To begin with, I would define discrimination as the use of a person's membership in a group, such as a race or gender, to unfairly deny them access to some good or benefit, such as a job or admission to something desirable like a school. So when a woman, for example, is denied a job because she is a woman, that is an example of discrimination. Discrimination is, by definition, morally wrong, but not all moral wrongs done to members of groups can be characterized as discrimination.

So, when someone uses a term such as one of those you mention, that person is not thereby discriminating against anyone, for no one is being denied access to anything simply by means of the use of such derogatory language. This does not mean, however, that using such language is not morally wrong. But the harm done by their use is different than that done by discrimination. These terms are generally called slurs and they are condemned because they exhibit attitudes that are generally taken to be harmful to those targeted. There is disagreement about exactly what the harm caused by the utterance of a slur is, but the point is that slurs are morally abhorrent despite not being acts of discrimination.

Generally, the use of a slur indicates that a person possesses a set of demeaning attitudes towards members of a group and views the person to whom the slur as uttered as inferior because of their being a member of that group. I take this to be what you meant when you said that the use of a slur involves a stereotype. But a stereotype, such as blacks being "lazy and shiftless" or Jews all being "money grubbers," is different than a slur. Stereotypes are certainly not good when they are used to judge individuals and to characterize groups, but they are not morally problematic in and of themselves. Some stereotypes may have a grain of truth in them, but they need to be sharply distinguished from the use of racial and other slurs. Slurs are harmful and, as such, morally wrong.

Quine's views on this matter vary over the years. Early (meaning in "Two Dogmas" and related works of that period), he was prepared to deny that there are any analytic statements. Later, especially in Philosophy of Logic, Quine's view mellows a bit, and he is prepared to recognize a very limited class of such statements, namely, truths of sentential logic, such as "It is raining or it is not raining" and the like. That's still a pretty limited set, as Quine seems unprepared to regard even what one would normally regard as truths of predicate logic as analytic (e.g., "If someone loves everyone, then everyone is loved by someone"). But mostly this is because Quine thinks there's no clear sense in which that sentence is properly analyzed as a truth of predicate logic. This is connected with the doctrine of ontological relativity. In so far as it is properly so analyzed, I think Quine would regard it as analytic.

So mathematics, for Quine, is quite definitely out as analytic. There are going to be several reasons for this. But, Quine seems to think that, in principle, even such simple and beloved statements as "1 + 2 = 3" could be revised, under suitable empirical pressure. I am happy to grant that this is hard to imagine, and if, unlike Quine, one were prepared to grant that predicate logic is analytic, then perhaps this kind of statement could also be regarded as analytic, since it is, in some sense, more or less equivalent to a truth of predicate logic, viz:

(Ex)(Ey)(Ez)[Fy & (w)(Fw --> y=w) & Gy & Gz & (w)(Gw --> w=y v w=z)) -->
(Ex)(Ey)(Ez)[(Fx v Gx) & (Fy v Gy) & (Fz v Gz) & (w)(Fw v Gw --> w=x v w=y v w=z)]

(I write it out just to make clear that it can be written out explicitly.) Or, perhaps the right thing to say would be that it is the truth of predicate logic that is analytic and that we tend to confuse "1 + 2 = 3" with it.

What Quine would not regard as analytic is something like the statement: Every pair of numbers has a sum. And here, most philosophers of mathematics would agree with him. The reason is that there are very small collections of what look like very simple principles that together imply that there are infinitely many numbers, e.g.:

1. Every (counting) number has a "successor", a number that is one bigger than it.
2. Zero is not the successor of any number.
3. Different numbers have different successors.

Richard's response is helpful and interesting, but perhaps I would put matters a bit differently. He makes it sound as if Quine accepts the distinction between analytic and synthetic truth and goes on to argue that nothing counts as a truth of the first kind (perhaps "mellowing" his view about this later on). But Quine's position (early, middle, and late) is rather that he can make no sense of the distinction at all. His challenge isn't to the analyticity of logical or mathematical truth; it's rather to the intelligibility of sorting truths into these categories – to the very categories themselves – as the traditional philosopher conceives of them.

Your thought that the distinction can be given some sense in the context of an artificial language is a natural one. Quine explicitly turns to this suggestion in section 4 of "Two Dogmas of Empiricism."

You're right that there needs to be a distinction that goes with the word if it's to be of much use. And there are no doubt some sense of the word "special" (meaning something like rare or unique) that don't allow for all of us to be special. But there's still logical room for a sense in which we're all special. Here are two ways.

The first is simply this: it could be that each of us possesses some distinction, though not the same one for all. You may be the world's greatest kazoo player; I may make the world's best Jello salad. And so on. You'd be special in the kazoo-playing way, I in the Jello-making mold and each other person in their own (dare I say) special way. But there's another possibility.

