bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Flexibility of Heterocercal Tails: What Can the Functional Morphology of Shark Tails Tell Us about Ichthyosaur Swimming?
Authors: Crofts S B , Shehata R , Flammang B E
Published: February 2019

Synopsis

The similarities between ichthyosaurs and sharks are a text-book example of convergence, and similarities in tail morphology have led many to theorize that they had similar swimming styles. The variation of ichthyosaur tail shapes is encompassed within the diversity of shark families. In particular early ichthyosaurs have asymmetrical tails like the heterocercal tails of carcharhinid sharks, while later occurring ichthyosaurs have lunate tails similar to those of lamnid sharks. Because it is not possible to measure ichthyosaur tail function, the goal of this study is to measure and compare the flexibility and stiffness of lunate and heterocercal shark tails, and to measure skeletal and connective tissue features that may affect tail flexibility. We measured flexibility in 10 species and focused on five species in particular, for dissection: one pelagic and one bottom-associated individual from each order, plus the common thresher shark (Alopias vulpinus), a tail-slapping specialist. As expected, lunate tails were overall less flexible than heterocercal tails and had greater flexural stiffness. Our results suggest that the cross-sectional profile of the skeletally supported dorsal lobe dictates flexural stiffness, but that changing tissue composition dictates flexural stiffness in the ventral lobe. We also found structural differences that may enable the tail slapping behavior of the common thresher shark. Finally, we discuss how our morphological measurements compare to ichthyosaur measurements from the literature; noting that similarities in functional morphology suggest sharks may be a good analog for understanding ichthyosaur swimming biomechanics.
Tegavivint and the β-Catenin/ALDH Axis in Chemotherapy-Resistant and Metastatic Osteosarcoma
Authors: Nomura Motonari , Rainusso Nino , Lee Yi-Chien , Dawson Brian , Coarfa Cristian , Han Ruolan , Larson Jeffrey L , Shuck Ryan , Kurenbekova Lyazat , Yustein Jason T
Published: February 2019

Background

The Wnt/β-catenin pathway is closely associated with osteosarcoma (OS) development and metastatic progression. We investigated the antitumor activity of Tegavivint, a novel β-catenin/transducin β-like protein 1 (TBL1) inhibitor, against OS employing in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo cell line and patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models that recapitulate high risk disease.

Methods

The antitumor efficacy of Tegavivint was evaluated in vitro using established OS and PDX-derived cell lines. Use of an ex vivo three-dimensional pulmonary metastasis assay assessed targeting of β-catenin activity during micro- and macrometastatic development. The in vivo activity of Tegavivint was evaluated using chemoresistant and metastatic OS PDX models. Gene and protein expression were quantified by quantitative Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction or immunoblot analysis. Bone integrity was determined via microCT. All statistical tests were two-sided.

Results

Tegavivint exhibited antiproliferative activity against OS cells in vitro and actively reduced micro- and macrometastatic development ex vivo. Multiple OS PDX tumors (n = 3), including paired patient primary and lung metastatic tumors with inherent chemoresistance, were suppressed by Tegavivint in vivo. We identified that metastatic lung OS cell lines (n = 2) exhibited increased stem cell signatures, including enhanced concomitant aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH1) and β-catenin expression and downstream activity, which were suppressed by Tegavivint (ALDH1: control group, mean relative mRNA expression = 1.00, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.68 to 1.22 vs Tegavivint group, mean = 0.011, 95% CI = 0.0012 to 0.056, P < .001; β-catenin: control group, mean relative mRNA expression = 1.00, 95% CI = 0.71 to 1.36 vs Tegavivint group, mean = 0.45, 95% CI = 0.36 to 0.52, P < .001). ALDH1high PDX-derived lung OS cells, which demonstrated enhanced metastatic potential compared with ALDHlow cells in vivo, were sensitive to Tegavivint. Toxicity studies revealed decreased bone density in male Tegavivint-treated mice (n = 4 mice per group).

Conclusions

Tegavivint is a promising therapeutic agent for advanced stages of OS via its targeting of the β-catenin/ALDH1 axis.
Acute Flaccid Myelitis: Lessons From Polio
Authors: Gilsdorf Janet R
Published: February 2019

With the eradication of poliomyelitis in the United States, the appearance of acute flaccid myelitis outbreaks has raised questions regarding their causation. Review of the epidemiology, clinical aspects, and laboratory findings of bygone cases of poliomyelitis have revealed shows important similarities with those of newer cases of acute flaccid myelitis. Many occurrences are preceded by an apparent viral illness, and a number of viruses, particularly enteroviruses A71 and D68, can be isolated from respiratory or stool specimens. Our inability to detect these viruses in cerebrospinal fluid samples from these patients does not eliminate them as etiologic agents, because poliovirus is often not detected in cerebrospinal fluid samples of patients with paralysis caused by poliomyelitis.
Using Response Propensity Modeling to Allocate Noncontingent Incentives in an Address-Based Sample: Evidence from a National Experiment
Authors: Jackson Michael T , McPhee Cameron B , Lavrakas Paul J
Published: February 2019

