bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Baroque Violin & Viola, vol. II
Authors: Reiter Walter S.
Published: January 2022

The Early Music revival has had far-reaching consequences on how music of the past is performed, both by specialists and non-specialists. This timely book is a practical step-by-step course of lessons for violinists and violists in both these categories, covering the interpretation, technique, culture and historical background of the Baroque violin repertoire. Written by a violinist and teacher specializing in Baroque music over many years, it guides readers from the basics (how to hold the violin) to Bach, via music from a wide variety of styles. Avoiding obscure musicological jargon, it is eminently readable and accessible. Packed with information, detailed observations on the music under discussion and relevant quotations from historical and contemporary sources, it covers everything the Baroque violin student should know and may be considered the equivalent of two to three years of individual lessons. The book contains over 100 exercises devised for and tested on students over the years. The author’s holistic approach is evident through the exercises aimed at bringing out the individual voice of each student, and his insistence that what happens within, the identification and manipulation of affects, is a vital part of successful performance. Imitating the voice, both spoken and sung, is a constant theme, beginning with the simple device of playing words. There are fifty lessons, including five Ornamentation Modules and ones on specific topics: temperament, rhetoric, the affects, etc. All the music, transcribed for both violin and viola, is downloadable from the website, where there is also a series of videos.
Stepping Back in Time
Authors: Reiter Walter S.
Published: January 2022

The interpretation of early seventeenth-century sonatas involves the use of specific skills foreign to today’s conservatory-trained musician. Developing basic improvisational skills entails learning to dare: as a warm-up, specially devised note patterns are applied to a simple scale and transposed into other keys. The art of playing divisions is defined as “the spontaneous dividing up of a single note into several shorter notes.” Numerous sources help us to learn this skill, as they did at the time. Ganassi’s Fontegara is recommended as an initial source to develop fluency in divisions within specified intervals; suggestions are given as to how to practice them. The importance of learning to read seventeenth-century music from facsimiles is emphasized and the old ‘diamond’ notation explained. Divisions underwent a stylistic evolution toward 1600: Bassano’s divisions and cadences, more appropriate to the early sonata repertoire, are thoroughly explored and Virgiliano’s Rules are quoted in full and discussed.
“The Noble Manner of Singing”
Authors: Reiter Walter S.
Published: January 2022

As no treatise on violin playing exists from this time, the Preface to Giulio Caccini’s Nuove Musiche (1602), emphasizing music’s “power to move the affections of the soul,” is an invaluable source of information on contemporary expression. Caccini shuns long, distracting passaggi, advocating instead specific expressive devices. These include the intonatio, the “growing and diminishing of the voice” and exclamations of varying intensity. A gruppo enhances a cadence and a cascata is a series of freely falling notes. Rhythmic alteration adds interest to equal notes and sprezzatura implies, among other things, “not submitting oneself to strict rhythm.” Some of these devices are here ‘translated’ into terms of violin technique by means of exercises: the trillo, an ornament on a single note, translates as a bow vibrato or staccato. Caccini’s annotated madrigal “Deh, dove son fuggiti” is reproduced in full as a piece pointing the way to the earliest violin sonatas.
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber: The Mystery Sonatas
Authors: Reiter Walter S.
Published: January 2022

The lesson opens with a lengthy discussion on scordatura, the reasons for it, problems associated with it, and advice on how to cope with it. There is a section on symbolism and the Jesuits, their relevance to Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber personally and to the performance of the sonatas. The text is intermingled with quotations from the New Testament and connections established between the two. The rhetorical fragments in a single line are identified and described in detail as an example of how to seek out and dramatize the rhetorical meaning of the music. Objective truth in this kind of activity does not exist: to each person, a fragment may elicit different reactions entirely, but if the images or feelings conjured up by the informed imagination are successfully transformed into sound, the interpretation will be all the stronger and more authentic. Theological, historical, rhetorical, interpretive, and technical information are here in abundance.
Approaching the Music of the French Baroque
Authors: Reiter Walter S.
Published: January 2022

This interlude outlines the historical and cultural background to French Baroque music, arguably the hardest Baroque style to approach. A study of attitudes, conventions, and etiquette within Louis XIV’s court at Versailles and an account of Louis’s achievements in the arts provide the reader with a foundation for the understanding and performance of the music itself. The stylized, proscribed behavior at court is reflected in the aesthetics of French musical style and in the French concept of ornamentation, radically different from that of the Italians that some considered lacked sophistication. French ornamentation is written down in the form of agrémens, little ornaments indicated by specific symbols. Little deviation from the written text is normally allowed. The lowly social status of the violin in France accounts for the dearth of violin music in the early Baroque period, one reason for the Concerts Royaux of Couperin to be selected for discussion here.
The “Concerts” of François Couperin
Authors: Reiter Walter S.
Published: January 2022

