This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is about parents, power, and children and, in particular, the legitimacy of parents' power over their children. It talks about the prevailing or dominant approach to the analysis of parental power. The book proposes an alternative, pluralist view of paternalism. It shows that even paternalism properly understood is of limited application when we evaluate parental power. The book addresses a number of ethical questions through practical reason and practical judgement. It looks at an example of how political philosophers tend to approach moral conflicts. The book argues for an approach influenced in part by John Rawls's account of reasonableness and Thomas Nagel's account of 'public justification in a context of actual disagreement'.

When words and phrases combine together into whole clauses, the manner in which they combine can result in quite different meanings and in structural ambiguities that lead to lawsuits. Chapter 4 considers an “attachment ambiguity” in a false advertising suit, as in WE ARE PROVIDING GREAT REFRESHMENTS DURING THE SUPER BOWL AT CANDLESTICK PARK. The refreshments were not actually offered onsite at Candlestick Park, but at some distance from it. The ambiguity involves whether AT CANDLESTICK PARK modifies the verb, ‘We are providing at Candlestick Park great refreshments during the Super Bowl,’ or the noun phrase THE SUPER BOWL, in which case it is logically asserted only that the Super Bowl takes place there. In this latter attachment, questions of contextual inference and real-world knowledge then come into play and can still “implicate” that the services are also provided at Candlestick Park. More complex syntax, involving subordinate clauses and phrases that follow SUBJECT TO, resulted in a dispute over when or whether at all the prior condition for sale specified in this real-estate contract needed to be met. The subordinating conjunction ALTHOUGH and its “implicatures” were at the center of a libel suit in which unprofessional conduct by a lawyer and drinking to excess were alleged.

John Locke’s influential account of personal identity emphasizes the importance of consciousness.  This had led many commentators to argue that Lockean selves just are consciousnesses.  Charles Taylor has mounted persuasive critiques of this “punctual” Lockean self; such a conception of the self is too thin and stands divorced from our values and moral agency.  This chapter shifts the focus from Locke’s views on personal identity to his views on personhood in an effort to show that Locke is sensitive to the kinds of worries raised by Taylor.  Lockean persons are more than consciousness.  In particular, the chapter focuses on Locke’s exploration and analysis of the complex faculty psychology undergirding consciousness and on the ways in which persons can be embodied.  This allows for a richer conception of the self.  It then argues that this richer conception better aligns with Locke’s own views about the value and importance of the self and with what he says regarding our moral agency and our duty of self-improvement.  Finally, the chapter shows that understanding Locke’s examination of human cognition as contributing to an analysis of the self allows us to resituate him with respect to some of his predecessors in seventeenth-century England.

This chapter traces notions of the self in the plays of early modern Spain. Drawing on a vast corpus of unpublished plays with the technique of “distant reading”, it examines the relation between self and free will in a period of increasing authoritarian control by both church and state. These plays demonstrate a deep preoccupation with maintaining a sense of personal freedom and choice despite the pressure of external constraints: Kallendorf proposes that the self is conceived as a “fortress” within which some sense of personal autonomy can be retained. This is very different from the more free-form relational concepts of the self that we have seen developed in the volume up to this point: the self remains grounded in the body and operative in society, but society places the body under heavy restraint.

Chapter 2 describes four regular challenges for lexicographers when they are composing their semantic definitions for individual words, and it shows how each of these challenges has led to disputed meanings in lawsuits. First, just about every word of English has more than one basic sense and disputes can center around which meaning is intended. An example is given from a patent for a dental prosthesis involving SUBSTANTIALLY. It can have a “booster” meaning or a “downtoner” meaning, and which one is selected determines whether there is patent infringement or not. Second, there is the issue of the precise extent of the meaning of a word and its permitted “vagueness.” What exactly does APPROXIMATELY (300 acres) cover in a real-estate contract? And how broadly or narrowly is the word DISEASE understood in a medical insurance contract? Third, words can be used with nonliteral and extended meanings, as in metaphors. Some lawsuits are described involving FIGHTING, CHEATING, and MURDER, where the dispute centered on whether the intended meaning was literal or extended. Fourth, how are dictionary definitions impacted by the changing technological world around us? The word TANGIBLE is discussed from a movie contract fifty years ago when the objects referred to where in plastic or paper form. Are they still TANGIBLE today when they exist on a computer screen?

Chapter 6 discusses the distinction between sense and reference. The sense of a term is its general meaning as captured in the semantic properties of its dictionary definitions. This is what underlies generic and descriptive terms in trademark law. Unique identification of one particular entity requires some special and different “mapping” between language and the world: an “arbitrary” or “fanciful” link between e.g. APPLE and KODAK and their respective companies; a “suggestive” extension of ROACH MOTEL to its producer; or a “secondary meaning” for an otherwise descriptive term. The chapter argues, on the basis of grammatical and corpus evidence, that POST OFFICE is a generic term and not a source identifier for the US Postal Service. It analyses a set of trademarks involving ELASTIC, which are shown to make a clear and unique identification of the source company in question. Finally the difference between “referential” and “attributive” uses of definite descriptions is exemplified for THE POLICE in a dispute over who exactly was being accused of a certain crime.

Word combinations can be “compositional” (the meaning of the whole is straightforwardly and transparently derivable from the individual parts) or else “non-compositional” (and not so easily derivable). Chapter 3 discusses the combination WRENCH-ENGAGING SURFACE from a dental patent which has a non-compositional purpose or design component in its meaning (the surface is designed for engagement with a wrench), and this was crucial for a determination of patent infringement or not. The precise meaning of another word combination REHAB FOR BILLY was at the center of a libel suit over whether BILLY was actually in, or going into, rehab.

Word combinations, especially compound nouns, feature regularly in trademark disputes. The basic categories of trademark law are summarized, generic, descriptive, suggestive, arbitrary, and fanciful terms. The chapter then exemplifies genericness with APP STORE and gives semantic, grammatical, and corpus evidence for making this classification. It cannot be a trademark. HALF PRICE BOOKS is argued to be a descriptive term, not a generic one, and can be trademarked as long as “secondary meaning” is proven, whereby it also refers to a particular company.