How can conceptual content be social and normative, and, at the same time, be objective? 9783110324129, 9783110323832

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l o/ g o j Studien zur Logik, Sprachphilosophie und Metaphysik

Herausgegeben von / Edited by Volker Halbach • Alexander Hieke Hannes Leitgeb • Holger Sturm Band 6 / Volume 6

Andrea Clausen

How can conceptual content be social and normative, and, at the same time, be objective?

ontos verlag Frankfurt

.

Lancaster

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de

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Dissertation der Universität Konstanz Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 17. Juni 2004 Referent: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Spohn Referent: Prof. Dr. Michael Esfeld

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2004 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 3-937202-57-9

2004

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Meinen Eltern

Preface There are a few people without whose support this book would not have come into existence. First of all I wish to thank the supervisors of my thesis – Wolfgang Spohn, Michael Esfeld, and Holger Sturm – for their open, constructive critique throughout all stages of my project, as well as for the very pleasant ways of personally dealing with each other. I wish to thank Robert Brandom for the opportunity of attending the University of Pittsburgh as a Visiting Scholar during the spring term 2002 and for the intense discussions we had during this period. I wish furthermore to thank Katherine Munn, Katie Ainsworth-Vizenor and Lowell Vizenor and, at an earlier stage of my project, Maike Lerch for their painstaking help in ameliorating my English. I am of course alone responsible for all the mistakes and shortcomings that have remained in this thesis with regard to its content and style.

Table of contents Introduction................................................................................................7

Part I 1

The problem The objectivity of content ...........................................................31

2 2.1 2.1.1 2.1.1.1 2.1.1.2 2.1.1.3 2.1.2 2.1.3 2.2 2.2.1 2.2.2 2.2.3 2.3

The normative and social character of content.........................43 Kripke: A social, normative account of content ............................43 Why is semantics normative and social? .......................................44 The rule-following problem and content .......................................44 Rules as being constituted by normative practice ........................50 Rules as being constituted by social practice ................................58 Objections to Kripke’s specification of his pragmatist account of rule-following ............................................................................60 Semantic naturalism .........................................................................72 The notion of content........................................................................79 The Frege-Brandom proposal ..........................................................79 Objections to inferential role semantics ...........................................98 A refined conception of content ......................................................108 The normative character of content in greater detail: the debate about the “normativity of meaning” ...............................................111

Part II

Critical discussion of proposed answers

3 3.1 3.2 3.3

A naturalist answer ......................................................................117 Presentation and a first critical assessment.....................................118 The rejection of the two-step model of content ..............................129 Sellars’ antifoundationalism and its implications ...........................132

4 4.1 4.2 4.3

A pragmatist reading of Heidegger – a middle position?..........147 Protagonists of a pragmatist reading of Heidegger.........................147 Textual evidence for a pragmatist reading of Heidegger ................151 What is wrong with Heidegger? .....................................................159

5 5.1 5.1.1 5.1.2

A primitivist answer .....................................................................165 Presentation and a first critical assessment .....................................165 The scorekeeping model .................................................................165 The Hegel model.............................................................................196

5.2

How does a pragmatist reading of Brandom account for objectivity?..................................................................................... 206 5.3 Circularity ...................................................................................... 223 5.4 Conceptual realism......................................................................... 228 5.4.1 Avoiding a gap between the world and our conceptualisations ..... 229 5.4.2 Arguments against conceptual realism that have been formulated in the literature............................................................................... 249 5.4.3 Conceptual realism and the method of making explicit ................. 253 Bibliography........................................................................................... 255

7

Introduction In his interpretation of Wittgenstein, Kripke (1982) argues that rulefollowing has to be conceived as normative and social if a radical skepticism of rule-following is to be avoided. In what follows this basic idea shall be considered only with regard to its consequences for the meaning or, more precisely, the conceptual content – for short: the content – of a linguistic expression. Content can be considered as a particular kind of rule. Kripke’s basic idea encompasses an epistemological and an ontological dimension. The epistemological dimension contains the idea that an individual can only be said to grasp or master the content of a linguistic expression if a process of mutual assessments of linguistic performances1 leads to the result that she is taken to be a competent speaker. Intimately related to the epistemological dimension is an ontological thesis. It says that content is determined or constituted by normative, social practice. This is what I mean when I say that content is normative and social. The guiding question of the present study, then, is: How can the content of empirical assertions be normative and social and, at the same time, be objective? In order to motivate this question I specify first what it means to characterize content as normative, social and objective, how these features are motivated, and why the combination of all three features seems to be problematic. In principle, we can say that whereas a non-normative conception of content describes constitutive practice exclusively in non-normative terms, a normative conception describes constitutive practice in normative terms. In order to further explicate and motivate the thesis that content is constituted by normative, social practice, let me first of all specify how a non-normative conception of content is characterized and why it fails. Then I will state how the thesis that content is normative can be specified and how it is related to the thesis that content is social.

1

A linguistic performance is a verbal performance that possesses content, i.e. a verbal, conceptual performance. A conceptual performance is an inferentially related performance that refers to a worldly entity so that under proper conditions it permits one to infer the presence of the entity.

