Abstract

Brandom's book Making It Explicit defends Davidson's claim that conceptual thought can arise only on the background of a practice of mutual interpretation, without endorsing the further view that one can be a thinker only if one has the concept of a concept. This involves giving an account of conceptual content in terms of what Brandom calls practical deontic attitudes. In this paper, I make a plea for the conclusion that these practical attitudes are best seen as intentional, but non-conceptually contentful. In particular, I argue that the hypothesis that Brandom's practical deontic attitudes are non-conceptually contentful wouldn't conflict with his view that non-conceptual intentionality is merely derivative. I then explore some of the implications which this hypothesis might have with respect to various forms of «intentional ascent»