Dual Character Concepts, Normative Generics and Evaluative Language

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Zurich hosts a conference on Dual Character Concepts, Normative Generics and Evaluative Language. The conference will be held in Zurich from 16th to 18th June 2022.

If you would like to register, please send an email to kevin.reuter@uzh.ch

Its thematic focus is on normative and evaluative phenomena in natural language, both from a theoretical and empirical perspective. Our confirmed keynote speakers are:

Norms and evaluations are integral to everyday language, and yet, some of the means and mechanisms by which those norms are communicated have only recently come to the fore. Two prominent examples that have received increased attention in both philosophical and psychological research are dual character concepts and generics.

Dual character concepts like ‘art’, ‘colleague’ and ‘happiness’, have an independent normative dimension often expressed by statements like “This is true art.” or “She is truly happy.” As such they are distinguishable from more obvious normative concepts like thick (e.g., ‘courageous’) and thin concepts (e.g., ‘awesome’).

Generic sentences also often encode substantial normative content and regularly communicate harmful social biases, e.g., “Boys don’t cry.”, “Girls don’t play football.” In order to account for the diverse normative aspects of generics, various new frameworks have been recently proposed.

Other linguistic vehicles that communicate normative content and have seen a rise in both theoretical as well as empirical work include thick concepts and slurs.