bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Misery to Mirth
Authors: Newton Hannah
Published: July 2018

The history of early modern medicine often makes for depressing reading. It implies that people fell ill, took ineffective remedies, and died. This book seeks to rebalance and brighten our overall picture of early modern health by focusing on the neglected subject of recovery from illness in England, c.1580–1720. Drawing on an array of archival and printed materials, Misery to Mirth shows that recovery did exist conceptually at this time, and that it was a widely reported phenomenon. The book takes three main perspectives: the first is physiological or medical, asking what doctors and laypeople meant by recovery, and how they thought it occurred. This includes a discussion of convalescent care, a special branch of medicine designed to restore strength to the patient’s fragile body after illness. Secondly, the book adopts the viewpoint of patients themselves: it investigates how they reacted to the escape from death, the abatement of pain and suffering, and the return to normal life and work. At the heart of getting better was contrast—from ‘paine to ease, sadnesse to mirth, prison to liberty, and death to life’. The third perspective concerns the patient’s loved ones; it shows that family and friends usually shared the feelings of patients, undergoing a dramatic transformation from anguish to elation. This mirroring of experiences, known as ‘fellow-feeling’, reveals the depth of love between many individuals. Through these discussions, the book opens a window onto some of the most profound, as well as the more prosaic, aspects of early modern existence, from attitudes to life and death, to details of what convalescents ate for supper and wore in bed.
Processes and Precipitates
Authors: Simons Peter
Published: July 2018

Biology is about things: organisms, but also about the processes in which they and their parts are involved as participants—reproduction, growth, respiration, hibernation, migration, interaction, selection, adaptation, evolution. The deeper one goes, the more these processes seem to matter—processes such as mitosis, meiosis, catabolism, anabolism, and so on. Yet at each stage we are confronted with the same dichotomy between things and the processes in which they are involved, down to molecules and their reactions. Is it possible to conceptualize a metaphysically superior revisionist biology in which everything basic is processual, without losing touch with the things of standard biological discourse? This chapter argues that it is, by understanding continuant things as precipitates of processes and thus by construing the whole organic sphere as au fond processual.
Genidentity and Biological Processes
Authors: Pradeu Thomas
Published: July 2018

A crucial question for a process view of life is how to identify a process and how to follow it through time. The genidentity view (first proposed by Kurt Lewin and later elaborated by Hans Reichenbach) can contribute decisively to this project. It says that the identity through time of an entity X is given by a well-identified series of continuous states of affairs. Genidentity helps address the problem of diachronic identity in the living world. This chapter describes the centrality of the concept of genidentity for David Hull and proposes an extension of Hull’s view to the ubiquitous phenomenon of symbiosis. Finally, using immunology as a key example, it shows that the genidentity view suggests that the main interest of a process approach is epistemological rather than ontological and that its principal claim is one of priority, namely that processes precede and define things, and not vice versa.
Persons as Biological Processes
Authors: Meincke Anne Sophie
Published: July 2018

Human persons exist longer than a single moment in time; they persist through time. However, so far it has not been possible to make this natural and widespread assumption metaphysically comprehensible. The philosophical debate on personal identity is rather stuck in a dilemma: reductionist theories explain personal identity away, while non-reductionist theories fail to give any informative account at all. This chapter argues that this dilemma emerges from an underlying commitment, shared by both sides in the debate, to an ontology that gives priority to static unchanging things. The claim defended here is that the dilemma of personal identity can be overcome if we acknowledge the biological nature of human persons and switch to a process-ontological framework that takes process and change to be ontologically primary. Human persons are biological higher-order processes rather than things, and their identity conditions can be scientifically investigated.
Introduction
Authors: Fugate Courtney D. , Hymers John
Published: July 2018

The relationship between Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–62)1 and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is as profound as any in the history of philosophy. In depth, it rivals such rightfully famous relationships as those between Socrates and Plato, between Aristotle and Aquinas, between Russell and Wittgenstein. More than one-third of the ...
Wittgenstein, Dummett, and Travis
Authors: Kuusela Oskari
Published: July 2018

This chapter discusses differences between the Wittgensteinian account of content developed by Travis and systematic theories of meaning and language. These theories aspire to explain knowledge of linguistic meaning and language use in terms of a uniform framework, such as truth conditions. An alternative framework for thinking about language and linguistic meaning is presented, based on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of logic. One component of this is an explanation of how logic is possible as a non-empirical discipline, when it is acknowledged that logic is concerned with parochial forms of thought and language, rather than abstract principles adhered to by any possible speaker or thinker. This view makes it possible to account for multiple dimensions of meaning determination, including Travisian parochial considerations which are now explainable as particular dimensions of meaning determination, and to transcend the restrictive commitment of systematic theories to the uniformity of meaning determination.
Communicating by Doing Something Else
Authors: Davies Alex
Published: July 2018

