Session 9 | MLAG Seminars Series 2025-2026 (5 June, 11h00, Room 305 - FLUP)

[FLUP | Instituto de Filosofia]

MLAG Seminars Series 2025-2026

Session 9

Discussion of the paper Notes on the metaethics of slurs (Manuel de Pinedo & Neftalí Villanueva)

| Manuel de Pinedo (University of Granada)

 

 

5 June 2026 | 11h00 | Room 305

Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto

 

The Mind, Language and Action Group (MLAG), a research group of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Porto, invites you to the 9th talk of the new MLAG Seminar Series featuring presentations by international researchers on topics of interest to the group.

In this session, we’ll have as a guest Manuel de Pinedo (University of Granada), whose paper, entitled "Notes on the metaethics of slurs", we will read in advance and discuss at the meeting.

This session will be in-person only and take place on June 5 at 11:00 Western European Time (WET) in Room 305.

 

 

Abstract: This paper examines an apparent tension between two claims about evaluative language: that slurs lack genuinely neutral counterparts and that slurs can be reappropriated by the groups they target. We argue that this tension arises from a misreading of the relationship between two theses: Difference, the claim that descriptive and evaluative uses of language can and should be distinguished, and Anti-disentanglement, the claim that the descriptive and evaluative components of evaluative concepts cannot be separated. Drawing on work on the normativity of meaning, we develop a framework in which both theses can be accepted. On this view, the impossibility of neutral counterparts follows from the evaluative constitution of the extensions of slurs, while reappropriation is understood as the inauguration of new evaluative practices. The result is an account of slurs that preserves the distinction between description and evaluation without treating evaluation as detachable from linguistic practice.

 

Paper in attachment and downloadable here: https://ifilosofia.up.pt/activities/session-9-mlag-seminars-series-2025-2026

 

 

MLAG Seminars Series 2025-2026: https://ifilosofia.up.pt/activities/mlag-seminars-series-2025-2026

 

Information about MLAG can be found here: https://ifilosofia.up.pt/research-groups/mlag

To contact the organisers, please send an email to mlag....@gmail.com

 

Organisation:
Sofia Miguens (MLAG-IF)
Dan Zeman (MLAG-IF)
James Grayot (MLAG-IF)
Rafael Antunes Padilha (MLAG-IF|IFCH-UNICAMP)
Samuel Lima (FLUP)
João Carlos Rocha Lima (FLUP)

RG Mind, Language and Action Group (MLAG)
Instituto de Filosofia da Universidade do Porto – UID/00502/2025
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

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Tel. 22 607 71 80
E-mail: ifilo...@letras.up.pt
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