bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Arabkir Çay and Dascusa
Authors: Mitford Timothy Bruce
Published: January 2022

Sites in the basin of the Arabkir Çay, and bridges. Fine section of Roman road above Körpinik hüyük, a signalling and vantage point. Location of Dascusa, guarding a cavalry ford of the Euphrates, and important for raft traffic. Division of frontier road, towards the Antitaurus pass and towards the Antitaurus gorge. Destruction above the Keban dam.
Closing (or at Least Narrowing) the Explanatory Gap
Authors: Farkas Katalin
Published: January 2022

This chapter revisits the issue of the explanatory gap that is supposed to open when considering identity statements between physical and mental phenomena. It is argued that the question asked in the original formulation of the explanatory gap was this: ‘Why is this phenomenal character, rather than any other, attached to this physiological process?’. An answer is proposed to this via establishing a ‘natural fit’ between the phenomenal character of experiences and their functional roles. The chapter explains how to narrow the explanatory gap: first, identify the functional role of an experience and look for the physical process that plays this role. Then, second, note that there is a natural fit between the phenomenal character and the functional role of conscious experiences. The chapter concludes with a view which may be called Phenomenal Functionalism.
A Materialist Reconception of the Mind
Authors: Thomasson Amie L.
Published: January 2022

This chapter continues the theme of the analytic or a priori status of the causal theory. It is suggested that rather than conceiving of the causal theory as a product of conceptual analysis, it should be considered an exercise in what has become known as conceptual ethics. Just as some behaviourists took their view not to expose the concept they already had, but as a suggestion for conceptual reform, Armstrong’s causal theory might be taken as a suggestion for conceptual reform in the light of scientific and other discoveries which might make one doubt whether there is anything in the world corresponding to some of the pre-reform concepts of the mental. The chapter argues that while Armstrong certainly never explicitly understood what he was up to in these ways, it’s certainly clear that in his later writings he became unhappy with the idea that the causal theory was a straightforward analytic truth about existing concepts—even though he had no clear idea about what the alternative might be.
Back-Door
Authors: Anderson Raymond A.
Published: January 2022

The ‘back-door’ areas {Collections/Recoveries (C&R) and Fraud} deal with problem accounts, with greater modelling latitude. (1)Collections and Recoveries—manage late payments arising from a variety of factors, whether consumer or business loans. Reasons may be genuine, or not—and collectors can be well versed in the tactics. Collections deals with early delinquencies with a goal to maintain the customer relationship; Recoveries, late delinquency where the relationship may be terminated. (2)Fraud—guards against and pursues cheats at the gambling table. Fraud types vary by i) relationship to account {1st-, 2nd-, 3rd-party}; ii) misrepresentation {embellishment, social engineering, identity theft and synthetics &c}; iii) whether the victim was conned into a voluntary transaction {authorized, unauthorized}. Various countermeasures can be used, whether manual/physical or online/electronic. In recent times, biometrics and multi-factor identification have become the norm. So too have analytical methods, whether to highlight high-risk individuals/transactions or abnormal patterns.
Predictive Modelling Techniques
Authors: Anderson Raymond A.
Published: January 2022

This chapter covers commonly-used supervised-learning techniques and combinations, with guidance on choices. (1) A view from on high—i) caveats—data dependency of predictive modelling; ii) language—in academic literature for representation of formulae and concepts. (2) Parametric—make assumptions about the relationships between predictors and predicted, and their distributions {linear regression, linear probability modelling (LPM), probit/logit, discriminant analysis, linear programming}. (3) Non-parametric—require few or no assumptions {k-nearest neighbours, Decisions Trees and Random Forests (RF)s, support vector machines, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms}. (4) Conglomerations—of models and approaches, whether i) practical—for business reasons; ii) parallel—developed using the same data, and then fused; iii) residual—subsequent models predict what prior models could not. Machine learning is introduced. (5) Making the choice—factors affecting the choice {regulatory/compliance, transparency/opacity, suitability to the statistical and business problems, skills availability, longer-term maintenance, development and implementation timeframes, speed of execution once implemented}.
Scaling and Banding
Authors: Anderson Raymond A.
Published: January 2022

Next is to convert proxies and coefficients into points that can be tallied into a score, which is needed for communicating model outputs, and implementation. There are two parts. (1) Scaling—i) what it means, why it’s done, and desired qualities; ii) percentages—why not; iii) fixed ranges—specify highest and lowest values; iv) scaling parameters—use of a benchmark score and odds, and fixed points-to-double odds; v) other considerations—presentation to a non-technical audience, and adverse reason codes. (2) Banding—i) zero constraints—neither the number of groups or risk of each; ii) fitted distributions—to match a specified frequency distribution; iii) benchmarked—to given average risk levels {AAA, AA+, AA, … C}; iv) fixed-band boundaries—upper and lower limits for each grade. The last two options are appropriate for Master Rating Scales, which are recommended to ensure consistency of meaning and communication within an organization.
Czesław Miłosz's Faith in the Flesh
Authors: Bill Stanley
Published: January 2022

