bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Trinitarian Natural Philosophy
Authors: Sytsma David S.
Published: July 2017

This chapter sets forth the theological motivations and basic contours of Baxter’s theory of nature. In contrast with early modern trends toward separation of the domains of theology and philosophy, Baxter sympathized with a tradition of Mosaic physics popular among early modern Calvinists. Baxter also identified with a medieval tradition of identifying traces of the Trinity (vestigia Trinitatis) in nature. These motivations informed an eclectic reception of the philosophies of Tommaso Campanella and Robert Boyle. Baxter divided reality into passive and active natures, and accommodated Boyle’s corpuscular philosophy in the passive inorganic realm while maintaining Aristotelian and scholastic concepts regarding the soul. His view of active natures and souls was informed by a tradition of reflection on vestigia Trinitatis and the philosophy of Campanella.
Ciborium or Canopy? Textual Evidence on Canopies in the Byzantine Church
Authors: Bogdanović Jelena
Published: July 2017

This chapter analyzes the different idioms, arguments, and rhetorical strategies Greek-speaking Byzantines used to discuss canopies in their churches. It compares the modern academic conventions of naming and describing canopies as ciboria with conventions that are related to the Byzantine tradition. Such an analysis links some of scholarship’s evident lacunae and misunderstandings to the inception of Byzantine studies and its antiquarian approach starting in the sixteenth century and solidified by positivistic scholarship since the Enlightenment. Because the word ciborium was used less often than previously thought and other descriptive and metonymic words also referred to canopies, in this study, the modern term canopy is used as it points to the architectural form. This chapter also highlights the Byzantine intellectual elite’s awareness of the terminology related to canopies as a carrier of complex theological ideas that were deeply associated with the materialization and meaning of canopies in the Byzantine church.
The Micro-Architectural Framing of Sacred Space
Authors: Bogdanović Jelena
Published: July 2017

A critical feature of canopies is their micro-architectural quality, which highlights the essence of design practices in Byzantine religious architecture. This chapter examines various canopies as columnar and vaulted installations and relates them to the meaning and form of the canopy as a basic spatial unit of the Byzantine church. Specific architectural solutions reveal the various spatial relations and meanings between different canopied installations. The analysis shows how altar canopies, for example, resulted from the complex circumstances of diverse liturgical needs, devotional practices, and movement-directing channels within a given church and may have originated from concepts related to funerary (funerary altars and tomb canopies), civic (tetrapyla and imperial canopies), and sacred architecture (shrines and sacrificial altars). Case studies include the shrines of Old St. Peter’s in Rome and early Christian churches in the Mediterranean, of St. Euphemia in Constantinople, St. Demetrios in Thessaloniki, and Blessed Loukas in Boeotia.
Johann Sebastian Bach – B Minor Mass
Authors: Shrock Dennis
Published: July 2017

Historical discussion focuses on the lineage of the Bach family, compositions determined by circumstances of employment, the composition of Lutheran Masses, the possible rationale for composing a Catholic Mass, and the history of the B Minor Mass in terms of manuscripts, performances, and editions. Musical discussion focuses on parody technique, the assemblage of four disparate units of composition into the B Minor Mass, comparisons of stile antico and stile moderno characteristics of the Mass, and formal and musical structures of the Mass, with special attention to structural balance and mirror dispositions. Performance practices include singers and instrumentalists and their arrangements in performance, meter as it affects tempo, rhythmic alteration, and ornamentation.
Felix Mendelssohn – St. Paul
Authors: Shrock Dennis
Published: July 2017

This chapter begins with a discussion of Mendelssohn’s development as a composer, his involvement with the works of J. S. Bach and Handel, and the genesis of St. Paul. Following is material related to the libretto, Mendelssohn’s process of revision, the various premieres of the oratorio, its reception by critics and the public, and Mendelssohn’s interest in past historical styles of music. Musical discussion is focused on the structures of arias, choruses, and chorales, and performance practice issues include Mendelssohn’s views on the subject, as well as performance of St. Paul in German or English, arrangement of singers and instrumentalists on stage, and the treatment of fermatas and recitative.
Igor Stravinsky – Mass
Authors: Shrock Dennis
Published: July 2017

This chapter begins with a survey of the vast amount of European choral music Stravinsky was exposed to in his youth and his fascination with the sounds of language in the Russian Orthodox Church. This is followed by a survey of the many modern-era Masses based on historic models as well as a survey of the many Stravinsky compositions so based. The music of the Mass is discussed in terms of its neo-Gothic and neo-Renaissance attributes and its mirror formal structures. Performance practice issues address the cubist-like setting of text and its close relationship to the text setting of Francis Poulenc, and Stravinsky’s unique motor-like rhythmic textures.
Changing Natural Character
Authors: Leunissen Mariska
Published: July 2017

