bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Moralizing the Folk
Authors: Drake Jamil W.
Published: January 2022

Chapter 1 sets the tone of the book by discussing the early social scientific work of Howard Odum, a budding progressive white southern sociologist. Born in 1884 in Bethlehem, Georgia, Howard Odum organized his two dissertations at Clark and Columbia Universities around what he considered to be his special collection of black “folk” spirituals and other religious and “secular” expressions. Odum thought that the significance of the folk songs and expressions was not about preserving a “vanishing past.” Rather, as the chapter shows, he thought they were treasures that could solve the race problem in the American South by providing progressive reformers with a scientific knowledge of the collective mind, otherwise known as soul, of the black folk (note that the opening line of his dissertation is the title of this book: To Know the Soul of a People). This chapter shows that he used folk to frame religious expressions in order to show the inherited race traits of the black masses or unrefined people. It argues that the folk category used to frame religious expressions was designed to disclose the natural mental and moral deficits of the Black southerners, an underdeveloped population. And their religion was “folk” because it did not cultivate the necessary mental and moral equipment to be a self-controlled, dependable, and efficient laboring class. But his use of the folk, as this chapter notes, was an abstraction that obscured the everyday worlds of Black southerners and their religious cultures in the small towns in Jim Crow Georgia and Mississippi.
Assimilating the Folk
Authors: Drake Jamil W.
Published: January 2022

Chapter 2 chronicles the St. Helena study sponsored by University of North Carolina’s Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRSS) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) a year before the 1929 stock market crash. The St. Helena study was a comprehensive social scientific study that examined the Black yeoman farming families off the Carolina Coast. IRSS’s newly minted professor, Guy Benton Johnson, added to the field study by examining what he called the “folk” spirituals and beliefs of the families. Rejecting the African survivals thesis (à la J. G. Ballanta) and race traits (à la Howard Odum), Johnson instead argued that the Sea Island spirituals of the Black landowners were derived from white populations, dating back to the Protestant revivals and camp-meetings, particularly during the antebellum period. Johnson used the folk category to show how the Sea Island spirituals and broader revival Protestantism were products of their cultural and regional isolation from the modern worlds of transportation, radio, print culture, and motion pictures. His use of the folk was a part of the IRSS’s call for “social planning” to regionally develop the agricultural South, which included Black farmers, whom they considered invaluable to the region’s economic development. Examining the “Chapel Hill” group, “folk,” as used by Johnson, recycled racial hierarchy while seeking to privilege class and rural environment in the study of Black small landowners.
Medicalizing the Folk
Authors: Drake Jamil W.
Published: January 2022

Chapter 3 explores the fieldwork of Charles S. Johnson within the Julius Rosenwald Fund and United States Public Health Service’s syphilis treatment program for tenant farmers and sharecroppers in Macon County, Alabama, during the early years of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. A Black sociologist and chair of the Social Science Department at Fisk University, Johnson used the folk category to challenge the idea that America did not have a peasant class and a feudal order in the Jim Crow South. He and members affiliated with Fisk University documented the conjure practices and “social taboos” among tenant farmers and sharecroppers. Johnson concluded that these spiritual practices and social customs were indicators that these poor workers occupied a lower stage of mental and moral development. Rejecting racial traits, Johnson and his research team focused on the racial prejudice and cotton system that stunted not only their religion, but equally, their health maturation. Moreover, he concluded that their folk religion was outside modern health and familial structure. Johnson joined the Rosenwald Fund in an effort to reform their folk religion by organizing the treatment program to extend modern healthcare to them. But Johnson recycled the racial logics that he sought to get away from by accenting their immoral sexual habits, “bad” family structure, and outmoded beliefs. This chapter argues that he considered the religion of Black rural “folk” to have developed in isolated from modern medicine as well as proper forms of family and sex. He concluded that it hindered their mental, moral, and medicinal progress.
Conclusion
Authors: Drake Jamil W.
Published: January 2022

This chapter concludes with the importance of religion in shaping the perceptions of the Black poor in American social and political thought. This importance was captured in the use of the folk category by social scientists in the early twentieth century. But the Conclusion gestures toward the significance of the book by showing how the creation of the southern folk was the precursor to the underclass concept in the latter twentieth century. Famed journalist Nicholas Lemann explained that to understand the urban underclass in Chicago required knowledge about the cultural behavioral pathologies developed in rural Mississippi. Lemann posits a “southern continuity” narrative to understand the urban poor. In the end, the folk category in the social sciences was the part of the moral and cultural framing of the Black poor that took attention away from the deeper structural issues that perennially plagued the Black and lower-class communities.
Birdsong over the trenches
Authors: Guida Michael
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines the importance of listening in the trench environment of the Western Front to argue that in spite of the disorder and cacophonous noise, and perhaps because of it, soldiers drew out of the air the chiming musicality of birdsong. They found such sounds cleared and purified the defiled atmospheres of the frontline and provided solace and a sense of future continuity that they might be part of. The chapter shows how an appreciation of the sounds of the many species of bird living close to soldiers was cultivated at the same time as knowledge of the sounds of exploding weaponry. The sounds of danger and the sounds of relief were learned together, and both were needed for survival. The familiar rituals of the lark ascending in the morning and the nightingale’s liquid notes in the darkness gave order and rhythm to the unpredictable trench scene.
Pastoral quietude for shell shock and national recovery
Authors: Guida Michael
Published: January 2022

