bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Disclosure
Authors: Wells Colin
Published: August 2023

A failure on the part of the prosecution to make proper disclosure may result in proceedings being stayed as an abuse of process. Proper disclosure of unused material remains a crucial part of a fair trial and is essential to avoiding miscarriages of justice. Disclosure remains an important and complex issue in the criminal justice system. The duties and responsibilities of the parties with regard to disclosure are governed by the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 (CPIA 1996), as amended by the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (CJA 2003) and the CPIA Code of Practice. Fair disclosure of information to an accused, by the prosecution is an inseparable part of a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Entrapment
Authors: Wells Colin
Published: August 2023

This chapter examines the judicial discretion to stay proceedings where an offence has been incited by another using deceptive techniques to test, as part of an entrapment operation, whether or not a person is willing to commit an offence. Examining entrapment cases where the state through its agents lure its citizens into committing acts forbidden by the law and then prosecuting them. The case law considers the boundary between permissible and impermissible police conduct. A degree of active involvement by the police in the commission of a crime is generally regarded as acceptable in test purchases. Journalistic entrapment is often dealt with by way of exclusion of evidence under section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE). The common law jurisprudence reflects European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case law.
Delay
Authors: Wells Colin
Published: August 2023

This chapter examines the abuse of process remedy in protecting the common law right to a speedy trial. The essential elements of granting relief in delay cases are inordinate delay and prejudice, whether proved or inferred, with the courts taking into account responsibility of the prosecution and the defence for the delay and the trial issues. The exclusion of evidence by way of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and judicial direction to jurors are alternative trial process control mechanisms used by judges to overcome delay in proceedings. A breach of the Article 6 ECHR right to a trial within a reasonable time period may lead to a stay of proceedings—but only in exceptional circumstances.
Unfair Conduct and Abuse of Executive Power
Authors: Wells Colin
Published: August 2023

The courts have a duty to protect and promote the dignity and integrity of the criminal justice process and judicial system, by staying proceedings which offend the court’s sense of justice and propriety. The judiciary are responsible for the maintenance of the rule of law that embraces a willingness to oversee executive action and to refuse to countenance behaviour that threatens either basic human rights or the rule of law. The courts have no power to apply direct discipline to the police or the prosecuting authorities, but the courts can stay proceedings, to stop state agencies taking of advantage of executive misconduct. This involves performing a ‘balancing’ test that takes into account whether the police have acted with an improper motive; the misconduct was committed in circumstances of urgency, emergency, or necessity; the availability or otherwise of a direct sanction against the person(s) responsible for the misconduct; and the seriousness of the offence with which the defendant is charged.
Ability to Participate in Criminal Proceedings
Authors: Wells Colin
Published: August 2023

This chapter examines a defendant’s ability to participate effectively in criminal proceedings, in terms of mental capacity and legal representation. Judicial endorsements of procedural modifications, including special measures, to assist defendant participation are an alternative to staying proceedings as an abuse of process.
Extradition
Authors: Wells Colin
Published: August 2023

There is a fundamental difference between general criminal proceedings and extradition proceedings. Where domestic criminal proceedings look to try accused persons and result in the punishment of those found guilty, proceedings in extradition involve neither trial as such nor punishment. The Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) allows, in limited circumstances, for extradition proceedings to be stayed on the grounds of abuse of process. After sketching the statutory bars to extradition and the background to the courts reluctance to permit the use of abuse of process in extradition cases, this chapter will examine the way in which the abuse of process jurisdiction has developed. The grounds on which a person can resist a request for extradition made by a state with whom extradition arrangements are in place are circumscribed by the Extradition Act 2003 (EA 2003) the rule against double jeopardy; absence of prosecution extraneous considerations; unjust or oppressive by reason of the passage of time; the person’s age; earlier extradition from territory; conviction in absence; human rights, proportionality; request for temporary transfer; unjust or oppressive by reason of mental or physical conditions, hostage-taking considerations; and death penalty.
Confiscation Proceedings and Civil Recovery
Authors: Wells Colin
Published: August 2023

Confiscation proceedings as a form of restitution are examined in the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA). The objective and effect of confiscation proceedings is draconian in nature. However, since a confiscation order is not a penalty, but a civil debt, a number of the safeguards surrounding the criminal trial process do not apply. The Crown Court must proceed with a POCA confiscation hearing if a defendant is convicted of an acquisitive crime, and either the prosecutor has asked for the court to proceed or the court believes it is appropriate to do so. A restraint order can be made under section 41 POCA prohibiting a person or persons from dealing with their assets, wherever located, so as to prevent dissipation pending the outcome of an investigation or criminal case. There is no need to invoke the concept of abuse of process’ in the making of confiscation orders: section 6 POCA requires any order to be ‘proportionate’. If a confiscation order is required, the court proceeds to calculating the benefit obtained by a defendant either by way of their criminal conduct, or as a result of a criminal lifestyle. Where there was a joint obtaining of benefit it would be disproportionate to make an order against two or more persons the result of which would be at least the ‘double’ recovery of the benefit obtained. However, it is not disproportionate where such an order is made for two or more defendants to serve the entire default term where no payments are made in satisfaction of such an order. In addition to criminal confiscation proceedings, state enforcement authorities can apply under Part 5 POCA to the High Court for civil recovery orders.
Regulatory and Disciplinary Proceedings
Authors: Wells Colin
Published: August 2023

