Although not studied by the generative approach (Shlonsky 2017), the embedded Wh- in situ clause nevertheless belongs to the French language spoken in a large amount of areas, and, we believe, to “français tout court” (Blanche-Benveniste & Jeanjean 1987): until now, it has mainly been studied in Quebec (Lefebvre & Maisonneuve 1982; Blondeau & Ledegen 2021) and in Reunion Island (Ledegen 2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2016; Ledegen & Martin 2020), but it has recently been massively attested in the Multicultural Paris French project in the suburbs of Paris (Gardner-Chloros & Secova 2018) and Strasbourg (Marchessou 2018). These new data could be read as a language contact, as a recent linguistic change, or as a long-established “popular” structure (Guiraud 1966), different analytical hypotheses that will be detailed in this study. These recent data also argue in favour of the methodology of ecological corpora, obtained within the framework of a strong acquaintanceship and located at the pole of communicative proximity (Koch & Oesterreicher 2001). The examination of various existing corpora will reveal the structural functioning of the structure and contrast the corpora following the modes of interaction, the oral or written medium, as well as on the chronological axis.

When reading contemporary theories of distributive justice, one could easily get the impression that questions of fiscal design are normatively speaking merely instrumental for realizing the distributive ideal. Once the overall conception of justice is settled upon, questions of how the state should arrange its institutions and policies are settled if they effectively and efficiently promote the preferred distribution. I argue that such pure instrumentalism is mistaken in the context of fiscal policy. As a result, there is nothing problematic or morally arbitrary about accepting domain-specific principles of fiscal justice.

As readers of this journal can attest to, although philosophers and economists are somewhat used to talking to and learning from each other, it tends to be the subset of philosophers working in decision theory, philosophy of science, and particular areas of ethics and political philosophy that contribute to our interdisciplinary field of research. The book that is the subject of this review symposium, Anna Mahtani’s The Objects of Credence (Oxford University Press, 2024), is a wonderful exemplar of what can be learned when a different branch of philosophy is brought to bear on central questions in this field. Both philosophers and economists talk about and work with credences, or degrees of belief, all the time. These are usually modelled as probabilities, which are in turn usually thought of as attaching to propositions. But it has long been argued by philosophers of language that propositions cannot be the objects of credence. Mahtani’s book is an investigation into all that begins to unravel once we accept this insight. The results have profound implications both for rational choice modelling and for welfare economics.

The Objects of Credence grew from a simple insight, which is that credence claims are opaque (or ‘hyperintensional’). This central idea can be illustrated using the following example:

1. (1) Tom has a high credence that George Orwell is a writer.

2. (2) Tom has a low credence that Eric Blair is a writer.

I’m so grateful to the commentators for their insightful and constructive responses! Below I continue this exchange with a brief note of reply.

As in many areas of pre-Reformation devotion, the dead were a conspicuous presence in English religious guilds of all sizes. Members joined in the expectation that the guild would say prayers and perform masses for their souls after death, and previous members and benefactors would be commemorated with regularity. This article, however, investigates a new avenue of the fraternal relationship with the dead: the practice of enrolling people after their death. Doing so shifts the paradigm of our understanding of the multidimensional functions of pre-Reformation society, commemoration, and guilds, privileging the experiences of both the dead and living equally, while highlighting the interplay of the spiritual and socioeconomic. Taking the extensive membership records of England's “great” guilds as its basis, this article reveals that postmortem enrollment was a practice both common and widespread, and it addresses questions of practicalities and motivations. As such, the richness of commemoration in late medieval society is demonstrated, and the importance of postmortem membership brought to the fore.

Real human agents, even when they are rational by everyday standards, sometimes assign different credences to objectively equivalent statements, such as ‘Orwell is a writer’ and ‘E.A. Blair is a writer’, or credences less than 1 to necessarily true statements, such as not-yet-proven theorems of arithmetic. Anna Mahtani calls this the phenomenon of ‘opacity’. Opaque credences seem probabilistically incoherent, which goes against a key modelling assumption of probability theory. I sketch a modelling strategy for capturing opaque credence assignments without abandoning probabilistic coherence. I draw on ideas from judgement-aggregation theory, where we face similar challenges of defining the ‘objects of judgement’.

Stalnaker’s ‘Assertion’ (1978 [1999]) offers a classic account of diagonalization as an approach to the meaning of a declarative sentence in context. Here I explore the relationship between diagonalization and some puzzles in Mahtani’s book The Objects of Credence. Diagonalization can influence how we think about both credence and desirability, so it influences both components of a standard expected utility equation. In that vein, I touch on two of Mahtani’s case-studies, chance and the finite version of the Two Envelope Paradox.

