Non-Ideal Foundations of Language

There's a certain slant of light: Three attitudes toward the political turn in analytic philosophy

“…In this sense, all theorizing is congenital to some degree of idealization, since even nonideal theories abstract only the essential features of the phenomenon under study, leaving behind other features. For this reason, we agree with Keiser that nonideal theory should be understood as an opposition not to ideal theory in general but rather to those pernicious idealizations that “prevent us from developing the hermeneutical resources needed to articulate the ways in which language can function to perpetuate unjust social systems” (Keiser 2022, 10). In light of this, we acknowledge that nonideal theories may be ideal, but not ideal in the ideological, politically pernicious, way.…”

“…She claims that viewing language primarily as cooperative information exchange is an ideal theory conditioned by the privileged social position of some of the twentieth century's most influential philosophers of language, such as David Lewis, Paul Grice, and Robert Stalnaker. Those who belong to disenfranchised groups are, of course, involved in cooperative information exchange too, but as they “are systematically subjected to various forms of hostility, violence, manipulation, and other kinds of injustice through the use of language” (Keiser 2022, 6), it might be more alien to them to claim that the main function of language is to coordinate information exchange among cooperative agents. In Keiser's words, “It should be no surprise, then, that the growing field of social/political philosophy of language has been spearheaded by members of groups who are accustomed to being barred from information exchange, whose ways of exchanging information do not conform to the practices of institutional science, who systematically experience harmful uses of language, and to whose linguistic contributions others systematically fail to respond in cooperative ways” (Keiser 2022, 6).…”

“…Those who belong to disenfranchised groups are, of course, involved in cooperative information exchange too, but as they “are systematically subjected to various forms of hostility, violence, manipulation, and other kinds of injustice through the use of language” (Keiser 2022, 6), it might be more alien to them to claim that the main function of language is to coordinate information exchange among cooperative agents. In Keiser's words, “It should be no surprise, then, that the growing field of social/political philosophy of language has been spearheaded by members of groups who are accustomed to being barred from information exchange, whose ways of exchanging information do not conform to the practices of institutional science, who systematically experience harmful uses of language, and to whose linguistic contributions others systematically fail to respond in cooperative ways” (Keiser 2022, 6). After debunking some of the background assumptions of certain theories in the philosophy of language, which were committed to the idea that language is mainly cooperative information exchange, Keiser proposes her own account of how language works, taking into consideration neglected injustices that may arise in the use of language, arguing that its main function is to direct the attention of others.…”

“…In this sense, the political turn can be considered nonideal theory. Some philosophers of language (such as Lackey [2018]; Beaver and Stanley [2019]; and Keiser [2022]) have recently described part of what has been called the political turn in their field in terms of the ideal/nonideal distinction. In doing so, they rely on Charles Mills's distinction, according to which nonideal theories are those that construct models that abstract only the essential features of the phenomena under study, whereas ideal theories are those that construct models that capture the phenomena under study as they should be, rather than as they actually are.…”

“…There is a growing interest in political and social issues within analytic philosophy. In the philosophy of language, questions concerning how language shapes, and is shaped by, political and social factors are receiving increasing attention—see, for instance, The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language (Khoo and Sterken 2021) and Nonideal Foundations of Language (Keiser 2022). In philosophy of mind, some authors have been working on politically oriented issues—see, for instance, The Mind‐Body Politic (Maiese and Hanna 2019) and Feminist Philosophy of Mind (Maitra and McWeeny 2022)—such as the characterization of the status of implicit biases (Borgoni 2022) or the political importance of understanding attributions of mental states as fundamentally normative, rather than descriptive (Pinedo 2020).…”