This chapter examines the abuse of process remedy in English and Welsh regulatory and disciplinary proceedings. This is an increasingly important area of jurisprudence as it concerns protecting the public interest in maintaining proper standards of professional conduct and ensuring public confidence. General principles are considered in a discussion of specific regulatory and disciplinary regimes. There are important differences between the regimes, but there are also common legal topics and procedural and evidential issues which apply across the board. In regulatory proceedings, the appellate courts have considered the two elements of discretion and balancing exercise in a number of cases, recognizing that there is a strong public interest in ensuring that serious misconduct allegations against professionals proceed to a full and proper investigation.
Introduction
Authors: Slavny Adam
Published: August 2023

This chapter introduces the central themes and methodology of the book. It distinguishes between interpretivism, the approach that predominates in non-instrumentalist private law theory, and the foundationalist method pursued in this book, which begins with an account of enforceable moral duties and builds towards questions of legal enforcement and institutional design. The chapter summarizes the four-fold analysis of moral corrective duties, according to which wrongdoing, conditional permissibility, outcome responsibility, and distributive fairness are distinct and independent grounds for owing such duties. The introduction concludes with a chapter summary of the rest of the book.
Pockets of Effectiveness and the Politics of State-building and Development in Africa
Authors: Hickey Sam , Pruce Kate
Published: August 2023

The role of bureaucratic ‘pockets of effectiveness’ (PoEs) in delivering development is generating renewed interest within development studies and development policy. In summarizing the state-of-the art in the field, this chapter shows that existing research on PoEs recognizes that politics plays a leading role in shaping the emergence and sustainability of high-performing state agencies, alongside the importance of organizational-level factors. However, the field lacks a clear sense of the particular forms of politics that shape PoE performance, partly because of a tendency to see PoEs as ‘islands’ that are divorced from their political contexts, which are in turn often theorized as being uniformly ‘neopatrimonial’ in nature. This chapter proposes an alternative approach to conceptualizing PoEs not as aberrations from the norm but as being firmly embedded within their historically-shaped political and transnational contexts, and the incentives and ideas that shape elite political behaviour therein. From this perspective, PoEs reflect the logics of patronage as well as merit-based civil-service systems, the elitism introduced into African bureaucracies by colonial rule, and the policy and lending priorities of international development agencies. PoEs thus emerge as interesting objects of enquiry in their own right but also as fascinating windows onto how the competing logics of regime survival, state-building, and democratization are playing out in Africa, within a shifting transnational context, and the implications that this has for both political and economic development.
State Capacity-building in Zambia amidst Shifting Political Coalitions and Ideologies
Authors: Cheelo Caesar , Hinfelaar Marja
Published: August 2023

This chapter examines the performance trajectories of three sometime ‘pockets of effectiveness’ (PoEs) in Zambia, namely the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Zambia, and Zambia Revenue Authority. It shows that their performance has been shaped by structural forces underpinning Zambia’s historical trajectory, namely the character of its political settlement, the structure of the economy and global neoliberalism, and of the shifting political coalitions that have governed the country. Originally shaped by the nationalized copper industry and a state-led economy, these organizations were subject to a radical reorientation under the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s. Donor supported ‘capacity-building’ efforts and the need to adhere to international standards disciplined Zambia’s economic institutions, moderated political interference from the executive, and enabled them to function effectively in a narrow organizational sense. Over time these PoEs turned out to be politically unsustainable in the face of developmental failures, alternative ideological commitments, elite fragmentation, and political populism. Zambia’s governing elite was only fully aligned with this project of technocratic neoliberalism for a relatively brief period during the mid-2000s that ended with the death of the then-president. With politics becoming increasingly competitive and fragmentary, this mode of economic governance came into conflict with political populism and a residual commitment to a more statist and planning-based approach within the bureaucracy. Despite the rhetoric of economic nationalism, the prioritization of short-term survival strategies had undermined the quality of economic governance to the extent that rising levels of debt dependency threatened both Zambia’s sovereignty and its developmental future.
Pockets of Effectiveness
Authors: Strauss Julia C.
Published: August 2023

