In this short piece belonging to a book symposium on my book How Propaganda Works (Oxford Univers... more In this short piece belonging to a book symposium on my book How Propaganda Works (Oxford University Press, 2015), I reply to the objections, comments and suggestions provided by the contributors: Bianca Cepollaro and Giuliano Torrengo, Olúfémi O. Táíwò, and Maria Cristina Amoretti. I show how some of the objections can be accommodated by the framework adopted in the book, but also how various comments and suggestions have contributed to the development, in future work, of several threads pertaining to the general view put forward in How Propaganda Works.
Chalmers’s philosophical work exploits a distinctive version of two-dimensionalism, a formal moda... more Chalmers’s philosophical work exploits a distinctive version of two-dimensionalism, a formal modal framework from the 1960s and 1970s that one can use to define two kinds of possible worlds semantic values. Chalmers presents this as the best form of a Fregean account of content. One of the principal aims of Constructing the World is to provide its metaphysical foundations. Chalmers presents himself as vindicating a Fregean account of meaning. I will be arguing that this is incorrect; the resulting theory of meaning is not properly regarded as Fregean, because it is not a plausible theory of cognitive significance How much this poses a problem for Chalmers depends upon whether his notion of content ultimately depends upon the Fregean theory of content, i.e. the theory of content that does provide an account of cognitive significance. While Constructing the World takes the form of a vindication of something like Carnap’s project in the Aufbau, my interest in this paper is in that part...
On March 4, 1801, President Thomas Jefferson delivered one of the nation's finest inaugural addre... more On March 4, 1801, President Thomas Jefferson delivered one of the nation's finest inaugural addresses, after participating in one of its most politically divisive election cycles. Seeking common ground in an inherently unstable democratic republic, the author of the Declaration of Independence urged his audience: blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/the-ways-ofsilencing/?_r=1.
Semantic theory has been used for many different philosophical purposes, This thesis investigates... more Semantic theory has been used for many different philosophical purposes, This thesis investigates two such uses of semantic theory. The first is the use of semantic theory in providing a justification for a formal theory. The second is the use of semantic theory in yielding an account of understanding. The first paper is "Truth and Metatheory in Frege", In this paper, it is contended, against much recent work in Frege interpretation, that Frege should be credited with the first semi-rigourous formulation of a semantic theory, In so doing, it attempts to show that many of the arguments which purport to establish that Frege could not have engaged in semantic theorizing suffer from two kinds of misconceptions. The first misconception involves the notion of truth which a philosopher must accept in order to engage in such theorizing, The second misconception involves the sort of justification which these arguments assume a semantic theory attempts to provide. The second paper is "Frege's Thesis", For each primitive expression in a language, two questions may be asked. The first is: what is it in virtue of which that expression has the semantic value it does? The second is: what is it in virtue of which a speaker counts as understanding that expression? Frege's Thesis states that one answer can be given to both of these questions; that the account of what it is in virtue of which a speaker understands an express;on can also serve as the account of why that expression has the semantic value it does. In this paper, Frege's Thesis is defended. First, it is argued that some objections against it result from a confusion between semantics and metasemantics, Second, the Thesis is defended against traditional objections from Kripke and Putnam. My tenure at MIT occurred at a very special time in the history of MIT philosophy. I like to think that during my tenure at MIT, there *was* MIT philosophy-that strange mixture of the philosophies of language, logic, and mind that draws the best minds to the better half of Cambridge, One of my greatest debts is thus not to any particular person, but rather to a very special intellectual environment, one which I fear I may not encounter again, After the MIT philosophy department, my next greatest debt to a non-person is to my thesis committee. This thesis is a direct result of literally hundreds of hours of conversations-and almost as many lengthy e-mail exchanges-I have had with Robert Stalnaker, Dick Cartwright, and George Boolos, Each one of them was prepared, from my first day in the department, to drop whatever they were doing to discuss my latest idea or projects, and to share with me their own current thinking. It is no exaggeration to say that one of my central goals in life is to prove to these three people that the time and work they invested in me was worthwhile, Now to members of these groups, My greatest intellectual debt to a teacher of mine is to my thesis advisor Robert Stalnaker. Simply put, I have arrived at my views by struggling with his, both in conversation and in print. Bob's manner of doing philosophy also has greatly affected me, There is a tendency in philosophy-and especially in philosophy of language-to embrace simplistic responses to difficult problems, out of a fear of the detail and complexity an adequate response to these problems may involve, Bob's intellectual honesty in facing up to the depth and complexity of the problems which we face has given me hope that progress in philosophy is possible, 1 also owe Bob a tremendous personal debt, First of all, he has never imposed either his views or his methodology on me-virtually unheard of for a famous philosopher, Instead, he has