This book presents Czesław Miłosz’s poetic philosophy of the body as an original defense of religious faith, transcendence, and the value of the human individual against what he viewed as dangerous modern forms of materialism. The Polish Nobel laureate saw the reductive “biologization” of human life as a root cause of the historical tragedies he had witnessed under Nazi German and Soviet regimes in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe. The book argues that his response was not merely to reconstitute spiritual or ideal forms of human identity, which no longer seemed entirely plausible. Instead, he aimed to revalidate the flesh, elaborating his own non-reductive understandings of the self on the basis of the body’s deeper meanings. Within the framework of a hesitant Christian faith, Miłosz’s poetry and prose often suggest a paradoxical striving toward transcendence precisely through sensual experience. Yet his perspectives on bodily existence are not exclusively affirmative. The book traces his diverse representations of the body from dualist visions that demonize the flesh through to positive images of the body as the source of religious experience, the self, and the poet’s own creative faculty. It also examines the complex relations between “masculine” and “feminine” bodies and forms of subjectivity, as Miłosz represents them. Finally, it elucidates his contention that poetry is the best vehicle for conveying these contradictions, because it also combines “disembodied,” symbolic meanings with the sensual meanings of sound and rhythm. For Miłosz, the double nature of poetic meaning reflects the fused duality of the human self.
Introduction
Authors: Bill Stanley
Published: January 2022

The Introduction outlines the central problem of the body in Miłosz’s writings, beginning with a little-known essay on the impoverished existence of Warsaw refugees during the Second World War. Miłosz’s nightmare was the biologized body of pure reductionism: the human being stripped of higher value to become a mere animal. He was convinced that such reductively materialist perspectives had represented the underlying causes of genocide in the twentieth century. In response, he sought the rehabilitation of a transcendent human identity that would preserve and intertwine both material and immaterial aspects. In a secular sense, he aimed to restore the value of the human individual by exposing the deeper significance of the flesh, which transcends consciousness in its connections with the natural world and with other human beings. In religious terms, belief in Miłosz’s writing also takes bodily form—not rationalized or understood, but felt in the blood and breath. For Miłosz, the body is not just the only vehicle for human life, but also the mysterious ground of its higher value.
The Totalitarian Self
Authors: Bill Stanley
Published: January 2022

Chapter 2 focuses on Miłosz’s theory of the political consequences of the dualist split between an incorporeal core of the self and the trap of the body. After an introductory close reading of a key poem, focusing on Manichaean “hatred of the flesh,” the chapter examines the persistent motif of consciousness in front of the mirror, contemplating the reflection of the “thing” of its deteriorating, and aging, body. From this individual perspective, the chapter turns to the collective dimension of the same self-objectification through analysis of Miłosz’s multiple poetic images of the human species as “one flesh” from which the “I” strives to separate itself. The chapter concludes with Miłosz’s gathering sense from the 1950s onward that this split version of subjectivity—like the reductive materialist view to which it responds—is both destructive to his poetic vocation and politically dangerous. As he explains, the alienated subject’s desire for “purity” and separation from fleshly humanity bears the seeds of a “totalitarian” worldview and of violence, especially in its Soviet forms.
The Embodied Self
Authors: Bill Stanley
Published: January 2022

Chapter 3 examines Miłosz’s positive representations of the body, beginning with an interpretation of one of his earliest lyrics, in which the human subject ecstatically identifies with the material world through the rhythm of his blood. In subsequent sections, it discusses his poetic exploration of the bodily dimensions of faith, the emotion of wonder, morality, and the human relation with God. Miłosz finds in the body the most authentic sources of the self, but also of a human connection with the otherworldly divine. In this way, he returns to the central significance of incarnation in Christian thought, with its “crossing” of the symbolically “vertical” and “horizontal” dimensions. In doing so, he also presents religious belief—at least for himself—as instinctive and natural, almost written into the code of the body and blood. Though Miłosz rejects scientifically reductive explanations of religion, his own ideas anticipate some of the most recent theories of the embodied nature of faith.
Conclusion
Authors: Bill Stanley
Published: January 2022

This Conclusion summarizes the book’s interpretation of Czesław Miłosz’s work as a paradoxically materialist response to what he sees as the violent historical consequences of reductive forms of materialism. The emphasis is placed on deeper exploration of the body as Miłosz’s answer to the dehumanization and secularization that supposedly threaten the human individual in modern times, and on the potential for “transcendence” through material or sensual experience. The Conclusion reviews Miłosz’s concern with poetic form in his efforts to bridge seemingly disparate realities: the human and the divine; the material flesh and the immaterial spirit; horizontal transcendence and vertical transcendence. It ends with a brief final interpretation of a poem that captures the book’s central concerns with the body, transcendence, and poetic form, focusing on rhythm and the blood.
Art, Science, and the Natural World
Authors: Thomas Joshua J.
Published: January 2022

