. It argues that legal personhood is a cluster property, and best understood in terms of disseverable but interconnected incidents. It sets out by distinguishing passive and active incidents, and then enumerates and presents both types of incidents. While doing so, the chapter highlights the benefits of an incident-based approach to legal personhood. After presenting the incidents, the notion of a ‘subject of law’ is offered as an alternative way of analysing legal personhood. The chapter concludes by addressing some of the connections between personhood and legal personhood.
Magical Printing
Authors: Asseraf Arthur
Published: September 2019

This chapter gives a brief history of newspapers in colonial Algeria, showing how beliefs about newspapers contrasted with their actual usage. The men who conquered Algeria believed that the printing press could bring modernity. This belief can be described as a form of magical thinking. In practice, newspapers behaved in unexpected ways as they interacted with the rest of the news ecosystem. In the summer of 1881, the French Parliament passed two laws that instituted a division between those who could publish and those who could not. But while Europeans dominated printing, they did not control reading. Algerians had read newspapers well before the French arrived, and continued to import publications not intended for them. Yet by the turn of the twentieth century, the belief in magical printing had spread to elite Muslim Algerians, who saw their production of newspapers as an attempt to ‘catch up’ with Europeans.
Wartime
Authors: Asseraf Arthur
Published: September 2019

Did people in a colonial society live at the same time? This chapter tests this by looking at different forms of news that circulated around a single event: the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Prophetic manuscripts, rumours, and songs emplotted the same events within different temporalities. A historical manuscript connected to an insurrection in western Algeria used the beginning of war to promise the end of French rule. By contrast, the French administration dismissed this as ‘false news’, using a different historicity that saw rumours as the remains of an archaic past. French historians like the medievalist Marc Bloch who was in Algeria during the war were key to this diagnosis of ‘false news’ that ignored most Algerians’ understanding of the world. Yet certain forms of news could move across communities, in particular the song of Hajj Guillaume, a popular tune that acted like a sung newspaper.
Old Waves
Authors: Asseraf Arthur
Published: September 2019

This chapter considers how the news ecosystem could change with the introduction of new technologies, particularly the cinema and the radio. What was unfolding was not a replacement of old forms of media but a superposition of waves upon waves of information in a variety that proved bewildering. The first section explains the development of newsreels in cinemas and radio as new forms of visual and aural news. The technical constraints of the radio made the existing problem of divergent audiences more evident, by placing the spotlight on the issue of spoken language. The second section looks at how these new forms of news contributed to a growing political polarization of Algeria in the 1930s, focusing on news of the Spanish Civil War. The novelty of radio-listening was that it facilitated the formation of new political communities across borders, placing Algeria within a wider transnational conflict between fascism and communism.
Palestine the Martyr
Authors: Asseraf Arthur
Published: September 2019

This chapter looks at how debating news of distant events shaped the development of Algerian nationalism. Distance gave Algerians a means to reconsider their own problems on a different scale, to zoom out and reconsider their relationships with each other. It considers two case studies. First, Algerians observed keenly the Italian takeover of neighbouring Libya from 1911 to 1919, and used it to experiment with new forms of political mobilization. However, the interpretation of events in Libya remained volatile. This uncertain interpretation remained a problem during a second moment of mobilization around events in the British mandate of Palestine from 1929 to 1939. Palestine seemed to offer a mirror back to communal relations between Muslims, Jews, and Europeans in Algeria, leading to a number of conflicting interpretations.
Exemptions and Exclusions
Authors: Cnossen Sijbren
Published: September 2019

Chapter 9 draws up a taxonomy of standard and non-standard exclusions, exemptions, and zero rates, highlights the distortions caused by them and the administrative complexities to which they give rise. Broadly, it compares the treatment of various exemptions in the EU, which have also been adopted by most African countries, with their treatment under New Zealand’s GST and South Africa’s VAT. For political or administrative reasons, all VATs exempt or exclude specified goods, services, activities, entities, or sectors, but most African VATs go much further down this road than accords with VAT’s functionality and logic. Exemptions and exclusions are truly the Achilles heel of the VAT.
Financial Services
Authors: Cnossen Sijbren
Published: September 2019

As shown in Chapter 13, the appropriate treatment of financial services is the single most important design issue that remains to be solved under the VAT. Conventional wisdom holds that margin-based financial services, as opposed to fee-based services, cannot be included in the VAT base calculated on the tax credit method. For this reason, most countries with a VAT exempt financial services entirely, whether margin-based or fee-based. To limit the effects of the rather broad EU type of exemption, two kinds of modifications have been adopted. First, the reach of the full exemption has been narrowed down by taxing fee-based financial services. Second, the cascading effects of the exemption have been mitigated by zero-rating the provision of financial services to registered businesses, providing for partial input VAT recovery. The chapter concludes by drawing some lessons from the analysis which may be useful for African countries.
Small Businesses and Farmers
Authors: Cnossen Sijbren
Published: September 2019