helped me to develop my own views, even (and perhaps especially) when they depart from his, Secondly, during my years at MIT, he has patiently endured a variety of emotional explosions from my side, either stress induced (as with this year on the job market), or caused by frustrating encounters with the False (a terrifying and omnipresent being.,,), For all this, and more, I thank him. When non-MIT philosophers encounter my views, they are often shocked to find out that Richard Cartwright is on my committee, "But doesn't he tell you that your views are ridiculous?", they all ask. The answer to this is: well, yes, But he doesn't just tell me this; rather he tries to convince me that they are, As a result, Dick and I have spent a tremendous amount of time in extremely animated-and for me, extremely fruitful-discussion, My many discussions with Dick have been my greatest, and most rewarding, intellectual challenges so far in my career, Dick has also given me what is perhaps one of the greatest gifts a philosopher can give to their student: a philosophical conscience, It is now second-nature for me, whenever I am working on a problem, to attempt to formulate how Dick would challenge my approach, and what the best way to defend it against these challenges would be, Though my philosophical differences with Dick are quite large, this has never affected our working relationship, nor my feeling that we are both working on the same problems. Rather than causing me to feel that the problems have no solutions, our many clashes have brought me to a heightened awareness of their complexity and importance, George Boolos, despite his repeated disavowals of philosophical aspirations, is the greatest active philosopher of logic. It has been a great' honor (albeit often quite daunting) to be his student. I have learned to live with his twice-monthly outbursts decrying the possibilitiy of progress in philosophy, since they are punctuated by discussions of amazing profundity, It is still the case that George's paper, "To Be is to be the value of a variable (or some values of some variables)", with its marriage of philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, and metaphysics, is, after "Sense and Reference", the paper I wish most to have written in all of analytic philosophy, George's understanding of logic, its history, and its philosophy, goes so far beyond what l-or anyone I know-could ever learn about these subjects, that it has almost discouraged me from pursuing these matters. Yet his ability, in print and in discussion, to convey the philosophical richness of these disciplines, has convinced me that to be a serious philosopher, I must pursue my interests in these fields.
The overarching goal of How Propaganda Works is to provide an argument that democracy requires ma... more The overarching goal of How Propaganda Works is to provide an argument that democracy requires material equality. I hoped to forge an argument for this view without premises about morality or justice. I do not think this is as bold as it may sound. Democracy requires political equality. And political equality involves an epistemic component. This is recognizable in much traditional democratic political philosophy, which looked to a democratic or liberal education as a prerequisite for democracy. We see this, for example, in the work of W.E.B. Du Bois and John Dewey.
Stanley and Min discuss how propaganda works in liberal democratic societies. Stanley observes th... more Stanley and Min discuss how propaganda works in liberal democratic societies. Stanley observes that the inability to address the crisis of liberal democracies can be partially explained by contemporary political philosophy’s penchant for idealized theorizing about norms of justice over transitions from injustice to justice. Whereas ancient and modern political philosophers took seriously propaganda and demagoguery of the elites and populists, contemporary political philosophers have tended to theorize about the idealized structures of justice. This leads to a lack of theoretical constructs and explanatory tools by which we can theorize about real-life political problems, such as mass incarceration. Starting with this premise, Stanley provides an explanation of how propaganda works and the mechanisms that enable propaganda. Stanley further theorizes the pernicious effects that elitism, populism, authoritarianism, and “post-truth” have on democratic politics.
Neutrality functions as an ideal in deliberation—we are supposed to have a neutral standpoint in ... more Neutrality functions as an ideal in deliberation—we are supposed to have a neutral standpoint in debate, speak without bias or taking sides. We argue against the ideal of neutrality. We sketch how a theory of meaning could avoid commitment even to the coherence of a neutral space of discourse for exchanging reasons. In a model that accepts the ideal of neutrality, what makes propaganda exceptional is its non-neutrality. However, a critique of propaganda cannot take the form of “clearing out” the obstacles for a “neutral space of discourse for exchanging reasons”, since that is to misunderstand how speech works. Such a critique would suggest that any emotive appeal is fundamentally undemocratic, and would delegitimize almost all historical protest movements. In this paper, we contrast a neo-Fregean picture of the neutral core of language with our own practice-based view, a view that takes political propaganda and the language of protest as central cases, and in which all language pra...
Let’s say that discussion is neutral if perspectives and social location are irrelevant to the un... more Let’s say that discussion is neutral if perspectives and social location are irrelevant to the understanding and evaluation of each move in the discussion. If perspectives and social location are irrelevant to the discussion, the discussion is neutral. We argue that there is no such thing as a neutral discussion - neutrality is inconsistent with the metaphysics of language, and as such, is incoherent.
