bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Relevance of Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion Today
Authors: Stewart Jon
Published: January 2022

The cultural landscape concerning religion has changed considerably since Hegel’s time. Today we live in multicultural societies and are in regular contact with people from other religious traditions. Moreover, due to the rise of secularism, religion no longer plays the dominant role that it once did. This then raises the question of whether Hegel’s concerns with regard to the issues about religion in the nineteenth century are in any way still relevant for us today in the twenty-first century. Does Hegel have anything meaningful to say about the philosophy of religion in a pluralistic world? This chapter argues that Hegel’s views on the world religions and his defence of Christianity represent an important challenge with great relevance today. His ideas on religion were developed in reaction to and in critical dialogue with two main traditions: the Enlightenment and Romanticism. It is easy to recognize in contemporary culture important strains from these traditions of thought. Writing at the time of a great wave of interest in non-European cultures in the first half of the nineteenth century, Hegel was among the first to realize the reality of religious pluralism. He saw that a philosophy of religion that wanted to favour Christianity must at a minimum have some story to tell about the other religions of the world.
Rational Deliberation
Authors: Gauthier David
Published: January 2022

A collection of David Gauthier’s writings on practical rationality and deliberation, all but two written after Morals by Agreement (1986). They represent the author’s most important contributions to the theory of practical reason, moving some distance from the view first presented in “Reason and Maximization” (1975) and developed in a much-reprinted chapter of Morals by Agreement (1986). These essays will make Gauthier’s more recent essays on rationality available to a wider audience, will change common misconceptions of his revisionist views, and will address many of the concerns of his critics, including himself.
Commitment and Choice
Authors: Gauthier David
Published: January 2022

This chapter develops a conception of “resolute choice” that reintroduces into the theory of rational planning the capacity for genuine commitment. An agent’s commitment to a plan may require counter-preferential choice. A resolute chooser, as understood in this essay, is someone who can make rational commitments, namely commitments that extend to the agent’s willingness to execute counter-preferential choices required by the plan as long as, but only as long as, the agent believes herself better off making these choices than she could have expected to be, had she adopted a plan that did not require non-maximizing choices. Resolute planning, as understood here, requires the rejection of a “separability” condition on dynamic choice; in the context of a plan, it may be rational to choose what it would be irrational to choose otherwise. It also requires the rejection of subgame perfection as a condition on interaction; maximally effective co-ordination is achieved by agents whose plans are best responses to those of their fellows. Even in a one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma, resolute choosers who can exchange credible assurances will plan to co-operate—and the credibility of their assurances will of course be in part dependent on their resoluteness.
Intention and Deliberation
Authors: Gauthier David
Published: January 2022

This chapter focuses on the relation between intention and deliberation, contrasting the author’s position with that of Michael Bratman in his Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reason (Harvard, 1987). Intentions that an agent has rationally formed and has no reason to reconsider constrain her future deliberations; she considers only actions compatible with those intentions. The orthodox position on the question of what makes it rational to settle on one intention rather than another overlooks the effect a particular intention may have on the expectations and consequent actions of others. There are outcome-related reasons for performing an action but also for forming an intention; deliberation may concern not only the former but also the latter.
Introduction
Authors: Mitford Timothy Bruce
Published: January 2022

The line of Vespasian’s eastern frontier is described from south to north,1 beginning at Samosata in northern Commagene, passing through Cappadocia and Armenia Minor, crossing the Pontic mountains, and ending on the Black Sea shore at Trapezus, the modern Trabzon (chapters 1–16). The chain of protected anchorages, extending east and north along the coast to Sebastopolis (Sukhumi) below the Caucasus and known largely from Arrian, is described without personal knowledge, other than a brief visit to Sukhumi and the Abkhazian Wall in August 1965 (...
Through the Antitaurus Gorge
Authors: Mitford Timothy Bruce
Published: January 2022

Gradual ascent, passing the Hittite Samuha, to join the Silk Road, and vertiginous descent into the Antitaurus gorge. Difficult route, by Teucila, to Kemaliye, formerly Eğin, and the Ottoman bridge, perhaps on Roman foundations, over the Euphrates. High and tortuous routes northwards on both sides of the river, and the Silk Road climbing over the Hostabeli pass (5,970 feet) towards Kemah. Rafts and navigation. Destruction above the Keban dam.
Per Ripam to Erzincan and Satala
Authors: Mitford Timothy Bruce
Published: January 2022

Description of the route along the deep Euphrates trench, by Analiba, Sinervas, Carsaga, and Arauraca, to Erzincan (Suisa), destroyed in the 1939 earthquake; and continuation over the Sipikör pass (7,870 feet) to the fortress of Satala. Kemah, and routes to the Dersim and Harput.
Satala (Sadak)
Authors: Mitford Timothy Bruce
Published: January 2022