This introductory chapter sketches the historical background against which Hellenistic developments in the natural sciences need to be set. Much of the chapter is devoted to discussing the ambitious intellectual programme sponsored by the Ptolemaic kings in Alexandria, their new royal capital. Several aspects of this programme are highlighted: the collection of books from across the world to stock the famous Library; the persistent concern with cataloguing and classification in Alexandrian scholarship; and the inspiration that the kings and leading intellectuals drew from Aristotle and his followers in the Peripatetic school. Against this backdrop, the chapter turns to consider how the Ptolemaic kings interacted with the animal kingdom, particularly during the third century BC.
Links Between Growth, Inequality, and Poverty
Authors: Cerra Valerie , Lama Ruy , Loayza Norman
Published: January 2022

Is there a tradeoff between raising growth and reducing inequality and poverty? This chapter reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the complex links between growth, inequality, and poverty, with causation going in both directions. The evidence suggests that growth can be effective in reducing poverty, but its impact on inequality is ambiguous and depends on the underlying sources of growth. The impact of poverty and inequality on growth is likewise ambiguous, as several channels mediate the relationship. But most plausible mechanisms suggest that poverty and inequality reduce growth, at least in the long run. Policies play a role in shaping these relationships and those designed to improve equality of opportunity can simultaneously improve inclusiveness and growth.
The Library as Computer
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

The chapter begins with a description of the futuristic annex of the British Library in rural Yorkshire, controlled by a robot, the books kept in a post-human environment. This opens out a discussion of the library as the ultimate storage device, ranging from the Library of Congress—the largest collection of books ever made—to the internet, that transcends all knowledge in a hyper-cloud. What are the limits of knowledge, in an age when nobody can comprehend the size of the human library? The chapter considers the concept of representation (‘mimesis’) within writing systems and within the invention of writing itself as an idea, especially through the imperial claims of the Roman alphabet, finishing by suggesting that this power is a magical illusion, waiting to be broken.
Shakespeare and Bibliofetishism
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

Shakespeare’s Folio continues to take centre stage in this chapter. The book has become a modern fetish, not only of the book as such (the most studied individual edition in history) but of authorship and of subjectivity. The theory of the fetish is traced from Marx’s Kapital to William Pietz. The chapter also considers the history of the word by way of European colonialism, and links this to the colonial presence of Shakespeare in Africa, China, and elsewhere. The argument then transfers to artistic representation of book fetishism in modern China, before suggesting that the ‘cult of the book’ has found a modern home in commodification and digitization. As books move from sacred to secular, they also move into a world of ambiguous economic value in which, like art works, they are modern relics.
Glyph
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

The glyph of writing—the written mark on the page—contains a profound paradox. The chapter begins with a discussion of ‘indecipherable scripts’. Some of these, famously, have been deciphered—such as hieroglyphics in the nineteenth century and Linear B in the twentieth; some, like Polynesian Rongorongo remain a baffling mystery. What do we mean by ‘decipherment’ in relation to writing? The chapter goes on to examine Poe’s story ‘The Purloined Letter’ and its philosophical application in Lacan and Derrida; and the historical ramifications of decipherment in treason trials, especially in the deployment of torture from the Reformation to the French Revolution, from imperial China to Guantánamo. The book concludes with a meditation on the idea of the glyph in modernism, in Levi and in Anselm Kiefer, in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and the late fiction of Samuel Beckett, to suggest that writing always contains an unfathomable mystery.
Conclusion
Authors: McGovern Jonathan
Published: January 2022

The Conclusion draws together the threads of the preceding chapters, restating that the sheriff remained an indispensable component of local government and administration at the close of the Tudor period. It offers a consolidated summary of all the Tudor reforms to the office of sheriff discussed in the preceding chapters, and briefly summarizes the decline of the shrievalty in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also offers some comments on the office of sheriff in the United States of America and in the Commonwealth. It concludes by affirming the value of administrative history and archival empiricism, in contrast to various forms of theory-driven history.
Leibniz on Time, Space, and Relativity
Authors: Arthur Richard T. W.
Published: January 2022