Monetary incentives are frequently used to improve survey response rates. While it is common to use a single incentive amount for an entire sample, allowing the incentive to vary inversely with the expected probability of response may help to mitigate nonresponse and/or nonresponse bias. Using data from the 2016 National Household Education Survey (NHES:2016), an address-based sample (ABS) of US households, this article evaluates an experiment in which the noncontingent incentive amount was determined by a household’s predicted response propensity (RP). Households with the lowest RP received $10, those with the highest received $2 or $0, and those in between received the standard NHES incentive of $5. Relative to a uniform $5 protocol, this “tailored” incentive protocol slightly reduced the response rate and had no impact on observable nonresponse bias. These results serve as an important caution to researchers considering the targeting of incentives or other interventions based on predicted RP. While preferable in theory to “one-size-fits-all” approaches, such differential designs may not improve recruitment outcomes without a dramatic increase in the resources devoted to low RP cases. If budget and/or ethical concerns limit the resources that can be devoted to such cases, RP-based targeting could have little practical benefit.
Slowing the spins of stellar cores
Authors: Fuller Jim , Piro Anthony L , Jermyn Adam S
Published: February 2019

The angular momentum (AM) evolution of stellar interiors, along with the resulting rotation rates of stellar remnants, remains poorly understood. Asteroseismic measurements of red giant stars reveal that their cores rotate much faster than their surfaces, but much slower than theoretically predicted, indicating an unidentified source of AM transport operates in their radiative cores. Motivated by this, we investigate the magnetic Tayler instability and argue that it saturates when turbulent dissipation of the perturbed magnetic field energy is equal to magnetic energy generation via winding. This leads to larger magnetic field amplitudes, more efficient AM transport, and smaller shears than predicted by the classic Tayler–Spruit dynamo. We provide prescriptions for the effective AM diffusivity and incorporate them into numerical stellar models, finding they largely reproduce (1) the nearly rigid rotation of the Sun and main sequence stars, (2) the core rotation rates of low-mass red giants during hydrogen shell and helium burning, and (3) the rotation rates of white dwarfs. We discuss implications for stellar rotational evolution, internal rotation profiles, rotational mixing, and the spins of compact objects.
The ‘Big Dipper’: the nature of the extreme variability of the AGN SDSS J2232−0806
Authors: Kynoch Daniel , Ward Martin J , Lawrence Andy , Bruce Alastair G , Landt Hermine , MacLeod Chelsea L
Published: February 2019

SDSS J2232−0806 (the ‘Big Dipper’) has been identified as a ‘slow-blue nuclear hypervariable’: a galaxy with no previously known active nucleus, blue colours, and large-amplitude brightness evolution occurring on a time-scale of years. Subsequent observations have shown that this source does indeed contain an active galactic nucleus (AGN). Our optical photometric and spectroscopic monitoring campaign has recorded one major dimming event (and subsequent rise) over a period of around 4 yr; there is also evidence of previous events consistent with this in archival data recorded over the last 20 yr. Here we report an analysis of the 11 optical spectra obtained to date and we assemble a multiwavelength data set including infrared, ultraviolet, and X-ray observations. We find that an intrinsic change in the luminosity is the most favoured explanation of the observations, based on a comparison of continuum and line variability and the apparent lagged response of the hot dust. This source, along with several other recently discovered ‘changing-look’ objects, demonstrate that AGNs can exhibit large-amplitude luminosity changes on time-scales much shorter than those predicted by standard thin accretion disc models.
Middle-Class Midwifery
Authors: Kline Wendy
Published: February 2019

Chapter 2, “Middle-Class Midwifery: Transforming Birth Practices in Suburban Washington, D.C.,” investigates the individuals and organizations that began to promote home birth in the 1970s. Many of the D.C.-area women attribute their “calling” to midwifery at least in part to their experiences as mothers, La Leche League leaders, and childbirth educators. When they opted to take the further step of becoming midwives, they enabled the transition of home birth as a practice primarily supervised by doctors to one facilitated by midwives. Aware of the significance of this shift, these women carefully positioned themselves as responsible, educated, middle-class midwives, representing the least threatening version of the midwife to organized medicine. With the establishment of the area’s first nurse-midwifery program at Georgetown University in 1974, many trained and worked with established doctors and hospitals.
From El Paso to Lexington
Authors: Kline Wendy
Published: February 2019

Chapter 5, “From El Paso to Lexington: The Formation of the Midwives Alliance of North America,” closely tracks the push to organize direct-entry midwives, beginning with the first international conference of practicing midwives in El Paso in 1978 and ending with the formation of MANA. Ideologically, many of them viewed midwifery as a feminist endeavor that enabled women to reclaim their bodies, rather than a medical profession. Barred from membership in the already established American College of Nurse Midwives, they sought to create a more inclusive organization that could provide them with the protection, legitimacy, and visibility needed to sustain and grow their trade. This would turn out to be an enormously challenging task.
Risk on All Sides, Eyes Wide Open
Authors: Apostolidis Paul
Published: February 2019