Chapter 16 discusses VAT registration thresholds and the treatment of farmers. A high threshold of, say, US$50,000 or higher, is recommended to keep the number of taxable persons manageable. The VAT on exempt small businesses should be confined to the tax on their inputs. Although voluntary registration is an important safety valve to limit economic distortions, a minimum threshold, as in South Africa, below which registration is not possible, is recommended. A generous threshold without further ado would also be appropriate for the agricultural sector, except that small exempt farmers would have to cope with the cascading effects of the input VAT. Voluntary registration would not work in view of low literacy levels, the absence of basic accounts, and the lack of communication. The solution appears to lie in a combination of a reasonably high threshold (the same as for other small businesses) and the zero-rating of major agricultural inputs, which have no alternative use outside the agricultural sector.
Smell on the Streets
Authors: Tullett William
Published: September 2019

This chapter sets out to offer a more complex picture of smell on the streets of eighteenth-century England than has been offered previously. Far from only being disgusted, urbanites engaged with the smells of putridity and mouldy food in subtle and complex ways that were freighted with questions of social status. This is apparent from domestic advice, jokes, and satirical prints. Yet sanitary records, parliamentary improvement acts, and occupational medicine all offer declining evidence for concerns about the health threats of smell. Despite this, the smells of trades, food, and the streetscapes continued have important social meanings for city-dwellers. A study of the dichotomized olfactory representation of London’s City and the West End demonstrates the continued cultural currency of unsanitary scents.
Material Cultures of Scent
Authors: Tullett William
Published: September 2019

If tobacco was, normatively speaking, the preserve of masculinity then the smelling bottle was the visual symbol of olfactory femininity. Around 1700 the smelling bottle replaced an earlier object, the pomander, as the most popular form of material culture associated with smell. This shift illustrates several wider changes. The shift from the pomander to smelling bottle was a physiological shift from womb to nose; an embodied shift from leaky to stoppered-up visions of corporeality; and a practical shift from creating atmosphere to mitigating against atmospheres created by others. The design, use, and cultural representation of the smelling bottle all testified to these important shifts.
Using Bad Data
Authors: Smith Gary , Cordes Jay
Published: September 2019

Good data scientists consider the reliability of the data, while data clowns don’t. Reported data sometimes systematically misrepresent the phenomena being recorded. Data can be deformed by extremely unusual data—outliers—which can be clerical errors, measurement errors, or flukes that can mislead us if not corrected. Other times, outliers are valuable data. We should always consider if data are skewed by unusual events or distorted by unreported “silent data.” If something is surprising about top-ranked groups, look at the bottom-ranked groups. Consider the possibility of survivorship bias and self-selection bias. Incomplete, inaccurate, or unreliable data can make clowns out of anyone.
Doing Harm
Authors: Smith Gary , Cordes Jay
Published: September 2019

An unfortunate reality in the age of big data is Big Brother monitoring us incessantly. Big Brother is indeed watching, but it is big business as well as big government collecting detailed information about everything we do so that they can predict our actions and manipulate our behavior. Big business and big government monitor our credit cards, checking accounts, computers, and telephones, watch us on surveillance cameras, and purchase data from firms dedicated to finding out everything they can about each and every one of us. Good data scientists proceed cautiously, respectful of our rights and our privacy. The Golden Rule applies to data science: treat others as you would like to be treated.
Politics and the Urban Sector in Fifteenth-Century England, 1413-1471
Authors: Hartrich Eliza
Published: September 2019

Since the work of K.B. McFarlane in the mid-twentieth century, political histories of late medieval England have focused almost exclusively on the relationship between the Crown and aristocratic landholders. Such studies, however, neglect to consider that England after the Black Death was an urbanizing society. Towns not only were the residence of a rising proportion of the population, but were also the stages on which power was asserted and the places where financial and military resources were concentrated. Outside London, however, most English towns were small compared to those found in medieval Italy or Flanders, and it has been easy for historians to under-estimate their ability to influence English politics. Politics and the Urban Sector in Fifteenth-Century England, 1413–1471 offers a new approach for evaluating the role of urban society inthe political culture of late medieval England. Rather than focusing on English towns individually, it creates a model for assessing the political might that could be exerted by towns collectively as an ‘urban sector’. Based on primary sources from twenty-two towns (ranging from metropolis of London to the tiny Kentish town of Lydd), Politics and the Urban Sector demonstrates how fluctuations in inter-urban relationships affected the content, pace, and language of English politics during the tumultuous fifteenth century. Chapter 1 identifies the different types of links that towns formed with one another and with other members of political society. Chapters 2–5 are arranged chronologically, demonstrating the ways in which the frequent twists and turns of fifteenth-century ‘high politics’—from the reign of Henry V to the Wars of the Roses—were a reflection of the ever-shifting relationships between towns.
Introduction
Authors: Hartrich Eliza
Published: September 2019

