bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Chinese and Japanese in the Census
Authors: Schor Paul
Published: July 2017

This chapter discusses the integration of Chinese and Japanese into the US census. The American census added a new race it termed “Chinese” to its questionnaires beginning in 1870 and “Japanese” in 1890. The remarkable thing is that what was a nationality immediately became a race as well. Since 1850, the place of birth of all inhabitants had been recorded, whether or not they were immigrants, and in the case of non-European immigrants, two categories of origin were involved: on the one hand, foreign birth, and on the other hand, race, which was transmitted to the following generations. In spite of their small numbers, Asian immigrants were the object of disproportionate attention in the US census, to the point that in 1920, out of nine possible racial categories, five were Asian.
The Question of Racial Mixing in the American Possessions
Authors: Schor Paul
Published: July 2017

This chapter discusses the imposition of the US system of racial classification in the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. The original use in certain US territories of a “mixed” racial category highlights the national norm that made mulattoes into “lighter-skinned” blacks. In the various territories acquired by the United States after 1898, a rigid imposition of the categories of the US census was difficult because they were the product of a national history that had not been shared. Whether in the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, or Hawaii the perception of what made a person black, white, or mulatto was very different from North American usage, showing that binary black and white mainland tradition was not working there.
The Census and African Americans Within and Outside the Bureau
Authors: Schor Paul
Published: July 2017

This chapter focuses on the relationship between the Census Bureau and African Americans. In the first half of the twentieth century, the history of the agency’s relations with the black population was one of an incomplete transformation. For the census, blacks were the most objectified inhabitants, to the point that slaves were deprived of names to become numbers in the population statistics, and the ones least likely to be viewed as subjects. At the same time, blacks as a category were always the object of particular attention in census reports. The chapter also describes the growing involvement of black authors and statisticians in publications for the black population; the career of Charles E. Hall with respect to the census, who became the first African American to be given supervisory responsibilities over black employees; and the Census Bureau’s relations with the African American business community.
PySeqLab: an open source Python package for sequence labeling and segmentation
Authors: Allam Ahmed , Krauthammer Michael
Published: July 2017

Motivation

Text and genomic data are composed of sequential tokens, such as words and nucleotides that give rise to higher order syntactic constructs. In this work, we aim at providing a comprehensive Python library implementing conditional random fields (CRFs), a class of probabilistic graphical models, for robust prediction of these constructs from sequential data.

Results

Python Sequence Labeling (PySeqLab) is an open source package for performing supervised learning in structured prediction tasks. It implements CRFs models, that is discriminative models from (i) first-order to higher-order linear-chain CRFs, and from (ii) first-order to higher-order semi-Markov CRFs (semi-CRFs). Moreover, it provides multiple learning algorithms for estimating model parameters such as (i) stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its multiple variations, (ii) structured perceptron with multiple averaging schemes supporting exact and inexact search using ‘violation-fixing’ framework, (iii) search-based probabilistic online learning algorithm (SAPO) and (iv) an interface for Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno (BFGS) and the limited-memory BFGS algorithms. Viterbi and Viterbi A* are used for inference and decoding of sequences. Using PySeqLab, we built models (classifiers) and evaluated their performance in three different domains: (i) biomedical Natural language processing (NLP), (ii) predictive DNA sequence analysis and (iii) Human activity recognition (HAR). State-of-the-art performance comparable to machine-learning based systems was achieved in the three domains without feature engineering or the use of knowledge sources.

Availability and implementation

PySeqLab is available through https://bitbucket.org/A_2/pyseqlab with tutorials and documentation.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Mechanisms to protect the privacy of families when using the transmission disequilibrium test in genome-wide association studies
Authors: Wang Meng , Ji Zhanglong , Wang Shuang , Kim Jihoon , Yang Hai , Jiang Xiaoqian , Ohno-Machado Lucila
Published: July 2017

Motivation

Inappropriate disclosure of human genomes may put the privacy of study subjects and of their family members at risk. Existing privacy-preserving mechanisms for Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) mainly focus on protecting individual information in case–control studies. Protecting privacy in family-based studies is more difficult. The transmission disequilibrium test (TDT) is a powerful family-based association test employed in many rare disease studies. It gathers information about families (most frequently involving parents, affected children and their siblings). It is important to develop privacy-preserving approaches to disclose TDT statistics with a guarantee that the risk of family ‘re-identification’ stays below a pre-specified risk threshold. ‘Re-identification’ in this context means that an attacker can infer that the presence of a family in a study.

Methods

In the context of protecting family-level privacy, we developed and evaluated a suite of differentially private (DP) mechanisms for TDT. They include Laplace mechanisms based on the TDT test statistic, P-values, projected P-values and exponential mechanisms based on the TDT test statistic and the shortest Hamming distance (SHD) score.

