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423Just go ahead and lieAnalysis 72 (1): 3-9. 2012.The view that lying is morally worse than merely misleading is a very natural one, which has had many prominent defenders. Nonetheless, here I will argue that it is misguided: holding all else fixed, acts of mere misleading are not morally preferable to acts of lying, and successful lying is not morally worse than merely deliberately misleading. In fact, except in certain very special contexts, I will suggest that – when faced with a felt need to deceive – we might as well just go ahead and lie
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527Philosophical analysis and social kindsProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106 (1): 89-118. 2006.[Sally Haslanger] In debates over the existence and nature of social kinds such as 'race' and 'gender', philosophers often rely heavily on our intuitions about the nature of the kind. Following this strategy, philosophers often reject social constructionist analyses, suggesting that they change rather than capture the meaning of the kind terms. However, given that social constructionists are often trying to debunk our ordinary (and ideology-ridden?) understandings of social kinds, it is not surp…Read more
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345What is said and psychological reality; Grice's project and relevance theorists' criticismsLinguistics and Philosophy 25 (3): 347-372. 2002.One of the most important aspects of Grice’s theory of conversation is the drawing of a borderline between what is said and what is implic- ated. Grice’s views concerning this borderline have been strongly and influentially criticised by relevance theorists. In particular, it has become increasingly widely accepted that Grice’s notion of what is said is too lim- ited, and that pragmatics has a far larger role to play in determining what is said than Grice would have allowed. (See for example Bez…Read more
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194Stop Thinking So Much About ‘Sexual Harassment’Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (3): 307-321. 2014.This article explores two related widespread mistakes in thinking about sexual harassment. One is a mistake made by philosophers doing philosophical work on the topic of sexual harassment: an excessive focus on attempting to define the term ‘sexual harassment’. This is a perfectly legitimate topic for discussion and indeed a necessary one, but its dominance of the literature has tended to prevent philosophers from adequately exploring other topics that are of at least equal importance, particula…Read more
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429Feminist philosophy of languageStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.Much of feminist philosophy of language so far can be described as critical—critical either of language itself or of philosophy of language, and calling for change on the basis of these criticisms. Those making these criticisms suggest that the changes are needed for the sake of feminist goals — either to better allow for feminist work to be done or, more frequently, to bring an end to certain key ways that women are disadvantaged. In this entry, I examine these criticisms. I also examine work b…Read more
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135The road to hell: Intentions and propositional attitude ascriptionMind and Language 14 (3). 1999.Accounts of propositional attitude reporting which invoke contextual variation in semantic content have become increasingly popular, with good reason: our intuitions about the truth conditions of such reports vary with context. This paper poses a problem for such accounts, arguing that any reasonable candidate source for this contextual variation will yield very counterintuitive results. The accounts, then, cannot achieve their goal of accommodating our truth conditional intuitions. This leaves …Read more
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446Speaker meaning, what is said, and what is implicatedNoûs 36 (2). 2002.[First Paragraph] Unlike so many other distinctions in philosophy, H P Grice's distinction between what is said and what is implicated has an immediate appeal: undergraduate students readily grasp that one who says 'someone shot my parents' has merely implicated rather than said that he was not the shooter [2]. It seems to capture things that we all really pay attention to in everyday conversation'this is why there are so many people whose entire sense of humour consists of deliberately ignoring…Read more
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244Lying, misleading, and what is said: an exploration in philosophy of language and in ethicsOxford University Press. 2012.1. Lying -- 2. The problem of what is said -- 3. What is said -- 4. Is lying worse than merely misleading? -- 5. Some interesting cases.
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135The Best of Intentions: Ignorance, Idiosyncrasy, and Belief ReportingCanadian Journal of Philosophy 29 (1). 1999.Context plays a crucial role in our propositional attitude reporting practices. A belief-reporting sentence which seems true in one context may seem false in another, as Kripke showed us in ‘A Puzzle About Belief.’ To put it a bit sloppily, may seem true when we are discussing Peter's beliefs regarding Paderewski-the-pianist and false when we are discussing his beliefs regarding Paderewski-the-statesman. Peter believes that Paderewski is a fine musician.A number of recent theorists have taken th…Read more
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505Gender and RaceAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 80 (1): 119-143. 2006.Sally Haslanger’s ‘What Good Are Our Intuitions? Philosophical Analysis and Social Kinds’ is, among other things, a part of the theoretical underpinning for analyses of race and gender concepts that she discusses far more fully elsewhere. My reply focuses on these analyses of race and gender concepts, exploring the ways in which the theoretical work done in this paper and others can or cannot be used to defend these analyses against certain objections. I argue that the problems faced by Haslange…Read more
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174Wayne A. Davis, Implicature: Intention, convention, and principle in the failure of Gricean theory (review)Noûs 35 (4): 631-641. 2001.
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100Simple sentences, substitution, and intuitionsOxford University Press. 2007.Substitution and simple sentences -- Simple sentences and semantics -- Simple sentences and implicatures -- The enlightenment problem and a common assumption -- Abandoning (EOI) -- Beyond matching propositions -- App. A : extending the account -- App. B : belief reporting.
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545On Treating Things as People: Objectifi cation, Pornography, and the History of the VibratorHypatia 21 (2): 45-61. 2006.This article discusses recent feminist arguments for the possible existence of an interesting link between treating things as people and treating people as things. It argues, by way of a historical case study, that the connection is more complicated than these arguments have supposed. In addition, the essay suggests some possible general links between treatment of things and treatment of people
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125Enlightened? As if!International Journal of Philosophical Studies 18 (4): 547-549. 2010.This Article does not have an abstract
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463Scepticism and Implicit BiasDisputatio 5 (37): 243-263. 2013.Saul_Jennifer, Scepticism and Implicit Bias
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102Intensionality: What are intensional transitives?Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 76 (1). 2002.[Graeme Forbes] In I, I summarize the semantics for the relational/notional distinction for intensional transitives developed in Forbes. In II-V I pursue issues about logical consequence which were either unsatisfactorily dealt with in that paper or, more often, not raised at all. I argue that weakening inferences, such as 'Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon, therefore Perseus seeks a gorgon', are valid, but that disjunction inferences, such as 'Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon, therefore Perseus seeks …Read more
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3071Dogwhistles, Political Manipulation, and Philosophy of LanguageIn Daniel Fogal, Harris Daniel & Moss Matt (eds.), New Work on Speech Acts, Oxford University Press. 2018.This essay explores the speech act of dogwhistling (sometimes referred to as ‘using coded language’). Dogwhistles may be overt or covert, and within each of these categories may be intentional or unintentional. Dogwhistles are a powerful form of political speech, allowing people to be manipulated in ways they would resist if the manipulation was carried outmore openly—often drawing on racist attitudes that are consciously rejected. If philosophers focus only on content expressed or otherwise con…Read more
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