Welcome to my site! I'm a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Porto and member of the MLAG. I received my Ph.D. in Cognitive Science and Language from the University of Barcelona in 2011. You can find my CV here and on my ORCID, Scopus, Google Scholar, Web of Science, or PhilPeople profiles. |
RESEARCH
My research focuses on the semantics of "perspectival" expressions - predicates of taste, aesthetic adjectives, moral terms etc. I'm involved in the contemporary debate between contextualism and relativism about these expressions. I'm also interested in the semantics of knowledge ascriptions, epistemic modals and tense. Theories of speaker meaning and methodological issues such as the status of certain arguments (e.g., "the argument from binding", "the argument from disagreement" etc.) in current semantic debates are among my interests too. Recently, I became interested in the semantics of slurs and gender terms, hate speech, propaganda. Click here for more details. |
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Relativism and Retraction: The Case Is Not Yet Lost In Retraction Matters, ed. by Dan Zeman and Mihai Hîncu, Springer. Parity, Faultlessness, and Relativism: A Response to Wright and Ferrari Analysis (advance article). Non-standard Uses of Hybrid Evaluatives and the Echoic View Pragmatics & Cognition 30 (1), 222-227. Review of Michael Blome-Tillmann, The Semantics of Knowledge Attributions, Oxford University Press, 2022 Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. See my complete list of publications here. |
NEWS
I've started a new job (Principal Investigator) at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Porto, with the Mind, Language and Action Group. My project (acronym: LEXISLUR) is on applying a certain theory from lexical semantics (a "rich-lexicon" theory) to several evaluative expressions, including slurs, expressives, thick terms, evaluatives, dual-character expressions, etc.
Retraction Matters, the volume Mihai Hîncu and I are editing for the Synthese Library series (the first ever dedicated to this topic!), has been published. Check the table of contents here.
The last talk of the STAL seminar in the 2023-2024 academic year, on June 4, was by Starr Sandoval, entitled "Non-speaker-oriented Expressives in Ktunaxa and English". Thanks to all who participated and see you next year!
Between May 30 and June 1, I was at the INPRA 2024 in Pisa. I enjoyed the conference (and the city) a lot!
Víctor Carranza-Pinedo was the sixth speaker of the STAL seminar, held on May 21. His talk was about pejorative nicknames.
STAL-2024, the yearly workshop of the STAL Network, took place on May 16-17 at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences. We had a blast!
On April 16, I co-organized a small workshop at the West University of Timisoara (with Adrian Briciu): Forms of Context-Sensitivity.
The fifth talk of the STAL seminar, scheduled on April 9, was by Constant Bonard. Title: "What and How Slurs Mean: An Empirical Investigation".
On March 20, I gave a talk at the Pacific APA in Portland entitled "Perspective-Shifting in Relativist Semantics".
The program of STAL-2024 has been published - check it here! The workshop is in-person only, but attendance is free, so just let us know if you want to participate.
Between March 8 and 10, I was at the Szrenica ski lodge in the Great Mountains of Poland for the 24th Workshop on the Roots of Pragmasemantics, as an invited speaker. My talk was on rich-lexicon approaches on slurs and other evaluative expressions.
Eleonora Orlando and Andrés Saab were our guest speakers at the fourth instalment of the STAL seminar, on March 5. Their talk was called "Slurs: A Syntactically Grounded Ambiguity".
The STAL seminar hosted its third meeting on February 6, in which María Bibiloni gave a talk entitled "Idealization and Epistemic Power in Theories of Slurs".
My first talk in 2024 (online!) was at the colloquium of the Institute of Philosophy, Technical University of Dresden, on January 24. The talk was entitled "The Politics of Slur-Use: Two Issues" and you can see the abstract here.
The deadline for STAL-2024, the second workshop on slurring terms from less studied languages, has passed. Thanks to all who submitted!
On December 14, I gave a talk at the Analytic Department seminar (ZFA) at the University of Warsaw about recent experimental results on disagreement and retraction.