Background information on how the Concerts Royaux came to be written and performed comes from Couperin himself, who is quoted at length. Various sources speak of the difficulty of describing ornaments by writing: nevertheless, most of the lesson is devoted to definitions and detailed information on the ornaments [agréments] found in the seventh Concert Royal, with detailed descriptions drawn from the sources on their execution, illustrated by facsimiles and transcriptions. The Tremblement, with its three parts (appuy, battemens, and point d’arrest) is analyzed and discussed, with a number of variations illustrated. The pincé (simple and double), the port de voix (simple and double), the tierce de couler, and the petit silence are also defined with commentaries both original and source-derived. There are discussions on notes inégales (an exercise for which appears in the next lesson) and on the appropriate pitch. An addendum illustrates relevant ornaments found elsewhere in Couperin’s music.
A Brief History of Baroque Romanticism
Authors: Reiter Walter S.
Published: January 2022

This lesson looks at how the way of playing the solo works of Bach evolved through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The author expresses respect for the great artists who perform in a more traditional way but notes that times are changing, with today’s students having more available stylistic options. Both the title and title page of Bach’s book are discussed in detail and the question of symbolism here and elsewhere in the work is explored. A history of the book and the Bach revival from Mendelssohn to modern times follows. Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms, and Fritz Kreisler added piano accompaniments. The philosophy of bringing Bach’s music stylistically “up to date” was a constant, the first editions liberally changing bowings and adding fingerings reflecting contemporary playing style. Not until modern times were editions available showing what Bach actually wrote. By that time the tradition of playing Bach in a Romantic way firmly embedded.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Authors: Reiter Walter S.
Published: January 2022

The fugue is the crowning glory of Baroque form, with Bach its indisputable master. He had already written a G minor fugue with Basso Continuo while working in Weimar: his influences were Corelli and Westhoff ,whose fugues were less sophisticated,. This Fuga is the shortest of the three solo ones; it has a nine-note subject with a range of just a fourth. Bach’s seemingly infinite ingenuity in the handling of such sparse material is commented upon: each time the fugue subject occurs it has a different feel. This poses a challenge to the performer, who must constantly match these differences with new colors. The author does not believe that we are obliged to use the same bowing throughout. Slurs are discussed: are they harmonic shorthand or intended to be played literally? There is advice on voicing, an exercise on how to exploit the violin’s resonance when playing chords and copious bar-by-bar observations.
Entrepreneurs and Investment
Authors: Chambers Samuel A.
Published: January 2022

Chapter 7, “Entrepreneurs and Investment,” describes entrepreneurs as the agents who initiate the capitalist production process, and analyzes the “entrepreneurial” choice of investing in production or merely saving. It defines “capital” as not an empirical thing but a relation established within a capitalist mode of production.
Introduction
Authors: Buschmeier Matthias , von Kellenbach Katharina
Published: January 2022

This introductory chapter outlines the theoretical assumptions and principles that guided the three-year interdisciplinary research group into guilt as a force of cultural transformation. One basic assumption was that guilt unleashes social, spiritual, psychological, and cultural pressures that demand articulation and representation, sometimes after considerable time has passed. Without resorting to metaphysics, one observes “moral reminders” that “haunt” individuals and communities. Second, to say that guilt is transformative does not necessarily mean that guilt always or necessarily serves the greater good. Guilt can turn transformative in violent retribution and retaliation as much as in reconciliation and the repair of relationships. Practices of guilt attribution and denial, feelings of remorse and requests for release, as well as negotiations over repair, redress, and transformation can all inspire renewed violence just the same as they can prevent violence. The inherent ambivalences in guilt discourses are not minimized by the contributors. Rather, this volume seeks to understand the particular symbolic, legal, ritual, political, and aesthetic representations that create the conditions for prosocial resolutions to antecedent harm.
Guilt as a Positive Motivation for Action?
Authors: Schumacher Meinolf
Published: January 2022

