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Item Bad Beliefs Why They Happen to Good People(Oxford University Press, 2021) Levy, NeilWhy do people come to reject climate science or the safety and efficacy of vaccines, in defiance of the scientific consensus? A popular view explains bad beliefs like these as resulting from a range of biases that together ensure that human beings fall short of being genuinely rational animals. This book presents an alternative account. It argues that bad beliefs arise from genuinely rational processes. We’ve missed the rationality of bad beliefs because we’ve failed to recognize the ubiquity of the higher-order evidence that shapes beliefs, and the rationality of being guided by this evidence. The book argues that attention to higher-order evidence should lead us to rethink both how minds are best changed and the ethics of changing them: we should come to see that nudging—at least usually—changes belief (and behavior) by presenting rational agents with genuine evidence, and is therefore fully respectful of intellectual agency. We needn’t rethink Enlightenment ideals of intellectual autonomy and rationality, but we should reshape them to take account of our deeply social epistemic agency.Item Artisans Abroad(Oxford University Press, 2023) Bensimon, FabriceBetween 1815 and 1870, when European industrialisation was in its infancy and Britain enjoyed a technological lead, thousands of British workers emigrated to the Continent. They played a key role in several sectors such as textiles, iron, mechanics, and the railways. These men and women thereby contributed significantly to the industrial take-off in continental Europe. This book examines the lives and trajectories of these workers, who emigrated from manufacturing centres in Britain to France, Belgium, Germany, and other countries. It is interested in their mobilities, their culture, their politics, and their relations with the local populations. It reminds us that the British economy was not just orientated towards the Empire and the United States, but also towards the Continent, long before the European Union and Brexit. It shows how critical the part played by migrant workers in the industrial revolution was. Artisans Abroad is the first social and cultural history of this forgotten migration.