Results

Using simulation studies with a small cohort and a large one, we showed that that the exponential mechanism based on the SHD score preserves the highest utility and privacy among all proposed DP methods. We provide a guideline on applying our DP TDT in a real dataset in analyzing Kawasaki disease with 187 families and 906 SNPs. There are some limitations, including: (1) the performance of our implementation is slow for real-time results generation and (2) handling missing data is still challenging.

Availability and implementation

The software dpTDT is available in https://github.com/mwgrassgreen/dpTDT.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
New Genes and Functional Innovation in Mammals
Authors: Villanueva-Cañas José Luis , Ruiz-Orera Jorge , Agea M. Isabel , Gallo Maria , Andreu David , Albà M. Mar
Published: July 2017

The birth of genes that encode new protein sequences is a major source of evolutionary innovation. However, we still understand relatively little about how these genes come into being and which functions they are selected for. To address these questions, we have obtained a large collection of mammalian-specific gene families that lack homologues in other eukaryotic groups. We have combined gene annotations and de novo transcript assemblies from 30 different mammalian species, obtaining ∼6,000 gene families. In general, the proteins in mammalian-specific gene families tend to be short and depleted in aromatic and negatively charged residues. Proteins which arose early in mammalian evolution include milk and skin polypeptides, immune response components, and proteins involved in reproduction. In contrast, the functions of proteins which have a more recent origin remain largely unknown, despite the fact that these proteins also have extensive proteomics support. We identify several previously described cases of genes originated de novo from noncoding genomic regions, supporting the idea that this mechanism frequently underlies the evolution of new protein-coding genes in mammals. Finally, we show that most young mammalian genes are preferentially expressed in testis, suggesting that sexual selection plays an important role in the emergence of new functional genes.
Parameter Spaces for Algebraic Equivalence
Authors: Achter Jeffrey D , Casalaina-Martin Sebastian , Vial Charles
Published: July 2017

A cycle is algebraically trivial if it can be exhibited as the difference of two fibers in a family of cycles parameterized by a smooth integral scheme. Over an algebraically closed field, it is a result of Weil that it suffices to consider families of cycles parameterized by curves, or by abelian varieties. In this article, we extend these results to arbitrary base fields. The strengthening of these results turns out to be a key step in our work elsewhere extending Murre’s results on algebraic representatives for varieties over algebraically closed fields to arbitrary perfect fields.
Conceptualization, Development, and Application of Research in Deaf Education
Authors: Easterbrooks Susan R.
Published: July 2017

Many have referred to practices in deaf education as having their basis in beliefs and attitudes rather than evidence and science; misunderstandings between the culture of the researcher and the culture of the practitioner result in misperceptions of the intentions from both sides. The purpose of this chapter is to identify how a good idea makes it from a belief in a practice to scientific validation of its effectiveness. The available research designs are legion, and all have their purposes. This chapter describes the place of the different designs on the path from a belief to an evidence-based practice and uses examples from the existing evidence base to demonstrate how they fit in the overall scheme of moving a good idea into the evidence base.
Research and Development of Guidelines for ASL Translation of Education Assessments
Authors: Higgins Jennifer , Famularo Lisa , Kurz Christopher , Reis Jeanne , Moers Lori
Published: July 2017

This chapter draws from the Guidelines for Accessible Assessment Project (GAAP), a federally funded research project to create and evaluate guidelines for developing American Sign Language versions of standardized test items. The chapter begins with a brief discussion of national education policy that provides the context for GAAP and the need for evidence-based guidelines, followed by an overview of the project. The third section describes lessons learned regarding fostering effective communication and collaboration among a deaf and hearing team. The fourth section describes important considerations for researchers related to sampling, recruitment, study design, data collection, analysis, and reporting. The chapter concludes with a summary of key learnings and critical questions that researchers should consider before embarking on research in deaf education.
Action Research in Deaf Education
Authors: Beal-Alvarez Jennifer
Published: July 2017

This chapter presents an overview of action research, specifically, participatory action research (PAR), and its components. These components include, among others, recruitment and establishment of co-researchers, specifically deaf co-researchers and their lived experiences; confidentiality responsibilities in the PAR process; identification of relevant issues within target communities; and power-sharing among team members. The author reviews the action research literature related to deaf participants and co-researchers and focuses on the subcategory of action research within deaf education. Finally, the author presents empirical data through case studies that demonstrate how preservice and in-service teachers utilize action research interventions to guide their data-based instruction.
Evaluating Evidence-Based Practices in Reading Interventions for Deaf Students
Authors: Trezek Beverly J. , Wang Ye
Published: July 2017