The theme of facing “risk on all sides” imbues day laborers’ reflections about occupational safety and health (OSH) hazards. This theme expresses a contradictory structure of body-time pairing workers’ incessant physical vulnerability with suddenly arising dangers and traumatic incidents. Workers vow to keep “eyes wide open,” striving to protect themselves through temporalized practices of personal responsibility, although employment power-relations induce workers to violate their own principles. Drastically erratic employment and deportation threats make day laborers’ OSH predicament exceptional, even among nonwhite working-class groups. Yet the themes also reflect the pervasive proliferation of OSH risks in “fissured workplaces,” as conceptualized by David Weil, under post-Fordism and financialized capitalism. Day laborers further help generate the morally stigmatizing discourses of “slow death,” theorized by Berlant, that produce the self-undermining subjectivities needed by this order. These theme-theory resonances nonetheless invite workers at large to oppose the transmutation of capital risk into workers’ bodily risk.
Organizing the Fight against Precarity
Authors: Apostolidis Paul
Published: February 2019

How have day labor organizations responded to predicaments of precarity highlighted by workers’ generative themes, and what prospects for a broader antiprecarity movement of working people do these responses suggest? Day labor groups’ direct action and policy advocacy against deportation challenge exceptionally precaritizing forces aimed at migrants that are associated with desperate responsibility, dangerous work, and job-seeking on the corner. Furthermore, by connecting worker centers with corners and sponsoring ecologically oriented demonstrations of unauthorized local citizenship, day labor organizations contest neoliberal mobility-governance and recompose urban time-spaces as domains of cosmopolitan solidarity. Critical-popular analysis of workers’ themes also yields a composite conception of antiprecarity politics that emphasizes the fight for time, the struggle for the city, and the refusal of work. Demanding worker centers for all working people would invigorate such politics by proliferating experiences of conscientizaçao and opportunities for critical-popular inquiry, in ways complementing the demand for a basic income.
A New Departure
Authors: Long Kathryn T.
Published: February 2019

This chapter introduces two women and two closely affiliated organizations that would play a significant role in missionary contact with the Waorani. The women were a missionary, Rachel Saint (sister of slain pilot Nate Saint), and Dayomæ, a young Wao woman who was Rachel Saint’s language helper. The two organizations were the Wycliffe Bible Translators, a group raising funds and recruiting personnel to translate the Bible into the languages of tribal peoples, and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, which supervised the work of linguists and Bible translators recruited by WBT abroad. Both groups were founded by W. Cameron Townsend, a controversial religious entrepreneur committed to Bible translation as key to successful missionary work. In 1957 Rachel Saint and Dayumæ were introduced to American audiences through an appearance on the television program This Is Your Life. A second version of the “auca epic” began to emerge.
Big Oil, Waorani Relocation, and Polio
Authors: Long Kathryn T.
Published: February 2019

This chapter describes how the baptized Christians in Tewæno, whose understanding of Christianity included men having only one wife and no longer spearing enemies, were overwhelmed during 1968 and 1969 by the arrival of the Piyæmoidi and the Baiwaidi, other Wao groups that, initially at least, did not share these values. They came seeking spouses, trade goods, and peace and because the Summer Institute of Linguistics wanted to relocate them away from potentially violent clashes with oil crews in their territory. These newcomers to Tewæno and the surrounding protectorate experienced food shortages and waves of contact illnesses, culminating in a polio epidemic that left sixteen Waorani dead from disease and three from revenge killings. Although she did not move to Tewæno until 1970, Catherine Peeke, a veteran SIL staff member with a PhD in linguistics, was assigned to the Waorani work in 1968.
Early Anti-Mission Sentiment
Authors: Long Kathryn T.
Published: February 2019

This chapter deals with early criticisms of SIL’s work among the Waorani from outsiders, as well as dissatisfaction among some Waorani in Tewæno with the atmosphere created by Dayomæ and Rachel Saint. The 1971 Barbados Declaration insisted that Christian missions were hostile to indigenous cultures. It provided justification for other critical voices, including German-born Erwin Patzelt in Ecuador and writer Laurie Hart in the US. In Tewæno, after a power struggle with Dayomæ, a Wao woman named Zoila Wiñame and her followers left Tewæno to establish Dayono, a community with no ties to SIL. SIL sought to curb the influence of Saint and Dayomæ, in part by adding more staff: medical worker Rosi Jung and literacy instructor Pat Kelley. Evangelicals in the US continued to celebrate Saint as a great missionary, and they flocked to a series of “Auca Update Rallies,” featuring Saint and three Wao Christians.
¡Fuera de Aquí! (Get Out of Here!)
Authors: Long Kathryn T.
Published: February 2019