Chapter 2 discusses the changeability of natural character under the influence of factors such as diet and environment and thereby offers an explanation for the individual differences of the more and the less within a species-specific character profile. That is, while ideally all humans are by nature courageous and intelligent, and while all humans are more courageous and intelligent than any other kind of animal, some humans are by nature more courageous or intelligent than others, while others are more cowardly and less intelligent, and these differences matter for the ease with which one can acquire virtue. After identifying the material-efficient causes that produce these natural variations in character, I discuss what this means for the moral development of certain “barbarians” and “slavish people” living in different climatic regions of the world, and I offer reasons against identifying all these latter groups as counting as “natural slaves” for Aristotle.
Perfection and the Psychophysical Process of Habituation
Authors: Leunissen Mariska
Published: July 2017

Chapter 5 offers a psychophysical account of how habituation changes the bodies and souls of men and makes them virtuous, by building on Aristotle’s discussion of habituation as a form of perfection in Physics VII 3, which is the only extended natural scientific treatment of the processes of habituation in the corpus. Character virtue, then, is a proportionate, unified, and stable relation that exists among the capacities that are constitutive of the perceptive part of the soul, have all individually undergone qualitative changes so that each is in the best condition possible, and are suitably obedient to the rational part of the soul, which is practically wise. The perfection that brings about this kind of psychological relation is very hard to achieve because it involves the alteration of many psychological capacities, each of which requires its own particular kind of training from infancy onward.
Universals in English Platonism
Authors: Lotti Brunello
Published: July 2017

This chapter reconstructs the topic of universals in the English Platonists’ epistemologies and ontologies. More and Cudworth restrict universals to the mental realm, stating that whatsoever exists without the mind is singular. Despite this nominalistic principle, universal concepts are not inductive constructions, but primarily divine thoughts and secondarily a priori innate ideas in the human mind. The archetypal theory of creation and the connection of finite minds to God’s Mind ensure their objective validity, in antithesis to Hobbes’ phenomenalism and sensationalism. Norris shares the archetypal theory of creation, but refuses innatism, and his doctrine of universals is framed in terms of his theory of the ideal world inspired by Malebranche. Both the Cambridge Platonists and Norris, opposing theological voluntarism, discuss the status of ideas in God’s mind, which oscillate from being merely thoughts of the divine intellect to being its eternal objects.
Kant and Abstractionism about Concept Formation
Authors: Vanzo Alberto
Published: July 2017

This chapter outlines Kant’s account of empirical concept formation and discusses two objections that have been advanced against it. Kant holds that we form empirical concepts, such as color concepts, by comparing sensory representations of individuals, identifying shared features, and abstracting from the differences between them. According to the first objection, we cannot acquire color concepts in this way because there is no feature that all and only the instances of a given color share, and because the boundary between colors is conventional. According to the second objection, assuming that all instances of a given color share certain features, we can identify them only if we already possess a concept of that color. Neither of the objections is convincing as it stands. Kant can offer replies to both objections that are consistent with his views and with empirical evidence concerning the perception and representation of colors.
Affirmation and Intensification
Authors: Cumiskey Kathleen M. , Hjorth Larissa
Published: July 2017

In this chapter we focus on mobile-emotive rituals of affirmation and intensification. Loss can be viewed as a disruption in identity. Mobile media are used as a means to affirm the role that the deceased played in the bereaved person’s life. Mobile media are also used to intensify connections between people who share a common identity. The mobile phone itself serves as a linking object, in that the lost loved ones can seem as though they are still present. Mobile-emotive rituals are discussed as extensions of traditions and of self. This chapter draws on fieldwork in the United States to demonstrate the ways in which users utilize social and mobile media to express collective social identities and the significance of others.
Transition and Letting Go
Authors: Cumiskey Kathleen M. , Hjorth Larissa
Published: July 2017

This chapter focuses on mobile-emotive rituals of transition and letting go. Traditional psychological trajectories of the grief process typically end with the concept of the letting go of the deceased or “lost object.” While this book engages with critiques related to this trajectory, this chapter will focus on the ways in which the concept of “letting go” functions in terms of users’ relationships with digital content. Drawing from fieldwork in the United States, this chapter will show the role that the purging—as well as preserving—of mobile media plays in the integration of loss into one’s life. We investigate how US participants described their motivations behind whether or not they deleted digital content and how, for some of these participants, changes made to content or devices indicated a mobile-emotive transition in their grief process.
Open Channeling and Continuity
Authors: Cumiskey Kathleen M. , Hjorth Larissa
Published: July 2017

