Questions for Week 12

Brandom claims that in order for a subject to be ‘cognitively en rapport’

with an object, the subject must endorse some true nontrivial identity

claim relating one term as intersubstitutable with another term. Weak *de

re*, on the other hand, leaves open the possibility that a subject to whom

a belief is ascribed may be ignorant of the relevant specification.

(1) One of the main differences between the strong and weak *de re* seems

to be that strong *de re* concerns the sort of *belief* a subject has,

while weak *de re* concerns the sort of *ascription *ascriber uses. In the

case of strong *de re*, the construction of an ascription can only follow a

check-up of the subject’s own endorsements involving singular terms, and so

seems to already assume a strong *de re* belief held by the subject. Do

you think this is consistent with the thought that *de re* and *de

dicto*apply to ascriptions (not beliefs), or even the weaker thesis

that beliefs are explained in terms of ascriptions?

(2) How exactly does the strong *de re* requirement make intelligible what

it is to be ‘cognitively en rapport’ with an object? I am not sure what

philosophers mean by ‘en rapport’, ‘directly about’, ‘present to mind’

etc., but whatever they might mean it seems to involve more than simply a

grasp of the intersubstitutability of singular terms. Perhaps they would

prod you to emphasize the role RDRDs play in anchoring communication

(anaphoric) chains.

Shivam Patel

In chapter 8 of Making it Explicit Brandom criticizes a Kripkean account of proper

names which rejects strong de re Fregean senses in favor of direct reference.

Brandom raises two challenges facing a direct reference semantic theory, where these

challenges are those which motivated Frege’s distinction between sense and

reference in the first place. The first of these challenges concerns the task of

accounting for the inferential difference between two types of identity claims: (a)

t=t and (b) t=t’. The second concerns ascription of a belief of the form that t

and t’ are not identical (where t=t’). After arguing that a Kripkean-type view

cannot satisfactorily answer these two worries, Brandom claims that we should think

of the tokening repeatables of proper names as anaphoric chains (rather than

equivalence classes of lexically cotypical tokenings). According to this view, the

referent of a proper name is determined by the anaphoric initiator of the chain.

Each subsequent tokening then inherits “the same role in the substitution

inference that is played by classes of cotypical tokenings”(580). Anaphoric

chains, Brandom argues, can account for “both of the theoretical tasks for which

Frege postulated senses:they are ways in which objects can be given to us, and they

determine the reference of the expressions occurring in them(whose senses they

articulate”(572). It seems to be true that anaphoric chains account for both the

mode of presentation and determination of the referent. However, it is not clear to

me how anaphoric chains can account for the cognitive significance of a proper name.

In the case of the first challenge, Fregean senses were postulated to account for

the difference in the cognitive significance of t=t and t=t’. On Frege’s model

these identity claims have different senses (where senses are the cognitive

significance) so they have different cognitive significance. On Brandom’s model,

both identity claims are true in virtue of their corresponding anaphoric chain. The

trivial identity t=t requires the repeatability of the token ‘t‘ which is made

explicit by the “overtly anaphoric reflexive construction in t=itself”(573) and

the nontrivial identity requires that the anaphoric chains of t and t’ are

anchored in the same object. Since t and t (trivial identity) are part of the same

anaphoric chain they have the same substitutional and inferential commitments

(inherited from the anaphoric initiator). Would t and t’ also have the same

substitutional and inferential commitments since the two anaphoric chains are

anchored in the same object? and if so, how can an anaphoric account of proper names

distinguishes between the cognitive significance of trivial and non-trivial

identity?

Laura

My question for this week is a development of the question from last week:

I'm interested in what exactly counts as the "content" of a particular

utterance or propositional attitude here, since it will have to be, in some

sense, abstracted from the "collateral concomitant commitments, which can

serve as auxiliary hypotheses in inferences involving it" (608). Will the

content ultimately be identified with the truth-conditions of the

assertion, conceived in a fairly narrow sense? It seems like it will be

impossible to specify the content without characterizing it from some point

of view, from the background of some "discursive commitments" (590), so I

am left wondering what the shared content between the shaman's "The seventh

god graces us with his presence" and my "The sun is shining" is. I also

wonder if you are committed to there always being one unique propositional

content that every translator of a particular utterance ought to share in

their translations, and, if so, how you can show that this convergence will

always happen.