It doesn't make sense to say that we're special, period. If any of us are special, it's because of something about us. But suppose some characteristics are intrinsically valuable -- that is, have value all by themselves, without reference to anything else. Perhaps being conscious counts; perhaps having the ability to reason does, or the capacity to participate in the moral community. Or suppose that standing in a certain relationship to something with its own intrinsic value counts. The religious might say, for example, that being creatures made in God's image gives us infinite value. We might well say: anything that is conscious, or can reason, or is created in God's image... is special exactly on that account. However, it could turn out that all of us have the special-making feature. If so, we really are special on that account, but it's not a contest; we could all be winners.

This isn't a purely idle notion. Many religious believers think we were created in God's image. Many Buddhists believe that we all have the capacity for Enlightenment ("Buddha nature"). Kant claimed that we all possess an infinite value that goes with our moral nature.

Whether there's any such trait that we all possess is quite another matter; there may well not be. But the issue here was the logic of the matter. And on that account, it does seem that even though we couldn't all be above average, we could all be special.

Thank you for your question! Saying is indeed an action, and believing is a mental state as you say (though just what a "mental state" is is no easy question). Asserting is an action, too: it is something we do at will, something we can refrain from, something we can be held responsible for, something we can try but fail to do and so on--in short, it has all the hallmarks of an action. However, unlike mere saying, asserting is subject to a norm, namely, "assert only what you believe." This is colloquially referred to as the norm of sincerity, thought there are some delicate issues about just what sincerity is. At any rate, that asserting is subject to certain norms involving mental states, does not imply that it is itself a mental state. (In this respect, compare asserting with promising.) Nonetheless, asserting is a comparatively sophisticated action, since it is subject to norms, without which I suspect assertion would not even be possible.

Philosophers have long been fascinated with assertion. One (Robert Brandom) has gone so far as to call it, "the form of cognitive discourse." Debate is currently under way on such questions as whether another norm governs it besides the one I've mentioned. This is the norm that says: assert only what you know. For more on assertion and the norms govern it, please see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's articles on 'Assertion' and 'Speech acts'.

Mitch Green

Here is a simple response, which I think is true: Language shapes our understanding and our perception of reality (different words will cause us to focus on different aspects of the world around us) and reality shapes our language (different environments will cause us to adopt different words). Speakers of different languages all belong to the same world, however, for there is only one world.

Here is a more complicated response that may do a better job of addressing your concern: When people use different words to refer to the very same objects -- a bug, a chair, a curtain -- the differences in their view of the world can seem trivial. But when different languages focus on entirely different things (even the words for objects such as bugs and chairs can have importantly different associations in different languages), they are bound to reflect important differences in the worldviews of the relevant speakers. In some cases, the different views may be quite compatible because they simply attend to different things -- different parts of a single world. In other cases, where there seems to be a disagreement about the very same thing (about what will help a fever, for example), it may be difficult to decide who is right because it is difficult to decide whether the disagreement is really about the same thing (fever or something of which the fever is just a symptom? help reduce a fever or help it do its work? reduction in objective temperature or reduction in felt distress? etc.). In these cases, we may say that the different speakers exist in different worlds as way of noting differences in their worldviews, but I think that this way of talking is dangerous insofar as it encourages us to give up on the attempt to communicate with others about our common world.

Very interesting! Your specific interest seems to be vulgarity as opposed to blasphemy (e.g. using 'God' or 'Jesus' in cursing) or insults in general. I am not acquainted with much philosophical work on vulgarity per se, but there is some literature on politeness and respect that may be relevant. Some have argued that politeness is a virtue itself (what Hobbes called small morals) while others have contended that politeness is a reflection of greater virtues (the shadow of great virtues, to use G.K. Chesterton's expression). I suggest that vulgarity may be used for a host of reasons: to insure familiarity with someone, to use as an insult, to simply get attention, and so on. There was an important Supreme Court case in the USA --I believe it was Cohen versus California-- in which it was argued that a person had a right to wear a shirt that had the words "Fuck the Draft" on it because only using the explicative was the person able to fully express his convictions and thus it was protected under our first ammendment. You have chosen an interesting path in refusing to use vulgarity, but you might consider two other matters: first, in an emergency such as an outbreak of fire in a building, don't you think more people would respond straight away if a person shouted out "There is a Fu*king Fire in the F***ing building! Get the F*** out of here!" rather than if someone left out the F word? Second, there is another way to drain the vulgarity out of the F and S word and that is by over-use. Some people use the terms so much that they seems as pointless as repeating "um" or using the word "like" to punctuate your sentences