Roughly put, occasion-sensitivity is the thesis that the meaning of a sentence is not a Kaplanian character: a function from canonical features of a context to truth conditions. Many have doubted occasion-sensitivity because they doubt that linguistic communication would be possible if the meaning of a sentence was not a Kaplanian character. The aim in this chapter is to describe what would be sufficient to rebut this criticism. It proceeds by identifying assumptions that David Lewis (in his book Convention) has to make in order to reach the conclusion that linguistic conventions are required for linguistic communication. The chapter then describes circumstances in which these assumptions would be false despite the absence of Kaplanian characters. To show that Kaplanian characters are not necessary for linguistic communication, it would be sufficient to show (without postulating Kaplanian characters) that these assumptions are false in our own case.
Truth-conditionality
Authors: Yli-Vakkuri Juhani , Hawthorne John
Published: July 2018

In Chapter 2 we argue that internalists are committed to a kind of relativism, and that theirs is a particularly radical form of relativism. Thought experiments involving certain symmetries across space and/or time play a starring role. If the kinds of symmetries featured in them are possible, we argue, the truth values of narrow content must be relative to some very unusual parameters.
Rationality and narrow content
Authors: Yli-Vakkuri Juhani , Hawthorne John
Published: July 2018

In Chapter 4 we ask whether a range of epistemological properties and relations pertaining to apriority can be explained by any kind of narrow content, and we come to a pessimistic conclusion. Thought experiments involving certain symmetries across space and/or time again play a starring role. We argue that, if the kinds of symmetries that feature in those thought experiments are possible, then narrow content cannot be used for explaining a priority and related properties and relations.
Kenya
Authors: Kamundia Elizabeth
Published: July 2018

This chapter describes the use of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) by Kenyan courts. The chapter analyses fourteen cases in which Kenyan courts have made reference to the CRPD and finds that there is a steady increase in the usage of CRPD provisions by Kenyan courts, particularly since the coming into force of the Constitution of Kenya in 2010 which transformed Kenya into a monist state. The most widespread use of the CRPD is to support a decision that would have been reached anyway, based on other sources; however, in a few cases, the CRPD has significantly impacted on court judgments. The vast majority of references to the CRPD in court cases were references to specific CRPD articles including Articles 2, 4, 5, 12, 26, 27, 28 and 29. Kenyan courts are not currently engaging in a transnational dialogue regarding the CRPD.
Spain
Authors: Cervera Ignacio Campoy
Published: July 2018

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) became part of the Spanish legal system on 3 May 2008, being placed at the highest normative level. Accordingly, since then the CRPD has been directly applicable by different Spanish courts, which have to interpret fundamental rights in line with CRPD. Nevertheless, the application of CRPD by different Spanish courts has not followed a smooth path. This chapter examines how the CRPD has been used by different Spanish courts, from the lower courts to the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, focusing on the rights that have been most frequently referred to the courts: the rights to equality and non-discrimination; equal treatment as a person before the law; access to justice; personal liberty; honour, reputation and privacy; to education; an adequate standard of living; and participation in political and public life.
France
Authors: Schmitt Olivier , Rynning Sten
Published: July 2018

This chapter provides readers with an overview of the transformations of French defence policy since 1991. To a large degree, French defence policy is still perceived through a ‘Gaullist’ prism by non-specialist observers, who tend to analyse French defence developments by referring to a pursuit of ‘independence’ at all costs, or a willingness to maintain neo-colonialists’ privileges. This chapter challenges this prevailing narrative by providing a concise yet complete analysis of the drivers of French defence policy. First, it discusses the French strategic culture, the institutional setting (role of the president, parliament, etc.) and civil–military relations in France. Second, it presents the role of nuclear weapons in French defence policy. Finally, it presents the evolution of the force structure since 1991. It also discusses the two key drivers of military change in France: interventions abroad and France’s membership to international security institutions.
The United Kingdom
Authors: Dorman Andrew M.
Published: July 2018

This chapter examines the post-cold-war evolution of the UK defence policy into a national security strategy, with an accompanying review of strategic defence and security. It considers how the United Kingdom’s defence posture has changed from a threat-based approach to that of a risk-based approach via a capabilities-based approach. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first considers the evolution of British defence and security policy up to the end of the cold war. The second then analyses how defence and security adapted to the end of the cold war and led to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The third section examines the post-Iraq and Afghanistan period up to the end of 2017 and how UK defence policy was affected by the 2008 financial crisis and the era of austerity that followed. Finally, it draws some conclusions about the drivers of UK defence and security policy and where this might head into the future.
Turkey
Authors: Gursoy Yaprak
Published: July 2018