The eastward route from Satala towards Armenia, followed by Trajan and Arrian, and in Ottoman times by the historic caravan route from Constantinople to Erzerum and north-west Persia. The horrors of winter. The position, history, and remains of the fortress (of XVI Flavia Firma and XV Apollinaris): structures, inscriptions, mosaics, water supply, and excavations. The basilica.
Over the Pontic Mountains to Maçka
Authors: Mitford Timothy Bruce
Published: January 2022

Description of the northbound route taken by the frontier road in summer, joining the route taken by Xenophon, and by the crowded caravan route from Persia and Erzerum. Climbing from the Baghdad bridge and from Sedisca towards Mt Theches, the Roman road passed the high refuges of Patara, Frigidarium, and Pylae to reach the Xenophon cairn (8,200 feet), the position from which the Ten Thousand, Hadrian, and Arrian saw the sea; and descended rapidly through Gizenenica and past the later fort of Hortokop, to Maçka. Discussion of visibility and snow conditions.
Lewis and the Identity Theory
Authors: Armstrong D. M.
Published: January 2022

This chapter presents Armstrong’s last paper on philosophy of mind, where he recounts the origins of David Lewis’s seminal paper ‘An Argument for the Identity Theory’ which appeared in 1966, two years before Armstrong’s book. Armstrong situates Lewis’s theory in relation to his own theory and in so doing adds an important seam to the familiar narrative of how the causal theory of mind emerged in the years immediately after the publication of A Materialist Theory of the Mind. The historiography, created and propagated by Armstrong himself, has always rightly emphasized the priority of U. T. Place and J. J. C. Smart, but until now there has not been such a detailed account from Armstrong himself of Lewis’s ‘causal role’ in the first wave of thinking about the mind.
Armstrong and Perception
Authors: Rosenthal David
Published: January 2022

In this chapter, Rosenthal contests Armstrong’s view that perceptions are simply the acquiring of beliefs, and so lack any mental qualitative nature. Armstrong’s desire to circumvent any appeal to mental qualities is due to his conviction that mental qualities are necessarily conscious, and that would in turn undermine mind-body materialism. But it is argued that a conception of mental qualities as necessarily conscious is optional, and that an alternative account is available on which they are properties that underwrite the ability to make perceptual discriminations. Because perceptual discrimination can occur without being conscious, that alternative account is altogether independent of consciousness, and completely consistent with materialism. And because mental qualities, so construed, have representational character, the account is in the spirit of both Armstrong’s representationalism and his causal theory of mind.
Armstrong on Conation
Authors: Lycan William G.
Published: January 2022

This chapter is the first to look seriously at Armstrong on conation. A principal focus of this chapter is the so-called content specification or grain problem for the content of desires. Anyone who has read stories about the cunning way genies in bottles make life bad for their masters in granting wishes will be familiar with the problem. The canonical expression of a desire almost without exception leaves open that the proposition expressed could be made true without your getting what you want. The chapter explores the strategy of specifying the content of a desire as a kind of conditional: your desire has something like a conditional content, with the antecedent of that conditional involving the conditions under which the consequent is desirable. It compares Lycan’s own preferred version of this strategy with others and finds resources in Armstrong’s account of conative states to solve the problem.
Retail Credit
Authors: Anderson Raymond A.
Published: January 2022

This chapter covers retail credit, which has different data and modelling needs than wholesale. (1) Scorecard terminology—presented is a points-based model (other forms are acknowledged). The goal is to identify rare events, e.g. loan defaults, liquidations, bankruptcies or other undesirable outcomes. (2) Retail models—types across the credit cycle {solicitation, origination, collection, recovery, fraud}, what is being measured {risk, response, retention, revenue}, whose data is used {bespoke, generic, pooled, borrowed} and how it is done {empirical, hybrid, expert judgment}. (3) Data sources—focus is on credit bureaux and credit registries, their spread across various countries, ownership types of credit bureaux and some behind their establishment and spread. (4) Risk indicators—presentation of scores to end-users or downstream processes, as distinct from risk grades. (5) FICO scores—provided by major credit bureaux, with details of different versions and types, plus an imperfect formula for converting their scores into probabilities.
Credit—A Microhistory
Authors: Anderson Raymond A.
Published: January 2022