The obligation of satisfaction (satisfactio operis) in the Christian sacrament of penance made guilt productive in the Middle Ages because it required charitable and good works. These acts did not necessarily have to benefit the concrete victims but could also support other needy persons or society. Moreover, they could be performed on behalf of other sinners in acts of vicarious penance. Martin Luther fundamentally disputed this way of dealing with guilt in his doctrine of justification. In the wake of the Reformation, attempts to relieve a guilty conscience through action remain controversial, and a possible motivation for socially good deeds is lost. After a brief overview of the basic ideas of Christian penance, this chapter outlines the critiques of the mystic Meister Eckhart and the reformer Luther and describes the social consequences of the Reformation. The last section discusses the possibility of making guilt productive today using three current examples: volunteer service, vicarious activism, and charitable donations
Guilt with and without Punishment
Authors: Hofmann Dominik
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines different phenomena that share the feature of being scandalized under the keyword “impunity.” Situations as diverse as presidential (self-)pardons, post-transitional-justice amnesty laws, selective policing among class lines, or low clearance rates in homicide cases in Central America are seen as situations in which the law displays an “absent presence,” symbolically and discursively important, but inactive in practice. In these diverse situations, wrongdoing is decoupled not only from legal punishment, but also from guilt. Under these circumstances, guilt—moral and legal—becomes a diffuse concept, frequently leading to socially disruptive effects. These deleterious effects create a demand for (legal) institutions that help rein in the destructive potential of guilt and utilize its (conciliatory-when-controlled) force in productive ways.
Post-War Justice for the Nazi Murders of Patients in Kherson, Ukraine
Authors: Penter Tanja
Published: January 2022

Under German occupation in World War II, tens of thousands of sick and disabled people were killed in the occupied Soviet Union. Very few German perpetrators were convicted for these crimes by courts in the Federal Republic after the war, whereas in the Soviet Union hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens were sentenced to long prison terms or death as Nazi collaborators. Using the example of the murder of more than 1,000 mentally ill people at a psychiatric hospital in the Black Sea port city of Kherson, this article examines how investigative authorities and courts in Germany and the Soviet Union dealt with guilt, and asks whether criminal prosecutions have productive effects compared to impunity, particularly with respect to the culture of remembrance.
Guilty Dreams
Authors: Ghassem-Fachandi Parvis
Published: January 2022

This chapter describes responses to an anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, India, in 2002, and its aftermath over time. It seeks to understand whether and how shame, remorse, or regret were expressed or curtailed in public discourse and private expression, leaving the state in an ambiguous relation to guilt, with all its productive and unproductive possibilities. It presents a case study where in a series of dreams of a supernatural figure appear to compensate for a lack of accounting for violence and atone for the marginalization of Muslims in the state. The author addresses guilt in two ways: as external attribution where it is explicitly rejected, and as reactive feeling that manifests in social relationships in indirect ways.
The Guilt of Warriors
Authors: Derwin Susan
Published: January 2022

War is, in the words of Vietnam veteran Karl Marlantes, a “moral quagmire,” born of the ethical, emotional, and existential consequences of inflicting death upon the enemy. This essay analyzes the challenges veterans face when confronting their feelings of guilt about wartime killing. It explores how veterans must balance the antithetical experiences of, on the one hand, having been a warrior, charged with casting aside the prohibition against killing, and, on the other hand, returning to society after war, where that prohibition obtains. The essay argues that, in order for warriors to successfully heal from war, their guilt must be avowedly co-owned by both themselves and their society. If and when this happens, guilt can become socially productive, and warriors can regain access to, and assume the full range of, their humanity, not least their sense of belonging to the society in whose name they served.
Patching Technologies of Control
Authors: Veeraraghavan Rajesh
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines how digital technology became a central instrument in a struggle for control of administrative processes between upper-level and lower-level NREGA bureaucrats in Andhra Pradesh. Because technology can be resisted and repurposed to unanticipated political ends by different actors, this chapter focuses on changes in technology over time in order to better understand how such changes affect political realities on the ground. In particular, it asks how and why upper-level bureaucrats in Andhra Pradesh made changes in the technology the program uses? How did the affordances of these technologies affect both specific outcomes and the ultimate possibilities for NREGA’s success? How did the changes affect the discretion of the lower-level bureaucrats? And how did they shape the ability of the upper-level bureaucrats to retain control of the implementation of NREGA at the last mile?
Reading and Writing State Records
Authors: Veeraraghavan Rajesh
Published: January 2022

How does the transparency that social audits create in theory lead to a practice that enables marginalized citizens to demand accountability from the state? The key part of the strategy is how social auditors mediate marginalized citizens’ access to NREGA records. The struggle to make NREGA administrators accountable centers on questions of who has read access to NREGA records and who has write access to them. This chapter details the process of how the auditors rewrite NREGA records when there are discrepancies in the administration’s official records. It then goes on to discuss the role upper-level bureaucrats play in both facilitating and ultimately limiting this rewriting. The chapter argues that social audits need to be evaluated not just in terms of the specific outcomes of NREGA, but also in broader terms of how they change relations between the Indian state and society and their potential to further democratize the state.
Only the Clothes on Her Back
Authors: Edwards Laura F.
Published: January 2022