The pastoral quietude emanating from the English countryside was used as a primary therapeutic milieu for soldiers and the nation in recovery after WWI. The archives of Enham Village Centre in Hampshire, a model village experiment for ordinary ex-servicemen, have been brought to light to show how country peace and quiet was part of a national ideology not just for soldiers but for all those shocked by world conflict. Quiet as a sonic category has received scant attention in scholarship. Yet, here its perception and its construction articulate more than simply an absence of meaningful sound. Quiet was a container within which small sounds could expand and take on significant meanings. When the invention of the Armistice silence brought so many together to pause and remember, even those two sacred minutes were given over to the sound of leaves and pigeon wings to inhabit.
Broadcasting nature
Authors: Guida Michael
Published: January 2022

The BBC’s leading figure, John Reith, formulated a vision of broadcasting that was underpinned by the idea that the medium of radio and its programme content could give the nation access to sublime earthly and cosmic silences. In a new reading of the well-known live nightingale transmissions that from 1924 became an annual event every May, the paradox of a silent broadcasting system is explored. Reith, who described the nightingale’s song as a silence that the busy world craved, also saw it as symbolic of the culturally unifying force that his public service broadcasting should be, with an emotional appeal to every citizen. More than this, Reith mixed scientific and mystical ideas to articulate his belief that radio waves connected all humans to the perfect stillness of the heavens and the grand scheme of nature, presided over by a silent God.
The Archeology and History of Palmyra
Authors: Raja Rubina
Published: January 2022

This chapter introduces Palmyra with Pliny’s famous description of the city as a place “having a destiny of its own.” Palmyra—once known as Tadmor—is placed in its historical and geographical context, and the importance of its location as an oasis in the desert is examined, followed by a brief overview of Palmyrene history from before the Romans. Palmyra’s rise to power under the Romans is examined, and key themes, ideas, and terminologies are introduced. This is followed by an overview of Zenobia’s rebellion, together with a discussion of the available written sources and an overview of the impact Zenobia has had on wider historiographical discourse around Palmyra.The chapter closes with a discussion of the city’s “rediscovery” by Europeans and of Palmyra in modern times.
Family Networks
Authors: Raja Rubina
Published: January 2022

The funerary sphere from Palmyra provides us with unique insights into the world of the dead and therefore the wider values and identities of Palmyrene society. This chapter offers a detailed insight into the importance of Palmyra’s wealth of funerary sculpture, from necropoleis such as the tower tombs, hypogea, and temple or house tombs, to the incredible inscriptions and funerary portraits that have survived. This chapter outlines the evidence for what we know of Palmyrene treatment of the dead and offers an in-depth account of Palmyrene funerary monuments. Analysis is made of the different kinds of funerary reliefs such as loculus reliefs, sarcophagi, and banqueting reliefs, together with a discussion of the 1,360 funerary inscriptions collected from Palmyra. Through this evidence from the world of the dead, the chapter offers a new and more intimate understanding of ancient Palmyra and its family networks.
Changing Ties
Authors: Raja Rubina
Published: January 2022

This chapter explores the development of Palmyra from the point at which the city was sacked for a second time by Aurelian, in 273 CE, to the city’s “rediscovery” by Europeans in the seventeenth century. Based on materials indicating a continuation of activity at cult sites and the construction of new buildings, there is evidence of the ongoing inhabitation and development of the city as it changed—from metropolis to military garrison, and from the worship of a range of different deities, through Christianity, to Islam—tracing the significant alteration that occurred in the city’s networks with the wider region. The chapter traces the city’s changing fortunes after the Umayyad period and looks at fleeting references to both Palmyra and Zenobia in medieval written sources from Western Europe before examining the earliest Western expeditions to Palmyra in Early Modern times, the art work and textual sources arising from these visits, and the first archeological work at the site.
Soup Is an Anagram of Opus
Authors: Noë Alva
Published: January 2022