This introduction suggests that political practices, discourses, and events in fifteenth-century England were shaped by the experiences of those who governed, lived in, and travelled through towns. The tradition, however, of studying individual English towns, rather than assessing the collective influence of multiple towns, has made it difficult for the role of townspeople and urban spaces in English political life to be appreciated. Here, a new methodology is proposed for studying relationships between towns and for tracing the relative strength of this inter-connected ‘urban sector’ at particular points in time. Fluctuations in the membership and strength of this ‘urban sector’ had significant implications for how pivotal events in English history—including the Wars of the Roses—played out.
Introduction
Authors: Rouse William B.
Published: September 2019

Chapter 1 provides the introduction to this book. Predictions can seldom specify what will happen, so, inevitably, one addresses what might happen. There are often many possible futures, with leading indicators and potential tipping points for each scenario. Computational models can be used to explore designs of systems and policies to determine whether these designs will likely be effective and to aid in decision-making. Models are means to ends rather then ends in themselves. Decision-makers seldom crave models. They want their questions answered in an evidence-based manner. Decision-makers want insights that provide them with a competitive advantage. They want to understand possible futures to formulate robust and resilient strategies for addressing these futures.
Elements of Modeling
Authors: Rouse William B.
Published: September 2019

Chapter 2 addresses elements of modeling. Modeling efforts should be driven by the questions that prompted the efforts and the phenomena associated with addressing the questions of interest. Visualizations of the phenomena of interest can help to both engage stakeholders and simplify the trade-offs that need to be addressed. There are a variety of representational paradigms that can be employed to model the evolution of the states of the system of interest. Choices among representations depend on the specific nature of the phenomena of interest, the data available to support use of this representation, and the expertise and preferences of the personnel involved. Computational models—and visualizations—are means to explore phenomena of interest, identify central trade-offs, and foster collaborative solutions. Decision-making teams use models to gain insights into the complexity of their broadly defined enterprise, with an overarching goal of understanding what might happen.
Markets and Competitors
Authors: Rouse William B.
Published: September 2019

This chapter focuses on humans as consumers of products and services as well as participants in designing these products and services. Human-centered design is a process of considering and balancing the concerns, values, and perceptions of all the stakeholders in a design. Attributes of importance to stakeholders, and the functions that provide these attributes, can be modeled and explored to plan new products and services. Modeling tools that are independent but share representations and data can enable the formulation and exploration of these models. Model-based analyses should compare planned offerings to those of the competition, including the likely reactions of competitors to these offerings. The status quo is compelling because the customer already has it and knows how to use it, and it requires little if any additional expenditures.
Technology Adoption
Authors: Rouse William B.
Published: September 2019

This chapter discusses how to attach value to technology options. One needs to address the balance between investing in getting better at what you are already doing versus investing in doing new things. There are numerous high-profile examples of companies unsuccessfully addressing this balance, leading to their eventual demise. Technology and process investments create contingent opportunities for later solutions; they are contingent in the sense that they may not emerge. Many markets are inherently laced with uncertainties. If a company is better at managing uncertainty than its competitors are, high profits can result. Strategic value is the sum of the net present value of current lines of business, and the net option value of aspirational lines of business. Options-based thinking can provide a framework for value-centered organizations by characterizing value, assessing value, and managing value.
‘The Cross-Examination of the Physiologist’
Authors: Dawson Gowan
Published: September 2019

This chapter examines the Metaphysical Society’s ‘most notorious paper ever’, T. H. Huxley’s ‘The Evidence of the Miracle of the Resurrection’ delivered in January 1876, which contended that Jesus’s death upon the Cross was impossible to verify and that his supposed Resurrection was more likely to have been merely a naturalistic revival rather than a supernatural miracle. Drawing on previously unpublished correspondence, the chapter reconstructs the composition, presentation, and aftermath of Huxley’s infamous paper, as well as contextualizing it in relation to the wider revival of the so-called ‘swoon theory’ in the 1870s. By doing so, Huxley’s paper also casts new light on the Metaphysical Society’s internal tensions, even between those members who usually worked together as supporters of scientific naturalism, as well as the discordance between its elitist model of authority and the new age of mass democracy in late Victorian Britain.
Hodgson, Clifford, and the Unseen Universe
Authors: Mander W. J.
Published: September 2019

