El propósito principal de este artículo es presentar un modelo teórico-metodológico de estudios del discurso desde una perspectiva social e ideológica y precisar el papel de los recursos interpersonales del lenguaje para dar cuenta de la explicación de fenómenos sociales. De manera particular se describe y explica el potencial analítico que ofrece el sistema de valoración para los estudios del discurso. Con el objeto de dar cuenta de una manera comprehensiva de este sistema, se ilustra cada uno de los sub-sistemas (...) y categorías propuestas con ejemplos provenientes de un corpus oral y escrito sobre las prácticas discursivas de transmisión pedagógica de las memorias históricas de un pasado reciente de violación a los derechos humanos cometidos durante la dictadura civil-militar de Augusto Pinochet en Chile. (shrink)

In this article we explore the semantic category of graduation, specifically force, which builds the symbolic dimension of time in historical discourses. Our aim is to provide a more refined and extensive theoretical framework to analyse the symbolic construction of time in historical discourses – one that allows us to take into consideration how social, political and economic processes and events are represented and valued in historical discourses. We propose that this symbolic ‘scenification’ of time is constructed in the discourse (...) by a combination and accumulation of congruent and metaphorical lexico-grammatical resources. In this manner, meanings of quantification of time as duration and sequencing tend to be expressed in a more congruent way, whereas meanings of intensification of time as accelerating, deepening and expectation tend to be expressed in a more metaphorical manner by means of processes and nominalizations. The chronological dimension of time imbricates the symbolic dimension in a way that allows historians and sociologists to legitimate particular historical memories of the recent Chilean past. (shrink)

This article offers an analysis of the Spanish derivative morphology potential for graduating attitudinal meanings regarding the expression of political crisis and of contested meanings of human rights violations in the discourse of recent Chilean History. This study is framed in the typological principles of Systemic Functional Linguistics and in the appraisal system, particularly in the sub-system of graduation. The analysis demonstrates on one hand the productive role of the suffixes -ada and -azo when graduating attitudinal meanings regarding the expression (...) of social and political crisis in the discourse of history. These suffixes can graduate at the rank of the morpheme, word and group and also be involved in an inter-stratal tension that is functioning as an experiential grammatical metaphor that works in combination with a lexical metaphor intensifying time and events in an incongruent manner. On the other hand, the analysis shows that when dealing with traumatic and argued meanings of state terror, extreme degree suffixes -ísimo/a/s play a critical role in the intensification of qualities and in the quantification as amount and extent in a congruent manner. Spanish suffixes can graduate by sub-modification in the lower rank of a word structure instead of at the group structure contributing to the building of constellation of patterns of evoked and inscribed interpersonal meanings in the discourse. (shrink)

Este trabajo trata de las relaciones, inexistentes, probables o seguras, entre ambos escritores teniendo en cuenta cuatro aspectos: si se conocieron; la presencia de Tirso en Cervantes, la influencia de Cervantes en Tirso y la evocación cervantina en la obra del Mercedario. This article analyses the non-existent, probable or concrete relationships between both writers: Cervantes and Tirso de Molina. The analysis focuses on four aspects: the probability that both of them met and knew each other, the presence of Tirso in (...) the works by Cervantes, the influence of Cervantes in the plays of Tirso and Cervantes evocation in the works of the friar. (shrink)

Civility is often treated as an essential virtue in liberal democracies that promise to protect diversity as well as active disagreement in the public sphere. Yet the fear that our tolerant society faces a crisis of incivility is gaining ground. Politicians and public intellectuals call for "more civility" as the solution--but is civility really a virtue? Or is it something more sinister--a covert demand for conformity that silences dissent? Mere Civility sheds light on this tension in contemporary political theory and (...) practice by examining similar appeals to civility in early modern debates about religious toleration. In seventeenth-century England, figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the wars of words and "persecution of the tongue" between sectarians would be required; and yet, they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution.--. (shrink)