This work gives fresh interpretations of Gottfried Leibniz’s theories of time, space, and the relativity of motion, based on a thorough examination of Leibniz’s manuscripts as well as his published papers. These are analysed in historical context, but also with an eye to their contemporary relevance in the philosophy of time, space, and spacetime. Leibniz’s views on relativity have been extremely influential, first on Mach, and then on Einstein, while his attempts to provide a formal theory of space through his analysis situs inspired many later developments in geometry. Expounding this novel approach to geometry in some detail, Arthur explains its relationship to Leibniz’s metaphysics of space and the grounding of motion, and defends Leibniz’s views on the relativity of motion against charges of inconsistency. The brilliance of Leibniz’s work on time, though, has not been so well appreciated, and Arthur attempts to remedy this through a detailed discussion of Leibniz’s relational theory of time, showing how it underpins his theory of possible worlds, his complex account of contingency, and his highly original treatment of the continuity of time, providing formal treatments in an appendix. In other appendices, Arthur provides translations of previously untranslated writings by Leibniz on analysis situs and on Copernicanism, as well as an essay on Leibniz’s philosophy of relations. In his introductory chapter he explains the main theses of Leibniz’s non-idealist metaphysics he defended in his earlier Monads, Composition and Force (OUP 2018), and how they provide the framework for the interpretations presented here.
De tempore: Leibniz’s Theory of Time
Authors: Arthur Richard T. W.
Published: January 2022

This chapter treats Leibniz’s relational theory of time. Opposing the reading of time as ordering only the phenomena, Arthur shows how temporal relations among simple substances and composites alike are based on relations of precedence among states of monads. These relations are based on Leibniz’s theory of requisites, where an earlier state is a “mediate requisite” for (or efficient cause of) later states, that is, a necessary condition for their existence, that is explanatorily simpler and involves intermediate states. It is shown how this relational foundation underpins Leibniz’s theory of possible worlds, his complex account of contingency, and his highly original treatment of the continuity of time. The latter is traced from its origins in Leibniz’s early dialogue Pacidius Philalethi to the connection of his notion of vague states with this mature theory of petites perceptions and his Law of Continuity. Also discussed is the nature of Leibniz’s nominalism in relation to the issue of reduction and the ideality and homogeneity of time. The interpretation of Leibniz’s theory of time presented in this chapter is given a complete formal treatment in an appendix, and the reading of his philosophy of relations on which it is based is defended in a second appendix.
Believing—Part 2
Authors: Field Clive D.
Published: January 2022

Sample surveys illuminate public opinion on five areas of religious interest. General attitudes to religion have deteriorated, in that religion is perceived to be losing its influence on national life, fewer regard Britain as a Christian country, being Christian is viewed as an unimportant attribute of British citizenship, and religion is increasingly seen as a force for ill. The standing of Churches and clergy has diminished, especially in terms of public confidence and trust in them. Observance of Sunday as Christianity’s holy day has been eroded by growth in leisure activities outside the home, improved public and private transport to access them, and statutory deregulation of many that were once prohibited (such as shopping). Polls mostly demonstrate a desire to separate religion from politics, yet psephology indicates a continuing influence of legacy religious cleavages on party choice. Notwithstanding some inherent contradictions, there is no consensus that science has displaced religion.
Conclusion
Authors: Field Clive D.
Published: January 2022

The major part of the conclusion summarizes the findings of Chapters 3–10 as a secularization dashboard of twenty-one key performance indicators (KPIs). None demonstrated any overall net improvement during the past half-century, three have been stable (but ambivalently so), while eighteen exhibited decrease, often on a substantial scale, in relation to demographic growth, mostly in continuation of existing trends. Two KPIs underpin a conjectural religious profile of British adults for ten data points between 1880 and 2020, revealing how secularization has been a progressive process, albeit with an appreciable quickening of pace since the millennium. Diminished religious socialization of children and adolescents and Sunday observance are identified as major secularizing forces. A shorter second section suggests updates to the historiography (Chapter 1), noting a broad alignment of this book’s conclusions with Steve Bruce’s writings. It also offers preliminary remarks about the impact of Covid-19 on the British religious landscape.
Low Interest Rates Offer the Opportunity to Reform the Tax Treatment of Owner-Occupied Housing
Authors: Ewijk Casper van , Lejour Arjan
Published: January 2022

Home ownership is subsidized by the Dutch tax system compared with other assets. Due to falling interest rates in recent decades, older home owners, who have (largely) repaid their mortgage loan, have benefited relatively more from the favourable tax treatment of owner-occupied housing compared with younger home owners, because for the latter the mortgage interest deductibility is relatively more important than the taxation of home equity (via the taxation of imputed rent). The subsidy on owner-occupied housing results in welfare losses because it stimulates excessive housing consumption, distorts financing decisions, and puts pressure on the housing market and spatial planning. In addition, the subsidy—in combination with mandatory pension savings—leads to excessive saving by many households and unnecessary restrictions on consumption in earlier phases of the lifecycle. For these reasons, the subsidy on owner-occupied housing should be eliminated under a uniform tax treatment of all capital income, where the tax treatment of owner-occupied housing is neutral relative to other assets.
Corporate Tax Competition
Authors: Hofmann Patricia , Riedel Nadine
Published: January 2022