The fact that migration cases seldom raise any questions under Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is neither inevitable nor justified. This article reaffirms the equality provision as a useful and indeed necessary mechanism for the European Court of Human Rights to deal with such applications. More concretely, we build on our previous work, which identified a legal tool suitable for achieving this reorientation in judicial practice: the principle that we call ‘migratory vulnerability’, once recalibrated away from a group-based approach to a notion of vulnerability as situational and socially induced. In this article, we explain how the principle of migratory vulnerability, even if it does not represent an inherently suspect ground of differentiation, enables us to identify instances of discrimination defined as a measurable disadvantage that is disproportionate or arbitrary and cannot, therefore, be reasonably justified on the basis of the Convention. This presupposes a move away from nationality as a privileged ground in migration-related cases and from the ‘comparator’ test to determine Article 14 ECHR violations, to also encompass situational experiences. We end with two examples that show that this reconceptualization is both workable in practice and of added value, enabling the Court to find violations that presently go undetected.

It is now over ten years since the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Court) first established that asylum seekers are inherently and particularly vulnerable on account of their very situation as asylum seekers. This occurred in its Grand Chamber judgment in the case of M.S.S. v Belgium and Greece. This article critically examines the Court’s subsequent asylum jurisprudence through the lens of vulnerability. The analysis reveals that the Court has engaged in ‘vulnerability backsliding’. Specifically, it traces the ways in which the Court has surreptitiously reversed the very principle of asylum vulnerability it itself established in M.S.S. The consequence of this backsliding is not only that the judicially recognised concept of asylum vulnerability is undermined, but that some of the most vulnerable applicants that come before the Court suffer renewed marginalisation, and, in some circumstances, exclusion from the ‘special protection’ to which they were previously afforded courtesy of M.S.S.

First, Mahtani argues that both in the game The Mug and in the Sleeping Beauty we should not defer to a trusted person under a particular designation if they do not self-identify under this designation. This invites a more complex Reflection Principle. I respond that there are more parsimonious ways to avoid the challenges posed to the Reflection Principle. Second, Mahtani argues that preferences create a hyperintensional context, which poses a challenge to the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle that can be averted by supervaluation. I respond that such an appeal to supervaluation would block randomization as a fair allocation device.

The traditional drafting and subsequent implementation of international refugee law have been criticised for relying on a male-centric understanding of persecution. Whilst this framework has recently shifted to include a more gender-sensitive interpretation, I argue that this introduction of gender within refugee status determination has traditionally relied on narratives infused with gendered and racialised stereotypes. In particular, it relies on a ‘white saviour’ colonial narrative that perceives refugee women as vulnerable victims in need of saving. Drawing on a decolonial and critical epistemological analysis that includes both a race and gender dimension, I unpack the epistemic violence and hidden colonial legacies in the representation of refugee women in case-law. Ultimately, this article concludes with a call for reframing the legal narrative around refugee women by approaching them as political actors rather than oppressed and vulnerable subjects.

States’ bordering practices force individuals to undertake dangerous migratory journeys and put them at risk of severe human rights violations. Yet, irregular arrivals who are found not to be at risk of serious harm in their countries of origin are perceived as voluntary migrants and are therefore assumed not to be in need of protection. This article employs the concept of vulnerability to challenge the idea that both the initial and subsequent dangerous migratory journeys are undertaken voluntarily. Based on an analysis of trafficking-based asylum claims from the UK and Germany, the article shows that both re-trafficking and irregular re-migration result from vulnerabilities which converge to preclude reintegration in the country of origin and access to livelihood options. While some of these vulnerabilities are likely to be present at the time of the initial dangerous journey already, the article pays particular attention to ‘consequential vulnerabilities’ brought about by previous migration experiences. It then introduces the concept of ‘route causes’ of irregular re-migration to describe factors which heighten the risk of re-migrating irregularly and therefore establish a risk on return related to harm experienced during irregular migration, rather than in the country of origin. Thus, the article shows that the vulnerability concept informs the future risk analysis in refugee law and argues that, just like a risk of re-trafficking, a risk of irregular re-migration could form the basis of an asylum claim.

In Chapter 6 of Objects of Credence, Anna Mahtani argues that the opacity of credence raises difficulties for the Principal Principle and proposes a revised principle relating credence and chance that avoids it. In this comment on her book, I both defend Mahtani’s proposed principle against a charge of triviality and argue that the opacity of belief does not threaten the role of chance in guiding credence.

This article aims to reflect on ‘ecological vulnerability’ – which makes evident the relationship, flows and interactions between the human being/body and the environment/non-human world – as applied in the context of environmentally induced migration. In particular, the dual role of the law vis-à-vis environmentally displaced migrants as a generator and exacerbator of their vulnerability as well as potential antidote, valuable for attaining protection, will be highlighted. Namely, on one hand, the analysis will show how a lack of conceptualisation of the notion to understand the spatial and temporal patterns of climate change-related migration, as well as its consequences for societal well-being, contributes to generate and exacerbate the vulnerability of that category of migrants. On the other hand, the critical understanding of vulnerability, as developed in some recent legal reasoning of international and national jurisdictions, will be proposed as a key element for ensuring the resilience of both environmental migrants and the law itself, for both virtuously expanding traditional asylum norms and flexibilising access to international protection for those migrants.