Intuitions about retractions have been used to motivate truth relativism about certain types of claims. Among these figure epistemic modals, knowledge attributions, or personal taste claims. On MacFarlane’s prominent relativist proposal, sentences like “the ice cream might be in the freezer” or “Pocoyo is funny” are only assigned a truth-value relative to contexts of utterance and contexts of assessment. Retractions play a crucial role in the argument for assessment-relativism. A retraction of a past assertion is supposed to be mandatory whenever (...) the asserted sentence is not true at the context of use and the context of assessment. If retractions were not obligatory in these conditions, there would be no normative difference between assessment-relativism and contextualism. The main goal of this paper is to undermine the claim that retractions reveal this normative difference. To this effect, the paper offers a review of three important objections to the obligatoriness of retractions. Taken together, these objections make a strong case against the alleged support that retractions give to assessment-relativism. The objections are moreover supported by recent experimental results that are also discussed. This will satisfy a further goal, which is to undermine the idea that there is a constitutive retraction rule. The paper also discusses two ways to understand what such a rule would be constitutive of, and concludes with a discussion of how to describe what retractions are. (shrink)

The idea that one can 'soak up' someone else's mood or sense the tension in a room is familiar - as in 'negative energy'. This ability to borrow or share states of mind is now pathologized, as the author shows in relation to affective transfer in psychiatric clinics.

When German authorities established the Theresienstadt Ghetto for Bohemian and Moravian Jews in late 1941, the site initially functioned much like other ghettos and transit camps at the time, as a mere way station to sites of extermination further East. The decision to reconfigure the ghetto as a site of internment for select “privileged” groups of Jews from Germany and Western Europe, and its advertisement as a “Jewish settlement” in Nazi propaganda, constituted an apparent paradox for a regime that sought (...) to make the Greater German Reich “judenrein” (clean of Jews). This article investigates the Theresienstadt Ghetto from a historical-spatial perspective and argues that varying prejudices and degrees of antisemitism shaped divergent “spatial solutions” to segregate Jews from non-Jews, wherein the perceived divide between so-called “Ostjuden” and assimilated Western Jews played a central role. In this analysis, Theresienstadt emerges as a logical culmination to paradoxical policies designed to segregate select groups of German and assimilated Western European Jews. (shrink)

Cultural diversity is an increasingly important phenomenon that affects not only social and political harmony but also the cohesion and efficiency of organisations. The problems that firms have with regard to managing cultural diversity have been abundantly studied in recent decades from the perspectives of management theory and moral philosophy, but there are still open questions that require deeper reflection and broader empirical analysis. Managing cultural diversity in organisations is of prime importance because it involves harmonising different values, beliefs, credos (...) and customs, and, in essence, human identity. Taking into consideration these cultural differences and harmonising them is a human rights issue and a central dimension of corporate social responsibility. Here we are going to focus on theoretical reflection about the ideas that lie behind corporate policies and organisational initiatives that deal with cultural diversity. The aim of our paper is twofold: to present a critical reflection on the ideology of tolerance, and propose an ideology of respect for dealing with cultural diversity. We start by presenting the plurality of interpretations of the concept of ideology, and justify its applicability to the field of cultural diversity. We then reflect on the differences between “tolerance” and “respect” and identifying the practical implications for managing cultural diversity. And finally, we propose a culture of respect that goes beyond tolerance and complements and legitimizes the “business case” perspective for managing cultural diversity in companies. The ideology of respect is based on the Kantian tradition and on the discursive approach where rational dialogue and argumentation are considered the legitimate process for creating a culture of intercultural respect. From this theoretical discussion of the key philosophical concepts we can suggest some general principles for managing cultural diversity in organisations. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that hate speech expresses hate, and answer some objections to expressivist views. First, I briefly comment on some limitations of pragmatic accounts of harmful speech. I then present an expressive-normative view of derogatory discourse according to which it is expressive of an affective state by presupposing it. A linguistic act expressive of an affective state inherits the normativity that is constitutive of that state, as directed to its intentional object. If the act is successful, it (...) updates the conversational context with the normative appraisal conditions of the affective state presupposed. I argue that this model can be applied to hate speech. I rely on current research on the psychology of hate to identify the appraisal conditions, action tendencies, and motivational goals characteristic of hate. The account supplements other pragmatic accounts of hate speech. (shrink)