Only the Clothes on Her Back tells the history of law and commerce in the United States between the Revolution and the Civil War through textiles and the legal principles associated with them. Those principles existed not in statutes or treatises, but in social and cultural practices, commonly known then, but now long forgotten, which made textiles—clothing, cloth, bedding, and accessories, such as shoes and hats—a unique form of property that people without rights could own and exchange. Textiles' value depended on law, which was what made them a secure form of property for marginalized people, who not only used these goods as currency, credit, and capital, but also as entre into the new republic's economy and governing institutions. Using original archival research, the first part of the book reconstructs the governing order in which textiles' legal principles flourished and follows the implications, recasting our understanding of production and exchange. The second part pieces together the rules that governed trade: trunks established ownership; witness testimony served instead of receipts; accounts were kept in diaries, if they were recorded at all. These practices might seem outside law, but they were not. The third part follows the legal downfall of textiles, showing how the practices associated with them became suspect as the federalism system elevated the possession of rights over other means of making property claims. By the mid—nineteenth century, textiles no longer had the legal power they once had, but most Americans had nothing to replace them.
Polly’s Yarn
Authors: Edwards Laura F.
Published: January 2022

Americans conducted their lives with the presumption that everyone could make legal claims to textiles. This chapter explains that situation, exploring the customary practices that, by the time of the American Revolution, had cohered into legal principles, which allowed people without rights—even enslaved people and married women—to make claims to textiles in law, something they could not do with other forms of property. Those principles persisted in the new republic, adding value to textiles by turning them into a secure form of property for those whose legal status made such claims tenuous. Claims to textiles did not involve rights or confer rights. Yet, when draped in textiles, even those without rights assumed distinct legal forms that officials found impossible to ignore: textiles conferred legal power.
Mr. Robinson’s Fabrics
Authors: Edwards Laura F.
Published: January 2022

The legal principles associated with textiles blurred the lines between merchants and their customers, placing more power in the hands of customers. Those principles allowed customers to act as merchants, buying and selling textiles themselves. The white male merchants also depended on those principles, which allowed a wider range of people to purchase textiles. When it came to textiles, “the market” had two meanings. There was the global market configured as an abstract set of dynamics, in which rights were a prerequisite for participation. Then there were local markets, where customers bought specific items, based on individual preferences, with the assumption that those qualities created attachments with legal meanings. These two aspects comingled when it came to textiles, which meant that white male merchants were never completely in control. Their fortunes were bound to the legal principles associated with textiles and the people who used them.
Rebecca Coles’s Factory
Authors: Edwards Laura F.
Published: January 2022

Before mechanization, the work of textile production was done by hand, within households, regardless of whether women or men did it or whether the goods were intended for commercial dissemination or household use. The value of textiles was determined by skill, which was a matter of dexterity, experience, and aesthetics, not gender or the location of production. Good cloth was worth more than bad cloth; well-made garments were worth more than shoddy ones. As this chapter shows, the importance of skill and hand labor in the textile trades persisted in the new republic, even after the onset of mechanization, creating economic spaces for those on the margins. The legal principles associated with textiles also shaped the economics of the textile trades, enabling people without rights to control what they produced and making them more like the white men now identified as manufacturers
Jane Cooley’s Loom
Authors: Edwards Laura F.
Published: January 2022

The full value of the goods made by women and other marginalized textile producers has been hidden amid presumptions that wives, daughters, the enslaved, and even wage workers could not legally control the goods they produced. The legal principles associated with textiles not only allowed these people to claim such goods but also gave these items value beyond what they fetched at the store. Textile producers were making goods that they could leverage in a variety of ways. As this chapter shows, cloth and clothing could be turned into capital that people without strong claims to rights could control and use to support themselves and their loved ones. These people amassed capital in the same way that they spun, wove, tailored, sewed, mended, and laundered: through the creative application of their labor in circumstances not of their own choosing.
Sarah Allingham’s Sheet
Authors: Edwards Laura F.
Published: January 2022

This chapter explores enforcement of the legal principles associated with textiles, which was essential if these goods were to fulfill all their various economic uses. Local officials up and down the Eastern Seaboard found themselves in the presence of angry, opinionated people, demanding recognition of claims to textiles. They responded using public law, treating property claims as an element of the public order, not a matter of individual rights, and acknowledging the legal resonance of practices attached to textiles at odds with rights-based law. To retain the limited power that they had, however, the legal principles of textiles had to be asserted openly and repeatedly. That is exactly what people did, perpetuating longstanding conceptions of ownership and exchange based in relationships that predated the republic’s founding. It was never ideal. But for many it was their only recourse.
Charles Lohman’s Dresses
Authors: Edwards Laura F.
Published: January 2022