This chapter discusses the Andy Warhol exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 2015. In particular, it provides commentary on Warhol's Campbell's soup can paintings. First painted and shown in 1962, in Los Angeles, the thirty-two paintings have seldom been brought together for display. Warhol worked not from actual cans with actual labels but from promotional materials that Campbell's sent out. In other words, these are not so much pictures of either cans or labels as they are reproductions or copies of the commercial graphics itself, blending design and text. At least part of what is put on display, part of what is exhibited in a condensed form, is this distinctive and recognizable form of collector's mentality. Warhol is putting the human mind, or at least one of its species, on exhibition. It is not about soup cans; it is not about pop culture. It is about us.
I Am Sitting in a Room
Authors: Noë Alva
Published: January 2022

This chapter analyzes Alvin Lucier’s performance of his twentieth-century masterpiece, “I Am Sitting in a Room. The performer—in this case the composer himself—records his voice making a statement about what he is doing. This is then played back and recorded again. This new recording is then played back and recorded again. Each playback sounds like a pretty faithful rendition of what came before. After about sixteen rounds of this, however, what the audience is given is sound that bears no recognizable relation to the original utterance. The subtle degradations of each recording cycle get compounded in the iteration and reiteration. At the end one must wonder: are we getting a degraded signal, or is the final message a signal imbued with unimagined new content—a disclosure of the room's very own resonant nature, as the artist himself suggests, or of the true essence of sound, or, indeed, of speech? The composition is also an interesting example of the way technology and art work together. Tape is an old technology, yet the work would be impossible without tape recording. In a way, this is a kind of investigation of what tape recording actually is.
Forty Speakers in a Room
Authors: Noë Alva
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines Janet Cardiff’s 2001 art installation, The Forty Part Motet, which was on view at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, in the winter of 2017. In this art installation, one enters the room and encounters forty speakers, arranged in an oval, playing a recording of the Salisbury Cathedral Choir singing “Spem in alium” (Hope in any other), which was composed by the English composer Thomas Tallis in 1556. One could opt to sit in the middle of the room and listen to the wall of sound created by the joint effect of each speaker, but one could also move about the room, causing one voice to pop out and another to be drowned out. In this way, the work invites the audience not only to enjoy the music but to remix it by sampling voices. The whole work is less an opportunity for deep listening than it is an opportunity for manipulating sound by moving around. The work itself is a supercharged technical remaking of the music. And the distortions one produces through one's own movements are the direct result of the fact that recording technology makes separate what was, in the making, collective.
Rock Art
Authors: Noë Alva
Published: January 2022

This chapter focuses on Kevin Sudeith’s rock carvings, which he refers to as petroglyphs. There is something straight-shooting and straightforward about Sudeith’s work. The figures are intelligible and the sentiments that lie behind them are suitable for children and grandparents—downright patriotic, almost. But spend a bit more time in the space carved out by Sudeith’s work and the postmodern character of his work, along with its bright wit, jumps into focus. Sudeith’s work not only is site-specific but makes unusually specific geological and cultural demands. First, he had to find good boulders in more or less accessible locations. Second, he had to get permission to make an artwork out of them. The rocks may be on public or private land. What is required, third, is not just permission to make the work but permission to make a work that will take months to complete and so will require the artist's long-term presence on the land and, in effect, in the community. The very project, then, is a social experiment; the artist works with rock and carving, but he also works with this more immaterial material of delicate social relations and community.
Cheap Thrills at the Whitney
Authors: Noë Alva
Published: January 2022

This chapter addresses Jeff Koons’s work, which was on displayed at the old Whitney Museum of American Art in 2015. The Koons show puts lots of sex and celebrity on display. Against the background of the sad details of Koons’s failed marriage to the ready-made love of his life, the porn icon La Cicciolina, the exhibition even puts the tragic on display. Each of his pieces comes packaged, as it were, with important questions for the audience to ask about their feelings about toys, or cheap consumer goods, or luxury and celebrity. Indeed, Koons attends not only to the material detail but to the intellectual detail as well. Ultimately, however, what makes Koons’s work so accessible and so likable is not its engagement with interesting questions but its pornographic pandering. It provides cheap thrills.
Making the Work Work
Authors: Noë Alva
Published: January 2022

This chapter reflects on an article in the New York Times that highlighted the concern of museum curators and event planners with finding ways to make works of art accessible to the viewing public. The director of Harvard's Peabody Museum has turned to brain science for clues to the way art manages—or, as is often the case, fails to manage—to ignite the imagination and pleasure centers of the viewing public. The chapter argues that the turn to neuroscience is an abdication of the museum's real mission, which is not to cause this or that to happen in the brains of unsuspecting visitors but rather to afford motivated, interested, curious individuals the opportunity to appreciate what is on display. It then looks at the Matisse/Diebenkorn exhibition that was on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2017. The logic of the comparison between the two is compelling. Henri Matisse was one of Richard Diebenkorn's heroes; Diebenkorn's encounters with the senior artist's work made an impression, not only in the younger artist's rumination but also in the work itself.
The Camera and the Dance
Authors: Noë Alva
Published: January 2022