The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate evidence-based practices in reading interventions for deaf students using the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) standards published in 2014. These standards first use eight quality indicators to determine the methodological rigor of group comparison or single-subject design studies. Evidence-based classifications are then applied to groups of studies evaluating designated categories of practice. A review of the literature yielded 30 reading intervention studies between 2000 and 2016, of which 10 employed designs allowing for subsequent analyses. The application of the quality indicators resulted in nine methodologically sound studies in six categories of practice. Although findings revealed that none of the included reading intervention practices was considered evidence-based, three were classified as potentially evidence-based, one as having mixed evidence, and the remaining two as having insufficient evidence. Challenges to meeting the CEC standards are discussed and recommendations for future research explored.
Conclusion
Authors: Cawthon Stephanie W. , Garberoglio Carrie Lou , Hauser Peter C.
Published: July 2017

This chapter marks the conclusion of this edited volume, Research in Deaf Education. The purpose of the volume as a whole is to identify strategies for improving the quality of research in deaf education; the conclusion summarizes main themes that both cut across chapters and extend arguments made by individual chapter authors. Overarching themes include discussions around standards for research quality; the positionality of researchers; and how we obtain, interpret, and translate research findings for diverse audiences. In each of these themes we recognize challenges that the field faces as well as opportunities for further dialog and collaboration for addressing these challenges in the future. The chapter concludes with strategies for mentoring the next generation of scholars in deaf education, with an emphasis on incorporating diverse perspectives, making the invisible culture of academia visible to deaf scholars, and ways to increase the accessibility of deaf education research.
Ceremony and Civility
Authors: Hanawalt Barbara A.
Published: July 2017

London’s civic ceremonies marked the relationships between the mayors and the crown, but also between denizens and their government, gild wardens and members, masters and apprentices, and parishioners and their church. London, like all premodern cities, was made up of immigrants. The number of people who were citizens (who enjoyed the “freedom of the city”) was a small proportion of the inhabitants. The newly arrived had to be taught the civic culture of the city so that the city could function peacefully. Ritual and ceremony played a key role in the acculturation process. In a society in which hierarchical authority was most commonly determined by the inheritance of title and office or sanctified by ordination, elected civic officials relied on rituals to cement their authority, power, and dominance. Since the term of office was a year, the election and inauguration of city officials had to be very public, and the robes of office had to distinguish the officers so that everyone would know who they were. Apprentices entering the city to take up a trade were educated in civic culture by their masters. Gilds also provided experience in leadership through gild governance. Again, rituals, oath swearing, and distinctive livery marked their belonging. Those who rebelled against authority and who broke the civic ordinances were made spectacles of through ritual humiliations so that others could learn from their example. At the parish level, and even at the level of the street, civic behavior was taught through example, proclamations, and ballads.
The Urban Environment
Authors: Hanawalt Barbara A.
Published: July 2017

London’s civic world included the Thames and the city walls, the main market (Cheapside), the Guildhall, major churches, wards, and parishes, the physical features that had a role in the city’s ceremonial life. Social divisions played a crucial role in urban life. To be “free of the city” (citizens or freemen) was a franchise limited to those who completed apprenticeships or bought the right. The number of freemen was a small fraction of the population, and among them, the members of the elite who governed was even smaller. London’s society was hierarchical at every level, with elites taking leadership positions in government and in the gilds. Londoners were loyal and curious about their history. They kept books with stories of its creation and major events and documents. The proximity of the Tower on one side and Westminster on the other were influential in London’s relationship with the crown.
Rebellion and Submission
Authors: Hanawalt Barbara A.
Published: July 2017

Offenders who slandered the mayor and aldermen were brought before the court at the Guildhall to be tried. The ultimate punishment was the removal of citizenship, which meant that the man could not trade in the city. Most offenders made public apologies and made a bond to be paid if they slandered again. Punishments for infractions were turned into didactic rituals that informed the populace about the guilty man’s wrong behavior, fraud, or sexual lapse, and so on. Public punishment depended on the offender’s social class. While a citizen could get off with a bond, a bawd, prostitute, baker of bad bread, or a seller of spoiled meat pies was tried in the mayor’s court and, if found guilty, paraded through the streets on a hurdle drawn by a horse to the stocks to stand in public view. It was both humiliating and indicated whom not to patronize.
Civic Lessons for the Masses
Authors: Hanawalt Barbara A.
Published: July 2017