This commentary reflects critically on the contribution that this volume makes to the study of PoEs and state capacity in the Global South, and prompts a rethinking of some of the author’s own decades old work on Republican-era China. It lauds the ways in which the political settlements approach substantially adds to the extant literature on PoEs. In recognizing that organizations are never divorced from their surrounding environments, the political settlement typology explains systematic variation both between cases and over time, with shifting interactions between technical domain, the skill of organizational leadership, and the overall political settlement leading to differing and changing ‘degrees of PoE-ness’. At the same time, these reflections suggest that the volume’s case selections of presumptive excellence, which the authors call the ‘logistical’ segments of the state, are almost entirely within the economic technocracy. A disaggregation of why ‘excellence’ appears to be so concentrated in the economic technocracy, and which of its PoE-fostering features might be applied fruitfully to very different arenas of policy implementation, particularly those that require service delivery or behavioural change, is a natural next step for research on PoEs.
From Pockets of Effectiveness to Topographies of State Performance?
Authors: Roll Michael
Published: August 2023

This book advances existing work on pockets of effectiveness (PoEs) by systematically investigating the link between political context and bureaucratic performance, by presenting a new theoretical framework in conjunction with a comparative research design, and by linking PoEs research to broader debates about the politics of state-building. Based on a critical assessment of the book’s contributions and limitations, this commentary suggests some future directions for PoEs research. It first discusses the reframing of PoEs suggested by the authors, their power domains framework, the distinction between PoEs emergence and persistence, the role of ideas for PoEs, and the generalizability of the book’s findings. Future directions for PoEs research are then discussed, covering theoretical framework and methodology, and suggesting a move from a PoEs focus to a broader perspective on ‘topographies of state performance’ into which the study of PoEs can be embedded.
Protection Gap Entities
Authors: Jarzabkowski Paula , Chalkias Konstantinos , Cacciatori Eugenia , Bednarek Rebecca
Published: August 2023

As the climate crisis and other geopolitical factors make disasters more frequent and severe, disasters are becoming increasingly uninsurable. Without insurance to pay for reconstruction after fires, floods, and terrorist attacks, people suffer, and economies are set back. In response, many countries have established “Protection Gap Entities” (PGEs), organizations and schemes to keep disaster insurance available. PGEs rebalance the tensions (paradoxes) at the heart of insurance: who controls the insurance market (the private sector or government); how much is known about the risk (too little or too much); and who should pay (individuals or society). This chapter is accessible for those who have never heard of PGEs or thought about disaster insurance. We explain why PGEs are vital in adapting to an increasingly disaster-prone world. Our alternative view of the tensions PGEs face will also provoke thought for insurers and risk professionals concerned about the challenges of insuring disasters.
Paradoxes of origination
Authors: Jarzabkowski Paula , Chalkias Konstantinos , Cacciatori Eugenia , Bednarek Rebecca
Published: August 2023

Protection Gap Entities (PGEs) vary in their governance, remits, the insurance products they offer, and the disasters they cover. Yet all originate from an imbalance in knowledge; when too little or too much is known about disasters to make them insurable. We call this the knowledge paradox. This chapter explains that PGEs have been established, from the early twentieth century to today, to address an imbalance in knowledge that makes disasters uninsurable. We explain how PGEs work with knowledge imbalances to provide disaster insurance that would otherwise not be available. PGEs either ignore a deficit in, or override an excess of, knowledge about the risk of a loss, typically by removing some risk from the private sector to the government, or by redistributing it across a population. In doing so, PGEs also develop a great deal of knowledge that can then be an asset to disaster insurance and resilience.
The Archives of Performance and Sacred Time
Authors: Di Salvo Gina M.
Published: August 2023

Chapter 1 offers a survey of medieval saint plays and the reforms of the liturgical calendar of the English church. The development of theatrical repertoire in the Middle Ages and the shifts in the catalog of saints in liturgical calendars determined which saints and which types of saints were dramatized on the early modern stage. In the Middle Ages, saints were depicted in snippets and scenes of iconography, miracles, transformation, and romance and these performances frequently occurred as part of a sacred temporality. When saints did appear in dramatic form, such as in the Digby Plays and the N-Town Plays, a process of vernacular improvisation interpolated tropes from other established genres and miracles were used to validate claims of sanctity. In all cases, it was common for theatrical and paratheatrical events involving saints to veer from their devotional vitae. The second half of the chapter tracks the growth, iconoclasm, and limited return of saints in English liturgical calendars across the various reforms of the sixteenth century. Despite a contention with saints and sainthood as England underwent Protestant reform, the official inventory of sanctity in the English church made space for certain ancient martyrs and English saints. Chapter 1 is complemented by the book’s two appendices. Appendix I presents a table of nearly three hundred theatrical events involving saints between the tenth and seventeenth centuries, and Appendix II inventories saints in liturgical calendars across the sixteenth century.
Epilogue: Look Up, Look Up
Authors: Di Salvo Gina M.
Published: August 2023