Since 1991, the Turkish armed forces (TAF) have experienced major transformations in the spheres of civil–military relations, military operations, and military capabilities; yet there have also been elements of continuity. While the military has come under the control of civilians, the 2016 coup attempt showed that old patterns of behaviour continue and reflect conflict among various groups and issues, including political Islam. In the sphere of military operations, TAF has participated in international peacekeeping missions, but has also become embroiled in the Syrian war and carried out unilateral operations in Iraq against Kurdish groups. Finally, Turkey has increased its military capabilities, but it is still dependent on Western powers for technological expertise. Overall, there is a mismatch between Turkey’s power aspirations and the domestic and regional circumstances it faces, leading to continuities despite the changes.
Ukraine
Authors: Polyakov Leonid
Published: July 2018

Ukraine has been through several stages of national security orientation: non-alignment, aspiration to join NATO, non-alignment and orientation on Russia and, since 2014, defence from Russian aggression and aspiration to join NATO in the future. The inconsistencies in national strategies have led to confusing military doctrines and an ineffective military posture. In 2014, the response of Ukraine’s armed forces during the Russian annexation of Crimea and in the early phase of the operations against pro-Russian separatists proved rather poor, and exposed serious military weaknesses, except the will to defend the country. Over the next two years, Ukraine took a number of measures of mobilization and rearmament, and thereby managed to rebuild a substantial force capable of stopping the Russian invasion and separatism in Ukraine’s south-east. Further on, capitalizing on lessons learned and Western support, Ukraine intensified its defence transformation to make its armed forces capable of deterring full-scale aggression from Russia.
Austria and Switzerland
Authors: Hauser Gunther , Mantovani Mauro
Published: July 2018

Since the end of the cold war, Austria and Switzerland have maintained their status of neutrality, but reinterpreted their neutrality policy in pragmatic yet different ways. Both, however, joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) initiative at an early stage. Within the EU and PfP, Austria focused on armed forces interoperability, whereas Switzerland increased its formerly very low contribution to international peace missions. Both alpine republics conducted three major reforms of their armed forces, which entailed a substantial downsizing of overall mobilization strength and weaponry, while maintaining territorial defence as the core mission. Austria and Switzerland both aim at slightly increasing defence expenditures up to the early 2020s as a consequence of widely increased threat perception (owing to mass migration, Islamist terrorism, and a reasserting Russia), yet they will still find it difficult to replace their rapidly ageing main weapons systems. Troop contributions to international operations are likely to remain at at the 2017 levels.
Belarus
Authors: Hansen Flemming Splidsboel
Published: July 2018

The Belarusian armed forces are caught in an unsettled struggle between past and future. A pyramid-shaped resource base with a disproportionately large Soviet-era foundation and a much smaller tip of modern technology, the pool of equipment is impressive at first glance, but upon closer inspection it becomes clear that a substantial part is obsolete and Belarus’s force readiness is occasionally put into question by even its closest ally, Russia. The particular understanding by the Belarusian authorities of the implications of the country’s aspirations for neutrality is unlikely to change even in a long-term perspective. Consequently, Belarus is likely to remain a hesitant ally within the Common Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and even in its relations with Russia. In the absence of a major reinterpretation by the regime of the country’s geopolitical context, the defence burden is likely to remain well below the 2 per cent mark even in a long-term perspective.
Serbia and Croatia
Authors: Ejdus Filip
Published: July 2018

During the cold war, the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia was a middle-sized power pursuing a non-aligned foreign policy and a defence strategy based on massive armed forces, obligatory conscription, and a doctrine of ‘Total National Defence’. The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s resulted in the creation of several small states. Ever since, their defence policies and armed forces have been undergoing a thorough transformation. This chapter provides an analysis of the defence transformation of the two biggest post-Yugoslav states—Serbia and Croatia—since the end of the cold war. During the 1990s, defence transformation in both states was shaped by the undemocratic nature of their regimes and war. Ever since they started democratic transition in 2000, and in spite of their diverging foreign policies, both states have pivoted towards building modern, professional, interoperable, and democratically controlled armed forces capable of tackling both traditional and emerging threats.
Ireland
Authors: Speller Ian
Published: July 2018

This chapter explores the evolution of Irish defence policy from the end of the cold war through to 2017. It provides an analysis of national strategy, military doctrine, and force structures and reveals how these have evolved to meet new challenges and opportunities. The chapter explains how successive governments have sought to balance a reluctance to devote significant resources to defence and the desire to maintain the longs-tanding tradition of neutrality with a commitment to international engagement through the UN and active participation in a number of UN peacekeeping missions overseas. It also examines how the relationship with NATO and the EU has evolved. The chapter explores changes to the role and structure of the Defence Forces since the 1990s and concludes with an examination of existing policy and future challenges in the aftermath of the 2015 defence review.
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
Authors: Bieri Matthias , Nünlist Christian
Published: July 2018

