Many philosophers accept that a naturalistic reduction of meaning is in principle impossible, since behavioural regularities or dispositions are consistent with any number of semantic descriptions. One response is to view meaning as primitive. In this paper, I explore Brandom’s alternative, which is to specify behaviour in non-semantic but normative terms. Against Brandom, I argue that a norm specified in non-semantic terms might correspond to any number of semantic norms. Thus, his theory of meaning suffers from the very same kind (...) of problem as its naturalistic competitors. It is not sufficient, I contend, merely that some norms be introduced into one’s account but that they be specified using intensional, semantic notions on a par with that of meaning. In closing, I counter Brandom’s reasons for resisting such a position, the most significant of which is that it leaves philosophers with nothing constructive to say about meaning. (shrink)

Brandom's "inferentialism"—his theory that contentfulness consists in being governed by inferential norms—proves dubiously compatible with his own deflationary approach to intentional objectivity. This is because a deflationist argument, adapted from the case of truth to that of correct inference, undermines the criterion of adequacy Brandom employs in motivating inferentialism. Once that constraint is abandoned, moreover, the very constitutive-explanatory availability of Brandom's inferential norms becomes suspect. Yet Brandom intertwines inferentialism with a separate explanatory project, one that in explaining the pragmatic significance (...) of meaning-attributions does yield a convincing construal of the claim that the concept of meaning is normative. (shrink)

In this article, I maintain that Habermas, in his critical essay on Brandom included inTruth and Justification(2003), reduces communication to its narrowly dialogical form, and in doing so tends to ignore the fact that the discursive process is, above all, for Brandom, the product of a shared coordination of different individual perspectives contributing to advancing the game of giving and asking one another for reasons. On the one hand, I propose to carry out a critical analysis of Habermas’ position and, (...) on the other hand, to do justice to Brandom by emphasizing the specificity of the discursive communicative process. (shrink)

For all of Brandom’s self-professed allegiance to Hegel, there is something perplexing about his fixation on semantic and epistemological issues at the expense of the type of social and political considerations that are at the heart of Hegel’s system. However, and although Brandom himself concedes that his work is circumscribed to a number of highly specialized and technical issues in the philosophy of mind and language, the truth is that his views often radiate to other philosophical fields, if not always (...) explicitly. My claim in this article is that at the heart of Brandom’s semantic theory, there are elements of a critical project, one that offers a normative standpoint to judge and improve our current practices. Moreover, these progressive features of Brandom’s normative pragmatics should be seen in the light of his adoption of a series of hermeneutic themes, ultimately culminating in his recollective conception of rationality and his edifying view of semantics. (shrink)

By linking the conceptual and social dynamics of change in science, Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions proved tremendously fruitful for research in science studies. But Kuhn’s idea of incommensurability provoked strong criticism from philosophers of science. In this essay I show how Raimo Tuomela’s Philosophy of Sociality illuminates and strengthens Kuhn’s model of scientific change. After recalling the central features and problems of Kuhn’s model, I introduce Tuomela’s approach. I then show (a) how Tuomela’s conception of group ethos aligns with (...) Kuhn’s notion of paradigms as group commitments, and (b) how Tuomela’s distinction between I-mode and we-mode forms of collective intentionality can capture the shifting paradigmatic commitments in Kuhn’s model of change as a cycle of normal and revolutionary science. But Tuomela’s analysis does not rely on meaning holism, and thus does not involve the problematic notion of incommensurability that burdened Kuhn’s analysis. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to investigate Brandom’s conception of the objectivity of norms. In Making It Explicit Brandom supports a weak notion of objectivity based on his understanding of the perspectival structure of linguistic practices. In his following works, he resorts to the Hegelian notion of recognition, adding a historical dimension to his account. I contend that this notion of objectivity can be successfully defended against the objections raised by the commentators. In particular, it does not jeopardise the (...) same possibility of communication, as claimed by Habermas and others, unless a strongly objective notion of communication is assumed. However, the paradigm shift from a strong to a weak understanding of objectivity entails a consequent revision of the conception of social criticism. (shrink)

According to a Kantian-Brandomian view of concepts, we can understand concepts in terms of norms or rules that bind those who apply them, and the use of a concept requires that the concept-user be sensitive to the relevant conceptual norms. Recently, Ginsborg raises two important objections against this view. According to her, the normativity Brandom ascribes to concepts lacks the internalist or first-person character of normativity that Kant’s view demands, and the relevant normativity belongs properly not to concepts as such, (...) but rather to belief or assertion. The purpose of this paper is to defend a Kantian-Brandomian view of concepts against these objections. (shrink)

According to the Kantian-Brandomian view of concepts, we can understand concepts in terms of norms or rules that bind those who apply them, and the application of a concept requires that the concept-user be sensitive to the norms governing its application. But this view faces some serious objections. In particular, according to Rosen, Glüer and Wikforss, this view leads to a vicious regress of norms. The purpose of this paper is to defend a version of the Kantian-Brandomian view of concepts (...) against this objection. I argue that we can deal with this problem along the lines of a coherentist account of justification. (shrink)

Robert Brandom defends the intelligibility of the notion of a fully discursive practice that does not include any kind of logical vocabulary. Logical vocabulary, according to his account, should be understood as an optional extra to discursive practice, not as a necessary ingredient. Call this the Layer Cake Picture of the relation of logical to non-logical discursive practices. The aim pursued in this paper is to show, by way of an internal critique, that the Layer Cake Picture is in fact (...) incompatible with the most central claims of Brandom’s philosophy. A way is sketched how to give up the Layer Cake Picture and still hold on to a position that is central to Brandom’s philosophical outlook, namely his expressivism about logic. (shrink)

This article tackles the problem of normativity in naturalism and considers it in the context of the philosophy of historiography. I argue that strong naturalism is inconsistent with genuine normat...