This chapter explores the relationship between the camera and dance. As a general rule, film destroys dance. Dance as a performance is a contact sport, an encounter of audience and performers. One cannot film it, because all one can film is something that can be seen. When it comes to dance, it is not what one sees but the seeing itself that is where the action is. The chapter then considers Wim Wenders's Academy Award–nominated film Pina: Dance, Dance, Otherwise We Are Lost, which contains a segment of Lutz Förster's marvelous solo from Bausch's Für die Kinder von Gestern, Heute und Morgen (For the Children of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow). Dance for film is another story altogether. For these are works where the camera is itself choreographed by the dance itself, or rather, it is a collaboration, a duet, between the dancer and the camera. Dance on film, in contrast with dance for film, is usually a disappointment.
This Is No Zoo
Authors: Noë Alva
Published: January 2022

This chapter reviews the collection of dioramas at the Civic Museum of Natural History in Milan. Diorama dates back to the era before widespread access to color photography, not to mention to a time when free digital access to information and graphical media would have been considered science fiction. Indeed, everything one sees in a diorama is a collaboration of science and craft or science and art. Yet the diorama form is very much alive and well in natural history museums around the world. The chapter then considers the role of the plane of glass that separates the audience from the world of the diorama. Ultimately, it may be that the quaintness and old-world quality of dioramas have something to do with the way they invite pretend to happen, and with it play. This may also explain the remarkable fact that, despite their quaintness, diorama thrives as an exhibition mode in today's high-tech culture.
Conclusion
Authors: Zaharna R.S.
Published: January 2022

The conclusion brings readers full circle from the all-thumbs, limited view of communication outlined in Chapter 1 to a mindset of connectivity that views the logics working in unison to enhance our capacity for global collaboration. This final chapter highlights key take-away points for Boundary Spanners and suggests an agenda for future research and practice of humanity-centered diplomacies. Points discussed include adopting a humanity-level perspective as the key to cultivating a mindset of connectivity; developing a proficiency across the three logics, especially in areas that have been overshadowed by dominant understandings of global communication and public diplomacy; blending the communication logics, rather than segmenting publics, to navigate the twin challenge of global interconnectivity and diversity; moving from a capacity to cooperate to a capacity for collaboration; searching for commonality; and expanding humanity-centered public diplomacy to a global mandate for problem-solving, identity mediation, and empathetic public diplomacy.
Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy
Authors: Barnhill Anne , Bonotti Matteo
Published: January 2022

This book develops a ‘public reason approach’ to healthy eating efforts. Public reason is the view that political rules are legitimate only if they are justified on the basis of reasons that are public, i.e. reasons that all citizens can accept at some level of idealization despite their different values and worldviews. The book applies the idea of public reason to healthy eating efforts and develops a framework that can be used in the assessment of such efforts in the real world. By doing so, the book adopts a ‘farm to fork’ approach to the ethics of healthy eating efforts: it engages with rather abstract theories and debates in political philosophy, considers the implications of different theoretical positions for healthy eating efforts, and then develops a concrete tool for assessing healthy eating efforts that will be of interest to both scholars and policymakers. The book also serves another purpose: it brings not just public reason but political philosophy more generally to bear on healthy eating efforts and the debates about it. This will be of interest to two audiences. The first audience consists of those who are familiar with healthy eating efforts but may have little experience with political philosophy—it might include public health researchers and practitioners, public health ethicists, and other researchers who take an interest in healthy eating efforts. The second audience comprises political philosophers, who will be already familiar with the concepts and theoretical debates the book considers but may find their concrete application to healthy eating efforts to be of interest.
Introduction
Authors: Barnhill Anne , Bonotti Matteo
Published: January 2022

The introduction illustrates how contemporary states are increasingly adopting efforts aimed at changing people’s dietary habits, such as sugary drink taxes and food bans. These kinds of measures have often been criticized as instances of government paternalism, i.e. efforts aiming to make people better off that are motivated by a negative judgment of the individual and/or interfere with their freedom without their consent. The introduction explains how the book moves away from this focus and examines instead healthy eating efforts through the lens of public reason. According to this view, healthy eating efforts should be publicly justified based on reasons that all citizens of a liberal society could accept at some level of idealization despite their diverse conceptions of the good. The introduction concludes by providing a roadmap of the book.
Healthy Eating Efforts and Millian Liberalism
Authors: Barnhill Anne , Bonotti Matteo
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines the implications of John Stuart Mill’s liberalism for healthy eating efforts. Mill is one of the key representatives of perfectionist liberalism, a strand in liberalism that is centred around the value of individual autonomy and the importance for the state to legislate in ways that advance citizens’ autonomous flourishing in all aspects of their lives. Mill’s ideas are often appealed to by critics of state paternalism, including those who challenge healthy eating efforts. First, the chapter explores whether and to what extent Mill’s ‘harm principle’ justifies social and legal non-paternalistic penalties against unhealthy eaters. Second, it shows that Mill’s account warrants taxing unhealthy foods, thus de facto justifying some degree of paternalism in the area of healthy eating policy. Finally, it argues that Mill’s account warrants some restrictions on food advertising and justifies various forms of food labelling.
Healthy Eating Efforts and Paternalism
Authors: Barnhill Anne , Bonotti Matteo
Published: January 2022

