Papers by Bianca Cepollaro
, in "Chomsky on Analytic and Necessary Propositions", discusses Chomsky's view on the analytic-s... more , in "Chomsky on Analytic and Necessary Propositions", discusses Chomsky's view on the analytic-synthetic distinction and on necessary propositions. Cipriani underlines how Chomsky's defense of such a distinction can hold only under the assumption of conceptual innateness. Furthermore, Cipriani notes that, in Chomsky's view, the distinction between necessary and contingent truths is determined by the structure of the conceptual system and its relations with other systems of common-sense understanding. But such a hypothesis, Cipriani argues, seems to be incompatible with Chomsky's own objection to Kripke's essentialism. In "The Two-Way Relationship Between Language Acquisition and Simulation Theory", Hashem Ramadan (Boğaziçi University) draws a two-way connection between Simulation Theory and language acquisition. The idea is that, on the one hand, if an individual has better simulation capabilities, then she will be better when it comes to L2 acquisition; on the other hand, being exposed to different languages seems to lead to better simulation capacities and higher degrees of empathy. Drawing on an evolutionary explanation, Ramadan argues in favor of Simulation Theory over Theory Theory and discusses some studies involving children with ASD which provide support for it. Marco Fenici (University of Florence), in "Rebuilding the Landscape of Psychological Understanding After the Mindreading War", addresses the intricate net of connected debates in philosophy and cognitive sciences about the onset, the development, and the nature of mindreading mechanisms. Fenici discusses the contribution of each debate and the ways in which philosophy and cognitive sciences have or have not fruitfully interacted thus far. Alessandra Buccella (University of Pittsburgh), in "Naturalizing Qualia", puts forward an alternative to Hill (2014)'s naturalization of qualia. For Hill, perceptual qualia (i.e., the ways in which things look from a viewpoint) are physical properties of objects and are relational in nature-that is, they are functions of objects' intrinsic properties, viewpoints, and observers. After analyzing the weaknesses of Hill's account, Buccella builds upon Chirimuuta (2015)'s color adverbialism and argues for a broadly adverbialist view of perceptual qualia. "Carving Mind at Brain's Joints. The Debate on Cognitive Ontology", by Marco Viola (IUSS Pavia and Vita-Salute San Raffaele University), assesses the vexed mind-brain problem; in particular, he discusses the traditional hypothesis of a one-to-one mapping between mental states and neural activities and the shortcomings of this sort of "new phrenology". Viola explores two ways to avoid such weaknesses: the first endorses a many-to-many mapping model, whereas the second radically rethinks its relata. Joana Rigato (Champalimaud Center for the Unknown, Lisbon), in her paper "Looking for Emergence in Physics", discusses a topic on which philosophers and physicists often talk past each other: emergence. Emergentism, in its different forms, is the view that certain features of reality (be they objects, properties or laws) are irreducible to the lower-level bases they emerge on. After going through some examples of emergence in (classical and quantum) physics, Rigato concludes that paradigmatic examples of discontinuity between models in physics can back the emergentist philosopher's case up against reductionist theories. "Direct Social Perception of Emotions in Close Relations", by Andrea Blomqvist (University of Sheffield), explores the theory of Direct Social Perception with respect to perceiving the emotional states of our closest ones (spouses, friends, and family). Blomqvist argues that emotions are embodied and can be directly perceived. Moreover, she argues against a nonconceptual view of emotion recognition and claims instead that by attending to certain expressive patterns of emotions, we can learn "emotional concepts". This view predicts that we can directly perceive both basic and non-basic emotions of people we are close to. In "Me, You and the Measurement. Founding a Science of Consciousness on the Second Person Perspective", Niccolò Negro (University of Milan) critically assesses the methodologies 14 LAURA CAPONETTO, BIANCA CEPOLLARO involved in the study of consciousness while discussing whether they adopt a first-, second-or third-person perspective. In particular, he argues that Integrated Information Theory