This chapter suggests that just as during the 1960s American evangelicals idealized the Waorani as examples of missionary success, a decade later critics of missions and especially of the Summer Institute of Linguistics looked to the Waorani as evidence of the way missionaries damaged tribal cultures. After 1975 the criticisms in Ecuador became more widespread, coming from, among others, the anthropology department of the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador and from ¡Fuera de Aquí! (Get Out of Here!), a film by the Bolivian director Jorge Sanjinés seen by millions of Ecuadorians. Although ¡Fuera de Aquí! accused missionaries of a secret sterilization campaign against indigenous women, in the Amazonian rainforest the Waorani maintained healthy birth rates, and SIL staff helped them cope with more pressing matters of health: appropriate use of medicines, sanitation, and the prevalence of poisonous snakebites.
Saving the Rainforest
Authors: Long Kathryn T.
Published: February 2019

This final chapter argues that to save the rainforest, environmentalists created their own romanticized story of the Waorani for North American consumption. Ironically, it paralleled earlier evangelical narratives, with a representative Wao (Moi), a typical village (Cæwæidi Ono), a bestselling book (Savages), and, within a few years, a film (Trinkets and Beads). The journalist and adventure travel writer Joe Kane, author of Savages, introduced secular American audiences to the Waorani, their homeland, and the threat of Big Oil. Kane discredited Maxus Energy and blamed the failings of the Waorani on missionaries, with Rachel Saint as the authoritarian prototype. As with most critics, Kane failed to see the complexities of the missionary-Waorani encounter: at once an iconic narrative in the history of American evangelicalism and the seldom told stories of specific missionaries—their failings and their contributions to the survival of the Waorani.
Epilogue
Authors: Long Kathryn T.
Published: February 2019

The epilogue provides an update on the Waorani and missionaries from about 1995 to 2015. For most of this time, Steve Saint, Nate Saint’s older son, was the face of American evangelical involvement. Saint criticized a dependence on missionaries that he said was destroying the Wao church. With Mart Green and others, Saint used a film, The End of the Spear, to introduce a new generation of Americans to the Ecuador missionary martyr narrative. In Ecuador, young Waorani juggled ethnic identity and the pressures of modern life. The failure of the Yasuní-ITT Initiative jeopardized the biodiversity of Wao lands. The Wao political organization, renamed Waorani Nationality of Amazonian Ecuador, struggled for legitimacy. Never more than 20 to 25 percent of the population were professing Christians as young Waorani struggled to find the meaning of faith for themselves. The long-term future remains uncertain.
Varieties of Medicine
Authors: Broadbent Alex
Published: February 2019

This chapter surveys the origins of medicine and introduces the concept of “Mainstream Medicine,” which is the globalized descendant of Western medicine. Based primarily on Roy Porter’s work, a broad-brush survey of the history of Mainstream Medicine is provided. The history of Alternative Medicine is also outlined, and a rough distinction drawn between Alternative and Traditional Medicine. The latter has its origins in a distinct geographical region and tradition, while the former typically involves conscious deviations from or rejections of the mainstream. Medical traditions from China, India, and Africa are briefly outlined. The chapter illustrates the geographical and temporal diversity of medical practices, in order to ground both the driving questions of the book—what is medicine, and what should we think of it? Any answer must handle the variety of medicine and be epistemically fair to the various traditions.
The Goal of Medicine
Authors: Broadbent Alex
Published: February 2019

In order to say what medicine is, we need to identify the goal of medicine, the business of medicine, and the nature of health and disease. This chapter introduces the Curative Thesis: both the goal and business of medicine are cure. The Curative Thesis is found to be correct that there is one ultimate goal of medicine: cure. Definitions of cure (and therapy) are discussed. The chapter considers and rejects the view that pain relief is a goal of medicine. The Puzzle of Ineffective Medicine and the Argument from the Persistence of Ineffective Medicine are introduced, concluding that the business of medicine cannot be cure. The business of medicine is the use of a competence or skill, and the persistence of ineffective medicine shows that curing is often not a competence doctors always—or even commonly—possess. But we still recognize medical skill, which must therefore be something else.
Introduction
Authors: Murphy Kelly J.
Published: February 2019

The introduction starts with a brief history of the Gideons International, an organization that was named after the character of Gideon found in the biblical book of Judg 6–8. While the Gideons chose the name because they found Gideon to be a man willing to do God’s work, the biblical text portrays him much more ambiguously, from a hesitant, insecure man in need of multiple divine assurances to a clever tactician, a persuasive leader, a ruthless military manner, and, perhaps, an idolater. The chapter sets out key concepts for the following chapters, including a discussion of how the book will explore the story of Gideon and its reception history through masculinity studies and redaction criticism.
Decisional Conflict
Authors: Shortland Neil D. , Alison Laurence J. , Moran Joseph M.
Published: February 2019

