Robin Jeshion

Fifty years ago, Zwicky demonstrated the slur-neutral counterpart vocative divergence thesis (SNCVD):Slurs occur freely as vocatives. Neutral counterparts do not. In this article, I craft a novel problem for theories of slurs. The Vocatives Problem is the challenge to explain the SNCVD. I argue that there are two strong solutions. One construes slurs as encoding non-expressive pejorative evaluation. Another construes them as expressives, as tools for expressing speaker-contempt. I advance further rationales for treating slurs as expressives as a best solution. I argue that four alternative accounts, none of which place restrictions on slurs’ semantics, fail to explain SNCVD. Finally, I show how the Vocatives Problem presents a formidable challenge to leading analyses of slurs that explain slurs’ derogatory force exclusively via appeal to pragmatics, socio-linguistic rules like prohibitions, or articulations.

A theory of slurring terms must explain how and why uses of slurs function to dehumanize. On extant expressivist views, speakers express contempt for targets on account of being in the group. This chapter argues that explaining how slurs dehumanize requires more than encoding the speaker’s contempt toward the target and group. It requires appreciating the intricate moral-psychological structure of contempt, in particular that contempt, as a moral emotion, involves taking those properties that are the basis for regarding the target contemptuously as fundamental to the targets’ _identity as a person_. This feature of contempt is reflected in slurs’ semantics. Understanding contempt is also needed to defend expressivism from important objections.

Predicativists frequently champion predicativism as superior to referentialism on the grounds that only predicativism is capable of offering a unified semantics for both singular “bare” occurrences of proper names, as in _Alfred resides in Princeton_, and pluralized and determiner- and quantifier-fronted occurrences, as in _Two Alfreds reside in Princeton_ and _Some Alfreds are crazy_. This chapter discusses Fara’s attempt to defend a Uniformity Argument for predicativism by explaining away certain examples as alternately either non-literal uses of proper names (_That museum has three Picassos_) or literal uses of proper count nouns that are not proper names (_Many Kennedys died tragically_). It argues that the defense is inadequate because the rationale for attributing either non-literality or standing as a proper count noun that is not a proper name may apply as well to examples like _Two Alfreds reside in Princeton_ and _Some Alfreds are crazy_, and thus referentialism may treat all the examples in parallel as instances of polysemy.

According to predicativism about proper names, proper names are not primarily devices of reference; they are, rather, predicates that are a special kind of count noun. The view harkens back to Quine, Sloat, and Burge, and has received new life in the writings of Elbourne, Matushansky, and Fara. Predicativists frequently champion predicativism as superior to referentialism on the grounds that only predicativism is capable of offering a unified semantics for both singular “bare” occurrences of proper names, as in _Alfred resides in Princeton_, and pluralized and determiner- and quantifier-fronted occurrences, as in _Two Alfreds reside in Princeton_ and _Some Alfreds are crazy_. This chapter explicates and dismantles this Uniformity Argument for predicativism, and, in doing so, extends the range of phenomena to be accounted for in our theorizing about proper names.

In Inflammatory Language, Una Stojnić and Ernie Lepore argue that no extant theory of slurs can explain slurs’ hyperprojectivity, emphasizing their difficulties in accounting for acoustic and phonological resemblance cases in which a word merely sounds like a slur. Further, all content theories confront the Specificity Problem, the charge that the content view’s content, whatever it is, is too specific to encompass the full range of competent weapon uses of slurs. One half of this paper concerns hyperprojectivity. I argue that there is a gap in Inflammatory Language’s overarching dialectic that results from excluding a range of theories. Some theories of slurs are what I call single mechanism views: they aim to explain all the phenomena with a single explanatory mechanism. Multiple mechanism views exploit more than one. Within Inflammatory Language, multiple mechanism theories are bypassed. Yet multiple mechanism theories possess resources to explain slurs’ hyperprojectivity. The other half of this paper addresses the Specificity Problem. I argue that a view I have developed in previous writings, Identity Expressivism, does not succumb to the problem. I craft a version of the Specificity Problem tailor-made for the theory and rooted in Stojnić and Lepore case against other expressivist theories. Identity Expressivism is, I argue, uncompromised by the Specificity Problem.