This chapter explores the growing barriers to the enforcement of textiles’ legal principles. By the 1850s, a large cadre of lawyers had embraced a highly professionalized view of law that ignored those principles. Its logic shifted adjudication in civil suits from questions about the relationships that shaped property conflicts to questions about the rights of individuals regardless of the circumstances. From there, it moved into the area of public law, where professionally trained lawyers elevated procedural rights over the principles associated with textiles. Not only did a process based in rights push the legal principles of textiles aside, but it also silenced people without rights. Without the institutional backing necessary for enforcement, the legal principles and practices associated with textiles drifted out from the realm of law.
The Straitened Gate
Authors: Harris Paul William
Published: January 2022

Chapter 2 presents the events that propelled a growing radicalization among leading northern Methodists. Northern Methodists strongly supported the Union cause and the Emancipation Proclamation, and they seized on the opportunity that the Civil War provided to re-enter the South and lay claim to church properties previously held by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. They found success among both whites and Blacks, despite stiff competition from the African Methodist denominations. In their attempts to appeal to African Americans, the Methodist Episcopal Church decided to create separate annual conferences for their Black membership rather than integrating them into white conferences, which became a long-standing source of controversy. The establishment of the Freedmen’s Aid Society to offer schooling to the freed slaves added greatly to the attraction of the M.E.C., notwithstanding its paternalism. Violent opposition in the South undercut northern Methodist hopes for political Reconstruction but did not prevent the first steps toward reconciling with the M.E.C., South.
What is an intention?
Authors: Yaffe Gideon
Published: January 2022

This chapter describes a view of the nature of intention dominant among philosophers. According to the position described, intentions are mental representations of future states that are governed by distinctive norms of rationality. Compliance with these norms allows human beings not to waste deliberative effort reconsidering practical questions they have previously answered and allows us to coordinate our behavior with our future and past selves, and with each other, in order to reach complex goals.
When is an action voluntary?
Authors: Hieronymi Pamela
Published: January 2022

This chapter presents four different senses of “voluntary” that might be in play. First, voluntary1 movement contrasts with bodily movement not guided by the person, such as blinking or digesting. Second, you might move voluntarily1 and yet make a mistake—you might send an email to the wrong person, involuntarily2. Voluntary2 action is successful. Third, you might purposely and successfully do something you didn’t want to do, e.g., throw the cargo overboard during the storm. You act involuntarily3. In contrast, you might act happily, as a volunteer, so to speak. Finally, sometimes you can be manipulated or deceived into acting as a volunteer, in which case you lack an important form of freedom. We might say that you act involuntarily4. The first two senses might be fruitfully studied by neuroscience, while the final sense marks a distinction draw by ethical reflection.
What is freedom?
Authors: Sinnott-Armstrong Walter
Published: January 2022

Freedom in general needs to be analyzed as freedom from some barrier to do some act instead of certain alternatives. Incompatibilists understand free will and free action as freedom from determinism or causation, whereas compatibilists instead see free will and free action as freedom from constraint or excuse. The latter kind of freedom comes in degrees and requires reasons-responsiveness and/or an appropriate connection to a deep self. These kinds of freedom are important to different issues.
Can a robot with artificial intelligence have free will?
Authors: Hall Jonathan , Vierkant Tillmann
Published: January 2022

This chapter discusses the question of whether there could ever be artificial intelligence with free will. This question reduces to whether or not artificial intelligence will ever be able to act on domain-general rationally formed intentions. However, it might not be possible to distinguish between behavior that is produced by such intentions and behavior that is merely a simulation. This could be because, as the Chinese Room thought experiment seems to show, consciousness intuitively is a necessary condition for intentionality. There are three potential responses to this challenge. One could argue that full domain-general rational behavior is possible only with consciousness, or that it might also be necessary for the system to be implemented in the right substrate, or that the right microfunctionalist structure needs to be in place for real intentionality.
Do conscious decisions cause physical actions?
Authors: Block Ned
Published: January 2022

Experiments suggest that conscious decisions to act may be initiated by unconscious neural events that precede the decision. Some have concluded that unconscious neural events are sufficient to cause both the decision to act and the action, so consciousness has no causal efficacy in producing the action. Here, I explain why this reasoning is fallacious in terms that apply to all mental events, using a variety of examples in which the conscious aspect of a mental event has a different and even an “opposite” effect on behavior from the unconscious aspect. These cases provide vivid illustrations of the distinct causal contributions of conscious and unconscious aspects of a mental event to behavior. One conclusion is that the neuroscience of decision has been overly focused on binary “go/no go” contents, obscuring the ways in which conscious and unconscious contents can make distinct contributions to decision and to action.
What are the main stages in the neural processes that produce actions?
Authors: Haggard Patrick , Parés-Pujolràs Elisabeth
Published: January 2022

