On Messages — Morally Significant, Communicative Side-effects

Speaker: Julius Schönherr is an assistant professor at Peking University. He graduated from the University of Maryland in 2019 with a thesis on social coordination and the problem of other minds. His research, which has been published in journals such as Philosophical Studies, Synthese and the British Journal of the Philosophy of Science, spans a wide range of topics in social epistemology, the philosophy of mind and moral philosophy. His current focus is on issues concerning epistemic injustice. Here, he outlines the scope and dimensions of harm one can experience in one's capacity as a knower.

Venue: Room 311, Building 4, Chengjun Yuan, Zijingang Campus

Abstract: Many speech acts have morally significant, communicative side-effects, i.e., they give uptake to morally problematic propositions that are neither part of the literal or implicated meaning of the speaker’s utterance, nor are they presupposed by the speaker. I call these communicative side-effects messages. For instance, experimental evidence suggests that talk of “inner city crime” tends to give uptake to morally problematic inferences about black crime that may be wholly unintended by the speaker. While the evaluative properties involved in messages have been thoroughly recognized and, more importantly, analyzed, a similar analysis of these messages’ deontic properties – i.e., the conditions under which it is (im)permissible for a speaker to send them – has yet to be forthcoming. In this talk, I will provide this analysis. I shall appeal to the famous doctrine of double effect, which I will modify to accommodate the fact that it is sometimes permissible to send a harmful message if audience uptake is sufficiently irrational.