The epistemological argument against descriptivism about proper names is extremely simple. Fora proper name ‘N’ and definite description ‘F’, the proposition expressed by “If N exists, then N is F is not normally known a priori. But descriptivism about proper names entails otherwise. So descriptivism is false. The argument is widely regarded as sound. This paper aims to establish that the epistemological argument is highly unstable. The problem with the argument is that there seems to be no convincing rationale for the first premise that is independent of a view about the nature of the proposition expressed by the sentence “If N exists, then N is F”.

Donnellan famously argued that while one can fix the reference of a name with a definite description, one cannot thereby have a de re belief about the named object. All that is generated is meta‐linguistic knowledge that the sentence “If there is a unique F. then N is F” is true. Donnellan's argument and the sceptical position are extremely influential. This article aims to show that Donnellan's argument is unsound, and that the Millian who embraces Donnellan's scepticism that the reference‐fixer cannot secure the relevant de re belief faces a serious problem: Millianism about names plus scepticism about the reference‐fixer's de re belief conflicts with what seems to be an analytical thesis about the relationship between semantic content and understanding. The upshot is that the Millian has good reason to seek an alternative to scepticism.

Fifty years ago, Zwicky demonstrated the slur‐neutral counterpart vocative divergence thesis (SNCVD):Slurs occur freely as vocatives. Neutral counterparts do not. In this article, I craft a novel problem for theories of slurs. The Vocatives Problem is the challenge to explain the SNCVD. I argue that there are two strong solutions. One construes slurs as encoding non‐expressive pejorative evaluation. Another construes them as expressives, as tools for expressing speaker‐contempt. I advance further rationales for treating slurs as expressives as a best solution. I argue that four alternative accounts, none of which place restrictions on slurs’ semantics, fail to explain SNCVD. Finally, I show how the Vocatives Problem presents a formidable challenge to leading analyses of slurs that explain slurs’ derogatory force exclusively via appeal to pragmatics, socio‐linguistic rules like prohibitions, or articulations.

Theories of slurs aim to explain how – via semantics, pragmatics, or other mechanisms – speakers who use slurs convey that targets are inferior persons. I present two novel problems. The Slur Creation Problem: How do terms come to be slurs? An expression ‘e’ is introduced into the language. What are the mechanisms by which ‘e’ comes to possess properties distinctive of slurs? The Bigotry Formation Problem: Speakers’ uses of slurs are a prime mechanism of bigotry formation, not solely bigotry perpetuation. With a use of a slur, how are speakers able to introduce new bigoted attitudes and actions toward targets? I argue that expressivism offers powerful resources to solve the problems.

The reclamation of slurs raises a host of important questions. Some are linguistic: What are the linguistic conventions governing the slur post-reclamation and how are they related to the conventions governing it pre-reclamation? What mechanisms engender the shift? Others bend toward the social: Why do a slur’s targets have a special privilege in initiating its reclamation? Is there a systematic explanation why prohibitions on out-group use of reclaimed slurs vary from slur to slur? And how does reclamation contribute to shaping social identities and reversing oppressive social norms and stigma? Most analyses of slur reclamation advance a single model to answer these questions. The author argues that there are different varieties of reclamation. Two predominate, what she calls pride reclamation and insular reclamation. While many features unite pride and insular reclamation, they differ with respect to the purpose of the reclamatory act, the linguistic mechanisms reclaimers employ to execute the linguistic change, and the social and grammatical roles of the reclaimed slur. By distinguishing these two types of reclamation and offering a fine-grained characterization of their properties, the author argues that we gain deeper insight into the reasons why slurs may in principle only be ignited by the target group and why pride- but not insular-reclaimed slurs become available for use by out-group members.