The Metaphysical Society debates were largely between those espousing religious commitment to the transcendent and those defending scientific naturalism. However, this paper highlights a third strain of thought to be found among the Society’s proceedings, one which regarded philosophy – and especially metaphysics – as an autonomous discipline with its own method and authority. To this way of thinking the proper project of the Society was precisely to use such independent and constructive philosophy to seek for reconciliation between the opposed views of religion and science. The paper focuses on the pair of Society members who most strongly embody this point of view, Shadworth Hodgson (1832–1912) and William Kingdon Clifford, (1845–79) analysing their several contributions and, in particular, comparing their different responses to the theory set out in Peter Guthrie Tait and Balfour Stewart’s influential work, The Unseen World. (1875) Both thinkers see merit in the idea of an unseen realm. However, both relativize this ‘unseen’ to a point of view, thereby ruling out of court that which is utterly and completely unknowable. In this respect they are linked together in common opposition to one further widespread philosophy of the day, agnosticism. From an historical perspective neither Hodgson nor Clifford met with much popular or lasting success in their attempts at finding a philosophical reconciliation between religion and science, and the paper concludes by contrasting their efforts with those of the British Idealists who, seemingly, were able to achieve much greater recognition in what was in many respects a similarly motivated ambition.
Intuitionism, Religious Belief, and Proof in the Papers of the Metaphysical Society
Authors: Sweet William
Published: September 2019

An issue frequently discussed by members of the Metaphysical Society concerned whether and how belief and believing can be justified. This exchange has been regarded as one between ‘empiricists’ and ‘intuitionists’. Here, I examine the responses to the issue of the justification of belief—particularly, religious belief—provided by those called ‘Christian intuitionists’. Little attention, however, has been given to what is meant by this intuitionism, or to the complexities of the Christian intuitionist position. I focus, therefore, on one of the founding members of the Society, the ecclesiastic and theologian, Henry Edward Manning, who arguably provides the most developed account of this view. Determining what Manning understood intuitionism to mean, allows one to see better what these intuitionists took religious belief to be, and how religious belief can be true and, as appropriate, reasonable or justifiable. In doing so, the so-called ‘Christian intuitionist’ position is made clearer.
Family interests and settlements at common law
Authors: Baker John
Published: September 2019

The cases in this chapter relate to property provisions for widows (dower), widowers (curtesy), younger sons, and daughters. A group of reports throws light on the difficulties in interpreting conditional gifts restricted to descendants, culminating in the Statute De Donis (1285) and its outcome, the statutory fee tail. Later reports show the perplexity occasioned over the legal nature of the fee tail and its durability. There are also discussions of the common recovery as a method of barring the entail, of the concept of the remainder, and of doubts about the validity of contingent remainders.
The term of years
Authors: Baker John
Published: September 2019

This chapter shows the steps whereby the tenant for years came to be protected against his lessor, and thereby to acquire an estate in land; the lease, though a chattel, became a ‘chattel real’. This required an act of judicial legislation in turning the trespassory action of ejectment – for ejecting a lessee from possession - into a real action by which the ejected lessee could be restored to possession. Ejectment was then seen to work more effectively than the real actions and assizes available to freeholders, and so a way was found of using it to displace them. Its perfection as an action for freeholders involved an elaborate fantasy with imaginary parties and imaginary leases; the procedure is illustrated. Finally, there are discussions about the possibility of creating entails and future estates in terms of years.
Debt
Authors: Baker John
Published: September 2019

This chapter contains cases concerning the action of debt, with particular reference to the modes of proof and pleading. If there was no deed evidencing the debt, but some quid pro quo, the plaintiff produced ‘suit’ (which became fictitious) and the defendant could usually wage his law by taking an oath that he owed nothing and producing eleven compurgators to back him up; the working of wager of law, which itself became semi-fictitious, is illustrated. The cases show considerable uncertainty as to the underlying law of contract, if indeed there was any, since it only occasionally surfaced for discussion. Where a deed was used, it usually took the form of a bond: a sealed writing acknowledging the indebtedness. Since a deed was superior to parol evidence, few defences were available to debt on a bond; this was found to cause considerable hardship.
Assumpsit in lieu of debt
Authors: Baker John
Published: September 2019

Once it was established that the action of assumpsit would lie for nonfeasance, thoughts turned to using it for the non-payment of debts. This would enable the action of debt to be avoided, and thus prevent debtors from escaping their debts by waging law. The development was accepted by the King’s Bench in 1532, but resisted for over sixty years by the Common Pleas, which regarded wager of law as a right worth preserving. This chapter shows the arguments that were advanced on both sides, how the clash between the courts came to a head with the creation of the Exchequer Chamber in 1585, with jurisdiction to reverse King’s Bench judgments, and how the dispute was finally ended (by the barest majority) in Slade’s Case (1602). The 1602 decision was that every debt included an implied undertaking on which assumpsit would lie. This effectively put an end to wager of law.