bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Message Repetition and Epistemic Overinclusion
Authors: Tanasoca Ana
Published: October 2020

Chapter 9 discusses how message repetition can undermine citizens’ internal deliberations by leading them to double-count the same piece of information. When speakers do not maintain their epistemic independence, they can lead their listeners to attribute to much weigh to their claims in internal deliberation—a case of epistemic overinclusion. This threat to informal networked deliberation can be mitigated through the adoption of special deliberative norms by citizens and influentials alike and the redesign of social media platforms.
Rational Powers in Action
Authors: Tenenbaum Sergio
Published: October 2020

Human actions unfold over time, in pursuit of ends that are not fully specified in advance. Rational Powers in Action locates these features of the human condition at the heart of a new theory of instrumental rationality. Where many theories of rational agency focus on instantaneous choices between sharply defined outcomes, treating the temporally extended and partially open-ended character of action as an afterthought, this book argues that the deep structure of instrumental rationality can only be understood if we see how it governs the pursuit of long-term, indeterminate ends. These are ends that cannot be realized through a single momentary action, and whose content leaves partly open what counts as realizing the end. For example, one cannot simply write a book through an instantaneous choice to do so; over time, one must execute a variety of actions to realize one’s goal of writing a book, where one may do a better or worse job of attaining that goal, and what counts as succeeding at it is not fully determined in advance. Even to explain the rational governance of much less ambitious actions like making dinner, this book argues that we need to focus on temporal duration and the indeterminacy of ends in intentional action. Theories of moment-by-moment preference maximization, or indeed any understanding of instrumental rationality on the basis of momentary mental items, cannot capture the fundamental structure of our instrumentally rational capacities. This book puts forward a theory of instrumental rationality as rationality in action.
Future-Directed Intentions and the Theory of Instrumental Rationality
Authors: Tenenbaum Sergio
Published: October 2020

This chapter considers a major alternative to the extended theory of instrumental rationality (ETR): the view, pioneered by Michael Bratman, that future-directed intentions (FDIs) have a fundamental role to play in our understanding of the rationality of extended agency. FDIs come in many flavours; they can be specific intentions, plans, policies, or projects. I argue in this chapter that ETR naturally classifies some of these “flavours” as instances of extended actions, and therefore they are structurally identical and subject to the exact same basic instrumental requirements as other instances of extended actions. Once we see this point, it turns out that purported norms and principles governing FDIs are either superfluous or invalid.
Persisting Intentions
Authors: Tenenbaum Sergio
Published: October 2020

Chapter 6 continues the discussion of putative requirements generated by future-directed intentions, turning to what I call “intention-persistence requirements”. These requirements seem particularly important in understanding choice among incommensurable or incomparable alternatives. In such choice situations, it seems irrational to engage in “brute shuffling”; that is, intending first to choose one option, then (possibly) incurring certain costs associated with bringing about this option, and then, in the absence of any new information or any reason to change one’s mind, switching to choose another, incomparable, option. However, unless we accept intention-persistence requirements, it might seem that we cannot explain why such behaviour is irrational. The chapter argues against the validity of such persistence requirements and proposes a different understanding of choices in these contexts. In particular, the chapter argues that only certain patterns of shuffling are irrational, and the irrationality of these patterns can be given a more direct and satisfying explanation without appeal to intention-persistence requirements.
Actions, Preferences, and Risk
Authors: Tenenbaum Sergio
Published: October 2020

Formal theories of instrumental rationality, such as orthodox decision theory, often provide a powerful account of the rationality of choice under risk. Can the extended theory of instrumental rationality (ETR) be similarly extended to contexts of risk and uncertainty? Chapter 9 argues that ETR can provide a satisfactory account of rationality in these contexts and that it can actually co-opt the resources of decision theory exactly in the cases in which the theory seems most plausible; namely, the pursuit of what I call “general means” (such as the pursuit of health or wealth). Moreover ETR plausibly renders coherent certain ubiquitous choice dispositions (such as the ones manifested in the Allais paradox) that seem incompatible with orthodox decision theory.
Analyticity Reconsidered1
Authors: Boghossian Paul , Williamson Timothy
Published: October 2020

This essay distinguishes between metaphysical and epistemological conceptions of analyticity. The former is the idea of a sentence that is ‘true purely in virtue of its meaning’ while the latter is the idea of a sentence that ‘can be justifiably believed merely on the basis of understanding its meaning’. It further argues that, while Quine may have been right to reject the metaphysical notion, the epistemological notion can be defended from his critique and put to work explaining a priori justification. Along the way, a number of further distinctions relevant to the theory of analyticity and the theory of apriority are made and their significance is explained.
Williamson on the A Priori and the Analytic
Authors: Boghossian Paul , Williamson Timothy
Published: October 2020

