•  292
    The metaphysics of gender and race is a growing area of concern in contemporary analytic metaphysics, with many different views about the nature of gender and race being submitted and discussed. But what are these debates about? What questions are these accounts trying to answer? And is there real disagreement between advocates of differ- ent views about race or gender? If so, what are they really disagreeing about? In this paper I want to develop a view about what the debates in the metaphysics…Read more
  •  222
    Review of Holly Lawford-Smith: Gender-Critical Feminism (review)
    Ethics 134 (1): 146-154. 2023.
  •  1
    Sexual Orientations: The Desire View
    In Keya Maitra & Jennifer McWeeny (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Mind, Oxford University Press, Usa. pp. 294-310. 2022.
  •  478
    What Is Social Construction?
    European Journal of Philosophy 23 (4): 1137-1152. 2015.
    In this paper I discuss the question of what it means to say that a property is socially constructed. I focus on an influential project that many social constructivists are engaged in, namely, arguing against the inevitability of a trait, and I examine several recent characterizations of social construction, with the aim of assessing which one is more suited to the task
  •  2
    Kinds of Social Construction
    In Pieranna Garavaso (ed.), Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Feminism, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 103-122. 2018.
    An important question in the debate regarding the nature of politically significant human kinds, such as gender, race, and sexual orientations, is concerned with the question of whether these human kinds are socially constructed (Stein 1999; Root 2000; Haslanger 2012; and Ásta 2013). In order to settle this debate, a more fundamental question needs to be answered: what does it mean to say that a category is socially constructed? Recently, many philosophers have become interested in this issue (H…Read more
  •  139
    The Meta-Problem of Consciousness and the Phenomenal Concept Strategy
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 27 (5-6): 62-73. 2020.
    The hard problem of consciousness is about how we could explain in physicalist terms why we are conscious. The meta-problem of consciousness is about how we could explain why we have a hard problem of consciousness. In this note I argue that the phenomenal concept strategy can in principle provide a satisfactory solution to the meta-problem.
  •  67
    This comment on Ásta’s Categories we live by: the construction of sex, gender, race, and other social categories discusses Ásta’s arguments that the conferralist view on social properties does better than a response-dependence view concerning gender. Her key argument is that a response-dependence does not allow for mistakes. This comment tries to show that a response-dependence view can accommodate misgendering and passing.
  •  348
    On how to achieve reference to covert social constructions
    Studia Philosophica Estonica 12 34-43. 2019.
    What does it mean to say that some features, such as gender, race and sexual orientation, are socially constructed? Many scholars claim that social constructionism about a kind is a version of realism about that kind, according to which the corresponding kind is a social construction, that it, it is constituted by social factors and practices. Social constructionism, then, is a version of realism about a kind that asserts that the kind is real, and puts forward a particular view about the nature…Read more
  •  84
    Pejorative Terms and the Semantic Strategy
    Acta Analytica 35 (1): 23-34. 2020.
    Christopher Hom has recently argued that the best-overall account of the meaning of pejorative terms is a semantic account according to which pejoratives make a distinctive truth-conditional contribution, and in particular express complex, negative socially constructed properties. In addition, Hom supplements the semantic account with a pragmatic strategy to deal with the derogatory content of occurrences of pejorative terms in negations, conditionals, attitude reports, and so on, according to w…Read more
  •  63
    Sally Haslanger is concerned with the debate between social constructionists and error theorists about a given category, such as race or gender. For example, social constructionists about race claim that the term “race” refers to a social kind, whereas error theorists claim that the term “race” is an empty term, that is, nothing belongs to this category. It seems that this debate depends in part on the meaning of the corresponding expression, and this, according to some theorists, depends in tur…Read more
  •  183
    Sexual Orientation as Interpretation? Sexual Desires, Concepts, and Choice
    Journal of Social Ontology 3 (2): 231-248. 2017.
    Are sexual orientations freely chosen? The idea that someone’s sexual orientation is not a choice is very influential in the mainstream LGBT political movement. But do we have good reasons to believe it is not a choice? Going against the orthodoxy, William Wilkerson has recently argued that sexual orientation is partly constituted by our interpretations of our own sexual desires, and we choose these interpretations, so sexual orientation is partly constituted by choice. In this paper I aim to ex…Read more
  •  428
    We are living in a material world (and I am a material girl)
    Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 27 (3): 85-101. 2008.
    In this paper I examine the question of whether the characterization of physicalism that is presupposed by some influential anti-physicalist arguments, namely, the so-called conceivability arguments, is a good characterization of physicalism or not. I compare this characterization with some alternative ones, showing how it can overcome some problems, and I defend it from several objections. I conclude that any arguments against physicalism characterised in that way are genuine arguments against …Read more
  •  77
    Actors Are Not Like Zombies
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 112 (1pt1): 115-122. 2012.