This chapter introduces and critically examines debates about paternalism and healthy eating efforts in bioethics and political philosophy. These debates normally emphasize views about autonomy, including controversial substantive views about the importance of autonomy in the good life. The chapter focuses instead on an objection to paternalism advanced by Jonathan Quong which is not rooted in a perfectionist view about the importance of autonomy but instead in the Rawlsian demand that citizens ought to be regarded as free and equal, and as capable of forming, revising, and rationally pursuing a conception of the good. The chapter critically evaluates Quong’s view in relation to healthy eating efforts. Contrary to Quong, who argues that the Rawlsian ideal requires policymakers to assume that citizens always behave rationally, the chapter contends that regarding citizens as free and equal does not require this but instead requires recognizing and respecting diverse conceptions of the good and diverse perspectives and practises vis-à-vis eating and health.
Designing Publicly Justified Healthy Eating Efforts
Authors: Barnhill Anne , Bonotti Matteo
Published: January 2022

This chapter develops an ethics framework that can be used by public health policymakers, and others, to help them to navigate the complex empirical and moral issues surrounding healthy eating efforts discussed in the previous chapters. First, the chapter sketches a ‘public reason framework for healthy eating efforts’ that public health officials, legislators, and others can use to assess proposed or existing healthy eating efforts. This framework consists of questions that public health officials and legislators should ask themselves when designing new healthy eating efforts, or evaluating existing ones with an eye toward reforming or repealing them if necessary. Second, the chapter makes recommendations about institutionalizing the use of this framework (and, by extension, institutionalizing the public justification of healthy eating efforts), by incorporating into policymaking a process of consultation and deliberation that includes public health officials, ordinary citizens, advocacy groups, and representatives of affected groups.
Push
Authors: D'Errico Mike
Published: January 2022

This book shows how changes in music software design in the first decades of the twenty-first century shaped the production techniques and performance practices of artists across media, from hip-hop and electronic dance music to video games and mobile apps. Emerging alongside developments in digital music distribution such as peer-to-peer file sharing and the MP3 format, digital audio workstations (DAWs) such as FL Studio and Ableton’s Live encouraged rapid music-creation workflows through flashy, user-friendly interfaces. Meanwhile, software such as Avid’s Pro Tools attempted to protect its status as the industry-standard “professional” DAW by incorporating design elements from predigital technologies. Other software, such as Cycling ’74’s Max, asserted its alterity to “commercial” DAWs by offering users just a blank screen. The book examines the social, cultural, and political values designed into music software and how those become embodied by musical communities through production and performance. It reveals ties between maximalist design in FL Studio, skeuomorphic design in Pro Tools, and gender inequity in the music products industry. It connects the computational thinking required by Max and iZotope’s innovations in artificial intelligence with the cultural politics of Silicon Valley’s “design thinking.” Finally, it examines what happens when software becomes hardware and users externalize their screens using musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) controllers, mobile media, and video-game controllers. Amid the perpetual upgrade culture of music technology, Push the book provides a model for understanding software as a microcosm for the increasing convergence of globalization, neoliberal capitalism, and techno-utopianism that has come to define our digital lives.
Controller Cultures
Authors: D'Errico Mike
Published: January 2022

Throughout the history of hip-hop and EDM, the process of mixing vinyl records between two turntable decks has become standard practice for DJs, enhancing the perceived “live” presence of the DJ. However, the increasing presence of software in the DJ booth has thrown into question the nature of performance within dance music communities. In an attempt to heighten the sense of physicality when working with seemingly intangible software, producers and DJs have increasingly integrated button-based hardware “controllers” into their creative workflows. This chapter makes the connection between musical controllers and video game controllers, examining how hardware peripherals have allowed musicians to physically embody the gestural affordances of software. Combining design analyses of MIDI devices and game controllers with analyses of performance techniques from electronic musicians, the chapter posits the shift from “turntablism” to “controllerism” as exemplary of trends toward the emergence of a “controller culture” more broadly.
There’s an App for That
Authors: D'Errico Mike
Published: January 2022

