Mental arithmetic and juggling with figures statistics in French and British policy towards colonial immigration in the 1950s

In the 1950s, Britain and France faced a comparable development of increasing immigration from current or former colonial territories, which was perceived as problematic. Immigration statistics had a central role in governmental or administrative discussions; however, both for general difficulties inherent in immigration statistics and for specific problems due to ‘post‐colonial’ nationality arrangements, these statistics are of limited reliability. The ways statistics were used differed as reactions to ‘colonial’ immigration in Britain and France differed, corresponding to their respective post‐war experiences and political aims. The official use of statistics against this background serves to reveal certain national characteristics in their reaction to ‘colonial’ immigration.     

Kant and the scientific study of consciousness

We argue that Kant's views about consciousness, the mind-body problem and the status of psychology as a science all differ drastically from the way in which these topics are conjoined in present debates about the prominent idea of a science of consciousness. Kant never used the concept of consciousness in the now dominant sense of phenomenal qualia; his discussions of the mind-body problem center not on the reducibility of mental properties but of substances; and his views about the possibility of psychology as a science did not employ the requirement of a mechanistic explanation, but of a quantification of phenomena. This shows strikingly how deeply philosophical problems and conceptions can change even if they look similar on the surface.     

Chinese Bronze Age Political Economies: A Complex Polity Provisioning Approach

Journal of Archaeological Research - In this article we argue that several of the dominant narratives concerning the political economy of the Chinese Bronze Age are in need of major revision,...