This essay criticizes Williamson’s attempt, in his book, The Philosophy of Philosophy, to undermine the interest of the a priori–a posteriori distinction. Williamson’s argument turns on several large claims. The first is that experience often plays a role intermediate between evidential and merely enabling, and that this poses a difficulty for giving a theoretically satisfying account of the distinction. The second is that there are no constitutive understanding–assent links. Both of these claims are subjected to detailed scrutiny. In particular, it is argued that Williamson’s case of the deviant logician, Simon, fails to constitute an intelligible counterexample to the status of conjunction elimination as an understanding–assent link for ‘and’.
Reply to Boghossian on the A Priori and the Analytic1
Authors: Boghossian Paul , Williamson Timothy
Published: October 2020

This chapter replies to Boghossian’s defence of the a priori–a posteriori distinction against the arguments for its shallowness in?The Philosophy of Philosophy. In particular, it shows how to understand the example of an unorthodox thinker who is linguistically competent with conjunction but refuses to treat the rule of conjunction elimination as logically valid. It also rebuts Boghossian’s charge of circularity against the account of knowledge of metaphysical modality in terms of the cognitive capacities required to assess ordinary counterfactual conditionals. For the explanation of knowledge of logic and mathematics, the key significance is emphasized of the distinction between knowing the truth of what is in fact a necessary truth and knowing that it is necessary.
Do We Have Reason to Doubt the Importance of the Distinction between A Priori and A Posteriori Knowledge?
Authors: Boghossian Paul , Williamson Timothy
Published: October 2020

This essay defends the a priori–a posteriori distinction against two skeptical challenges posed by Williamson in Chapter 8. Against the argument that no top-down characterization of the distinction can line up with the intuitive paradigm examples, it contends that the argument’s reliance on the distinction between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ experience renders it ineffective. An alternative way of running the argument is shown to lead to a different conclusion, one about the nature of justifiers. Against Williamson’s central argument, which presents a pair of cases designed to show that whatever distinction the paradigm examples mark it cannot be one of epistemological significance, the essay argues that Williamson fails to draw the correct conclusions from his cases, and in particular fails to show that the subject in either case can acquire justified belief via the type of exercise of the imagination that he describes.
Weather Forecasts
Authors: Bleakley Chris
Published: October 2020

Chapter 4 tells the story of numerical weather forecasting from its inception to today’s supercomputing algorithms. In 1922, Lewis Fry Richardson proposed that, since the atmosphere is subject to the laws of physics, future weather can be predicted by means of algorithmic calculations. His attempt at forecasting a single day’s weather by means of manual calculations took several months. In the late 1940s, John von Neumann resurrected Richardson’s idea and launched a project to conduct the first weather forecast by computer. The world’s first operational electronic computer – ENIAC - completed a 24-hour forecast in just one day. It appeared that accurate forecasting simply required faster computers. In 1969, Edward Lorenz discovered that tiny errors in weather measurements can accumulate during numerical forecasting to produce large errors. The so-called Butterfly Effect was alleviated by the Monte Carlo simulation method invented by Stanislaw Ulam for particle physics.
Facebook and Friends
Authors: Bleakley Chris
Published: October 2020

Chapter 9 examines how algorithms extract knowledge from data. In the 1990s, web sites began to store increasing volumes of data. A new industry grew up to exploit this data for commercial purposes. In a Harvard dorm, Mark Zuckerberg created a web site that allowed students to share personal news. The key to Facebook’s success was an algorithm invented by Zuckerberg to prioritise posts based on their popularity and relevance. The algorithm sparked a revolution in viral messaging. Netflix launched a US$1 million prize to find the most accurate algorithm for recommending movies to based users’ ratings. Google Flu Trends attempted to predict outbreaks of the flu across the USA based on Google queries. Despite initial high profile successes, the project ended in failure - an ode to the limits of data science.
Mimicking the Brain
Authors: Bleakley Chris
Published: October 2020

Chapter 11 traces the history of artificial neural networks (ANNs) from humble beginnings in the 1940s to their monumental successes in the 21st century. ANNs are algorithms which mimic the behaviour of the nerve cells in the human brain. The concept was originally proposed by Walter Pitts and Warren McCulloch but it was Frank Rosenblatt that popularised the idea, building an ANN to recognise simple shape in images. Rosenblatt’s Perceptron was heavily criticised and attention turned to other, more rigorours mathematical, approaches. In the 70s, three independent research teams invented an effective algorithm for training an ANN to perform pattern recognition tasks. By the 1990s, a handful of results suggested that the idea might work after all. Around 2006, it finally became apparent that computer performance had been the limiting factor. Large networks could perform many pattern recognition just as well humans. So-called deep learning was about to transform computing.
Next Steps
Authors: Bleakley Chris
Published: October 2020

