CFP: Hate Speech and the Normativity of Communication

The students of the philosophy department at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York invite submissions of high-quality work in any area of philosophy to be considered for presentation at The 19th Annual CUNY Graduate Student Philosophy Conference, to be held at the Graduate Center on April 15th and 16th, 2016.  The theme of our conference this year is “Hate Speech and the Normativity of Communication”.  Our keynote speakers are Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers) and Rachel McKinney (MIT).

We welcome submissions on any philosophical topic, but some preference will be given to those which engage closely with the research interests of our speakers, or with such questions as:

-What do slurs mean?  Which aspects of their meaning are semantically encoded?  What, if anything, can slurs teach us about the proper scope of formal semantics and pragmatics?

-In virtue of what is it the case that slurs mean what they do?  What can the study of slurs contribute to foundational (as opposed to descriptive) semantics?     

-Many particularly objectionable slurs implicitly refer to particular races, genders, or sexual preferences.  What is it for a person to belong to a particular race or gender?  What is it to have a particular sexual preference?

-What makes a given communicative act a form of hate speech?  What limits on free speech are morally appropriate?

-How and to what extent do implicit biases affect communication?  What do such biases tell us about our cognitive architecture?  What is the relationship between implicit bias and moral responsibility?

Please email all submissions to [email protected].  All papers should be prepared for blind review, prefaced with a title page including an abstract of no more than 200 words.  Papers must be 3500 words or fewer. An accompanying cover letter should also be attached, containing the author’s name, contact information, and institutional affiliation, as well as the paper’s title, word count, and philosophical field (e.g., metaphysics, language).  All attachments should be in .pdf, .doc, or .docx format.  All submissions must have only graduate students as authors. 

The deadline for submissions is February 26th.  Acceptances will be announced by March 20th.