In April 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan, began using water from the Flint
River. The official ... more In April 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan, began using water from the Flint River. The official reason to break Flint’s long time contract with the Detroit Water and Sewage Department was financial efficiency; it was presented as a cost-cutting measure. Flint residents began immediately complaining about their water, complaints that were ignored. Thanks to the local activists, it was eventually discovered that the water was indeed corrosive, the city failed to treat it, and lead leached from the pipes into the water drunk by the city’s children and families. By September 2015, the city was acknowledging the size of the health crisis this entailed, and in October 2015, Flint switched back to Detroit water. It was too late: the damage was done, and Flint’s children have shown persistently high levels of lead—poisoned by a series of decisions that would never have been made in a majority white city. It is also now clear that relevant officials knew that the switch to the Flint River was in fact more expensive, both in the short term and the long term, than remaining with the Detroit Water and Sewage Department. Using Vesla Weaver’s concept of frontlash, I argue that a technocratic ideology combined with a certain version of racism, resembling settler colonialism, is the cause of the tragedy.
In this paper, we sketch a conception of the theory of meaning that focuses on political speech a... more In this paper, we sketch a conception of the theory of meaning that focuses on political speech as a core example, which has different goals than standard practice—such as capturing unintended communicative effects—and different key concepts, such as that of a speech practice. The book that this paper begins is devoted to adjusting, reinterpreting, and modifying tools, concepts, and understandings thereof to incorporate the resources we need to understand speech in a non-ideal world.
Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language , 2021
The study of propaganda involves understanding the communicative processes in persuading people b... more The study of propaganda involves understanding the communicative processes in persuading people by bypassing rationality. It has led philosophers and linguists to add new elements to theory of meaning - such as Elizabeth Camp’s notion of a perspective (Camp, 2013), introduced to explain the communicative effect of slurs. And it has led theorists of meaning to alter their understanding of classic notions, such as Sbisa’s argument that propaganda forces us to recognize a normative character to the rule of accommodation (Sbisa, 1999), or the more dramatic reworking of the theory of presupposition and accommodation in Beaver and Stanley (forthcoming). In studying propaganda, theorists of meaning connect to a long tradition of inquiry. We may have new terms, such as “fake news”, or study it in piecemeal, as in the case of slurs. But in studying these phenomena, theorists of meaning connect to a longer tradition. Our goal in this chapter is to contextualize and systematize this study in the context of its recent history.
In this piece, I use the distinction between liberal democratic culture and fascist culture to il... more In this piece, I use the distinction between liberal democratic culture and fascist culture to illuminate the difference between the kind of lying one finds politicians engaged in during fairly normal democratic times, and the kind of lying (if that is what it is) that occurs when fascist culture has made significant inroads. Fascism’s friend/enemy ideology underlies its vexed relationship with truth.
Shared rationality is the common ground of scientific progress. However, some theorists have argu... more Shared rationality is the common ground of scientific progress. However, some theorists have arguedthat this common ground may not be level, in that subtle assumptions embedded within lay views of rationality marginalize some would-be participants. Specifically, feminist philosophers have argued that rationality is associated with male rather than female discourse. This claim has frequently been dismissed as incoherent, but a straightforward interpretation is readily available: The concept reason is semantically associated with the concept male. We support this hypothesis in four studies (total N > 900), finding that at both the explicit and implicit level, reason is preferentially associated with male, feeling is preferentially associated with female, male faces prime unrelated judgments of reason/rationality, and gendered associations are related to interest in academic disciplines as well as estimates of the (mis)representation of women within those disciplines. Implications f...