The history of credit from ancient to modern times, parties involved and media used: (1)Ancient world—Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome. Penalties for non-payment were significant, and could result in slavery of self/family, or death. (2)Mediaeval world—religious belief caused restrictions. Many modern-day practices had their origins in this era, including the use of bills of exchange, mortgages, pawn shops and merchant banking. (3)Credit evolution—the expansion of trade and personal credit, both unscrupulous {loan sharks, pawn shops} and scrupulous {philanthropic societies, industrial lenders}. Motor vehicle finance drove instalment credit. (4)Credit vendors—credit drapers, tallymen, and travelling salesmen, department stores, mail order—to promote goods’ sales. More recent are mobile-network operators and Internet service providers. (5)Credit media and Assets Financed—tools used to extend extent credit and transact {cheques, credit cards}, and major instalment finance classes {motor vehicle, consumer durables, home loans}.
The Birth of Modern Credit Intelligence
Authors: Anderson Raymond A.
Published: January 2022

The history of external credit-intelligence players, with many accused of spying. (1)Pre-revolution—collaborative efforts of close-knit communities or business groups. (2)United Kingdom—guardian/trade protection societies, established as member co-operatives. (3)United States—for-profit ‘mercantile agencies, most founded by wholesalers capitalizing on their credit dossiers. Consumer credit bureaux developed separately, as did ‘credit men’ employed by companies. (4)The Big Three credit bureaux—Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, but also Centrale Rischi Finanziari (CRIF) and CreditInfo. Further details are provided regarding their geographic representation, and economic factors. (5)Rating agencies—Moody’s, Standard and Poors (S&P) and Fitch Ratings, which focus on wholesale credit, but some services overlap with small and medium enterprise (SME) credit. (6)High-level observations—i) segments served (consumer, micro, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) and wholesale); ii) economies of scale—drove establishment, expansions, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity; iii) communications—especially print publishing; iv) geographical spread—limitations; v) product mix—banks with deep data and experience are less reliant on external data.
File Assembly
Authors: Anderson Raymond A.
Published: January 2022

And finally (at least for the ‘organizing’ stage), it is time to bring it all together—observation and performance—‘what we knew then’ and ‘what we now know’! Most relates to matching records. (1) Data merge—of data from various sources, observation and performance. i) Treatment of one-to-many or many-to-one matches of observations, especially duplicates on different dates; ii) matching to the performance indicators; iii) assessment/assignment of kill and other (policy) rules; iv) not-taken-up(NTU)/Uncashed—reasons and treatment. (2) External data acquisition—issues around obtaining data from vendors: i) requests for retrospective histories, whether observation or performance; ii) data security issues and treatment. (3) Further data reduction—initial review to identify more fields for removal, given the ability to test against performance: i) correlated characteristics—where only one is required; ii) weak characteristics—that are highly unlikely to provide any value, which are often those underpopulated.
Beyond the Body
Authors: Bill Stanley
Published: January 2022

Chapter 1 examines Miłosz’s poetic attempts to salvage a non-bodily, “transcendent” dimension of human identity from reductively materialist perspectives. It begins with a brief introduction of his understanding of the “death of God” in Western culture, before presenting a sustained interpretation of a poem exemplifying his own resistance—an uncertain defense of transcendent human “meaning,” partly represented by poetry itself. This discussion of poetry’s mission is followed by a more detailed analysis of the stakes as Miłosz conceived them in various prose reflections on the political and literary consequences of reductive materialism, including its supposed role in the mass violence of the twentieth century. Finally, the chapter discusses Miłosz’s positive reconstructions of a “vertical” aspect of the human self that soars above the physical body. In some cases, this component of human identity reflects a secular notion of “consciousness.” However, the Polish poet also develops a heretical “Manichaean” myth of a transcendent spark of the self, cast down into the prison of the flesh.
Animals in Hellenistic Royal Mosaics
Authors: Thomas Joshua J.
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines a series of sumptuous opus vermiculatum mosaics depicting animals made for royal patrons in Alexandria and Pergamon. Some of these compositions still survive: the Dog Mosaic from the palatial district in Alexandria, the Parrot Mosaic from Palace V in Pergamon, and the Fish Mosaic from Palace IV in the same city. Two further Attalid royal mosaics made by Sosos likewise depicted animals­ or animal parts, and are known thanks to Pliny’s Natural History and a series of later versions. In analysing these compositions, this chapter tackles an important question: ‘Why did Hellenistic kings commission high-quality mosaic floors containing naturalistic depictions of particular animals?’ It is argued that the natural world offered a sophisticated visual language for expressing ideas about power and privilege during Hellenistic times.
Quasibrittle Fracture Mechanics and Size Effect
Authors: Bažant Zdenek P. , Le Jia-Liang , Salviato Marco
Published: January 2022

