Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages

In-Page Footnotes:

• Susan James, Benedict de Spinoza: Royal Institute of Philosophy London Lecture Series 2014/15 - The History of Philosophy - Why Should We Read Spinoza?
• The YouTube blurb is:-
  • During the twentieth century, Spinoza was allotted a minor role in Anglophone histories of philosophy. Dwarfed by Descartes, Hobbes, Locke and Leibniz, he was widely regarded as an eccentric loner.
  • Recently, however, he has come to be seen as a philosopher of broad contemporary relevance. He has been read as a religious pluralist, a radical democrat, an early defender of dual aspect monism, a metaphysical holist whose ideas anticipate the concerns of contemporary ecologists, and as nothing less than the founder of the Enlightenment.
  • In this lecture I shall ask what this interpretative turnaround tells us about the way we do the history of philosophy. What are we looking for when we study philosophy’s past? And why should we read Spinoza?
  • Filmed on 7th November, 2014
• I was disappointed by this lecture. It could have done with some Q&As at the end.
• I'm not sure it answered it's own question - just Why Should We Read Spinoza? And if we do read him, which works should we read? I've read "Spinoza (Benedict de), Curley (Edwin), Hampshire (Stuart) - Ethics" but found it impenetrable. Interpretations or expositions of Spinoza are all very well, but how are non-experts to connect these ideas to what he actually wrote, and how do we know that these ideas aren't those of his expositors? See my analysis of "Spinoza (Benedict de), Curley (Edwin), Hampshire (Stuart) - Ethics" on Substance. It was going nowhere, as I couldn't understand how the argument hung together. Maybe it's best to ignore his actual argument and just pick up on his ideas.
• The speaker - who I knew slightly when at Birkbeck - is really interested (in this talk) in why historians of philosophy are interested in particular past philosophers. She thinks there are two main reasons.
• One is that the philosopher in question addresses a subject that the historian is interested in.
• The other is somewhat related: a teleological approach - to show how we got to our present enlightened understanding of whatever topic is of interest to the historian.
• There is a transcript which may be worth reading through. But I don't think this talk is of much use to me either in the context of my research into Personal Identity, nor in expounding what Spinoza thought on anything of interest to me.
• See also Susan James - Natural Rights as Powers: Spinoza's Transformation.

• Alexander Bird: The Structure and the Necessity of the Natural Laws
• Sadly not published in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018.
• However, there is an auto-generated transcript on YouTube. I've copied this to "Bird (Alexander) - The Structure and the Necessity of the Natural Laws".
• It was interesting to see a well-known philosopher of science in action.
• However, I found the presentation a little chaotic, difficult to follow, and not altogether convincing.
• I liked the conclusion that we can't do metaphysics without physics (and the other sciences).
• His argument is that the laws of physics - while they might have been radically different - can't easily be slightly different because the laws and their consequences are so intertwined. Maybe so, but the argument was a little hand-wavy.
• He also seemed supportive of a contrary view that when we finally come up with a theory of everything, the 'constants' will just drop out, leaving no room for 'twiddling the dials'.
• As I only listened while doing the washing-up, this requires closer scrutiny.

• Amie L. Thomasson: Easy Ontology and the Work of Metaphysics
• This talk was published (with a different title) in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 139-163.
  → See "Thomasson (Amie L.) - Changing Metaphysics: What Difference does it Make?".
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort).
• I didn't like the speaker's style - too smug and overconfident.
• She thinks that Analytic Philosophy took a wrong turn following Quine by getting obsessed with Ontology.
• She cites as evidence the lack of agreement. I don't think she cited "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?". Maybe the Brian Leiter Reports?
• The first part of the talk - which seeks to justify this assessment - was interesting, however.
• I didn't find the second half - which sets out what she sees as the residual role for metaphysicians: mainly conceptual revision (and getting rid of allegedly redundant and obnoxious Concepts like Race).
• She introduces the talk as an exercise in Metametaphysics.
  → See "Chalmers (David), Manley (David) & Wasserman (Ryan) - Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology", containing
  → "Thomasson (Amie L.) - Answerable and Unanswerable Questions"
  → And other papers by speakers in this series.
  → I note that almost all the papers have to do with Ontology!

• This talk was published in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 109-138.
• Unfortunately the talk is far too difficult to understand in detail while doing the washing up!
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort).
• Better to see "Hale (Bob) - The Basis of Necessity and Possibility".
• There's also a hand-out: Hale - The Basis of Necessity and Possibility - RIP Handout.
• The YouTube blurb is:-
  • This lecture argues that modal concepts should be explained in terms of the essences or nature of things: necessarily p if, and because, there is something the nature of which ensures that p; possibly p if, and because, there is nothing whose nature rules out its being true that p. The theory is defended against various objections and difficulties, including ones arising from attributing essences to contingent individuals.

• Elselijn Kingma: The Metaphysics of Pregnancy
• This talk was published (with a slightly different title) in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 165-187.
• See "Kingma (Elselijn) - Lady Parts: The Metaphysics of Pregnancy".
• Rather oddly, I've made a very detailed write-up of this RIP talk under "Kingma (Elselijn) - Were You Part of Your Mother?".
• I've not listened to the talk again, but need to sort out the write-ups.

• John Hawthorne: Arbitrariness Arguments in Metaphysics
• Not published in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018. At least not as delivered.
• However another paper co-authored by Hawthorne with his research student was included in the RIP volume: "Fairchild (Maegan) & Hawthorne (John) - Against Conservatism in Metaphysics".
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort).
• Hawthorne mentions this in his introduction - that some of the talk - and resulting paper - is down to Maegan Fairchild (presumably languishing in Australia).
• It was interesting to see Hawthorne in action, though I grew to dislike his stance somewhat. He was very dismissive of an author who takes a commonsensical view of ontology. Yet, someone needs to argue for this stance.
• Hawthorne is basically arguing for ontological universalism as against either minimalism or conservatism. In his terms permissivists. eliminativists and conservatives.
• His main target is the 'conservative' Daniel Z. Korman who argues in his book Objects: Nothing Out of the Ordinary that only commonsense objects exist.
• I doubt I'll ever read this book, but "Korman (Daniel Z.) - Strange Kinds, Familiar Kinds, and the Charge of Arbitrariness" might be worth taking a look at.
• Hawthorne's discussion of 'outcars' leading to 'outrocks' and then to 'islands' was interesting and fairly convincing.
• I think I'm willing to go along with all this. We just don't have concepts for most things that exist as they are not relevant to our concerns. We are interested in archipelagos of islands but not of spectacles.
• Hawthorne's main worries with his view arise from theorems in transfinite arithmetic due to Cantor (along the lines that 'the set of all sets' is a logical contradiction - Russell's paradox).

• Jonathan Schaffer: Beyond Fundamentality
• This talk was published under a different title in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 91 (The Philosopher's Manifesto) - 2022, pp. 1-22.
• See "Schaffer (Jonathan) - Laws for Metaphysical Explanation".
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort).
• Apart from being irritated by the speaker's voice, I can remember nothing of the talk (I'm in catch-up mode). I need to listen to it again.

• Kathrin Koslicki: Towards a Distinctively Hylomorphic Solution to the Grounding Problem
• This talk was published in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 333-364.
• See "Koslicki (Kathrin) - Towards a Hylomorphic Solution to the Grounding Problem".
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort).
• This talk rehearses a lot of the arguments about coincident objects, starting with "Gibbard (Allan) - Contingent Identity" (she prefers Lumple to Lump1).
• However, while her suggestion of Hylomorphism is important, she didn't give an account of what Form actually is supposed to be (in the modern world).

• Naomi Thompson: Fictionalism about Grounding
• This talk was published - uder a slightly different title - in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 23-44.
• See "Thompson (Naomi) - Irrealism about Grounding".
• The YouTube blurb is:-
  • Grounding talk has become increasingly familiar in contemporary philosophical discussion.
  • Most discussants of grounding think that grounding talk is useful, intelligible, and accurately describes metaphysical reality. Call them realists about grounding.
  • Some dissenters reject grounding talk on the grounds that it is unintelligible, or unmotivated. They would prefer to eliminate grounding talk from philosophy, so we can call them eliminitivists about grounding.
  • This lecture outlines a new position in the debate about grounding, defending the view that grounding talk is (or at least can be) intelligible and useful.
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort).
• I'm not sure if there's any difference between Fictionalism and Irrealism.
• The speaker's point is that Fictions - while not true accounts of reality - are useful short-cuts in our discourse.
• Personally, I think the reality or otherwise of grounding depends on the subject matter.

• Sally Haslanger: What is a Social Practice?
• This talk was published in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 231-247.
• See "Haslanger (Sally) - What is a Social Practice?".
• The YouTube blurb is:-
  • This lecture provides an account of social practices that reveals how they are constitutive of social agency, enable coordination around things of value, and are a site for social intervention.
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort).
• There's a link to a handout, but it's now broken.
• An interesting lecture, .... I'd only read Haslanger in the context of Persistence. It was useful to see her in action in another context.
• I thought she assumed too readily that the audience was on her side (ie. 'woke'). She supposes that 'critical theory' is virtuous common sense.
• The talk alternated between sensible descriptions and radical - not to say contentious - lessons. Her goal is prescriptive - reforming our social conduct - rather than merely descriptive.
• My friend Geoff - hardly a reactionary - recounted an annoying experience wherein a women he'd stood aside for on a narrow path on Hampstead Heath looked at him as though he was patronising scum. Maybe it was Sally Haslanger, as one of her examples of odious social practices that need critiquing is men opening doors for women (as though they are too weak to open the door themselves). Maybe this is a little old fashioned (and is not the same as holding a door open which is just politeness).
• She has some interesting, but controversial, points to make about Race. The transcript may be useful for digging these nuggets out.

• Stewart Shapiro: Potential Infinity: A Modal Account
• Sadly not published in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018.
• There's a paper co-authored by Shapiro and published in Nous that seems to cover the same ground: See "Linnebo (Oystein) & Shapiro (Stewart) - Actual and Potential Infinity".
• However another paper co-authored by Shapiro was included in the RIP volume: "Snyder (Eric), Shapiro (Stewart) & Samuels (Richard) - Cardinals, Ordinals, and the Prospects for a Fregean Foundation".
• It's an interesting paper, but required more attention than I was able to give it white doing the washing-up.
• I've read (most of) "Shapiro (Stewart) - Thinking about Mathematics - The Philosophy of Mathematics" so was interested to watch the author in action. His approach is very rapid staccato with a 'right?' added after each sentence.
• The video has sections from a presumed hand-out projected. It'd make the talk easier to review if this was available as a printout.
• There's a lot of formal modal logic and Shapiro explains the symbolism as he goes along. I'd be amazed if anyone in the audience without this background would have a clue what he was on about, or would even care. Distinctions between 'necessarily possibly' and 'possibly necessarily' are very important, but might sound like something out of Monty Python to the general public (this was a public lecture, after all).
• He seemed to be contrasting Platonism with Constructivism, trying to show that the latter isn't as absurd as it seems to most mathematicians.

• Suki Finn: Nonexistence
• Not published in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018. At least not as delivered.
• However another paper co-authored by Finn was included in the RIP volume: "Finn (Suki) & Bueno (Otávio) - Quantifier Variance Dissolved".
• The talk is really about quantifier invariance, with quantifying over nonexistent things being a pressure-point.
• Finn believes in the straightforward existence of nonexistent things. She alludes to Meinong, or at least - presumably modern - Meinongians, but doesn't mention 'subsistence'.
• I'd thought that Meinong had been disposed of by "Russell (Bertrand) - On Denoting" (and, maybe, "Russell (Bertrand) - Meinong's Theory of Complexes and Assumptions (I.)" to "Russell (Bertrand) - Meinong's Theory of Complexes and Assumptions (III.)").
• Anyway, the initial discussion of nonexistent things is interesting enough.
• My own view is that nonexistent things don't exist but our Concepts of them do. So, when we say that Father Christmas has a long wide beard, we're refering to our Concept. I suppose that we do likewise when we say male lions have manes, but in this case our concept 'lion' refers. Sometimes our concepts may be inaccurate, but still refer (eg. if we think of dolphins as fish).
• Quite 'where' or 'how' concepts exist is still a difficult matter to resolve.
• Otherwise, I thought that Suki Finn was simply asserting her ontological (and other) intuitions rather than really arguing for them.

• Tim Button: I disappear
• This talk was published (with a different title) in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 205-229.
• See "Button (Tim) - Wittgenstein on Solipsism in the 1930s: Private Pains, Private Languages, and Two Uses of ‘I’". I need to read this.
• It was entertaining to listen to the talk - especially the speaker's rather flamboyant (if not rather camp) style - while doing the washing-up, but it requires closer scrutiny.
• It reminded me of a conversation I had with Sarah Patterson once where she complained of the difficulty of marking certain exam scripts. What mark do you give a student who thought Wittgenstein was arguing FOR private languages? In the case of this talk, I wasn't sure whether the speaker came down on the side that Selves existed of not.
• His central point is that "There’s a possibility of an error through misidentification iff I pick out myself something other than a first-person indexical".
• I found the concluding argument that there's no difference between spatial and personal indexicals obscure.
• The Self is important in my research. This Talk also provides an insight into Wittgenstein's thoughts on the Self. The possibility of the Self or 'I' 'disappearing' relates to Nihilism.

• Timothy Williamson: Spaces of Possibility
• This talk was published in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 189-204.
• See "Williamson (Timothy) - Spaces of Possibility".
• The YouTube blurb is:-
  • We care not just how things are but how they could have been otherwise - about possibility and necessity as well as actuality.
  • Is such talk beyond the reach of respectable science?
  • In this lecture, Timothy Williamson argues not.
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort).
• It was interesting to see Williamson in action, and to hear his West-country burr.
• He's rather dismissive of David Lewis's Modal Realism, but I didn't attend closely enough to gather what his alternative account of Modality is.
• Maybe he should be kinder to Lewis as his own - epistemological - solution to Vagueness is not immune to 'the incredulous stare'.
• He mentions that modality doesn't feature in the symbolism of mathematics.
• I need to read his paper.

• Nilanjan Das: The First Person in Buddhism
• This talk was published under a different title in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 93 (Expanding Horizons) - 2023, pp. 23-53.
• See "Das (Nilanjan) - Vasubandhu on the First Person".
• The YouTube blurb is:-
  • In classical South Asia, most philosophers thought that the self (if it exists at all) is what the first-person pronoun “I” stands for. It is something that persists through time, undergoes conscious thoughts and experiences, and exercises control over actions.
  • The Buddhists accepted the “no-self” thesis: they denied that such a self is substantially real.
  • This gave rise to a puzzle for these Buddhists. If there is nothing substantially real that “I” stands for, what are we talking about when we speak of ourselves?
  • In this lecture, I present one Buddhist answer to this question, an answer that emerges from the work of the Abhidharma thinker, Vasubandhu (4th-5th century CE).
  • Audience members will be able to ask questions through the You Tube chat function, which will then be answered live.
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort). What might be worth salvaging is the Q&As forming the latter half of the podcast, starting with some interesting questioning from Julian Baggini, referencing his PhD dissertation ("Baggini (Julian) - Psychological Reductionism About Persons: A Critical Development").
• I thought this a fascinating talk - but need to read the associated Paper. The discussion is fairly central to my concerns, relating to three areas: the Self, I and Buddhism.
• One thing that I'm suspicious about, though this isn't really relevant from a philosophical point of view, is whether Das is reading lots of modern Western ideas into the classical Buddhist texts; whether they are translated using modern terminology, and so on. Also, how can anyone check out the texts? There's some useful information on one of them on Amazon (Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya. A New English Translation, Volume1: Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya).

• Will Kymlicka: Membership Rights for Animals
• This talk was published in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 91 (The Philosopher's Manifesto) - 2022, pp. 213-244.
• See "Kymlicka (Will) - Membership Rights for Animals".
• The YouTube blurb is:-
  • Will Kymlicka argues that domesticated animals – including companion and farm animals – should be granted rights as members of society, with a distinctive, non-human role. Questioning the widely-held assumption that “society” is a human-exclusive phenomenon, Kymlicka posits that domesticated animals participate in schemes of co-operation, comply with rule-governed institutions, and have interdependent interests. “We therefore need to think about society in interspecies terms.”
  • Will Kymlicka is the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen’s University. His books include Multicultural Citizenship (1995), Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity (2007), and Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (2011), co-authored with Sue Donaldson.
  • This lecture was recorded from a live event at Foyles Charing Cross Road in May 2022.
• An interesting lecture, though rather an extreme view on Animal Rights.
• There are 30 minutes of Q&As at the end of the lecture.
• He mentions Tom Regan, who thinks that domesticated animals should be left to go extinct. Kymlicka thinks that we - having bred them - have a duty to maintain them in retirement (along the lines of donkey sanctuaries) ad infinitem, though in naturally reducing numbers.
• He doesn't mention "Francione (Gary) - Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?".

• Emma Borg: What Is It to Be Responsible for What You Say?
• This talk was published in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 95 (Words and Worlds) - 2024, pp. 107-126.
• See "Borg (Emma) - What Is It to Be Responsible for What You Say?".
• The YouTube blurb is:-
  • In asserting something I incur certain kinds of liabilities, including a responsibility for the truth of the content I express. If I say “After leaving the EU, the UK will take back control of c.£350 million per week”, or I tell you that “The number 14 bus stops at the British Museum”, I become liable for the truth of these claims. As my audience, you could hold me unreliable or devious if it turns out that what I said is false. Yet this socio-linguistic practice – of acquiring and ascribing ‘linguistic liability’ – is complicated, especially given philosophical distinctions between the various different kinds of contents people may express (am I liable, for instance, for the claim that the number 14 bus will stop at the British Museum today or only usually?).
  • In this talk, I draw apart different kinds of linguistic liability, exploring how each relates to a divergent kind of content and to the intentions of the speaker. I also explore some of the practical repercussions of these different kinds of liability, for instance around the identification of, and legislation about, hate speech
  • Speaker Emma Borg is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading and Joint Director of the Reading Centre for Cognition Research. She has published widely in philosophy of language (including two OUP monographs, Minimal Semantics (2004) and Pursuing Meaning (2012), both of which have been translated into Chinese). Her work in philosophy of language deals with the relationship between meaning and context, and the nature of communication. She is currently working on a new book, Compelling Reasons, which looks at debates around rationality and bias, arguing that we are more rational than social psychologists often take us to be.
  • Emma also works in business ethics, exploring the so-called ‘social licence’ model as a guide to reshaping relations between the private sector, the state and individuals. As part of this work, she serves as an Independent Advisor to the Professional Standards Committee of His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort).
• As I write this Note, I've completely forgotten the import of the talk. I think I'll need to audit it again, though maybe I should just focus on the Paper.

• Ernie Lepore: Slurring Words and Slurring Articulations
• This talk was published under a different title in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 95 (Words and Worlds) - 2024, pp. 63-72.
• See "Lepore (Ernie) - Inflammatory Language".
• The YouTube blurb is:-
  • Early in the twentieth century, philosophy in the English-speaking world took what Richard Rorty later called “The Linguistic Turn” in which language became the central focus of philosophy. In the twenty-first century, the philosophy of language remains strong but has changed considerably. This series examines these new directions, including new questions and methods as well as interest in what other disciplines and world philosophies have to teach us. The speakers are all leading or up-and-coming thinkers representing the full diversity of philosophy in the English-speaking world today. Their talks are aimed as much at the interested generalist as philosophical specialists.
  • Ernie Lepore (Rutgers) (Paper co-authored with Una Stojnic)
  • Slurring words, slurring articulations
  • Slurs are epithets that denigrate a group simply on the basis of membership, for example, on the basis of race, ethnicity, origin, religion, gender or ideology. They provide powerful linguistic weapons, carrying a characteristic offensive sting, prone to cause offence, outrage, and even injury. So much so, that they can be subject to media censorship, and sometimes even legislation. As to the nature and source of their characteristic offence, the predominant position is to invoke some aspect of meaning. The few who reject this assumption locate the source of offence in the taboo status of pejorative language. In other words, slurs themselves and/or their associations are the source of their offensive sting, not their meanings. We will challenge both sorts of approaches and defend a novel alternative according to which the source of an offensive effect is negative associations triggered not by slurs but rather by certain articulations of these expressions—phonological or orthographic. We need to distinguish slurs from their articulations because, surprisingly, the latter can trigger an offensive effect even when the former is absent, and even when articulated, a slur can lose its offensive potency if its articulation is non-canonical.
  • Dr. Ernie Lepore is a Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy. He is the author of numerous books and papers in the philosophy of language, philosophical logic, metaphysics and philosophy of mind, including Imagination and Convention, with Matthew Stone (Oxford University Press, 2015); Meaning, Mind and Matter: Philosophical Essays, with Barry Loewer (Oxford University Press, 2011); Liberating Content, Language Turned on Itself (both with Oxford University Press, in 2016 and 2007, respectively); Insensitive Semantics (2004, Basil Blackwell), all three with Herman Cappelen; Donald Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language and Reality, (Oxford University Press, 2005); Donald Davidson’s Truth-Theoretic Semantics, (Oxford University Press, 2007), both with Kirk Ludwig; Meaning and Argument, Holism: A Shopper’s Guide (Blackwell, 1991); The Compositionality Papers (Oxford University Press, 2002), both with Jerry Fodor; and What Every College Student Should Know, with Sarah-Jane Leslie (Rutgers Press, 2002). He has edited several books, including Handbook in Philosophy of Language (with Barry Smith, Oxford University Press, 2006), Truth and Interpretation (Blackwell, 1989), and What is Cognitive Science? (with Zenon Pylyshyn, Blackwell, 1999). He is also general editor of the Blackwell series “Philosophers and Their Critics”.
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort; however, they are fine to read uncorrected while out walking the dog!). What might be worth salvaging accurately are the Q&As forming the latter half of the podcast.
• Lepore admitted that he's not a public speaker, and he's right. It was impossible to hear much of what he said, given that he mumbles. The transcript seems to have picked it up, though.
• I didn't understand his thesis: he seemd at one point to say that slur terms are always unacceptable, but then he says it's dependent on articulation (if I've understood him aright).
• There was an interesting discussion of the use of the N-word by Blacks (as in Pulp Fiction, though this wasn't mentioned). Slur words can be reappropriated by the slurred group. I think there was a discussion of why 'coloured' is unacceptable; it wasn't chosed by Blacks themselves. This causes a problem for South African 'coloureds' - where the term is used by those of Indian heritage.
• There's also an interesting take on the 'niggardly' controversy. The objection is that there are many alternative synonyms for this term, so its use is seen - or felt - as provocative.
• Lepore refers to a useful unnamed old paper by Jen Hornsby, but it's not cited in hi Paper. I presume it's "Hornsby (Jennifer) - Meaning and Uselessness: How to Think of Derogatory Words".
• I'd need to read the Paper - or the transcript - to add anything sensible.

• Mihaela Popa-Wyatt: How Hate Speech Works
• This talk was published under a different title (and co-authored with her husband) in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 95 (Words and Worlds) - 2024, pp. 73-86.
• See "Popa-Wyatt (Mihaela) & Wyatt (Jeremy) - Games, Norms, and Utterances".
• The YouTube blurb is:-
  • Hate speech poses puzzles for philosophers of language, society and politics.
  • In this talk, I shall examine slurs, as a case study in hate speech. There are several questions arising. Why do some slurring utterances offend more than others? How do slurring utterances work in a conversation so as to offend? What other effects do slurring utterances have? How do slurring utterances have effects beyond the immediate conversation in which they are uttered?
  • These questions can be answered by drawing on the idea of conversational games, the theory of speech acts and an understanding of how social roles influence conversation. Within a conversational game, slurring speech acts are exercises of power which change the rules governing the game. A further problem is how slurring utterances have effects beyond the conversation, such as contributing to changes in social norms. This effect can be explained by a system of hierarchical social and conversational games. Building on this idea of a hierarchical game, I will identify the ingredients required to model hate speech and its social effects.
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort). What might be worth salvaging is the Q&As forming the latter half of the podcast, though they don't add much. One questionner suggested that 'no-platforming' caused significant practical harm, while the so-called offensive opinions could just be shrugged off. The speaker thought that such opinions poisoned society so caused more harm than was initially apparent.
• I basically dislike the whole attitude of the speaker, even though there's some useful information. She seems convinced that 'hate speech' comes from the powerful - particularly 'men in suits' - when in fact most of it comes from the weak who are just a little less weak than those they fear will take their jobs, etc. She seemsed overconfident and smug. I wondered whether she considered herself to have power, or whether it's only the patriarchy that does.
• One YouTube commentator remarked 'This is not philosophy, this is a political broadcast.' I agree.
• There was a general antipathy to Boris Johnson - particularly citing his reference to women in burkas looking like letter-boxes as a paradigmatic case of 'hate speech'. There's no admission that that's just what they do look like, and that the practise arose (and continues within) paradigmatically patriarchal societies that severely curtail the opportunities afforded to women.
• I'd need to read the Paper, which at least has more game theory than was in the talk.

• Robert Brandom: What is Philosophy?
• Not published in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements as far as I can see.
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort).
• The YouTube blurb is:-
  • What is the task of philosophical investigation? How is it different from the inquiries pursued in the natural sciences, the social sciences, and other humanistic disciplines?
  • Robert Brandom is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy. His books on the philosophy of language include "Brandom (Robert) - Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing & Discursive Commitment" (Harvard, 1994) and Between Saying and Doing (Oxford, 2008). His books on German Idealism include A Spirit of Trust (Harvard, 2019), and Pragmatism and Idealism (Oxford, 2022).
• I was set a passage from "Brandom (Robert) - Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing & Discursive Commitment" ("Brandom (Robert) - Toward a Normative Pragmatics", which discusses 'What are we?') by my supervisor, so it was interesting to see what the speaker looked and sounded like: basically an occidental version of Confucius.
• This talk is about our use of Concepts, and may be useful in that regard. It's not an elementary introduction to philosophy.
• That said, I don't have much use for Kant or Hegel.

• Anil Seth, Louise M. Antony, Philip Goff, Maja Spener: Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Debate 2022 - Can Consciousness be Explained?
• The YouTube blurb is:-
  • How can flesh and blood brains give rise to pains and pleasures, dreams and desires, sights and sounds? Some believe this ‘hard problem’ of consciousness can never be solved. Can we expect any breakthroughs as the science of the mind progresses?
  • Our annual debate this year considers whether the problem of consciousness really is intractable. Our illustrious panel is neuroscientist Anil Seth and philosophers Louise Antony, Maja Spener and Philip Goff, with the BBC’s Ritula Shah chairing.
  • Speakers:-
    → Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex.
    → Louise M. Antony is Professor Emerita at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
    → Maja Spener is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Birmingham.
    → Philip Goff is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University.
  • Chair:-
    → Ritula Shah is a journalist and presenter of The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4.
• There's a full auto-generated YouTube transcript (these take a lot of tidying up, so are only a last resort; however, they are fine to read uncorrected while out walking the dog!). What might be worth salvaging accurately are the Q&As forming the latter half of the podcast.
• It was interesting seeing Anil Seth, Louise M. Antony and Philip Goff in action. Louise M. Antony seemed arrogant and dismissive. Philip Goff was hand-wavy and played to the audience. Anil Seth was clear, coherent and optimistic.
• I'm not sure a debate can get very far with a topic as complex as Consciousness. This one is notable for a spat between Anil Seth and Louise M. Antony over the priority of bottom up over top down explanation (respectively). I note that the title of the talk is 'Can Consciousness be Explained?' NOT 'Can Science Explain Consciousness?'. Louise M. Antony thinks it can only be explained top down by philosophy in a functional way, whereas Anil Seth prefers athe bottom up approach from neuroscience. I'm with him, basically because I'm against Functionalism and think that Explanation has to get into the details of 'how does it all work' rather than merely 'what's it for and what does it do'.
• Someone asked for opinions on whether one should treat Teletransportation as a means of transport and use it if the technology worked. Anil Seth and Louise M. Antony said 'no' it would be death, with replacement by a copy. Maja Spener thought 'maybe' - if your atoms were transmitted and reassembled (but Louise M. Antony thought that we - unlike artifacts - can't survive such procedures). Philip Goff was agnostic, probably because his Panpsychist claims are supposedly orthogonal to any scientific explanation.
• A lot more should be said.

Summary of Notes Referenced by This Note

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References & Reading List

Author	Title	Medium	Source	Read?
Baggini (Julian)	Psychological Reductionism About Persons: A Critical Development	Paper - Cited	PhD thesis, University College London, 1996	1%
Baggini (Julian), Ed.	Words and Worlds: New Directions in the Philosophy of Language	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	No
BBC	Miscellaneous iPlayer and Podcasts	Paper - Cited	BBC, Various Dates	Yes
Bird (Alexander)	The Structure and the Necessity of the Natural Laws	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures 2016-17: Metaphysics	No
Borg (Emma)	What Is It to Be Responsible for What You Say?	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 95 (Words and Worlds) - 2024, pp. 107-126	No
Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David)	The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Studies: Vol. 170, No. 3 (September 2014), pp. 465-500	Yes
Brandom (Robert)	Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing & Discursive Commitment	Book - Cited	Brandom (Robert) - Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing & Discursive Commitment	3%
Brandom (Robert)	Toward a Normative Pragmatics	Paper - Cited	Brandom (Robert) - Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing & Discursive Commitment, 1994, Chapter 1	50%
Button (Tim)	Wittgenstein on Solipsism in the 1930s: Private Pains, Private Languages, and Two Uses of ‘I’	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 205-229	5%
Chalmers (David), Manley (David) & Wasserman (Ryan)	Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology	Book - Cited	Chalmers (David), Manley (David) & Wasserman (Ryan) - Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology	3%
Das (Nilanjan)	Vasubandhu on the First Person	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 93 (Expanding Horizons) - 2023, pp. 23-53	No
Fairchild (Maegan) & Hawthorne (John)	Against Conservatism in Metaphysics	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 45-75	4%
Finn (Suki) & Bueno (Otávio)	Quantifier Variance Dissolved	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 289-307	6%
Francione (Gary)	Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?	Book - Cited	Francione (Gary) - Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?	4%
Gibbard (Allan)	Contingent Identity	Paper - Cited	Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader	Yes
Hale (Bob)	The Basis of Necessity and Possibility	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 109-138	4%
Haslanger (Sally)	What is a Social Practice?	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 231-247	7%
Hornsby (Jennifer)	Meaning and Uselessness: How to Think of Derogatory Words	Paper - Cited	Midwest Studies in Philosophy volume 25 (Figurative language, edited by P French and H Wettstein) January 2001, pp 128-141	No
Kingma (Elselijn)	Lady Parts: The Metaphysics of Pregnancy	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 165-187	Yes
Kingma (Elselijn)	Were You Part of Your Mother?	Paper - Cited	Mind, Volume 128, Issue 511, July 2019, Pages 609–646	Yes
Korman (Daniel Z.)	Strange Kinds, Familiar Kinds, and the Charge of Arbitrariness	Paper - Cited	Oxford Studies in Metaphysics:119-144 (2010)	5%
Koslicki (Kathrin)	Towards a Hylomorphic Solution to the Grounding Problem	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 333-364	4%
Kymlicka (Will)	Membership Rights for Animals	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 91 (The Philosopher's Manifesto) - 2022, pp. 213-244	No
Lepore (Ernie)	Inflammatory Language	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 95 (Words and Worlds) - 2024, pp. 63-72	No
Linnebo (Oystein) & Shapiro (Stewart)	Actual and Potential Infinity	Paper - Cited	Noûs, Vol. 53, No. 1 (March 2019), pp. 160-191	No
Martinich (A.P.)	The Philosophy of Language	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	7%
O'Hear (Anthony), Ed.	Metaphysics	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	8%
Popa-Wyatt (Mihaela) & Wyatt (Jeremy)	Games, Norms, and Utterances	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 95 (Words and Worlds) - 2024, pp. 73-86	No
Rea (Michael), Ed.	Material Constitution - A Reader	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	41%
Russell (Bertrand)	Meinong's Theory of Complexes and Assumptions (I.)	Paper - Cited	Mind, 13.50 (Apr. 1904), pp. 204-219	No
Russell (Bertrand)	Meinong's Theory of Complexes and Assumptions (III.)	Paper - Cited	Mind, 13.52 (Oct. 1904), pp. 509-524	No
Russell (Bertrand)	On Denoting	Paper - Cited	Martinich - The Philosophy of Language	Yes
Schaffer (Jonathan)	Laws for Metaphysical Explanation	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 1-22	6%
Shapiro (Stewart)	Thinking about Mathematics - The Philosophy of Mathematics	Book - Cited	Shapiro (Stewart) - Thinking about Mathematics - The Philosophy of Mathematics	12%
Snyder (Eric), Shapiro (Stewart) & Samuels (Richard)	Cardinals, Ordinals, and the Prospects for a Fregean Foundation	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 77-107	4%
Spinoza (Benedict de), Curley (Edwin), Hampshire (Stuart)	Ethics	Book - Cited	Spinoza (Benedict de), Curley (Edwin), Hampshire (Stuart) - Ethics	Yes
Spinoza (Benedict de), Curley (Edwin), Hampshire (Stuart)	Ethics	Paper - Cited	Spinoza, Curley, Hampshire - Ethics	Yes
Thomasson (Amie L.)	Answerable and Unanswerable Questions	Paper - Cited	Chalmers (David), Manley (David) & Wasserman (Ryan) - Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology	4%
Thomasson (Amie L.)	Changing Metaphysics: What Difference does it Make?	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 139-163	5%
Thompson (Naomi)	Irrealism about Grounding	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 23-44	6%
Williamson (Timothy)	Spaces of Possibility	Paper - Cited	Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 82 (Metaphysics) - July 2018, pp. 189-204	7%

Text Colour Conventions

1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026
2. Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)