bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Depinning Transition
Authors: Zapperi Stefano
Published: August 2022

Several systems in condensed matter physics can be described by elastic manifolds in random media. Concrete examples are provided by domain walls in ferromagnets, flux lines in type II superconductors, contact lines, crack fronts and dislocations. When an elastic manifold is pushed through a disordered landscape, it typically displays a depinning transition between a moving and a pinned phase. In the past decades, a vast theoretical effort has been devoted to understand the depinning transition as a non-equilibrium critical phenomenon. In the course of time, a deeper level of description and understanding of this phenomenon has been achieved, going far beyond a mere estimate of the depinning force, which has typically been the original motivation to address the problem. The morphology of a manifold is generally found to be self-affine and can be characterized by a roughness exponent. Other scaling exponents have been introduced to characterize the behavior of correlation lengths and times, the velocity above depinning. In addition, the dynamics of elastic manifolds proceeds by avalanches that are power law distributed at the depinning transition. Quantitative predictions of the critical exponents have been obtained analytically by the renormalization group and have been confirmed by numerical simulations.
Flow in Porous Media
Authors: Zapperi Stefano
Published: August 2022

The process of fluid invasion in a porous medium is often irregular and characterized by avalanches. In imbibition, one typically observes a self-affine front and avalanches are related to those observed in interface depinning. Conversely in drainage, the fluid front tears apart, giving rise to an invasion percolation process where the fluid forms a fractal interface. The crossover between these two behaviors is ruled by the wetting angle and can be described by simple models. In further applications, we discuss the capillary condensation of He in nucleapore and air flow during the inflation of collapsed lungs. The air pressure opens the bronchial channels and alveoli in avalanches, resulting in a crackling noise.
Outlook
Authors: Zapperi Stefano
Published: August 2022

In this book, we have presented an overview of crackling noise and have discussed its interpretation in terms of underlying avalanche phenomena. We have seen that the statistical properties of crackling noise are characterized by a set of power-law distributions which can be related by scaling laws in analogy with similar relations derived for equilibrium- and non-equilibrium-critical systems. This suggests that crackling noise is a manifestation of some for of criticality of the avalanches that produce the noise. While in this book we followed the general idea that power-law distributions in crackling noise are due to critical avalanches, several other mechanisms not involving critical points have been proposed in the literature. However, none of these mechanisms of power-law generation have gained much traction in the context of crackling noise. While not all power laws in nature are a signature of a critical point, avalanche phenomena have been consistently and quantitatively interpreted using critical phenomena.
Bringing the Church Back In
Authors: Møller Jørgen , Doucette Jonathan Stavnskær
Published: August 2022

The Introduction first shows how much recent social science literature, which has delved back to the High Middle Ages to study the development of European self-government and state formation, has ignored the role of the Catholic Church. It then presents the main argument of the book: that the eleventh-century ‘crisis of church and state’ unleased the two balancing acts that European state-builders have had to operate under ever since—against strong societies and against each other. This argument draws inspiration from an older body of social science work, as well as the work of historians. The Introduction describes the theoretical framework of the book, and it presents the structure of the chapters that follow.
The Conflict of Church and State
Authors: Møller Jørgen , Doucette Jonathan Stavnskær
Published: August 2022

This chapter traces the roots of the eleventh-century ‘conflict of church and state’. It shows how the historical point of departure was a fusion of lay and religious authority which bolstered sacral monarchy. This situation, common across the great civilization areas of Eurasia, was destabilized by a large-scale collapse of public authority in the ninth and tenth centuries. The buckling of royal power allowed a bottom-up reform movement in West Francia (the Cluniac movement), directed by clergy but with popular backing, to push for ecclesiastical autonomy and asceticism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This reform programme was then adopted by the top-down papal or ‘Gregorian’ reform movement, which is conventionally dated to 1046 or 1049. In the 1070s, the Gregorian reformers unleashed the great conflict over investiture, centring on whether they or lay rulers had the right to appoint clergy, in particular bishops. Throughout the High Middle Ages, the consequent conflict of church and state would dominate European politics.
A New Dataset of Ecclesiastical and Lay Institutions in the Latin West
Authors: Møller Jørgen , Doucette Jonathan Stavnskær
Published: August 2022

This chapter presents the data used in this book. The authors have compiled a new dataset of urban religious and lay institutions in Western and Central Europe between ad 1000 and 1300, supplemented by data on realm-level political assemblies in the East Iberian Crown of Aragon. In Chapter 2, this dataset is used to illustrate how religious institutions, such as bishoprics and Cluniac and Dominican monasteries, spread across the Latin West after the collapse of the Roman Empire. The chapter also shows how urban autonomy emerged in northern Italy and France and then spread across Western Europe. These data serve as a foundation for later empirical analyses, which connect the dots of the spread of ecclesiastical and lay institutions.
The Reform Movement and Urban Self-Government
Authors: Møller Jørgen , Doucette Jonathan Stavnskær
Published: August 2022