Literature on consumer ethics tends to focus on issues within the public sphere, such as the environment, and treats other drivers of consumption decisions, such as family, as non-moral concerns. Consequently, an attitude–behaviour gap is viewed as a straightforward failure by consumers to act ethically. We argue that this is based upon a view of consumer behaviour as linear and unproblematic, and an approach to moral reasoning, arising from a stereotypically masculine understanding of morality, which foregrounds abstract principles. By demonstrating (...) the importance of context to consumption decisions and articulating the impact of caring relationships, we highlight how such decisions are both complex and situated. This is particularly evident for decisions involving the needs of others, as occurs in family life. We argue that the incorporation of care ethics provides both theoretical insights and a more complete account of consumer ethics. This is explored empirically through an investigation of the ethical dilemmas arising from consumption decisions made by mothers of young children. Such decisions juxtapose an ethical consumption orientation with care for one’s child. Therefore, what has been previously considered a failure to act ethically may in fact be the outcome of complex decision making, which involves competing ethical considerations. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice and how this approach to consumer ethics could be applied more widely. (shrink)

Concepts stand at the centre of human cognition. We use concepts in categorizing objects and events in the world, in reasoning and action, and in social interaction. It is therefore not surprising that the study of concepts constitutes a central area of research in philosophy and psychology, yet only recently have the two disciplines developed greater interaction. Recent experiments in psychology that test the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning have found a great deal of variation, across individuals and (...) cultures, in categorization behaviour. Meanwhile, philosophers of language and mind have investigated the semantic properties of concepts, and how concepts are related to linguistic meaning and linguistic communication. A key motivation behind this was the idea that concepts must be shared across individuals and cultures. With the dawn of experimental philosophy, the proposal that the experimental data from psychology lacks relevance to semantics is increasingly difficult to defend. -/- This volume brings together leading psychologists and philosophers to advance the interdisciplinary debate on the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning, the relationship between concepts and linguistic meaning and communication, the challenges conceptual variation poses to communication, and the social and political effects of conceptual change. (shrink)

In History After Lacan, Teresa Brennan argues that Jacques Lacan was not an ahistorical post-structuralist. She tells the story of a social psychosis, beginning with a discussion of Lacan's neglected theory of history which argued that we are in the grip of a psychotic's era which began in the seventeenth century and climaxes in the present. By extending and elaborating on Lacan's theory, Brennan develops a general theory of modernity. Contrary to postmodern assumptions, she argues, we need a general (...) historical explanation. An understanding of historical dynamics is essential if we are to make the connections between the outstanding facts of modernity--ethnocentrism, the relation between the sexes, and ecological catastrophe. A challenging feminist, interdisciplinary study, History After Lacan will be essential reading for social, cultural, and political theorists, historians, psychoanalysts, and literary theorists. (shrink)

Words change meaning, usually in unpredictable ways. But some words’ meanings are revised intentionally. Revisionary projects are normally put forward in the service of some purpose – some serve specific goals of inquiry, and others serve ethical, political or social aims. Revisionist projects can ameliorate meanings, but they can also pervert. In this paper, I want to draw attention to the dangers of meaning perversions, and argue that the self-declared goodness of a revisionist project doesn’t suffice to avoid meaning perversions. (...) The road to Hell, or to horrors on Earth, is paved with good intentions. Finally and more importantly, I want to demarcate what meaning perversions are. This, I hope, can help us assess the moral and political legitimacy of revisionary projects. (shrink)

Both the diagnosis and medical treatment of gender dysphoria —particularly in children and adolescents—have been the subject of significant controversy in recent years. In this paper, we outline the means by which GD is diagnosed in children and adolescents, the currently available treatment options, and the bioethical issues these currently raise. In particular, we argue that the families and healthcare providers of children presenting with GD currently face two main ethical dilemmas in decision making regarding treatment: the pathway dilemma and (...) the consent dilemma. (shrink)

The `riddle of femininity', like Freud's reference to women's sexuality as a `dark continent', has been treated as a romantic aside or a sexist evasion, rather than a problem to be solved. In this first comprehensive study, Teresa Brennan suggests that by placing these theories in the context of Freud's work overall, we will begin to understand why femininity was such a riddle for Freud.