The educating of the illiterate, other than the public shaming and time on the pillory, was done through the public reading of the city ordinances and a variety of city institutions. When a man entered the city, he was given three nights to become a member of the frankpledge, taking an oath before an alderman to uphold the laws. The ward was the basic unit of government. Parish churches were inclusive of all parish inhabitants regardless of their social status, but the governance of the finances belonged to elite members. The social and religious gilds that were connected to the parish church were mostly for those of middling rank in the city and, again, had a hierarchical structure. Wards and parishes served an educative function in civic behavior, as did the parishes themselves. Finally, there was the oral culture of the streets and the visual culture of the public buildings.
A Good and Perfect Beginning
Authors: Bernal Angélica Maria
Published: July 2017

This chapter examines the problem of the lawgiver and the people by way of Plato’s approach to foundational lawmaking in the Laws. Plato’s encounter with the problems of founding a new regime and its laws is informative for contemporary constitutional democracies in bringing to the fore tensions between lawmakers and the people in the origins of political community. Mainly, it underscores tensions between the goals of public unity, political stability, and institutional endurance in relation to pluralism, contention, and change. It is also revealing in its problematic resolution to these tensions: Plato defines founding as the establishment of a singular authority and immutable beginning that lays down all the necessary political and legal foundations of a political community, providing for their preservation and endurance against a plural and ever-changing people. This chapter advances a critique of Plato’s attempted resolution and ends by underscoring his ultimately ambivalent relationship to it.
Foundings, Origins, and Repetition
Authors: Bernal Angélica Maria
Published: July 2017

This chapter turns to the Roman historian Titus Livy’s theory of founding to tackle the problem of original authority. The central argument advanced by this chapter is that Livy’s conception offers us helpful resources for rethinking foundings and foundation building beyond origins and authoritative beginnings. Against political foundationalism, Livy’s conception of founding recasts the relationship between foundations and foundational change by disaggregating foundings from origins, pluralizing foundings and founders, and redefining founding action and a founder’s exemplariness. Livy’s narrative invites us to rethink foundings as relative, imperfect, conflictual, and incomplete, seeing these as characteristic of their political nature as well as of a political order’s strength, the source for its continuance, and for necessary innovation and adjustment to changing needs and contingencies.
The Promise and Perils of Presidential Refounding in Latin America
Authors: Bernal Angélica Maria
Published: July 2017

This chapter examines the politics of presidential refounding in Latin America. While the rise of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa appeared to herald the return of radical populism in Latin America, what remained less examined is the wave of refoundational constitution making that these leaders set into motion. Shifting the lens of analysis from populism to refoundational constitution making, the chapter engages with the issue of how we can determine the democratic legitimacy of refoundational claims and constituent processes set into motion by these presidents, given their complex roles as key agents of refounding while also simultaneously appealing to “the people” and invoking participatory constitution making to authorize and enact such constituent change.
Introduction
Authors: Sammons Benjamin
Published: July 2017

THE AETHIOPIS WAS an epic poem in five books whose subject was the death of Achilles. Its narrative began immediately after the death of Hector and included two major movements. The first featured a newly arrived Trojan ally, the Amazon princess Penthesileia, who routed the Achaeans but fell at the hands of Achilles. The second featured the Ethiopian prince Memnon, also a newly arrived Trojan ally, who similarly perished, after brief success, at the hands of Achilles. Each of these movements had its own sequel or pendant. Appended to the first was the story of how Achilles was mocked by Thersites, murdered him, and traveled to Lesbos to be purified of blood-guilt; and appended to the second was the story of how Achilles stormed the walls of Troy and died at the hands of Paris and Apollo, followed by an account of his funeral and the argument over his arms....
Narratives
Authors: Sammons Benjamin
Published: July 2017

This chapter discusses inset narratives and indirect narratives, with particular attention to their use in the construction of poems and the interconnections of poems to a larger mythological context. The Achaeans’ departure from Troy and the revenge of Athena against Oilean Ajax seem to have been prospectively narrated in the Ilioupersis in a way that causes confusion in Proclus’s summary. Similarly, much Trojan War mythology preceding the judgment of Paris was probably indirectly narrated in the Cypria, as is the case in the famous fragment concerning Helen’s birth. Two major passages of the Nostoi were most likely also narrated indirectly. Under the heading of paradigmatic tales (stories told by characters to one another for rhetorical purposes) our evidence is unfortunately meager, but the one example from the Cypria recorded by Proclus reveals a degree of sophistication equal to the most elaborate Homeric examples.
Character Roles and Narrative Design
Authors: Sammons Benjamin
Published: July 2017

