Arianna Falbo

Bentley University
  •  1222
    Slurs, neutral counterparts, and what you could have said
    Analytic Philosophy 62 (4): 359-375. 2021.
    Recent pragmatic accounts of slurs argue that the offensiveness of slurs is generated by a speaker's free choice to use a slur opposed to a more appropriate and semantically equivalent neutral counterpart. I argue that the theoretical role of neutral counterparts on such views is overstated. I consider two recent pragmatic analyses, Bolinger (Noûs, 51, 2017, 439) and Nunberg (New work on speech acts, Oxford University Press, 2018), which rely heavily upon the optionality of slurs, namely, that a…Read more
  •  706
    This article develops a new approach for theorizing about hermeneutical injustice. According to a dominant view, hermeneutical injustice results from a hermeneutical gap: one lacks the conceptual tools needed to make sense of, or to communicate, important social experience, where this lack is a result of an injustice in the background social methods used to determine hermeneutical resources. I argue that this approach is incomplete. It fails to capture an important species of hermeneut…Read more
  •  671
    Inquiry and Confirmation
    Analysis 81 (4). 2021.
    A puzzle arises when combining two individually plausible, yet jointly incompatible, norms of inquiry. On the one hand, it seems that one shouldn’t inquire into a question while believing an answer to that question. But, on the other hand, it seems rational to inquire into a question while believing its answer, if one is seeking confirmation. Millson (2021), who has recently identified this puzzle, suggests a possible solution, though he notes that it comes with significant costs. I offer an alt…Read more
  •  633
    Should epistemology take the zetetic turn?
    Philosophical Studies 180 (10-11): 2977-3002. 2023.
    What is the relationship between inquiry and epistemology? Are epistemic norms the norms that guide us as inquirers—as agents in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding? Recently, there has been growing support for what I, following Friedman (Philosophical Review 129(4):501–536, 2020), will call the zetetic turn in epistemology, the view that all epistemic norms are norms of inquiry. This paper investigates the prospects of an inquiry-centered approach to epistemology and develops several mot…Read more
  •  358
    Est-ce que Vous Compute?
    Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 8 (3). 2022.
    Cultural code-switching concerns how we adjust our overall behaviours, manners of speaking, and appearance in response to a perceived change in our social environment. We defend the need to investigate cultural code-switching capacities in artificial intelligence systems. We explore a series of ethical and epistemic issues that arise when bringing cultural code-switching to bear on artificial intelligence. Building upon Dotson’s (2014) analysis of testimonial smothering, we discuss how emerging …Read more
  •  357
    Inquiring Minds Want to Improve
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (2). 2023.
    Much of the recent work on epistemology of inquiry defends two related theses. First, inquiry into a question rationally prohibits believing an answer to that question. Second, knowledge is the aim of inquiry. I develop a series of cases which indicate that inquiry is not as narrow as these views suggest. These cases can be accommodated if we take a broader approach and understand inquiry as aiming at epistemic improvement, described more generally. This approach captures a wider range of inquir…Read more
  •  270
    The Zetetic
    In Kurt Sylvan, Jonathan Dancy, Matthias Steup & Ernest Sosa (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology (3rd Edition), Wiley Blackwell. forthcoming.
  •  193
    Hermeneutical Injustice
    In Kurt Sylvan, Jonathan Dancy, Matthias Steup & Ernest Sosa (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology (3rd Edition), Wiley Blackwell. forthcoming.
  •  76
    Les explications de ce pourquoi mentir est mal sont toutes inadéquates. Leur problème commun se situe dans leur structure unitaire. Ces analyses présupposent que tous les mensonges sont mauvais pour la même raison unificatrice. Cette supposition ne rend cependant pas justice au phénomène du mensonge, et ce, parce qu’on peut s’objecter à l’acte de mentir de différentes façons. Ainsi je suggère qu’il faut un changement dialectique en direction d’un traitement pluraliste de ce qui est mauvais dans …Read more