Indirect Taxation of Events Beyond the Control of the Taxpayer in Crucial Tax and Customs Judgements of the Court of Justice

Indirect taxes are shaped in such a way that the final customers bear their economic burden. The scope of taxation is usually delineated to cover all goods (and services) reaching the afore-mentioned final consumers. One may assume that the aim of a lawmaker is that goods (or services) supplied to the consumers should not remain untaxed. However, the intensity of pursuing this aim differs between VAT, excise duties, and customs duties. A scientific question that the rules outlined above bring about is whether it is acceptable – under the general principles of the European Union law perceived through a number of tax (customs) cases – to impose duties on a person or to deprive a taxpayer of rights owing to tax-relevant facts that have been entirely out of the control of this person or this taxpayer (customs debtor). Although the position of the Court of Justice towards this issue is not homogenous, the author of this article claims that situations that are wholly beyond the scope of control of a diligent person should not affect the tax (customs) situation to the detriment of such a person.

What to Believe? Impact of Knowledge and Message Length on Neural Activity in Message Credibility Evaluation

Understanding how humans evaluate credibility is an important scientific question in the era of fake news. Message credibility is among crucial aspects of credibility evaluations. One of the most direct ways to understand message credibility is to use measurements of brain activity of humans performing credibility evaluations. Nevertheless, message credibility has never been investigated using such a method before. This article reports the results of an experiment during which we have measured brain activity during message credibility evaluation, using EEG. The experiment allowed for identification of brain areas that were active when participant made positive or negative message credibility evaluations. Based on experimental data, we modeled and predicted human message credibility evaluations using EEG brain activity measurements with F1 score exceeding 0.7.

Behavior of Sliding Angle as Function of Temperature Difference between Droplet and Superhydrophobic Coating for Aircraft Ice Protection Systems

A hybrid anti-/de-icing system combining a superhydrophobic coating and an electrothermal heater is an area of active research for aircraft icing prevention. The heater increases the temperature of the interaction surface between impinging droplets and an aircraft surface. One scientific question that has not been studied in great detail is whether the temperatures of the droplet and the surface or the temperature difference between the two dominate the anti-/de-icing performance. Herein, this scientific question is experimentally studied based on the mobility of a water droplet over a superhydrophobic coating. The mobility is characterized by the sliding angle between the droplet and the coating surface. It was found that the temperature difference between the droplet and the coating surface has a higher impact on the sliding angle than their individual temperatures.

The Society of Astrologers (c.1647–1684): sermons, feasts and the resuscitation of astrology in seventeenth-century London

Before the Royal Society there was the Society of Astrologers (c.1647–1684), a group of around forty practitioners who met in London to enjoy lavish feasts, listen to sermons and exchange instruments and manuscripts. This article, drawing on untapped archival material, offers the first full account of this overlooked group. Convinced that astrology had been misunderstood by the professors who refused to teach it and the preachers who railed against it, the Society of Astrologers sought to democratize and legitimize their art. In contrast to the received view of seventeenth-century London astrologers, which emphasizes their bitter interrelationships, this article draws attention instead to their endeavours to mount a united front in defence of astrology. The article locates the society's attempts to promote astrological literacy within broader contemporary programmes to encourage mathematical education. Unlike other mathematical arts, however, astrology's religious credibility was an area of serious concern. The society therefore commissioned the delivery and publication of apologetic sermons that justified astrology on the basis of its sacred history. In this context, the legitimacy of astrology was more a religious than a scientific question. The society's public relations campaign ultimately failed, however, and its members disbanded in the mid-1680s. Not only were they mounting a rearguard action, but also they built their campaign on out-of-date historical arguments.

What Is Neo-Positivism and How Could We Argue for It?

Chapter 7 explains how the non-factualist views established in the first part of this book fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism. This chapter formulates neo-positivism, explains why neo-positivism isn’t self-refuting, and explains how we could argue for neo-positivism. Neo-positivism is (roughly) the view is that every metaphysical question decomposes into subquestions, and in connection with each of these subquestions, we can endorse one of the following three anti-metaphysical views: non-factualism, scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. Non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there’s no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is (roughly) the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some aspect of physical reality, and Q can’t be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is (roughly) the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that’s metaphysically innocent in the sense captured by the Chapter-6 view modal nothingism.

Introduction

Chapter 1 provides a synopsis of the entire book. Roughly speaking, the book does two things. First, it introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view and argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions—most notably, the question of whether there are any abstract objects and the question of whether there are any composite objects. Second, the book explains how these non-factualist views fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism, and it explains how we could argue that neo-positivism is true. Neo-positivism is (roughly) the view that every metaphysical question decomposes into subquestions, and in connection with each of these subquestions, we can endorse one of the following three anti-metaphysical views: non-factualism, or scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. Non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there’s no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is (roughly) the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some aspect of physical reality, and Q can’t be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is (roughly) the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that’s metaphysically innocent in the sense that it doesn’t say anything about reality and, if it’s true, isn’t made true by reality.

Conceptual Analysis

Chapter 8 argues that neo-positivists can endorse scientistic views of conceptual-analysis questions—i.e., questions like ‘What is free will?’, ‘What is a person?’, and so on. Very roughly, scientism about a question Q is the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some aspect of physical reality. This chapter argues for scientism about conceptual-analysis questions by arguing that these questions are completely settled by physical-empirical facts about us—in particular, by psychological facts about what we mean by our words. This is an important part of the neo-positivist argument; for in connection with almost all metaphysical questions, one of the main subquestions that neo-positivists need to address is (or is something like) a conceptual-analysis question. So if neo-positivists can endorse scientistic views of all conceptual-analysis questions, then this simplifies things for them considerably (it makes it much easier for them to motivate neo-positivist views of specific metaphysical questions).

Metaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion

This book does two things. First, it introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view, and it argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions, most notably, the abstract-object question and the composite-object question (more specifically, the book argues that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any such things as abstract objects or composite objects—or material objects of any other kind). Second, the book explains how these non-factualist views fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism, and it explains how we could argue that neo-positivism is true. Neo-positivism is (roughly) the view that every metaphysical question decomposes into some subquestions—call them Q1, Q2, Q3, etc.—such that, for each of these subquestions, one of the following three anti-metaphysical views is true of it: non-factualism, or scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. These three views can be defined (very roughly) as follows. Non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there’s no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some contingent aspect of physical reality, and Q can’t be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that’s metaphysically innocent in the sense that it doesn’t say anything about reality and, if it’s true, isn’t made true by reality.

A Solution to the Combination Problem and the Future of Panpsychism

This paper supports the scientific position that panpsychism is a valid category of possible resolutions to the hard problem of consciousness, and it focuses on a solution to the 'combination problem' in panpsychism. I argue for a new way of thinking about consciousness in which consciousness is not viewed in reference to subjects, and that the concept of a 'subject' is borne of the illusion of self. Therefore, we don't face a combination problem if the notion of a subject is superfluous and consciousness itself is pervasive in the form of a field. The paper is also a more general discussion about the importance of pursuing this scientific question in the twenty-first century: is consciousness a more fundamental aspect of the universe than we have previously assumed?