A review of corporate tax policy in the Netherlands is provided, focusing in particular on international aspects and corporate tax competition. Empirical evidence shows that corporate tax policy is important and that it determines the international location of investment and profits of multinational enterprises (MNEs). In terms of tax policy instruments, especially low statutory corporate tax rates—more than narrow tax base definitions—attract internationally mobile business and profits. In addition, ‘smart tax competition’ elements of the Dutch tax system, such as the ‘innovation box’ and generous research and development (R&D) tax credits, help to attract R&D investments that may exert positive spill-over effects on the local economy. Recent tightening of anti-profit-shifting provisions through the European Union’s Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD) and the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) have not eliminated the incentives to engage in corporate tax competition, and the associated detrimental welfare effects, in consequence, prevail. If appropriately designed, further corporate tax policy coordination will likely be beneficial from a global and a Dutch perspective.
ACE or CBIT for the Netherlands?
Authors: Schindler Dirk , Vrijburg Hendrik
Published: January 2022

The traditional corporate tax regime creates costly distortions via a preference for debt over equity and possibilities to shift profits to low-tax countries. To overcome these problems, fundamental reforms towards a comprehensive business income tax (CBIT) or an allowance for corporate equity (ACE) have been proposed. A pure CBIT is undesirable—while reducing debt bias and profit shifting, it exacerbates investment distortions. However, a pure ACE is undesirable as well. Although the ACE would both remove debt bias and no longer distort firms’ investment decisions, it would strengthen profit shifting. Because the world features multiple distortions that cannot be simultaneously eliminated, tax policy should not aim to fully remove all finance distortions to contain investment distortions and profit shifting. Therefore, the current system should be amended by a stripping rule that restricts deductibility of interest expenses and royalty payments to a certain threshold of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA).
Options for Taxation of the Financial Sector
Authors: Lockwood Ben
Published: January 2022

This chapter surveys and evaluates three different options for increasing the taxation of the financial sector: (1) bringing financial services more within the scope of value-added tax (VAT); (2) using financial activity taxes; and (3) using bank levies. As regards (1), the most practical solution is probably the New Zealand approach of zero-rating financial services sold to VAT-registered customers. As regards the other options, there are probably stronger arguments for using bank levies rather than financial activity taxes to discourage excessive bank leverage as bank levies are better targeted.
Excise Duties to Correct Market and Individual Failure
Authors: Cnossen Sijbren
Published: January 2022

Selective taxes on goods and services (known as excise duties) should be designed so that they internalize the external and internal costs of abusive consumption or the use of potentially harmful products, in conjunction with targeted regulations. The current excise duty system in the Netherlands does not seem to meet this requirement, as shown by an analysis of the duties on tobacco, alcohol, gambling, soft drinks, fireworks, and plastics. Policies should be directed at minimizing abuse by people who (potentially) cause the greatest external and internal costs. Importantly, internal effects should be taken into consideration when assessing the regressive distribution of excise duties—not just who pays the tax. Specifically, it is recommended to replace the non-targeted excise duty on soft drinks with a specific excise duty on sugar, to prohibit plastic packaging and single-use items, and to promote an increase in the minimum duties on alcohol at the European level.
Emily Dickinson and the “High Prerogative” of Pain
Authors: Constantinesco Thomas
Published: January 2022

This chapter investigates Emily Dickinson’s response to the problem of pain and connects philosophical and historicist readings of her work, which usually approach the question of pain from antithetical perspectives. In one instance, pain is viewed as intimate and atemporal because it disrupts the very conditions of experience itself. In the other, Dickinson is considered a poet of her time because her poems engage with the generalization of grief occasioned by the Civil War. Building on Agamben’s notion of contemporariness as irrelevance, the chapter argues that it is precisely the sense of untimeliness of Dickinson’s poems of pain that renders them legible as timely interventions into the nation’s culture of pain. It makes the claim that their resistance to time, and to the inscription of pain in time, enables a critique of the chronopolitics of pain and its underlying structure of sacrifice, which informed Northern war propaganda as well as the politics of Reconstruction. At the same time, however, the question of reconstruction and the possibility of community through shared pain deeply preoccupied Dickinson. As her poems try to imagine the suffering of others and confront the limits of sympathy, the chapter concludes, they sketch fleetingly forms of attachment which emerge from the recognition of the very incommensurability of pain.
Anti-Dogmatism and ‘Orthodoxy’
Authors: Lewis Simon
Published: January 2022

Chapter 7 explores anti-dogmatist attacks on Methodism. To Latitudinarians and heterodox ‘Rational Dissenters’, Methodists stifled the progress of the Reformation by defending ‘human’ dogmas, such as the Augustinian doctrine of original sin, infant baptism, and Trinitarianism. Ironically, these orthodox doctrines were also defended vociferously by anti-Methodist High Churchmen, who associated the controversial practices of evangelical leaders with the ‘enthusiastic’ excesses of the Reformation. To some, the Reformation had ended long ago, meaning that the Methodists’ endeavours were, at best, redundant, and, at worst, damaging. To others, the Reformation was a work in progress, which was being stifled by the Methodists’ dogmatic zeal for ‘orthodoxy’. The term ‘Methodism’, therefore, conjured up different images for different people. These images were, however, always rooted firmly in the past.
Intentional Objects, Existent and Nonexistent
Authors: Adams Robert Merrihew
Published: January 2022