Many modern engineering structures are composed of brittle heterogenous (a.k.a. quasibrittle) materials. These materials include concrete (an archetype), composites, tough ceramics, rocks, cold asphalt mixtures, and many brittle materials at the microscale. Understanding the failure behavior of these materials is of paramount importance for improving the resilience and sustainability of various engineering structures including civil infrastructure, aircraft, ships, military armors, and microelectronic devices. This book provides a comprehensive treatment of quasibrittle fracture mechanics. It first presents a concise but rigorous and complete treatment of the linear elastic fracture mechanics, which is the foundation of all fracture mechanics. The topics covered include energy balance analysis of fracture, analysis of near-tip field and stress intensity factors, Irwin's relationship, J-integral, calculation of compliance function and deflection, and analysis of interfacial crack. Built upon the content of linear elastic fracture mechanics, the book presents various fundamental concepts of nonlinear fracture mechanics, which include estimation of inelastic zone size, cohesive crack model, equivalent linear elastic fracture mechanics model, R-curve, and crack band model. The book also discusses some more advanced concepts such as the effects of the triaxial stress state in the fracture process zone, nonlocal continuum models, and discrete computational model. The significant part of the book is devoted to the discussion of the energetic and statistical size effects, which is a salient feature of quasibrittle fracture. The book also presents probabilistic fracture mechanics, and its consequent reliability-based structural analysis and design of quasibrittle structures. Finally, the book provides an extensive review of various practical applications of quasibrittle fracture mechanics.
Energetic Size Effect in Quasibrittle Fracture
Authors: Bažant Zdeněk P. , Le Jia-Liang , Salviato Marco
Published: January 2022

The energetic size effect, transitioning from ductile behavior at small structure sizes to brittle behavior at large ones, is a quintessential feature of all quasibrittle fracture. Its analytical law, recently adopted for ACI Standard 318, is important for safe and efficient structural design. First it is explained that, in absence of any material characteristic length, which is the case for both elasticity and LEFM, the scaling of structural strength must be a power law of structure size. Its particular form is derived from dimensional analysis. After establishing the second-order asymptotic size effect of quasibritle structures at the small-size limit, the size effect law for geometrically scaled structure is derived by asymptotic matching to large-size asymptotic expansion of equivalent LEFM. The brittleness number is introduced as a geometry independent characteristic of failure behavior. Differences between the deterministic size effects of Type 1 and Type 2 are explained and their particular size effect laws are derived. It is also shown how to derive the R-curve from the observed size effect. Finally, the standardized use of the type 2 size effect law to obtain the fracture energy and characteristic FPZ size from the tests of maximum loads of similar notched specimens of sufficiently different sizes is derived and explained.
Financial Inclusion
Authors: Barajas Adolfo , Beck Thorsten , Belhaj Mohamed , Ben Naceur Sami
Published: January 2022

The past two decades have seen a rapid increase in interest in financial inclusion, both from policymakers and researchers. This chapter surveys the main findings from the literature, documenting the trends over time and gaps that have arisen across regions, income levels, and gender, among others. It points out that structural, as well as policy-related, factors, such as encouraging banking competition or channelling government payments through bank accounts, play an important role, and describes the potential macro and microeconomic benefits that can be derived from greater financial inclusion. It argues that policy should aim to identify and reduce frictions holding back financial inclusion, rather than targeting specific levels of inclusion. Finally, it suggests areas for future research.
The Book-Fires of 1933
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

The central image of censorship in modernity, and perhaps in history altogether, is the book-burning in Nazi Germany in May 1933. A description of the fires and their origins prompts a discussion of their meaning. It is argued that they functioned not as an action of political censorship of ideas so much as a rite of purgation. Functional destruction gives way to a pathological attitude towards culture. What does this tell us about the concept of censorship? The history of the term is reviewed from the Enlightenment (in Spinoza or Locke) to the twenty-first century, and from the Papal Index to Soviet Russia, and is contrasted with an alternative model of violence towards literature as motivated by a hatred of representation and mimesis itself.
The Book After the French Revolution
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

The modern book appears to be denuded of its associations with either holiness or embodiment. A book is a book, equivalent to a mundane sense of contents. Letter appears to give way to spirit alone. This chapter considers the French Revolution as a threshold of modernity in attitudes towards writing and the press, including concepts of copyright and the free press. These ideas are examined both in relation to the production of books, and in the representation of writing in visual art, such as David’s Death of Marat. Rather than a process of desacralization, this is revealed as a crisis in the idea of ‘spirit’. The concept is analysed philosophically in relation to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and then historically in the revolutionary quarrels between Robespierre and other Jacobins, and the use of the guillotine as a literal metaphor of justice. As reason triumphs, the repressed body returns.
The Sheriff’s Tourn
Authors: McGovern Jonathan
Published: January 2022