This chapter makes use of the concept of “character-space” to treat character roles as an underlying feature of narrative structure. The argument begins with a discussion of how Achilles’ presence and absence in the story of the Iliad reflects the narrative design of the poem as a whole, and the contrast between the Iliad and Odyssey in this regard. The range, distribution, and use of character roles also had an intimate connection to the narrative and thematic design of the cyclic epics. The Little Iliad and the Aethiopis used leading characters to bring a kind of unity to the work as a whole. Other poems show different narrative strategies and aims: the Cypria shifted focus from one character to another until finally settling on Achilles in the second half; and the Nostoi uses the two sons of Atreus as defining figureheads for the doublet-structure of the poem as a whole.
Conclusions
Authors: Sammons Benjamin
Published: July 2017

The conclusions include a brief reconstruction of each cyclic epic, with emphasis on points suggested by the arguments in each chapter. Comparison of the cyclic epics among themselves shows that catalogues and doublets were especially important compositional elements. Two-fold structure in particular seems to have been highly characteristic of poems of medium length, with smaller elements such as the aristeia being used to reinforce large-scale structure. Character roles, divine activity, and thematic correlations were used to bring unity to the more compendious poems. Comparison of cyclic epics with the Homeric poems shows that the crucial difference lies in the function of shared compositional devices relative to the overall scale of poems. Devices that are used to structure relatively small parts of the Homeric poems could be used to construct very large portions of shorter epics, if not entire poems.
Introduction
Authors: Huang Yukon
Published: July 2017

Few countries get the public’s attention to the extent that China does. And few generate such diverging views concerning its economic, social, and political evolution. This chapter sets the context by noting China’s impressive economic achievements as well as current financial difficulties. Markets are questioning whether China can survive the threat of looming debt and property-market bubbles, while the general public is more concerned with the country’s political stability and security as Beijing becomes more aggressive in its claims over neighboring islands. How does one explain such extreme variation in views? Many factors are involved, which makes it difficult to be ideologically neutral regarding this emerging great power. If the diagnosis is wrong, then likely so are the policy prescriptions.
China’s Impact on the Global Balance of Power
Authors: Huang Yukon
Published: July 2017

President Xi’s “China Dream” is underpinned by the country’s expanding trade and aid initiatives. While many welcome such opportunities, Beijing’s assertive foreign policy has exacerbated tensions. Meanwhile, America’s rebalancing toward Asia is seen by China as a containment strategy. China’s response has been to launch its “One Belt, One Road” initiative to support infrastructure development along historic land and maritime routes across Asia and the Middle East to Europe. Beijing’s plans have been substantiated by large amounts of lending and a new multilateral institution. China is no longer willing to accept the United States as the dominant regional power, yet it is unclear whether America is prepared to surrender any portion of its primacy. It remains to be seen whether the disputes over the sovereignty of regional islands will lead to conflicts or a conciliatory process that will allow the region to remain stable and prosper.
Trust
Authors: Van Lange Paul A. M. , Rockenbach Bettina , Yamagishi Toshio
Published: July 2017

This chapter provides a brief review of the conceptual and empirical development of the concept of trust. In doing so, it briefly discusses some historical writings of trust, along with some clear trends toward an integrative, interdisciplinary science of trust. Trust and social dilemmas are close partners, in that trust is often a necessary but not a sufficient condition for establishing and maintaining cooperation in social dilemmas. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the book, providing a brief discussion of the sections dealing with (a) the biology and development of trust; (b) trust in dyads, groups, and organizations; and (c) trust in different cultures.
The Influence of Globalization and Ethnic Fractionalization on Cooperation and Trust in Kenya
Authors: Buchan Nancy R. , Rolfe Robert
Published: July 2017

This research examines the effects of ethnic fractionalization and globalization on individual-level propensities toward generalized trust and cooperation at the national level. Conclusions regarding both ethnic-fractionalization and globalization remain mixed as to their influence on prosocial behavior. This chapter explores the relationship between these variables in Kenya, a country with an extremely heterogeneous population that has increased integration with the global economy over the past decade. Literate Kenyan male and female adults, ages 18 to 60, from two of Kenya’s largest ethnic groups, the Luo and Kikuyu, participated in an experimental public goods game in which players contribute to, and benefit from, a national account. Results are consistent with the argument that it is not ethnic fractionalization per se that is associated with lower cooperation but increased ethnic inequality. The implications of these findings are that trust and cooperation are highly contextually based and influenced by social and environmental factors.
Introduction
Authors: Miller Ruth A.
Published: July 2017

The introductory chapter presents the major themes of the book. After exploring a series of vignettes in which human and nonhuman reproduction or replication operate together to produce a nostalgic, yet effective, mode of mass democratic political engagement, it goes on to defend the book’s primary claims: that biopolitics need not be dead to scholarship, that embryos and alphabets are politically vital in remarkably similar ways, and that nostalgia is neither a purely human state nor politically enervating as a mode of engaging with the world. In the process, this chapter begins to situate the book’s conclusions within the scholarly fields with which it engages: feminist theory, political theory, science and technology studies, bioethics, and legal studies.
Nonhuman Nostalgia
Authors: Miller Ruth A.
Published: July 2017

