This paper puts forth a functionalist difficulty for Sally Haslanger’s proposal for engineering our concept of ‘woman.’ It is argued that the project of bringing about better political function fulfillment cannot get off the ground in virtue of epistemic failure.

This paper begins with the idea that there are sometimes gaps in our shared linguistic/conceptual resources that make it difficult for us to understand our own social experiences, and to make them intelligible to others. In this paper, I focus on three cases of this sort, some of which are drawn from the literature on hermeneutical injustice. I offer a diagnosis of what the gaps in these cases consist in, and what it takes to fill them. I argue that these gaps are filled in, at least initially, by labels of a particular kind. Specifically, these are labels that allow us to see the experiences in question as novel instances of phenomena with which we are already normatively familiar. Further, I also show that these labels bring with them important downsides: they introduce distortions into our understandings of these experiences. Using a pair of case studies (‘statutory rape,’ ‘sexual harassment’), I illustrate these distortions.

Is it harmful to make generic claims about social groups? Those who say yes cite
the reinforcement of oppressive stereotypes and cognitive bias. Those who say no
cite the potential of generics to do good, rather than harm, by taking advantage of
the same mechanisms that perpetuate the harms. This paper analyzes generic utterances in the context of social justice efforts to weigh in on the debate about whether
and how generic utterances contribute to stereotypes and oppression. We need to
first pay more attention to what it means to utter generics in social justice contexts.
Doing so will allow us to distinguish those generic utterances that are helpful for
social justice projects from those that might impede their progress. I argue that there
is an important pragmatic sense in which generics can be undermined: especially
generics used in service of social justice claims. I then offer an epistemic thesis for
why some generics are more susceptible to being undermined by counter-examples
than others. I conclude that if we are interested in using generics in the service of
social justice, then there is reason to restrict the contexts in which we utter generics. In doing so, I challenge the conventional wisdom that generics are resistant to
counterexamples.

Dementia patients in the moderate-late stage of the disease can, and often do, express different preferences than they did at the onset of their condition. The received view in the philosophical literature argues that advance directives which prioritize the patient’s preferences at onset ought to be given decisive moral weight in medical decision-making. Clinical practice, on the other hand, favors giving moral weight to the preferences expressed by dementia patients after onset. The purpose of this article is to show that the received view in the philosophical literature is inadequate and is out of touch with real clinical practice. I argue that having dementia is a cognitive transformative experience and that preference changes which result from this are legitimate and ought to be given moral weight in medical decision-making. This argument ought to encourage us to reduce our confidence in the moral weight of advance directives for dementia patients.

The paper is concerned with the development of the paradoxical theme of Daoism. Based on Chad Hansen's interpretation of Daoism and Chinese philosophy in general, it traces the history of Daoism by following their treatment of the limit of language. The Daoists seem to have noticed that there is a limit to what language can do and that the limit of language is paradoxical. The 'theoretical' treatment of the paradox of the limit of language matures as Daoism develops. Yet the Daoists seem to have noticed that the limit of language and its paradoxical nature cannot be overcome. At the end, we are left with the paradoxes of the Daoists. In this paper, we jump into the abyss of the Daoists' paradoxes from which there is no escape. But the Daoists' paradoxes are fun!