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Dynamics, Brandom-style

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Abstract

This paper discusses the semantic theory presented in Robert Brandom’s Making It Explicit. I argue that it is best understood as a special version of dynamic semantics, so that these semantics by themselves offer an interesting theoretical alternative to more standard truth-conditional theories. This reorientation also has implications for more foundational issues. I argue that it gives us the resources for a renewed argument for the normativity of meaning. The paper ends by critically assessing the view in both its development and motivations.

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Notes

  1. In addition to these early texts, some of the core expositions are provided by Kamp and Reyle (1993), Chierchia (1995), Groenendijk and Stokhof (1991), Veltman (1996).

  2. This seems to be the dominant usage in some of the debates about how semantics and pragmatics interact. See, e.g., Perry (1998), Stanley (2000), Stanley and Szabo (2000). It is also endorsed by theorists who take it to be constitutive of the subject matter of semantics that we explain why very often, we are happy to endorse the claim that if S means that p, then S is true iff p (as, e.g., Borg 2004, Larson and Segal 1995).

  3. This is the dominant way of focusing on semantics in the work of Davidson. See, e.g., the seminal papers Davidson (1984a, b). For further particularly clear statements of this idea, see Higginbotham (1985, 1989), Szabo (2000). It is also endorsed by those participants to the semantics/pragmatics debate who deny that semantic interpretation yields something truth-evaluable, e.g., Bach (1994), Recanati (2002, 2004).

  4. See, e.g., Travis (1985, 2000).

  5. This is one of the crucial ideas motivating Lewis’ discussion of performatives in Lewis (1983).

  6. A standard strategy analyzes the meaning of a question in terms of its possible answers. The basic idea stems from Hamblin (1958, 1973), Karttunen (1977). For a recent survey, see Groenendijk and Stokhof (1997).

  7. As before, many of the theorists who endorse one of the first two conceptions of semantics I distinguished earlier also endorse this structure of speech acts and semantic theorizing. The point is just that on these views, it is a substantive hypothesis that semantics fits into a theory of communication. For a kind of dissent from this substantive hypothesis, see Cappelen and Lepore (2005). On their view, semantics are truth-conditional and compositional, but the truth-conditional content of sentence is at best distantly, and certainly unsystematically, related to the content a speaker conveys by using that sentence, even when she is using the sentence literally.

  8. This way of thinking about conversations, as well as the notion of shared information and the terminology of common ground, is due to Stalnaker. See his (1999a, b, 2002).

  9. Dynamic semantics, just like static varieties, depend on a semantics/pragmatics distinction. In a static framework, the semantic value of a sentence as used on a particular occasion should not be all of the information conveyed by the use of that sentence. If that was the case, we wouldn’t be able to arrive at a systematic theory. Likewise, in a dynamic framework, the content of an assertion shouldn’t be identified with all of the effects an assertion has on the context. As in the static framework, we focus on some effects and try to explain other effects—such as the addition of information that is usually considered to be implicated rather than asserted—in terms of the interaction between the initial assertion and the context.

  10. For an introduction to the problems that presupposition raises, see Kadmon (2001). For a thorough introduction to how presupposition is accounted for in dynamic semantics, see Beaver (2001).

  11. In general, the important formal result that determines whether a dynamic system can be translated into a static system is contained in van Bentham (1986). The issue turns on whether all updates can be defined in terms of a certain set of basic operations.

  12. I put this theory forward for illustrative purposes only, not to suggest that it is the true theory of epistemic modals.

  13. Brandom (1994, p. 141).

  14. Brandom (1994, pp. 158–159), emphasis in the original.

  15. Brandom (1994, p. 142).

  16. Brandom (1994, p. 190).

  17. See Brandom (1994, pp. 190–191).

  18. I’ll discuss how to formulate updates in more detail in the §6.1, below.

  19. Normativism entered the recent debate with Kripke (1982). It is a position with many adherents, including Baker and Hacker (1984), Bloor (1997), Boghossian (1989), Glock (1994, 1996), Lance and O’Leary Hawthorne (1998), McDowell (1984), McGinn (1984), Millar (2004), Miller (1998), Pettit (1990), Wright (1980, 1984).

  20. For the knowledge rule, see Williamson (1996). For a version and defense of the truth-rule, see Weiner (2005). For a version of the reasonable-belief rule, see Lackey (2007).

  21. Cf. Glüer and Wilkforss (2009b, §2.1.1).

  22. Brandom (1994, p. 83).

  23. See, e.g., Glüer and Wilkforss (2009a, b), Wilkforss (2001), Glüer and Pagin (1999), Papineau (1999), Hattiangadi (2006), Horwich (1995), Dretske (2000).

  24. See Boghossian (2003), Gibbard (2003), Wedgwood (2002, 2007). Indeed, Boghossian (2003) rejects his earlier defense of normativism.