From the earliest performances in the Middle Ages to the virgin martyr plays of the Stuart era, English theatre-makers experimented with and perfected theatrical conventions to show sainthood. The Epilogue concludes the book with an extended meditation on encounters with faith and belief in the absences and provocations of miraculous illusion developed in and alongside theatrical sainthood. It focuses on two nondramatic lives that exclude miraculous illusion before turning to a millennial dramatic fantasy that revels in it. The twelfth-century Life of Christina of Markyate and the late twentieth-century film Breaking the Waves offer stories of sanctity that invite doubt and denial. Moreover, both the text and the film lack many of the conventions of showing sainthood that operate in medieval and early modern saint plays. In contrast, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes by Tony Kushner utilizes the miraculous theatricality of the saint plays. In its staging and stage directions, Kushner’s two-part epic recovers the capacity and necessity of illusion in the staging of miracles.
Philosophical Accounts
Authors: Heinzelmann Nora
Published: August 2023

This chapter provides philosophical novices with a spotlight overview highlighting historically influential as well as contemporary accounts. It contrasts these approaches with respect to their terminology (e.g. ‘akrasia’, ‘incontinentia’, ‘moral weakness’), conception of the phenomenon (state of character, weakness of a faculty of the mind, failure of foresight or of practical reasoning, etc.), and presumed normative failure (of knowledge, morality, or rationality). Accounts that rely on discounting theory (Mele, Bratman) are discussed in greater detail. This chapter breaks down into the following sections: ancient philosophers (Plato’s Socrates and Aristotle); Hare; Davidson; Mele and Bratman; Holton
Accelerating Expansion
Authors: Belot Gordon
Published: August 2023

This is an exploration of some of the philosophical implications of modern cosmology, focused on the significance that the discovery of the accelerating expansion of our universe has for our understanding of time, geometry, and physics. The appearance of a term featuring a positive cosmological constant in the equations of general relativity allows one to model universes in which space has an inherent tendency towards expansion. The cosmological constant was originally introduced by Einstein but was subsequently abandoned by him. After a tumultuous career, it is has returned to centre stage with the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. This pedagogically -oriented essay begins with a study of the of the most basic and elegant relativistic world that involves a positive cosmological constant, de Sitter spacetime. It then turns to the relatives of de Sitter spacetime that dominate modern relativistic cosmology. Some of the topics considered include: the nature of time and simultaneity in de Sitter worlds; the sense in which de Sitter spacetime is a powerful dynamical attractor; the limited extent to which observation can give us information about the topology of space in a world undergoing accelerated expansion; and cosmologists’’ favourite skeptical worry about the reliability of evidence and the possibility of knowledge, the problem of Boltzmann brains.
Let the Good Times Roll
Authors: Belot Gordon
Published: August 2023

This chapter is concerned with disanalogies between the nature of time in special relativity and in de Sitter spacetime. Whereas in Minkowski spacetime the choice of a freely falling observer determines a natural notion of simultaneity, in de Sitter spacetime this is not true: time is stranger in de Sitter spacetime than in Minkowski spacetime. There are, however, geometrically natural subregions of de Sitter spacetime in which time and simultaneity are as well-behaved as one could wish. But each of the various notions of de Sitter simultaneity that we will consider has its unsettling features. The chapter concludes by making a case that it would require far-reaching changes in traditional concepts to assimilate the nature of time in de Sitter worlds.
Elliptic de Sitter Spacetime
Authors: Belot Gordon
Published: August 2023

This chapter offers an overview of the geometry of elliptic de Sitter spacetime. Elliptic de Sitter spacetime is de Sitter spacetime’s only rival in symmetry and elegance among solutions of Einstein’s equations with a positive cosmological constant. It is also, in many ways, the most natural example of a temporally non-orientable spacetime. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some reasons that have motivated physicists to take elliptic de Sitter spacetime seriously as a physical model, despite its temporal non-orientability.
The Anti-Hero
Authors: Belot Gordon
Published: August 2023

This chapter is devoted to anti-de Sitter spacetimes, the analogues of de Sitter spacetimes that arise in the case of a negative cosmological constant. It surveys some facts about the surprising geometry and physics of the anti-de Sitter realm. It then turns to some ideas that will play important roles through the following chapters: the technique of conformal completion; observer complementarity as a response to the paradoxes of black hole evaporation; and the AdS-CFT correspondence, a profound conjectured correspondence between conformal field theories and the asymptotically anti-de Sitter sector of quantum gravity.
Cosmic Topology
Authors: Belot Gordon
Published: August 2023