This chapter shows how for more than a century after the Investiture Controversy, urban self-government by and large remained confined to towns ruled by bishops. It argues that this was because townsmen supporting the reform agenda were incentivized to take political power in episcopal cities to correct unreformed clergy. This was a result of how the church reform movement had introduced a set of social realignments, facilitated by new norms about ecclesiastical office-holding. These realignments stimulated the urban associationalism which led to the initial emergence of autonomous town councils. The chapter documents that medieval towns, and episcopal towns in particular, were substantially more likely to establish autonomous town councils in the period 1000–1200 if they had contact with monasteries which spread the ‘Cluniac’ reforms. The initial appearance of self-governing groups, which European rulers henceforth had to confront and bargain with, was thus an outgrowth of the reform programme within the Church.
The Invention and Spread of Representation and Consent
Authors: Møller Jørgen , Doucette Jonathan Stavnskær
Published: August 2022

This chapter focuses on the invention and spread of representation and consent. It first shows that recent attempts to explain the development of medieval representative institutions have neglected a long-standing insight of medieval and legal historians: political representation and rule by consent were first developed within the Catholic Church following the eleventh-century Gregorian Reforms. These practices then migrated to secular polities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, facilitated by the towering position of the Church in medieval society in general and the ubiquitous ‘areas of interaction’ between religious and lay spheres in particular. The authors use qualitative evidence to document these processes by analysing the initial adoption of proctorial representation and consent at political assemblies, first within the Church, then in lay polities. As a second step, they show how the presence of the mendicant Dominican order (organized from top to bottom based on representation) inspired the development of representative government at the urban level. These findings corroborate recent insights about the importance of religious institutions and diffusion in processes of regime change, and they shed light on the puzzling fact that representation and consent—the core principles of modern democracy—only arose and spread in the Latin West.
Corollaries of the Hohenstaufen Collapse
Authors: Møller Jørgen , Doucette Jonathan Stavnskær
Published: August 2022

This chapter examines further the repercussions of the tensions between lay and religious authority by studying the political consequences of the final papal victory over the Hohenstaufen imperial dynasty in the thirteenth century. The result was another state collapse—in the form of a prolonged succession crisis known as the Great Interregnum (1250–1312)—this time confined to the Roman Empire of the German Nation. The chapter documents how this crisis, itself a consequence of the conflict of church and state, further consolidated urban self-government across large swatches of Western and Central Europe. Besides stimulating the internal balancing act, the progressive fragmentation and decentralization of the Empire—throughout the High Middle Ages the main candidate for creating an imperialization of the Latin West—left space for the advent of territorial states such as France. Finally, it had repercussions elsewhere in the form of generalized geopolitical pressure. The chapter shows how the rulers of the Crown of Aragon became embroiled in the Hohenstaufen collapse, and how this made them more hemmed in by but also able to channel power via institutions of constraint.
Taking Stock and Looking Forward
Authors: Møller Jørgen , Doucette Jonathan Stavnskær
Published: August 2022

The Conclusions first briefly describes the political role of the Catholic Church in the period after the French Revolution. Against this backdrop, the chapter argues that there is another story to tell for those interested in how the Catholic Church has influenced European processes of state formation and regime change. It discusses what kind of power the Church mainly exercised and it summarizes the key findings of the book. Finally, the implications of the findings for how to best understand European state formation and regime change and how to theorize and analyse interactions between religion and politics are discussed.
What Rosalind Likes
Authors: Hecht Paul J.
Published: August 2022

What Rosalind Likes begins with the strange ferocity of Elizabethan responses to poetry: a woman named Rosalind expresses scorn for a shepherd’s poems, and a character in a play loses his temper and storms off stage at the sound of a blank verse line. What are these people so angry about? Thus begins a journey into a world where the details of poetic form and vagaries of Latin translation are caught up in the dynamics of gender, sexuality, class, and race, and power, where too much alliteration, for example, could destabilize your gender or pose a threat to national security. Situated in the crucial final two decades of the sixteenth century, What Rosalind Likes takes three figures named “Rosalind” in works by Spenser (The Shepheardes Calender), Lodge (Rosalynde), and Shakespeare (As You Like It) to create a new approach to literary history and feminist criticism. The development and emergence of Rosalind as one of the most famous and beloved characters in the Shakespeare canon is thus connected to the troubled history of Virgilian reception, to tensions between aesthetics and sexual empowerment and powerlessness, to methodology associated with postcritique, including surface reading and the valorization of negative emotions, and to queer theology. The book ends by thinking about Rosalind with respect to the poetry of Mary Wroth, and examining depictions of Rosalind on stage and screen by Dora Jordan and Katharine Hepburn.
Introduction
Authors: Hecht Paul J.
Published: August 2022