This chapter begins with a quasi-historical overview of dominant mortuary practices and rituals. This overview seeks to connect new media practices with their media genealogies. The chapter focuses on the open nature of mobile communication and the ways in which this then lends itself to be the perfect medium, like a psychomanteum, through which parapsychological phenomenon can be experienced. Drawing from fieldwork in the United States, this chapter explores the ways in which mobile media can cultivate a haunted culture and facilitate a continuation of bonds with the deceased beyond death. Mobile media provide mobile-emotive forms of after-death communication that can lead to new ways of “reanimating” the dead.
The Art of Interpretation in the Age of Computation
Authors: Kockelman Paul
Published: July 2017

This book is about media, mediation, and meaning. It focuses on a set of interrelated processes whereby seemingly human-specific modes of meaning become automated by machines, formatted by protocols, and networked by infrastructures—that is, the way computation replaces interpretation, information effaces meaning, and infrastructure displaces interaction. The book asks: what does it take to automate, format, and network meaningful practices; what difference does this make for those who engage in such practices; and what are the stakes? Reciprocally it questions how can we better understand computational processes from the standpoint of meaningful practices; how can we leverage such processes to better understand such practices; and what lies in wait. In answering these questions, this book stays very close to fundamental concerns of computer science as they emerged in the middle part of the twentieth century. Rather than foreground the latest application, technology, or interface, it tries to account for processes that underlie each and every digital technology being deployed today. And rather than use the tools of conventional social theory to investigate such technologies, it leverages key ideas of American pragmatism—a philosophical stance that understands the world, and our relation to it, in a way that avoids many of the conundrums and criticisms of twentieth-century social theory. It puts this stance in dialogue with certain currents and key texts in anthropology and linguistics, science and technology studies, critical theory, computer science, and media studies.
Lines Crossed and Circles Breached
Authors: Kockelman Paul
Published: July 2017

This chapter lays out the key moves, and organizational logic, of the entire book. It argues that, rather than privileging mere ‘relations’, our analysis must foreground a particular ensemble of relations between relations if we are to properly understand the following modes of mediation: semiotic processes, semiological structures, agentive practices, environment-organism interfaces, communicative channels, social relations, and parasitic encounters. And it shows the ways such modes of mediation get computationally enclosed through processes that automate, format and network them, such that their meaningfulness is made to seem relatively portable: applicable to many contents and applicable across many contexts. It reviews and reworks several key ideas of Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism. And it summarizes each of the chapters, highlighting key themes, arguments, and interlocutors.
Enemies, Parasites, and Noise
Authors: Kockelman Paul
Published: July 2017

This chapter begins by outlining some common properties of channels, infrastructure, and institutions. It connects and critiques the assumptions and interventions of three influential intellectual traditions: cybernetics (via Claude Shannon), linguistics and anthropology (via Roman Jakobson), and actor-network theory (via Michel Serres). By developing the relation between Serres’s notion of the parasite and Peirce’s notion of thirdness, it theorizes the role of those creatures who live in and off infrastructure: not just enemies, parasites, and noise, but also pirates, trolls, and internet service providers. And by extending Jakobson’s account of duplex categories (shifters, proper names, meta-language, reported speech) from codes to channels, it theorizes four reflexive modes of circulation any network may involve: self-channeling channels, source-dependent channels, signer-directed signers, and channel-directed signers. The conclusion returns to the notion of enclosure, showing the ways that networks are simultaneously a condition for, and a target of, knowledge, power, and profit.
Meaning, Information, and Enclosure
Authors: Kockelman Paul
Published: July 2017

This chapter argues that information is a species of meaning that has been radically enclosed, such that the values in question seem to have become radically portable. They are not so much independent of context, as dependent on contexts which have been engineered so as to be relatively ubiquitous, and hence ostensibly and erroneously ‘context-free’; not so much able to accommodate all contents, as able to assimilate all contents to their contours, and hence ostensibly and erroneously ‘open content’. To make this argument, the chapter highlights the ideas of Donald MacKay in relation to those of Claude Shannon, and it foregrounds the semiotic framework of Charles Sanders Peirce in relation to cybernetics and computer science. It offers two alternative definitions of information. The first focuses on interaction, while the second focuses on institutions, and both effectively mediate between relatively quantitative theories of information and relatively qualitative theories of meaning.
Materiality, Virtuality, and Temporality
Authors: Kockelman Paul
Published: July 2017

This chapter is about the relation between meaning, media, and materiality. It focuses on various kinds of durability that allow particular materials to last, and thereby preserve meaning, by leaving relatively enduring traces. And it focuses on various ways this durability is imagined and utilized in particular media, and in particular understandings of mediation. In offering such an archeology of media, its focus is on entropy as much as information. Such ideas are then used, in conjunction with the notions of secrets and singularities introduced in earlier chapters, to review, extend, and critique key understandings of the virtual: Deleuze, insofar as he is taken up by later media theorists; and Peirce, insofar as his theory of the meaningful is, by design, a theory of the virtual. It shows how we develop intuitions for the (otherwise secret) sense-making capabilities of highly complex systems.
General Approaches to Legal Socialization
Authors: Tyler Tom R. , Trinkner Rick
Published: July 2017