Chalmers's philosophical work exploits a distinctive version of two-dimensionalism, a formal moda... more Chalmers's philosophical work exploits a distinctive version of two-dimensionalism, a formal modal framework from the 1960s and 1970s that one can use to define two kinds of possible worlds semantic values. Chalmers presents this as the best form of a Fregean account of content. One of the principal aims of Constructing the World is to provide its metaphysical foundations. Chalmers presents himself as vindicating a Fregean account of meaning. I will be arguing that this is incorrect; the resulting theory of meaning is not properly regarded as Fregean, because it is not a plausible theory of cognitive significance How much this poses a problem for Chalmers depends upon whether his notion of content ultimately depends upon the Fregean theory of content, that is, the theory of content that does provide an account of cognitive significance. Although Constructing the World takes the form of a vindication of something like Carnap's project in the Aufbau, my interest in this paper is in that part of Constructing the World that can be seen as vindication of another work of Carnap's, namely Meaning and Necessity. The central notion in Meaning and Necessity was analyticity. The central notion in Chalmers's Constructing the World is what Chalmers calls 'a priori scrutability', the basic characterization of which (40) is: S is a priori scrutable from C for s iff x is in a position to know a priori that if C, then S. Chalmers proposes to use a priori scrutability to 'construct' Fregean senses, via a framework very similar to the one Carnap uses in Meaning and Necessity to define modal intensions, and thereby providing a metaphysical foundation for Fregean senses. In Meaning and Necessity, Carnap constructs a modal framework, which has as points what he called state descriptions, which are maximal consistent sets of sentences. To prevent consequences such as that it is possible for there to be a round square, Carnap appeals to what he calls 'meaning postulates', which eliminate state descriptions containing sentences incompatible with analytic definitions. Intensions are on this view functions from state-descriptions to extensions. A modal intension that is true in every state description, for Carnap, is analytic. Chalmers constructs epistemic scenarios, modeling them after Carnap's state descriptions. They too are sets of sentences. An epistemic intension that is true in every epistemic scenario is a priori. Both Carnap and Chalmers develop a framework to define intensions that are intended to serve similar roles as Fregean sense in the theory of content. But there is an important difference. In Meaning and Necessity, Carnap
THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science, 2016
The overarching goal of How Propaganda Works is to provide an argument that democracy requires ma... more The overarching goal of How Propaganda Works is to provide an argument that democracy requires material equality. My aim was to forge an argument for this view without premises about morality or justice. I do so by arguing that material inequality, like other forms of inequality, has pernicious epistemic effects. Inequality results in anti-democratic flawed ideologies, such as the ideology of meritocracy, and the ideology underlying the division of labor, the subjects of the last two chapters. Propaganda plays crucial roles both in preventing us from recognizing these epistemic harms, in the form of demagoguery, and in repairing them, in the form of civic rhetoric.
According to what I call "The Asymmetry Thesis", persons, though they are the direct bearers of t... more According to what I call "The Asymmetry Thesis", persons, though they are the direct bearers of the properties expressed by mental predicates, are not the direct bearers of properties such as those expressed by "weighs 135 pounds" or "has crossed legs". A number of different views of persons entail the Asymmetry Thesis. I first argue that the Asymmetry Thesis entails an error theory about our discourse involving person referring terms. I then argue that it is further threatened by consideration of the grounds we have for self-ascribing mental and physical predicates. Introduction. Neo-Lockeans about personal identity typically do not give explicit definitions of personhood. Rather, they supply contextual definitions, definitions of the form "For any x and y, x is the same person as y if and only if x bears psychological relation R to y". So, in an important sense, neo-Lockeans do not say what persons are. But whatever entities persons turn out to be, if the neo-Lockean is correct, they must satisfy the neo-Lockean contextual definition. Since the contextual definition given by neo-Lockean theorist invokes only psychological relations on the right hand side, and entities occupying different bodies
In this short piece belonging to a book symposium on my book How Propaganda Works (Oxford Univers... more In this short piece belonging to a book symposium on my book How Propaganda Works (Oxford University Press, 2015), I reply to the objections, comments and suggestions provided by the contributors: Bianca Cepollaro and Giuliano Torrengo, Olúfémi O. Táíwò, and Maria Cristina Amoretti. I show how some of the objections can be accommodated by the framework adopted in the book, but also how various comments and suggestions have contributed to the development, in future work, of several threads pertaining to the general view put forward in How Propaganda Works.
Chalmers’s philosophical work exploits a distinctive version of two-dimensionalism, a formal moda... more Chalmers’s philosophical work exploits a distinctive version of two-dimensionalism, a formal modal framework from the 1960s and 1970s that one can use to define two kinds of possible worlds semantic values. Chalmers presents this as the best form of a Fregean account of content. One of the principal aims of Constructing the World is to provide its metaphysical foundations. Chalmers presents himself as vindicating a Fregean account of meaning. I will be arguing that this is incorrect; the resulting theory of meaning is not properly regarded as Fregean, because it is not a plausible theory of cognitive significance How much this poses a problem for Chalmers depends upon whether his notion of content ultimately depends upon the Fregean theory of content, i.e. the theory of content that does provide an account of cognitive significance. While Constructing the World takes the form of a vindication of something like Carnap’s project in the Aufbau, my interest in this paper is in that part...
On March 4, 1801, President Thomas Jefferson delivered one of the nation's finest inaugural addre... more On March 4, 1801, President Thomas Jefferson delivered one of the nation's finest inaugural addresses, after participating in one of its most politically divisive election cycles. Seeking common ground in an inherently unstable democratic republic, the author of the Declaration of Independence urged his audience: blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/the-ways-ofsilencing/?_r=1.