The Introduction lays out the aims and stakes of the project as a technical history of Rosalind and a biography of poetry, terminology that suggests the project’s alignment with methodologies associated with postcritique, and a specific aim to connect aesthetics and classical reception through poetic form with debates over gender and sexuality. These topics are explored through analyses of formative theory by Theodor Adorno and Leo Bersani, and more recent queer feminist work by Janet Halley and Amber Musser. The chapter ends with an analysis of an early version of a play by Ben Jonson, Every Man In His Humour.
Reforming the Bank’s Structure
Authors: Moloney Kim
Published: August 2022

There is a surprising lack of academic analysis of the Bank’s 1987 reform. While more analysis has been published about the 1992 Wapenhans Report, both the reform and the Report do more to structurally influence sector-specific policy change than any other post-1980 effort. The 1987 reform created organizational space for Bank staff who encouraged an alternative institutional development focus for the PSM sector agenda. The 1992 Wapenhans Report highlighted misaligned lending incentives and organizational blockages at the Bank. An ongoing non-resolution of Report findings will shape subsequent chapters and help explain the limited influence of internal evaluative mechanisms over sector-specific policy change. This reform and Report interact with moments of sector expansion and change.
Internal Evaluators and External NGOs
Authors: Moloney Kim
Published: August 2022

This chapter engages two sets of actors. The first is the multiple internal evaluative units and other related accountability actors. This includes the Operational Evaluation Department (later renamed the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG)), the Inspection Panel, an Integrity Vice Presidency, the now-defunct Quality Assurance Group (QAG), and a similarly defunct Results Secretariat. For this book’s identified policy sector, each internal actor’s influence over policy change is minimal. Reasons vary from evaluations which do not alter incentives (IEG), no sector-specific bureaucratic and operational procedures (Panel), and no sector-specific interactions (Integrity). While both QAG and the Secretariat did interact with this book’s sector of interest (as well as other sectors), each faced organizational disincentives to their continuation as internal evaluative actors. The second set of actors are NGOs. Contrary to most scholarship on civil society interaction with the Bank in non-PSM/PSG sectors, NGOs with a specific focus on PSM/PSG are far less common. Of the five NGOs identified by interviewe as relevant to this sector of policy change, only Transparency International (TI) and the International Budget Project (IBP) had some influence over PSM/PSG policy change. In TI’s case, its influence was most significant in the 1990s as President Wolfensohn added anticorruption to the Bank’s sector agenda. In contrast, IBP’s influence arose after the mid-2000s and was specific to IMF-Bank interactions on budget transparency initiatives.
PSM/PSG Sector Emergence, Policy Change, and Who Matters at the World Bank
Authors: Moloney Kim
Published: August 2022

The conclusion reminds readers of this book’s analytical framework for explaining 32 years of policy change within the World Bank’s public sector management and public sector governance agenda. The chapter notes the book’s focus on policy change as worthy of a sustained analytical interest, its engagement with the public administration discipline to potentially complement constructivist approaches arising out of international relations, and the importance of policy change analyses for mid-range theory development. The book’s independent variables are further articulated within this chapter via six researchable propositions for external actors and another seven propositions for internal actors. Each proposition may offer an opportunity to further IO policy change studies.
Rule of Law and Human Rights in Investment Arbitration—Need for Judicial Reforms
Authors: Petersmann Ernst-Ulrich
Published: August 2022

Chapter 7 discusses the need for reforming investment law and arbitration and the problems which bilateral WTO appellate arbitration could pose for the coherence of world trade law. Like international trade law, the historical evolution of investor–state arbitration reflects conflicting neo-liberal, state capitalist, and ordo-liberal conceptions of economic law. Case studies demonstrate that even if human rights were invoked as investor claims, as defences of the host state, by third-party interveners or by arbitrators ex officio, the impact of human rights law on arbitration awards tended to remain marginal, for example due to the more precise and higher investment protection standards in investment treaties. The investor biases in investment treaties and arbitration (e.g. offering foreign investors higher protection standards than domestic investors) require procedural and substantive reforms like stronger protection of public interest legislation in investment law and arbitration procedures. Yet, it remains doubtful whether the United States and China will give up their past resistance against EU proposals for transforming the multilateral arbitration procedures of the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes and of the UN Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) into new forms of public law adjudication by multilateral investment courts.
Quirky Quantum Effects
Authors: Speller Susannah
Published: August 2022

