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3018Dogwhistles, 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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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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521Philosophical 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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499Gender 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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491Pornography, speech acts and contextProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106 (2). 2006.Catharine MacKinnon has claimed that pornography is the subordination of women. Rae Langton has defended the plausibility and coherence of this claim by drawing on speech act theory. I argue that considering the role of context in speech acts poses serious problems for Langton's defence of MacKinnon. Langton's account can be altered in order to accommodate the role of context. Once this is done, however, her defence of MacKinnon no longer looks so plausible. Finally, I argue that the speech act …Read more
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461Scepticism and Implicit BiasDisputatio 5 (37): 243-263. 2013.Saul_Jennifer, Scepticism and Implicit Bias
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443Speaker 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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418Just 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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413Feminist 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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376Feminism: Issues and ArgumentsOxford University Press. 2003.A stimulating and accessible introduction to feminist philosophy. The chapters are organised around key issues of practical significance. Clear arguments are provided for a variety of feminist positions, drawing upon up-to-date empirical research. No background in feminism or philosophy is needed, and the clarity of the narrative ensures that Feminism: Issues and Arguments will appeal to a wide audience.
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341What 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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291Subordination, Silencing, and Two Ideas of Illocution (review)Jurisprudence 2 (2): 379-440. 2011.This section gathers together five reviews of Rae Langton?s book Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification followed by a response from the author.
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290Racial Figleaves, the Shifting Boundaries of the Permissible, and the Rise of Donald TrumpPhilosophical Topics 45 (2): 97-116. 2017.The rise to power of Donald Trump has been shocking in many ways. One of these was that it disrupted the preexisting consensus that overt racism would be death to a national political campaign. In this paper, I argue that Trump made use of what I call “racial figleaves”—additional utterances that provide just enough cover to give reassurance to voters who are racially resentful but don’t wish to see themselves as racist. These figleaves also, I argue, play a key role in shifting our norms about …Read more
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241Lying, 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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237Politically Significant Terms and Philosophy of LanguageIn Sharon Crasnow & Anita Superson (eds.), Out from the Shadows: Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2012.Philosophers of language have tended to focus on examples that are not politically significant in any way. We spend a lot of time analyzing natural kind terms: We think hard about “water” and “pain” and “arthritis.” But we don’t think much about the far more politically significant kind terms (natural or social—it's a matter for dispute) like “race,” “sex,” “gender,” “woman,” “man,” “gay,” and “straight.” In this essay, I will try to show, using the example of “woman,” that it's worth thinking a…Read more
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205Simple Sentences, Substitutions, and Mistaken EvaluationsPhilosophical Studies 111 (1). 2002.Many competent speakers initially judge that (i) is true and (ii) isfalse, though they know that (iii) is true. (i) Superman leaps more tallbuildings than Clark Kent. (ii) Superman leaps more tall buildings thanSuperman. (iii) Superman is identical with Clark Kent. Semanticexplanations of these intuitions say that (i) and (ii) really can differin truth-value. Pragmatic explanations deny this, and say that theintuitions are due to misleading implicatures. This paper argues thatboth explanations a…Read more
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189Stop 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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175Ranking Exercises in Philosophy and Implicit BiasJournal of Social Philosophy 43 (3): 256-273. 2012.
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172Wayne A. Davis, Implicature: Intention, convention, and principle in the failure of Gricean theory (review)Noûs 35 (4): 631-641. 2001.
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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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134What is Happening to Our Norms Against Racist Speech?Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 93 (1): 1-23. 2019.Until recently, the accepted wisdom in the US was that overt racism would doom a national political campaign. This led to the use of covert messaging strategies like dogwhistles. Recent political events have called this wisdom into question. In this paper, I explore what has happened in recent years to our norms against racist speech, and to the ways that they are applied. I describe several mechanisms that seem to have contributed to the changes that I outline.
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127The 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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126Implicit Bias and Reform Efforts in PhilosophyPhilosophical Topics 46 (2): 71-102. 2018.This paper takes as its focus efforts to address particular aspects of sexist oppression and its intersections, in a particular field: it discusses reform efforts in philosophy. In recent years, there has been a growing international movement to change the way that our profession functions and is structured, in order to make it more welcoming for members of marginalized groups. One especially prominent and successful form of justification for these reform efforts has drawn on empirical data rega…Read more
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