Motivating inferentialism: Comments on

Author: McDowell, John¹

Source: Pragmatics & Cognition, Volume 13, Number 1, 2005 , pp. 121-140(20)

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

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Abstract:

Brandom’s attempt to motivate inferentialism is found wanting on a number of grounds, including a skepticism about how much recommendation for inferentialism can be derived from the evident unsatisfactoriness of the representationalism Brandom contrasts it with, which seems to be a straw man. Brandom’s appeal to authorities (Sellars, Frege, Dummett) falls flat; in particular, his reading of Frege’s early work as inferentialist in Brandom’s sense is a misinterpretation. Given the programmatic character of Brandom’s recommendation for inferentialism, the quality of the motivation he offers for it matters more than he has acknowledged.

Keywords: Begriffsschrift; conditional; deontic structure; formalism; foundationalism; Frege; inferentialist; Kant; linear explanation; pragmatism; representationalism; semantic self-consciousness; sociality