Chapter 2 outlines two basic models of legal socialization. The coercive one is consistent with the way young children view authority as something that is to be obeyed or not depending upon the rewards and punishments. This framework can carry into adulthood. Legal socialization can also lead to a consensual relationship to law, which is based upon the belief that laws and legal authorities are legitimate and therefore ought to be obeyed. When people relate to law in this way they are less focused upon the rewards and costs of behavior and more upon responsibilities and obligations toward rules and authorities. This volume argues that the consensual model of authority are superior and more desirable. For this model to be viable, most people in society must become adults who relate to law in a value-based way and who regard authorities as being legitimate and thereby deserving of deference.
Neurological Development and Legal Competency
Authors: Tyler Tom R. , Trinkner Rick
Published: July 2017

Chapter 6 discusses recent findings in biological and neurological development that may potentially impact the legal socialization process. Although biology is of central importance when talking about development of any kind, legal socialization scholars have largely ignored the role biology plays in the process. This represents a fundamental gap within the literature as it has becoming increasingly clear that how people interface with laws and legal authority are affected by their biological maturity. In particular, recent research has highlighted multiple neurological networks following different developmental trajectories that are fundamental to people’s capacity to regulate their social and legal behavior. Although this work has not been formally incorporated into the legal socialization context, it aligns nicely with the approaches outlined in chapters 4 and 5.
Legal Socialization in the Family
Authors: Tyler Tom R. , Trinkner Rick
Published: July 2017

The chapters in Part III take up the discussion of legal socialization across the spheres of childhood and adolescence. As they move through their early lives, children and adolescents pass through three spheres of authority: the family, the school, and the juvenile justice system. In each of these they can either experience coercive and consensual authority systems. Consensual systems promote the development of internal beliefs in the legitimacy of law and legal authority and because of such beliefs, encourage voluntary deference. Coercive systems lead to a risk orientation toward law, with people complying when the risk of being caught and punished is high.
Legal Socialization in the School
Authors: Tyler Tom R. , Trinkner Rick
Published: July 2017

Chapter 8 focuses on schools. Traditionally schools sought to socialize children into the values they would need to have to be future citizens. More recently schools have been seen as institutions whose mission is skill acquisition, and the value socialization role has been minimized. Studies make clear that schools do shape values and that the type of classroom and school authority that children experience shapes the degree to which their initial consensual or coercive orientations toward rules strengthen or decline. If children experience transparency in the rules implemented by authorities they believe are concerned about them and their welfare, they increasingly define their relationship to rules as consensual and view the authorities as legitimate. Coercive approaches, in contrast, develop when these legitimating characteristics are absent. Coercive orientations are associated with higher levels of rule-breaking, bullying, gang activity, and criminal behavior. Despite these findings, recent developments in the school environment have increased the coerciveness of school environments.
Legal Socialization in the Juvenile Justice System
Authors: Tyler Tom R. , Trinkner Rick
Published: July 2017

Chapter 9 discusses legal socialization within the juvenile justice system. Adolescence is a developmental period during which many young people have contact with legal authorities, primarily the police. These contacts involve high levels of discretion for law enforcement, and studies show the manner in which that discretion is exercised has strong consequences for the subsequent orientations that adolescents have toward the law as well as their later law-related behavior. In particular, adolescents react to how fairly the authorities treat them. Juvenile justice is a particularly contentious area of policy with many punitive practices advocated in spite of evidence that they do not build legitimacy or reduce crime. On the other hand, experiencing justice is shown to promote legitimacy and lower offending.
Legal Socialization across the Spheres of Childhood and Adolescence
Authors: Tyler Tom R. , Trinkner Rick
Published: July 2017

This part of the book examines the legal socialization process across three crucial domains. These domains are as follows: family and parents, schools and teachers, and legal institutions and authorities. The aim is to discuss the degree to which experiences with authority and rule-making and enforcement influence the acquisition of supportive legal values, formation of law-related attitudes, and development of legal reasoning competencies.
Determinism and Contingency
Authors: Landau Iddo
Published: July 2017

Some claim that determinism renders our lives meaningless because it suggests that we have no free will and, therefore, lack moral responsibility, deserve no praise for our achievements, and are no different from plants or animals. In response, this chapter explains why life can be regarded as meaningful even if we lack free will. Other arguments for the meaninglessness of life are based on the roughly reverse view, namely, that much in our lives is not necessary but, rather, arbitrary or governed by chance. The discussion in the chapter also explains why neither arbitrariness nor contingency renders life meaningless.
Why We Are Blind to Goodness
Authors: Landau Iddo
Published: July 2017