Members of the Armed Forces, at all levels, are required to make decisions in which every outcome appears to be averse and high risk. Neither the current military decision-making process nor contemporary psychological theory (e.g., recognition-primed decision-making) satisfactorily explains the process of making decisions such as these. This chapter discusses the prevalence of least-worst decisions, showing that they can occur at all levels, from the President’s decision to use a military option (e.g., in Syria) to the soldier on the ground who must decide whether to shoot or not (and the implications of the former on the latter and vice versa). The chapter also shows that effectively navigating combat, at all levels of command, is not a case of being able to select the best choice but, rather, often being able to grapple with choosing the least-worst.
Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race
Authors: Rosa Jonathan
Published: February 2019

Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race examines the emergence of linguistic and ethnoracial categories in the context of contemporary US constructions of Latinidad. The book draws from more than 24 months of ethnographic and sociolinguistic fieldwork to analyze the racialization of language as a central form of modern governance. It focuses specifically on youth socialization to US Latinidad as a contemporary site of political anxiety, “raciolinguistic” transformation, and urban inequity. Rosa’s account studies the fashioning of Latinidad in a highly segregated Chicago high school whose student body is more than 90% Mexican and Puerto Rican. Rosa shows how anxieties surrounding language, race, and identity produce an administrative project that seeks to transform “at risk” Mexican and Puerto Rican students into “Young Latino Professionals.” This institutional effort, which requires students to learn to be—and sound like—themselves in highly studied ways, reflects administrators’ attempts to navigate a precarious urban terrain in the city grappling with some of the nation’s highest youth homicide, drop-out, and teen pregnancy rates. Rosa explores the ingenuity of his researchers participants’ creative responses to these forms of marginalization through the contestation of political, ethnoracial, and linguistic borders. The detailed engagement with the relationship between linguistic and ethnoracial category-making that develops throughout the book points to the raciolinguistic, historical, political, and economic dynamics through which people come to look like a language and sound like a race across cultural contexts.
Introduction
Authors: Rosa Jonathan
Published: February 2019

The Introduction to this book links popular discourses surrounding US Latinxs across the interrelated contexts of New Northwest High School, the City of Chicago, and the nation. It argues that these discourses are anchored in a figurative debate between multiculturalism and assimilation. This debate is negotiated through the construction of categorical binaries that are tracked throughout each chapter of the book. The chapter synthesizes key insights and debates in Linguistic Anthropology, Education, and Latinx Studies to construct a “raciolinguistic” perspective—an analytical framework with which to investigate the creation of an emergent ethnoracial category and its linguistic indexes. By emphasizing the production of racial categories and linguistic varieties through interrelations among institutions, actors, and ideologies, the author shows how contingent processes rather than naturally occurring cultural essences structure these contexts.
Introduction
Authors: Van Leuven Holly
Published: February 2019

Ray Bolger was called an amiable fellow with a chinless profile, skittish feet, and a snickering spirit. At five feet, ten and one-half inches, he weighed between 135 and 140 pounds at any given time and was said to be skinnier than even Frank Sinatra. After an evening of dancing on Broadway, he could come off the stage as much as three pounds lighter, his dark brown hair blackened with sweat. “His face and body acquire their unusually eccentric quality only when he’s on a stage,” wrote show business reporter Maurice Zolotow. “Otherwise he’s quite nondescript.” Bolger himself said, “I look like everyone’s second cousin. I don’t look like Ray Bolger.”...
The Romantic Lives of Emerging Adults
Authors: Konstam Varda
Published: February 2019

The romantic lives of emerging adults are often baffling and contradictory: they prize committed and authentic relationships, yet they appear to be reluctant participants, and they prefer to foster ambiguity in their romantic relationships, even as they value honesty and clarity. This book grapples with these perplexing questions and considers the challenging economic conditions in which today’s emerging adults find themselves. With an emphasis on the constructs of commitment and sacrifice and their centrality to emerging adults’ readiness for long-term relationships, the main milestones in transitioning from an I identity to a we identity are reviewed. The concepts of choice and risk are discussed and structures such as asymmetrically committed relationships, cohabitation, marriage, and divorce are examined through the lens of risk and risk avoidance. The book probes extensively into the romantic lives of emerging adults—their attitudes, values, and expectations. In doing so, this text examines some of the developmental and contextual realities against which romantic attachment must be viewed. Critical topics such as casual and sexual experiences and relationships, going solo, breakups, the integration of work and love, and social media and its influence are considered. Original qualitative data about the topic is presented. The chapters conclude with a “close-up look” at one or more emerging adults so that their romantic lives are brought to life more vividly. The commonality and the individuality of the emerging adults that are presented throughout this text contribute to a rich understanding of emerging adults and how they live and love.
Identity
Authors: Konstam Varda
Published: February 2019