The concept of an intentional object is important for the whole project of this book. It has a central role in the account of existence and nonexistence. And merely intentional objects, which exist only in being represented, provide the clearest paradigm of things that are, but are not in themselves. Philosophical views about that sort of nonexistent objects are the main topic of this chapter. The view about nonexistent objects adopted in this book is a form of Moderate Realism. It affirms that there are fictitious and imaginary objects, but denies that they actually exist or have the main properties they are represented as having. Extreme Realism about nonexistent objects is represented here by Alexius Meinong (1853‒1920). He held that all possible objects of thought have their defining predicates whether or not they actually exist. That thesis is developed in a context that is ingenious and fascinating in a way, but in which the main arguments are knowingly never freed entirely from logical contradiction or at least the suspicion of it. At the opposite extreme, Anti-Realism, or Eliminationism, which denies that there are any objects that are nonexistent, is represented here by Kendall Walton’s monumental Mimesis as Make-Believe, in which assertions about nonexistent objects are analyzed as play-acting, taken as true inside the game, but recognized as false outside it. That surely happens; but does it really cover all belief in nonexistent intentional objects?
The Epistemology of Being
Authors: Adams Robert Merrihew
Published: January 2022

Chapter 6 leaves us with a sketch of three accounts of how our ordinary knowledge of the physical world might be related ontologically to things as they are in themselves, and with some reason to think that we do not know about any of them either that it is true or that it is false. That suggests that what we know when we know, as I suppose we often do, that we are in a house, must have a sufficient condition of its truth that actually obtains regardless of the truth or falsity of ontological speculations about what sorts of things are real in themselves. Giving practical reason a voice in the matter, as 17th-century philosophers such Leibniz and Locke did, the condition that Chapter 7 proposes as sufficient for the actuality of what we know and say about houses is that it can be inferred from our conscious experience, in accordance with largely causal ways of thinking that enable us to predict experiences accurately. But it is not possible for me to believe that the actuality of my conscious life could consist in nothing more than the kind of causally coherent experience of me that other people associated with me have. Neither, therefore, will I believe such a thing about the conscious life of another person. The way we care, and have reason to care, about persons gives us reason to be committed to the reality-in-itself of each person’s conscious life.
Blackstone's Guide to the UK Internal Market Act 2020
Authors: Peretz George , Bates Alan , McGurk Brendan , Williams Jack
Published: January 2022

The Internal Market Act 2020 provides the foundation for the United Kingdom’s new internal market after the United Kingdom’s departure from the EU after Brexit. The Act is of significant importance and interest to UK businesses, consumers, and individuals holding professional qualifications. It essentially replaces (and modifies) the large body of EU internal market law for the United Kingdom post-Brexit, and will touch on almost every area of domestic business and trade. This book explores the Act’s provisions in a succinct and practical manner, working through the provisions in the Act in a logical and cohesive way to help the busy practitioner. It includes worked examples to bring the Act’s provisions to life and comparative insights from EU internal market law and EU and UK competition and competition laws.
The Puzzle of Cognitive Phenomenology
Authors: Bayne Tim
Published: January 2022

The cognitive phenomenology debate concerns the nature of conscious thought. On one side of the debate are those who deny that thought has a sui generis phenomenal character. This view—which I refer to as ‘conservatism’—holds that to the extent that thoughts are phenomenally conscious, their phenomenal character is purely sensory. On the other side of the debate are those who hold that thought is characterized by sui generis non-sensory phenomenal states—‘cognitive phenomenology’. My concern in this chapter is not with the question of whether cognitive phenomenology exists, but with the very debate about itself: why do philosophers of mind disagree about the nature of conscious thought? I argue for a semantic analysis of this debate: conservatives and liberals lack a shared conception of what cognitive phenomenology would be. I go on to argue that the real lesson of the cognitive phenomenology debate is that there may be no unitary concept of phenomenal consciousness.
Sincerity and Philosophical Commitment
Authors: Singh Robert
Published: January 2022

On one plausible view, philosophical belief is impermissible because of widespread philosophical disagreement. If that’s right, it might be epistemically valuable to reconstrue philosophical belief as some other form of commitment, one which (a) captures some of the ways in which philosophical belief is valuable while (b) avoiding the problems caused by widespread disagreement. This chapter argues that any such commitment must be sincere, and that since certain candidates for non-doxastic philosophical commitment turn out to be insincere they should be rejected. In the course of doing this, an account of sincerity suitable for non-doxastic commitment is presented. Finally, the chapter proposes a non-belief candidate for philosophical commitment which is both sincere and can plausibly satisfy (b), drawing on the thought that we can be excused rather than justified for commitment held in the face of disagreement.
Chancy Covariance and the Mind Body Problem
Authors: Eva Benjamin
Published: January 2022