The second instalment of the STAL seminar, held on November 28, has featured a talk by Teresa Marques, entitled "Cross-linguistic Disagreement about Derogatory Words".
On November 11-12, I participated in the Cross-Linguistic Disagreement 2023 conference in Kanazawa city.
The STAL seminar, one of the regular activities of the STAL network, kicked off on October 31 with a talk by Philippe Schlenker (based on joint work with Jason and Jonathan Lamberton) about the projection of slurs in ASL.
On the 25th of October, I gave a talk at the PhiLang seminar series entitled "Retraction: Conceptual and Empirical Challenges".
I started the new academic year with giving a talk at SPE12/OASIS3, at the Côte d’Azur University.
On October 1, I started as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences with a 10 months research grant funded by the National Scholarship Programme of the Slovak Republic. The project, called "Developing the Rich Lexicon Approach to Slurs", continues my previous work on this type of expressions.
ECAP 11 (Central European University/University of Vienna, 21-25.08) was great! I presented my recent paper on retraction.
In July I participated in the Hate Speech, Fake News and Freedom of Speech workshop, University of Rijeka.
Congratulations to Diogo Santos for defending his PhD thesis at the University of Lisbon on June 12!
STAL-2023 has been a blast! Great talks, excellent atmosphere, and lots of fun. The project continues - stay tuned for more news.
The workshop Syntactic Arguments in the Contextualism/Relativism Debate, the last one pertaining to my research project at the University of Warsaw, took place on May 17. I enjoyed the talks and discussions!
Between 12 and 14 of May, I was at PhiLang 2023. My talk was on disagreement.
The program of STAL-2023, a workshop on slurring terms from understudied languages Isidora Stojanovic and I are organizing in Paris in June, is now available! Participation is free, but registration mandatory (see details on the workshop's webpage).
Daniela Vacek was our guest at the Analytic Philosophy Department seminar (University of Warsaw) on April 20, with a talk entitled "Towards the Semantics of Divine Names". See the abstract here.
On April 13, I gave a talk at the Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, entitled "A Polysemy View of Slurs and of Other Evaluative Expressions".
Between March 24 and 28, Kathrin Glüer-Pagin & Peter Pagin (Stockholm University) gave three Lectures on Switcher Semantics at the University of Warsaw, presenting material from their upcoming book.
I'm happy to have participated in the Themes in Oppressive Language workshop at the University of Manchester in March! Check out the schedule here.
The deadline for the Slurring Terms Across Languages workshop (Institut Jean Nicod, Paris, June 7-8) has passed. Thanks to all those who submitted! Results by the end of February.
On January 19, Robert Stainton was the invited speaker at the Analytic Philosophy Department seminar (University of Warsaw) with a joint talk entitled "Platonism in Philosophy of Linguistics" (co-authors: Christopher Viger and Arthur Sullivan).
In December, I went to SEFA X at the University of Santiago de Compostela, where I co-organized a symposium entitled "Assessment-Sensitivity: New Developments and Applications" with papers by Eduardo Pérez Navarro, Justina Berskyte and myself.
The first call for papers for Slurring terms Across Languages (STAL-23), a workshop Isidora Stojanovic and I are organizing at Institut Jean Nicod in Paris on June 7-8, 2023 was published. Check it here.
The last two papers in the "New Work on Disagreement" topical collection are online: "Diaphonic Pluralism: From Truth Pluralism to Disagreement Pluralism", by Sebastiano Moruzzi and "Disagreement and Inconsistency: A Problem for Orthodox Expressivism" by John Eriksson. Thanks to all involved! Mihai Hîncu and I will write the Introduction soon - stay tuned!
On October 20, I gave a talk at the Krakow Seminars in Law, Language, and Philosophy, Jagiellonian University in Krakow. I presented some of my work on slurs.
Justin Khoo was the invited speaker at the first meeting of the Analytic Philosophy Department seminar at the University of Warsaw this year (October 13). His talk was entitled "On Scariness".
September was a busy month - I gave talks at the GAP11, the CCC3 and the 2022 SIFA midterm conference.
