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This essay argues that the Pyrrhonian regress argument presupposes a Prior Grounding conception of justification. This is contrasted with a Default and Challenge structure, which leads to a contextualist picture of justification. Contextualism is said to incorporate the best features of its traditionalist rivals — foundationalism and coherentism — and also to avoid skepticism. It is argued that we should not ask which conception is really true, but instead give up epistemological realism.

This chapter presents simulation results for the English past. The first part of the chapter gives a general overview of the modeling assumptions used for the simulations of the English past-tense system, including input representations and the training corpus. Latter parts of the chapter discuss simulation results showing that of the five formal models considered in the book, only fragment grammars—the inference-based model—provides an adequate explanation of the major empirical phenomena in the English past. The inference-based model treats the regular rule as a default, applying in cases where no other inflectional process is available, while exhibiting blocking of the regular rule by the irregular forms. Furthermore, the inference-based model explains why blocking is directional, following the elsewhere condition with more specific generalizations typically taking precedence over others. It also provides a partial explanation for cases where blocking fails, for example, cases of overregularization during language acquisition.

Presents some typical textbook formulations of hedonism. Shows that they are unacceptable as formulations of the view—they fail to state the intended view in a coherent and consistent way. A simple form of sensory hedonism—‘Default Hedonism’—is then presented. This formulation does not have the defects of typical textbook formulations. Default Hedonism provides a starting point for all the other forms of hedonism to be discussed in the book. Concludes with a somewhat speculative discussion of the hedonism of Aristippus.

This chapter proposes a generalized paradigm function (GPF), comprising four separate functions defined over each of the four attributes of the lexical entry, FORM, SYN, SEM, LI, and mapping a pairing of 〈LI, {feature set}〉 to some representation. In the case of vanilla inflectional morphology the GPF applies trivially to the SYN, SEM, LI attributes and introduces no change. It therefore reduces to the paradigm function of classical PFM. However, for regular and productive derivational morphology the generalized paradigm function introduces non-trivial changes to all four attributes, including the lexemic index, LI, thus defining a new lexeme in the lexical database. The GPF is also deployed to define the notion ‘lexical entry’ itself: the FORM, SYN, and SEM components are defined over a pairing of the LI and the empty or unspecified feature set, u, so for the two homophonous verb lexemes DRAW1 and DRAW2, the FORM is defined as FORM(DRAW1, u) = FORM(DRAW2, u) = /draw/, while the SEM functions deliver distinct semantic representations for the two lexemes. The model includes a default principle specific to lexeme(LI)-changing morphology, the Derived Lexical Entry Principle: where a generalized paradigm function defines a new LI, either the properties are specified directly by the appropriate component of the generalized paradigm function, or they are replaced by underspecified values. For instance, if DRIVER has a SEM value ‘person who drives (something)’, the SYN attribute and the inflectional properties of the derived lexeme are replaced by the empty property set u. By the ‘Default Cascade’ the derived word will default to a noun syntactically (since DRIVER is ontologically a Thing) and hence morphologically to a noun. Inflecting words are given a morpholexical signature, which defines their morphological category and the features they inflect for. By default, this signature is derived from the SYN representation, but that default can be overridden to account for mismatches (e.g. nouns that inflect like adjectives). The GPF can now be used to define all the intermediate types of lexical relatedness. For instance, a transposition introduces non-trivial changes to the FORM and SYN attributes without changing the SEM and LI attributes, while meaning-bearing (inherent) inflection changes the FORM and SEM attributes without changing the SYN and LI attributes.

This chapter takes as its point of departure British writer Zadie Smith’s definition of language as “shared words that fit the world as you believe it to be” and illustrates its aptness with examples from English and the Australian language Warlpiri. Each language offers its speakers a set of words that appear to “fit the world as it is” but that in fact derive from the speakers’ own culture, history, interests, and needs. The chapter shows how this insight applies to the domain of color and how English color words have been reified in the successive versions of the Berlin and Kay popular theory of “basic color words.” It also discusses the different conceptualization of landscape in English (British and Australian), drawing on Australian historian Jay Arthur’s observation that Australians are trapped in the language of the ‘Default Country’ (England).

This chapter analyzes the implications of European bank consolidation on the default risk of acquiring banks. For a sample of 134 bidding banks, we employ the Merton distance to default model to show that, on average, bank mergers are risk neutral. However, for relatively safe banks, mergers generate a significant increase in default risk. This result is particularly pronounced for cross-border and activity-diversifying deals as well as for deals completed under weak bank regulatory regimes. Also, large deals, which pose organizational and procedural hurdles, experience a merger-related increase in default risk. Our results cast doubt on the ability of bank merger activity to exert a risk-reducing and stabilizing effect on the European banking industry.