This chapter is concerned with various senses in which topology of space or spacetime may be underdetermined by all possible evidence. It pays special attention to some classic results due to Glymour and to Malament and to some new results due to Ringström. In distinction from much of the recent philosophical literature on this topic, its focus is on cosmologically relevant examples in which underdetermination is a concomitant of exponential expansion.
Economies of Early Modern Drama
Authors: Enderwitz Anne
Published: August 2023

The monograph explores early modern theatre’s fascination with economic praxis and affords new insights into how it responded to changing economic practices. It reviews discourses on household management and commerce to create a rich context for the discussion of socio-economic actions and transactions in Macbeth, Othello, and Timon of Athens, as well as in city comedies by Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton. By approaching discourses on oeconomy and commerce as complementary, the book opens up a diverse field of socio-economic practices, including the gendered division of duties in the household, new modes of valuation, and evolving credit instruments. Theatre provides unique access to this field. In contrast to practical and policy-orientated discourses, it addresses socio-economic change and its vicissitudes in a spirit of experimentation, testing the ethical limits of socio-economic action and accustoming audiences to the demands of a changing socio-economic reality. Theatre thus offers a vital contribution to the prehistory of political economy. On the London stages, self-interest emerges as a key motive of socio-economic action and theatre playfully explores its ambiguous status as a partly rational and partly excessive force that is both a new ordering force and has huge potential for social conflict. At the same time, by staging the conflicting demands of ethics and efficiency in economic decision-making, early modern plays offer access to a changing understanding of prudence that has a Machiavellian touch: by aligning with the pursuit of private interest, prudence sheds some of its ethical content and becomes foremost an instrumental faculty.
Household Management and Commerce in Early Modern England
Authors: Enderwitz Anne
Published: August 2023

The chapter analyses classical and early modern discourses on household management and commerce to establish a historical context for the socio-economic concerns that the theatre around 1600 addresses. The turn of the seventeenth century saw the publication of the early mercantilists and bullionists, but also a steady flow of sermons and advice books on oeconomy and commerce. The chapter reviews newly written and republished works as well as classical sources that shaped early modern thought, highlighting connections between household and business. Together, oeconomic and mercantile discourses reflect the economic concerns of the time and the ongoing negotiation of the connections between ethics, oeconomy, and politics. Although necessarily selective, the chapter contextualizes the theatrical representation of economic practices and traces the revaluation and reinterpretation of private interest and practical rationality in early modern practical writings.
Mercantile Agency and Service in Othello and The Alchemist
Authors: Enderwitz Anne
Published: August 2023

The chapter shifts the earlier focus on gender relations to insubordinate servants who pursue their own private interests and social advancement. It employs Jonson’s The Alchemist and Shakespeare’s Othello to continue the exploration of a mercantile form of rationality that values efficiency over ethics and services private interests. The chapter uses Bacon’s notion of ‘wisdom of business’ as well as writings on rhetoric and commerce to render the manipulative skills of self-interested servants intelligible and to highlight the socio-economic contexts in which they prove effective. The chapter also recognizes crucial differences between the plays: whereas Jonson’s comedy performs plotting as a joint enterprise that demands tactical alliances and establishes the pursuit of profit as a general aim, Shakespeare casts Iago as a solitary agent who develops destructive force through manipulating credit and harnessing affect.
Asynchronous Exchanges in Volpone and Timon of Athens
Authors: Enderwitz Anne
Published: August 2023

The chapter interrogates the asymmetrical economies in Timon of Athens and Jonson’s Volpone. It focuses in particular on the temporality of socio-economic exchange. Both plays implicitly address the question of how to respond to and even exploit contingent events and circumstances in a changeable world. Specifically, the chapter explores the management of time as a crucial skill in a culture of credit and investment: in both plays, entrepreneurial figures—tricksters and false friends—seek to capitalize on the uncertainty of the future and to render the interval between payment and recompense productive. Both plays use the gift to interrogate an economic calculus of obligation and delayed reciprocity. At the same time, in both plays the management of time, in the form of dilation, plays a crucial role in the organization of plot. As in economic transactions, dilation of the interval becomes productive: it raises suspense and amplifies affective involvement.
Conclusion
Authors: Enderwitz Anne
Published: August 2023

The Conclusion reviews key insights of the preceding chapters through the lens of genre to help initiate a broader discussion of how tragedy and city comedy approach and mediate socio-economic relations and exchanges. The chapter outlines some of the concerns and priorities of these genres and shows how inherited dramatic forms adapt to changing social frameworks. It reviews theatrical representations of oeconomy in relation to ethics, politics, and the market, discusses the discontents of social mobility, and explores the tension between the promise of a future that can be shaped (as expressed in the Baconian notion of the ‘Architecture of Fortune’) and time as the dimension of contingent events.
Editors’ Introduction
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