Semantic theory has been used for many different philosophical purposes, This thesis investigates... more Semantic theory has been used for many different philosophical purposes, This thesis investigates two such uses of semantic theory. The first is the use of semantic theory in providing a justification for a formal theory. The second is the use of semantic theory in yielding an account of understanding. The first paper is "Truth and Metatheory in Frege", In this paper, it is contended, against much recent work in Frege interpretation, that Frege should be credited with the first semi-rigourous formulation of a semantic theory, In so doing, it attempts to show that many of the arguments which purport to establish that Frege could not have engaged in semantic theorizing suffer from two kinds of misconceptions. The first misconception involves the notion of truth which a philosopher must accept in order to engage in such theorizing, The second misconception involves the sort of justification which these arguments assume a semantic theory attempts to provide. The second paper is "Frege's Thesis", For each primitive expression in a language, two questions may be asked. The first is: what is it in virtue of which that expression has the semantic value it does? The second is: what is it in virtue of which a speaker counts as understanding that expression? Frege's Thesis states that one answer can be given to both of these questions; that the account of what it is in virtue of which a speaker understands an express;on can also serve as the account of why that expression has the semantic value it does. In this paper, Frege's Thesis is defended. First, it is argued that some objections against it result from a confusion between semantics and metasemantics, Second, the Thesis is defended against traditional objections from Kripke and Putnam. My tenure at MIT occurred at a very special time in the history of MIT philosophy. I like to think that during my tenure at MIT, there *was* MIT philosophy-that strange mixture of the philosophies of language, logic, and mind that draws the best minds to the better half of Cambridge, One of my greatest debts is thus not to any particular person, but rather to a very special intellectual environment, one which I fear I may not encounter again, After the MIT philosophy department, my next greatest debt to a non-person is to my thesis committee. This thesis is a direct result of literally hundreds of hours of conversations-and almost as many lengthy e-mail exchanges-I have had with Robert Stalnaker, Dick Cartwright, and George Boolos, Each one of them was prepared, from my first day in the department, to drop whatever they were doing to discuss my latest idea or projects, and to share with me their own current thinking. It is no exaggeration to say that one of my central goals in life is to prove to these three people that the time and work they invested in me was worthwhile, Now to members of these groups, My greatest intellectual debt to a teacher of mine is to my thesis advisor Robert Stalnaker. Simply put, I have arrived at my views by struggling with his, both in conversation and in print. Bob's manner of doing philosophy also has greatly affected me, There is a tendency in philosophy-and especially in philosophy of language-to embrace simplistic responses to difficult problems, out of a fear of the detail and complexity an adequate response to these problems may involve, Bob's intellectual honesty in facing up to the depth and complexity of the problems which we face has given me hope that progress in philosophy is possible, 1 also owe Bob a tremendous personal debt, First of all, he has never imposed either his views or his methodology on me-virtually unheard of for a famous philosopher, Instead, he has helped me to develop my own views, even (and perhaps especially) when they depart from his, Secondly, during my years at MIT, he has patiently endured a variety of emotional explosions from my side, either stress induced (as with this year on the job market), or caused by frustrating encounters with the False (a terrifying and omnipresent being.,,), For all this, and more, I thank him. When non-MIT philosophers encounter my views, they are often shocked to find out that Richard Cartwright is on my committee, "But doesn't he tell you that your views are ridiculous?", they all ask. The answer to this is: well, yes, But he doesn't just tell me this; rather he tries to convince me that they are, As a result, Dick and I have spent a tremendous amount of time in extremely animated-and for me, extremely fruitful-discussion, My many discussions with Dick have been my greatest, and most rewarding, intellectual challenges so far in my career, Dick has also given me what is perhaps one of the greatest gifts a philosopher can give to their student: a philosophical conscience, It is now second-nature for me, whenever I am working on a problem, to attempt to formulate how Dick would challenge my approach, and what the best way to defend it against these challenges would be, Though my philosophical differences with Dick are quite large, this has never affected our working relationship, nor my feeling that we are both working on the same problems. Rather than causing me to feel that the problems have no solutions, our many clashes have brought me to a heightened awareness of their complexity and importance, George Boolos, despite his repeated disavowals of philosophical aspirations, is the greatest active philosopher of logic. It has been a great' honor (albeit often quite daunting) to be his student. I have learned to live with his twice-monthly outbursts decrying the possibilitiy of progress in philosophy, since they are punctuated by discussions of amazing profundity, It is still the case that George's paper, "To Be is to be the value of a variable (or some values of some variables)", with its marriage of philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, and metaphysics, is, after "Sense and Reference", the paper I wish most to have written in all of analytic philosophy, George's understanding of logic, its history, and its philosophy, goes so far beyond what l-or anyone I know-could ever learn about these subjects, that it has almost discouraged me from pursuing these matters. Yet his ability, in print and in discussion, to convey the philosophical richness of these disciplines, has convinced me that to be a serious philosopher, I must pursue my interests in these fields.