The Ukraine crisis serves as a tragic reminder of how fragile European security still is—twenty-five years after the cold war ended. As the only inclusive European security organization, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) once more demonstrates how useful cooperative security instruments can be to de-escalate international tensions. This chapter focuses on the OSCE’s contribution to cooperative security in Europe after 1990, in particular in the field of conventional arms control and the building of confidence and security between European armed forces. It reviews the arms-control regime in Europe and explains why military transparency as achieved with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), the Vienna Document, and the Treaty on Open Skies is again needed in a post-2014 security environment. The chapter also highlights that, while the Ukraine crisis underscored its need for reform, adapting the arms-control regime in Europe has become even more difficult.
The Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
Authors: Futter Andrew
Published: July 2018

Since the end of the cold war, the global landscape of weapons of mass destruction has changed considerably. Three additional states have openly acquired a nuclear capability—India, Pakistan, and North Korea—and a fourth, Iran, may be trying to do the same. Meanwhile, other states were forced to give up or agreed to abandon their nuclear capabilities or ambitions. At the same time, the threat of ‘loose nukes’ and the associated challenge of nuclear security have acquired existential significance given the possibility of nuclear terrorism, the impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the damage caused by the A. Q. Khan network. Europe remains a key ‘nuclear theatre’ with UK, French, Russian, and NATO nuclear forces deployed in the region, and this seems unlikely to change anytime soon. The aim of this chapter is to explore the nature and implications of a second nuclear age for European military thinking and strategy.
Counterinsurgency
Authors: Egnell Robert , Reis Bruno Cardoso
Published: July 2018

Looking at the rise and decline of counterinsurgency between 2003 and 2017, this chapter seeks to assess its impact at the level of strategy, doctrine, and military structures within a number of European armed forces. The chapter finds that European states have engaged in counterinsurgency operations in quite varying ways and also extracted rather different lessons from this period. Regardless, several contextual factors point to the continued salience of counterinsurgency. They include the global trends of urbanization, Western technological advantage in conventional combat against most potential challengers, the attractiveness and effectiveness of irregular tactics to militarily inferior adversaries, and the securitization of ‘state failure’ following 9/11, all of which are no less salient in 2017, and for the forseeable future, with the continued challenges of radicalization and violent extremism exemplified by Daesh/ISIS.
Intelligence
Authors: Phythian Mark
Published: July 2018

This chapter considers national-level responses to the security challenges set out in Part III with regard to intelligence, with a particular focus on the transformative impact of transnational terrorism on national intelligence missions and structures. It goes on to discuss intelligence cooperation between European states and the implications of developments here for national oversight and accountability arrangements. The question of US–European tensions over post-9/11 intelligence-gathering, some a consequence of the information leaked by former US National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, is assessed. Finally, the chapter considers the question of the extent to which the European Union has become an intelligence actor in its own right and the possible obstacles to it further developing such a role.
Russian Military Operations
Authors: Sutyagin Igor
Published: July 2018

Russian military operations since 1991 have displayed a high degree of continuity. Being tailored to specific situations, these operations reveal a nearly constant mix of tactics, evolving with time but remaining fundamentally the same. Russia’s operational use of ambiguity is predominantly aimed at impeding or disrupting an adversary’s decision-making process. Meanwhile, the traditional ‘conventional’ tactics are always present in any operation, resulting in the omnipresent mix, described as the ‘hybrid-warfare’ challenge to the West. The long Russian experience in exercising hybrid warfare represents significant accumulated hybrid operational skills, which give the Russian forces a substantial advantage over the West in terms of operational art. Russia’s post-2014 actions against the West involving its military carry all the features of previous military operations, which suggests that warnings about a unilateral ‘new cold war’ waged by Russia are not hollow.
Arrested Development?
Authors: Sumner Andy
Published: July 2018

In this chapter, we discuss the third wave of developmentalism in South East Asia, which was a post-Lewis transition or even a ‘premature’ deindustrialization. There was a divergence across Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand in terms of managing Kuznetsian forces. The period begins with the crisis of the second wave of structural transformation and capital accumulation in the late 1990s. We identify the next incarnation of developmentalism in a nascent, new developmentalism and the ascendancy of Polanyi’s regulator or handmaiden, in the form of state intervention in the economy and a less liberal approach to international capital. The period has also been one of emerging democratic and popular political forces.
Constructivism and the Normativity of Practical Reason
Authors: Southwood Nicholas
Published: July 2018