Names are referring expressions and interact with the determiner system only exceptionally, in stark contrast with count nouns. The-predicativists like Sloat, Matushansky, and Fara claim otherwise, maintaining that syntactic data offers indicates that names belong to a special syntactic category which differs from common count nouns only in how they interact with ‘the’. I argue that the-predicativists have incorrectly discerned the syntactic facts. They have bypassed a large range of important syntactic data and misconstrued a critical data point on which they ground the-predicativism. The right data offers new compelling syntactic grounds for referentialism.

In this paper, I assess the relative merits of two semantic frameworks for slurring terms. Each aims to distinguish slurs from their neutral counterparts via their semantics. On one, recently developed by Kent Bach, that which differentiates the slurring term from its neutral counterpart is encoded as a ‘loaded’ descriptive content. Whereas the neutral counterpart ‘NC’ references a group, the slur has as its content “NC, and therefore contemptible”. On the other, a version of hybrid expressivism, the semantically encoded aspect of a slurring term that distinguishes it from its neutral counterpart is, rather, expressed. A speaker who uses the slurring term references the group referenced by the neutral counterpart and, in addition, expresses her contempt for the target. On this view, while the speaker’s attitude may be evaluated for appropriateness, the expressivist component of slurring terms is truth-conditionally irrelevant. The reference to the group, and only the reference to the group, contributes to truth conditions. I’ll argue that hybrid expressivism offers a more parsimonious analysis of slurs’ projective behavior than loaded descriptivism and that its truth conditional semantics is not inferior to the possible accounts available for loaded descriptivism. I also meet Bach’s important objection that hybrid expressivism cannot account for uses of slurring terms in indirect quotation and attitude attributions.

What makes us epistemically justified in believing the truths of logic and mathematics. What is the source, or nature, of that justification? Is it in some way ultimately grounded in sensory experiences? Or can it be grounded on reason and understanding alone? ;My aim in this dissertation is to develop a conception of non-perceptual intellection-based justification for belief and to argue that much knowledge of mathematics and logic has an intellection-based epistemic ground. The second objective is divided into three broad tasks. The first task is to argue that one can have a justification grounded on reason alone for believing propositions one takes to be obvious, i.e., propositions one holds as true just in virtue of understanding the proposition. Some of the arithmetical and logical beliefs justified on this basis may serve as premises for proofs of other propositions. The second task is to show that the lengthiness of a proof does not normally alter the epistemic character of the prover's justification for believing the derived proposition. The increased susceptibility to error due to length in performing the proof does not necessitate the introduction of empirical elements into the justification. Some of the arguments given to fulfill these first two tasks assume that agents have knowledge of their own thoughts and beliefs. The third task is therefore to explicate why the epistemic ground of knowledge of one's own thought is itself dependent upon reason and understanding, not on sensation or perception. This rationalist project sharpens the significance of the distinctive types of justificatory procedures used in mathematics and logic; and it may contribute to showing wherein our ability to have such knowledge marks something distinctive about being reflective reasoners

Clarence Sloat, Ora Matushansky, and Delia Graff Fara advocate a Syntactic Rationale on behalf of predicativism, the view that names are predicates in all of their occurrences. Each argues that a set of surprising syntactic data compels us to recognize names as a special variety of count noun. This data set, they say, reveals that names’ interaction with the determiner system differs from that of common count nouns only with respect to the definite article ‘the’. They conclude that this special distribution of names is best explained by the-predicativism, the view that posits the existence of the null-determiner ‘the’ preceding bare singular names. This essay argues that they have incorrectly discerned the syntactic facts: their critical data point concerning the ungrammaticality of sentences like “The Katherine wants coffee” is mistaken. Such sentences’ grammaticality undermines the Syntactic Rationale and presents serious auxiliary problems for predicativism.