In this chapter, the focus is on what is happening to the electrons in a superconductor. As well as exploring why superconductors have zero resistance, the concept of quantum tunnelling is introduced to understand what happens when the supercurrent has to get across narrow regions of non-superconducting material at a Josephson junction. This leads into a discussion on devices like Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDS) and devices for superconducting electronics that rely on Josephson Junctions to work. “Under the Lens” sections look at the superconducting energy gap and the sensitivity of SQUIDS. The Scanning Tunnelling Microscope that uses quantum tunnelling for imaging the surfaces of materials is introduced in the “Wider view” section.
Desistance from Crime and the Potential Role of Restorative Justice
Authors: Shapland Joanna
Published: August 2022

As criminological research becomes more specialised, there is a need to examine whether there might be synthesis between different theoretical traditions. Both lifestyle criminology and restorative justice theory have examined offenders’ potential path towards desistance, or stopping committing crime. Drawing from both the Sheffield Desistance Study and the evaluation of three large-scale restorative justice projects involving adult offenders in England and Wales, the potential theoretical linkages between the experiences of offenders in restorative justice and their progress towards desistance are considered. It is proposed that some forms of restorative justice, involving a future-oriented discussion and conferencing, may serve as a stage or boost towards desistance, both in terms of motivation and addressing practical obstacles to a less offending lifestyle.
Towards a True Social Ecology of Crime
Authors: Wikström Per-Olof H.
Published: August 2022

Tony Bottoms is one of Europe’s leading urban criminologists. The 1976 publication of The Urban Criminal (with John Baldwin), and his subsequent work (and collaborations with Paul Wiles and others), contributed to the revitalisation of the social ecology of crime and brought new and fresh ideas and insights to its study, such as the role of local housing markets and the importance of integrating key insights from classic ecology of crime and the more recent environmental criminology. This chapter deals with a central but largely ignored problem that hampers the development of a true social ecology of crime: the common neglect of considering the role of people (actors) and, crucially, the person–environment interaction in crime causation. From a Situational Action Theory (SAT) perspective, the chapter argues for the advantages of applying a genuine ecological perspective in the study of crime and its causes.
Constructive Sentencing through Custody-Avoiding Sanctions
Authors: Bois-Pedain Antje du
Published: August 2022

In recent years, sentencing innovations that permit courts to impose what one may think of as ‘bespoke’ sentences, which have the future-oriented objective of helping the offender stay away from crime, have received renewed attention from scholars and policy-makers alike. Such sentencing options are often of greatest interest when they can reduce reliance on imprisonment. But that is also where concerns regarding fairness between offenders, public acceptability of sentencing outcomes, and limitations on effective guidance come to the fore. Tony Bottoms has regularly engaged with issues raised by probation, suspended sentences and other community-based disposals, most recently in a journal article analysing the role of the concept of ‘punishment’ in non-custodial sentences. This chapter takes up the twin challenges of providing a coherent penal–theoretical conceptualisation of custody-avoiding sentencing options and integrating these options into a comprehensive theory of criminal punishment capable of underpinning constructive sentencing practices.
The Distributional Politics of Social Transfers in Kenya
Authors: Porisky Alesha
Published: August 2022

This chapter examines the politics of distributing the Cash Transfer for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (CT-OVC); the Older Persons Cash Transfer Programme (OPCT); and the Inua Jamii Pension in four counties in Kenya. The chapter presents two key findings. First, state infrastructural power plays a central role in mediating programme implementation. Where state infrastructural power is high, formal programme guidelines tend to be closely followed. However, where state infrastructural power is low, bureaucrats compensate by relying on local authorities—including administrative chiefs and clan leaders—to assist with programme functions that are outside of their formal roles. Second, there is less political interference in the local distribution of social transfers than the extant literature predicts. Strong formal programme rules and guidelines, combined with significant central oversight over programme implementation, limit local politicians’ influence over distribution.
‘New Normal’, 2001–2019
Authors: Gupta Suman
Published: August 2022

This chapter begins by considering examples of sentences in which the phrase ‘new normal’ was used amidst the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020. It then looks back and tracks the career of the catchphrase from US Vice President Dick Cheney’s reference to a ‘new normalcy’ of security arrangements following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the USA. In relation to 9/11, the ‘new normal’ also indicated a traumatized environment and a pressured legal field where rule-of-law tenets seemed to be undermined. The different nuances of the catchphrase in business and investment circles, first with the 2002 dot-com crash and then more widely with the 2007–2008 financial crisis and subsequent austerity measures are outlined. The wider purchase of the catchphrase from 2010 onwards is described. Notably, it appeared as a slogan for Chinese economic policy from 2014. Other significant contexts of usage were for flexible-working drives, growing concern about climate change, and exacerbating income inequality.
Policy Catchwords
Authors: Gupta Suman
Published: August 2022