Constructivists hold that truths about practical reasons are to be explained in terms of the exercise of practical reason in accordance with certain norms (rather than vice versa). But what is the normative status of the relevant norms of practical reason? The problem is that constructivism appears to presuppose the truth of two theses that seem hard to reconcile: first, that the relevant norms have a special normative status that goes beyond the minimal normativity of, say, the rules of snakes and ladders; second, that the relevant norms are prior to and independent of practical reasons. This chapter offers a new solution to the problem. The special normative status of the relevant norms derives from the fact that they determine what the author has called elsewhere truths about “the thing to do”—namely, truths about correct answers to the question of what to do.
Towards a Trajectory-Dependent Model of (Human) Rational Agency
Authors: Jones Karen
Published: July 2018

This chapter addresses the question, “What is the role and authority of conscious deliberation and judgment in human rational agency?” Anti-rationalists claim that the rationalist account of its role and authority is mistaken: conscious deliberation and judgment plays a relatively small part in our practical lives, can be used in the service of rationalizing bullshit, and is not the only or necessarily the most reliable path of access to our reasons. Against the anti-rationalist, the chapter argues that their critique rests on an analogy between the authority of judgment and the authority of an expert, when the rationalist models judgment’s authority on that of a judge. Against the traditional rationalist, the chapter argues the judge model fails. The chapter explores a third model—the monitor model—which, like rationalism, gives our reflective capacities a significant regulatory role, but accommodates the anti-rationalist emphasis on emotion and fast non-deliberative action.
A Different Beginning
Authors: Oklopcic Zoran
Published: July 2018

In preparing the ground for a different practice of theoretical imagination, Chapter 1 paves the way for moving beyond its most frequent object—not the people as such, but rather the six specific propositions of peoplehood. This chapter does so by outlining the imaginative choices that inhere in the six overlapping and mutually interconnected registers of constituent imagination: purposive, visual, quasi-narrative, affective, ambiental, and conceptual. In setting the stage for the exercise of imagination that is neither polemically quietist nor visually indifferent, it also draws attention to its practical, polemical, scopic, scenic, diagnostic, prognostic, disciplinary, and rhetorical dimensions, which together offer the speculative morphology of constituent imagination in action—the practice of theoretical imagining which remains attuned to the diversity of ways in which image schemata, scripts, stage-sets, ways of seeing, plotting devices, and audience design shape the theoretical understandings of popular sovereignty beyond traditional disciplinary divides.
The Nomos and the Gaze
Authors: Oklopcic Zoran
Published: July 2018

Chapter 5 confronted the imagination of the right to self-determination in international law. It focused on the ways in which interpretations of that right hinge on jurists’ implicit cartographies, their scopic regimes, affective predilections, disciplinary self-images, concealed calculi of suffering, visions of alternative universes, false binaries, and their idiosyncratic levels of (im)patience and anxiety, which—together with their quasi-nationalistic professional commitments and dreams of disciplinary sovereignty—remain some of the main factors that determine how international lawyers interpret the national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political autonomy of everyone else. After having proposed a number of new ways of looking at the claims of the right to self-determination, Chapter 6 ends on a sobering note: as long as jurists remain preoccupied with their own disciplinary self-determination and ‘linguistic’ purity, they will continue reproducing the flat, monochromatic, and vacuous imaginary of popular sovereignty.
Territorial Isomorphs
Authors: Oklopcic Zoran
Published: July 2018

From the perspective of K-Universe, the formation of sovereign states is governed by recursive applications of K-Algorithm, and results in T-Isomorphs. Chapter 7 proposes Sierpinski recursion as an intuitive and commonsensical alternative to the existing ones, confronting it with those that can be gleaned from four constitutional theories––foundational constitutionalism, constitutional pluralism, para-constitutionalism, and radical pluralism—imagined also as potential problem-solving templates. In order to look at these theories more practically, what also needs to be reimagined is the conception of ultimate constitutional authority: away from the preoccupations with origins and narratives, and towards fuzzy, yet discernible mental image: a multi-dimensional matrix of presumed authority-challenges that informs the theorists’ attitudes towards a range of relevant issues in constitutional theory—from narrative identity and the character of political collectivity to constitutional pluralism and constitutionalism.
From One to Astronomical
Authors: Schrijver Karel
Published: July 2018

Where centuries ago one could be burned at the stake for speculating about distant worlds, the modern scientific method has made us realize that there are planetary systems around most of the over a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy. Learning that the Earth was not the center of the Solar System represented a true revolution in our thinking, but the recent insight that the Solar System is but one of an immense number of similar systems was smoothly adopted by our culture, which had already been exposed to many fictional worlds over the preceding dedades. This introductory chapter describes these changes, woven into the story of how astrophysics has grown from the work of a few isolated individuals into a globe-spanning, fast-publishing enterprise with state-of-the-art observatories, from master–pupil teaching to university-based education, and from learning from often ancient books to modern observation-based investigations.
One Step Short of Life
Authors: Schrijver Karel
Published: July 2018