Chapter 13 investigates cryptocurrency and quantum computing. Bitcoin – the world’s first cryptocurrency - was released by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. Unlike conventional money, Bitcoin transactions are anonymous - maintained by a worldwide collection of computers operated by volunteers. Bitcoin took off on the black market but then migrated to legitimate business. The current value of all bitcoins is a staggering $41 billion. Strangely, no one knows who Nakamoto is – he, she, or they have yet to reveal themselves. Quantum computing was first proposed by physicist Richard Feynman in 1981. His idea was that the weird behaviour of sub-atomic particles could be exploited to perform computations. In theory, quantum computing allows huge numbers of calculations to be performed simultaneously. Google, IBM and others are now in race to build a practical quantum computer. Such a machine might well crack the encryption algorithms that currently underpin both the Internet and Bitcoin.
Canonical transformations
Authors: Kotkin Gleb L. , Serbo Valeriy G.
Published: October 2020

This chapter addresses the canonical transformation defined by the given generating function, the rotation in the phase space as a canonical transformation, and themovement of the system as a canonical transformation. The chapter also discusses using the canonical transformations for solving the problems of the anharmonic oscillations and using the canonical transformation to diagonalize the Hamiltonian function of an anisotropic charged harmonic oscillator in a magnetic field. Finally, the chapter addresses the canonical variables which reduce the Hamiltonian function of the harmonic oscillator to zero and using them for consideration of the system of the harmonic oscillators with the weak nonlinear coupling.
Integration of one-dimensional equations of motions
Authors: Kotkin Gleb L. , Serbo Valeriy G.
Published: October 2020

If the potential energy is independent of time, the energy of the system remains constant during the motion of a closed system. A system with one degree of freedom allows for the determination of the law of motion in quadrature. In this chapter, the authors consider motion of the particles in the one-dimensional fields. They discuss also how the law and the period of a particle moving in the potential field change due to adding to the given field a small correction.
Legal Pluralism in European Contract Law
Authors: Mak Vanessa
Published: October 2020

The relevance of contracting and self-regulation in consumer markets has increased rapidly in recent years, in particular in the platform economy. Online platforms provide opportunities for businesses and consumers to connect with strangers, often across borders, trading products, and services. In this new economy, platform operators create, apply, and enforce their own rules in their contractual relationships with users. This book examines the substance of these rules and the space for private governance beyond the reach of state regulation. It explores recent developments in lawmaking ‘beyond the state’ with case studies focusing on companies such as Airbnb and Amazon. The book asks how common values and objectives of EU law, such as consumer protection and contractual fairness, can be safeguarded when lawmaking shifts to a space outside the reach of state law.
Introduction
Authors: Mak Vanessa
Published: October 2020

This introductory chapter presents the major themes of study and narrows the scope of research to the European Union (EU). It briefly examines developing trends in the market for consumer goods and services as well as the legal systems which changed to accommodate these trends. In particular, the chapter focuses on the platform economy. It discusses issues arising from these developments, especially as they apply to private law. Private law concerns the contractual rights that suppliers and customers have vis-à-vis each other and their potential liability. However, whereas the rights and duties of these parties would normally be governed by rules of national contract and consumer law, or perhaps also by rules of European origin if the parties are in the EU, the platform economy has created a private sphere that operates largely through other mechanisms. From here, the chapter introduces research questions as well as a new approach to lawmaking in European law.
The Platform Economy
Authors: Mak Vanessa
Published: October 2020

This chapter charts which rules concerning contracts and consumer protection have until now emerged in public and private regulation. These contain a mix of public regulation, co-regulation, codes of conduct, soft law projects to develop model rules, and reputational feedback systems. Also, online dispute resolution can in practice be a source of norms, as norms developed in this context are often through a feedback loop used to improve the quality of services offered by platform operators. Here, the chapter places the focus on the platform economy. Platforms themselves are actively working to provide mechanisms that can, at least partly, overcome the problems of enforcing consumer rights. They have an interest in securing trust between users who, even more than consumers in the offline world, are at a disadvantage in establishing the quality of goods and services and the reliability of their counterparty. Platforms therefore use mechanisms that can fill in a ‘regulatory void’.
Managing Pluralism
Authors: Mak Vanessa
Published: October 2020

This chapter examines which mechanisms can provide ‘checks and balances’ for the rules created by different lawmakers in a legal pluralist constellation. The question here is which space exists for the creation and maintenance of private governance mechanisms based on voluntary participation. First, the chapter maps the mechanisms for monitoring the substance of private lawmaking, in so far as they relate to European contract law. Second, the spaces that exist between private and public regulation in relation to each of these instruments are examined. The chapter moves on to a more in-depth analysis of the space that private regulation has besides public regulation. The relevant mechanisms that can be discerned are: standardisation of contracts, the use of optional instruments or model rules in contract law, and monitoring through online dispute resolution.
Introduction
Authors: Sullivan Ceri
Published: October 2020

