Use–mention distinction Puns

This is one small attempt to improve the precision and productivity of our conversations about moral matters, by applying a standard philosophical distinction.

Uttering racial slurs is, in typical cases, morally worse than not doing so. I take that as a given. (If you need an argument for this, look elsewhere.) However, it is not the case that all utterances of a given word -- e.g., the n-word -- are equally bad. Most people who work in philosophy (and, for that matter, linguistics) are well-acquainted with an important distinction here, that seems to be lost on most other folks. That is the use-mention distinction.

The Context (Warning: A racial slur word appears below.)

The reason for bringing this up right now is the controversy du jour: Brooke Baldwin: 'Don't use the N-word on my show'. You can listen to the original, uncensored segment here: White CNN Guest Says N****r On Live Television.

During this segment, a white man, Charles Kaiser, who was a guest on the show uttered the following statement:

> "If you don't want to support the alt-right don't choose as your White House counselor a man who uses the word 'nigger', whose wife says he did not want his daughters to go to a school with too many Jews."

(I apologize for mentioning a statement that includes the n-word. That is the only time the n-word will appear. For this discussion, it would have made things less clear to avoid every single mention of it. I return to this at the end.)

The Use-Mention Distinction

Here is where the use-mention distinction matters. Kaiser did not use the n-word; he mentioned it. (This is signified in the quoted text by the inverted commas around the word in question.) To see the difference, note that his utterance of the n-word did not serve to refer to any particular individual or to talk about people at all. He was talking about the word itself. He was reporting something about this word -- that it had been used by someone else. Presumably he means that the person in question did indeed refer to people by this word.

To bring out the distinction with more examples... Donald Trump used the word 'pussy' when speaking to Billy Bush in 2005. The author of this post just mentioned the word 'pussy' to describe something Trump did (and, as of t

I’m quite struggling with this problem now. Especially my teacher gives me some exercises to do, and to be honest I have no idea how to solve these...... I know that, single quotation marks are mention rather than used. Double quotation used for metaphorical or ironic language use. After I tried the exercise, I found all of the sentences could be used single quotation. Moreover, what is the difference between using linguistic expression and mention linguistic expression? For example, sentence like:

Achilles refers to the name of the greatest warrior of the Aechaens. You will simply written as: ‘Achilles’ refers to the name of the greatest warrior of the Aechaens.

Anna hated Billy. You will simply leave it alone without any quotation marks.

Are these all right?

Use-mention distinction is a distinction between using and mentioning a word.

From wikipedia:

Use: cheese is derived from milk.

Mention: "cheese" is derived from the Old English word "cyse".

The point I see in the use-mention distinction is that words used and words mentioned do not co-refer.

BUT,

in the contemporary Philosophy of Mind some philosophers who defend physicalism are saying something along the lines of:

phenomenal states / first-person are indeed using the experience and material states / third-person are not using experience, BUT this does not mean that material states / third-person are not mentioning them. And this referential aspect is the one that matters, therefore third-person and first-person talk about experience CAN co-refer.

Let me give you an example from D. Papineau from his Confusion about Consciousness:

However, once we stop to examine it, we can see that this line of thought involves a simple fallacy, indeed a species of Quine’s famous use-mention fallacy. There is indeed a sense in which non-phenomenal concepts (like nociceptive-specific neuronal activity) do "leave out" the conscious experiences themselves. They do not use such experiences. But it does not follow that they do not mention such experiences. After all, most referring terms succeed in denoting their referents without using those referents in the process. There is no reason to suppose that non- phenomenal concepts of experience do not do this too.

Non- phenomenal concepts differ from phenomenal ones in not using the experiences they refer to. This is the sense in which they "leave out" the experiences. But it does not follow that non-phenomenal concepts differ from phenomenal ones in what they mention. In this referential aspect, which is the one that matters, they need not "leave out" any element of the experience, not even the "what-it’s-likeness". There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to refer to this "what-it’s-likeness" using concepts which don't actually give us the feeling. It is only the peculiar fact that some special concepts, our phenomenal concepts, do refer by giving us the feelings which confuses us here.

So my questions are:

1. Isn't the use-mention distinction wrongly "used" in the Papineau's example. If not, how so, can you explain, I really do not see how use-mention distinction benefits the physicalist.

2. What does it mean that:*"After all, most referring terms succeed in denoting their

Currently I'm writing my CV and motivational letter to apply for jobs as a civil engineer. Do I mention if I graduated with great distinction or not on my CV and motivational letter?