Two more papers from the "New Work on Disagreement" topical collection of Synthese have appeared online: Guy Axtell's "Risk-limited Indulgent Persmissivism" and James Cartlidge's "Lyotard, the Differend and the Philosophy of Deep Disagreement".
Mihai Hîncu and I are continuing our editorial cooperation! Retraction Matters. New Developments in the Philosophy of Language (provisional title) will come out with Springer (the Synthese Library series) in 2023.
My last talk of the academic year was at Indexicals and Demonstratives II, the second workshop in a series organized by Tadeusz Ciecierski at the University of Warsaw. This one was centered on the work of Geoff Georgi.
I gave my first keynote talk at the Zderzenia Poznawcze 2022 graduate conference, organized by the Cognitive Science unit of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Warsaw! The talk was entitled "Slurs: What Are They and Why They Matter".
On June 17, we had Delia Belleri (University of Lisbon) as our guest at the ALEF Seminar, with a talk entitled "Conceptual Engineering and Trust in Our Concepts".
New papers from the Synthese "New Work on Disagreement" topical collection have appeared online: Rasmus Jaksland's "Disagreement in Metametaphysical Dispute" and Annalisa Coliva & Louis Doulas' "What Philosophical Disagreement and Philosophical Skepticism Hinge on".
From June 6 to 10, I was a visitor at the University of Split, as part of an Erasmus Teacher Mobility scheme. I taught a class in Ljudevit Hanžek's "Contemporary Philosophy II" course and gave a talk at the Berislav Žarnić Research Center.
Fabrizio Calzavarini (University of Bergamo & LLC Turin) was the guest speaker at the June 3 meeting of the ALEF Seminar. His talk was entitled "The Empirical Status of Semantic Perceptualism".
On May 27-28, the Perspectival Plurality workshop took place. Many thanks to the participants and the audience!
The "New Work on Disagreement" topical collection is shaping up! Two more papers have been published: "A Critique of Strong Anti-Archimedeanism: Metaethics, Conceptual Jurisprudence, and Legal Disagreements" by Pablo A. Rapetti and "Worldview Disagreement and Subjective Epistemic Obligations" by Daryl Ooi.
On April 8, I gave a talk in the Seminar Series in Analytic Philosophy of the LanCog research centre.
Indexicals and Demonstratives I, a workshop organized by Tadeusz Ciecierski at the University of Warsaw, took place on April 6-7, with focus on the work of Alexandru Rădulescu.
On March 25, we had the pleasure of hosting Matti Eklund at the ALEF Seminar, who gave a talk entitled "Alien Structure: Language and Metaphysics".
Two more papers have been published in the topical collection Mihai Hîncu and I are editing for Synthese:
Marko-Luka Zubčić's "Disagreement Without Discovery and the Epistemological Argument for Freedom from Poverty" and Giulio Pietroiusti's "Having a Disagreement: Expression, Persuasion and Demand".
Starting with March 1, I'm a Visiting Scholar (remotely, for 4 months) at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University.
Miljana Milojević was our guest at the ALEF Seminar on February 25. You can watch her talk, entitled "Persons as Properties: Motivation and Consequences", here.
A new paper from New Work on Disagreement, the topical collection Mihai Hîncu and I are editing for Synthese, has been published: Catherine Z. Elgin, "Disagreement in Philosophy".
The ALEF Seminar started the new year with a talk by Alex Davies entitled "Distributing Meanings across Contexts: When Hermeneutical Injustice Meets Linguistic Contextualism". which you can watch here.
On January 12, I gave a talk at the Analytic Philosophy Department seminar on retraction. Thanks to all participants for the discussion!
Tadeusz Ciecierski was our invited speaker at the last ALEF Seminar this year, with a talk entitled "Demonstrations as Actions and Products". See the recording here.
On November 5, the ALEF Seminar hosted a talk by Carlotta Pavese, "Epistemic Luck, Knowledge-How and Intentional Action", whose recording can be found here.