This chapter discusses the basic neural mechanisms that enable action execution in humans. Using a reverse-engineering approach, the chapter starts from the phenomenon to be explained, namely, a muscle contraction, and traces its causation back to proximal neural causes in the primary motor cortex. It then searches for the causes triggering those neurons to send a motor command. One theory postulates two main pathways linking higher-order association areas to the motor cortex: a lateral and a medial one. These pathways are primarily responsible for initiating movements that are either triggered by an external stimulus or are endogenously initiated, respectively. The chapter further considers whether the concept of endogenous initiation provides a satisfactory account of the intentional nature of human actions.
Does the will correspond to any clearly delineated brain area or activity?
Authors: Kreiman Gabriel
Published: January 2022

How wills are encoded in neural circuits is one of the central questions in neuroscience. Our current understanding of the neural machinery orchestrating willed actions is minimal. Elegant neurophysiological experiments in monkeys and humans have provided an initial glimpse of neural responses in several frontal and motor areas that show a content-specific progressive ramp in firing rates several hundreds of milliseconds before movement onset. Elucidating where, when, and how neurons represent wills is also going to inform treatment of patients with disorders of volition.
How are the neural processes for deciding when to move similar to and different from those for deciding what or how to move?
Authors: Triggiani Antonio Ivano , Hallett Mark
Published: January 2022

An awake person moves all the time. All these movements are characterized by different temporal and spatial patterns, often complex and influenced by both internal drive and external stimuli. This chapter reviews a series of classic neurophysiological experiments aimed at disentangling the neural activity underpinning the specific features of simple movements: when, what, and how. Neural activity can be assessed with fMRI or EEG. In “when” experiments, the subject can freely decide when to perform a specified movement. In “what” experiments, the subject must choose between different simple movements at a specific time. In “how” experiments, the subject must decide how to execute a complex action.
How are arbitrary and deliberate decisions similar and different?
Authors: Bold Jye lyn , Mudrik Liad , Maoz Uri
Published: January 2022

The Libet experiments investigated arbitrary decisions, though their results were long assumed to generalize to deliberate ones too. This has launched a debate, which is ongoing, regarding whether there are differences in the neural mechanisms underlying arbitrary and deliberate decisions. The debate thus directly relates to the extent to which the Libet results can be generalized beyond arbitrary decisions. Several studies provide conflicting support for the generalizability of the readiness potential (RP) from arbitrary to deliberate decisions. Some found similarities between the neural correlates of actions following arbitrary and deliberate decisions; others found differences. This chapter describes those studies and discusses how to potentially reconcile these conflicting results.
What are intentions and intentional actions?
Authors: Parés-Pujolràs Elisabeth , Haggard Patrick
Published: January 2022

This chapter discusses the neural mechanisms that underlie the human capacity for intentional action. In particular, it highlights the hierarchical nature of the brain areas involved in action selection and notes its structural similarity with some philosophical accounts of intention. It further discusses the interaction between higher-order areas containing more abstract representations, and lower-level decision-making processes leading to detailed specification of motor action. These interactions may contribute to understanding of intentional control of action in the human brain that is both philosophically relevant and also causally effective. Further, the chapter discusses how the neural basis of the subjective aspects of intentional action can be investigated in an empirically tractable way.
What is known about the neural correlates of specific beliefs and desires that inform human choices?
Authors: Hopkins Amber , Maoz Uri
Published: January 2022

Philosophical theories, especially compatibilist ones, focus on the importance of beliefs and desires in the formation of human choice. This chapter reviews neuroscientific research on how beliefs and desires are instantiated in the brain, emphasizing the role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the dopaminergic pathways as a possible neural correlate of the cooperation of beliefs and desires that inform human choice. However, there is little neuroscientific research that aligns with the manner by which belief and desire are defined by philosophers. Hence, the neuroscientific evidence that is needed to settle philosophical debates about the nature of beliefs and desires and their relation to free will does not yet exist.
China's Foreign Policy Contradictions
Authors: Rühlig Tim Nicholas
Published: January 2022

China’s Foreign Policy Contradictions explains the fundamental contradiction in China’s foreign policy: contrary to its claims, China does not consistently uphold the principle of state control in its international affairs. This inconsistency is shaping China’s impact on the international order. This anthropological study of the foreign policymaking of the opaque Chinese party-state examines three case comparisons: the Responsibility to Protect, Hong Kong, and the World Trade Organization. Based on in-depth interviews with party-state officials and an analysis of official documents, the book reveals the internal discussions, diverse set of interests, and dynamics and processes of a party-state in a state of constant transformation. The book demonstrates how competing sources of the Chinese Communist Party’s domestic legitimacy combine with the complex and dynamic structure of the Chinese party-state, resulting in contradictory foreign policies. It demonstrates how both legitimization and the party-state structure constitute vulnerabilities of the party-state. Even though China struggles with these domestic vulnerabilities, this does not prevent it from projecting its power internationally or shaping the global order. The book argues that two sets of domestic vulnerabilities explain China’s contradictory foreign policy and undermine its ability to project and promote a “China Model” as an alternative to the existing international order. China’s contradictory foreign policy is likely to lead to a more particularistic, plural, and fragmented international order.
Unpacking the Chinese Party-State
Authors: Rühlig Tim Nicholas
Published: January 2022

