10/30/2012
Week Ten Questions
Chapter 5
At the close of chapter 5, Brandom attempts (implicitly) to align his
general view with McDowell’s early conception of how facts are revealed in
experience. For McDowell, concepts should not be viewed as making an even
‘notionally distinct’ contribution to experience if we are to make sense of
thought about the world. Another way of putting the same point is to say,
again with McDowell, that the ‘form of thought is just as such the form of
the world’ (which, perhaps owing to his flowery way of stating the
position, he calls a form of idealism). Based on how chapter 5 closes, it
seems that the analogue for Brandom is that the empirical world does not
make an even ‘notionally distinct’ contribution to inferential practice. In
Brandom’s phrase, “The way the world is constrains [inferential practices]
from ‘within’ those very practices”. It thus seems that practices for
Brandom plays the role of experience for McDowell: both are central to the
possibility of thought about the world. Given the grand perch from which I
am viewing both theories, I cannot ask anything of much value. Nevertheless,
despite the drastic differences between you and McDowell, is this a fair
comparison to make?
Chapter 7
Brandom claims that we should seek only a necessary condition on purported
singular reference by way of finding at least two ways of picking out the
same object. Brandom’s view is motivated by the apparent failure of
Frege’s condition that purported singular reference requires settling every
way of picking out the object. Frege took this condition as both necessary
and sufficient for purported singular reference; thus if we are to weaken
Frege’s condition by requiring only two ways of picking out the same
object, it may seem as if we are left only with a necessary condition on
purported singular reference. I don’t understand why you view your
weakening of Frege’s condition as issuing in a mere necessary condition on
purported singular reference. If Frege’s condition was asking for too
much, why not view your weakened version as asking for just enough, as
being both necessary and sufficient for purported singular reference. Brandom
suggests, as he does in many places, that a 'social' dimension is also
required in the account of purported singular reference. However, I am not
sure how significant a role this 'social' dimension will play, other than
providing us with the obvious point that *people* must have more than one
way to refer to an object, and so the weakened condition must serve as a
premise in scorekeeping dynamics. It seems, in short, that the heavy duty
work is done on the non-pragmatic front – we are told what it is for
sentences involving singular terms to be *about* an *object* – and I fail
to see the worth of assimilating it back to the pragmatics.
Shivam Patel
Making it Explicit
Chapter 7
Brandom argues that it is substitution-inferential triangulation which gives us our
“cognitive grip on objects in general” (431) where substitutional triangulation
picks out objects and structures the content of singular terms while inferential
triangulation structures the content expressed by sentences. On this inferentialist
conception of meaning, representational purport of singular terms can be determined
by their substitution-inferential significance. In other words, representational
purport consists in specifying the relevant class of canonical designators for a
term. However, it seems as though this model would not be sufficient to uniquely
determine representational purport. It seems possible that more than one differing
canonical designator can satisfy this criteria in a multitude of cases. Further,
this worry seems to apply not only to the extension of the representational purport,
but to its intension as well. Brandom argues we can proceed from inferential
significance to extension through substitution-inference commitments and that we can
also move from inferential significances to intensions through relativizing these
significances to one’s collateral commitments. Consequently I am unsure if
Brandom’s substitution-inferential triangulation is enough to capture
representational purport or if something important is lost on this model.
Chapter 5
Brandom gives a deflationary account of truth arguing that ‘truth’ and
‘refers’ are not explanatory but merely expressive. Truth and reference must be
taken as expressive since, as Brandom argues, these notions presuppose propositional
content and can therefore not be used to explain the very propositional content
which it must presuppose. ‘Truth’ and ‘reference’ are consequently not
primitive notions, but instead inherit their meaning through anaphoric antecedents.
However, unlike traditional representational vocabulary, on Brandom’s
inferentialist model, one is able to explain the practical significance of our
discursive practices and consequently the propositional contents expressed without
using notions of truth conditions or facts. Their significance, Brandom argues, can
be explained in terms of the social practice of giving and asking for reasons.
However, it seems as though here Brandom might face the same challenge as the
representationalist. Although Brandom is not required to explain our discursive
practices in terms of truth, he is required to explain our practices and the
contents they express in terms of norms. These norms, it seems, presuppose content
in similar manner as truth was taken to presuppose content. Although Brandom might
respond that these norms are merely implicit in practice whereas truth is explicit,
I do not see how Brandom is not subject to a similar challenge as the one he poses
to the traditional semantic version of truth.
Laura Davis