In addition to altering the everyday bodily comportments and embodied relationships between individuals and technology, mobile interfaces reconfigure practices of digital labor. As the rhetoric of personal productivity continuously embeds itself into the everyday practice of ubiquitous computing, the line between individual creativity and crowdfunded, corporate labor becomes increasingly blurred. Through design analyses of mobile music-making apps, this chapter examines two parallel developments in “upgrade culture”—downloadable content (DLC) in digital games, and the app model of digital distribution. Together, these phenomena reify an ideology of technological solutionism, in which users are encouraged to consume as many digital commodities as possible for their purported abilities to solve virtually any task. In turn, companies use this ideology to encourage free labor among their consumers, who work under the guise of creativity and play within a perceptibly unrestricted virtual community.
Worlds of Sound
Authors: D'Errico Mike
Published: January 2022

In his 1996 talk “Generative Music,” Brian Eno describes the principle that formed the basis of his philosophy of ambient music: “the idea that it’s possible to think of a system or a set of rules which once set in motion will create music for you.” With the rise of procedural generation in media design, more broadly, this desire for self-generating “environments” would seemingly materialize in the multisensory space of video games. Through an examination of “indie” games such as Minecraft, Proteus, and Fract OSC, this chapter highlights how the application of generative music across media has opened up new forms of HCI— defined here as emergent interfaces. Through analyses of sound design practices in the Unity game engine, the chapter shows how emergent interfaces encourage dynamic, relational modes of HCI in which sound heightens the players’ ethical sense of embodied self in the fragile ecology of the (virtual) world.
Deep Listening
Authors: D'Errico Mike
Published: January 2022

Throughout the history of the recording industry, the creative practices of mixing and mastering engineers were viewed simultaneously as a dark art and a highly specialized skill set requiring years of training in critical listening. In the 2010s, the implementation of AI algorithms and deep learning techniques in mixing and mastering plug-ins made these techniques available to casual users with a single button click. This chapter surveys the emergence of automation in the creative workflows of music producers, from AI drum machines and composition algorithms to the mixing and mastering “assistants” available in iZotope’s suite of plug-ins. How have automated tools for music composition, postproduction, and distribution affected divisions of labor in the recording industry? Further, how might the ocular-centric design of software plug-ins shape the nature of musical listening, especially amid twenty-first-century debates about automation and digital surveillance?
Romanticism: The Retreat to Subjectivity
Authors: Stewart Jon
Published: January 2022

Chapter 3 is dedicated to exploring Hegel’s considerations of religion as a reaction to some key trends found in the Romantic movement. Although Romanticism is usually understood as a critical response to the Enlightenment, it can in many ways be seen as a natural continuation of it. The chapter begins with a discussion of the notion of religion found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s portrayal of the nameless Savoyard priest from Book IV of Emile. The Savoyard priest rejects all forms of academic philosophy and theology. Instead, he finds the true locus of religion in the conscience of the individual. A section is dedicated to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Herr Moses Mendelssohn from 1785. Ultimately rationalist and scientific explanations are, for Jacobi, only a second-order kind of knowing. According to Jacobi, there is a higher knowing or immediate certainty that we call ‘faith’. Hegel argues that this distinction between immediate and mediated knowledge breaks down when one begins to examine it in more detail since the two are dialectically related. An account is given of Schleiermacher’s theory of intuition and immediate feeling. Hegel believes that the Romantic movement reduces faith to something inward and subjective. By contrast, he thinks that the proper conception of faith is one that recognizes some objective external doctrine. Without this, religion reduces to a form of relativism.
Reason’s End
Authors: Gauthier David
Published: January 2022

This essay, previously unpublished, develops a kind of “Kantian naturalism” in a conversation with some of the work of the late Jean Hampton. It begins with a quotation from Kant expressing admiration and awe for the moral law within us. Kant’s conception of reason is captured in the felicitous phrasing of Jean Hampton, who claims that the deliverances of reason possess “objective normative authority”, and “motivational force” in virtue of their authority. The author seeks to find a place for both assertoric and categorical imperatives within an account of practical or deliberative rationality that assumes throughout the first-person stance. Each person achieves a dignity through her capacity to act on the assertoric imperatives of fulfilment, constructing for herself a conception of good, so each achieves a further dignity through her capacity to govern herself by the categorical imperatives of agreement, committing herself to cooperate with others whom she respects as she respects herself. These are the gifts of reason. Hampton wanted to explain “what it means to say that reason is the hallmark of our humanity”. The meaning is in the gifts.
Friends, Reasons, and Morals
Authors: Gauthier David
Published: January 2022

In this chapter, the author revises some of his earlier views. He argues that moral reasons apply to persons who recognize the benefits of the forms of social cooperation that it helps to make possible. This view enables us to determine morality’s basic requirements—that no one makes herself better off by worsening the situation of her fellows, and that each deals fairly with others in cooperating for mutual fulfilment. And this view also enables us to explain the rational hold of morality—to show why reasons apply to almost everybody. This account does not treat the good of morality as merely instrumental. Moral requirements contribute to our good life, but in following them we are not seeking that good life but respecting others as ends.
The Pontic Coast
Authors: Mitford Timothy Bruce
Published: January 2022