This chapter discusses two policy catchwords which caught on around 2010 and have found renewed currency in 2020. ‘Austerity’ became a catchword in UK political discourse in 2010, when Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s government introduced wide-ranging cuts in public spending following the 2007–2008 financial crisis. It was initially reminiscent of post-World War II ‘austerity’ and was immediately received as such. Shortly after that, however, the term moved out of policy circles and was principally used by opponents of austerity policies. This passage of the catchword is traced here with a particular focus on the period 2008–2010. A following section is devoted to ‘resilience’. Emerging from 1980s’ ecological economics, ‘resilience’, alongside ‘sustainability’, also became a policy catchword around 2010, especially within legislative and management circles. It suggested a desirable and measurable quality of institutions and organizations, which could help rationalize investments and financial management. In this chapter, the rationales fronted by the catchword are examined with particular reference to the policies of a key cultural institution in the UK, the Arts Council, for the period 2010–2017.
Conclusion
Authors: Gupta Suman
Published: August 2022

Here the theoretical principles which have underpinned this study are set out. A distinctive approach to contemporary history is outlined and a theory of political catchphrases proposed. Three arguments are presented. The first considers what ‘contemporary’ means in contemporary history. Several conceptions of contemporaneity in historicizing are considered. Departing from them, it is suggested that contemporary history is mainly characterized by being engaged from within a prevailing idiom; catchphrases are a particular facet of prevailing and shifting idiomaticity. The second argument concerns the meaning of the ‘political’ in political catchphrases. In this instance, the argument is pursued by examining various dictionaries of political expressions and terms. The erasure of the distinction between political and commercial appears as a noteworthy feature of the present. The third argument elaborates on the catchiness of catchphrases by unpacking how ‘keywords’ work. Here keywords are understood as a device for organizing and searching texts.
Ireland
Authors: Doyle Oran
Published: August 2022

Chapter 4 by Oran Doyle focuses on Ireland, exploring how Brexit has impacted the Republic, and what kind of Member State it has become in the last decade. Ireland is by far the EU Member State most affected by Brexit. At the same time, Brexit has in some ways brought to completion a process of increasing separation between Ireland and the UK: contrary to the latter, Ireland is a Member State at the heart of the EU, which largely punches above its weight, with Irish policy-makers in key positions, from the Presidency of the Eurogroup, to the European Central Bank. In fact, Doyle underlines how Ireland has recently undergone a remarkable liberal development, visible in the constitutional referendum legalizing gay marriages and abortion. Nevertheless, Doyle stresses how Brexit also poses a significant challenge for the future of Ireland, in the form of a possible unification referendum with Northern Ireland, and he considers some procedural and substantive guideposts which it would be wise for the political elites and the public to start debating.
Global Connections
Authors: Satz Helmut
Published: August 2022

We present percolation theory as the leading model to obtain global connections. It constitutes a geometric form of critical behavior and has a wide range of applications. In particular, it shows that critical behavior can arise without any specific interaction between the constituents. Besides continuum percolation, we discuss the discrete form of site perolation.
The Nature of Forces
Authors: Satz Helmut
Published: August 2022

We introduce gravity and electromagnetic interactions, discuss the origin of dark matter, of dark energy, and obtain the entropy of black holes. Dark matter is seen to arise from the velocity distribution of outlying stars in galaxies, deviating from Kepler’s law. Up to today, the form and nature of such matter is not understood. We discuss the entropy of black holes and note the specific form of the force of gravity.
Self-Organized Criticality
Authors: Satz Helmut
Published: August 2022

We introduce the emergence of self-organized criticality in statistical systems, leading to critical behavior without a manipulating operator. Such behavior is observed in a variety of phenomena, and criticality was, in particular, studied as origin for earthquake formation.
Bifurcation and Chaos
Authors: Satz Helmut
Published: August 2022

We show how bifurcation leads to an end of determinism and thus eventually to chaos. Such models were originally introduced in population studies, and they show how deterministic equations can lead to chaotic behavior. A similar type of behavior was obtained earlier by Fibonacci, whose number sequence led to the golden rule, which found many realizations in nature. The origin of this agreement remains a puzzle of natural science.
Brownian Motion
Authors: Satz Helmut
Published: August 2022