The chapter points out some dynamics that can blind people to the good aspects of reality and lead them to see life as “nastier” than it really is. Alongside previously discussed dynamics (such as perfectionism), the chapter discusses the view that people’s behavior in a crisis is an indication of their true nature; the tendency to judge oneself excessively harshly and to refrain from forgiving oneself; the hostility to pride; and the treatment of the critical attitude toward oneself and the world as a status symbol. The chapter also argues that recognizing the good around and within us need not lead to complacency or diminish people’s motivation to improve things.
Identifying I
Authors: Landau Iddo
Published: July 2017

Some people have meaningless lives because they have not identified what would make their lives more meaningful and, hence, have not engaged in it. The chapter discusses strategies and questions that can help people identify what is meaningful for them. Among other issues, it weighs the advantages and disadvantages of “deathbed questions” (e.g., if you were now on your deathbed and looked back, would you be glad that you had spent this day as you did?). It also emphasizes that people cannot increase meaning in life in just any way they please; decisions about increasing meaning in life should be realistic and take into account inclinations, abilities, and external circumstances.
Conclusion I
Authors: Landau Iddo
Published: July 2017

This is the first of the two concluding chapters, both of which address general questions about meaning in life and the claims made in this book. Does this book discuss our perceptions of meaning in life or meaning in life itself? Do we find meaning or create it? Suppose that religious claims about the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are incorrect; could life still be deemed meaningful? Is it true that issues relating to the meaning of life are in the sole domain of psychology and psychiatry? And is existentialism a good source of guidance on the meaning of life?
Becoming Who We Are
Authors: Norris Andrew
Published: July 2017

While a number of books and many articles have been written on the work of Stanley Cavell, this is the first monograph on his contribution to politics and practical philosophy. Though skepticism is Cavell’s central topic, he understands it not as an epistemological problem or position but as an existential one. The central question is not what we know or fail to know, but to what extent we have made our lives our own, or failed to do so. Accordingly, Cavell’s reception of Austin and Wittgenstein highlights, as other readings of these figures do not, the uncanny nature of the ordinary, the extent to which we ordinarily fail to mean what we say. Bringing this out highlights Cavell’s debts to Heidegger and Thompson Clarke, even as it allows for a deeper appreciation of the extent to which Cavell’s perfectionism is a rewriting of Rousseau’s and Kant’s theories of autonomy. This in turn opens up a way of understanding citizenship and political discourse that develops points made more elliptically in the work of Hannah Arendt, and that contrasts in important ways with the positions of liberal thinkers like John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas on the one hand, and radical democrats like Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe on the other.
Introduction
Authors: Norris Andrew
Published: July 2017

The introduction examines why Cavell’s contribution to our understanding of politics and practical philosophy has not yet received extensive examination in book form and why it merits such examination and such a book. It then briefly reviews Cavell’s unique approach to philosophy in general and to practical philosophy in particular. It concludes by summarizing the five chapters of the book, and their accounts of Cavell’s understanding of, in turn, ordinary language, skepticism, the nature of political claims, Thoreau’s achievement in Walden, and the manner in which what he terms Emersonian perfectionism represents a radical reworking of Kant’s theory of autonomy.
Receiving Autonomy
Authors: Norris Andrew
Published: July 2017

This chapter presents Cavell’s Emersonian perfectionism as a response to and interpretation of Kant. For Cavell, receptivity is the key to Emerson’s inheritance of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, as partiality is the key to his inheritance of Kant’s practical philosophy. Partiality for Emerson names both the individual agent’s inherent lack and its want for change and growth. The shameful experience of lack is the precondition for the transformative encounter with an exemplary other who enables the self’s conversion of the nihilistic conformity of everyday life as it is now lived. The chapter argues that Cavell’s insistence that Emersonian perfectionism sets itself against any idea of ultimate perfection does not condemn Cavell’s agents to an endless and hence nihilistic pursuit of an unrealizable telos, as it might seem, but instead furnishes the basis for democratic hope.
Introduction
Authors: Backhouse Roger E. , Bateman Bradley W. , Nishizawa Tamotsu , Plehwe Dieter
Published: July 2017

During the last several decades, the welfare state has come under increasing pressure around the world, with social provision often being cut or privatized. Often the justification for these changes has been made as an economic argument, especially a neoliberal argument that the welfare state diminishes growth or produces disincentives to work. These arguments are of relatively recent origin, however; many types of economists have supported the creation of the welfare state, even liberal economists. The purpose of this book is to examine the economic arguments that have been used in the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany in support of, and in opposition to, the welfare state. Special attention is paid to the transnational dimensions of recent welfare discourse and to the ways that liberal and neoliberal arguments about the welfare state have changed over time.
Transparency in Electoral Governance
Authors: Norris Pippa
Published: July 2017