Description of Roman garrisons spread along the Pontic coast from Trapezus to Pityus below the Caucasus. Arrian’s voyage and inspections of personnel and forts, at Hyssou Limen, Apsarus, Phasis, and Sebastopolis; and visits to Athenai, with a shipwreck, and Chobus. The route from Colchis to Iberia, the Abkhazian Wall, the Caucasus passes, and the German assault in 1942.
The Two Davids and Australian Materialism
Authors: Fisher A. R. J.
Published: January 2022

This chapter by Fisher continues the theme of the relation between Armstrong and Lewis, only Fisher casts the net far wider. He begins by arguing that there were at least two different lines of influence from early twentieth-century behaviourism to the identity theory: one through logical positivism and the other through ordinary language philosophy, the latter involving Place and Smart, and Lewis and Armstrong. It was Armstrong and Lewis who were to have a profound influence on subsequent developments in analytic philosophy, both methodologically and in metaphysics, and it is for this reason that Fisher devotes the rest of his chapter to tracing the origins of their theories of mind and the manner in which the emphases and methodologies deployed in developing their respective theories became the hallmarks of their wider impact on analytic philosophy.
Does A Materialist Theory of the Mind Give Us a Reply to the Knowledge Argument?
Authors: Jackson Frank
Published: January 2022

This chapter by Jackson provides his reply to his famous knowledge argument against physicalism by using Armstrong-influenced discussions of colour and of perception, arguing that Armstrong’s treatment of perception in terms of the acquisition of belief is along the right lines but needs to be modified. One should think of perceptual experiences as putative responses to the world that by their very nature urge a view about how the world is. Experiences as of an object’s surface being a certain colour are, accordingly, states that urge that the object’s surface is a certain way, and an object will have that colour just if its surface is the way in question. The way itself is understood as a location in a certain kind of similarity matrix. The chapter explains Jackson’s view and discusses why he dissents from Armstrong’s well-known version of physical realism about colour, which holds that colours are physical properties of, or are physical properties closely associated with, objects’ surfaces (in the case of surface colour), reflectance profiles as it might be.
Introspection and Distinctness
Authors: Cox Ryan
Published: January 2022

This chapter deals with Armstrong’s self-scanning theory of self-knowledge. Armstrong held the view that when we know that we are in some mental state, it’s a question of scanning our own internal states. The chapter claims that, for Armstrong, this follows from a combination of a traditional view of perception, and something like the central-state materialist view that mental states are internal states of the brain. This made Armstrong very keen to reject another traditional view, namely, that we have incorrigible access to our own mental states. He rejected this, this chapter states, because he thought if our access were incorrigible, this would be inconsistent with this combination of views. This leads to Armstrong’s own argument for why we should expect our beliefs about our own mental states to be fallible, which hangs on the idea that our beliefs about mental states, and the states they are beliefs about are distinct, given Hume’s dictum that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. The chapter then considers the various ways in which we might think about the idea of distinctness, and contrasts Armstrong’s view with Shoemaker’s view, according to which they are not distinct.
Armstrong’s Just-so Story about Consciousness
Authors: Stoljar Daniel
Published: January 2022

This chapter argues that there is a fascinating tension between Armstrong’s perceptual or self-scanning model of introspection, and his account of the function of consciousness. The account of the function of consciousness is roughly that consciousness is necessary for purposive thought: in order to think things through, we must keep track of and be aware of our various thoughts. Thus, Armstrong claims it’s necessary that, if we have purposive thought, we are conscious. But then it looks like it’s a kind of constraint on rationality that we are aware of our thoughts—that’s what it takes to have rational thought. The price, for Armstrong, of thinking this is that the idea that it is a constraint on rationality that we are in touch with our thoughts is precisely a leading contender for capturing the denial of the self-scanning view. The chapter identifies just such a problem in later discussions of introspection and concludes with a general worry about any attempt to give an account of consciousness in terms of being informationally sensitive to our own states—surely such sensitivity could be achieved at the sub-personal level.
Armstrong’s Revenge
Authors: Heil John
Published: January 2022