This chapter focusses on the second ancient court for which the sheriff was responsible, known as the tourn. The tourn was a court of inquisition and record designed to uncover trespasses and felonies considered to be harmful to the commonwealth. While the tourn is often believed to have been basically defunct by the Tudor period, this chapter demonstrates that there were tourns held in at least 177 hundreds, across 31 English counties, still operative in the Tudor period. The chapter reconstructs the procedure of this court, and analyses its business under three broad headings: enquiry into disturbances and felonies; enquiry into nuisances and unfulfilled obligations; and social and economic regulation.
The London Sheriffs’ Court and the York Court of Pleas
Authors: McGovern Jonathan
Published: January 2022

This chapter begins with an analysis of the London Sheriffs’ Court, held four times weekly at the Guildhall. It introduces the staff of the court, including its attorneys and clerks, and argues that the full court was held before the undersheriffs throughout the Tudor period. It discusses the actions and remedies available to plaintiffs, and discusses some representative lawsuits from the Elizabethan period. It reconstructs the court procedure, from the entry of an action at the sheriffs’ compters, to judgment and execution. It also analyses the court’s cost and popularity. A second, shorter section turns its attention to the York Court of Pleas, one of several other borough courts held before municipal sheriffs, providing information about its staff and procedure.
Revenue Collection and Accounting at the Exchequer
Authors: McGovern Jonathan
Published: January 2022

This chapter discusses the sheriff’s responsibility for collecting and accounting for royal revenue. Sheriffs collected a miscellaneous range of revenue on the king’s behalf, including rents for custody lands, fines and amercements levied by other courts, and traditional fees payable at the county court and tourn. The chapter discusses the nature of the various debts and rents which the sheriff was bound to collect. Some of this money was pumped immediately back into local communities, while some of it had to be paid into the Exchequer. The chapter reconstructs the system of Exchequer audit in the Tudor period, which consisted of up to seven stages: pre-view, foreign apposal, view, sum, account of seizures, additional views, and final sum. It identifies the problems with this system, most importantly the fact that sheriffs had to account for money which was impossible to collect, and it discusses various attempts to solve these problems, most importantly the acts of Parliament passed to alleviate sheriffs’ financial burden in 1543 and 1548.
The Virtues of Limits
Authors: McPherson David
Published: January 2022

Human beings seek to transcend limits. This is part of our potential greatness, since it is how we can realize what is best in our humanity. However, the limit-transcending feature of human life is also part of our potential downfall, as it can lead to dehumanization and failure to attain important human goods and to prevent human evils. This book explores the place of limits within a well-lived human life and develops and defends an original account of limiting virtues, which are concerned with recognizing proper limits in human life. The limiting virtues that are the focus are humility, reverence, moderation, contentment, neighborliness, and loyalty, and they are explored in relation to four kinds of limits: existential limits, moral limits, political limits, and economic limits. These virtues have been underexplored in discussions about virtue ethics, and when they have been explored, it has not been with regard to the general issue of the place of limits within a well-lived human life. The account of the limiting virtues provided here, however, is intended as a counter to other prominent approaches to ethics, namely, autonomy-centered approaches and consequentialist (or maximizing) approaches. This account is also used to address a number of important contemporary issues such as genetic engineering, distributive justice, cosmopolitanism vs. patriotism, and the ethical status of growth-based economics.
Introduction
Authors: Christians Allison , van Apeldoorn Laurens
Published: January 2022

This book aims to demonstrate the key role that the international tax system plays in achieving justice by establishing what justice in international taxation requires, showing that justice is inadequately pursued under prevailing institutions, norms, and processes, and presenting the kinds of reforms that would be necessary to change course. The introductory chapter lays out the goals and structure of the book by presenting the idea that tax cooperation is a significant site of contention in relation to ongoing development challenges, in particular the Sustainable Development Goals. It then introduces the international tax system as a system of cooperative norm- and rule-making such that the manner in which nations engage in such cooperation and the norms and rules they devise among themselves are central to the currently unjust distribution of resources within and across national populations. Finally, it explains the goals and structure of the arguments to come.
Two Principles for Tax Cooperation
Authors: Christians Allison , van Apeldoorn Laurens
Published: January 2022

The goal of this chapter is to lay the groundwork for the arguments that follow throughout the remainder of this book. The role of taxation in securing justice in the context of a global economy characterized by international capital mobility is examined. The starting point is a widely (though hardly universally) endorsed view of international justice that accepts the existence of independent states on the world stage under the so-called society-of-states model of international justice. The purpose of cooperation on international taxation is identified in terms of two complementary aims autonomous states have in a globalized economy: on the one hand, the pursuit of national wealth through the facilitation of international capital mobility, and on the other hand the continued protection of their political autonomy. It is argued that the first aim gives rise to fairness questions regarding the distribution of the benefits of this cooperation (the ‘cooperative surplus’) between the cooperating states. It is suggested that there are two principles of international justice that can resolve these fairness questions: the entitlement principle and the equal benefit principle. It is argued that the second aim requires that these principles be implemented in a way that allows states to remain politically autonomous, which in practice requires that they remain capable of pursuing income taxation. In the next chapter, some of the main obstacles to achieving these aims are considered and the prospects for removing them.
Obstacles to Fair Cooperation
Authors: Christians Allison , van Apeldoorn Laurens
Published: January 2022

