Plural Agents, Private Intentions, and Legal Interpretation

The chief problem posed in Multimember Legislative Bodies and Intended Meaning is one in which lawmakers pass a tax bill supported by two equal groups with conflicting interpretations of the bill’s content. One believes it taxes imported tomatoes, among other things; the other believes it exempts tomatoes. They disagree because they received supposedly authoritative, but in fact conflicting, information about the meaning of “fruit” in the bill’s text. One group was told it is used with its biological sense, which includes tomatoes as edible seed-bearing reproductive parts of a plant. The other group was told that “fruit” is used with its culinary sense, in which fruits are contrasted with vegetables, including tomatoes. The bill is understood as taxing imported fruits but not vegetables. Our problem is to decide how the tax applies to a shipment of tomatoes and kiwis. My answer will follow from the answer to the question What did the lawmakers assert or stipulate in passing the bill?—which can be illuminated by answering an analogous question about what action two employers instruct an employee to take

Why Incomplete Definite Descriptions do not Defeat Russell’s Theory of Descriptions

For Russell, a simple sentence containing a description, the F, is true only if a single object satisfies F. Sentences containing incomplete descriptions pose problems because they are often used to express truths, even though more than one thing in the discourse satisfies F. It is argued (i) that non-Russellian analyses cannot solve these problems, and (ii) that Russellian analyses can, provided that a new conception of\ud meaning and assertion is adopted. On this conception, the meaning of S is what is common to what is asserted by utterances of S in all normal contexts, and the propositions asserted by particular utterances are required to be pragmatic enrichments of the semantic content of S. These pragmatic enrichments are the propositions speakers primarily intend to assert. The proposition semantically expressed by S counts as asserted only when it is a necessary, a priori consequence of the speaker’s primary assertion, plus presuppositions of the conversation. The problem of incomplete descriptions is solved by noting that the false propositions semantically expressed are not consequences of the true, pragmatically enriched propositions the speaker asserts

A crucial role for IL-21 in controlling CD4 T cell responses to respiratory viral infection

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a pneumovirus that infects almost all children by the age of three, and causes an intense pulmonary infiltrate termed bronchiolitis. The tissue damage caused by this immune response significantly reduces lung function such that hospitalisation and mechanical ventilation may be required. There is no licensed vaccine against RSV, partly because the exact immunological mechanism responsible for bronchiolitis remains unclear, though CD4 and CD8 T cells are known to be essential. Interleukin-21 (IL-21) is a recently identified member of the γc chain cytokine family, important in autoimmunity, cancer, and chronic viral infections. Produced mainly by CD4 T cells, IL-21 affects the responses of several cell types but is particularly important for enhancing activation and survival of CD8 T cells. As such, it was hypothesised that IL-21 could be targeted therapeutically to reduce anti-RSV CD8 T cell responses and reduce the incidence of bronchiolitis. This hypothesis was tested in three models of RSV disease. Here, it is shown that IL-21 is critical for control of CD4 T cell responses rather than CD8. IL-21 depletion increases T cell responses, including cell recruitment and cytokine production, thereby increasing disease. Conversely, it reduced regulatory T cell influx and antibody production. In contrast, IL-21 over-expression ablates the anti-viral T cell response and RSV disease without affecting regulatory T cells. Also, early chemokine production by infected epithelial cells is inhibited and that DC migration is affected, possibly reducing T cell activation and influx. Antibody 4 production is also reduced, and consequently lymphocyte memory development is blocked resulting in no protection against viral rechallenge. Therefore, IL-21 plays a crucial role in the development of anti-viral pulmonary immunity and should be considered as part of a therapy to alleviate primary RSV disease in conjunction with other factors to boost anti-viral memory.Open Acces