The dynamic processes of individual and couple identity formation are discussed against a theoretical background. Absence of strict codes of behavior creates an environment in which emerging adults feel freer to explore and experiment with identity options, both as individuals and as couples. Marcia’s four “identity statuses” are presented in a contemporary context, and the concept of group identification is discussed. The challenges of transitioning from an individual identity to a couple identity—from an I to a we—are analyzed. The 29 research participants discuss their personal experiences in forming a we identity and the difficulties in developing and maintaining an I while living in a we relationship. The chapter concludes with a case study of a young American woman of Middle-Eastern ethnicity who must contend with strong cultural and parental influences while trying to forge an individual and a couple identity.
“We’ll see you in court!”
Authors: Railton Peter
Published: February 2019

Is there a distinctive normative force of law itself, as opposed to whatever moral or prudential reasons might speak on behalf of law? Answering this question requires attention to law as a distinctive kind of social scheme, which limits the number of degrees of freedom in interpersonal interactions and thereby structures expectations and practices in ways that create “opportunity paths” that would not otherwise exist. Such rule by law can be given a purely instrumental, external normative ground, as Hobbes argued. However, as he also argued, rules are not self-enforcing, so that the well-functioning and stability of a system of rule by law depends upon broad social presence of an array of evaluative attitudes that could robustly sustain playing one’s part in a scheme of self-constraint and mutualconstraint—rule by law as an explanatory kind. An expansion of these constraints to include those in power can underpin rule of law, giving it distinctive social dynamics as well as a distinctive character as a normative kind distinct from morality or prudence, and help explain why certain human rights have been viewed as part of the rule of law.
Laws as Conventional Norms
Authors: Southwood Nicholas
Published: February 2019

A persistent worry concerning conventionalist accounts of law is that such accounts are ill equipped to account for law’s special normativity. The chapter offers a particular kind of conventionalist account that is based on the practice-dependent account of conventional norms the author has offered elsewhere and considers whether it is vulnerable to the Normativity Objection. The chapter argues that it isn’t. It can account for all the ways in which law can justly claim to be normative. While there are ways of being normative that it cannot account for, it is an error to suppose that law is normative in any of those ways.
Legal Teleology
Authors: Copp David
Published: February 2019

Legal Teleology seeks to embrace and to ground the most plausible tenets of both legal positivism and natural law theory. It is compatible with the positivist view that law consists at root in a social practice of a certain kind. Yet it also can accommodate at least some claims about the relation between law and morality that are advocated by opponents of positivism. Most important, it argues that law is “robustly normative”—roughly, law is a source of genuine reasons. Standard forms of positivism cannot account for this thesis, but, arguably, the central doctrines of positivism are compatible with it. Legal Teleology is an account of the normativity of law that is supported by “pluralist-teleology,” a naturalist account of normativity that has been proposed elsewhere (Copp 2009). Legal Teleology sees the law as having a purpose, and it says that law is defective insofar as it does not further that purpose. It agrees that jurists can sometimes help law better to serve its purpose when they invoke moral principles in interpreting law. Legal Teleology represents a kind of intermarriage between legal positivism and natural law theory.
How to Argue for Law’s Full-Blooded Normativity
Authors: Letsas George
Published: February 2019

This chapter aims to make space for the view that law possesses full-blooded normativity in a top-down way. Here is the dialectic of the inquiry: What would have to be true of morality for the claim that some specific practice is full-bloodedly normative to be plausible? The chapter assumes that the practice of morality as a whole has full-blooded normativity in the sense that its requirements give one genuine reasons to act, irrespective of one’s subjective wants, desires, and beliefs. The focus is on what it means to say of a specific practice that it partakes of morality’s normativity. The reason is simple: it should be an open question whether this or that practice has full-blooded normativity. For if it is not possible for any particular practice to have full-blooded normativity, then the question of whether law has full-blooded normativity would make no sense from the get-go. The account put forward builds on the idea of obligations of role. A practice, has full-blooded normativity when it instantiates a distinct set of obligations, one that pertains to people in a particular capacity, such as friends, parents, doctors, or teachers. The proposition that there are distinct moral practices, which are not reducible to a single moral concern, is of course disputed territory in moral philosophy. But if this proposition is accepted, one can ask, by analogy, whether legal practice instantiates an obligation of role and, as a result, bears the attributes of full-blooded normativity. This way of proceeding perceives the relationship between law and metaethics differently: it shows that law’s claim to full-blooded normativity ultimately depends on contestable assumptions about the nature of morality as a whole.
Legal Philosophy à la carte
Authors: Toh Kevin
Published: February 2019

Recent philosophical thinking about the nature of law has been hampered by a systematic conflation of the goal of identifying the facts or considerations in virtue of which legal claims are true, and the goal of identifying the facts or considerations in virtue of which a community of people have a legal practice, including discursive aspects of that practice. This chapter diagnoses the source of this conflation, and argues that new avenues of theorizing about the nature of law would be opened up by being clear-headed about the distinction. Some influential recent contributions to the literature, including that by Brian Leiter, are scrutinized and criticized along the way.
Normativity in Language and Law
Authors: Silk Alex
Published: February 2019

