John McDowell articulated a radical criticism of normative inferentialism against Robert Brandom’s expressivist account of conceptual contents. One of his main concerns consists in vindicating a notion of intentionality that could not be reduced to the deontic relations that are established by discursive practitioners. Noticeably, large part of this discussion is focused on empirical knowledge and observational judgments. McDowell argues that there is no role for inference in the application of observational concepts, except the paradoxical one of justifying the content (...) of an observational judgment in terms of itself. This paper examines the semantical consequences of the analysis of the content of empirical judgments in terms of their inferential role. These, it is suggested, are distinct from the epistemological paradoxes that McDowell charges the inferentialist approach with. (shrink)

Nous comparons les notions d’usage et de signification chez Ludwig Wittgenstein et Martin Heidegger. Contrairement à Jocelyn Benoist, nous pensons que l’analogie entre Wittgenstein et Heidegger n’est pas superficielle. La métaphysique de Heidegger explicite certaines présuppositions implicites de la seconde philosophie de Wittgenstein. Le pragmatisme naturaliste de Wittgenstein peut être théorisé. Notamment la notion wittgensteinienne d’usage, ou de jeu de langage, peut être comprise comme une pratique à la fois naturelle et normative régie par des règles. -/- Wittgenstein’s notions of (...) use and meaning are compared with the corresponding Heidegger’s ones. Unlike Jocelyn Benoist, we suggest that the analogy between Wittgenstein and Heidegger is not superficial. Heidegger’s metaphysics makes explicit some of the implicit presuppositions of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Wittgenstein’s naturalistic pragmatism can be theorized. In particular, Wittgenstein’s notion of use, or language game, can be understood as both natural and normative rule- governing practice. (shrink)