•  364
    False Double Consciousness: Hermeneutical Resources from the Rush Limbaugh Show
    with Sarah Campbell
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 36 (2): 298-312. 2018.
    This article is a study of the interpretive resources developed by Rush Limbaugh on his radio show. Interpretive resources – also called ‘hermeneutical resources’ – are concepts, narratives, conceptual frameworks, etc. that enable subjects to make sense of themselves and their world. Much recent scholarship has explored how a community's interpretive resources influence social interactions or character traits in the community. In Limbaugh's transcripts, we found a pattern of what we call ‘concep…Read more
  •  361
    Linguistic labor and its division
    Philosophical Studies 176 (7): 1855-1871. 2019.
    This paper exposes a common mistake concerning the division of linguistic labor. I characterize the mistake as an overgeneralization from natural kind terms; this misleads philosophers about which terms are subject to the division of linguistic labor, what linguistic labor is, how linguistic labor is divided, and how the extensions of non-natural kind terms subject to the division of linguistic labor are determined. I illustrate these points by considering Sally Haslanger’s account of the divisi…Read more
  •  292
    Resources, Rules, and Oppression
    Hypatia 34 (4): 619-643. 2019.
    There is a large and growing literature on communal interpretive resources: the concepts, theories, narratives, and so on that a community draws on in interpreting its members and their world. (They're also called “hermeneutical resources” in some places and “epistemic resources” in others.) Several recent contributions to this literature have concerned dominant and resistant interpretive resources and how they affect concrete lived interactions. In this article, I note that “using” interpretive…Read more
  •  174
    Ideal DoLLs as Ideology
    Studia Philosophica Estonica 12 44-63. 2019.
    This paper argues that many philosophical theories of meaning idealize our actual language communities and thereby contribute to perpetuating group-based oppression. I focus on externalist theories of language that posit a division of linguistic labor (DoLL), and I argue that the DoLLs they imagine are free of oppression and untouched by its effects. This distorts both basic theoretical assumptions and our ideas about which meanings are to be found in some language community. By thus obscuring o…Read more
  •  98
    Emergent Substances, Physical Properties, Action Explanations
    Erkenntnis 80 (6): 1125-1146. 2015.
    This paper proposes that if individual X ‘inherits’ property F from individual Y, we should be leery of explanations that appeal to X’s being F. This bears on what I’ll call “emergent substance dualism”, the view that human persons or selves are metaphysically fundamental or “new kinds of things with new kinds of causal powers” even though they depend in some sense on physical particulars :5–23, 2006; Personal agency. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008). Two of the most prominent advocates of…Read more
  •  93
    Property Reductive Emergent Dualism
    Philosophia 43 (1): 63-75. 2015.
    This paper sketches and motivates a metaphysics of mind that is both substance dualist and, to a large extent, property reductive. Call it “property reductive emergent dualism”. Section “Emergent Dualism” gives the broad outlines of the view. Sections “Problems of Mental Causation” and “Theoretical Virtues” argue that it can claim several advantages over non-reductive physicalist theories of mind. Section “Problems of Mental Causation” considers metaphysical challenges to mental causation in det…Read more
  •  91
    What we talk about when we talk about content externalism
    Synthese 193 (1): 125-143. 2016.
    Some content externalists claim that if C is a theoretical concept and “C” expresses C, then the content of C in a community at a time is determined by how some members of the community at the time—call them “experts”—understand C or use “C”. Thus, when non-expert Chauncey utters “C”, the content of the concept he expresses does not depend entirely on his intrinsic physical properties, contra the claims of content internalism. This paper proposes that “concept” expresses a theoretical concept, s…Read more
  •  87
    Varieties of Multiple Antecedent Cause
    Acta Analytica 27 (3): 231-246. 2012.
    A great deal has been written over the past decade defending ‘higher-level’ causes by arguing that overdetermination is more complex than many philosophers initially thought. Although two shooters overdetermine the death of a firing squad victim, a baseball and its parts do not overdetermine the breaking of a window. But while these analyses of overdetermination have no doubt been fruitful, the focus on overdetermination—while ignoring other varieties of causal relation—has limited the discussio…Read more
  •  86
    What is the Exclusion Problem?
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (2): 205-232. 2015.
    The philosophical literature contains at least three formulations of the problem of causal exclusion. Although each of the three most common formulations targets theories according to which some effects have ‘too many determiners’, no one is reducible to either of the others. This article proposes two ‘new’ exclusion problems and suggests that exclusion is not a single problem but a family of problems unified by the situations they problematize. It is shown, further, that for three of the most p…Read more
  •  78
    Interactive, Inclusive Substance Dualism
    Philosophia 45 (3): 1149-1165. 2017.