Wilfrid Sellars’s practical philosophy was absolutely central to his overarching philosophical project of situating persons qua practically rational, norm-governed animals within the world as described by an ideal science. The Editors’ Introduction offers an overview of Sellars’s metaethics, detailing its key features and explaining how these features are supposed to solve outstanding metaethical problems that faced not only Sellars?s contemporaries, but which continue to create lively debate among contemporary theorists. The Introduction also offers summaries of each of the twenty-four chapters in The Metaphysics of Practice, indicating the main lines of argument and where each piece fits into Sellars’s overall picture.
Obligation and Motivation
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

Sellars offers an account of moral judgments according to which they are cognitive, motivating, but also ontologically modest. Sellars denies that “ought” claims assert a relation between an agent and an obligation, and defends a nonrelational account of ought-statements (just as he defends a nonrelational account of meaning claims): I ought to do X in C =Df  tokens of “Everybody ought to do X in C, and I am in C” tend to evoke my doing X in C. “Ought” plays a role in the moral syllogism, as the rationalist claims; it is cognitive. But through training and conditioning, the thought of “ought” motivates us to act.
“Ought” and Moral Principles
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

The “ought” of means-ends reasoning is the “ought” of logical consistency: If bringing about A entails bringing about B, then you cannot consistently will A but not B. Can the moral “ought” be an “ought” of consistency—a matter of what one wants to do, all things considered? It would seem not, because the moral “ought” should be univocal, but from the perspective of individual means-ends reasoning, consistency doesn’t determine a unique “ought”: Rather, we are confronted with the “ought” of self-interest and that of altruism. Sellars’s solution is to locate the moral point of view not in individual means-ends reasoning, but in reasoning as one of us—from the point of view of the “we.” There is a unique, all-things-considered “ought” from this point of view. Sellars concludes by suggesting there might actually be significant overlap between the points of view of morality and rational self-interest.
Reason and the Art of Living in Plato
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

Plato’s notion of a craft involves a recipe for producing a product such as a house or a shoe. Given a determinate description of the end of the craft (and the available ingredients), factual principles govern the craft and the production of its end. These principles of the craft must be distinguished from mere conventions (e.g., imperatives enforced by a guild). Similarly, given the end of a satisfying life and certain “ingredients” for such a life, there are objective principles for how one ought to live—and these may diverge from positive law. Sellars’s interpretation of Plato’s thesis that “the form of the Good is the Form of Forms” is that it is only in light of some practical end that any sort of reasoning is intelligible at all—that rationality essentially includes practical rationality. For the world to have an intelligible structure, not all reasoning can involve hypothetical imperatives.
Metaphysics and the Concept of a Person
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

Sellars argues that all concepts pertaining to mental acts are functional. This allows him to defend a Kantian concept of personhood, which is neutral as to the underlying substance constituting the experiencing subject. However, Sellars wants to reconcile this with an Aristotelian metaphysics of the person, according to which it is the same thing, a person, which both thinks and runs. Sellars argues that modern postulational science reveals persons to us as constituted by swarms of microparticles. This swarm constitutes the being “which both thinks and runs,” per Sellars’s Aristotelian metaphysics. Sellars also offers a criticism of agent causation and the dualism often associated with this view.
Volitions Re-Affirmed
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

Sellars clarifies his notion of a volition: volitions are a species of intention; they are essentially involved in practical reasoning; they are not a part of an action but instead are the cause of actions; and there is a conceptual connection between volition and action. Sellars also introduces several clarifications regarding the logic of practical reasoning: reiterates the important connection between “shall be” and “shall do,” which reflects his distinction between “ought-to-bes” and “ought-to-dos”; he formally introduces the “So-be-it” principle, which allows states of affairs that are not up to one to enter the scope of the “Shall” operator and hence be taken up in one’s practical reasoning; he develops his notion of a conditional intention; and he discusses the sense in which reasons can be the causes of actions.
Reply to Alan Donagan
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

Sellars is replying to Donagan’s criticism of the reconciliationist compatibilism he articulated in FD and MP. In “Determinism and Freedom: Sellars and the Reconciliationist Theory,” Donagan rejects Sellars’s account of the ability to will otherwise. In reply, Sellars distinguishes between conditions that result in x’s failure to do A and those which cause x to lose the capacity to will A. Sellars also reiterates his claim in “Fatalism and Determinism” (FD, 1966) that the manifest image cannot produce a deterministic model of human action. Finally, Sellars reaffirms his rejection of C.D. Broad–type agent causation, but grants that agents can be “immanent causes” of actions in the sense that an action’s proximate cause is within the agent (viz., a volition). This allows us to view reasons for actions as causes of actions, and, thus, to view an appeal to reasons when explaining action as a special case of causal explanation. This last point illustrates Sellars’s recurring theme of integrating the natural and the normative or fusing together into a synoptic vision the scientific and manifest images.
Imperatives, Intentions, and the Logic of “Ought”
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