is the approach that is most likely to account for a measure and a mathematical analysis of conscious experience. Timothy A. Burns (Loyola Marymount University), in "Empathy, Simulation, and Neuroscience: A Phenomenological Case against Simulation-Theory", questions the claim that the discovery of mirror neurons provides empirical support for the simulation view of mindreading. In addition to formulating multiple objections against Simulation Theory, Burns draws on the works of Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein and proposes a phenomenological account to mindreading. In "On Experiencing Meaning: Irreducible Cognitive Phenomenology and Sinewave Speech", John Joseph Dorsch (University of Tübingen) deals with the phenomenon of sinewave speech (i.e., a synthetic acoustic signal that replaces the original human voice's formants with pure tone whistles). When subjects first hear sinewaves, all that they can discern are beeps and whistles; however, after listening to the speech from which the sinewave is derived, beeps and whistles actually sound like speech. Granted that the two episodes (whistles vs. speech) differ in their phenomenal character, Dorsch investigates whether and to what extent such an alteration in phenomenal character may provide evidence for irreducible cognitive phenomenology. Joe Higgins (University of St. Andrews and University of Stirling-SASP) discusses the tension within cognitive scientific accounts of human selfhood between bodily processes and social processes in his paper "Embodied Mind-Ensocialled Body: Navigating Bodily and Social Processes within Accounts of Human Cognitive Agency". Drawing on a range of phenomenological and empirical insights, Higgins argues for the concept of an "ensocialled body", in which all organic bodily processes are at the same time also social processes.
Croatian Journal of Philosophy, 2017
In this paper, I discuss the Reclamation Worry (RW), raised by Anderson and Lepore 2013 and addre... more In this paper, I discuss the Reclamation Worry (RW), raised by Anderson and Lepore 2013 and addressed by Ritchie (2017) concerning the appropriation of slurs. I argue that Ritchie’s way to solve the RW is not adequate and I show why such an apparent worry is not actually problematic and should not lead us to postulate a rich complex semantics for reclaimed slurs. To this end, after illustrating the phenomenon of appropriation of slurs, I introduce the Reclamation Worry (section 2). In section 3, I argue that Richie’s complex proposal is not needed to explain the phenomenon. To show that, I compare the case of reclaimed and nonreclaimed slurs to the case of polysemic personal pronouns featuring, among others, in many Romance languages. In section 4 I introduce the notion of ‘authoritativeness’ that I take to be crucial to account for reclamation. In section 5, I focus on particular cases (the “outsider” cases) that support my claims and speak against the parsimony of the indexical ac...
In this thesis I develop a uniform account of slurs and thick terms in terms of presuppositions. ... more In this thesis I develop a uniform account of slurs and thick terms in terms of presuppositions. I argue that slurs and thick terms – even though they were studied by different disciplines – belong to the same class of ‘hybrid evaluatives’. My work aims to fill the gap between the research on thick terms on the one hand and the research on slurs on the other, by showing that the mechanisms underlying slurs and thick terms is one and the same and that the phenomenal differences that one can observe depend on the peculiarities of their descriptive content.
This paper offers a brief survey of the philosophical literature on assertion, presenting each co... more This paper offers a brief survey of the philosophical literature on assertion, presenting each contribution to this special issue within the context of the contemporary debate in which it intervenes. The discussion is organised into three thematic sections. The first one concerns the nature of assertion and its relation with assertoric commitment – the distinctive responsibility that the speaker undertakes in virtue of making a statement. The second section considers the epistemic significance of assertion, exploring the role that assertion plays in the transmission of knowledge, the epistemic constraints that regulate it, and its relation with truth. The third section deals with communicative content that goes beyond what is literally asserted: implicatures, metaphors and expressive meaning.