Fiction is good at registering how speakers approach God in ways that are specific to their time and place. Literary critics have studied the dramatic qualities in the public prayer of the early modern liturgy; religious historians have taken a lead from lyric poetry when discussing the language of private prayer. This chapter crosses these lines of research to show how private prayer at the turn of the seventeenth century is explicitly dramatic. Shakespeare scholars focus on his plays’ oaths, prophecies, and curses. Yet private prayers in the folio versions of the history plays go beyond these genres, to structure the action on stage. They are, moreover, greater in number and substance than in the quarto versions, and are original, rather than being sourced from the liturgy, Bible, or chronicles.
Techniques to Compose Private Prayers
Authors: Sullivan Ceri
Published: October 2020

Affecting petitions come from skill in characterizing the addressee and beneficiaries of prayer. In this chapter, these figures are considered through the four genres of prayer (praise, thanks, confession, or request), to give a rounded picture and to amplify the emotion behind a petition. While largely agreeing that model private prayers may be provided as training aids, prescriptive texts worry that thinking up words for a prayer in advance (let alone reading or reciting others’ texts) might be trying to limit the promptings of the Spirit. They balance words like inspiration, instinct, and quickening against terms such as rules, moulds, and forms. Since theorists of creativity are also at the time trying to think about how the process of writing brings together originality and craft, the conceptual frameworks of prayer and poetics converge in advice on when, and how, preparation should yield to improvisation.
Scripting a Role for the Speaker of Private Prayer: 2 and 3 Henry VI
Authors: Sullivan Ceri
Published: October 2020

Private prayer creates narrative lines about its beneficiaries. Collections of model prayers show kitchen maids how to empathize with war heroes, or gentlemen with pregnant women, or merchants with coalminers, imagining their beneficiaries’ problems in loving detail. Pray-ers refer to themselves as marginalized (sick, criminal, in chains), yet at the same time as provided with an almighty weapons system to change the world. Praying could be a form of ethical and pragmatic life coaching, a way to steel the self to unpalatable actions or perform a thought experiment in alternative outcomes—but it could also shut down radical possibilities. This chapter discusses how alternative plot lines developed by the king’s prayer in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI create a counterfactual history, one opposed by the normative pray-ers in the factions around Henry.
Afterword
Authors: Sullivan Ceri
Published: October 2020

Prayer on stage might, at points, have been felt to be real. Private prayer was made in the wider context of a domestic performance culture, in which people sang, danced, played, and read aloud to each other. Such prayer was seen as a dialogue, not a charm, so, when it came to staged prayer, the actor and audience were primed to understand that God was listening with them to a character speak to him. Passages of solitary prayer would have got the same rehearsal, under the same conditions, as a real private prayer. A moment of prayer in a play lets actors revive a sense of the options open to their character (blocking out for the moment their knowledge of what subsequently happens), thus aiding the blending of actor into character. Prayer that is worded conventionally, in particular, may encourage audiences to respond as they do to such signals off stage.
Reconstructing the ‘Cossey Hall’ Album
Authors: Matthews Samantha
Published: October 2020

The Jerningham family began their influential British country house album at Cossey Hall, Norfolk, in 1785: a defining moment in public awareness of the elite practice. Lady Frances Jerningham’s letters chart the book’s transition from a novel amusement to a meaningful agent in the family’s social network, and in constructing their public image. Contributors ranged from the family’s children and neighbours, to authors including Arthur Murphy and Amelia Opie. Edward Jerningham’s ‘Lines written in the Album, at Cossey Hall’ (1786), appropriated by the periodicals, became the most widely known album poem of the late-eighteenth century, and made the Cossey volume the most famous English album of the age. Drawing on family letters and contemporary periodicals, the chapter demonstrates how a unique manuscript book kept behind closed doors became not only a record of domestic and local affairs, but of public and political events, over two generations.
‘Like Her, Fair Book, be thou’
Authors: Matthews Samantha
Published: October 2020

Chapter 3 examines six manuscript books which influential hostess Sarah Sophia Child-Villiers, fifth Countess of Jersey (1785–1867) kept in 1805–24. It argues that these manuscript compilations are overlooked technologies of power, influence, and creativity in elite Regency social and literary networks. The books reflect the shift towards collecting original poems during album-keeping’s transition to a popular practice, and show Jersey’s developing consciousness of the album as an expression and extension of her own identity. The albums document the range of reading, copying, and composing practices associated with guests’ visits to the Jerseys’ house at Middleton Park, from parlour games and flirtation, more formal and public tributes, and prestigious personalized poems in autograph by celebrated poets including George Crabbe, Lord Byron, and Thomas Moore, as well as overlooked society poets such as W. R. Spencer.
Albo-mania, Albo-phobia
Authors: Matthews Samantha
Published: October 2020