This chapter (IIOR, 1963), a revised and expanded version of an earlier article with the same title (IIO, 1957)), is the earliest expression of Sellars’s metaethical theory, which he presents as an alternative to intuitionism and emotivism. Contrary to intuitionism, moral judgments are analytically connected to moral motivation. Contrary to emotivism, moral judgments are intersubjective. After rejecting other alternatives, including R.M. Hare’s prescriptivism, Sellars articulates his own intention-based view. According to Sellars’s metaethical intentionalism, “ought” is a special case of “shall,” where “shall” expresses intentions, or, in the logic of intentions, is an operator to render a sentence an intention-expressor. By treating moral judgments as intentions, Sellars assigns them two dimensions of intersubjectivity: first, intentions occupy inferential roles; second, diverging expressions of intention can be genuinely contradictory rather than merely like disagreement in attitude. Although Sellars does not use the term “we-intention” in IIOR, the concept is on display here and in the contemporaneous SE.
On Reasoning about Values
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

This essay is a contribution to the logic of intentions, and to Sellars’s project of interpreting the moral “ought” in terms of “shall.” Using “shall” as an operator to denote the expression of an intention (e.g., “Shall [I go to the park]”), Sellars outlines a number of logical principles which must govern inferences among such intention-expressions. However, the moral “ought” cannot be analyzed in terms of ordinary intention-expressions, for the latter lack the necessary elements of intersubjectivity. Sellars argues that a particular kind of intentions—we-intentions—can have the requisite kind of intersubjectivity, and offers an account of what distinguishes we-intentions from ordinary, egocentric intentions. He concludes with reflections on the moral community, arguing that it is in virtue of sharing the intrinsically reasonable intention Shall [each of us do that which, in the circumstances, promotes the happiness of each and every one of us, all relevant things considered]. that one is a member of the moral community, a community we must treat as comprising rational beings, generally.
Practical Reasoning
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

This is an essay fragment, likely related to “Thought and Action” (TA). One issue Sellars addresses in detail, more so than in TA, is implication relative to an assumption, which he discusses here under the heading of “derivable intentions”: Given “Shall [P] implies Shall [Q]”, “Shall [Q]” expresses a derivable intention—derivable relative to the assumption “Shall [P].” Sellars uses this conception of a derivable intention to analyze what it is to have and act on a policy. Additionally, Sellars reflects on the concept of self-love, and its relation to the moral point of view.
Practical Reasoning Again
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

In this unpublished manuscript, Sellars updates his theory of the logic of intentions. Sellars endorses the principle of conjunction introduction—the rule that from “Shall [P]” and “Shall [Q]” you may infer “Shall [P and Q]”—a principle he denied in “Thought and Action” (TA). He also explains how, using his principles of inference, you can form the contrapositive of “Shall [P] implies Shall [Q]”—something he also denied was possible in TA, since “Shall” has no external negation. Sellars introduces a new principle, So-be-it, which allows us to introduce the agent’s factual beliefs into the scope of the shall-operator so that they may be taken up in practical reasoning; and he explains the important relationship between So-be-it and conditional implication (e.g., “Shall [If it rains, I will study]”).
The Castañeda–Sellars Correspondence, 1956–1967
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

This correspondence consists of letters exchanged between Sellars and Hector-Neri Castañeda in 1956 and 1967. The 1956 correspondence deals primarily with the early (Methodos) version of “Intention, Imperatives, and the Logic of ‘Ought’” (IIO). Castañeda argues (contra Sellars) that there are valid inferences not only among intentions, but also among commands, promises, and other nonassertoric speech acts; and he further offers criticisms of various aspects of Sellars’s logic of intentions such as the requirement that the “shall”-operator may not appear within the scope of logical operators. The later correspondence concerns “Form and Content in Ethical Theory,” most of which was incorporated into Chapter 7 of Science and Metaphysics. Castañeda addresses what he takes to be ambiguities and weaknesses in Sellars’s logic of intentions, such as whether Sellars’s notion of “reasonableness” is a semantic or pragmatic value, why the shall-operator cannot embed, and whether Sellars is consistent in his projection of nomologicals into the practical realm. Both sets of correspondence contain Sellar’s replies to Castañeda’s arguments.
The Aune–Sellars Correspondence, 1961–1979
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

This extensive correspondence between Sellars and Bruce Aune consists of 20 letters exchanged between 1961 and 1979. It opens with a brief exchange concerning free will; Sellars outlines some of the arguments and definitions which later appear in “Fatalism and Determinism” (1966), and Aune replies with some critical commentary, prompting some clarifications from Sellars. The remaining correspondence chiefly concerns Sellars’s logic of intentions. Aune raises a number of objections to Sellars’s theory: He repeatedly criticizes the notion of dependent implication (or implication relative to an assumption), which is so central to Sellars’s theory; he argues that S-Imp (Sellars’s basic principle for reasoning among intentions) is too strong; he criticizes Sellars’s distinction between shall-be and shall-do; and more. Sellars offers detailed replies, to which Aune offers spirited rebuttals. In the later correspondence, Aune has softened in his stance, claiming closer agreement with Sellars; but he continues to criticize Sellars’s theory on a number of points (offering, for example, additional critical commentary on Sellars’s notion of dependent implication).
Sellars to Solomon, 28 June 1976
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: August 2023

In this letter to David Solomon, Sellars is exploring some of the logical implications of both ascriptions and expressions of we-intentions. We can ascribe both intentions and actions to groups, but neither ascription formally entails the corresponding intention or action for any particular member of that group. If, on the other hand, I express a group intention (“We shall disperse”), this doesn’t formally entail “I shall disperse”; but it does have some implication of the form “I shall do A”—at a minimum, “I shall not impede the dispersal.” Sellars emphasizes that we-intentions need not be shared—the point is merely that such intentions are shareable. The categorically valid intention defining the moral community is, “We shall any of us do that which (in his/her circumstances) promotes (maximizes) our common good.” Sharing this intention defines what it is to be a member of the moral community.
The Porta Stabia Neighborhood at Pompeii Volume I
Authors: Ellis Steven J. R. , Emmerson Allison L. C. , Dicus Kevin D.
Published: August 2023

This volume brings together the results from the University of Cincinnati’s archaeological excavations of the Porta Stabia neighborhood at Pompeii. These excavations targeted two town blocks on either side of the via Stabiana (Insulae VIII.7 and I.1), which comprised modest houses, shops, workshops, food and drink outlets, and hospitality buildings. The present volume describes and documents the phased, structural development of this neighborhood over several centuries. The earliest discernible activity here dates to the sixth century bce, with the insulae taking their definitive shape only in the second century bce. It is from this time that production activities dominate the neighborhood, only to be wholly replaced by retail-oriented street-fronts from the early first century ce. Underpinning this narrative of urban development is a focus on the social and structural making of the Porta Stabia neighborhood, along with an interest in both the micro- (urban site formation processes) and macro-contextualization of the site (setting the results within a larger historic and urban framework).
Making Empire
Authors: Ohlmeyer Jane
Published: August 2023

Empire and imperial frameworks, policies, practices, and cultures have shaped the history of the world for the last two millennia. It is nation states that are the blip on the historical horizon. This book re-examines empire as process—and Ireland’s role in it—through the lens of early modernity. It covers the two hundred years between the mid-sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century. How did the English empire actually function in early modern Ireland and how did this change over time? What did access to European empires mean for people living in Ireland? This book answers these questions by interrogating four interconnected themes: first, that Ireland formed an integral part of the English imperial system; second, that the Irish operated as agents of empire(s); third, that Ireland served as laboratory in and for the English empire; finally, it examines the impact that empire(s) had on people living in early modern Ireland. What it meant to be Irish and the ‘trans-imperialism’ of people from Ireland are themes explored throughout. What becomes clear is that colonisation was not a single occurrence but an iterative and durable process that impacted different parts of Ireland at different times and in different ways. That imperialism was about the exercise of power, violence, coercion, and expropriation. Strategies about how best to turn conquest into profit, to mobilise and control Ireland’s natural resources, especially land and labour, varied but the reality of everyday life did not change and provoked a wide variety of responses ranging from acceptance and assimilation to resistance.
Making history
Authors: Ohlmeyer Jane
Published: August 2023

This chapter draws on Making History, a play by Brian Friel, which was first performed in 1988 to unpack the four themes addressed in this book: first, that Ireland formed an integral part of the English imperial system; second, that the Irish operated as agents of empire(s); third, that Ireland served as laboratory in and for the English empire; finally, it examines the impact that empire(s) had on people living in early modern Ireland. Section I introduces the play which is about Hugh O’Neill and set on the eve of the Nine Years’ War (1594–1603). Section II focuses on the contexts in which the play was set, was performed, and is read today, along with the relevant historiographies. Section III explores the challenges involved in writing a broad history of Ireland and empire and the final section offers an overview of the five remaining chapters in this book.