This chapter offers two explanations for the following disconnect: the first chapter established that source states may have to tax away some of the investment returns earned within their territories in order to receive an equal share of the benefits of cooperation on international capital mobility. One might therefore expect most source states to routinely impose taxes to the fullest extent on all returns to capital that they can plausibly link to their jurisdictions, at least within the bounds of accepted norms. In fact, the opposite is true: many states do not appropriate a share of the cooperative surplus of international capital mobility through source-based taxation, even—perhaps especially—when they keenly rely on inbound capital investment for economic development. In the previous chapter we suggested that this likely means that these states do not receive a fair share of the benefits of tax cooperation. This chapter offers two explanations, namely tax competition and peer pressure to conform to international tax norms, both through treaties and soft law. It examines why and how these factors impede the capacity of source states to tax cross-border income. It also reviews some of the reforms currently under consideration in multilateral fora, now that a confluence of factors has resulted in a willingness even among the most affluent states to consider modifications to traditional principles and norms of tax cooperation.
Subsistence Rights and the Duty of Assistance
Authors: Christians Allison , van Apeldoorn Laurens
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines the implications of international justice if one accepts that states have a duty of assistance given the pervasive subsistence rights deficits we see in the world today. The duty of assistance, in brief, holds that when states are unable or unwilling to secure the subsistence rights of their populations, other states that are relatively affluent and well-ordered have a duty to assist in securing such subsistence rights. It begins by surveying the breadth and severity of subsistence rights deficits. It explains why subsistence rights deficits create obligations not only for the state where the deficits occur, but also for third-party states, which have a duty to act as backup rights protectors in specified circumstances. And it establishes how the duty to assist impacts the principles of fair tax cooperation, showing that their application to cooperative schemes is conditional on subsistence rights being fulfilled in the cooperating states. When international capital mobility and investment involves states with populations facing subsistence rights deficits, any cooperative surplus generated must be viewed as the national endowment of the states in which subsistence rights are yet to be fulfilled, until such time as they are fulfilled. It concludes that the claims of relatively wealthy, well-ordered states to the (full) wealth of their territory are invalid until subsistence rights are realized in all states. This conclusion carries significant implications for the design of tax rules, which we will examine in detail in the chapter that follows.
Tax Cooperation Without a Duty of Assistance
Authors: Christians Allison , van Apeldoorn Laurens
Published: January 2022

This chapter aims to demonstrate that accounting for the cost of subsistence rights deficits is already possible and indeed is on occasion already undertaken under existing well-accepted tax norms and standards. In doing so, it aims to show that some existing international tax norms could be adjusted to accommodate more source taxation, in the same spirit and along the same lines as those we introduced in Chapter 4 when thinking about ways residence states could facilitate greater taxation at source. It examines how international cooperation with the proposed adjustments could be facilitated using existing tax law precedents and practices as well as conventional international coordination regimes. It raises and answers some of the likely critiques of the proposed approaches, and concludes that, as we saw in Chapter 4, current trends in multilateral policy negotiations may be creating the necessary momentum to achieve a fairer sharing of the cooperative surplus derived from cross-border investment, in line with the entitlement and equal benefit principles.
De loco: Leibniz’s Theory of Space
Authors: Arthur Richard T. W.
Published: January 2022

This chapter traces the development of Leibniz’s theory of space, from his absolutist conception in the early 1670s, to his mature relational theory. It is argued that the relations in question are the relations of situation among bodies, and that place is an equivalence class of relations of situation, space being a system of places, and thus an order of possible situations—not a system of relations among actual bodies. It charts Leibniz’s debts to Hobbes for his conception of abstract situation in terms of relations among the vertices of geometric figures, to Spinoza for the idea of the divine attribute of the “extended per se” as the basis of space, and to Huygens for the rejection of the idea of an immobile space as incoherent, and gives an analysis of how Leibniz’s novel mathematical theory of situations allows him to identify key properties of space, such as its homogeneity, arcwise connectedness, isotropy, and continuity. The origin of Leibniz’s analysis situs is linked to his emerging metaphysics in the late 1670s through the idea that the point of view of a monad is given primarily by the situation of its organic body, and this is connected with a realist interpretation of extension of the body as arising from the diffusion of derivative forces, and thus of substances possessing these forces, in the body. De Risi’s opposing phenomenalist interpretation is discussed in detail, and the idea of a phenomenal space distinct from mathematical space is also discussed and rejected.
Counting Religion in Britain, 1970-2020
Authors: Field Clive D.
Published: January 2022