  25. Hattiangadi (2006) argues in a similar vein.

  26. I am doubtful of these intuitions for parallel reasons as I am doubtful of intuitions about how to draw the distinction between semantics and pragmatics, or for that matter, what the basic concept of semantic theorizing should be. Whether a sentence is felicitous or odd in a context is the result of the interaction of many different factors, and while the result of their interaction is open to inspection by intuition—perhaps better: by direct judgment—the individual factors are not. Investigating them requires the use of theoretically motivated tools. Likewise, I think that the overall normative status of an action is open to direct judgment. How that status comes about is not. For a more direct response to Boghossian and Hattiangadi, see also Whiting (2007).

  27. See Grice (1991). For each of the examples in the text, one may challenge that the false proposition really is the meaning of the sentence at issue, in this case, that the literal meaning is really that he is a good friend. Especially in the case of metaphors, it has been argued that the metaphorical meaning of a metaphorically used sentence really is the literal meaning. For the purposes of this discussion, I will simply grant the opponent of normativism that there are examples of the sort she posits, and I’ll use he’s a fine friend to illustrate the strategy I am offering the proponent of normativism.

  28. Given this kind of objection, we can see why proponents of normativist views consider mental content a more promising subject. It doesn’t seem as if there is a kind of non-serious belief that could serve as a counterexample in the way that non-serious uses of sentences do here.

  29. This is essentially the Gricean idea of saying something false to convey something true, transposed into the dynamic semantic setting.

  30. Usually, the demand for semantics for the operators is put by saying that we want to be able to interpret complex sentences in terms of their parts, i.e., compositionally. However, Brandom denies that languages work compositionally. That’s why I use the less committal notion in the text.

  31. A point noted by Lance (2001).

  32. As Brandom points out, the sense in which commitment to one precludes commitment to the other is normative, not descriptive. Speakers do at times commit themselves to incompatible sentences (see, e.g., Brandom 2008, p. 120).

  33. Two remarks. Brandom has to mimic the operation of taking the union of all of the incompatibilities with S in terms of entailment, rather than disjunction, since we’re trying to define the logical connectives and hence cannot help ourselves to them at the outset.

    Second, the equivalence between worlds-talk and Brandom’s incompatibility-talk is only a heuristic. It turns on how rich the language is over which we’re defining incompatibility and hence entailment, roughly, whether there are sentences to cover all of logical space. To take an example, suppose we have a language that only contains three color-related sentences: this is red, this is blue, this is green. In that case, it’s not the case that this is red is equivalent on Brandom’s view to this is blue or green, whereas this equivalence obviously doesn’t hold on a possible worlds conception. I take it that Brandom considers this a feature, not a bug.

  34. The idea is introduced at Brandom (2008, p. 123), stated formally at Brandom (2008, p. 141).

  35. Argument: let there be two sets of sentences X, Y, and two sentences ϕ, ψ such that

    1. (i)

      X is incompatible with ψ

    2. (ii)

      X ∪ {ϕ} is compatible with ψ

    By the assumption that persistence fails, we are assured that there are suitable X, Y, ϕ, ψ. By the definition of entailment, X ∪ {ϕ} ⊧ X iff every set of sentences incompatible with X is also incompatible with X ∪ {ϕ}. But by assumption, ψ is incompatible with X but compatible with X ∪ {ϕ}. Hence, \(X \cup \{\phi\} \not\models X.\)

  36. This is Brandom’s own example (Brandom 2008, p. 123).

  37. NB: If Brandom avails himself of this strategy, much of his motivation for positing materially good inference has to go by the boards, since the strategy I’m pursuing on his behalf in the text runs counter to his concerns about the “dogma of formalism” (see Brandom, 1994, p. 97ff).

  38. Theories disagree over the semantic/pragmatic mechanisms that induce this change, and they also differ over how to think about standards of evidence. That debate is irrelevant to present concerns.

  39. Brandom (1997) highlights an alternative argumentative strategy that focuses on anaphora-like phenomena via what he calls the prosentential theory of truth, building on work by Grover (1992), Grover et al. (1975).

  40. Cf. Brandom (1994, p. 462).

  41. Brandom (1994, pp. 463–464).

  42. As I emphasized in the main text, we are not concerned with variable binding uses of pronouns, either within sentences or across them, as in A \(man_1\) came to the door. \(He_1\) was selling encyclopedias. For that reason, the debate about whether the mechanism I describe in the text can be extended to cover cases of cross-sentential anaphora is irrelevant to the viability of my response. Proponents of the view that such an extension is possible include Lewis (1983). It has been critiqued by Heim (1982).

  43. Brandom (1994, p. 457), emphasis in the original.

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    Bernhard Nickel

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The material for this paper grew out of a seminar I taught at Harvard University in the Spring of 2008. I want to thank the participants in that seminar for lots of helpful discussion, especially Ephraim Glick, Jon Litland, Paul Pietroski, and James Shaw.

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Nickel, B. Dynamics, Brandom-style. Philos Stud 162, 333–354 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9768-4

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