This chapter analyzes a unique and hand collected dataset of executive compensation by all European bank CEOs of listed banks that publish such data. To further expand the sample of banks, this chapter also includes a sample of similarly sized U.S. banks. The analysis employs the Merton distance to default model to show that increases in CEO cash bonuses lower the default risk of a bank. However, we find no evidence of cash bonuses exerting a risk-reducing effect when banks are financially distressed or when banks operate under weak bank regulatory regimes. Our results link bonus compensation in banking to financial stability and caution that attempts to regulate bonus pay need to tailor CEO incentives to the riskiness of banks and to regulatory regimes.

The first chapter details the nature of sovereign debts. The sovereign nature of the issuer has an enormous impact in terms of risk. At the very least, one may argue that sovereign bonds have a split personality in terms of risk. Indeed, debt issued by a government can be considered as either the safest financial asset or one of the riskiest. This chapter details the incentives governments have to repay their debts. It further shows the difference between default and repudiation. When states default they declare themselves unable to repay their debts. In the case of repudiation the legality of the debts is questioned. The difference is especially relevant in the Russian case as the Soviets decided to repudiate the Tsarist debts to mark a clear break with the previous regime. The chapter ends by detailing how the nature of lenders may affect negotiations and reimbursement.

This chapter updates the case for the simulation approach to mindreading. It shows how simulation theory successfully addresses four questions: (1) how mental-state attribution tasks are executed; (2) how simulation figures in the early acquisition of mentalizing; (3) how simulation comports with evidence about the neural basis of mentalizing, and (4) how it meshes with plausible accounts of brain evolution. A duplex approach to mindreading is presented that exemplifies the familiar dual-process model of cognition. “Enactment” imagination drives high-level mindreading whereas mirroring is the basis of low-level mindreading. The power of simulation is supported by a recent study showing that merely imagining eating can mimic genuine eating. Rival theories of mindreading (e.g., theory-theory and rationality theory) provide little or no explanation of many species of mindreading, especially attribution of sensations and emotions by means of facial expressions and other observable cues.

The introductory chapter introduces the reader to the concept of localism in both broadcast policy and critical theory. It also provides a brief historical overview of local broadcast policy in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom, and unpacks the methods and methodologies employed in the research. More specifically, it discusses the value of document analysis and interviews to critical media policy studies, explains critical discourse analysis, and introduces the concept of critical regionalism which will be further explicated in chapter 1. Additionally, the chapter introduces the reader to two terms coined in the book: “the political economy of localism” and “default localism.” The chapter concludes with an outline of the chapters to follow.

Chapter 5 chronicles regulatory attempts to bolster local television, particularly local television news, in the US, UK and Canada. It argues that each of these attempts ultimately fell victim to status quo thinking, a reliance on market factors, and a fallback to default localism. The American case study is an analysis of the FCC’s Broadcast Localism Inquiry. The Canadian case study is an evaluation of the Local Programming Improvement Fund, a subsidy to bolster local news amongst television stations. The UK case study is on the Local Digital Television Programme Service, which was an attempt to establish a local television system akin to those in North America in 2013.

In Chapter 6, the case studies are analyzed through the frameworks of critical regionalism and critical political economy. The first section describes how a political economy of localism has come to exist within media policy discourse. This system favors the status quo over alternatives, tethers local media exclusively to specific places, and impedes our ability to think through ways to bridge the spatial and social divides of localism. The second section reintroduces critical regionalism as an approach that tempers this political economy. The chapter argues that while the political economy of localism works to stifle policy alternatives, there are policy windows – “moments of critical regionalism” – that require our attention. The chapter offers a definition of media localism based on critical regionalism and the case studies.

This chapter describes the foreclosure crisis of the 1930s. Borrower defaults were rooted in the double trigger of reduced incomes and lower house prices, as well as the fragile structure of contracts discussed in the previous chapter. The result was a self-reinforcing cycle of foreclosures and weaker house prices. As lenders’ financial positions weakened, the flow of new credit fell to historic lows. By March 1933, the housing and mortgage markets in the U.S. were in a downward spiral with no end in sight.

Oil and gas exploration and production is an expensive process beset with a variety of risk. An exploration well may find nothing, meaning that that the entire cost of the drilling has been “thrown away”; cost increases or falling oil price may make a project that has been commenced uneconomic; or something may go disastrously wrong, resulting in massive financial liability. In order to spread the risk of such eventualities, as well as for other ancillary reasons, exploration and production companies tend to work together cooperatively in joint ventures. This chapter discusses the contract –the Joint Operating Agreement – by which these joint ventures implemented. The chapter describes and critically comments upon the key features of these agreements, including issues such as whether these contracts constitute a partnership, the role of the operator and of the Opcom, the consequences of default and of disagreement within the joint venture, the regulation of pre-emption and the state’s role in e.g. approving the operator and controlling the transfer of a stake in a JOA.