The overarching goal of How Propaganda Works is to provide an argument that democracy requires ma... more The overarching goal of How Propaganda Works is to provide an argument that democracy requires material equality. I hoped to forge an argument for this view without premises about morality or justice. I do not think this is as bold as it may sound. Democracy requires political equality. And political equality involves an epistemic component. This is recognizable in much traditional democratic political philosophy, which looked to a democratic or liberal education as a prerequisite for democracy. We see this, for example, in the work of W.E.B. Du Bois and John Dewey.
Stanley and Min discuss how propaganda works in liberal democratic societies. Stanley observes th... more Stanley and Min discuss how propaganda works in liberal democratic societies. Stanley observes that the inability to address the crisis of liberal democracies can be partially explained by contemporary political philosophy’s penchant for idealized theorizing about norms of justice over transitions from injustice to justice. Whereas ancient and modern political philosophers took seriously propaganda and demagoguery of the elites and populists, contemporary political philosophers have tended to theorize about the idealized structures of justice. This leads to a lack of theoretical constructs and explanatory tools by which we can theorize about real-life political problems, such as mass incarceration. Starting with this premise, Stanley provides an explanation of how propaganda works and the mechanisms that enable propaganda. Stanley further theorizes the pernicious effects that elitism, populism, authoritarianism, and “post-truth” have on democratic politics.
Neutrality functions as an ideal in deliberation—we are supposed to have a neutral standpoint in ... more Neutrality functions as an ideal in deliberation—we are supposed to have a neutral standpoint in debate, speak without bias or taking sides. We argue against the ideal of neutrality. We sketch how a theory of meaning could avoid commitment even to the coherence of a neutral space of discourse for exchanging reasons. In a model that accepts the ideal of neutrality, what makes propaganda exceptional is its non-neutrality. However, a critique of propaganda cannot take the form of “clearing out” the obstacles for a “neutral space of discourse for exchanging reasons”, since that is to misunderstand how speech works. Such a critique would suggest that any emotive appeal is fundamentally undemocratic, and would delegitimize almost all historical protest movements. In this paper, we contrast a neo-Fregean picture of the neutral core of language with our own practice-based view, a view that takes political propaganda and the language of protest as central cases, and in which all language pra...
Let’s say that discussion is neutral if perspectives and social location are irrelevant to the un... more Let’s say that discussion is neutral if perspectives and social location are irrelevant to the understanding and evaluation of each move in the discussion. If perspectives and social location are irrelevant to the discussion, the discussion is neutral. We argue that there is no such thing as a neutral discussion - neutrality is inconsistent with the metaphysics of language, and as such, is incoherent.
In April 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan, began using water from the Flint
River. The official ... more In April 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan, began using water from the Flint River. The official reason to break Flint’s long time contract with the Detroit Water and Sewage Department was financial efficiency; it was presented as a cost-cutting measure. Flint residents began immediately complaining about their water, complaints that were ignored. Thanks to the local activists, it was eventually discovered that the water was indeed corrosive, the city failed to treat it, and lead leached from the pipes into the water drunk by the city’s children and families. By September 2015, the city was acknowledging the size of the health crisis this entailed, and in October 2015, Flint switched back to Detroit water. It was too late: the damage was done, and Flint’s children have shown persistently high levels of lead—poisoned by a series of decisions that would never have been made in a majority white city. It is also now clear that relevant officials knew that the switch to the Flint River was in fact more expensive, both in the short term and the long term, than remaining with the Detroit Water and Sewage Department. Using Vesla Weaver’s concept of frontlash, I argue that a technocratic ideology combined with a certain version of racism, resembling settler colonialism, is the cause of the tragedy.
In this paper, we sketch a conception of the theory of meaning that focuses on political speech a... more In this paper, we sketch a conception of the theory of meaning that focuses on political speech as a core example, which has different goals than standard practice—such as capturing unintended communicative effects—and different key concepts, such as that of a speech practice. The book that this paper begins is devoted to adjusting, reinterpreting, and modifying tools, concepts, and understandings thereof to incorporate the resources we need to understand speech in a non-ideal world.
Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language , 2021
The study of propaganda involves understanding the communicative processes in persuading people b... more The study of propaganda involves understanding the communicative processes in persuading people by bypassing rationality. It has led philosophers and linguists to add new elements to theory of meaning - such as Elizabeth Camp’s notion of a perspective (Camp, 2013), introduced to explain the communicative effect of slurs. And it has led theorists of meaning to alter their understanding of classic notions, such as Sbisa’s argument that propaganda forces us to recognize a normative character to the rule of accommodation (Sbisa, 1999), or the more dramatic reworking of the theory of presupposition and accommodation in Beaver and Stanley (forthcoming). In studying propaganda, theorists of meaning connect to a long tradition of inquiry. We may have new terms, such as “fake news”, or study it in piecemeal, as in the case of slurs. But in studying these phenomena, theorists of meaning connect to a longer tradition. Our goal in this chapter is to contextualize and systematize this study in the context of its recent history.
In this piece, I use the distinction between liberal democratic culture and fascist culture to il... more In this piece, I use the distinction between liberal democratic culture and fascist culture to illuminate the difference between the kind of lying one finds politicians engaged in during fairly normal democratic times, and the kind of lying (if that is what it is) that occurs when fascist culture has made significant inroads. Fascism’s friend/enemy ideology underlies its vexed relationship with truth.
Shared rationality is the common ground of scientific progress. However, some theorists have argu... more Shared rationality is the common ground of scientific progress. However, some theorists have arguedthat this common ground may not be level, in that subtle assumptions embedded within lay views of rationality marginalize some would-be participants. Specifically, feminist philosophers have argued that rationality is associated with male rather than female discourse. This claim has frequently been dismissed as incoherent, but a straightforward interpretation is readily available: The concept reason is semantically associated with the concept male. We support this hypothesis in four studies (total N > 900), finding that at both the explicit and implicit level, reason is preferentially associated with male, feeling is preferentially associated with female, male faces prime unrelated judgments of reason/rationality, and gendered associations are related to interest in academic disciplines as well as estimates of the (mis)representation of women within those disciplines. Implications f...
Chalmers's philosophical work exploits a distinctive version of two-dimensionalism, a formal moda... more Chalmers's philosophical work exploits a distinctive version of two-dimensionalism, a formal modal framework from the 1960s and 1970s that one can use to define two kinds of possible worlds semantic values. Chalmers presents this as the best form of a Fregean account of content. One of the principal aims of Constructing the World is to provide its metaphysical foundations. Chalmers presents himself as vindicating a Fregean account of meaning. I will be arguing that this is incorrect; the resulting theory of meaning is not properly regarded as Fregean, because it is not a plausible theory of cognitive significance How much this poses a problem for Chalmers depends upon whether his notion of content ultimately depends upon the Fregean theory of content, that is, the theory of content that does provide an account of cognitive significance. Although Constructing the World takes the form of a vindication of something like Carnap's project in the Aufbau, my interest in this paper is in that part of Constructing the World that can be seen as vindication of another work of Carnap's, namely Meaning and Necessity. The central notion in Meaning and Necessity was analyticity. The central notion in Chalmers's Constructing the World is what Chalmers calls 'a priori scrutability', the basic characterization of which (40) is: S is a priori scrutable from C for s iff x is in a position to know a priori that if C, then S. Chalmers proposes to use a priori scrutability to 'construct' Fregean senses, via a framework very similar to the one Carnap uses in Meaning and Necessity to define modal intensions, and thereby providing a metaphysical foundation for Fregean senses. In Meaning and Necessity, Carnap constructs a modal framework, which has as points what he called state descriptions, which are maximal consistent sets of sentences. To prevent consequences such as that it is possible for there to be a round square, Carnap appeals to what he calls 'meaning postulates', which eliminate state descriptions containing sentences incompatible with analytic definitions. Intensions are on this view functions from state-descriptions to extensions. A modal intension that is true in every state description, for Carnap, is analytic. Chalmers constructs epistemic scenarios, modeling them after Carnap's state descriptions. They too are sets of sentences. An epistemic intension that is true in every epistemic scenario is a priori. Both Carnap and Chalmers develop a framework to define intensions that are intended to serve similar roles as Fregean sense in the theory of content. But there is an important difference. In Meaning and Necessity, Carnap
THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science, 2016
The overarching goal of How Propaganda Works is to provide an argument that democracy requires ma... more The overarching goal of How Propaganda Works is to provide an argument that democracy requires material equality. My aim was to forge an argument for this view without premises about morality or justice. I do so by arguing that material inequality, like other forms of inequality, has pernicious epistemic effects. Inequality results in anti-democratic flawed ideologies, such as the ideology of meritocracy, and the ideology underlying the division of labor, the subjects of the last two chapters. Propaganda plays crucial roles both in preventing us from recognizing these epistemic harms, in the form of demagoguery, and in repairing them, in the form of civic rhetoric.