The epistemological argument against descriptivism about proper names is extremely simple. For a proper name ‘N’ and definite description ‘F’, the proposition expressed by “If N exists, then N is F” is not normally known a priori. But descriptivism about proper names entails otherwise. So descriptivism is false. The argument is widely regarded as sound. This paper aims to establish that the epistemological argument is highly unstable. The problem with the argument is that there seems to be no convincing rationale for the first premise that is independent of a view about the nature of the proposition expressed by the sentence “If N exists, then N is F”.

Overview The debate over the semantics of proper names has, of late, heated up, focusing on the relative merits of referentialism and predicativism. Referentialists maintain that the semantic function of proper names is to designate individuals. They hold that a proper name, as it occurs in a sentence in a context of use, refers to a specific individual that is its referent and has just that individual as its semantic content, its contribution to the proposition expressed by the sentence. Furthermore, a proper name contributes its referent to the proposition expressed by virtue of mechanisms of direct reference to individuals, not by virtue of expressing properties. Predicativists embrace an opposing view according to which proper names are just a special kind of common noun. Their semantic function is to designate properties of individuals. A proper name, as it occurs in a sentence in a context of use, expresses a property, and that property is its contribution to the proposition expr ..

Controversy remains over exactly why Frege aimed to estabish logicism. In this essay, I argue that the most influential interpretations of Frege's motivations fall short because they misunderstand or neglect Frege's claims that axioms must be self-evident. I offer an interpretation of his appeals to self-evidence and attempt to show that they reveal a previously overlooked motivation for establishing logicism, one which has roots in the Euclidean rationalist tradition. More specifically, my view is that Frege had two notions of self-evidence. One notion is that of a truth being foundationally secure, yet not grounded on any other truth. The second notion is that of a truth that requires only clearly grasping its content for rational, a priori justified recognition of its truth. The overarching thesis I develop is that Frege required that axioms be self-evident in both senses, and he relied on judging propositions to be self-evident as part of his fallibilist method for identifying a foundation of arithmetic. Consequently, we must recognize both notions in order to understand how Frege construes ultimate foundational proofs, his methodology for discovering and identifying such proofs, and why he thought the propositions of arithmetic required proof.

As a class of terms and mental representations, proper names and mental names possess an important function that outstrips their semantic and psycho-semantic functions as common, rigid devices of direct reference and singular mental representations of their referents, respectively. They also function as abstract linguistic markers that signal and underscore their referents' individuality. I promote this thesis to explain why we give proper names to certain particulars, but not others; to account for the transfer of singular thought via communication with proper names; and, more generally, to support a cognitivist, not acquaintance or instrumentalist, theory of singular thought.

Donnellan famously argued that while one can fix the reference of a name with a definite description, one cannot thereby have a de re belief about the named object. All that is generated is meta-linguistic knowledge that the sentence “If there is a unique F, then N is F” is true. Donnellan’s argument and the sceptical position are extremely influential. This article aims to show that Donnellan’s argument is unsound, and that the Millian who embraces Donnellan’s scepticism that the reference-fixer cannot secure the relevant de re belief faces a serious problem: Millianism about names plus scepticism about the reference-fixer’s de re belief conflicts with what seems to be an analytical thesis about the relationship between semantic content and understanding. The upshot is that the Millian has good reason to seek an alternative to scepticism

In In Defense of Pure Reason [IDPR], BonJour advances a version of moderate rationalism, the thesis that rational insight is an independent, though fallible, source of a priori epistemic justification. To demonstrate that this thesis must obtain, BonJour argues that rational insight is truth conducive and that no infallibilist rationalist theory could be correct. This article aims to establish two points: (1) BonJour’s argument for the fallibilist thesis is problematic because it invokes implausible conditions on justification, conditions that even BonJour rejects; (2) BonJour’s argument for the truth conduciveness of rational insight fails because it does not (and cannot) account for the truth-conduciveness of fallible rational insights.