-Billy

On Sun, Nov 4, 2012 at 10:50 PM, William Eck <

> wrote:

> On pg. 514, you present “He claims *of* the sun that it is shining” as a

> specification of the content of “The seventh god graces us with his

> presence”, one that we could “extract information from” and “reason with.”

> I wonder if, when we take the *de re* ascription as characterizing the

> content of the speaker’s utterance, there is a risk that we can get too far

> from the speaker’s meaning. Surely many of the consequences the speaker

> sees himself as committing himself to are lost in the propositional content

> we ascribe to him, and many are gained. It seems, also, that there may be a

> few *de re* ascriptions we might have chosen in this case, depending on

> the circumstances, some of which could be true, and some false. Might it

> not be problematic to pick one of these as characterizing *the *content

> of the utterance?

> -Billy Eck

I have a question addressing understanding against the background of

collateral commitments --

You say successful communication can be expressed in scorekeeping terms by

the requirement that the scorekeeping audience interpreting the

performances of the speaker or agent be able to /attribute/ the very same

commitments that the performer /undertakes/ or /acknowledges/ by those

performances. But with every assertion concomitant on different sets of

inferences for both the speaker and the audience, by way of what is

understanding established -- how do we know when we have understood each

other? I need to be cleared up on the wording you used. Saying

/undertakes/ or /acknowledges/ allows for very different things.

A situation: Both of us can agree 'Copper is a metal', but I am aware of

its melting point; I am a smelter. You can only find Copper on the

periodic table and know that, due to its location, it is a metal. Both of

us might be unaware of its heat capacity, or that this concept exists

(concept and fact in reality), and differs for different elements. For us

to be in understanding, do the commitments I must be able to /attribute/

to you having /undertaken/ include consequential ones -- and if so, how

far down? Should we be speaking about degrees of understanding? We can

both agree copper is a metal, and in saying this, consequentially be

undertaking the same commitments.

My big issue is that there is clearly a gulf between the commitments one

can consequentially become committed to in undertaking a commitment, and

those one is aware of possibly becoming committed to. Your conceptual

content might include 99/100 inferences I am in fact unaware of my same

concept possibly leading to. And we can say the same visce-versa. But if

we speak in a sense involving only that 1/100th overlapping inference, are

we in understanding? It seems though that I'd be attributing a very

different set of commitments than you'd be undertaking. But if I'm

attributing the exact same one commitment we agree on that you're

undertaking, are we in understanding then? And so are consequential

commitments not to be in play?

Jacquet Kehm

The last sections of MIE8 and AR6 give arguments for the objectivity of
propositional content. They differ in the resources they employ: both rely
on "claims that..." vocabulary, but while MIE8 relies in addition on
vocabulary explicitating the representation of objects (perhaps also of
explicit de-re constructions, used in the "recipe" on p. 603), the argument
of AR6 is based mostly on the fact that there are two "flavors" of
normative statuses, namely commitments and entitlements.
I wonder if it would be correct to say that this difference in resources
employed reflects a widening of the argumentative *goal* from MIE to AR. In
particular, while MIE8 is an argument "only" for the objectivity of
propositional content, AR6 can be read as an argument for a broader kind of
objectivity.
What I'm thinking about is the notion of *determinacy* which characterizes
all norms, all "rule-following" in Wittgenstein's sense, crucially
including non-linguistic norms. The problem of MIE1 was to make sense of
this determinacy regarding what counts as (correctly) following a norm. The
claim was that it can be explained in terms of attitudes in such a way that
correctly following a norm turns out to be different from merely taking
something to be the following of a norm (and from communal takings of this
sort).
So, can AR6 be understood as the completion of the argument for that claim
in MIE1? Is it correct to think that the aim of AR6 is wider than that of
MIE8? Would that mean that the distinction between commitments and
entitlements is an important aspect of all normative practice, not just
linguistic practice? (A strange thought, but perhaps not false if properly
unpacked.) And do you see a problem in my characterization of the relation
between objectivity of propositional content on the one hand and
determinacy of what would be a correct rule-following (even in the case of
non-linguistic norms)? Sorry about the number of questions, but since they
all hang together, perhaps they can all be answered in one go.

Matthias Kiesselbach