This chapter develops the book’s central theoretical framework, which identifies three alternative channels of accountability for electoral-management bodies (EMBs)—the core administrative agencies charged with running elections. It shows that channels of accountability flow upward from EMBs toward the international community and, horizontally, outward to other core state institutions, providing checks and balances on the power of electoral authorities. Thus, the chapter considers how these processes work in diverse contexts and types of regimes. It describes the structure and accountability of different types of EMBs. Finally, this chapter provides a roadmap for the plan of the book, including explaining how this theoretical framework applies to each of the subsequent chapters.
International Monitors
Authors: Arceneaux Craig , Leithner Anika
Published: July 2017

This chapter focuses on explaining the causes and consequences of divergent findings among reports issued by international electoral-observer monitors. Several reasons could be behind these differences, including the foreign policy interests of bilateral donors, the methods used by each organization, and their political agendas and values. The chapter focuses on the degree of professionalization of observer monitors to explain how missions arrive at their evaluations, and on the lack of standardization in the field despite endorsement of a common code of conduct among over 40 international observer groups. It analyzes 14 electoral reports across five different countries via a Democracy Coverage Index to show how observer groups use a diverse range of standards to evaluate elections. Where evaluations differ, countries can appeal to different monitoring reports, reducing the overall effectiveness of efforts to enforce international standards of electoral integrity.
Poll Workers
Authors: Clark Alistair , James Toby S.
Published: July 2017

Electoral malpractices are commonly thought to occur in polling stations. This chapter makes the normative case for electoral management bodies (EMBs) around the world routinely using poll worker surveys. These surveys provide concrete sources of information about the extent and nature of any problems in the electoral process. Accusations by partisan actors can therefore be readily tested and challenged. Poll worker surveys can therefore increase the transparency of EMBs and the electoral process. They also increase opportunities for evidence based policy making in electoral management. Their usefulness is demonstrated through the first-ever non-US poll worker survey which was undertaken in Britain at the 2015 general election. This survey (n = 1,321) contradicted the existing literature on electoral administration in Britain in a number of ways.
The Fourth Estate
Authors: Nai Alessandro
Published: July 2017

This chapter analyzes the quality of election coverage by the traditional news media. It describes a hierarchical model of influences that is expected to shape the fairness of election coverage. These operate at three levels: the political and social structure, the media market, and the journalistic culture. The chapter shows that the fairness of election coverage is lower when the content of information is distorted by pressures from exogenous actors such as politicians and pressure groups, when the media market faces a hypercommercialization, and when journalists see their role redefined toward infotainment journalism that creates the conditions for a strong shift toward soft news. On the other hand, the quality of elections coverage by traditional news media is higher when media outlets are dispersed across multiple and competitive institutions, which promotes inclusiveness and sets up safeguards against the emergence of media oligopolies.
Embodied Cognitive Science
Authors: Butz Martin V. , Kutter Esther F.
Published: July 2017

While “Embodied Cognitive Science” has significantly developed over the last 20 years or so, it remains unclear what it actually implies. We emphasize that embodied cognitive science particularly implies that abstract thought, such as our ability to understand and produce a large variety of metaphors, must develop from our gathered sensorimotor experiences about our world. While we experience our body and the environment, and actively explore it, our mind produces particular neural structures to improve these bodily and environmental interactions. Vice versa, the more versatile and flexible neural structures are available, the more intricate and versatile environmental interactions become possible. Our minds then manage to detach thought from the here and now, opening the possibility to think, for example, about the past and future, about social interactions with the environment including other humans, and about explanations for unexplainable observations. A more detailed book overview concludes the chapter.
Cognitive Science is Interdisciplinary
Authors: Butz Martin V. , Kutter Esther F.
Published: July 2017

Cognitive Science has come a long way – even the old Greeks have put forward intricate thoughts about what our minds can know and what seems inaccessible. This chapter addresses the historical development of cognitive science. The fundamental homunculus and qualia problems are introduced, and tentative answers from embodied cognitive science are sketched-out. A look at biology emphasizes that our bodies and brains are evolutionarily shaped, making us ready to develop our minds. Psychologically, minds develop and adapt given environmental feedback, striving to optimize behavior. Only by means of constructive, generative processes, however, can a behavior-oriented “understanding” of the environment develop. These “understanding”-oriented structures also make our mind language ready. Finally, in order to comprehend how the human mind actually comes into being, based on the considered principles, it is necessary to pursue functional, computational, and where possible, algorithmic and hardware perspectives in the sense of David Marr’s three levels of understanding.
Behavior is Reward-oriented
Authors: Butz Martin V. , Kutter Esther F.
Published: July 2017

