Words and Worlds: London Lectures 2022-3

This series examines new directions in the philosophy of language, including new questions and methods as well as interest in what other disciplines and world philosophies have to teach us.
London Lectures · Words and Worlds

Against Amelioration 

Many philosophers are calling for the “re-engineering” of certain concepts, arguing that they currently don't serve political and ethical purposes. Louise Antony explores why conceptual engineering is impossible, undesirable and unnecessary.

· London
London Lectures · Words and Worlds

Prejudicial Speech: What’s A Liberal To Do? 

What is prejudicial speech? What remedies exist, and are they compatible with free speech? Mari Mikkola discusses potential responses to harmful prejudicial speech.

· London
London Lectures · Words and Worlds

How to Get About 

Philosophy has long aimed, unsuccessfully, to understand the phenomenon of representation. In this lecture, David Sosa proposes that representation comes, ultimately, in varieties.

· London
London Lectures · Words and Worlds

Racial Realities 

Luvell Anderson examines language as a means of power, each describing a different reality, and what this means for things like achieving racial justice.

· London
London Lectures · Words and Worlds

Slurring Words, Slurring Articulations 

Ernie Lepore examines how the source of an offensive effect is negative associations triggered not by slurs but rather by certain articulations of these expressions—phonological or orthographic.

· London
London Lectures · Words and Worlds

A Modern Look at Ancient Chinese Theory of Language 

Chad Hansen explores how Classical Chinese philosophy of language gives us a developed alternative conceptual frameworks for understanding how words, the world, human history and society fit together.

· London