1820s print culture had a love–hate relationship with album poetry. Although the publishing industry capitalized on the democratization of the elite album, most of the critical discourse was satirical. Women’s ‘albo-mania’ provoked ‘albo-phobia’. Male professional writers’ intense anxieties about cultural feminization and de-professionalization focus on album poetry. Anti-album discourse mediated sociocultural anxieties about the decline of poetry and rise in women and amateur writers’ participation in the literary marketplace. By contrasting anti-album discourse in periodicals such as Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine with samples of published album verses by poets including Bernard Barton and Robert Charles Dallas, the chapter examines the genre’s identification with women, children, amateur writers, and newly literate classes deemed ineligible to participate in culture as agents rather than as consumers.
Coda
Authors: Matthews Samantha
Published: October 2020

What is the value of Romantic albums and album verses? Poems often figure the album as a cornucopia or treasure, yet the critical reception derided this positive valuation, and many albums were destroyed or lost. The Victorian afterlife of Romantic album culture shows how its ambivalent relation to the print marketplace contributed both to its democratization and its decline as a medium for original poetry and creative experimentation. In 1830s album verses, Leigh Hunt aligned the female album-owner with the commodified ‘scrap-beggar’, while Robert Southey thought only partisan collectors would save unique books from destruction. The afterlives of Dora Wordsworth and Emma Isola Moxon’s albums demonstrate these conflicts, yet digital culture can help recover albums and album poetry from neglect. Joanna Baillie’s simile of the album as a net of fish affirms Album Verses’ arguments for the creative and ethical possibilities of album poetry as manuscript form in the age of mass print.
Locate Targets That Fit Your M&A Strategy
Authors: Galpin Timothy
Published: October 2020

Deal sourcing involves creating leads and managing relationships to bring about a potential M&A transaction. A firm’s approach to deal sourcing depends partially on market conditions. As M&A waves gain strength there is often an abundance of capital pursuing too few deals. Conversely, in down M&A cycles deals are easier to source. In either circumstance, it is important that any prospective acquirer has a clear deal sourcing approach in order to maximize the chances of accomplishing their M&A strategy. This chapter covers three main categories of deal sourcing, the differences between financial and strategic buyers, and the M&A auction process, and differentiates between the strategic and organizational fit of M&A targets. Tools, templates, best practices, potential pitfalls, and a case example of how to go about deal sourcing are also addressed, along with the main participants, core activities, buyer’s and seller’s perspectives, and key cross-border considerations.
Negotiate Clearly Defined Deal Terms
Authors: Galpin Timothy
Published: October 2020

M&A negotiations are a process rather than an event and encompass much more than just price. Common negotiation areas beyond price include management decision-making and control, earn-out provisions, positions and roles, severance, organization structure, compensation and benefits, location, perks, and many others. This chapter covers common M&A negotiating terminology, integrative versus distributive negotiations, long- and short-form letters of intent (LOI), term sheets, key steps in M&A negotiations, and hostile takeovers. The tools, templates, best practices, potential pitfalls, and a case example of how to go about effective M&A negotiations are also addressed, along with the main participants, core activities, buyer’s and seller’s perspectives, and key cross-border considerations.
Consummate to Reach Transaction Close
Authors: Galpin Timothy
Published: October 2020

The period from signing a negotiated and agreed sale and purchase agreement (SPA) to actual deal close is full of hurdles, including satisfying regulatory requirements, gaining third-party approvals, and securing shareholder consent for the transaction. This chapter provides an overview of the key elements of consummating a transaction, from “signing to closing,” and covers the SPA; regulatory requirements and reviews in the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union; national security regulatory reviews; public versus private transactions; asset versus stock sales; closing and post-closing requirements; determining a final transaction price; methods of funding; break fees; earn-out provisions; and the impact of activist investors on M&A. The tools, templates, best practices, potential pitfalls, and a case example of how to move a deal from signing to closing are also addressed, along with the main participants, core activities, buyer’s and seller’s perspectives, and key cross-border considerations.
Innovate for Revenue Growth
Authors: Galpin Timothy
Published: October 2020

For deals with the strategic aims of acquiring new content and technologies, accessing new customers and developing new capabilities, revenue growth is at the center of the value proposition. Consequently, innovation for revenue growth becomes the mantra for the combined firm. Transactions can help or hinder the combined company’s ability to innovate. This chapter presents practical approaches to innovation for revenue growth during M&A, including a clear definition of innovation, innovation beyond R&D, and actions to promote innovation across the combined organization. The tools, templates, best practices, potential pitfalls, and a case example of how to effectively address innovation during M&A are also addressed, along with the main participants, core activities, buyer’s and seller’s perspectives, and key cross-border considerations.
Evaluate to Measure and Report Deal Success
Authors: Galpin Timothy
Published: October 2020