This chapter develops an account of the meaning and use of various types of legal claims, and uses this account to inform debates about the nature and normativity of law. The account draws on a general framework for implementing a contextualist theory, called Discourse Contextualism (Silk 2015a, 2016, 2017). The aim of Discourse Contextualism is to derive the apparent normativity of claims of law from a particular contextualist interpretation of a standard semantics for modals, along with general principles of interpretation and conversation. Though the semantics is descriptivist, it avoids Dworkin’s influential criticism of so-called “semantic theories of law,” and elucidates the nature of “theoretical disagreements” about the criteria of legal validity. The account sheds light on the social, interpersonal function of normative uses of language in legal discourse. It also gives precise expression to Hart’s and Raz’s intuitive distinctions among types of legal claims (internal/external, committed/detached). The proposed semantics and pragmatics of legal claims provides a fruitful framework for further theorizing about the nature and metaphysics of law, the relation between law and morality, and the apparent practical character of legal language and judgment. Discourse Contextualism provides a solid linguistic basis for a broader account of legal discourse and practice.
Authority and Interest in the Theory of Right
Authors: Nieswandt Katharina
Published: February 2019

The chapter suggests a new role for authority and interest in the theory of right: Rights can be explicated as sets of prohibitions, permissions and commands, and they must be justified by interests. The chapter argues as follows: (1) The two dominant theories of right—“Will Theory” and “Interest Theory”—have certain standard problems. (2) These problems are systematic: Will Theory’s criterion of the ability to enforce a duty is either false or empty outside of its original legal context, whereas Interest Theory includes in the definition of a right what actually belongs to the justification of the practice within which that right is assigned. (3) The chapter recasts the connection between authority, interests, and rights in a way that avoids each theory’s standard problem. (4) The resulting theory also has three further advantages: It analyzes rights in terms of very basic and familiar concepts, it mirrors the understanding of rights in actual public discourse, and it is compatible with a wide selection of moral theories. Since its core is about a specific use of modal auxiliary verbs, this new theory is called the “Modal Theory of Right.”
On the Legal Syllogism
Authors: Duarte d’Almeida Luís
Published: February 2019

This chapter argues against rule-deductivism. Rule-deductivism is the view that the justification of law-applying decisions is adequately understood on the model of a deductive argument—a “legal syllogism”, as it is often called—with a statement of an applicable rule as the “major premise”, and a statement of the relevant facts as the “minor” one. Rule-deductivism—not to be confused with formalism—has long been a popular view in legal argumentation theory. Endorsed by Kelsen, Hart, MacCormick, and Alexy, it continues to be accepted by authors such as Gardner, Leiter, and Marmor, among many others. But it is wrong, as this chapter tries to show. This chapter begins by offering a clear characterization of rule-deductivism; goes on to argue that rule-deductivism is not, even in its stronger version, a view that should be accepted; and concludes by sketching and motivating a new model of the justification of law-applying decisions that overcomes the flaws of the model of the legal syllogism.
Dworkin’s Literary Analogy
Authors: Shpall Sam
Published: February 2019

For decades Ronald Dworkin defended the view that legal interpretation is constructive. One of his most fascinating arguments for this idea, which turns on an analogy between legal and literary interpretation, has been more or less ignored by philosophers of law—probably because they have not been especially interested in the claims about literary interpretation that it presupposes. This chapter explores Dworkin's analogical argument with the sensitivity it deserves, and with particular attention to its controversial ideas about the interpretation of literature. The chapter evaluates the implications of Dworkin’s analogy for his overall anti-positivist project, and for one’s thinking about legal interpretation more generally.
Constitutional Realism
Authors: Rosati Connie S.
Published: February 2019

Constitutional discourse bears the realist earmarks of normative discourse more generally. Those who debate the morality of affirmative action programs, for instance, generally talk as if there were a correct answer from the standpoint of morality. In similar fashion, those who debate the constitutionality of a particular affirmative action program generally talk as if there were a correct answer from the standpoint of constitutional law. The aim of this chapter is to take seriously these earmarks and offer an account of the nature of constitutional facts: facts about what a constitution requires, forbids, or permits. This chapter proposes that constitutional facts are facts about what a specific constitution requires, forbids, or permits when it is interpreted in accordance with norms that are appropriate given the function of a constitution. It argues that this account of constitutional judgments and facts should be accepted because of its explanatory value. Understanding constitutional facts in this way well explains disagreement and patterns of constitutional argument. It explains why first-order constitutional theorizing takes the shape that it does. And it accounts for the objectivity and normativity of constitutional judgments.
How Brains Make Minds
Authors: Thagard Paul
Published: February 2019