This chapter makes a case for the validity of a nonhuman, rather than purely human, nostalgic state or experience. Drawing on a wide range of scholarship that theorizes and historicizes nostalgia, the chapter identifies a series of defining characteristics of the nostalgic state. From there, it challenges conventional wisdom that nostalgia is a purely human experience, describing the variety of ways in which nostalgia plays out across both organic and inorganic nonhuman fields and environments. Indeed, the chapter concludes that nostalgia is not only possible for both organic and inorganic nonhuman assemblages, but perhaps the most appropriate descriptive term for the simultaneously reproductive and intellectual activities of these assemblages.
Science and Metaphysics, Then and Now
Authors: Chakravartty Anjan
Published: July 2017

It is widely held that while the forms of inquiry into the nature of the world that came before and gave rise to the modern sciences were thoroughly infused with philosophical considerations, the modern sciences have departed from these earlier inquiries, in part by excluding such philosophical concerns. This chapter argues that while this common view is correct in some ways, it is importantly mistaken in others. It introduces the idea of a ‘metaphysical inference,’ and contends that such inferences are inevitably involved in attempts to interpret the outputs of science, such as theories and models, so as to describe their ontological implications. Metaphysical inferences admit of different “magnitudes,” thus defining a spectrum with more empirical forms of ontology at one end, and more purely philosophical forms at the another.
Naturalism and the Grounding Metaphor
Authors: Chakravartty Anjan
Published: July 2017

This chapter develops the notion of degrees of metaphysical inference, giving content to a number of widely used but only vaguely specified metaphors regarding what it could mean to “naturalize” metaphysical inferences by “grounding” them in scientific knowledge, and what it could mean to “derive” ontological conclusions from scientific work, or use such work as a “constraint” on ontological theorizing. It examines the prospects of demarcating scientific ontology from non-scientific, philosophical ontologically, the nature of a priori presuppositions and inferences and their possible roles in this demarcation, and the idea of naturalizing metaphysical inferences. In conclusion, it considers whether there is, in fact, anything like an objective distinction to be made between genuinely theorizing and merely speculating about ontology.
Structures
Authors: Chakravartty Anjan
Published: July 2017

This chapter continues the work of the previous chapter by examining a further case study. The example here focuses on an attempt to use scientific knowledge not merely as a launching pad for ontological theorizing but as a constraint on the forms such theorizing may take. It investigates an influential research program in recent philosophy of science concerning the ontology of fundamental physics in relation to the rather slippery notion of a subatomic “particle.” It is argued that different proposals, which have emerged to give content to this notion, exemplify a pattern of reasoning in which one is inevitably driven either to accept a contentious ontological primitive or to reject the ontological proposal under consideration. One plausible response to this dilemma is a differential application of realism and pragmatism to different descriptions of particles.
Coda
Authors: Chakravartty Anjan
Published: July 2017

The final chapter of the book marshals the upshot of what has come before, considering the ramifications of voluntarism about stances for how different agents should think about scientific ontology more generally. The potentially melancholy conclusion that philosophical analysis is powerless to resolve important debates concerning ontology is resisted, in favor of a more inspiring picture of the genuine insight that comes from understanding the true nature of ontological pursuits. This helps to separate questions regarding which illumination is possible from others, which amount to pseudo-problems, admitting of no genuine illumination after all. Invoking themes of Pyrrhonian skepticism regarding the peace of mind that may accompany such revelations, voluntarism about scientific ontology is presented as a transformative epistemology.
Advocating for Choice
Authors: Masuoka Natalie
Published: July 2017

This chapter presents data from in-depth interviews taken with activists who lobby on behalf of multiracial identities. It begins with a review of the multiracial movement to change the racial identification question on the 2000 census and outlines how activism changed after the mark-one-or-more races option on the census racial identification question was implemented. Interview data is split into two samples: those who personally self-identify as multiracial and those who are white mothers of biracial children. Interviews with self-identified multiracial activists demonstrates a clear worldview about race that emphasizes the right of personal choice. But while these activists express these strong views, they at the same time believe that established racial categories continue to influence how they are racially classified and treated by others. Interviews with white mothers reveals how parents’ ideologies about race have influenced patterns of multiracial identification.
In the Eye of the Beholder
Authors: Masuoka Natalie
Published: July 2017

