Abstract

The general framework in which Brandom lays out his philosophical system is an inferentialist theory of content. Inferentialism holds, broadly speaking, that the meaning of a sentence is its inferential role, i.e. the sets of sentences which may be inferred from it, and from which it may be inferred. For such an approach one of the most difficult cases to handle are perceptual reports, which involve words that seem to refer to experiences and experiential qualities, the meaning of which seems not to be exhausted by their inferential role. In the following I shall analyse Brandom’s inferentialist interpretation of perceptual reports and some of its metaphysical implications