In Brownian motion, macroscopic (visible) dust particles are seen to undergo random motion. This was interpreted as collisions with invisible smaller constituents and hence as evidence for atoms even in antiquity. We discuss Brownian motion as evidence for such microscopic structure and elaborate the underlying mathematical structure.
Introduction
Authors: Pettigrew Richard
Published: August 2022

In this chapter, I introduce the central question of the book and its main concepts and theses. I sketch the argument of the book and outline the chapters to come.
Varieties of Permissivism
Authors: Pettigrew Richard
Published: August 2022

In this chapter, I build on and slightly extended Elizabeth Jackson’s (2019) taxonomy of different species of permissivism about epistemic rationality, and I locate within that framework the positions for which I’ll argue in this essay. They are: · Radical common interpersonal permissivism about credences. That is, for most bodies of evidence, the range of credal states for which there is some individual who might rationally respond to that evidence with that credal state is wide. · Moderate common intrapersonal permissivism about credences. That is, for most bodies of evidence and many individuals, the range of credal states the individual might rationally adopt in response to that evidence is narrower, but it nonetheless contains more than one option.
Epistemic Risk and Picking Priors I
Authors: Pettigrew Richard
Published: August 2022

In this chapter, I argue in favour of the family of decision rules that I will apply to the choice of prior credences. The family is called the generalised Hurwicz Criterion. Each decision rule within the family is specified by a set of generalised Hurwicz weights. Each weight is a number. The first weight is the one we will apply to the best-case utility of an option to determine its contribution to the overall value of that option; the second weight is the one we will apply to the second-best case utility to determine its contribution; and so on down the last weight, which we apply to the worst-case utility. These generalised Hurwicz weights are best understood as our attitudes to risk. For instance, the more risk-inclined you are, the more weight you will concentrate in the earlier generalised Hurwicz weights, since these weight the better cases.
Epistemic Risk and Picking Posteriors
Authors: Pettigrew Richard
Published: August 2022

In the preceding two chapters, I asked how we should use epistemic utilities to pick our priors. In this chapter, I turn my attention to picking posteriors. In the early section, I consider and reject a range of possible approaches. Then I turn to an argument by Dmitri Gallow (2019) that we should pick our posteriors by maximising expected epistemic utility from the point of view of our priors, which entails that we should obtain our posteriors from our priors by conditioning on our evidence, just as Bayes' Rule demands.
What Is the Value of Rationality?
Authors: Pettigrew Richard
Published: August 2022

In this chapter, I consider and respond to three objections to permissivism about epistemic rationality. The first, given voice by Daniel Greco and Brian Hedden (2016) and also Ben Levinstein (2017), begins with the claim that we should defer to rationality and claims that this is incompatible with permissivism. I show that the version of deference that this objection requires is false. The second objection is due to Sophie Horowitz (2014) and challenges the permissivist to say what is valuable about rationality. I respond that the epistemic utility theorist is particularly well placed to answer this question. The third objection comes from Ginger Schultheis (2018), who notes that nearly all permissivists will think there are situations in which you know of one credal state that is rationally permissible that it is, while not knowing of another that is rationally permissible that it is. But, Schultheis argues, such a situation is impossible. I respond that it is not.
Is Brute Shuffling Irrational?
Authors: Pettigrew Richard
Published: August 2022

In this chapter, I address what is perhaps the most popular objection to permissivism. It begins by claiming that permissivists must say that it's rationally permissible to move from one permissible credence function to another without obtaining any new evidence; and it continues by contending that this is in fact rationally forbidden. I answer this by drawing a distinction between cases in which the individual considers their current credences authoritative for decision-making, and cases in which they do not. In the first, it is irrational to move from those credences to others, even if those others are permissible. In the second, it is not irrational to move from your current credences. I discuss what might lead an individual to come to think of their current credences as no longer authoritative for decision-making.
Referential Competence
Authors: Unnsteinsson Elmar
Published: August 2022

This chapter presents the author’s own accounts of speaker meaning and speaker reference. These are informed and influenced by earlier work in the tradition of Gricean intentionalism, especially by Grice, Strawson, Schiffer, Sperber, Wilson, Carston, Neale, and Bach. The chapter argues that speaker meaning ought to include Grice’s so-called third clause, which the author calls the directive intention. The mechanistic perspective assumed here gives reason to distinguish natural and nonnatural meaning, as understood by Grice, from what the author calls unnatural meaning. Unnatural meaning occurs when two distinct mechanisms, in this case the mechanism for natural meaning and the mechanism for nonnatural meaning, are unnaturally mixed in a single speech act. Speaker reference is defined directly in terms of speaker meaning, as a speech act whereby one means a singular proposition and intends the addressee to take a particular part of the utterance as direct evidence for a referential intention. This is the mature end-state of referential competence, involving the use of natural language expressions, rather than other possible means of communication. A few intuitive objections are addressed and the author tries to clarify the major concepts employed in this account of reference.
Good Cases, Bad Cases
Authors: Unnsteinsson Elmar
Published: August 2022

