16 found
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  1. Scorekeeping in a pornographic language game.Rae Langton & Caroline West - 1999 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 77 (3):303 – 319.
    If, as many suppose, pornography changes people, a question arises as to how.1 One answer to this question offers a grand and noble vision. Inspired by the idea that pornography is speech, and inspired by a certain liberal ideal about the point of speech in political life, some theorists say that pornography contributes to that liberal ideal: pornography, even at its most violent and misogynistic, and even at its most harmful, is political speech that aims to express certain views about (...)
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  2. Moral fictionalism versus the rest.Daniel Nolan, Greg Restall & Caroline West - 2005 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (3):307 – 330.
    In this paper we introduce a distinct metaethical position, fictionalism about morality. We clarify and defend the position, showing that it is a way to save the 'moral phenomena' while agreeing that there is no genuine objective prescriptivity to be described by moral terms. In particular, we distinguish moral fictionalism from moral quasi-realism, and we show that fictionalism possesses the virtues of quasi-realism about morality, but avoids its vices.
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  3. The Free Speech Argument against Pornography.Caroline West - 2003 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33 (3):391 - 422.
    It is widely held that free speech is a distinctive and privileged social kind. But what is free speech? In particular, is there any unified phenomenon that is both free speech and which is worthy of the special value traditionally attached to free speech? We argue that a descendent of the classic Millian justification of free speech is in fact a justification of a more general social condition; and, via an argument that 'free speech' names whatever natural social kind is (...)
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  4. Temporal phase pluralism.David Braddon-Mitchell & Caroline West - 2001 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (1):59–83.
    Some theories of personal identity allow some variation in what it takes for a person to survive from context to context; and sometimes this is determined by the desires of person-stages or the practices of communities.This leads to problems for decision making in contexts where what is chosen will affect personal identity.‘Temporal Phase Pluralism’ solves such problems by allowing that there can be a plurality of persons constituted by a sequence of person stages. This illuminates difficult decision making problems when (...)
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  5.  39
    Does Public Racist Speech Constitute Hostile Discrimination? Comments on McGowan.Caroline West - 2021 - Australasian Philosophical Review 5 (2):179-188.
    ABSTRACT In ‘Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm: An Overview and an Application’, Mary Kate McGowan argues that some racist speech in public places should be made unlawful in the United States for the same reason that sexist behaviour in the workplace is already legally actionable—namely, to protect individuals from a hostile discriminatory environment. While McGowan may be correct that some public racist speech may constitute an act of discrimination in some morally significant sense, I present several reasons for (...)
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  6.  49
    of Expression and Racist Hate Speech1.Caroline West - 2012 - In Ishani Maitra & Mary Kate McGowan (eds.), Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 222.
  7.  36
    Don Quixote and the Public.Carl Schmitt, Naomi Vaughan & Caroline West - 2022 - Critical Inquiry 48 (4):799-802.
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  8. What is Free Speech?David Braddon-Mitchell & Caroline West - 2004 - Journal of Political Philosophy 12 (4):437-460.
    It is widely held that free speech is a distinctive and privileged social kind. But what is free speech? In particular, is there any unified phenomenon that is both free speech and which is worthy of the special value traditionally attached to free speech? We argue that a descendent of the classic Millian justification of free speech is in fact a justification of a more general social condition; and, via an argument that 'free speech' names whatever natural social kind is (...)
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  9. (1 other version)On Scepticism About Personal Identity Thought Experiments.Andrew J. Latham, Kristie Miller, Caroline West & Wen Yu - 2023 - Analytic Philosophy 1.
    Many philosophers have become sceptical of the use of thought experiments in theorising about personal identity. In large part this is due to work in experimental philosophy that appears to confirm long held philosophical suspicions that thought experiments elicit inconsistent judgements about personal identity, and hence judgements that are thought to be the product of cognitive biases. If so, these judgements appear to be useless at informing our theories of personal identity. Using the methods of experimental philosophy, we investigate whether (...)
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  10.  35
    Freedom of Expression and Derogatory Words.Caroline West - 2016 - In Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee & David Coady (eds.), A Companion to Applied Philosophy. Malden, MA: Wiley. pp. 236–252.
    Should our commitment to freedom of speech extend to freedom of hate speech: speech that promotes hatred toward an individual or group on the basis of a characteristic such as race, gender, sexuality, nationality, or religion—often, although perhaps not exclusively, using slurs and epithets? Drawing on philosophy of language and empirical research, this essay outlines five theoretical models of how hate speech may function, and explores their implications for this issue. I argue that (some) hate speech can be regulated without (...)
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  11. Personal Identity: Practical or Metaphysical?Caroline West - 2007 - In Kim Atkins & Catriona Mackenzie (eds.), Practical Identity and Narrative Agency. New York: Routledge.
  12. Prudence and Perdurance.Kristie Miller & Caroline West - 2008 - In Dean W. Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.
    Many philosophers are sympathetic to a perdurantist view of persistence. One challenge facing this view lies in its ability to ground prudential rationality. If, as many have thought, numerical identity over time is required to ground there being sui generis (i.e. non-instrumental) prudential reasons, then perdurantists can appeal only to instrumental reasons. The problem is that it is hard to see how, by appealing only to instrumental reasons, the perdurantist can vindicate the axiom of prudence: the axiom that any person-stage (...)
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  13. Pornography and censorship.Caroline West - manuscript
    This question lies at the heart of a debate that raises fundamental issues about just when, and on what grounds, the state is justified in using its coercive powers to limit the freedom of individuals.
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  14. Moral fictionalism.Caroline West - manuscript
    What would morality have to be like in order to answer to our everyday moral concepts? What are we committed to when we make moral claims such as “female infibulation is wrong”; or “we ought give money to famine relief”; or “we have a duty to not to harm others”, and when we go on to argue about these sorts of claims? It has seemed to many—and it seems plausible to us—that when we assert and argue about things such as (...)
     
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  15. Liberalism and mental mediation.Daniel Nolan & Caroline West - 2004 - Journal of Value Inquiry 38 (2):186-202.
    Liberals agree that free speech should be protected, where speech is understood broadly to include all forms of intentional communication, including actions and pictures, not merely the spoken or written word. A surprising view about free speech in some liberal and legal circles is that communications should be protected on free-speech grounds only if the communications are mentally mediated. By “mentally mediated communication” we mean speech which communicates its message in such a way that the message can be rationally evaluated (...)
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  16.  44
    Are some humans more equal than others?Caroline West - unknown
    Every human life has equal intrinsic value. This commitment is what stands between us, and the barbarism that has characterised so much of human history—or so runs the consensus in modern liberal societies. So strong is our conviction about this line between civilisation and barbarity that rarely is it subject to critical scrutiny.
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