The Chinese Temples Ordinance was promulgated by the British colonial government in Hong Kong to address the alarming growth of “pseudo-religious establishments” exploiting the ignorant masses of uneducated Chinese residents. This article critically examines the ordinance and the 2015 proposed amendments as a case study of the potential pitfalls in state responses to religious fraud. First, this article demonstrates the discriminatory nature of the ordinance, which perceived Chinese religions as particularly prone to fraudulent practices and deserving of specific regulatory controls that are not applicable to any other religions. Tellingly, this discriminatory approach—while unconstitutional and undesirable—continues to underpin the proposed reform. Second, this article delineates the conceptual distinctions within religious fraud and the interaction dynamics between religious donors and recipients and argues that the government-sanctioned registration scheme under the ordinance is neither justified nor appropriate to address religious fraud premised on promises of divine intervention in exchange for financial contributions.

Forthright characterization of scientific uncertainty is important in principle and in practice. Nevertheless, economists and other researchers commonly report findings with incredible certitude, reporting point predictions and estimates. To motivate expression of incredible certitude, economists suggest that researchers respond to incentives that make the practice tempting. This temptation is the ‘lure’ of incredible certitude. I appraise some of the rationales that observers may have in mind when they state that incredible certitude responds to incentives. I conclude that scientific expression of incredible certitude at most has appeal in limited contexts. It should not be a general practice.

This article reflects on a double interpretation of English constructions containing the combined expression will have to. As I will show, illocutions involving sentences of the type ‘NP will have to VP’ can be interpreted as either (i) predicting future enforcing circumstances that trigger a future obligation or (ii) reporting such circumstances as currently in force at speech time. Once I sketch the different semantic elements at play in a Kratzerian framework, I cast doubt on some current views on the so-called modal–tense interaction. As I will show, one way to fully account for the availability of both readings is by assuming a semantic temporal underspecification as to when the triggering circumstances in the conversational background are initially in force. This raises important theoretical caveats for semantic analyses in the field, particularly for those that equate the semantics of the future with prediction. As the article shows, such a widespread assumption can be contended by a dynamic account of obligational ascriptions, according to which their different illocutionary forces can be derived from the contextual change potential of its primitive (and admittedly underspecified) future semantics. Ultimately, the paper voices support for the view that future semantics must not be equated with prediction.

Children tend to be represented as the quintessential victims of the ‘drug problem’, with drug-using parents, particularly mothers, characterised as vectors of the risks posed. Although evidence of drug use is not per se an impediment to retaining care of, or contact with, children (per Lady Hale in Re B [2013] UKSC 33, at para. 143), it does pose one of the greatest challenges to social and political norms about ‘good parenting’, and often has a powerful impact on decisions about care within UK family courts. While there is a considerable body of scholarship assessing criminal justice responses to drug use, there has been little research into how the family serves as an important site for the constitution of drug harms and the making of ‘drugs’ and ‘addiction’. This paper is informed by qualitative analysis of approximately 150 case reports in which drug use has been cited as relevant in the determination of guardianship/parenting. The purpose will not be to contest the difficult decisions that judges had to make in these cases but, using perspectives rooted in Science and Technology Studies and feminist drug scholarship, to remain attendant to the ontological multiplicity of objects that emerge from attempts to stabilise drug harms in legal narratives.

A number of philosophers have claimed that we should take not just empirical uncertainty but also fundamental moral uncertainty into account in our decision-making, and that, despite widespread moral disagreement, doing so would allow us to draw robust lessons for some issues in practical ethics. In this article, I argue that, so far, the implications for practical ethics have been drawn too simplistically. First, the implications of moral uncertainty for normative ethics are far more wide-ranging than has been noted so far. Second, one can't straightforwardly argue from moral uncertainty to particular conclusions in practical ethics, both because of ‘interaction’ effects between moral issues, and because of the variety of different possible intertheoretic comparisons that one can reasonably endorse.

The discussion of legal pluralism focuses on the coexistence of several legal systems, mainly religious and civil ones. But what happens when a process of assimilation—whether imposed or voluntary—characterizes the relationships between the systems? This article analyzes the fascinating process of assimilation of civil principles into religious law in the context of Jewish law and Israeli civil family law. Assimilation, as the article shows, is not the whole picture. The article reveals a corresponding (both open and implicit) struggle for the preservation of religious law principles despite the continuing efforts of civil law for their curtailment, or sometimes, elimination. The result, which is somewhat internally contradictory, suggests a normative pluralistic framework that enables both regimes—the civil and the religious—to preserve their core principles in family law matters.

This article addresses the issue of professionalization in the life sciences during the second half of the nineteenth century through a survey of British entomological periodicals. It is generally accepted that this period saw the rise of professional practitioners and the emergence of biology (as opposed to the older mode of natural history). However, recent scholarship has increasingly shown that this narrative elides the more complex processes at work in shaping scientific communities from the 1850s to the turn of the century. This article adds to such scholarship by examining the ways in which the editors of four entomological periodicals from across this time frame attempted to shape the communities of their readership, and in particular focuses upon the apparent divide between ‘mere collectors’ and ‘entomologists’ as expressed within these journals. Crucially, the article argues that non-professional practitioners were active in defining their own distinct identities and thereby claiming scientific authority. Alongside the periodicals, the article makes use of the correspondence archive of the entomologist and periodical editor Henry Tibbats Stainton (1822–1892), which has hitherto not been subject to sustained analysis by historians.

‘Honesty and dissent’ explores strategies of political resistance in Tudor Norwich through an analysis of the city's prestigious Company of St George. Nearly a quarter of those nominated for membership during the second half of the sixteenth century failed to appear when summoned and declined to take up the livery; most eventually complied, but only after fines, threats of imprisonment and delays that could last a year or more. They pursued a strategy of passive resistance that allowed them to register objections while conforming to expectations of ‘honest’ behaviour. That underappreciated approach enabled citizens to push back against urban authorities without compromising their standing in the community.

This article considers the impact of both historical and digital transhuman practices in archaeology with an eye towards recent conversations concerning punk archaeology, slow archaeology, and an ‘archaeology of care’. Drawing on Ivan Illich, Jacques Ellul, and Gilles Deleuze, the article suggests that current trends in digital practices risk alienating archaeological labour and de-territorializing archaeological work.