The first meeting of the ALEF Seminar this year academic took place on October 11, with Gillian Russell as our invited speaker. The recording of the talk can be found here, on our YouTube channel.
"Value in Language", a special issue I guest-edited for Organon F, is now online - and open access!
Between September 30 and October 3 I participated in the Analytic Philosophy Meets Legal Theory conference at the University of Krakow, where I presented my work on ameliorative accounts of gender terms.
The ALEF research group has a new website! Also, check here the schedule of the ALEF Seminar for the winter semester 2021-2022.
On September 24, I gave a talk at the SIFA 2021 entitled "Three Rich-Lexicon Theories of Slurs: A Comparison".
Jeremy Wyatt's paper "The nature of disagreement: matters of taste and environs" is the first to be published from the "New Work on Disagreement" Topical Collection that Mihai Hîncu and I are guest-editing for Synthese.
On June 18, 2021 we had the pleasure of hosting Sònia Roca-Royes's talk "Next Steps in the Epistemology of Modality" at the ALEF seminar. See the abstract here.
June 15, 2021 was the deadline for submissions to "New Work on Disagreement", a Topical Collection that Mihai Hîncu and I are guest-editing for Synthese. Many thanks for your submissions!
Eliot Michaelson and Ethan Nowak gave a talk ("Metasemantics, Into the Pluriverse") at the Department of Analytic Philosophy, University of Warsaw's regular seminar on June 8. Abstract here.
Between May 14-16, 2021, I was at PhiLang 2021, the second conference where I gave a talk this year!
On April 26, 2021, I gave a talk at the Monday Research Seminar, University of Bucharest: "Slurs and the Lexicon: Meaning Variation as Polysemy Resolution".
My paper "A Rich-Lexicon Theory of Slurs and Their Uses" has been published online first in Inquiry. Check it out here.
Value in Language, a workshop I organized with Matteo Pascucci and Mirco Sambrotta as part of the Slovak-Austrian Philosophy of Language Network , took place on March 29-30 and was hosted (online) by the Slovak Academy of Sciences.
On March 22, 2021, together with Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska, I organized a meeting with François Recanati, as part of the regular seminar of the Department of Analytic Philosophy, University of Warsaw. The format of the meeting was pre-read, with Tadeusz Ciecierski, Fiora Salis and Indrek Reiland providing comments on François' paper "Entertaining as Simulation".
The activities of the Slovak-Austrian Philosophy of Language Network have resumed in March, 2021. 9 individual talks and a workshop are planned by the end of the semester. Check the schedule here.
On February 16-17, 2021, Topics in Analytic Philosophy 4 - a workshop that I organized together with Adrian Briciu, Milan Jovanović and Miljana Milojević, and which continues a collaboration between analytic philosophers from Serbia in Romania - took place.
Mihai Hîncu and I are guest-editing a Topical Collection of Synthese, entitled "New Work on Disagreement". The deadline for submissions is on June 15, 2021. See the call for papers here.
My paper "Invariantist, Contextualist, and Relativiat Accounts of Gender Terms" has been published in a special issue of EurAmerica.
On December 16, 2020 I gave a talk at the Linguistics and Philosophy of Language Group seminar, Buenos Aires, entitled "Slurs and the Lexicon: Meaning Change as Polysemy Resolution". See a list of my past talks here.
The group ALEF (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) is starting a new series of talks in analytic philosophy (broadly conceived), in both English and Romanian. Check this Facebook page for details!
The book symposium on Jason Stanley's How Propaganda Works, which I guest-edited for Disputatio, is online now.
On October 1 2020 I started a new project, Semantic Relativism about Perspectival Expressions: A Reassessment and Defense, funded by the OPUS 17 programme of the Polish National Science Center. It lasts 3 years (2020-2023) and it will be hosted by the University of Warsaw. Check this page for events.
On September 25, 2020 I gave a talk at the Second ALEF Workshop in Analytic Philosophy (Babeș-Bolyai University, 25-26.09.2020), entitled "Implicaturist-Expressivist Accounts of Disagreement" (joint work with José R. Torices).