This chapter briefly reviews some the challenges encountered in the search for extraterrestrial life. So far, no signs of extraterrestrial life have been found. The search started with radio telescopes, looking for technology-based civilizations, but new strategies have emerged that take on the primary challenges in this search: the enormous distances to exoplanets and the question of the true nature of life. The author outlines the development of new tools for the search, and why the present focus is on Earth-sized exoplanets with a potential for liquid water on their surfaces. Not having been visited by an alien civilization presents us with a paradox: if life develops as quickly elsewhere as on Earth, then why have we not been contacted? Is the speed of light too slow to cross interstellar distances, is life intrinsically rare, or should we conclude that civilizations are intrinsically short-lived?
Exoplanet Systems and Their Stars
Authors: Schrijver Karel
Published: July 2018

This chapter highlights the amazing diversity of exoplanet worlds: planets can orbit neutron stars and giant stars, evaporate in the heat of their stars or have deep oceans, and may suffer from everlasting daysides and nightsides. A few enjoy two or more suns, and some bear a rough similarity to Earth with possible liquid water on their surface. The author describes how exoplanets reveal themselves through signatures in the light of their stars. The first exoplanets were found in unexpected places, but after determining where exoplanets could or could not be spotted with current detection methods, intrinsic statistical properties emerged. Some are in line with the Solar System, but many are not. What is clear is that exoplanets are more numerous than the stars in our Galaxy.
The Long View of Planetary Systems
Authors: Schrijver Karel
Published: July 2018

How many planetary systems formed before our’s did, and how many will form after? How old is the average exoplanet in the Galaxy? When did the earliest planets start forming? How different are the ages of terrestrial and giant planets? And, ultimately, what will the fate be of our Solar System, of the Milky Way Galaxy, and of the Universe around us? We cannot know the fate of individual exoplanets with great certainty, but based on population statistics this chapter sketches the past, present, and future of exoworlds and of our Earth in general terms.
Borderland Politics
Authors: Carrol Alison
Published: July 2018

A crucial forum for many of the debates about reintegration was politics. Equally, political life in interwar Alsace was dominated by questions posed by return. This chapter charts developments in regional politics as this focus upon the single issue of reintegration triggered the emergence of the autonomist political movement, and generated some unorthodox alliances between mainstream parties. Questions of Alsace squeezed normal political debate and became more important than differences between left and right, yet the focus upon the local that this engendered interacted with cross-border connections, as people, ideas, and political tracts crossed the border. The chapter considers these multiple impulses. It discusses parties that contested the region’s elections, analyses the issues that drove political debate, and traces the evolution of opinion in Alsace, as the population grappled with the dynamics of return and their place in Europe.
Reimagining Alsatian Identities
Authors: Carrol Alison
Published: July 2018

This chapter considers attempts to reimagine what it meant to be Alsatian after the region’s return to France through discussion of two areas of daily life: language and festivities. The region’s elites offered alternative visions of Alsace through debates over the use of French, German, and Alsatian dialect, and discussions over how the region’s past and present should be presented at festivities and in exhibitions. In so doing, they drew upon the region’s social and cultural practices, as well as its local context, position in France, and cross-border links. Their attempts are suggestive of questions over how to reconcile difference within the French nation, and their efforts to differentiate what was Alsatian from what was German reveal that rather than viewing loyalties in binary terms as ‘for or against’ France, nationalization in Alsace would be better understood as a spectrum that allowed for the expression of multiple loyalties and attachments.
Corporate Governance and Why It Matters
Authors: Driver Ciaran , Thompson Grahame
Published: July 2018

This chapter introduces the idea of governance and proceeds to a structured discussion of what corporate governance means and why it matters. The discussion is divided into three themes: the first deals with enterprise—long-run commitments that firms make in terms of investment and innovation; the second deals with complementary inputs, in particular labour and the commitment of employees; the final theme is politics, where the external effects of company actions are discussed in a context where governments increasingly withdraw from roles traditionally considered public responsibilities. These themes are used to illustrate some of the major debates in governance today, not just in terms of a distinction between shareholder and stakeholder approaches but within each of these as well. From this overall perspective we consider each of the individual chapters and comment on their distinctive ideas and how they relate to the overall themes.
Practical Shape
Authors: Dancy Jonathan
Published: July 2018