This article investigates the specific cultural and collaborative nature of China’s public spaces and how they are formed through performative appropriations. Collective cultural practices as political participation were encouraged during the Mao era when cultural activities played a key role in workers’ education and participation. Since the opening-up period, performance in public space has become widespread in China and creates alternative community spaces that constitute alternatives to capitalist spaces of consumption. Using Habermas’s theory of communicative action, we argue that cultural (...) practices performed in public space create a proletariat public sphere that plays a wider role in governance and China’s democratization. Further, the article examines performative practices in public space. It traces the popular activity of public square dancing through history and counters this research with a parallel study of a much younger skateboarding practice. The two practices are very differently rooted. Yet both practices appear to move through cycles of disruption and appropriation, followed by an affirmation of governmental rule. The studies reveal that western ideas of citizenship and individual leisure are less applicable. Public spaces are largely managed through collaborative practices, whereas contemporary scholarship reaffirms Fei Xiaotong’s description of Chinese society as individuals positioned within a complex network of concentric circles. (shrink)

Kaplan (1999) argued that a different dimension of expressive meaning (“use-conditional”, as opposed to truth-conditional) is required to characterize the meaning of pejoratives, including slurs and racial epithets. Elaborating on this, writers have argued that the expressive meaning of pejoratives and slurs is either a conventional implicature (Potts 2007) or a presupposition (Macià 2002 and 2014, Schlenker 2007, Cepollaro and Stojanovic 2016). We argue that an expressive presuppositional theory accounts well for the data, but that expressive presuppositions are not just (...) propositions to be added to a common ground. We hold that expressives, including pejoratives and slurs, make requirements on a contextual record governed by sui generis norms specific to affective attitudes and their expressions. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one right logic. A particular version of the view, what is sometimes called domain-specific logical pluralism, has it that the right logic and connectives depend somehow on the domain of use, or context of use, or the linguistic framework. This type of view has a problem with cross-framework communication, though: it seems that all such communication turns into merely verbal disputes. If two people approach the same domain with different logics (...) as their guide, then they may be using different connectives, and hence talking past each other. In this situation, if we think we are having a conversation about “¬A\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\lnot A$$\end{document}”, but are using different “¬\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\lnot $$\end{document}”s, then we are not really talking about the same thing. The communication problem prevents legitimate disagreements about logic, which is a bad result. In this paper I articulate a possible solution to this problem, without giving up pluralism, which requires adopting a notion of metalinguistic negotiation, and allows people to communicate and disagree across domains/contexts/frameworks. (shrink)

Lacan was not an ahistorical post-structuralist. Starting from this controversial premiss, Teresa Brennan tells the story of a social psychosis. She begins by recovering Lacan's neglected theory of history which argued that we are in the grip of a psychotic's era which began in the seventeenth century and climaxes in the present. By extending and elaborating Lacan's theory, Brennan develops a general theory of modernity. Contrary to postmodern assumptions, she argues, we need general historical explanation. An understanding of historical (...) dynamics is essential if we are to make the connections between the outstanding facts of modernity - ethnocentrism, the relationship between the sexes and ecological catastrophe. (shrink)

In this landmark collection of original essays, outstanding feminist critics in Britain, France, and the United States present new perspectives on feminism and ...

This article argues that a particular metaphysical model permeates cultural practices surrounding pregnancy: the foetal container model. Widespread uncritical reliance on this view of pregnancy has been highly detrimental to women's liberty and reproductive autonomy. In this article, I extend existing critiques of the medical treatment of pregnant women to the context of the burgeoning commercial surrogacy industry. In doing so, I aim to show that our philosophical analysis in both spheres is constrained by the presupposition that the foetus and (...) pregnant woman are metaphysically and ethically distinct entities. By exploring the similarities and differences between the expectations placed on pregnant women in these two spheres, I show that the foetal container model is not a homogeneous understanding of pregnancy applied consistently across contexts; rather, it has been used to justify various practices and attitudes toward pregnancy and pregnant women through different moral frameworks, in the service of different overarching aims. (shrink)

