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35Waltman, Max. Pornography: The Politics of Legal ChallengesEthics 133 (4): 653-658. 2023.This a review of Max Waltman's _Pornography: The Politics of Legal Challenges_.
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14New Applications, Hepeating, and Discrimination: Response to Anderson, Horisk, and WatsonRes Philosophica 98 (3): 537-544. 2021.This article is the author's response to critical essays by Luvell Anderson, Claire Horisk, and Lori Watson. The legal concept of discrimination, the sneaky communicative functioning of joke-telling, and the phenomenon of hepeating are each discussed.
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33Pr\'ecis for Just Words: On Speech and Hidden HarRes Philosophica 98 (3): 509-511. 2021.This is a summary of the book _Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm (OUP 2019)_. We all know that speech can be harmful. But what are the harms and how exactly does the speech in question brings those harms about? Just Words identifies a previously overlooked mechanism by which speech constitutes, rather than merely causes, harm. The author argues that speech constitutes harm when it enacts a norm that prescribes that harm. She illustrates this theory by considering many categories of speech i…Read more
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62On Media Reports, Politicians, Indirection, and DuplicityTopoi 42 (2): 407-417. 2023.We often say one thing and mean another. This kind of indirection (concerning the content conveyed) is both ubiquitous and widely recognized. Other forms of indirection, however, are less common and less discussed. For example, we can sometimes address one person with the primary intention of being overheard by someone else. And, sometimes speakers say something simply in order to make it possible for someone else to say that they said it. Politicians generating sounds bites for the media are an…Read more
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58Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm: An Overview and an ApplicationAustralasian Philosophical Review 5 (2): 129-149. 2021.ABSTRACT This paper argues for a hidden way in which speech constitutes harm by enacting harmful norms. The paper then explores the potential legal consequences of uncovering such instances of harm constitution. In particular, the paper argues that some public racist speech constitutes harm and is thus harmful enough to warrant legal remedy. Such utterances are actionable, it is contended, because they enact discriminatory norms in public spaces.
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44Response to CriticsAustralasian Philosophical Review 5 (2): 211-220. 2021.McGowan here responds to essays written in critical engagement with her lead essay (Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm: An Overview and an Application). She here responds to Caroline West, Ishani Maitra, Jeremy Waldron, Robert Mark Simpson, Lawrence Lengbeyer, Louise Richardsoon-Self, Laura Caponetto and Bianca Cepollaro
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35Mary Kate McGowan, Review of Reading Putnam by Peter Clark and Bob Hale (review)Philosophy of Science 65 (2): 372-373. 1998.
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63On Locker Room Talk and Linguistic OppressionPhilosophical Topics 46 (2): 165-181. 2018.This paper argues that linguistic oppression is coherent; speech can oppress. Moreover, even though oppression is a structural phenomenon, a single utterance can nevertheless be an act of oppression. This paper also argues that ordinary utterances can oppress. That is, speakers do not need to have and be exercising authority in order for their speech to be oppressive. Furthermore, ordinary speech can oppress even though the speakers do not intend to oppress, even though the hearers do not take i…Read more
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109Just Words: On Speech and Hidden HarmOxford University Press. 2019.We all know that speech can be harmful. But how? Mary Kate McGowan argues that speech constitutes harm when it enacts a norm that prescribes that harm. She investigates such harms as oppression, subordination, and discrimination in such forms of speech as sexist remarks, racist hate speech, pornography, verbal triggers, and micro-aggressions.
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23A World of States of Affairs (review)Dialogue 38 (3): 662-663. 1999.Evidently, David Armstrong is not one for misleading titles. In his A World of States of Affairs, he argues for the claim that the world is entirely composed of states of affairs. Much of the book is spent on the deeply worthwhile enterprise of arguing that this states-of-affairs ontology is sufficient to provide truthmakers for all contingent, all necessary, and all modal truths. This is a formidable task for a minimalist factualist ontology. The ontology is factualist since only states of affa…Read more
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930Oppressive speechAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (3). 2009.I here present two different models of oppressive speech. My interest is not in how speech can cause oppression, but in how speech can actually be an act of oppression. As we shall see, a particular type of speech act, the exercitive, enacts permissibility facts. Since oppressive speech enacts permissibility facts that oppress, speech must be exercitive in order for it to be an act of oppression. In what follows, I distinguish between two sorts of exercitive speech acts (the standard exercitive …Read more
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224Conversational exercitives: Something else we do with our wordsLinguistics and Philosophy 27 (1): 93-111. 2004.In this paper, I present a new (i.e., previously overlooked) breed of exercitive speech act (the conversational exercitive). I establish that any conversational contribution that invokes a rule of accommodation changes the bounds of conversational permissibility and is therefore an (indirect) exercitive speech act. Such utterances enact permissibility facts without expressing the content of such facts, without the speaker intending to be enacting such facts and without the hearer recognizing tha…Read more
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196On silencing, rape, and responsibilityAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (1). 2010.In a recent article in this journal, Nellie Wieland argues that silencing in the sense put forward by Rae Langton and Jennifer Hornsby has the unpalatable consequence of diminishing a rapist's responsibility for the rape. We argue both that Wieland misidentifies Langton and Hornsby's conception of silencing, and that neither Langton and Hornsby's actual conception, nor the one that Wieland attributes to them, in fact generates this consequence
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72Realism, Reference and Grue (Why Metaphysical Realism Cannot Solve the Grue Paradox)American Philosophical Quarterly 40 (1). 2003.This paper argue that metaphysical realism is insufficient to solve Goodman's grue paradox
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35On Pragmatics, Exercitive Speech Acts and PornographyLodz Papers in Pragmatics 5 (1): 133-155. 2009.On Pragmatics, Exercitive Speech Acts and Pornography Suppose that a suspect being questioned by the police says, "I think I'd better talk to a lawyer." Whether that suspect has invoked her right to an attorney depends on which particular speech act her utterance is. If she is merely thinking aloud about what she ought to do, then she has not invoked that right. If, on the other hand, she has thereby requested a lawyer, she has. Similarly, suppose that an unhappily married man says "I want my wi…Read more
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21Book Review:Reading Putnam Peter Clark, Bob Hale (review)Philosophy of Science 65 (2): 372-. 1998.