This book offers a theory of practical reasoning which is Aristotelian in spirit, since it maintains that one can reason to action in very much the same ways as those in which one can reason to belief. But the book gives its own, non-Aristotelian account of what those ways are; the practical syllogism hardly appears at all. Instead, there are accounts of reasons as considerations favouring a certain response, and of other ways in which considerations can be relevant to that response. Practical reasoning involves the attempt to see how the different relevant considerations come together to favour responding in a certain way (understood here as the attempt to determine the practical shape of the situation) and in acting in that way, in the light of those considerations. The only difference between this and theoretical reasoning is that in the latter, the relevant response is a belief rather than an action. The ‘therefore’ that is involved on both sides is a ‘for these reasons’ sort of therefore. The book also shows how the account offered can make good sense of moral reasoning and of the special forms of practical reasoning that are instrumental.
Understanding Rising Income Inequality and Stagnating Ordinary Living Standards in Germany
Authors: Bosch Gerhard , Kalina Thorsten
Published: July 2018

This chapter describes how inequality and real incomes have evolved in Germany through the period from the 1980s, through reunification, up to the economic Crisis and its aftermath. It brings out how reunification was associated with a prolonged stagnation in real wages. It emphasizes how the distinctive German structures for wage bargaining were eroded over time, and the labour market and tax/transfer reforms of the late 1990s-early/mid-2000s led to increasing dualization in the labour market. The consequence was a marked increase in household income inequality, which went together with wage stagnation for much of the 1990s and subsequently. Coordination between government, employers, and unions still sufficed to avoid the impact the economic Crisis had on unemployment elsewhere, but the German social model has been altered fundamentally over the period
Introduction
Authors: Rahat Gideon , Kenig Ofer
Published: July 2018

The chapter starts by presenting the goals of the book in relation to the advancement of the study of party change, of political personalization, and of the relationship between them. It then examines the scope of the analysis (a comprehensive and integrative look at the two main phenomena, i.e., party change and political personalization), the level of analysis (country), and the research population (twenty-six countries). It notes that the study is about processes; it is not a static snapshot of the state of the parties or of personalized politics. It then presents the methodology that was selected: a broad-brush mapping of both phenomena rather than the use of proxies or of the best available data on a few indicators. Finally, the chapter presents a brief outline of the book.
Party Change
Authors: Rahat Gideon , Kenig Ofer
Published: July 2018

The chapter sets the theoretical and conceptual basis for the analysis of party change from a cross-national comparative perspective. It starts with the central arguments in the literature on party change: the broad agreement that change occurs, followed by the debate that revolves around its depth and meaning. Are parties declining or adapting? Next, it explains the tendency in the literature to overlook cross-national variance. Finally, it outlines the approach adopted in this book: its emphasis on cross-national variance rather than on a generalized trend; the dozen indicators that are used to map the various aspects of party change; and the methodological barriers to conducting research on longitudinal cross-national variance and how we will overcome them. Finally, it presents indicators that were not included in the analysis, explains why they were left out, and assesses the “cost” of their exclusion.
Indicators of Political Personalization
Authors: Rahat Gideon , Kenig Ofer
Published: July 2018

Ten indicators of political personalization, covering all of its types and subtypes, are presented in this chapter. The analysis starts with the institutional personalization of both governmental (electoral systems and executives) and nongovernmental institutions (leadership selection and candidate selection in political parties). It then turns to indicators of media personalization, of both the uncontrolled (news coverage of politics) and the controlled type (unmediated messages). Finally, the chapter looks at indicators of personalization in the behavior of politicians (legislators’ behavior) and of voters. The logic and significance of each indicator is examined, as well as its advantages and limitations; and trends developed over time are presented country by country. Potential indicators that are not used are also mentioned and their exclusion is explained.
Party Change and Political Personalization
Authors: Rahat Gideon , Kenig Ofer
Published: July 2018

Scholars tend to see the relationship between parties and personalization as a zero-sum game: when one declines, the other is expected to rise. Yet, while scholars of political personalization regard party decline as the starting point of their story, for scholars of party change personalization is only one of the possible outcomes of party decline. These two perspectives are critically examined here. Then the chapter surveys Wattenberg’s works, the only scholar who accorded the two phenomena equal weight. Next the challenges encountered by this common representation of the relationship between party change and political personalization as a zero-sum game are examined. The chapter ends by reviewing the issue of the causal direction of this relationship.
World in Mind
Authors: Logue Heather
Published: July 2018

I will begin this paper by sketching a view according to which perceptual phenomenal character is “extended”, in the sense of literally incorporating mind-independent entities in the subject’s environment (a view also known as Naïve Realism or the Relational View). I will then argue that this metaphysical thesis about perceptual phenomenal character affords a novel version of epistemological disjunctivism (a view that is elaborated and defended by John McDowell and Duncan Pritchard). I will conclude by comparing the resulting view with other versions of epistemological disjunctivism, and arguing that the version I have offered provides the most satisfying response to external world skepticism.
What is Philosophy?
Authors: Stroud Barry
Published: July 2018