Delving further into development, adaptation, and learning, this chapter considers the potential of reward-oriented optimization of behavior. Reinforcement learning (RL) is motivated from the Rescorla–Wagner model in psychology and behaviorism. Next, a detailed introduction to RL in artificial systems is provided. It is shown when and how RL works, but also current shortcomings and challenges are discussed. In conclusion, the chapter emphasizes that behavioral optimization and reward-based behavioral adaptations can be well-accomplished with RL. However, to be able to solve more challenging planning problems and to enable flexible, goal-oriented behavior, hierarchically and modularly structured models about the environment are necessary. Such models then also enable the pursuance of abstract reasoning and of thoughts that are fully detached from the current environmental state. The challenge remains how such models may actually be learned and structured.
Multisensory Interactions
Authors: Butz Martin V. , Kutter Esther F.
Published: July 2017

This chapter shows that multiple sensory information sources can generally be integrated in a similar fashion. However, seeing that different modalities are grounded in different frames of reference, integrations will focus on space or on identities. Body-relative spaces integrate information about the body and the surrounding space in body-relative frames of reference, integrating the available information across modalities in an approximately optimal manner. Simple topological neural population encodings are well-suited to generate estimates about stimulus locations and to map several frames of reference onto each other. Self-organizing neural networks are introduced as the basic computation mechanism that enables the learning of such mappings. Multisensory object recognition, on the other hand, is realized most effectively in an object-specific frame of reference – essentially abstracting away from body-relative frames of reference. Cognitive maps, that is, maps of the environment are learned by connecting locations over space and time. The hippocampus strongly supports the learning of cognitive maps, as it supports the generation of new episodic memories, suggesting a strong relation between these two computational tasks. In conclusion, multisensory integration yields internal predictive structures about spaces and object identities, which are well-suited to plan, decide on, and control environmental interactions.
Attention
Authors: Butz Martin V. , Kutter Esther F.
Published: July 2017

Cognition does not work without attention. Attention enables us to focus on particular tasks and particular aspects in the environment. Psychological insights show that attention exhibits bottom-up and top-down components. Attention is attracted from the bottom-up towards unusual, exceptional, and unexpected sensory information. Top-down attention, on the other hand, filters information dependent on the current task-oriented expectations, which depend on the available generative models. This computational interpretation enables the explanation of conjunctive and disjunctive search. Different models of attention emphasize the importance of the unfolding interaction processes and a processing bottleneck can be detected. As a result, attention can be viewed as a dynamic control process that unfolds in redundant, neural fields, in which the selection of one interpretation and thus the processing bottleneck is strongest at the current focus of attention. The actual focus of attention itself is determined by the current behavioral and cognitive goals.
Decision Making, Control, and Concept Formation
Authors: Butz Martin V. , Kutter Esther F.
Published: July 2017

While attention controls the internal, mental focus of attention, motor control directs the bodily control focus. Our nervous system is structured in a cascade of interactive control loops, where the primary self-stabilizing control loops can be found directly in the body’s morphology and the muscles themselves. The hierarchical structure enables flexible and selective motor control and the invocation of motor primitives and motor complexes. The learning of motor primitives and complexes again adheres to certain computational systematicities. Redundant behavioral alternatives are encoded in an abstract manner, enabling fast habitual decision making and slower, more elaborated planning processes for realizing context-dependent behavior adaptations. On a higher level, behavior can be segmented into events, during which a particular behavior unfolds, and event boundaries, which characterize the beginning or the end of a behavior. Combinations of events and event boundaries yield event schemata. Hierarchical combinations of event schemata on shorter and longer time scales yield event taxonomies. When developing event boundary detectors, our mind begins to develop environmental conceptualizations. Evidence is available that suggests that such event-oriented conceptualizations are inherently semantic and closely related to linguistic, generative models. Thus, by optimizing behavioral versatility and developing progressively more abstract codes of environmental interactions and manipulations, cognitive encodings develop, which are supporting symbol grounding and grammatical language development.
Head of the Household
Authors: Swann Julian
Published: July 2017

Louis XIII, as head of the royal household, was expected to uphold his authority as supreme patriarch and yet his authority was constantly tested by his mother, brother, and extended family. His court was a hotbed of intrigue and it was constantly shaken by the impact of conspiracy and revolt. This chapter examines the nature of court life in an era of aristocratic military and political independence and explores the process by which the king, and especially his successor Louis XIV, would gradually impose a new model of political disgrace that would become a powerful tool for the management of court society. As they did so, subtle use of patronage and other signs of favour came to replace prison cells or the block as a means of upholding the royal authority.
Master and Servant
Authors: Swann Julian
Published: July 2017