Throughout the ten-stage Deal Flow Model presented in this book there are numerous aspects of the M&A process that when measured are more readily managed. M&A measurement can take the form of process as well as outcome measures. Moreover, M&A assessment is not just to inform. Effective M&A measurement should also support the agile nature of pre- and post-deal activities by prompting both corrective and celebratory actions. Well-defined measures also provide the foundation for rewarding and recognizing people who help achieve desired goals. This chapter covers the benefits of M&A measurement, various types and categories of M&A measurement, and using multiple M&A measures to tell a more complete story. The tools, templates, best practices, potential pitfalls, and a case example of how to effectively measure M&A progress and success are also addressed, along with the main participants, core activities, buyer’s and seller’s perspectives, and key cross-border considerations.
Introduction
Authors: Fallon Francis , Hyman Gavin
Published: October 2020

This Introduction provides a general contextual background to the question of agnosticism. It addresses the question of definition: how the term ‘agnosticism’ has been variously defined, and some of the various sub-divisions of different types of agnosticism that have appeared in scholarly literature. The Introduction also considers contextual historical issues, identifying the origins of the term in the nineteenth century, and its subsequent development. It considers the relationship of agnosticism to both theism and atheism, identifying strains of agnosticism within theology, and looking at the relationship of agnosticism to recent manifestations of ‘New Atheism’. Finally, the Introduction discusses the essays that follow, identifying both convergences and divergences between them. It suggests that although the essays employ different methodologies and reach distinct conclusions, many of them suggest that agnosticism may not be as incompatible with religious belief and practices as has sometimes been assumed.
What is Wrong with Agnostic Belief?
Authors: Avnur Yuval
Published: October 2020

One who thinks that our foreseeable sources of evidence could not indicate whether something is true is a sort of agnostic about that thing. If one also believes that thing, one has an ‘agnostic belief’. This chapter argues that not all agnostic beliefs must be irrational. Three reasons for thinking that all agnostic beliefs are irrational are considered: agnostic beliefs are always unjustified, always involve a sort of akrasia or incoherence, or always commit one to absurd ‘Moore-paradoxical’ judgements. But, none of these reasons pan out. So, some agnostic belief might fail to be irrational. However, such an agnostic belief, if it is to be defensible, must have some interesting features, which are discussed in the conclusion.
If Agnosticism, Then What?
Authors: Fallon Francis
Published: October 2020

This chapter will proceed from, rather than argue towards, agnostic convictions. It will outline those convictions, characterizing agnosticism as the rational position. Given this, what attitudes and practices may we rationally adopt? This chapter will reject that indifference necessarily follows from agnosticism. This chapter will also argue that agnosticism, as it has been characterized, is not rationally consistent with sustained religious belief. We have another option, whose source we can find in religious ambivalence (as opposed to indifference). Agnosticism finds the case for God’s existence unconvincing, but remains unconvinced of God’s non-existence. The latter suggests openness towards religious views and even experiences. Citing precedent in metaphor, history, and everyday epistemological attitudes, this chapter will show how one can refrain from accepting a belief in general while entertaining it in particular instances, discuss the constraints of such ambivalence, and justify as rational certain forms of religious attitude and practice.
Hegel, Wittgenstein, and the Question of Agnosticism
Authors: Hyman Gavin
Published: October 2020

Hegel and Wittgenstein are two philosophers for whom the possibility of agnosticism would appear, in principle, to be excluded. This is because the position of agnosticism is predicated on understandings of metaphysics and of the knowing subject that both philosophers reject. At the same time, however, their reasons for rejecting these metaphysical and epistemological models differ markedly. This chapter will explore how these apparently divergent thinkers actually partake of some deep affinities, particularly as manifested in their dispositions towards agnosticism. But it will also argue that Hegel’s philosophy allows for a form of agnosticism—albeit a form of agnosticism that differs from conventional understandings—in a way that Wittgenstein does not. This chapter will also suggest that it is precisely this that exemplifies the advantages of Hegel’s critique of metaphysics over that of Wittgenstein.
Aquinas and Agnosticism
Authors: O’Grady Paul
Published: October 2020

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to clarifying the nature of agnosticism. As a stance in the philosophy of religion, it clearly emerged in the nineteenth century, although the earlier philosophical work of Hume and Kant paved the way for it. However, there is also an older, related tradition in philosophy and theology, called apophaticism, which makes the notion of ‘not knowing’ about God central to its concerns. How do these approaches relate to each other, if at all? To attempt an answer to this question, this chapter will explore an interpretation of the work of Thomas Aquinas which emphasizes apophaticism, and a related interpretation of his work which results in one of the most systematically articulated versions of contemporary agnosticism.
Organizing Integrity
Authors: Nili Shmuel
Published: October 2020

