Dear players of language games, Come one, come all, to the next session of the Meaning Reading Group, on Wednesday, 3 June, from 4.00 to 6.00pm UK time, where we'll be joined by Lynne Tirrell (University of Connecticut) to discuss her marvelous and timely paper "Toxic Speech: Inoculations and Antidotes". The paper draws on both inferentialist philosophy of language and epidemiology to investigate the harms of toxic speech - it thus includes discussions of racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, and antisemitic speech.*
As ever, please read the paper beforehand. You will find it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bccp9rb7dkhr6kz/Tirrell%20-%20Toxic%20Speech%20II.pdf?dl=0 And please find the Zoom invitation below: Join Zoom Meeting (Zoom seminar 2) https://zoom.us/j/92381047411 Meeting ID: 923 8104 7411 The best of wishes, Nikki *Abstract: Toxic speech inflicts individual and group harm, damaging the social fabric upon which we all depend. To understand and combat the harms of toxic speech, philosophers can learn from epidemiology, while epidemiologists can benefit from lessons of philosophy of language. In medicine and public health, research into remedies for toxins pushes in two directions: individual protections (personal actions, avoidances, preventive or reparative tonics) and collective action (specific policies or widespread "inoculations" through which we seek herd immunity). This paper is the beginning of a project of identifying potential inoculations and antidotes to toxic speech. The essay brings a social practice theory of language, with special reliance on language-games and inferential roles, into conversation with concepts from the study of biologic toxins. Some speech harms are acute while others are chronic and insidious; they have different methods of delivery, come in variable doses, and not everyone is equally susceptible to the power to harm. I argue that of the many kinds of challenges we might issue against toxic speech, challenging its expressive commitments has the greatest potential to stop the damage. The essay explores the different sorts of protections that inoculations and antidotes might offer against discursive toxins and sketches how to imagine these in the practices that govern our speech. The paper does not make policy recommendations, but an epidemiology of discursive toxicity reveals several kinds of "more speech" that might fight against "bad speech." _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: https://lists.cam.ac.uk/pipermail/phil-events/ Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