    Daniel Stoljar has recently argued that comparing the zombie argument against physicalism with another influential argument in philosophy of mind, namely, the actor argument against behaviourism, can help to show why recent objections to the zombie argument fail. In this note I want to argue that the zombie argument and the actor argument have important differences, and, because of that, Stoljar's objections to some recent critiques of the zombie argument are not successful
  •  173
    How many explanatory gaps are there?
    APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers 8 (2): 33-35. 2009.
    According to many philosophers, there is an explanatory gap between physical truths and phenomenal truths. Someone could know all the physical truths about the world, and in particular, all the physical information about the brain and the neurophysiology of vision, and still not know what it is like to see red (Jackson 1982, 1986). According to a similar example, someone could know all the physical truths about bats and still not know what it is like to be a bat (Nagel 1974). We can conceive of …Read more
  •  266
    What does woman mean? According to two competing views, it can be seen as a sex term or as a gender term. Recently, Jennifer Saul has put forward a contextualist view, according to which woman can have different meanings in different contexts. The main motivation for this view seems to involve moral and political considerations, namely, that this view can do justice to the claims of trans women. Unfortunately, Saul argues, on further reflection the contextualist view fails to do justice to those…Read more
  •  58
    Are ghosts scarier than zombies
    Consciousness and Cognition 21 (2): 747-748. 2012.
  •  31
    Norms of judgement, naturalism, and normativism about content
    Philosophical Explorations 19 (1): 48-58. 2016.
    David Papineau [1999. “Normativity and Judgement.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 73 : 16–43.] argues that norms of judgement pose no special problem for naturalism, because all such norms of judgement are derived from moral or personal values. Papineau claims that this account of the normativity of judgement presupposes an account of content that places normativity outside the analysis of content, because in his view any accounts of content that place normativity inside the analysis of…Read more
  •  116
    Phenomenal concepts: Neither circular nor opaque
    Philosophical Psychology 29 (8): 1186-1199. 2016.
    In this paper, I focus on an influential account of phenomenal concepts, the recognitional account, and defend it from some recent challenges. According to this account, phenomenal concepts are recognitional concepts that we use when we recognize experiences as “another one of those.” Michael Tye has argued that this account is viciously circular because the relevant recognitional abilities involve descriptions of the form “another experience of the same type,” which is also a phenomenal concept…Read more
  •  455
    Can Phenomenal Concepts Explain The Epistemic Gap?
    Mind 119 (476): 933-951. 2010.
    The inference from conceivability to possibility has been challenged in numerous ways. One of these ways is the so-called phenomenal concept strategy, which has become one of the main strategies against the conceivability argument against physicalism. However, David Chalmers has recently presented a dilemma for the phenomenal concept strategy, and he has argued that no version of the strategy can succeed. In this paper, I examine the dilemma, and I argue that there is a way out of it. I conclude…Read more
  •  164
    A posteriori physicalism is the combination of two appealing views: physicalism (i.e. the view that all facts are either physical or entailed by the physical), and conceptual dualism (i.e. the view that phenomenal truths are not entailed a priori by physical truths). Recently, some philosophers such as Goff (2011), Levine (2007) and Nida-Rümelin (2007), among others, have suggested that a posteriori physicalism cannot explain how phenomenal concepts can reveal the nature of phenomenal properties…Read more
  •  219
    Reductive explanation, concepts, and a priori entailment
    Philosophical Studies 155 (1): 99-116. 2011.
    In this paper I examine Chalmers and Jackson’s defence of the a priori entailment thesis, that is, the claim that microphysical truths a priori entail ordinary non-phenomenal truths such as ‘water covers 60% of the Earth surface’, which they use as a premise for an argument against the possibility of a reductive explanation of consciousness. Their argument relies on a certain view about the possession conditions of macroscopic concepts such as WATER, known as ascriptivism. In the paper I disting…Read more
  •  12
    Consciousness, phenomenal concepts, and acquaintance
    Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 30 (1): 157-167. 2011.
  •  202
    Defending the phenomenal concept strategy
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (4). 2008.
    One of the main strategies against conceivability arguments is the so-called phenomenal concept strategy, which aims to explain the epistemic gap between physical and phenomenal truths in terms of the special features of phenomenal concepts. Daniel Stoljar has recently argued that the phenomenal concept strategy has failed to provide a successful explanation of this epistemic gap. In this paper my aim is to defend the phenomenal concept strategy from his criticisms. I argue that Stoljar has misr…Read more