    This paper argues that a certain kind of substance dualism can adopt the ‘Compatibilist’ solution to the problem of causal exclusion. After sketching a non-Cartesian substance dualism akin to E.J. Lowe’s account, 5-23, 2006, 2008) and considering its shortcomings with respect to mental causation in section one, section two outlines an alternative account of mental causation and argues that this account solves the exclusion problem. Finally, section three considers a challenge to the proposed sol…Read more
  •  71
    The Logic of Misandrogyny
    Philosophers Imprint 22 (n/a). 2022.
    This paper develops an account of misandrogyny that is modeled on Kate Manne’s account of misogyny. On Manne’s view, misogyny is a system of mechanisms that together police and enforce the gendered hierarchy of a patriarchal order. On the account developed here, misandrogyny is a system of mechanisms that together police and enforce the gender binary of a patriarchal order. The gender binary is constituted by norms that preclude the existence of persons who aren’t consistently ‘read’ either as a…Read more
  •  54
    Mental Causation is Not Just Downward Causation
    Ratio 30 (1): 31-46. 2017.
    According to a popular model of mental causation, an irreducible mental cause M1 brings about an irreducible mental effect M2 by bringing about M2's supervenience base, P2. Call this ‘the Downward Causation View’. This paper raises doubts about the Downward Causation View on grounds that M1 does not cause M2 immediately and there is no causal chain from M1 to M2. Prima facie, then, M1 does not cause M2 on this view. But a theory of mental causation ought to account for how some mental phenomena …Read more
  •  50
    Married Causes
    Acta Analytica 29 (2): 161-180. 2014.
    Many philosophers accept some version of a principle that says for all x, if x exists, then x plays a unique causal role. After briefly clarifying one version of the principle in Section 1, Section 2 gives reasons to doubt it by showing that there are non-identical “causal indiscernibles”—I call them “married causes.” Section 3 then sketches a few philosophical puzzles for which married causes may be helpful
  •  48
    Token Causal Powers
    Philosophical Papers 45 (1-2): 159-180. 2016.
    This paper proposes that the relation between property instances and token causal powers is akin to the relation between primary substances and property instances on the Aristotelian account of property instantiation. This view permits an individual to have two tokens of the same type of causal power. Paul Audi has argued that this cannot be: two tokens of the same power type are discernible, he claims, only if they are borne by discernible individuals. In the context of this criticism, he propo…Read more
  •  42
    Some Reflections on Gaslighting and Language Games
    Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 9 (3). 2023.
    This paper proposes that, in many cases, conversational norms permit gaslighting when socially subordinate speakers report systemic injustice. Section 1 introduces gaslighting and the kinds of cases on which I focus—namely, cases in which multiple people gaslight. I give examples and statistics to suggest that these cases are common in response to reports of race- or gender-based injustice; and I appeal to scholarship on epistemologies of ignorance to suggest that this kind of gaslighting is com…Read more
  •  27
    The Problem of Secondary Effects
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 54 (2): 247-266. 2016.
    This paper argues that two principles held by many metaphysicians and philosophers of mind are inconsistent: there is no systematic overdetermination, and some causal effects are also determined by their metaphysical grounds. Call this “The Problem of Secondary Effects.” After introducing the problem and noting philosophical theories that face it, the paper offers further clarification by considering three potential strategies for solving it. All fail. An approach that sacrifices ‘secondary effe…Read more
  •  24
    Unlucky on Twin Earth
    Journal of Philosophical Research 47 1-22. 2022.
    This paper proposes that there is a kind of moral luck that hasn’t been recognized in the philosophical literature: luck in the ‘wide’ contents of one’s concepts. We will treat moral luck as occurring when an agent is morally responsible for X—when X is a matter of luck for that agent. If moral luck is possible and content externalism is true, then there is a heretofore unrecognized kind of moral luck. We call it “conceptual moral luck.” This new kind of moral luck poses significant problems for…Read more
  • Nonideal Theory and Content Externalism
    Oxford University Press. 2024.
    This book charges that just about every philosophical theory of mind or language developed over the past 50 years in the West is systematically inaccurate. Systemic oppression has influenced the processes that theories of mind or language purport to identify; however, that same systemic oppression has also made it so that most middle-to-upper class White men (including most philosophers of mind or language) are ignorant of systemic oppression. Consequently, most theories of mind or language are …Read more