According to what I call "The Asymmetry Thesis", persons, though they are the direct bearers of t... more According to what I call "The Asymmetry Thesis", persons, though they are the direct bearers of the properties expressed by mental predicates, are not the direct bearers of properties such as those expressed by "weighs 135 pounds" or "has crossed legs". A number of different views of persons entail the Asymmetry Thesis. I first argue that the Asymmetry Thesis entails an error theory about our discourse involving person referring terms. I then argue that it is further threatened by consideration of the grounds we have for self-ascribing mental and physical predicates. Introduction. Neo-Lockeans about personal identity typically do not give explicit definitions of personhood. Rather, they supply contextual definitions, definitions of the form "For any x and y, x is the same person as y if and only if x bears psychological relation R to y". So, in an important sense, neo-Lockeans do not say what persons are. But whatever entities persons turn out to be, if the neo-Lockean is correct, they must satisfy the neo-Lockean contextual definition. Since the contextual definition given by neo-Lockean theorist invokes only psychological relations on the right hand side, and entities occupying different bodies
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discussion, the discussion is neutral. We argue that there is no such thing as a neutral discussion - neutrality is inconsistent with the metaphysics of language, and as such, is incoherent.
River. The official reason to break Flint’s long time contract with the Detroit
Water and Sewage Department was financial efficiency; it was presented as
a cost-cutting measure. Flint residents began immediately complaining about their water, complaints that were ignored. Thanks to the local activists, it was eventually discovered that the water was indeed corrosive, the city failed to treat it, and lead leached from the pipes into the water drunk by the city’s children and families. By September 2015, the city was acknowledging the size of the health crisis this entailed, and in October 2015, Flint switched back to Detroit water. It was too late: the damage was done, and Flint’s children have shown persistently high levels of lead—poisoned by a series of decisions that would never have been made in a majority white city. It is also now clear that relevant officials knew that the switch to the Flint River was in fact more expensive, both in the short term and the long term, than remaining with the Detroit Water and Sewage Department. Using Vesla Weaver’s concept of frontlash, I argue that a technocratic ideology combined with a certain version of racism, resembling settler colonialism, is the cause of the tragedy.
meaning - such as Elizabeth Camp’s notion of a perspective (Camp, 2013), introduced to explain the communicative effect of slurs. And it has led theorists of meaning to alter their understanding of classic notions, such as Sbisa’s argument that propaganda forces us to recognize a normative character to the rule of accommodation (Sbisa, 1999), or the more dramatic reworking of the theory of presupposition and accommodation in Beaver and Stanley (forthcoming). In studying propaganda, theorists of meaning
connect to a long tradition of inquiry. We may have new terms, such as “fake news”, or study it in piecemeal, as in the case of slurs. But in studying these phenomena, theorists of meaning connect to a longer tradition. Our goal in this chapter is to contextualize and systematize this study in the context of
its recent history.
discussion, the discussion is neutral. We argue that there is no such thing as a neutral discussion - neutrality is inconsistent with the metaphysics of language, and as such, is incoherent.
River. The official reason to break Flint’s long time contract with the Detroit
Water and Sewage Department was financial efficiency; it was presented as
a cost-cutting measure. Flint residents began immediately complaining about their water, complaints that were ignored. Thanks to the local activists, it was eventually discovered that the water was indeed corrosive, the city failed to treat it, and lead leached from the pipes into the water drunk by the city’s children and families. By September 2015, the city was acknowledging the size of the health crisis this entailed, and in October 2015, Flint switched back to Detroit water. It was too late: the damage was done, and Flint’s children have shown persistently high levels of lead—poisoned by a series of decisions that would never have been made in a majority white city. It is also now clear that relevant officials knew that the switch to the Flint River was in fact more expensive, both in the short term and the long term, than remaining with the Detroit Water and Sewage Department. Using Vesla Weaver’s concept of frontlash, I argue that a technocratic ideology combined with a certain version of racism, resembling settler colonialism, is the cause of the tragedy.
meaning - such as Elizabeth Camp’s notion of a perspective (Camp, 2013), introduced to explain the communicative effect of slurs. And it has led theorists of meaning to alter their understanding of classic notions, such as Sbisa’s argument that propaganda forces us to recognize a normative character to the rule of accommodation (Sbisa, 1999), or the more dramatic reworking of the theory of presupposition and accommodation in Beaver and Stanley (forthcoming). In studying propaganda, theorists of meaning
connect to a long tradition of inquiry. We may have new terms, such as “fake news”, or study it in piecemeal, as in the case of slurs. But in studying these phenomena, theorists of meaning connect to a longer tradition. Our goal in this chapter is to contextualize and systematize this study in the context of
its recent history.