This paper exposes a common mistake concerning the division of linguistic labor. I characterize the mistake as an overgeneralization from natural kind terms; this misleads philosophers about which terms are subject to the division of linguistic labor, what linguistic labor is, how linguistic labor is divided, and how the extensions of non-natural kind terms subject to the division of linguistic labor are determined. I illustrate these points by considering Sally Haslanger’s account of the division of linguistic labor for social kind (...) terms and raising an objection to it. Then, I draw on Tyler Burge’s work to characterize a conception of the division of linguistic labor that avoids the mistaken overgeneralization and grounds 1–4 above in social norms and practices. (shrink)

This paper argues that many philosophical theories of meaning idealize our actual language communities and thereby contribute to perpetuating group-based oppression. I focus on externalist theories of language that posit a division of linguistic labor (DoLL), and I argue that the DoLLs they imagine are free of oppression and untouched by its effects. This distorts both basic theoretical assumptions and our ideas about which meanings are to be found in some language community. By thus obscuring oppression and its effects, we (...) prevent ourselves from adequately addressing oppression's effects on the meanings we use to understand and communicate about the world. (shrink)

This article is a study of the interpretive resources developed by Rush Limbaugh on his radio show. Interpretive resources – also called ‘hermeneutical resources’ – are concepts, narratives, conceptual frameworks, etc. that enable subjects to make sense of themselves and their world. Much recent scholarship has explored how a community's interpretive resources influence social interactions or character traits in the community. In Limbaugh's transcripts, we found a pattern of what we call ‘concept doubling’, wherein terms are characterised in a way (...) suggesting that liberals and conservatives express different concepts by their utterances of the same word form. We propose that this promotes an interpretive resource that encourages in those who use it what we call ‘false double consciousness’. We contrast the effects of false double consciousness with those of double consciousness, and we consider the interpretive resources available within false double consciousness. (shrink)

There is a large and growing literature on communal interpretive resources: the concepts, theories, narratives, and so on that a community draws on in interpreting its members and their world. (They're also called “hermeneutical resources” in some places and “epistemic resources” in others.) Several recent contributions to this literature have concerned dominant and resistant interpretive resources and how they affect concrete lived interactions. In this article, I note that “using” interpretive resources—applying them to parts of the world in conversation with (...) others—is “a rule‐governed activity”; and I propose that in oppressive systems, these rules are influenced by the rules of oppression. Section I clarifies some rules governing the use of resources. Section II draws on work by Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. and others to suggest that according to the present rules of our oppressive system, it is permissible for dominantly situated speakers to dismiss interpretive resources developed in marginalized communities. Section III appeals to Charles Mills's work on White ignorance to propose, further, that our system's rules make it impermissible and deserving of punishment to use resistant resources. The conclusion enumerates several further points about such rules governing the use of interpretive resources, their social effects, and some philosophical literatures. (shrink)

According to Roderick Chisholm, one distinctive characteristic of mental phenomena is that they relate to their objects "under an aspect'": Lois Lane admires the one object that is both Superman and Clark Kent as "Superman" but not as "Clark Kent". This paper argues that visual attention exhibits no such characteristic. This suggests that attention is an exceptional mental phenomenon, and understanding it may provide insight into mind-body or mind- world relations.