The chapter claims that many philosophers employ a confusion-driven methodology, namely, they describe a case in which a speaker is confused about the identity of something and wonder what they could be referring to by making some utterance or other. The chapter argues that this methodology is suspect and goes through two case studies: Kripke on semantic reference, and Reimer on demonstratives. It shows how their arguments fail precisely in virtue of being based on cases of confusion. The author amplifies this result further by stressing that many well-known examples of near-confusion in the philosophical literature do not in fact support the same conclusion. The author has in mind Putnam on beeches and elms, and Donnellan on the distinction between attributive and referential uses of definite descriptions. The author concludes, thus, that his argument does not count against the so-called method of cases, only its confusion-driven incarnation.
Democratizing Moral Education, 1792−1802
Authors: Bow Charles Bradford
Published: August 2022

This chapter examines Stewart’s democratization of moral education in the Scottish philosophical tradition. The emergence of a counter-revolution—championed by Edmund Burke and enforced by Henry Dundas—advanced prejudices against teaching speculative philosophy. This formidable counter-revolution challenged the Scottish philosophical tradition that Stewart sustained at the University of Edinburgh. Stewart reacted to this revolutionary change in Scottish Enlightenment intellectual culture by introducing ‘a more perfect system of education’ in his Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1792). The cultivation of happiness in ‘all pursuits of life’ underpinned this novel ‘superstructure’ for teaching the ‘fundamental laws of human belief’ that guarded impressionable minds against unlimited scepticism and credulity. In doing so, Stewart rendered the characteristically Scottish philosophical language of intellectual, active, and moral powers of the mind accessible and practical for a general audience of men, women, and children from all ranks of society. This systematic approach to simplifying and correcting the technical ‘rubbish’ of Scottish metaphysics resulted in the democratization of Scottish Enlightenment moral philosophy.
“We don’t refuse money”
Authors: Carolini Gabriella Y.
Published: August 2022

This chapter charts the marketplace for development aid, trade, and foreign direct investment in Mozambique, in comparison with other economies on the African continent. It examines which countries have left the biggest footprints within this marketplace and situates the relative importance of Southern countries therein, particularly when compared to more traditional donors from advanced economies. Mozambique, much like the rest of Africa, has experienced a surge in the volume of foreign money landing on its territory in the past fifteen years. The analysis shows that Southern partners such as China, Brazil, India, and South Africa are creating alternative if sometimes controversial channels for development partnerships, while also building influential pathways for private investment. The chapter concludes by noting that despite the widening of the marketplace for foreign collaboration and resources—welcomed with open arms by national and municipal governments—its implications for equitable urban development are still poorly understood.
Anything but Basic
Authors: Carolini Gabriella Y.
Published: August 2022

This chapter introduces the five water-and-sanitation-related international cooperation projects the book explores in the realm of urban development in Maputo. Spread across different neighborhoods in the city, these projects encompassed partners from Brazil, China, Italy, Japan, and Spain, none of whose cooperation projects emerged as especially successful from a material distribution standpoint. They also varied in their scope—from sewerage and drainage upgrading to solid-waste management. This expansive view allows for exploring the constitution of development cooperation projects and their day-to-day workings across a diverse spectrum of partners and urban challenges. What these projects reveal is the “turbidity” of development cooperation on the ground. Projects not only defy neat categorizations such as South–South, triangular, or traditional partnerships with Northern donors, but they also do not conform with national geographic boundaries and geopolitical narratives.
The Governmentality of Evaluation
Authors: Carolini Gabriella Y.
Published: August 2022

This chapter asks how and why an evaluative orthodoxy, underlined by a faith in efficiency and hierarchy, remains in place in the international development industry despite an equally substantive development rhetoric around promoting participatory practices, equity, and learning. It does so through a critical review of the history and evolution of evaluative thinking in development—from the creation of the Operations Evaluation Department at the World Bank and the popularization of New Public Management, both in the 1970s, to the more recent fervor around evidence-based evaluation, randomized-control trials, and cost-benefit analysis. Although impact evaluations are meant to foster dynamic learning, who learns and what is learned often seems to escape critical review. In delimiting problems with orthodox project evaluation strategies, the chapter puts forth an alternative framing of evaluation centered on notions of distributive and procedural justice and epistemic equity at the project level.
Attempts to Reform the WHO Definition of Health (1997–1999)
Authors: Rauch Raphael
Published: August 2022

