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BIDDEFORD, Maine

David Smith to present at UConn Injustice League on dehumanization

David Livingstone Smith, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, will present at the second annual UConn Injustice League conference, which will be held November 21-23, 2014, at the University of Connecticut School of Law in Hartford, Connecticut.

The aim of this year’s conference is to examine the impact of speech that subordinates groups or individuals.  It seeks answers to questions of what constitutes dominating speech, how it harms people and what are appropriate reactions to it.

In Smith’s presentation, titled "Making Monsters," he proposes that dehumanization involves conceiving of others as both human and as subhuman and that their indeterminate metaphysical status induces a powerful and distinctive averse response that can be characterized as horror.  This response, he argues, may shed light on the hideous treatment meted out by dehumanizers to those whom they dehumanize.

 

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