This opening chapter spells out the key concepts deployed throughout the book. It also contends, against integrity skeptics of various types, that personal integrity, understood as fidelity to one’s fundamental commitments, can actually have independent moral significance. The focus is on two arguments, both revolving around unconditional commitments. The first, the unfairness argument, holds that since morality itself pushes agents to incorporate certain unconditional commitments into their self-conception, it is unfair to criticize agents who go on to treat these commitments as an independent factor in their moral deliberation. The second argument links agents’ unconditional moral commitments to their self-respect. Both arguments allow us to see why one’s integrity is not simply parasitic upon one “doing the right thing.” Rather, integrity can inform the analysis of what one morally ought to do.
Integrity
Authors: Nili Shmuel
Published: October 2020

This chapter begins by introducing a conception of a liberal polity as a collective agent with its own moral integrity, and presenting some initial attractions of conceiving of a liberal polity in this way. These attractions are further developed through various international cases, where the idea of liberal integrity captures important but elusive moral intuitions. Several parallels are presented between a liberal polity’s unconditional commitments and the unconditional commitments of an individual person. These parallels help dispute skepticism about integrity’s independent moral significance, and support the argument that such skepticism is easier to combat at the political as compared to the personal level. After developing two additional arguments reinforcing this conclusion, the chapter closes by considering the objection that the discussion of a liberal polity’s integrity might be a distraction from a proper focus on personal integrity.
Honoring Integrity?
Authors: Nili Shmuel
Published: October 2020

This chapter examines how the integrity framework bears on political honors, understood as any form of special symbolic recognition accorded by political entities to individuals, to particular social groups, or to particular social causes. Rather than focusing on honorees’ personal integrity, the chapter argues that honors decisions ought to focus on marking and reinforcing appropriate moral commitments of the collective in whose name the honor is being (or has been) awarded. Suggesting that political honors can often fulfill their collectivist functions even when they involve no individual politicians, the chapter also shows how the collectivist approach can account for cases where there is a particularly firm intuition that political leaders should be at the center of political honors. Rejecting an individual desert alternative to the collectivist approach, the chapter ends by showing how the collectivist approach can guide decisions regarding the withdrawal of political honors, without falling back either on individual integrity or on individual desert.
“Pris sur le vif”
Authors: James Alison
Published: October 2020

This chapter examines the surrealists’ deployment of the verbal or photographic document as a model that is simultaneously poetic and anti-literary. The surrealists eventually depart from their initial understanding of automatic writing as a “snapshot” that captures uncensored thought. Instead, their writings of the late 1920s and 1930s increasingly frame a range of poetic and visual documents within a multi-layered ethnographic discourse, whether in prose texts that attend to urban experience (Aragon’s Le Paysan de Paris, Breton’s Nadja), or, on the margins of the official surrealist group, in the work of Bataille’s Documents magazine. Finally, Michel Leiris’s reflections on ethnographic display simultaneously reveal the importance of contextualizing evidence and highlight the problematic collection practices that transform indigenous artifacts into cultural “documents.”
Reputation and Reality
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

This chapter attempts to explain the discrepancy between Strauß’s reputation and reality. Strauß is often portrayed as a revolutionary because he had written a radical book which undermined the authority of state and church. Yet Strauß was a moderate in both religion and politics. In religion, it was his intention to replace the weak historical foundation of Christianity in the Bible with a stronger philosophical foundation in the idea. In politics, Strauß dissociated himself from the left wing in the Württemberg Parliament and spurned the radical Junges Deutschland (New Germany) movement; on the whole, his politics was that of a moderate liberalism. Contrary to a widely accepted view, the chapter argues that Strauß was not a left-wing Hegelian.
Context and Background
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

Chapter 3 is a study of Strauß’s early intellectual context. It examines his early faith, his educational institutions (the Blaubeuren school and Tübinger Stift), his early devotion to mysticism and romanticism, his conversion to Hegel’s philosophy, his stint as an apprentice pastor in the village of Klein-Ingersheim, and his trip to Berlin to learn the master’s philosophy directly from its source. The chapter also discusses the influence of Kant, Schelling, Schleiermacher, and Boehme on the young Strauß, and attempts to reconstruct the major philosophical problem facing Strauß: the conflict between reason and faith in the early nineteenth century.
Tübingen Lectures
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

This chapter is a survey of Strauß’s early lectures in Tübingen. It first considers the context of Strauß’s lectures and their success with the audience. It then examines the question of why Strauß, after such initial success, abandoned his career as a lecturer. There follows a brief summary of the three lecture series: the 1832 lectures on logic and metaphysics, which were primarily an exposition of Hegel’s Wissenschaft der Logik; the 1832–3 lectures on the history of philosophy since Kant, which give us Strauß’s own views about the history of philosophy, though they are still heavily influenced by Hegel; and the 1833 lectures on the history of moral philosophy.
The Theory of Myth
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

