Motivating inferentialism : Comments on Making It Explicit (Ch. 2)
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; Frege; Kant; conditional; deontic structure; formalism; foundationalism; inferentialist; linear explanation; pragmatism; representationalism; semantic self-consciousness; sociality
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 January 2005
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