Counting Religion in Britain, 1970–2020, the fourth volume in the author’s chronological history of British secularization, sheds significant new light on the nature, scale, and timing of religious change in Britain during the past half-century, with particular reference to quantitative sources. Adopting a key performance indicators approach, twenty-one facets of personal religious belonging, behaving, and believing are examined, offering a much wider range of lenses through which the health of religion can be viewed and appraised than most contemporary scholarship (which is typically confined to one or two measures). Summative analysis of these indicators, by means of a secularization dashboard, leads to a reaffirmation of the validity of secularization (in its descriptive sense) as the dominant narrative and direction of travel since 1970, while acknowledging that it is an incomplete process and without endorsing all aspects of the paradigmatic expression of secularization as a by-product of modernization. The appendix of 173 tables, a discrete statistical reference work in its own right, besides supporting (and being cross-referenced in) the main text, is designed as an extension to 2020 of the appendix of tables to 1970 in the acclaimed 1977 Clarendon Press volume Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700, by Robert Currie, Alan Gilbert, and Lee Horsley. As well as covering statistics generated by faith communities and the state, as did the 1977 book, the appendix to Counting Religion in Britain, 1970–2020 includes a wide variety of time series from national sample surveys.
Belonging—Part 1
Authors: Field Clive D.
Published: January 2022

Two key features of religious belonging are investigated, saliency of religion (self-identification as a religious person) and religious affiliation. The former, evidenced in sample surveys, is explored from five angles: religiosity (binary questions), religiosity (non-binary questions), spirituality versus religiosity, importance of religion, and difference made by religion. All point towards decline. Sample surveys are also a major source for religious affiliation, but results are extremely sensitive to variant question wording. In particular, asking whether a respondent belongs to any religion (which has increasingly become the dominant form) minimizes the numbers professing some affiliation and maximizes those self-reporting as having no religion. By contrast, the official Annual Population Survey and decennial census in England and Wales simply ask ‘What is your religion?’ This presumptive terminology generates higher levels of affiliation, especially by Christians. Either way, however, there has been an exponential growth in religious nones, notably since the millennium.
Behaving—Part 1
Authors: Field Clive D.
Published: January 2022

Attendance at religious services and rites of passage have been the traditional benchmarks of religious behaviour. Unlike membership, they are universal measures, recognized as obligations across all major denominations and faiths. In Churches, observed congregations at ordinary religious services on specific dates (reflected in Peter Brierley’s ecumenical censuses and denominational counts) exhibited substantial decline from already low churchgoing baselines. Claimed levels of attendance throughout the year, which have tended to be higher because of their frequently aspirational nature, have also dropped, relative to population. Religious celebration of life events has collapsed. The proportions of British infants presented for baptism and of English and Welsh marriages solemnized according to religious rites both reduced from three-fifths to one-quarter over the period. Funerals conducted by religious officiants were still the norm on the eve of the millennium but now stand at around two-fifths, with the religious content even of these services heavily diluted.
Behaving—Part 3
Authors: Field Clive D.
Published: January 2022

The persistence of religion depends upon the successful transmission of faith from one generation to the next. Any failure in this process of religious socialization, particularly during the formative years of childhood and adolescence, potentially hastens secularization. For Christianity in Britain, the home, church, and day school have been the three principal socialization agencies. During the past half-century, each has become less effective in transmitting belief and practice. Parents have become increasingly reluctant to shoulder the responsibility of raising their children religiously. Following the collapse of Sunday schools, the Churches internalized their ministry to children and young people but failed even to retain those of most members and attenders. The requirement for maintained schools to provide collective acts of worship is widely disregarded, while their obligation to deliver religious education has morphed from teaching Christianity to worldviews. Faith schools teach a relatively small proportion of pupils, especially at secondary level.
Believing—Part 1
Authors: Field Clive D.
Published: January 2022

Orthodox beliefs, alternative beliefs, and religious experience, as evidenced by sample surveys, are the focus of this chapter. Belief in God, particularly in a personal God, has declined significantly, as has belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Belief in an afterlife, which was stable until the 2000s, is also now falling; so, too, is belief in heaven, hell, and reincarnation. However, a myriad of alternative beliefs, stoked nowadays by social media and fake news, remain pervasive, including among young people and orthodox believers, but they are often highly individualized, rather than forming a coherent intellectual system. Moreover, the extent to which, collectively or severally, they can be considered as ‘religious’ is a matter of debate (especially with imported beliefs that have tended to secularize in the United Kingdom). A similar consideration applies to religious experience, an active field of quantitative research before the millennium, albeit, regrettably, not since.
Believing—Part 3
Authors: Field Clive D.
Published: January 2022

