Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy
Evaluations in Disguise: A Dynamic Expressivist Account of Propaganda
Duration: 2022 - 2023
Code: DINEXPROP
Principal Investigator
Summary
The aim of this project is to develop an account of the effect of evaluations that allows us to detect cases of propaganda in which what is at least partly an evaluation is disguised as a pure description. For instance, in many contexts, an utterance of “A no-deal Brexit would affect expats more than immigrants” would be taken to merely present a fact, but by establishing a contrast between expats and immigrants the speaker could be seen as assigning different degrees of merit to workers who move to another country depending on where they come from. The resulting account will be a brand of what has been called “dynamic expressivism”, a family of theories that takes evaluations to have an impact on the conversation fundamentally different from that of descriptions. Knowing what the effect of an evaluation is will make it possible to establish whether utterances such as “A no-deal Brexit would affect expats more than immigrants” contribute to framing the discussion in an evaluative way and are thus instances of propaganda.
Funding entity: BBVA Foundation
Total budget: €29,700