This chapter evaluates how Americans racially classify others and how this process of racial classification might vary across individuals. The case examined in this chapter are voter perceptions of President Barack Obama’s race. Data show that although Obama self-identifies as (only) African American, the majority of voters describe Obama as a mixed-race person. At the same time, racial classification is found to vary depending on the respondent’s race and so analyses are offered that compare white, black, and Latino perception of Obama’s race. The second half of the chapter assesses the possible political implications of perceiving Obama as black compared to perceiving Obama as mixed race. Data show that voters who perceive Obama as black evaluate the president differently than voters who perceive Obama as mixed race.
Markets, Culture, and American Art
Authors: Ekelund Robert B. , Jackson John D. , Tollison Robert D.
Published: July 2017

Chapter 1 introduces the rationale for studying and analyzing the economic aspects of American art as a “category” of art genres and, more generally, it places the market for art in the context of trade for all goods and services. Art, like all traded goods, possesses credence characteristics, but they are present to a significant degree since the requisite assurance of authenticity is often difficult to determine. The chapter also explains why American art can be segmented for study apart from a “homogeneous” art category and also as two markets—one prior to art produced before 1950, and another that has come to be called contemporary American art. Chapter 1 previews the remainder of the book in which both semi-technical issues, such as artistic productivity, auction estimates, and investments, and narrative issues, including art crime, fakes, art marketing “death effects,” and contemporary art bubbles, are dissected from an economic perspective.
American Art and Illegal Activity
Authors: Ekelund Robert B. , Jackson John D. , Tollison Robert D.
Published: July 2017

This chapter presents an economic characterization of theft and fakery in the art world generally and with respect to American art specifically. When costs are low or benefits are high, there is more theft and fakery. That happens to be the case in the generally opaque market for art. With low national and international enforcement and higher and higher prices for art, we should not be surprised that art crime is the third largest criminal enterprise in the world. Art is used as “money” in drug operations and in money laundering of other illicit activities. Authenticity through experts, provenance, and exhibition records may add credence or establishment of authenticity to a work of art but, in many case, such “credence” may be faked. The story of art crime is told through a multiplicity of examples and “case studies,” derived primarily from theft and fakery of American art.
The Impact of Death and Bubbles in American Art
Authors: Ekelund Robert B. , Jackson John D. , Tollison Robert D.
Published: July 2017

Chapter 7 presents a dissection of two important issues affecting the art market and the fate of artists: “a death effect” and “bubbles.” Death of an artist is a guarantee that additional legitimate output will not be forthcoming, the “Coase durable monopoly conjecture.” Evidence indicates that the price path of seventeen artists who died over the sample period rises as the artist approaches death. After death, price may rise or fall with supply and demand, but we find it rises for our contemporary artists. “Bubbles”—rapid price increases—have and do occur in the art market. We find that art price behavior parallel GDP prior to 2008, but rose much faster thereafter. This result, coupled with an increasingly skewed world income distribution and billionaire buying, potentially denotes an “art price bubble.”
Overview: A New Kind of Science
Authors: Healey Richard
Published: July 2017

This overview introduces the book’s aim of showing how quantum theory marks a radical break from previous scientific theorizing: We are warranted in accepting the fundamental status within contemporary physics of a theory that posits no new physical entities or magnitudes of its own. By contrast with existing interpretations that attempt to say how the world could possibly be the way quantum theory says it is, a pragmatist takes understanding quantum theory to be a matter of knowing how it is applied, and how the theory’s various elements function in these applications. So Part I of the book offers a simple, self-contained presentation of quantum theory, emphasizing applications; while Part II says why the quantum revolution matters for philosophy. Coming to terms with the quantum revolution involves adopting views of scientific theorizing, probability, causation, explanation, objectivity, meaning, and fundamentality that philosophers should have arrived at without its prompting.
Assigning Values and States
Authors: Healey Richard
Published: July 2017

If a quantum state is prescriptive then what state should an agent assign, what expectations does this justify, and what are the grounds for those expectations? I address these questions and introduce a third important idea—decoherence. A subsystem of a system assigned an entangled state may be assigned a mixed state represented by a density operator. Quantum state assignment is an objective matter, but the correct assignment must be relativized to the physical situation of an actual or hypothetical agent for whom its prescription offers good advice, since differently situated agents have access to different information. However this situation is described, it is true, empirically significant magnitude claims that make the description correct, while others provide the objective grounds for the agent’s expectations. Quantum models of environmental decoherence certify the empirical significance of these magnitude claims while also licensing application of the Born rule to others without mentioning measurement.
Probability and Explanation
Authors: Healey Richard
Published: July 2017