In Spanish, the word “latino” can be used both for Europeans and Americans. But colloquially, it's used more often for Latin Americans than Latin Europeans.

So something like "wearing high heels, a dress, having long hair and using makeup" is defined as being feminine, rather than being a woman. And having the word woman refer to a more traditional definition, such as adult human female.

Are there philosophers of gender (if that's what it's called) who think this is a reasonable position? Or is it always maintained that if you do make a gender/sex distinction, then you are committed to the idea that man/woman refers to gender, and male/female refers to sex.

Sorry if I put this in a confusing way, hopefully you understand and if not I'll try my best to rephrase. Thank you.

Male and female biologies are immutable. Full stop. Outward appearance and secondary characteristics can indeed be altered to resemble the opposite sex, but a male person cannot BECOME female and visa-versa.

People who have a single X and Y chromosome are biologically male. In society they can identify and be recognized as women, but they are not and never will be female (XX). Obviously, the inverse is true as well. Unfortunately to the dismay of some, no medical treatment or operation can change this reality.

Thus, since nobody can transition from Male-to-Female or from Female-to-Male, the abbreviations MtF and FtM cannot logically be reconciled in a biological context. If such phrases are actually used in reference to gender identity instead of biology, then why are biological terms (male and female) being used at all? In fact, they shouldn’t be and cannot (rationally) be used by anyone who also maintains the sex-gender distinction.

While I can understand the term ‘trans woman’ in the context of gender identity, the same cannot be said for the term ‘trans female’, which I have regularly seen used interchangeably with the former. If female can be used interchangeably with woman and male interchangeably with man, then the terms are synonymous and the sex-gender distinction loses all coherence. Moreover, notice how people only ever say ‘gender identity’, not ‘sex identity’. This is undoubtedly due to the common idea of there being a fundamental difference between gender and sex.

If the trans community wishes to uphold and assert the sex-gender distinction, then they ought to repudiate the use of the terms and phrases ‘trans male’, ‘trans female’, ‘male-to-female’ (MtF), and ‘female-to-male’ (FtM), and exclusively adhere to ‘man’ and ‘woman’ instead of ‘male’ and ‘female’ respectively.

Practically speaking, if a transwoman were to request that I use her preferred pronouns, then without question, I would comply. In most cases I imagine this will suffice. However, if a transwoman were to phrase things in such a way that would require me to recognize her as explicitly as female, I would be unable to so. I refuse to reject basic biology, nor should anyone ever be expected to do so. I understand that the likelihood of this type of scenario manifesting in the real world is extremely slim, but it’s certainly possible and the principle remains.

The Italian language has masculine and feminine genders, and adjectives modify according to gender and number in order to agree with the noun. It never occurred to me until today what this means for the word molto (much/many).

Ci sono molti uomini nella piazza.

There are many men in the square.

Gli uomini sono molto arrabbiati.

The men are very angry.

Notice that in the first example, molto changes to molti in order to agree with uomini (men), which is masculine plural. Because it changes according to gender and number, we know that it is an adjective. But in the second example, it does not change from the seemingly singular form molto even though the noun and adjective in the sentence are plural. Therefore we can infer that molto is not an adjective and means "very", an adverb.

Obviously this is superfluous because context would tell you that "many angry" doesn't make any sense. And this doesn't save you much time on word-building either, since at best you get a handful of adverbs that don't need a distinct form. But I think the planned redundancy is a nice naturalistic detail.

Can you guys think of any further implications of this concept? I'm willing to bet some smart folks here can take it interesting places.

EDIT: I think a lot of people interpreted this to mean that you can change the gender of a root word to get a new word. This is of course one of the main benefits of having a gender system, but not my intended purpose. What I meant is that a modifier could become a new part of speech based on the fact that it does not inflect for gender (or number, or whatever other parameters you may have).

I know that when you have control over cash flows you use MWR. Can you give some context to this? Like I read a closed ended fund would use MWR as he has control over cash flows and a closed ended would use TWR. Are there more elaborate examples?

I'm profoundly colour blind and I have advanced macular degeneration... I can't tell the difference between light grey and white (or blue and purple) on the computer screen anymore...

It makes it very hard to tell the difference between posts I've already opened and those that are new.

I tend to browse reddit by /r/all - using never-ending reddit, I get to about page 80 in about three hours, then I take a break to do some work, and then I start back at the beginning of /r/all.