This chapter closely examines the core subject of the book: the Chinese party-state. First, it discusses how images of the state shape foreign policy practices and become “regulative ideas” manifest in the international order. Next, the chapter turns to the Chinese party-state and reflects on how the images, practices, and structures of the party-state have undergone a substantial transformation. The chapter summarizes the historical emergence of the specific duality of a hierarchical party structure coupled with a trend for fragmentation and decentralization, and for empowering subnational institutions and major corporations. This demonstrates that rather than intentionally crafted, the structures and legitimacy of the party-state are the result of China’s integration into the globalizing economy, contested political visions, and competition within the party-state. Finally, the chapter discusses how the specific institutional structure and its underlying political economy shape China’s foreign policy.
Chinese Approaches to Rule
Authors: Rühlig Tim Nicholas
Published: January 2022

This chapter situates the implementation of “One Country, Two Systems” in Hong Kong as a matter of international affairs and international law. It outlines in what respects and to what extent the PRC has accepted restrictions on its control over Hong Kong. China’s waiver on implementation of national security legislation for twenty-three years is contrasted with enforcement of a National Security Law in 2020, as well as the PRC’s rejection of any compromise on electoral reform The chapter demonstrates that implementation of One Country, Two Systems has been highly contradictory. The analysis of China’s Hong Kong policy sheds light on how the trade-offs inherent in economic and nationalist party-state legitimization in China and the structures of the party-state explain these contradictions. Finally, China’s instrumental approach to law and the undermining of core vocabulary definitions have structural implications that go far beyond Hong Kong to the future of the international order.
Conclusions
Authors: Rühlig Tim Nicholas
Published: January 2022

The concluding chapter begins with a comparative summary explaining China’s foreign policy contradictions found in the three case comparisons. It demonstrates how the institutionalization of trade-offs between different economic and nationalist legitimization needs within the party-state are decisive. The chapter then discusses the implications for the future international order. Even without developing into an alternative “model,” China’s contradictory approach will facilitate the development of a more particularistic, plural, and fragmented international order. The chapter relates the results of this empirical analysis to the existing literature and develops the theoretical argument: a combination of a constructivist focus on norms and narratives on legitimacy are complementary with the theoretical assumptions in works that emphasize the importance of China’s political economy. The chapter ends with six foundational considerations for policymakers in third countries who seek to preserve a rules-based international order at a time of China’s rise.
Mind Is Buddha
Authors: Davis Bret W.
Published: January 2022

This chapter addresses the question of what “Buddha” means for Zen Buddhists. It begins with Zen master Hakuin’s claim that “unenlightened beings are originally Buddhas,” and with his analogy of this being like the relation between ice and water. Linji’s shocking teaching “If you encounter the Buddha, kill him!” is explained as an exhortation to smash all idols of the Buddha. This means to let go of all objectifications of Buddha as something outside oneself. We must realize that “Mind is Buddha.” And yet, it is explained, the philosophy of Zen is a nondualism rather than either an idealism or a materialism. In the end, Zen enlightenment cannot be reduced to an intellectual grasp of a philosophical formula. Hence, the chapter concludes with a commentary on some famous thought-provoking (and practice-provoking) kōans on the question “What is Buddha?”
Zen as Trans-Mysticism
Authors: Davis Bret W.
Published: January 2022

This chapter explains why Zen cannot be sufficiently understood in terms of “mysticism,” if one means by mystical experience a transcendent or otherworldly experience that transports one beyond the mundane world. The path of Zen leads, rather, to a wholehearted and fully mindful engagement in the ordinary activities of everyday life. Zen master Zhaozhou says that “Everyday Even Mind is the Way,” and Zen master Linji tells us to “just be ordinary.” Nevertheless, the path to this enlightened everydayness requires passing through both a negation of unenlightened everydayness and a shedding of any extraordinary mystical experience of union with God (unio mystica) or oneness with the One. Drawing on Ueda Shizuteru’s comparisons of Zen with Meister Eckhart, the path of Zen is explained as that of a “trans-mysticism.”
Zen and Art
Authors: Davis Bret W.
Published: January 2022