This chapter distinguishes two species of functionalism: what Ned Block called, ‘functional specifier functionalism’ (now often called ‘realizer functionalism’) and ‘functional identity functionalism’ (now often called ‘role functionalism’). The first species of functionalism was defended by Armstrong and by David Lewis, and remains the dominant strain in Australian philosophy of mind. The second species became dominant in the US. A range of problems in the philosophy of mind over the last forty years stemming from the latter’s dominance are discussed. Most notably, issues about mental causation do not arise for Armstrong and Lewis because mental states literally are the causally efficacious states that play functional roles. In contrast, on the second view, mental states are higher-order states, such as ‘the state of having a state that plays a particular role’ the efficacy if which is dubitable. Heil argues that problems for the former view can be dealt with by modifying it to incorporate an account of dispositions traceable to C. B. Martin, according to which dispositions are identified with their categorical bases. Mental states are first-order states, not abstract states of being in some state that satisfies a particular functional specification, but dispositions with dispositional profiles that correspond to functional specifications. The chapter concludes by arguing that this modification has the potential to support a straightforward identification of experiential states with neurological states that avoids the pitfalls of previous attempts to do this.
Credit Intelligence & Modelling
Authors: Anderson Raymond A.
Published: January 2022

This book, “Forest Paths” for short, started as a detailed guide for the construction of predictive models for credit and other risk assessment, for use in big-bank retail lending. It became a textbook covering credit processes (from marketing through to fraud), bureau and rating agencies, and various tools. Included are detailed histories (economics, statistics, social science}, which much referencing. It is unique in the field, with chatpers’-end questions. The primary target market is corporate and academic, but much would be of interest to a broader audience. There are eight modules: 1) an introduction to credit risk assessment and predictive modelling; 2) micro-histories of credit, credit intelligence, credit scoring, plus industrial revolutions, economic ups and downs, and both personal registration and identification; 4) mathematical and statistical tools used to develop and assess predictive models; 5) project management and data assembly; 6) data preparation from sampling to reject inference; 7) model training through to implementation; and 8) appendices, including an extensive glossary, bibliography, and index. Although the focus is credit risk, especially in the retail consumer and small-business segments, many concepts are common across disciplines as diverse as psychology, biology, engineering, and computer science, whether academic research or practical use. It also covers issues relating to the use of machine learning for credit risk assessment. Most of the focus is on traditional modelling techniques, but the increasing use of machine learning is recognised, as are its limitations. It is hoped that the contents will inform both camps.
The Dawn of Credit Scoring
Authors: Anderson Raymond A.
Published: January 2022

The history of credit scoring, a recent phenomenon that started with judgmental rules and pointing systems, and only much later became empirical, whether to assess consumers or businesses. (1)Before statistics—expert models in the 1930s, first with Spiegel mail order and the American Federal Housing Association. (2)Statistical experiments—David Durand with car loans in ‘41, and Eldon Wonderlic at Household Finance Corp. in ‘46. (3)Scorecard vendors—Fair Isaac Co (FICO) developed its first scorecard for American Investment Co, a small-loan lender that was implemented in 1960. Other companies emerged, including Management Decision Systems, Scorelink and Scorex. (4)Corporate modelling—organizations focused on wholesale and business markets, including JP Morgan, Kealhofer, McQuown, Vašíček (KMV) and Moody’s Analytics, which were often the pioneers behind specific rating methodologies. (5)Regulation—both limiting and promoting the use of rating/scoring methodologies, including privacy and anti-discrimination legislation, Basel II and IFRS 9.
Practical Application
Authors: Anderson Raymond A.
Published: January 2022

This chapter provides further practical detail where prior theoretical background was insufficient but focused on binary categorization. (1) Data transformation—i) rescaling—mathematical transformations applied directly to predictors {min-max, log/exponent, power/root, theoretical distribution &c}; ii) discretization—subject counts allow {dummy variables, weights of evidence, piecewise}. (2) Characteristic assessments—more specifics around use for discretized predictors and binary targets {weight of evidence, information value, population stability index, chi-square}. (3) Model assessments—like (2), but for assessing model outputs {Lorenz curve, Gini coefficients, cumulative accuracy profile, divergence statistic}. (4) Odds and sods—measures that do not fit nicely elsewhere, like both subject-level and naïve accuracy based on log-likelihoods, and Calinski–Harabasz statistic to identify clusters based on model outputs {e.g. scores}. Methods for calculating Gini coefficients’ variance are also included.
Data Acquisition—Observation
Authors: Anderson Raymond A.
Published: January 2022

First of four chapters covering data assembly, being i) observation (predictors); ii) performance (target); iii) target definition; iv) data merge. (1) Make a plan—finalize the what, where, who and how of data, especially as regards internal and external data sources and how subject-level data will be matched. (2) Gather—identify key fields and determine what data aggregates are required, set retention rules and obtain retrospective histories from external sources. (3) Reduce—identify predictors to be dropped or ignored, especially those un- or under-populated, unpredictive, proscribed, highly correlated and … those populated after the decision was made. (4) Cleanse—individual records that are out-of-scope, underpopulated, and duplicates. Mention is also made of the treatment of outliers for continuous targets and of inconsistencies within the data {e.g. varying codes by time or source}. (5) Check—ensure file contents are consistent with expectations.