We are logical pluralists who hold that the right logic is dependent on the domain of investigation; different logics for different mathematical theories. The purpose of this article is to explore the ramifications for our pluralism concerning normativity. Is there any normative role for logic, once we give up its universality? We discuss Florian Steingerger’s “Frege and Carnap on the Normativity of Logic” as a source for possible types of normativity, and then turn to our own proposal, which postulates that (...) various logics are constitutive for thought within particular practices, but none are constitutive for thought as such. (shrink)

Hom and May (2015) argue that pejoratives mean negative prescriptive properties that externally depend on social ideologies, and that this entails a form of fictionalism: pejoratives have null extensions. There are relevant uses of fictional terms that are necessary to describe the content of fictions, and to make true statements about the world, that do not convey that speakers are committed to the fiction. This paper shows that the same constructions with pejoratives typically convey that the speaker is committed to (...) racist ideologies, in contrast with fictional discourse that typically does not. The disanalogy undermines the plausibility of fictionalism about pejoratives. Moreover, the exceptions—uncommitted uses in embedded constructions—display features that conflict with Hom and May's explanation of committed uses as conversational implicatures. (shrink)

This paper presents a new view of logical pluralism. This pluralism takes into account how the logical connectives shift, depending on the context in which they occur. Using the Question-Under-Discussion Framework as formulated by Craige Roberts, I identify the contextual factor that is responsible for this shift. I then provide an account of the meanings of the logical connectives which can accommodate this factor. Finally, I suggest that this new pluralism has a certain Carnapian flavour. Questions about the meanings of (...) the connectives or the best logic outside of a specified context are not legitimate questions. (shrink)

The distinction between essential versus accidental properties has been characterized in various ways, but it is currently most commonly understood in modal terms: an essential property of an object is a property that it must have, while an accidental property of an object is one that it happens to have but that it could lack. Let’s call this the basic modal characterization, where a modal characterization of a notion is one that explains the notion in terms of necessity/possibility. In the (...) characterization just given of the distinction between essential and accidental properties, the use of the word “must” reflects the fact that necessity is invoked, while the use of the word “could” reflects that possibility is invoked. The notions of necessity and possibility are interdefinable: to say that something is necessary is to say that its negation is not possible; to say that something is possible is to say that its negation is not necessary; to say that an object must have a certain property is to say that it could not lack it; and to say that an object could have a certain property is to say that it is not the case that it must lack it. (shrink)

Exhausting Modernity is a bold and exciting new work on the exhaustion of our resources, both natural and human. Brennan marshalls the insights of Marx and Freud to provide a compelling analysis of the pervading modern capitalism: environmental collapse, rising poverty levels, and the increased global economic disparity. Linking the consumption of environmental resources to our own depleted psychic life, she shows that modernity must be rethought if we are to find a sustainable future for both the environment and our (...) own psychic life. (shrink)

The classical liberal doctrine of free expression asserts the priority of speech as an extension of the freedom of thought. Yet its critics argue that freedom of expression, itself, demands the suppression of the so-called “silencing speech” of racists, sexists, and so on, as a threat to the equal expressive rights of others. This essay argues that the claim to free expression must be distinguished from claims to equal speech. The former asserts an equal right to express one’s thoughts without (...) interference; the latter the right to address others, and to receive a hearing and consideration from them, in turn. I explore the theory of equal speech in light of the ancient Athenian practice of isegoria and argue that the equality demanded is not distributive but relational: an equal speaker’s voice should be counted as “on a par” with others. This ideal better captures critics’ concerns about silencing speech than do their appeals to free expression. Insofar as epistemic and status-harms provide grounds for the suppression and exclusion of some speech and speakers, the ideal of equal speech is more closely connected with the freedom of association than of thought. Noticing this draws attention to the continuing—and potentially problematic—importance of exclusion in constituting effective sites of equal speech today. (shrink)