In the summer of 1661, Nicolas Fouquet the charismatic surintendant des finances appointed by the recently deceased cardinal Mazarin was arrested on the orders of the young Louis XIV. His subsequent trial and imprisonment was a crucial turning point in the history of the monarchy. It marked the end of the era of minister-favourites and the establishment of a new governmental system in which the king acted as the point of focus for a personal monarchy, aided and abetted by the secretaries of state. This chapter examines that transition, and the relationship between the royal master and his ministerial servants, and explores the role of disgrace in the functioning of a political system that would endure in many of its defining features until the eve of the Revolution.
Of Secrets and Supper Parties
Authors: Swann Julian
Published: July 2017

The court of Louis XV has been depicted as if it was a dusty museum, re-enacting the rituals and ceremonies of the Sun King, but without any vitality as cultural pre-eminence passed to Paris. Using the perspective of disgrace, this chapter takes a fresh look at the court in the eighteenth century, and argues that Louis XV showed dexterity in managing his court using intermediaries and access to his person in intimate settings such as his famous supper parties. Versailles was not immune to change, and in the course of the king’s reign the court experienced a form of ‘politicization’ resulting from changing patterns of ministerial recruitment and the influence of the political crises in the parlements. The infamous Revolution of 1771 demonstrates how Louis XV used his power to divide the opposition to his policies and to uphold his position as the head of the House of Bourbon.
Emptying the Chamber Pot
Authors: Swann Julian
Published: July 2017

In popular fiction and many scholarly works, courtiers are represented as masters of the art of dissimulation, cynical and self-serving, ready to turn their backs on anyone who has lost royal favour. This chapter challenges those assumptions by looking at the reaction of family groups and wider networks of friendship or clientele to disgrace. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, families rose and fell as a kinship group, and when confronted by the disgrace of one of their members the collective response was to rally in order to save social, financial, and political status. Friendship too proved far more durable than the stereotype of the courtier might lead us to predict, and by examining the conventions, theory, and actual practice of friendship in times of adversity this chapter offers new insight into noble sociability.
Disgrace without Dishonour
Authors: Swann Julian
Published: July 2017

Under the Old Regime, as today, dictionary definitions saw disgrace as almost synonymous with dishonour. Yet no matter how painful the impact of the sovereign’s displeasure many victims were convinced that they were suffering in a higher cause and that their punishment was in no way dishonourable. Using the examples of disgraced bishops, officers in the army, and judges, this chapter examines how they looked to religious, classical, legal, and historical examples to defend actions that had incurred the king’s wrath. It suggests that conscience, models of Christian or professional virtue, and the law offered a powerful defence against the stigma of disgrace and contained within them a potential critique of the practice.
Introduction
Authors: Goodman Jessica
Published: July 2017

The Introduction sets out the two key contexts with which the book engages: studies of Goldoni’s time in Paris and studies of eighteenth-century theatre. It exposes the contradiction that is found in both Goldoni’s account of his Parisian career (his Mémoires and letters) and critical responses to that career, introduces the concept of gloire, and outlines the main questions surrounding authorial self-fashioning in the period. All this provides a context within which to evaluate Goldoni’s own trajectory from the perspective of his misunderstandings. The Introduction also includes an outline of the book and a summary of the chapters that follow.
Mapping Theatrical Paris
Authors: Goodman Jessica
Published: July 2017

This chapter begins a recontextualization of Goldoni’s Comédie-Italienne career with a panoramic view, analysing the position of the Italian theatre in the contemporary Parisian theatrical field. Original archive work provides the most comprehensive existing account of the theatre’s audiences and finances across the 1760s, and this account is compared to existing work on the Comédie-Française and the Opéra to create a clearer picture of the symbolic and commercial hierarchies within which the various Parisian theatres operated. In particular, the chapter explores the tension between symbolic and commercial status in the theatres of the period, and reveals that in contrast to the long-standing assumption that the Comédie-Italienne was less successful than the Comédie-Française, the Italian theatre was on a par with its rival.
Goldoni’s Parisian Career
Authors: Goodman Jessica
Published: July 2017

This chapter analyses the essential facts of Goldoni’s whole Parisian career as they can be gleaned from contemporary sources. It explores his public and critical success at the Comédie-Italienne, his involvement in other areas of the literary field, and his engagement with both the court and literary societies. It then considers the misunderstandings that conditioned how Goldoni moved between these different activities and presented them to his correspondents, and links these misunderstandings (including an inability to escape Italian stereotypes) to an outdated conception of what French literary success looked liked, which bore little relation to the more complex reality of the field outlined in Chapters 2–4.