Is there a way of customising the colour of new posts vs seen posts?

(please say yes... please say yes... it's driving me mad, because I can't use reddit without RES night mode - after an hour of too much white background, it's basically like I've spent the day staring into the sun, and I can't see shit for at least four or five hours)

If it helps: I'm using a Macbook Pro connected to an external large screen monitor, using Chrome as my browser and drinking vodka.

Thanks in advance for any tips!

• Night mode: true
• RES Version: 5.14.5
• Browser: Chrome
• Browser Version: 72
• Cookies Enabled: true
• Reddit beta: false

Apologies in advanced for my lackluster English.

When we write down time, we usually use a format with a colon in the middle, and either a 24-hour or a 12-hour format with AM/PM. My view is that these methods are inferior to the very simple HHMM format, which is simply a 24-hour format with the colon ommited. I am specifically talking about text usages, as I agree that when speaking, other formats have their clear uses.

Putting the colon aside for a minute, the 24 hour format is just clearer than its 12-hour counterpart. It's universal and independant from language, as a bigger percentage of the world uses Hindu–Arabic numerals ("European Digits" according to Unicode) than the Latin alphabet. As an Hebrew-English speaker, I have to adjust my conventions depending on the language, writing "7 PM" in English and "7 בערב" in Hebrew. With the 24-hour format, I'l just use 1900 for both.

The 12 hour format alsointroduces a ton of confusion between AM and PM, and you have to explicitly state which one you want. With the 24 hour format, by simply writing the digit everyone knows what period of the day you are referring to.

As for the colon, it's completely unnecessary for most everyday uses. You only need 4 digits as most daily usages of time don't need to be exact to the second, and when noting dates and times, the only other parameter that can be confused with the HHMM notation is the year (years can also be expressed with 4 digits). However, if I'm writing to someone "I'll meet you at 1945", it's pretty obvious I'm reffering to 7 PM and not WWII era, and even if we're talking about the current year, no one will schedule a meeting at the year resolution.

As for the actual disadvantages, they are pretty obvious. If we're talking about using a keyboard for typing, the average QWERTY layout has you pressing Shift to access the colon - a very uncomfortable combination. When we talk about mobile texting it's even worst, as most keyboard layouts have you long-pressing a certaing key to access punctuation marks, or entering a different layout for the same punctuation marks. In both cases the result is annoyance and a waste of time, not to mention this is doubled if you want to return to the normal alphabet layout.

So, CMV.

EDIT: As my view hinges on understanding time from context (and thus not needing the colon), I'd add what I consider "everyday" text-based uses. As I see it, in our daily lives, we write times when speaking with people who we are usuall

First time operation player. For operation HEAT when you receive these marks do you have to spend them to gain the vehicle or say once you receive enough for an item it automatically comes to your account and the marks keep piling up?

I'm 37 mind you, but ay, gimme some some love my comrades.

Philosophy btw, which I think is enormously rewarding. It's hard as hell to read, takes me almost always a full day to read one paper, but if I do the level of comprehension I have of the actual subject material seems, generally, exceptionally good. I recommend it.

Why do I think philosophy is great for adhd? 1. it's creative. 2. it focuses that creativity into deeply powerfully useful thoughts, rather than just self-destructive nonsense!

And yes, I did get diagnosed in my late 20s, and that did seem to turn things around for me.

This list of arguments creationist should not use from CMI even has this listed for the same reasons I don't use these terms anymore and even the term "evolution." I try to avoid saying I don't believe in evolution because this almost always results in an equivocation fallacy from an evolutionist "we see evolution all the time, therefore evolution is a fact!" Instead, universal common ancestry is a better term that just avoids this equivocation from the start and better conveys what you mean. This also ties into why you shouldn't use the term micro or macroevolution, you'll get into the fallacy that if we see it now, then its been going on forever. And when you try to refute this argument, you just restate all your arguments against universal common ancestry! Macroevolution is a term that could mean many things, a quick Google search would just say that macroevolution means speciation, others define it differently. Its a far too ambiguous term that distracts from the main topic of "did we descend from a common ancestor or not.

What do you guys think? I also tweaked the design from the Home app a little :)

https://preview.redd.it/wn1k918cc2a21.jpg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1f85e39311ccb54d44e7db240961ef03ba790735

Also if you are knowledgeable, in which way is enlightenment different in practices such as Jainism, Buddhism, etc. Thank you guys in advance.