Brains make minds because mental representations and processes are performed by neural mechanisms. Mental representations work by patterns of firing in neural groups. More complicated representations that go beyond sensory experience can be formed by binding representations together, combining patterns of firing into new ones. In particular, binding can produce semantic pointers that coalesce and compress different kinds of information, including sensory, motor, emotional and verbal information. Semantic pointers retain connections to sensory and motor experience while also acquiring the autonomy that is usually attributed to symbols. Eliasmith’s semantic pointer hypothesis shows how neural cells can interact to produce high-level thinking. Different representations compete with each other to provide accounts of what is going on in the world through a parallel process of satisfaction of multiple constraints. Neural networks can learn by changing the synaptic connections between neurons.
Perception and Imagery
Authors: Thagard Paul
Published: February 2019

This chapter provides a general account of imagery that applies to both external senses such as vision and internal senses such as pain. It identifies five mental operations that occur in all kinds of imagery: intensification, focusing, combination, juxtaposition, and decomposition. Each of these operations results from neural mechanisms that are part of the Semantic Pointer Architecture, including storage, retrieval, neural representation, binding, competition, and transformation. There is abundant psychological and neural evidence that imagery is real and that the brain’s computations employ special patterns of neural representation that develop from sensory inputs. This development requires binding into semantic pointers that are susceptible to symbol-like manipulation that exploits the different sensory characters of visual, auditory, and other sorts of representation.
Concepts
Authors: Thagard Paul
Published: February 2019

Concepts are mental representations corresponding roughly to words. Construed as semantic pointers, concepts are capable of playing inferential roles, but they also maintain embodied connections with sensory–motor processes. Understanding concepts in this way enables us to give biologically and psychologically plausible accounts of innateness, learning, and categorization. Learning new concepts can occur not only through slow, incremental use of multiple examples but also by fast, sometimes revolutionary conceptual combinations. The process of categorization is carried out by retrieval through reactivation of neural patterns and through parallel constraint satisfaction accomplished by competition among semantic pointers. Categorization can contribute to different kinds of problem solving, including planning, decision making, and explanation. Concepts do not have strict definitions, but they can nevertheless be meaningful because of their relations with sensory and motor inputs and with other concepts.
Analogies
Authors: Thagard Paul
Published: February 2019

Analogies contribute to many kinds of human thinking, including problem solving, decision making, explanation, persuasion, and entertainment. An analogy is a systematic comparison between a source analog and a target analog, where information about the source is used to generate inferences about the target. The major stages of analogical thinking are (a) obtaining a source analog by memory retrieval or other means, (b) mapping the source to the target, (c) adapting the source to inform the target, and (d) learning by generalizing source and target into a schema. Most theories of analogy have used verbal representations, but a much broader appreciation of analogical thinking can be gained with semantic pointers. Analogies often use words, but they can also operate with visual, auditory, and other sensory modalities, all of which can contribute to all stages of analogy.
Emotions
Authors: Thagard Paul
Published: February 2019

Emotions serve not only to stand for things in the world but also to indicate their value. Decision, action, and many kinds of problem solving require determining how the world should be, not just how it is. Humans and other animals evolved with emotions as part of their innate biological machinery to guide action and inference. Emotions are patterns of neural firing that result from binding three different factors that are complementary rather than conflictive. A verbal or sensory representation of a situation can be bound both with a representation of the physiological states that the situation elicited and a cognitive appraisal of the import of the situation. Cognitive appraisal can also incorporate social factors because of the contributions of social goals and the culturally established associations of emotional words.
Consciousness
Authors: Thagard Paul
Published: February 2019

Progress is being made in understanding how brain mechanisms generate conscious experience. Simple conscious experiences such as sensations of colors, shapes, and sounds require only neural representations as patterns of firing that result from sensory inputs and internal processing. More complicated conscious experiences, such as awareness of reading in a chair in a room, require the amalgamation of sensations and images into more complex representations through binding into semantic pointers. Recursive binding—bindings of bindings of bindings—can produce the most complicated kinds of conscious experience of which humans are capable, taking people from feelings to awareness to self-awareness. Consciousness is limited because recursive binding and competition among the resulting semantic pointers depend on processing by many neurons.
Language
Authors: Thagard Paul
Published: February 2019

Semantic pointers handle syntactic structure in a way that integrates with other key aspects of language, including semantics, pragmatics, and phonology. Semantic pointers plausibly provide the underlying neural mechanisms for Jackendoff’s parallel architecture and for other theories of language that go beyond Chomsky’s syntax-first approach. In particular, they show how the mental representation of a word can efficiently combine information about sound, meaning, and grammar to enable the organization of words into sentences. Semantic pointers cast the meanings of words and sentences as multidimensional, relying not just on the relations of words to other words but also on the relation of words to the world through sensory-motor operations, with further contributions from genetic and social processes. The Semantic Pointer Architecture also provides neural mechanisms for explaining complex linguistic phenomena such as conceptual blending and metaphor.