Phenomenology and Mind, 2017
Phenomenology and Mind, 2018
Nell’ultimo decennio si e infittito il dibattito sul ruolo della filosofia sperimentale rispetto ... more Nell’ultimo decennio si e infittito il dibattito sul ruolo della filosofia sperimentale rispetto alla cosiddetta filosofia ‘in poltrona’ (‘armchair philosophy’). La discussione, che riguarda i metodi della filosofia analitica in generale, ha ricadute di grande interesse per la filosofia del linguaggio in particolare. In questo articolo presento un caso in cui una questione centrale nello studio dei termini espressivi – cioe se il contenuto offensivo delle espressioni denigratorie sopravviva o no nell’interazione con operatori semantici e in particolare con la negazione – e stata affrontata quasi contemporaneamente adottando metodi filosofici differenti: (i) in poltrona, (ii) attraverso l’applicazione di test linguistici e (iii) attraverso metodi sperimentali. I tre metodi – cosi diversi per tradizione e prospettive – offrono risultati convergenti. Casi come questi mostrano come una pluralita metodologica e un atteggiamento piu ecumenico rispetto allo scontro tra filosofia sperimenta...
Phenomenology and Mind, 2016
In this paper I spell out the conditions for a uniform analysis of thick terms and slurs, present... more In this paper I spell out the conditions for a uniform analysis of thick terms and slurs, presented in Cepollaro and Stojanovic (2016). Our claim is that thick terms and slurs convey evaluations via presupposition and represent a device through which language implicitly conveys linguistically encoded evaluations. I introduce the presuppositional account (section 2) and elaborate on the conditions that need to be fulfilled for slurs and thick terms to be analyzed along similar lines (section 3) and I discuss the predictions that this approach offers about the issues of reference and extension (section 4). I conclude with some considerations about the role and functions of slurs and thick terms with respect to moral systems (section 5).
Croatian Journal of Philosophy, 2018
The Cambridge Handbook of the Philosophy of Language
Organon F
While prototypical uses of slurs express contempt for targets, some reclaimed uses are associated... more While prototypical uses of slurs express contempt for targets, some reclaimed uses are associated with positive evaluations. This practice may raise concerns. I anticipate this criticism in what I dub the Warrant Argument (WA) and then defend the legitimacy of this kind of reclamation. For the WA, standard pejorative uses of slurs are problematic for assuming unwarranted connections between descriptive properties (e.g., being gay) and value judgements (e.g., being worthy of contempt). When reclaimed uses of slurs express a positive evaluation of their targets-the WA goes-reclamation fails to challenge the unwarranted link between descriptive properties and value judgements, and merely reverses the evaluation polarity from negative to positive. So, the WA concludes, reclaimed uses of slurs evaluating targets positively for belonging to a certain group make a similar moral error as derogatory uses of slurs (sections 2-3). The WA could lead us to condemn reclamation. To resist this conclusion, I draw a parallel with affirmative action, arguing that it can be morally permissible to balance an existing form of injustice by temporarily introducing a countervailing mechanism that prima facie seems to violate the norm of equality: even if the WA were right, it wouldn't constitute an argument against the moral permissibility of reclamation in the case of most slurs (section 4). This line of The Moral Status of the Reclamation of Slurs 673 Organon F 28 (3) 2021: 672-688 argument in defense of pride reclamation may also serve to debunk the myths of reverse racism and reverse sexism (section 5).
Australasian Philosophical Review, 2021
Mary Kate McGowan (2019, 2021) argues that ordinary verbal bigotry enacts norms that prescribe ha... more Mary Kate McGowan (2019, 2021) argues that ordinary verbal bigotry enacts norms that prescribe harm, i.e. norms that impose an ‘ought’ upon relevant parties to implement discriminatory practices against certain targets. We here take issue with her view and claim that ordinary verbal bigotry enacts a special kind of permissive norms – what we call ‘non-neutral permissives’. Neutral and non-neutral permissives alike introduce a ‘can’ (as opposed to an ‘ought’), but non-neutral permissives, in addition, mark the newly permitted course of action as preferable vis-à-vis contrasting options. Non-neutral permissives push individuals to take advantage of the permission they are given. The claim that ordinary instances of verbal bigotry enact non-neutral permissive norms thus contributes to explain their distinctive capacity to get others to play along. We conclude by maintaining that, even though ordinary verbal bigotry enacts permissive rather than prescriptive norms, it can still be constitutive of harm.