Most agree that mental properties depend in some way on physical properties. While physicalists describe this dependence in terms of deterministic synchronic relations like identity or supervenience, some dualists prefer to think of it in terms of indeterministic dynamic relations, like causation. This chapter develops a third conception that falls somewhere between the deterministic synchronic dependence relations of the physicalist and the indeterministic diachronic dependence relations advocated by some dualists. This new conception is then used to formulate a novel approach to the mind body problem that (i) posits a necessary, metaphysically robust synchronic dependence of the mental on the physical, (ii) satisfies several of the key motivations of both non-reductive physicalism and naturalistic dualism, (iii) is consistent with both the causal efficacy of the mental and the causal closure of the physical, and (iv) is capable of reconciling determinism about the physical world with indeterminism about the mental world.
Dehumanization and Perceptions of Immoral Intergroup Behavior
Authors: Heiphetz Larisa , Craig Maureen A.
Published: January 2022

Members of stigmatized groups often face dehumanization. Chapter 6 investigates whether individuals may also dehumanize perpetrators of bigotry. Three main findings emerge. First, participants perceive racists as less than fully human. This finding also generalizes to sexists, suggesting that the propensity to dehumanize perpetrators of bigotry is not limited to racists. Second, the extent to which participants dehumanize racists predicts the degree to which they report that ambiguous behaviors performed by strangers reflect racial bias. Third, this association does not emerge when participants evaluate behaviors performed by their friends, suggesting that views of “racists” in general may not be linked with evaluations of behaviors performed by at least some close others. These findings demonstrate that dehumanization extends to perpetrators of bias and predicts evaluations of their behaviors.
Fair Insurance
Authors: Parr Tom , Williams Andrew
Published: January 2022

What level and kind of protection against relative misfortune should our community provide, and how should it distribute the costs of provision amongst its members? According to the answer this chapter explores, the willingness of fairly situated individuals to pay for protection against the risk of misfortune plays an essential, though limited, role in answering these questions. The authors call this approach fair insurance. The chapter’s aim is to identify the appeal of this position compared to its rivals and to outline an amended variant of the most familiar version of the view. It then explains how that variant survives several influential objections that some have thought decisive. It concludes by showing that the fair insurance approach can contribute to recent debates about how best to develop a contractualist account of distributive decision-making in the face of risk.
Incentives, Inequality, and Community Revisited
Authors: Frye Harrison
Published: January 2022

Many accept some inequality as a price for efficiency—by paying some more than others, we incentivize socially productive behavior. G. A. Cohen famously criticized this argument for being overly uncritical of the motives of those who receive such incentives. Cohen’s argument and the debate it has generated implicitly rely on a class-based analysis of how inequality-creating incentives arise: there are the “least advantaged” and the “more advantaged,” and inequality is the result of the more advantaged holding out for more. In contrast, this chapter argues that inequality can be a solution to a problem of cooperation that faces equal sharing schemes: shirking. The temptation to shirk does not just plague the more advantaged, but everyone in an equal sharing scheme. If this is true, inequality is not some tribute we pay to the more advantaged. Instead, it is a solution to a problem of cooperation generated by all of us.
Minor Virtues? The Nicomachean Ethics and the Teaching of Rhetoric at the Akademia Zamojska
Authors: Lepri Valentina
Published: January 2022

This chapter demonstrates the ethics teaching oriented towards practice that was in vogue at the Academy of Zamość, a schola civilis organized according to Sturm's model. It discusses the assignment of a central role to the Nicomachean Ethics, particularly to the theory of 'minor' virtues. It also considers the core of Akademia Zamojska's teaching that are aimed at the education of a neo-Ciceronian figure of politician, whose crucial skill lay in the ability to persuade people by means of the spoken word. The chapter examines ethics, rhetoric, and dialectics, which are part of an integrated program that, in its appeal to ancient ideals, attempted to respond to the distinctly modern need to educate the statesman. It mentions commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics that were produced in the most important academic centres of Europe, from Oxford to Heidelberg, Cracow and Paris.
Dante's Masterplot and Alternative Narratives in the Commedia
Authors: Crisafi Nicolò
Published: January 2022