We can use quantum theory to explain an enormous variety of phenomena by showing why they were to be expected and what they depend on. These explanations of probabilistic phenomena involve applications of the Born rule: to accept quantum theory is to let relevant Born probabilities guide one’s credences about presently inaccessible events. We use quantum theory to explain a probabilistic phenomenon by showing how its probabilities follow from a correct application of the Born rule, thereby exhibiting the phenomenon’s dependence on the quantum state to be assigned in circumstances of that type. This is not a causal explanation since a probabilistic phenomenon is not constituted by events that may manifest it: but each of those events does depend causally on events that actually occur in those circumstances. Born probabilities are objective and sui generis, but not all Born probabilities are chances.
Observation and Objectivity
Authors: Healey Richard
Published: July 2017

The paradox of Wigner’s friend presents a challenge to the objectivity of description in quantum theory. Distinguishing several aspects of objectivity, I address this challenge. Relativization of quantum state assignment to agent situation disposes of the main problem and a residual worry concerning the objective content of magnitude claims about macroscopic records of outcomes. While Quantum Darwinism cannot alone secure the objectivity of outcomes, it can then help to show why claims about them are intersubjectively verifiable as multiple observers examine records of the outcome in different parts of the environment. A recent extension of the paradox shows why even a true claim about the outcome of a measurement is not transcendentally objective in the sense that it corresponds to a reality that transcends all possibility of observational access by the scientific community.
Fundamentality
Authors: Healey Richard
Published: July 2017

The metaphor that fundamental physics is concerned to say what the natural world is like at the deepest level may be cashed out in terms of entities, properties, or laws. The role of quantum field theories in the Standard Model of high-energy physics suggests that fundamental entities, properties, and laws are to be sought in these theories. But the contextual ontology proposed in Chapter 12 would support no unified compositional structure for the world; a quantum state assignment specifies no physical property distribution sufficient even to determine all physical facts; and quantum theory posits no fundamental laws of time evolution, whether deterministic or stochastic. Quantum theory has made a revolutionary contribution to fundamental physics because its principles have permitted tremendous unification of science through the successful application of models constructed in conformity to them: but these models do not say what the world is like at the deepest level.
Conclusion
Authors: Healey Richard
Published: July 2017

Quantum theory does not describe the world and so contributes little to natural philosophy: it implies neither that a particle can be in two places at once, that a cat can be neither dead nor alive, that there is instantaneous action at a distance, nor that our observations create the world they reveal. Quantum entanglement does not say that the world is radically holist or non-separable, that the world is indeterministic or deterministic, that mind influences matter, or that consciousness plays a special role in the natural world. But the theory does have lessons to teach about how philosophy should approach topics including causation, probability, laws, composition, and ontology that traditionally fall within metaphysics. Here the quantum revolution reinforces the pragmatist lesson that such topics are best approached by asking why agents like us should have developed the concepts we have when physically situated in a world like this.
Segmental Phonology: Consonants
Authors: Downing Laura J. , Mtenje Al
Published: July 2017

This chapter discusses the consonant phoneme inventory, briefly comparing the Chichewa consonant inventory with that of Proto-Bantu, before turning to the distribution of the consonants in different morphologically defined positions (stem-initial, stem-medial, affixes). The second half of the chapter surveys the main consonantal phonological processes. The processes discussed include regular and productive processes, like nasal place assimilation and postnasal stop aspiration, and morphologically conditioned consonant mutations involved in the formation of noun class 5/6 singular–plural pairs and in the formation of causative verbs.
Grammatical Tone Patterns of Negative and Relative Verbs
Authors: Downing Laura J. , Mtenje Al
Published: July 2017

This chapter takes up two additional parameters that condition grammatical tone in Chichewa, namely: negative polarity and relative clause type. There are fewer grammatical tone patterns for negative and relative verbs, compared to affirmative main clause verbs. The inflections that grouped together for the tone patterns discussed in Chapter 7 do not always group together for the corresponding negative and relative paradigms. The two core sections of the chapter illustrate in detail the tone patterns for negative and relative verbs. The concluding section of the chapter takes up the often neglected issue of where grammatical tone patterns are represented in the grammar.
Synthesis and Binding
Authors: Allais Lucy
Published: July 2017

There are a number of reasons to think that one of Kant’s concerns in the Critique of Pure Reason is with the active role the mind must play in organizing the sensory input to enable us to experience objects, and therefore that he thinks that something like what is now called perceptual binding is necessary for us to be presented with perceptual particulars. Given the centrality of the notion of synthesis in the Critique, as well as Kant’s claim that synthesis governed by the categories is needed for us to have what he calls ‘relation to an object’, it might be thought that Kant’s notion of synthesis is where we should look for Kant’s account of something like perceptual binding. The aim of this chapter is to argue that this is not the case, and that synthesis plays a much higher-level role in Kant’s account.