Reclamation and Authorization: Cepollaro and Lopez de Sa on in-group restriction (accepted). Philosophia.

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[postreview coming soon]

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It is generally thought that the reclamation of slurs is restricted to the in-group. Bianca Cepollaro and Dan Lopez de Sa challenge this assumption by presenting cases in which slurs are successfully reclaimed by members of out-groups. I agree with the idea that the out-groups often participate in reclamation. In this paper, I present a view which accommodates the fact that sometimes out-groups successfully reclaim slurs. At the same time, the view preserves the central role of the in-group in reclamation.

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The Psychological View of Generics and Worldly Truthmakers (2023). Acta Philosophica Fennica, Vol. 100, 345-368.

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[postreview coming soon]

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Sarah-Jane Leslie has proposed an influential psychological view of generics. According to the view, generics are products of a primitive psychological mechanism of generalization. Leslie's central claim is that generics do not have truth conditions based on compositional semantics. Rather, they have much looser worldly truth-makers. In this article, I offer a new perspective on the relationship between generics and their worldly truth-makers. This allows to distinguish genuine generics like ``Mosquitoes carry West Nile virus" from false generalizations like ``Pitbulls maul children". As a consequence, the revised view enables a response to Rachel Katharine Sterken who argues that (i) Leslie's worldly truth-makers are open to numerous counter-examples; (ii) contrary to Leslie's thought, generics are context-sensitive; and (iii) generics do not express cognitively primitive generalizations.

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Generic Inferential Rules for Slurs and Contrasting Senses (2022). (Swedish) Theoria, Vol. 88, Issue 5, 1037-1052, https://doi.org/10.1111/theo.12428

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This article offers a new perspective on the relationship between slurring terms and their neutral counterparts with an inferentialist view of slurs. I argue that slurs and their counterparts are coextensional with contrasting senses. Crucially, the proposed inferentialist view overcomes the combination of two challenges, Kaplanian inferences and the substitution argument. The previous views cannot account for both of them.

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Generic View of Gendered Slurs and the Subset Argument (2022). Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 8 (4), 762-779. https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2021.35

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The neutral counterpart assumption is widely accepted in the study of slurs. It provides a simple and an effective explanation for the meaning of slurs. Slurring terms are coextensional with their neutral counterparts. However, Lauren Ashwell has questioned this assumption. She argues that gendered slurs refer to a subset of their neutral counterparts. Hence, slurs are not coextensional with their counterparts. She goes on to present a view that is not based on the counterpart assumption. Still, her view is a unifying view of slurs as it also applies to ethnic and racial slurs. In this paper, I defend the counterpart assumption with a generic view of slurs. While being a unifying view, it accommodates the subset argument with its eponymous feature that the meaning of slurs involves a generic component.

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Generic Inferential Rules for Slurs: Dummett and Williamson on Ethnic Pejoratives (2021). Synthese, 198, 6533-6551, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-019-02473-6

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Michael Dummett has proposed an influential analysis of the meaning of ethnic and racial slurs based on inferential rules. Timothy Williamson, however, finds the analysis problematic. It does not seem to explain how slurs are actually used. Williamson's challenge for the inferentialist account of slurs has not gone unnoticed. In this article, I first discuss the debate between the inferentialists and Williamson. I argue that the inferentialist responses concentrate on the wrong issue and the real issue in Williamson's challenge is left untouched. I go on to specify his challenge and offer a solution to the challenge. The solution rests on the idea that the inferential rules for slurs involve a generic component.

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Semantic Innocence and Kaplanian Inferences (2019). SATS - Northern European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 20, issue 1, https://doi.org/10.1515/sats-2019-0006

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The core of Christopher Hom and Robert May's semantic innocence is the thesis that ethnic slurs have empty extensions. Thereby, a slurring term makes any unnegated slurring sentence false. At the same time, Hom and May emphasise that the most important task in the study of slurs is to explain non-xenophobic understanding of slurs. In this paper, I argue that there is a conflict between the two claims. I show this with Kaplanian inferences which, in my view, are crucial for the non-xenophobic understanding. After all, slurs offend us because we understand them.

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The Meaning of Absurdity (2017). Logique et Analyse, No. 239, 375-388.

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According to Panu Raatikainen, logical inferentialism cannot solve Carnap's problem, unlike its model-theoretic rival. In their reply, Julien Murzi and Ole Thomassen Hjortland show that intuitionistic inferentialists like Dummett and Prawitz can handle the problem but remain sceptical about a classical inferentialist solution. This paper reveals some problems with their solution due to Prawitz's and Dummett's view of absurdity. I offer a Tennant-style paraconsistent view of absurdity. It not only solves the exposed problems in intuitionistic solution but also contributes to the classical inferentialist solution.

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Slurring Epithets and Generic Descriptivism: The Meaning and The Epistemology of Ethnically Derogatory Terms (2017).

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PhD Thesis, King's College London // For a copy see https://kcl.academia.edu/PasiValtonen

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