The general public’s prejudice against religious groups is explored through four case studies. Prejudice against Catholics as individuals has largely disappeared, but attitudes towards the Catholic Church have hardened, especially on account of child sexual abuse by many of its clergy. Both Judeophobic and anti-Zionist anti-Semitism remain widespread, although the number of hard core anti-Semites, subscribing to multiple tropes about Jewish loyalties and behaviours, is comparatively small. At the same time, overall attitudes towards Jews as individuals have become more positive. Opinions of Muslims and Islam (aka Islamophobia) have worsened since the late 1980s. Despite considerable popular empathy with Muslims over the discrimination they experience, Britons cannot shake off their own associations of Muslims and Islam with immigration, lack of integration, and extremism. By contrast, acceptance of atheists has increased over time, as one element of the broader constituency of religious nones, who now constitute the majority in many surveys.
The Dark Side of Humanity, Part I
Authors: Temkin Larry S.
Published: January 2022

Drawing on events like the Holocaust, Mai Lai Massacre, and the Rwandan genocide, Chapter 5 notes the prevalence of evil within humanity, and that many people can be led to act very badly. This raises the worry that aid agencies may be subject to internal corruption. Widespread abuse of power and sex scandals within police forces, the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, Oxfam, and other organizations suggest that these worries cannot be dismissed lightly. Chapter 5 points out that there are strong incentives for an aid agency to emphasize any positive effects of its operation, and to deemphasize, ignore, or even engage in cover-ups of any negative effects, and that outside evaluating organizations, such as GiveWell, are severely limited in their ability to ferret out instances of internal corruption. Chapter 5 concludes by acknowledging that worries about internal corruption arise regarding any large organization, whether charitable or not.
The Dark Side of Humanity, Part II
Authors: Temkin Larry S.
Published: January 2022

Chapter 6 discusses the problem of external corruption—the worry that to accomplish their ends, aid agencies may often have to become enmeshed with corrupt individuals or institutions. Chapter 6 notes numerous ways that corrupt officials may get their hands on aid, and suggests that the problem of external corruption may be especially prevalent in some of the world’s most desperate regions where the need is greatest. Chapter 6 suggests that it is unlikely that the problem of foreign aid capture or diversion can be avoided simply by channeling aid efforts through NGOs (non-governmental organizations). Chapter 6 concludes by suggesting that perhaps in some cases we must simply learn to live with external corruption as the cost of foreign aid; that is, as a regrettable but necessary cost of addressing global poverty and aiding the needy in some of the world’s most desperate regions.
Ethical Imperialism
Authors: Temkin Larry S.
Published: January 2022

Chapter 10 argues that foreign aid to address global poverty and need often involves psychological attitudes that are morally problematic. It illustrates that aid interventions often fail to show respect for local people, customs, and ways of life. In addition, it argues that international aid efforts are prone to undermining the interests, priorities, and autonomy of the local people. Accordingly, Chapter 10 suggests that even if aid efforts avoid some of the most damaging and objectionable elements of colonialism, they often raise worries about ethical imperialism and Western hegemony that are reminiscent of colonialism.
On the Relation between Aid, Governance, and Human Flourishing
Authors: Temkin Larry S.
Published: January 2022

Chapter 11 notes that that there is surprisingly little hard evidence regarding the long-term effectiveness of global aid in promoting social and economic development, and long-term wellbeing. It presents Angus Deaton’s controversial view that Peter Singer, and his followers, have done more harm than good, by promoting the efforts of international aid organizations. According to Deaton, this is because good governance is crucial for social and economic development, and long-term wellbeing, and international aid efforts often undermine good governance in the world’s poorest regions. Chapter 11 also discusses Jeffrey Sachs’s approach to international aid and the Millennium Development Goals. It addresses the mixed success and problematic features of the Millennium Villages Project, and contends that Sachs and his followers have good reason to be concerned about Deaton’s view.
Towards Simpler Income-Dependent Tax Credits and Tax Rebates
Authors: Koot Patrick , Gielen Miriam
Published: January 2022

Income tax is becoming very complex, as a result of the increasing use of income-dependent tax credits and tax rebates. As a result, it can be very difficult for households to assess the consequences on their tax liabilities of, for example, changes in their wages or household situation. Specific parts of the tax system can be simplified with limited redistributional consequences. In particular, the complex system of income-dependent tax rebates for rent, health, and children can be greatly simplified with a single tax rebate, with the same income thresholds, a single phase-out rate, and a uniform means test. Any adverse distributional effects can be remedied via the tax or benefit system. Furthermore, the income-dependent general tax credit can be made independent from income using suitable adjustments in tax rates and the tax credit for the elderly without any noticeable distributional impacts.