Ever since Mary Astell was introduced as the “First English Feminist” in 1986, scholars have been perplexed by her dual commitments to natural equality and social, political, and ecclesiastical hierarchy. But any supposed “paradox” in her thought is the product of a modernist conceit that treats equality and hierarchy as antonyms, assuming the former must be prior, normative, and hostile to the latter. Seeing this, two other crucial features of Astell’s thought emerge: her ethics of ascent and her psychology of (...) superiority. These, in turn, illuminate her lifelong fascination with ambition as a feminine virtue, as well as her curious embrace of Machiavelli. Astell’s politics and ethics are thus doubly worthy of recovery, both as the product of a singularly brilliant early modern mind and as a fascinating but forgotten vision of “equality before egalitarianism” that sheds light on the persistent complexities of equality and hierarchy to this day. (shrink)

Philosophers of language and metaethicists are concerned with persistent normative and evaluative disagreements – how can we explain persistent intelligible disagreements in spite of agreement over the described facts? Tim Sundell recently argued that evaluative aesthetic and personal taste disputes could be explained as metalinguistic negotiations – conversations where interlocutors negotiate how best to use a word relative to a context. I argue here that metalinguistic negotiations are neither necessary nor sufficient for genuine evaluative and normative disputes to occur. A (...) comprehensive account of value talk requires stronger metanormative commitments than metalinguistic negotiations afford. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Most existing literature on the ethics of full ectogenesis has proceeded under the presupposition that science will at some point produce sophisticated technologies for full‐term gestation (from embryo to infant) outside the human womb, delivering neonate health outcomes comparable with (or even superior to) biological gestation. However, the development of this technology—as opposed to the support systems currently being advanced—would require human subject experiments in embryo‐onwards development using ectogenic prototypes. Literature on ectogenic research ethics has so far focused on (...) ‘backwards’ development of partial ectogenesis: incubation and ectogestation technologies that would allow the support of earlier and earlier neonates and foetuses. However, little has been said about the ethics of ‘forwards’ development of (partial or full) ectogenesis, involving the development of embryos and foetuses in prototype environments. Such a prototype might allow us to produce a gestateling or live neonate from a human embryo, but with poorer expected development and health outcomes than from biological gestation; it might also produce only gestatelings (healthy or otherwise) before the technology was developed to a stage where full‐term gestation was achievable. This paper explicates some of the ethical issues that this raises for the development of ‘full’ ectogenesis, and presents prima facie reasons to consider this research problematic and therefore to require extensive further argument in its defence. (shrink)

The `riddle of femininity', like Freud's reference to women's sexuality as a `dark continent', has been treated as a romantic aside or a sexist evasion, rather than a problem to be solved. In this first comprehensive study, Teresa Brennan suggests that by placing these theories in the context of Freud's work overall, we will begin to understand why femininity was such a riddle for Freud.

(2011). An Obscure Rider Obstructing Science: The Conflation of Parthenotes with Embryos in the Dickey–Wicker Amendment. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 20-28.

The problem of fair machine learning has drawn much attention over the last few years and the bulk of offered solutions are, in principle, empirical. However, algorithmic fairness also raises important conceptual issues that would fail to be addressed if one relies entirely on empirical considerations. Herein, I will argue that the current debate has developed an empirical framework that has brought important contributions to the development of algorithmic decision-making, such as new techniques to discover and prevent discrimination, additional assessment (...) criteria, and analyses of the interaction between fairness and predictive accuracy. However, the same framework has also suggested higher-order issues regarding the translation of fairness into metrics and quantifiable trade-offs. Although the tools which have been developed so far are essential to address discrimination encoded in data and algorithms, their integration into society elicits key questions such as: What kind of assumptions and decisions underlies the empirical framework? How do the results of the empirical approach penetrate public debate? What kind of reflection and deliberation should stakeholders have over available fairness metrics? I will outline the empirical approach to fair machine learning, i.e. how the problem is framed and addressed, and suggest that there are important non-empirical issues that should be tackled. While this work will focus on the problem of algorithmic fairness, the lesson can extend to other conceptual problems in the analysis of algorithmic decision-making such as privacy and explainability. (shrink)