Synthese
We present two experimental studies on the Italian expressive 'stronzo' (English 'jerk'). The fir... more We present two experimental studies on the Italian expressive 'stronzo' (English 'jerk'). The first study tests whether, and to which extent, the acceptability of using an expressive is sensitive to the information available in the context. The study looks both at referential uses of expressives (as in the complex demonstrative 'that jerk Marco') and predicative uses of expressives (as in 'Marco is a jerk'). The results show that expressives are sensitive to contextual information to a much higher degree than the non-expressive control items (such as 'Piedmontese') in their referential use, but also, albeit to a lesser degree, in their predicative use. The second study tests whether the lower acceptability of expressives in their predicative use may be simply due to saying something negative about someone. A comparison between expressives, such as 'jerk', and non-expressive negative terms, such as 'nasty' or 'unbearable', suggests that it is the expressive nature of these terms, rather than the mere negative valence, that affects acceptability. Our studies present a major challenge to the existing accounts of expressives, and raise several theoretical issues that still call for an answer.
Journal of Pragmatics
In this paper, we present three studies on slurs and non-slurring insults presented (i) in isolat... more In this paper, we present three studies on slurs and non-slurring insults presented (i) in isolation (Pilot study), (ii) in direct speech (Study 1) and (iii) in indirect reports (Study 2). The Pilot study showed that on average slurs are perceived as more offensive than non-slurring insults when presented in isolation. In Study 1, we found some surprising results: when they occur in atomic predications of the form 'X is a P', in average slurs are perceived as less offensive than when they occur in isolation, while insults are perceived as more offensive than when they occur in isolation. In order to explain these two findings, we have developed an information-based hypothesis that crucially illuminates the distinction between slurs and non-slurring insults in terms of the information they carry and the function that they fulfil. Such a perspective is more compatible with hybrid views (e.g. presuppositional) rather than with expressivist theories. Moreover, Study 2 showed that indirect report of the form 'Z: Y said that X is a P' decreases (without deleting) the offensiveness of utterances featuring slurs and insults. Such results speak against prohibitionist theories on slurs and pose challenges to the non-prohibitionist accounts.
Linguistics and Philosophy
Disputatio
In this paper we discuss two issues addressed by Stanley in How Propaganda Works: the status of s... more In this paper we discuss two issues addressed by Stanley in How Propaganda Works: the status of slurs (Section 1) and the notion of positive propaganda (Section 2). In particular, in Section 1 we argue contra Stanley that code words like ‘welfare’ are crucially different from slurs in that the association between the lexical item and an additional social meaning is not as systematic as it is for slurs. In this sense, slurs bring about a special kind of propagandistic effect, even if it typically concerns informal contexts rather than public debates. In Section 2, we consider positive propaganda and its relation to emotional effects. For Stanley, positive propaganda relies on the production of emotional effects, feature which risks to erode rational debates even if there is a good purpose behind. Instead, we argue that positive propaganda can work with no appeal to emotions. To this end, we focus on the use of ‘she’ as the default personal pronoun in academic writing and suggest that...
Grazer Philosophische Studien
In this paper, the authors present a presuppositional account for a class of evaluative terms tha... more In this paper, the authors present a presuppositional account for a class of evaluative terms that encode both a descriptive and an evaluative component: slurs and thick terms. The authors discuss several issues related to the hybrid nature of these terms, such as their projective behavior, the ways in which one may reject their evaluative content, and the ways in which evaluative content is entailed or implicated (as the case may be) by the use of such terms.
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Papers by Bianca Cepollaro
- assertion and its social effects
- assertion and conversational dynamics
- assertion, presupposition and implicature
- assertion and testimony
- assertion and epistemic injustice
- assertion and its relation to other speech acts
- assertion and its norm(s)
- insincerity, lying and misleading
- epistemic vigilance
- dangerous speech acts (e.g. silencing)
- insulting and hate speech (e.g slurs)
- empirical work on speech acts
Submissions may be in English and Italian, and should include an abstract of no more than 250 words (in English) and 5 keywords (also in English). Submissions must be fully anonymised and prepared for blind review. RIFL provides a Word template for the preparation of the manuscript [Download: http://www.rifl.unical.it/authortemplate/template_eng.doc]. The usage of the template is mandatory.