Chapter 6 is an account of Strauß’s concept of myth, which he considered the central characteristic of his approach to the Bible. It first discusses the origin of the theory in the eighteenth century and how Strauß extended the theory to the New Testament. It then considers the problems with Strauß’s various definitions of myth in the first edition of Das Leben Jesu. Finally, it treats the basic concept behind Strauβ’s theory of myth: the Volksgeist. This concept is often misunderstood as a metaphysical postulate, although it was essentially a heuristic maxim demanding an understanding of the cultural context of myth.
Reaction, Demotion, and Exile
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

The main subject of this chapter is the immediate consequences for Strauß’s career of the publication of Das Leben Jesu. It first treats Strauß’s self-defense before the Inspektorat in Tübingen: that his critique was only developing a tendency already present in Protestant theology. It then examines the consequences of the failure of this defense: Strauß’s banishment to a minor post in Ludwigsburg. Strauß’s failure to adjust to this new life led to his decision to move to Stuttgart and to become a freelance writer. Another concern of this chapter is the changes Strauß introduced into the second edition of Das Leben Jesu.
Crisis and Compromise
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

Chapter 9 examines the fallout from the reaction against Das Leben Jesu on Strauß’s life and writing. It first considers Strauß’s personal crisis from the spring of 1837 to 1838 when he fell into a deep depression because of his social isolation, which was the result of his reputation as a heretic. It then treats Strauß’s attempt to restore his reputation by revising some of his critical conclusions about the gospel of John in the third edition of Das Leben Jesu. It is argued that Strauß did not really retract his earlier conclusions but only slightly qualified them. This chapter also examines Strauß’s Zwei friedliche Blätter, where he attempted to modify his concept of Jesus so that he would be acceptable to a more orthodox Christian public. Though he was no longer divine in status, Jesus was now regarded as a genius.
The Zurich Affair
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

This chapter considers two important developments in Strauß’s life in the late 1830s: his attempt to gain a position on the Zurich faculty of theology, and the composition of his long essay on Schleiermacher and Daub. Strauß’s attempt to join the Zurich faculty was a disaster, closing the door on all his attempts to acquire a professional position. The ups and downs of his attempt are described in this chapter. The essay on Schleiermacher and Daub, one of Strauß’s finest, contrasts these two contemporary theologians, who represent the “subjective” and “objective” poles of contemporary theology. Strauß found both views deficient because of their vacillation about the power of reason.
The Doctrine of the Christian Faith
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

Chapter 11 provides an account of Strauß’s main work on Christian theology, his 1840 Die christliche Glaubenslehre. This work was Strauß’s critique of Christian dogma and therefore concerned more than the historical reliability of the New Testament. But the work was marred by a deep ambivalence: Strauβ’s work was meant as a compendium and therefore needed to provide the student with an introduction to Christian dogma; but Strauß also had deep personal reservations about Christianity which resurface in the text. The work contains a severe critique of the Christian beliefs in miracles, immortality, the trinity, and incarnation; but it also provides a demonstration of the existence of God. Though Strauß now distances himself from Hegel, he still does not completely disavow him.
Career in Politics and Political Writings
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

This chapter examines Strauß’s brief career in politics and his chief political writings, which took place from 1847 to1848. It first examines Strauβ’s attitude toward politics and his initial ambivalence about entering the political sphere It then examines his Der Romantiker auf dem Throne der Cäsaren, Strauß’s satire of the political ambitions of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. It then studies some of Strauß’s political articles in Jahrbücher der Gegenwart and Schwäbische Kronik. Strauß’s election campaign and his speeches for a seat in the Frankfurt Parliament are considered. It concludes with an account of his brief career in the Württemberg Parliament.
Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

This chapter examines Strauß’s restatement of his biblical criticism. It is argued that Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volke bearbeitet is not simply a popular version of Das Leben Jesu but that it contains a completely new method of exposition. Rather than simplifying his work for a popular audience, Strauß rewrote it and replied to the latest scholarly objections against it. This work also contains Strauß’s final formulation of his theory of myth and his response to the Tübingen school of theologians. The chapter concludes with a brief summary of the major similarities and differences between the 1864 version of Das Leben Jesu and the 1835 version.
Two Polemics of the 1860s
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

This chapter examines two polemical writings of the 1860s: Die Halben und die Ganzen and Der Christus des Glaubens und Jesu der Geschichte. The first writing was a critique of the liberal theologian David Schenkel. Strauß has been criticized for his savage treatment of Schenkel, but it turns out that Schenkel was not really so liberal after all: in his early days he persecuted the young neo-Kantian Kuno Fischer; Strauß wanted to expose the hypocrisy of Schenkel and the discrepancy between his later liberal posture and his earlier reactionary attitude. The second writing was a critique of Schleiermacher’s theology, especially his attempt to defend the divine status of Jesus. This helps to explain some of Strauß’s early biblical criticism, which was a reaction to Schleiermacher.