The book studies narrative pluralism in the Commedia by Dante Alighieri with the aim of opening up the poem to alternatives to the dominant narrative embedded in the text, which it terms ‘Dante’s masterplot’. This is the teleological trajectory that subordinates the past to the revisionist gaze of a new endpoint. The introduction analyses the masterplot’s workings and its role in the interpretation of the poem, documenting its overwhelming influence on readings of the Commedia. The body of the book then explores three competing narrative models that resist and counter its hegemony, which are enacted by (i) paradoxes, (ii) alternative endings and parallel lives, and (iii) the future. Paradoxes neutralize the teleological hierarchy and thus allow Dante to represent contradictory ideas and experiences; through counterfactuals and parallel episodes, Dante creates an affective space in the text, where narrative necessity and moral normativity are momentarily suspended; lastly, the future constitutes teleology’s blind spot and thus exposes the poem’s, and its author’s, vulnerability to time and circumstance. By focusing on non-linear modes of storytelling or taking teleological linearity to its extreme consequences, the monograph questions interpretations of the Commedia that favour one normative master truth, and highlights instead the manifold poetic, theological, and ethical tensions which, due to the masterplot’s influence, are often overlooked. The book concludes with a proposal that, alongside traditional notions of Dante’s plurality of linguistic registers and styles, Dante’s narrative pluralism can and should play a key role in readings of the Commedia.
Alternative Endings and Parallel Lives
Authors: Crisafi Nicolò
Published: January 2022

Chapter 2 discusses the detours from and parallels to the Commedia’s main storyline. These take the shape of counterfactual, ‘disnarrated’ narratives—events that could have happened but did not—and parallel episodes where two characters in a similar situation took different decisions with often antithetical outcomes. The chapter draws on a range of comparative readings, from novels by Marcel Proust and Ben Lerner to poems by Virgil, Robert Frost, and T. S. Eliot, in order to identify what is distinctive about Dante’s use of imaginative alternatives, and to reflect on why such alternatives, considered literary clichés by Proust, are often overlooked by Dante scholars. This narrative strategy has three functions in the Commedia. First, alternative scenarios counterbalance the determinism that is inevitable in retrospective storytelling with the existential perspective of the living, endowed with free will and faced with choices whose consequences and significance are unknown in life. Secondly, alternative scenarios give expression to the personal affections that are trampled underfoot by the grand march of history and the poem’s goal-oriented plot, offering a second chance to dwell in this affective space before the poem presses on. Lastly, alternatives grant the poet creative freedom from the deterministic demands of historical truth and moral normativity, allowing him to stray from them imaginatively without straying from them de facto. The chapter ends by comparing detours and parallel episodes with the many ‘secrets’ revealed to Dante in the Commedia, the fiction of which offers its author a comparable narrative freedom.
Abortion and the Non-Identity Problem
Authors: Harman Elizabeth
Published: January 2022

How is the ethics of abortion related to the non-identity problem? Some cases of deciding whether to abort turn out to raise the non-identity problem: for the same reasons that it is morally required to wait to conceive in some temporary condition non-identity cases, it is also morally required to abort some pregnancies. This implies that the following surprising claim is true: sometimes it is morally required to kill a being for its own sake, although continuing to live would be better for it. The chapter defends this surprising claim. The chapter also argues that we should understand non-identity phenomena more broadly, to encompass cases of affecting what the moral status facts are. This includes affecting who exists, affecting whether beings have moral status, and affecting what level of moral status beings have (if there are levels of moral status).
Prioritarianism, Population Ethics, and Competing Claims
Authors: Otsuka Michael
Published: January 2022

In his restriction of prioritarianism to cases in which the same people would exist in all the possible outcomes, Parfit stakes out an unstable position, both for himself and more generally. There is no plausible rationale for a prioritarianism that is so restricted, which is consistent with the key features of Parfit’s elaboration and defence of this view and his other commitments. The principles that might be appealed to, in an attempt to justify such a restriction, give rise to a different view—one that is sensitive to the presence or absence of the competing claims of different individuals, where both the existence and the magnitude of these claims are determined by gains and losses to individuals in a manner that is not fully captured by Parfit’s prioritarian weighting.
Between Scholarship and Church Politics
Authors: Maddicott John
Published: January 2022

This book provides an account of the life and career of John Prideaux, regius professor of divinity at Oxford, 1615–42, rector of Exeter College, Oxford, 1612–42, and bishop of Worcester, 1641–6. The twelve chapters discuss his role in the church, the Calvinistic theology which he expounded in his lectures and books, his scholarship and place in the European republic of letters, and his opposition to the Arminians and their supposed leader, Archbishop Laud. It focuses particularly on the 1630s, when Laud was both chancellor of the university and archbishop of Canterbury, and when the two men clashed repeatedly. The book additionally emphasises Prideaux’s role as a college head, teacher, and writer of undergraduate textbooks who rebuilt his college on a grand scale, increased its undergraduate intake, and raised its reputation to new heights. It also describes his domestic circumstances and his loyalties, local and national: to his family, his colleagues and friends in church and college, and his native county of Devonshire. It concludes by charting his experiences during the early stages of the Long Parliament, as bishop of Worcester during the Civil War and, in his last years, as a scholar who returned to Oxford to produce some of his most outstanding theological and pedagogical works. The book portrays Prideaux as a man who lived in several different but related worlds and was a central figure in each of them.