The Metaethics of Gender

This chapter argues that some of the traditional arguments for expressivism in metaethics carry over to the case of gender ascriptions. Descriptivist views about the semantics of gender ascriptions fall short in explaining certain kinds of disagreement in ways that are similar to the ways in which descriptivist views about normative terms fall short. This suggests an argument for expressivism about gender ascriptions. to The chapter explores the idea that if gender ascriptions are normative, we might understand gender terms on the model of ethically thick terms. One way of avoiding the conclusion that gender ascriptions are expressive and/or normative is to argue that the relevant kinds of disagreement are instances of metalinguistic negotiation. After presenting some concerns associated with this explanation, the chapter closes with a discussion of some of the reasons for thinking that the realist might get back in the game.

Moral Relativism, Metalinguistic Negotiation, and the Epistemic Significance of Disagreement

Although moral relativists often appeal to cases of apparent moral disagreement between members of different communities to motivate their view, accounting for these exchanges as evincing genuine disagreements constitutes a challenge to the coherence of moral relativism. While many moral relativists acknowledge this problem, attempts to solve it so far have been wanting. In response, moral relativists either give up the claim that there can be moral disagreement between members of different communities or end up with a view on which these disagreements have no “epistemic significance” because they are always faultless. This paper introduces an alternative strategy: accounting for disagreement in terms of “metalinguistic negotiation”. It argues that this strategy constitutes a better solution to the challenge disagreement poses for moral relativists because it leads to a nuanced understanding of the epistemic significance of moral disagreement between members of different communities. The upshot is a novel account of disagreement for moral relativists that has consequences for how moral relativism should be understood.

How to have a metalinguistic dispute

There has been recent interest in the idea that speakers who appear to be having a verbal dispute may in fact be engaged in a metalinguistic negotiation: they are communicating information about how they believe an expression should be used. For example, individuals involved in a dispute about whether a racehorse is an athlete might be communicating their diverging views about how ‘athlete’ should be used. While many have argued that metalinguistic negotiation is a pervasive feature of philosophical and everyday discourse, the literature currently lacks an account of this phenomenon that can be situated within a ‘mainstream’ view of communication. I propose an independently motivated account where individuals reconstruct metalinguistic propositions by means of a pragmatic, Gricean reasoning process.

Metalinguistic Negotiations and Two Senses of Taste

This paper defends the claim that the traditional Kantian division between two different types of judgments, judgments of personal preference (subjectively valid) and judgments of taste (intersubjectively valid), does not apply to some contexts in which metalinguistic negotiations take place. To begin, I first highlight some significant similarities between predicates of personal taste and aesthetic predicates. I sustain that aesthetic predicates are gradable and multidimensional, and that they often produce metalinguistic negotiations, characteristics that have motivated an individual treatment for predicates of personal taste. Secondly, contrary to Kant’s claim, I maintain that there are cases where judgments of personal preference are intersubjectively valid; in some contexts of metalinguistic negotiation, judgments of personal preference direct universality to a similar extent as judgments of taste. Some examples of real-life conversations will be presented to illustrate this point.

Linguistic Hijacking

This paper introduces the concept of linguistic hijacking, the phenomenon wherein politically significant terminology is co-opted by dominant groups in ways that further their dominance over marginalized groups. Here I focus on hijackings of the words “racist” and “racism.” The model of linguistic hijacking developed here, called the semantic corruption model, is inspired by Burge’s social externalism, in which deference plays a key role in determining the semantic properties of expressions. The model describes networks of deference relations, which support competing meanings of, for example, “racist,” and postulates the existence of deference magnets that influence those networks over time. Linguistic hijacking functions to shift the semantic properties of crucial political terminology by causing changes in deference networks, spreading semantics that serve the interests of dominant groups, and weakening the influence of resistant deference networks. I consider an objection alleging the semantic corruption model gets the semantic data wrong because it entails those who hijack terms like “racist” speak truly, whereas it’s natural to see such hijacking misuses as false speech about racism. I then respond to this objection by invoking the framework of metalinguistic negotiation proposed by Plunkett and Sundell.

Methodological Advantages

This chapter makes the case that modal normativism also brings significant methodological advantages. First, it can provide a much-needed justification of using intuitions, thought experiments, and a form of conceptual analysis, in answering metaphysical modal questions. Second, it provides a straightforward methodology for answering such questions—considered as “internal” questions—and gives reasons for thinking that some such questions are simply unanswerable. But such questions may also be addressed as external questions, where we are concerned not with what rules our terms do follow, but what rules they should follow, and what linguistic and conceptual schemes we should use. This gives us the means for understanding some debates about metaphysical modality as engaged in metalinguistic negotiation and conceptual engineering—and thereby preserving the idea that such debates may be deep and important.

Appropriation Art, Fair Use, and Metalinguistic Negotiation

Appropriation art (AA) involves the use of pre-existing works of art with little to no transformation. Works of AA (often) fail to satisfy established criteria for originality, such as creative labour and transformative use. As such, appropriation artists are often subject to copyright lawsuits and defend their work under the fair use doctrine of US copyright law. In legal cases regarding AA and fair use, judges lack a general principle whereby they can determine whether or not the offending party has ‘transformed’ the original work. Further, it is not the case that there is some antecedent fact that could determine the outcome one way or another. I diagnose debates surrounding the transformative nature of works of AA as cases of ‘metalinguistic negotiation’ over what concepts we should attach to terms like ‘copy’, ‘transformative’, and ‘work of art’.