This chapter takes up a second episode in WHO’s history which has received little attention thus far: the attempt in the late 1990s to change the preamble to the WHO’s constitution—which contains the much-cited definition of health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’—to include the phrases ‘dynamic state’ and ‘spiritual dimension’. Even though the Executive Board agreed on this change, the World Health Assembly did not pass the amendment necessary to alter the preamble. This is sometimes interpreted as a rejection of a ‘spiritual dimension’ of health. As this chapter shows, this failure may also rather be understood in a broader context of a major attempt to reform the WHO, including complex structural and budgetary issues, which were postponed—together with the addition of a ‘spiritual dimension’.
Epilogue
Authors: Winiger Fabian
Published: August 2022

The epilogue turns to the role played by religious actors in the WHO’s attempt to strengthen its partnerships with civil society during the Covid-19 pandemic. In many ways, the urgency of this global health crisis has solidified a trend, evident in the past two decades, for WHO to take seriously ‘spiritual’ concerns relevant to a significant population of WHO’s Member States. In early 2020, WHO created an internal taskforce, the Information Network for Epidemics (EPI-WIN), to communicate the organization’s public health advice during the Covid-19 pandemic. EPI-WIN soon introduced a model of ‘communities of practice’, through which the organization began a thus far unprecedented consultation with religious actors. While this remains a new development, it laid groundwork to introduce a framework for engagement with ‘faith partners’, hoped to deepen and formalize the organization’s engagement with a ‘spiritual dimension’ of health.
This Present Reformation in England
Authors: Guyer Benjamin M.
Published: August 2022

The chapter covers the chaotic reign of Charles I. The first section continues the story of British ecclesiastical convergence after the death of James VI and I, noting how liturgical changes and new bodies of canon law sought to inhibit the likelihood that something like the Scottish Reformation might reoccur in any of the British kingdoms. Before turning to civil war and its aftermath, the chapter then considers how Caroline authors discussed England’s “first reformation,” concluding that the phrase indicates less historiographical consensus than is generally assumed. The remaining sections look at how apocalyptic fears and militant realities formed the backdrop for the dawn of historiography on the English Reformation. With “reformation” a veritable battle cry among English religious dissenters, the first histories of the English Reformation painted a portrait of sixteenth-century religious history diametrically opposite the bloodshed of the 1640s and oppression of the 1650s. “Our English Reformation,” a polemical label directed against the militant “reformation” of the civil wars and its Scottish inspiration, gave rise to sustained historical analyses by authors such as Thomas Fuller and Peter Heylyn.
The ‘Birth’ of the Sick Note
Authors: Millward Gareth
Published: August 2022

Although the National Insurance sick note was ‘born’ on 5 July 1948, medical certification has a much longer history. Like the British welfare state itself, one cannot understand the sick note without knowing the prewar welfare systems that provided both the blueprint for the postwar health and social security systems as well as warning about the sick notes potential weaknesses. This chapter begins by explaining why medical certification was central to William Beveridge’s plans for the new welfare state. Sickness benefit would reduce demand on the health system—and vice-versa—but only if access was restricted to those who ‘really’ needed it. The chapter then demonstrates how experience of the old National Health Insurance system had made doctors and administrators sceptical about whether sick notes were appropriate for the task. It concludes by analysing the debates between the BMA and the Ministry of Health over the creation of the NHS. Here, doctors complained bitterly about sick notes. Based on their experience in the interwar years, doctors saw sick notes as a waste of time and scientifically inaccurate. Yet, they worked better than any realistic alternative. Doctors eventually dropped their opposition, but the debates in the 1940s give vital context to those seen in the following decades.
Absenteeism and Postwar Rebuilding
Authors: Millward Gareth
Published: August 2022

With the NHS and National Insurance established, the sick note was immediately under scrutiny. This chapter focuses on the concept of ‘absenteeism’ and how the sick note became synonymous with it. Using the experience of four nationalized industries in the 1950s—the Royal Ordinance Factories, the National Coal Board, the Metropolitan Police, and the Post Office—the chapter demonstrates that the actual level of sickness in the population was not necessarily the determining factor of whether economic output or absenteeism could be described as ‘a problem’. The context of postwar rebuilding and the need to drive higher economic output to pay off substantial war loans was more important than whether the number of sick notes being issued was ‘really’ too high or too low. Similarly, for critics of the welfare state and the concept of nationalization, absenteeism could be mobilized to attack the government, middle managers, and workers. As the legitimator of sickness absence, the sick note appears regularly in policy documents and media coverage of the time. The arguments deployed here provide important context to later debates about absenteeism, but it must also be stressed that the peculiar circumstances of the 1950s heightened both the force and political significance of such arguments.