This chapter addresses the question ‘What is philosophy?’, which it suggests is absurd. It argues that it is not so much the question that is absurd as the attempt to answer it. It contends that it is much better—more reliable—to look at what a philosopher does in a particular case than to listen to what he or she says about what is being done. It also asserts that philosophy does not necessarily exist—and certainly does not thrive—in every society or culture; that religious belief or religious thought is not the same as philosophy, or philosophical thought; and that philosophy is an activity, not a set of doctrines or truths at all. The chapter concludes that ‘What is philosophy?’ is a question to be treated rather than answered.
Explaining Perceptual Knowledge
Authors: Stroud Barry
Published: July 2018

This chapter offers a response to Quassim Cassam’s ‘Seeing and Knowing’, which challenges some of the conditions Cassam thinks the author has imposed on a satisfactory explanation of our knowledge of the external world. According to Cassam, the conditions he specifies can be fulfilled in ways that explain how the knowledge is possible. What is at stake in this argument between Cassam and the author is the conception of what is perceived to be so that is needed to account for the kind of perceptual knowledge we all know we have. That is what must be in question in any promising move away from the overly restrictive conception of perceptual experience that gives rise to the hopelessness of the traditional epistemological problem. The author suggests that we should explore the conditions of successful ‘propositional’ perception of the way things are and emphasizes the promise of such a strategy.
Doing Something Intentionally and Knowing that You are Doing it
Authors: Stroud Barry
Published: July 2018

This chapter examines the philosophy of action, with particular emphasis on the parallel between the competent exercise of conceptual capacities involved in perceptual knowledge of the world and those competences essential to intentionally doing something and knowing that you are doing it. It also considers the ‘philosophical’ notion of ‘an experience’, as well as the difference between being aware of something and knowing something. This difference, it argues, is crucial to the proper understanding of human knowledge. Finally, it explains how monitoring the degree of success of your actions usually takes place through sense perception. It suggests that we understand the possibility of the special knowledge we have of our own intentional actions only to the extent to which we understand the distinctive character—and the rich conditions—of informed human agency.
Logical Aliens and the ‘Ground’ of Logical Necessity
Authors: Stroud Barry
Published: July 2018

This chapter examines James Conant’s account of Gottlob Frege’s conception of the special character of the laws of logic. It also examines whether or how that conception figures in Frege’s opposition to ‘psychologistic logicians’ who apparently envisage the possibility of laws of logic contrary to our own. Conant asks two important questions: ‘What is the status of the laws of logic?’ and ‘Wherein does their necessity lie?’. Conant seems to be seeking some explanation of the necessity of necessary truths, or of the impossibility of their being false. The chapter challenges the ‘difficulty’ that Conant claims Frege has in presenting his arguments regarding the laws of logic, as well as his attributing to Frege some kind of explanation of the ‘source’ or ‘ground’ of the special character of logical laws.
The Arbitrariness Argument
Authors: Sullivan Meghan
Published: July 2018

This chapter presents a non‐arbitrariness argument against near bias: (1) At any given time, a prudentially rational agent’s preferences are insensitive to arbitrary differences. (2) Relative distance from the present is an arbitrary difference between events. (3) If you are near‐biased, your preferences are sensitive to when an event is scheduled relative to the present. (C) So at any given time, near‐biased preferences are not rational. This chapter focuses on objections to (1) (the Non‐Arbitrariness principle), offering cases to support the Non‐Arbitrariness principle. It considers and rejects Preference Uniqueness (i.e., any total set of reasons uniquely determines a set of rational preferences) as a way of defending (1) in favor of moderate preference permissivism. It argues that the Non‐Arbitrariness principle does not rule out rational choice in Buridan’s ass cases. While it is irrational to prefer one option to the other, it is not irrational to act by making choices.
Introduction
Authors: Hamou Philippe , Pécharman Martine
Published: July 2018

This introductory chapter pleads for a reassessment of Locke’s complex attitude to Descartes. It argues that the anti-Cartesian agenda of the Essay is better understood when Locke’s intellectual debt to Descartes and Cartesian philosophers is fully recognized. It shows that Locke’s engagement with Cartesian philosophy cannot be reduced to his defence of an ‘empiricist’ view of knowledge against a rationalist, Cartesian, one. Such characterizations raise perhaps as many problems as they supposedly solve. Besides, epistemology was not Locke’s unique preoccupation in the Essay. Natural philosophy, metaphysics of bodies and souls, religion were no less crucial, even though, at the surface of the text, Locke’s self-proclaimed agnosticism tended to underplay their importance. On these issues, a pluriform confrontation with Descartes was unavoidable, and clearly a driving force in the conduct of Locke’s arguments.