There is a famous puzzle in Rorty scholarship: Did or did Rorty not subscribe to a form of realism and truth when he made concessions regarding objectivity to Bjørn Ramberg in 2000? Relatedly, why did Rorty agree with Ramberg but nevertheless insist upon disagreeing with Brandom, though large parts of the research community hold their two respective requests for shifts in Rorty’s stance to be congruous? The present article takes up the discussion and tries, for the first time, to make (...) sense of Rorty’s insistence that there is a difference between Brandom’s notion of “made true by facts” and Ramberg’s notion of “getting things right” by showing that Ramberg’s appropriateness-conditions are fully compatible with Rorty’s revised interpretation of Davidson’s concept of “triangulation,” whereas Brandom’s inferential “made-true-by-facts”-language game is not. The reason why Rorty agrees with Ramberg but not with Brandom, I argue, is that Brandom’s contemporary concept of objectivity, as developed in his contribution to the debate and in his Making It Explicit, works with a scheme-content distinction, whereas Ramberg’s Davidson-based version does not. As many of his critics suppose, Rorty’s concession to Ramberg entails a substantive revision of Rorty’s position, not just a clarification. However, this new position is not in conflict with Rorty’s most important commitment, namely his anti-authoritarianism. The revised account still does not bind him to the forms of realism and truth that his critics favor. The article explains to which forms of realism and truth Rorty’s concessions to Ramberg commit him instead. (shrink)

Robert Brandom and John McDowell pursue similar, yet strikingly different approaches to a shared problem: that of how we can be answerable to the world in our beliefs about it in the wake of Sellars' critique of the myth of the given. While McDowell attempts to rehabilitate the idea that experience is capable of providing justifications for our beliefs, Brandom constructs a sophisticated social-pragmatist account of the objectivity of our conceptual commitments in which experience is, as he says, not one (...) of his words. In this article, I argue that McDowell is right in stressing the indispensability of the idea of experience, but that he is wrong in believing that Brandom lacks the resources for making sense of the idea of being answerable to the world in experience. Especially when we expand Brandom's account of discursive practice to include its relation to what he has called practical intentionality, his work provides the resources for an answer to McDowell's concerns, but only if it is understood not as an attempt to simply deny McDowell's claims about experience, but as an attempt to explain what we must be capable of doing in order for experience, in McDowell's sense, to be possible. (shrink)

Davidson claims that nothing can count as a reason for a belief except another belief. This claim is challenged by McDowell, who holds that perceptual experiences can count as reasons for beliefs. I argue that McDowell fails to take account of a distinction between two different senses in which something can count as a reason for belief. While a non-doxastic experience can count as a reason for belief in one of the two senses, this is not the sense which is (...) presupposed in Davidson's claim. While I focus on McDowell's view, the argument generalizes to other views which take experiences as reasons for belief. (shrink)

This paper provides an agonistic interpretation of Robert Brandom's social-pragmatic account of normativity. I argue that social practice, on this approach, should be seen not just as cooperative, but also as contestatory. This aspect, which has so far remained implicit, helps to illuminate Brandom's claim that normative statuses are ‘instituted’ by social practices: normative statuses are brought into play in mutual engagement, and are only in play from an engaged social perspective among others. Moreover, in contrast to a positivist or (...) conventionalist understanding of Brandom's work, it shows that the possibility of a critical stance toward existing practices is not only compatible with, but already implicit in this form of pragmatism. This can be made explicit with the notion of farcical practices: practices that are treated merely as if they institute genuine commitments and entitlements. Interpreting a practice as farcical is taking a critical stance toward it, and this possibility is inherent in Brandom's theoretical framework. This opens the way for a fruitful appropriation of Brandom's pragmatism for social and political philosophy. (shrink)

This article analyzes whether Brandom’s ISA (inferential-substitutional-anaphoric) semantics as presented in Making It Explicit (MIE) and Articulating Reasons (AR) can cope with problems resulting from inferentialism’s near-implied meaning holism. Inferentialism and meaning holism entail a radically perspectival conception of content as significance for an individual speaker. Since thereby its basis is fixed as idiolects, holistic inferentialism engenders a communication-problem. Brandom considers the systematic difference in information among individuals as the „point“ of communication and thus doesn’t want to diminish these effects (...) of inferentialism. Instead, explains communication with a model of “navigating among perspectives without sharing contents”. The crucial element in this navigation-model is the functioning of anaphoric connections between tokens uttered in discourse that can be used by every individual speaker in their own perspectival semantic substitution-economies. The heart of Brandom’s semantics is the thesis of the purely inferential, hence non-referential nature of anaphora, coupled with the claim that anaphoric-inferential semantic mechanisms yield sufficient conditions for mutually successful “information-extraction” or interpretation. This article disputes the thesis and denies the claim. Regarding the former it is observed that all of Brandom’s plausible reconstructions of anaphoric discourse-structures rely on covert “reference-infiltrations” that can’t be eliminated. Regarding the latter, a new argument based on context-sensitive semantic phenomena in anaphoric settings shows that the crucial distinction between initiator or anaphoric antecedent and anaphoric dependent cannot be drawn according to Brandom’s own premises without overt and irreducible referential premises. The article concludes that either Brandom’s semantics can offer determinate contents, but then must accept genuinely referential semantic primitives, or else it leaves utterance-contents undeterminable and hence cannot explain communication. (shrink)