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175The ethics of free speechIn John Skorupski (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Ethics, Routledge. pp. 769-780. 2010.This paper clarifies the legal right to free speech, identifies ways that speech can be harmful, and discusses pornography hate speech, and lies. It is also written for a non-technical audience
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85On Silencing and Systematicity: The Challenge of the Drowning CaseHypatia 31 (1): 74-90. 2016.Silencing is a speech-related harm. We here focus on one particular account of silencing offered by Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton. According to this account, silencing is systematically generated, illocutionary-communicative failure. We here raise an apparent challenge to that account. In particular, we offer an example—the drowning case—that meets these conditions of silencing but does not intuitively seem to be an instance of it. First, we explore several conditions one might add to the Hor…Read more
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750Debate: On silencing and sexual refusalJournal of Political Philosophy 17 (4): 487-494. 2009.This paper argues that an addressee's failure to recognize a speaker's authority can constitutes another form of silencing.
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236Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2012.This volume draws on a range of approaches in order to explore the problem and determine what ought to be done about allegedly harmful speech.Most liberal societies are deeply committed to a principle of free speech. At the same time, however, there is evidence that some kinds of speech are harmful in ways that are detrimental to important liberal values, such as social equality. Might a genuine commitment to free speech require that we legally permit speech even when it is harmful, and even whe…Read more
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194Review: Seana Valentine Shiffrin, Speech Matters: On Lying, Morality, and the Law (review)Ethics 126 (2): 536-541. 2016.This is a review of Shiffrin's _Speech Matters_
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338On Pornography: MacKinnon, Speech Acts, and "False" ConstructionHypatia 20 (3). 2005.Although others have focused on Catharine MacKinnon's claim that pornography subordinates and silences women, I here focus on her claim that pornography constructs women's nature and that this construction is, in some sense, false. Since it is unclear how pornography, as speech, can construct facts and how constructed facts can nevertheless be false, MacKinnon's claim requires elucidation. Appealing to speech act theory, I introduce an analysis of the erroneous verdictive and use it to make sens…Read more
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34Logic by Laurence Goldstein, Andrew Brennan, Max Deutsch and Joe Y.F. LauPhilosophical Books 47 (3): 272-273. 2006.
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126The metaphysics of squaring scientific realism with referential indeterminacyErkenntnis 50 (1): 83-90. 1999.This article clarifies the motivations for and commitments of metaphysical realism and shows that it is compatible with various kinds of referential indeterminacy.
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71Privileging propertiesPhilosophical Studies 105 (1): 1-23. 2001.The idea that the world is human construction is fairly familiar and generally disparaged. One version of this claim is partially defendedhere. This subjectivist thesis concerns a debate about the objectivityof rightness of categorization. A problem about the discriminatoryrole of properties is both presented and motivated. The subjectivistthesis is articulated and defended against two powerful objections.Finally, this thesis is shown to be conceptually independent ofboth verificationism and emp…Read more
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230Gruesome connectionsPhilosophical Quarterly 52 (206): 21-33. 2002.It is widely recognized that Goodman's grue example demonstrates that the rules for induction, unlike those for deduction, cannot be purely syntactic. Ways in which Goodman's proof generalizes, however, are not widely recognized. Gruesome considerations demonstrate that neither theories of simplicity nor theories of empirical confirmation can be purely syntactic. Moreover, the grue paradox can be seen as an instance of a much more general phenomenon. All empirical investigations require semantic…Read more
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167The limits of free speech: Pornography and the question of coverageLegal Theory 13 (1): 41-68. 2007.Many liberal societies are deeply committed to freedom of speech. This commitment is so entrenched that when it seems to come into conflict with other commitments (e.g., gender equality), it is often argued that the commitment to speech must trump the other commitments. In this paper, we argue that a proper understanding of our commitment to free speech requires being clear about what should count as speech for these purposes. On the approach we defend, should get a special, technical sense, dif…Read more
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176Sincerity SilencingHypatia 29 (2): 458-473. 2014.Catharine MacKinnon claims that pornography silences women in a way that violates the right to free speech. This claim is, of course, controversial, but if it is correct, then the very free speech reasons for protecting pornography appear also to afford reason to restrict it. For this reason, it has gained considerable attention. The philosophical literature thus far focuses on a type of silencing identified and analyzed by Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton (H&L). This article identifies, analyze…Read more
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367On Racist Hate Speech and the Scope of a Free Speech PrincipleCanadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 23 (2): 343-372. 2009.In this paper, we argue that to properly understand our commitment to a principle of free speech, we must pay attention to what should count as speech for the purposes of such a principle. We defend the view that ‘speech’ here should be a technical term, with something other than its ordinary sense. We then offer a partial characterization of this technical sense. We contrast our view with some influential views about free speech , and show that our view has distinct advantages. Finally, we cons…Read more
Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Law |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |