22 found
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  1. Silencing speech.Ishani Maitra - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (2):pp. 309-338.
    Pornography deserves special protections, it is often said, because it qualifies as speech. Therefore, no matter what we think of its content, we must afford it the protections that we extend to most speech, but don’t extend to other actions.1 In response, Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton have argued that the case is not so simple: one of the harms of pornography, they claim, is that it silences women’s speech, thereby preventing women from deriving from speech the very benefits that (...)
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  2. Subordinating Speech.Ishani Maitra - 2012 - In Ishani Maitra & Mary Kate McGowan (eds.), Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 94-120.
    This chapter considers whether ordinary instances of racist hate speech can be authoritative, thereby constituting the subordination of people of color. It is often said that ordinary speakers cannot subordinate because they lack authority. Here it is argued that there are more ways in which speakers can come to have authority than have been generally recognized. In part, this is because authority has been taken to be too closely tied to social position. This chapter presents a series of examples which (...)
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  3. In Defense of a Kripkean Dogma.Jonathan Ichikawa, Ishani Maitra & Brian Weatherson - 2011 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (1):56-68.
    In “Against Arguments from Reference” (Mallon et al., 2009), Ron Mallon, Edouard Machery, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich (hereafter, MMNS) argue that recent experiments concerning reference undermine various philosophical arguments that presuppose the correctness of the causal-historical theory of reference. We will argue three things in reply. First, the experiments in question—concerning Kripke’s Gödel/Schmidt example—don’t really speak to the dispute between descriptivism and the causal-historical theory; though the two theories are empirically testable, we need to look at quite different data (...)
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  4. Assertion, Norms, and Games.Ishani Maitra - 2011 - In Jessica Brown & Herman Cappelen (eds.), Assertion: New Philosophical Essays. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 277-296.
    This chapter focuses on a widely held package of views, according to which: (i) assertions are governed by some alethic or epistemic norm, (ii) such a norm is intimately connected to assertion, in the sense that it individuates or characterizes the speech act, and (iii) this sense of intimate connection can be explained with the help of an analogy between language use and games. It is argued that this package of views must be rejected. More specifically, by considering some different (...)
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  5. New Words for Old Wrongs.Ishani Maitra - 2018 - Episteme 15 (3):345-362.
    This paper begins with the idea that there are sometimes gaps in our shared linguistic/ conceptual resources that make it difficult for us to understand our own social experiences, and to make them intelligible to others. In this paper, I focus on three cases of this sort, some of which are drawn from the literature on hermeneutical injustice. I offer a diagnosis of what the gaps in these cases consist in, and what it takes to fill them. I argue that (...)
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  6. The Nature of Epistemic Injustice.Ishani Maitra - 2010 - Philosophical Books 51 (4):195-211.
  7. Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech.Ishani Maitra & Mary Kate McGowan (eds.) - 2012 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    This volume draws on a range of approaches in order to explore the problem and determine what ought to be done about allegedly harmful speech.Most liberal societies are deeply committed to a principle of free speech. At the same time, however, there is evidence that some kinds of speech are harmful in ways that are detrimental to important liberal values, such as social equality. Might a genuine commitment to free speech require that we legally permit speech even when it is (...)
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  8. Assertion, knowledge, and action.Ishani Maitra & Brian Weatherson - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 149 (1):99-118.
    We argue against the knowledge rule of assertion, and in favour of integrating the account of assertion more tightly with our best theories of evidence and action. We think that the knowledge rule has an incredible consequence when it comes to practical deliberation, that it can be right for a person to do something that she can't properly assert she can do. We develop some vignettes that show how this is possible, and how odd this consequence is. We then argue (...)
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  9. Silence and Responsibility.Ishani Maitra - 2004 - Philosophical Perspectives 18 (1):189-208.
    This paper is concerned with the phenomenon that has been labeled 'silencing' in some of the recent philosophical literature. A speaker who is silenced in this sense is unable to make herself understood, even though her audience hears every word she utters. For instance, consider a woman who says “No”, intending to refuse sex. Her audience fails to recognize her intention to refuse, because he thinks that women tend to be insincere, and to not say what they really mean, especially (...)
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  10. On silencing, rape, and responsibility.Ishani Maitra & Mary Kate McGowan - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (1):167 – 172.
    In a recent article in this journal, Nellie Wieland argues that silencing in the sense put forward by Rae Langton and Jennifer Hornsby has the unpalatable consequence of diminishing a rapist's responsibility for the rape. We argue both that Wieland misidentifies Langton and Hornsby's conception of silencing, and that neither Langton and Hornsby's actual conception, nor the one that Wieland attributes to them, in fact generates this consequence.
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  11. The Limits of Free Speech: Pornography and the Question of Coverage.Ishani Maitra & Mary Kate McGowan - 2007 - Legal Theory 13 (1):41-68.
    Many liberal societies are deeply committed to freedom of speech. This commitment is so entrenched that when it seems to come into conflict with other commitments (e.g., gender equality), it is often argued that the commitment to speech must trump the other commitments. In this paper, we argue that a proper understanding of our commitment to free speech requires being clear about what should count as speech for these purposes. On the approach we defend, should get a special, technical sense, (...)
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  12. On Racist Hate Speech and the Scope of a Free Speech Principle.Mary Kate McGowan & Ishani Maitra - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 23 (2):343-372.
    In this paper, we argue that to properly understand our commitment to a principle of free speech, we must pay attention to what should count as speech for the purposes of such a principle. We defend the view that ‘speech’ here should be a technical term, with something other than its ordinary sense. We then offer a partial characterization of this technical sense. We contrast our view with some influential views about free speech , and show that our view has (...)
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  13.  61
    Hateful Speech and Hostile Environments.Ishani Maitra - 2021 - Australasian Philosophical Review 5 (2):150-159.
    This paper examines Mary Kate McGowan’s account of oppressive speech. McGowan argues that ordinary hateful speech can oppress by enacting discriminatory norms, and further, that this enactment sometimes renders the speech regulable under current United States law. In response, the paper raises two sets of questions. First, it asks about the contents of the norms enacted by a given hateful utterance, and specifically, about what determines those contents. Second, the paper also questions McGowan’s emphasis on the distinction between causing harm (...)
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  14. Propaganda, Non-Rational Means, and Civic Rhetoric.Ishani Maitra - 2016 - Theoria. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science 31 (3):313-327.
    This paper examines Jason Stanley’s account of propaganda. I begin with an overview and some questions about the structure of that account. I then argue for two main conclusions. First, I argue that Stanley’s account over-generalizes, by counting mere incompetent argumentation as propaganda. But this problem can be avoided, by emphasizing the role of emotions in effective propaganda more than Stanley does. In addition, I argue that more propaganda is democratically acceptable than Stanley allows. Focusing especially on sexual assault prevention (...)
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  15. How and Why to Be a Moderate Contextualist.Ishani Maitra - 2007 - In G. Preyer (ed.), Context-Sensitivity and Semantic Minimalism: New Essays on Semantics and Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 111-132.
    In recent work, Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore have argued that neither Radical nor Moderate Contextualism can explain how we regularly succeed in communicating with each other. In this chapter, I argue that their preferred view (Pluralistic Minimalism) encounters the same difficulty with respect to explaining communication. Further, I offer a characterization (different from the one offered by Cappelen and Lepore) of what is at issue between the Moderate and the Radical Contextualist. This way of drawing the distinction between the (...)
     
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  16. Subordination and Objectification.Ishani Maitra - 2013 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 10 (1):87-100.
    This essay discusses Rae Langton’s recent collection of essays, Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification. After introducing some of the major themes of the collection, I raise questions about two of the central concepts in the book. The first question has to do with Langton’s notion of subordination. I ask why she takes pornography to be a subordinating speech act, rather than a subordinating practice, and argue that the latter view has several advantages. The remaining questions have to (...)
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  17. How and Why to Be a Moderate Contextualist.Ishani Maitra - 2007 - In G. Preyer (ed.), Context-Sensitivity and Semantic Minimalism: New Essays on Semantics and Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 111-132.
    In recent work, Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore have argued that neither Radical nor Moderate Contextualism can explain how we regularly succeed in communicating with each other. In this chapter, I argue that their preferred view (Pluralistic Minimalism) encounters the same difficulty with respect to explaining communication. Further, I offer a characterization (different from the one offered by Cappelen and Lepore) of what is at issue between the Moderate and the Radical Contextualist. This way of drawing the distinction between the (...)
     
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  18. Why Take Our Word for It?Ishani Maitra & Daniel Nolan - manuscript
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  19. Commentary on A.W. Eaton's "A Sensible Antiporn Feminism".Ishani Maitra - 2008 - Symposia on Gender, Race, and Philosophy 4 (2).
  20. In Defence of the ACA's Medicaid Expansion.Ishani Maitra & Brian Weatherson - 2013 - Public Affairs Quarterly 27 (3):267-288.
    The only part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (hereafter, ‘the ACA’) struck down in National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) et al. v. Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al. was a provision expanding Medicaid. We will argue that this was a mistake; the provision should not have been struck down. We’ll do this by identifying a test that C.J. Roberts used to justify his view that this provision was unconstitutional. We’ll defend that test against (...)
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  21. Misogyny and Humanism.Ishani Maitra - 2019 - APA Newsletter of Feminism and Philosophy 18 (2):14-18.
    In Down Girl, Kate Manne sets out to reclaim the word ‘misogyny’. To do this, she takes on the naïve conception, according to which misogyny is the hatred of women – universally or at least generally speaking – simply because they are women. Manne argues that this conception has many drawbacks, chief among them its tendency to “deprive women of a suitable name for a potentially potent problem facing them”. Her aim, then, is to develop an alternate conception of misogyny (...)
     
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  22. Silence, Speech, and Responsibility.Ishani Maitra - 2002 - Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Pornography deserves special protections, it is often said, because it qualifies as speech; therefore, no matter what we think of it, we must afford it the protections that we extend to most speech, but don't extend to other actions. In response, it has been argued that the case is not so simple: one of the harms of pornography, it is claimed, is that it silences women's speech, thereby preventing women from deriving from speech the very benefits that warrant the special (...)
     
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