This chapter discusses the intimate relation between Zen and the Japanese arts. Zen paradoxically teaches that we need to cultivate naturalness. The Japanese “Ways” of art and the martial arts are designed to allow us to do this. Zen gardens enable us to experience the relationship between human art and the natural world in a nondualistic manner, and the Japanese aesthetic of “cut-continuance” reveals how borderlines between things both connect as well as separate them. The aesthetic of wabi-sabi enables us to discover spiritual lessons as well as a poignant beauty in the rustic simplicity of imperfect and impermanent things. And the art of ikebana or flower arrangement reveals to us the intimate relations between life and death and between time and eternity. The chapter ends by suggesting how Zen-inspired art and music allow us to experience formlessness and silence as creative sources of form and sound.
Reviewing the Path of Zen
Authors: Davis Bret W.
Published: January 2022

This chapter explains the path of Zen by way of explicating The Ten Oxherding Pictures. This classic text, which consists of ten pictures together with a poem and preface appended to each one, shows the stages of Zen practice and enlightenment. Depicting both dramatic breakthroughs and plodding practice, it reconciles “sudden enlightenment” with the gradual ripening of the fruit of spiritual practice. The ox represents the true self or the mind, which the oxherder seeks to find and tame. Yet the ox disappears in the seventh picture, and the oxherder too disappears in the eighth picture. The penultimate picture is a scene of nature, and the last picture shows an old sage entering a town; in the end the oxherder has become a Bodhisattva who passes on the torch of the awakened mind. The final three pictures are interpreted as the “tricycle trilogy” of the true self.
Doing What You Really Want
Authors: Perkins Franklin
Published: January 2022

This book is a coherent, systematic, and plausible explanation of the philosophy of Mengzi (Mencius), a fourth-century bce Confucian. It covers the full range of Mengzi’s philosophy, from the place of human beings in nature, to human psychology and philosophy of emotions, to the various ways in which we can deliberately change and cultivate ourselves. Since Mengzi was concerned not just with theory but also with effective action, the book includes a chapter gathering practical advice and a Confucian analysis of how individuals can make a difference in the world, offering a new approach to understanding the contemporary relevance of Confucianism. These topics are integrated around Mengzi’s philosophy as a way of life directed toward striving to make the world a better place. Mengzi offers theoretical and practical resources valuable for anyone concerned with integrating efforts to improve the world with personal fulfillment and a sense of belonging. Mengzi’s philosophy is explained in a clear and engaging way that is suitable for students and general readers with no background in philosophy or Chinese studies. The core philosophical system is drawn from Mengzi, but the book regularly includes other Confucian materials.
Harmony with Nature
Authors: Perkins Franklin
Published: January 2022

The first chapter begins with the question of what it means to follow or harmonize with nature, given that nature appears to be morally indifferent. It lays out two perspectives on harmony with nature. The first looks at the patterns and cycles of nature as a whole, emphasizing the insignificance of human concerns. The second looks at nature in terms of the inherent motivations or natural dispositions of living things. The first is found in Daoist texts aimed toward peace of mind (as in the Zhuangzi). What is distinctive about Mengzi’s view is that he admits the first perspective but takes the second perspective as what should guide our actions. This chapter also introduces early Chinese views of nature and cosmology.
Power, Politics, and Action
Authors: Perkins Franklin
Published: January 2022

Most discussions of Confucian politics focus on how Confucian ideas relate to theories of government, particularly democracy and human rights. This chapter begins with a criticism of that focus, arguing that all of Confucian philosophy is ultimately political. The contemporary political relevance of Confucianism is in its analysis of how individuals can exert influence on the world through a process of self-cultivation. The chapter is structured around a commentary on the “Greatest Learning” (Daxue), which describes a progression from learning and cultivating emotions to leadership within one’s community and ultimately toward realizing world peace. This chapter serves as a conclusion, showing how the various themes previously discussed are integrated into a life dedicated toward making the world a better place.
Nothing Less Than Glorious
Authors: Lee John W.I.
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines Gilbert’s first two years (1888–1890) as Paine Institute’s new professor of Greek, Latin, and English and explains the development of Paine’s new collegiate curriculum, one based largely on the courses Gilbert had taken at Brown. It also tells the story of Gilbert’s wife Osceola (Ola) Pleasant and her family. From there, the chapter explores the early development of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, with special attention to the role of Gilbert’s Brown professor Albert Harkness, then it turns to investigating when and how Gilbert made his decision to go to Greece and attend the American School. Using evidence from surviving fragments of his letters, the final portion of the chapter traces Gilbert’s route from Augusta across the Atlantic, through London, Paris, and across Italy, by ferry to Patras in Greece, and finally by train from Patras to Athens.