8 A position that explicates constitutive practice exclusively in nonnormative terms (precisely in terms of (non-normative)2 facts such as dispositions to behavior) can be called reductionist. Kripke’s critical examination of different kinds of such positions makes clear that they do not permit one to settle which rule an individual is to be ascribed. This implies that an individual’s linguistic performances cannot be considered as correct or incorrect in the weakest sense of the term. At least such minimal correctness must be enabled if an individual is supposed to be ascribed any rule and thus content. Kripke’s initially mentioned basic idea has by now become a good deal intelligible. If there is not any correctness, one cannot say that a rule is followed (mastered) or that it exists. A reductionist position, therefore, leads to radical skepticism of rulefollowing. Before I turn to the alternative of a reductionist position, let me explicate the notion of correctness. If one calls something correct, one draws a distinction between what is correct and what is merely taken to be correct. What is correct can be specified in two different ways. This gives rise to two different kinds of correctness. Correctness in the weaker sense considers what is correct in the light of a privileged perspective, usually in the light of the community. Correctness is conceived as intersubjectivity. What is correct corresponds to a consensus among the members of a community. It coincides with what is taken to be correct by the community as a whole and is set against what is subjectively taken to be correct. In contrast, correctness as attitude-transcendence considers what is correct whether anybody takes it to be correct or not as opposed to what either subjectively or intersubjectively is taken to be correct. What lesson can be drawn from the objection to a reductionist account of content? Because an account of content in terms of facts does not even allow for the simplest kind of correctness, content has to be explicated in normative terms, and more precisely, in terms of assessments or sanctions

2

When I speak of facts, I always mean non-normative facts. Non-normative facts tell what is the case. Normative facts, in contrast, tell what is correct or what is taken to be correct. Examples for normative facts are assessments or normative attitudes.

9 of linguistic or non-linguistic3 performances as correct or incorrect. This implies that content has to be explicated in terms of normative attitudes: Assessments express what is taken to be correct by a speaker, i.e. they express her normative attitudes. Constitutive practice does not only have to be conceived as normative, but also as social. One must not consider an individual’s solitary assessments but rather the mutual assessments by the members of a community. Kripke defends his thesis that content is social by pointing to the private language argument. The private language argument says that there cannot be a language that only one individual understands. This point is intimately linked with the thesis that content is not constituted by an individual, but by social practice. Kripke thinks the private language argument and thus the social character of content follow directly from the rule-following problem. I think that Kripke’s line of argument is unconvincing. I think content has to be conceived as social because all assessments are thoroughly perspectival. They reflect what the one who assesses, the interpreter, takes to be correct. In consequence, it is indispensable to find out jointly what is correct; otherwise, the interpreter’s perspective would be privileged so that not even correctness in the weakest sense of the term would be enabled. An explication of content in terms of assessments rather than exclusively in terms of facts makes room for correctness, at least in the sense of intersubjectivity. A process of mutual assesments, described in terms of the normative attitudes each individual has, permits one to distinguish what is correct in the light of the community from what is subjectively taken to be correct because this process may happen to lead to a consensus. The thesis that content is normative and social argues that reductionist accounts fail to meet the minimal precondition for content. They do not make room for correctness in the weakest sense, namely in the sense of intersubjectivity. This precondition can only be fulfilled if content is

3

The example of the naturalistic approach that will be presented below makes clear that it is thinkable that the content of linguistic performances is constituted by a practice that exclusively deals with non-linguistic performances.

10 constituted by normative, social practice. Content has to be conceived as being constituted in the course of a process of mutual assessments by the members of a community. These assessments classify performances as correct or incorrect. This result demands one clarification. In this context, talk of determination or constitution means that the identity conditions of content, the items that individuate content, are the outcome of this process. In a different use than the one that underlies this context, the terms “to determine” and the converse term “to depend” do not make appeal to a process. They rather mean covariance. In general, covariance means that there is no difference among the items that are determined (or that there cannot be any difference among the items that are determined) without any difference among the determining items. In other words, the items that are determined cannot be grained more finely that the determining items. The notion of determination is used in this sense when I say that content determines the extension of a linguistic expression. No difference in the extension of expressions without any difference in their contents. If the term “water” goes with different extensions on Earth and Twin Earth (H2O and XYZ), then this term is also assigned different contents in both worlds, cf. Putnam (1975). When I say that our immediate, i.e. non-inferential, answers to the world constrain the correctness of assertions and the appropriateness of content and that content is anchored in the world, I do not wish to imply, however, that also the converse covariance applies. This would mean that contents cannot differ without any difference in the extension. Such covariance is ruled out because different contents may indeed go with the same extension. “Hesperus” and “Phosphorus” have different contents (the first celestial body in the evening sky and the last one in the morning sky) but the same extension (the planet Venus), cf. Frege (1892b). The claim that content is anchored in the world is meant to be synonymous with the claim that content determines extension. Different extension goes with different content, but not vice versa. Having distinguished determination as covariance from the way content is anchored in the world, let us come back to determination as the outcome of a process. The thesis that content is determined by normative, social practice does not imply covariance. This thesis does not say that any

11 difference in content requires that a feature of constitutive practice be different. There is indeed no feature of constitutive practice that could covary with content. In order to justify this claim, I will make clear below that normative attitudes, the basic elements of constitutive practice, do not covary with content. Having explicated and motivated the thesis that content is normative and social, let us now turn to the thesis that it must also be considered as objective. Throughout this study, I constrain myself on empirical assertions and their contents. In what follows I will first address and defend the objectivity of such assertions and then the objectivity of their contents. The first kind of objectivity is referred to as epistemological, the second one as semantic. Epistemological objectivity means that everybody, and even the community as a whole, can be wrong about the correctness, precisely the truth-value,4 of an empirical assertion because this correctness is constrained by our immediate answers to the world. According to the former part of this thesis, the correctness of empirical assertions is attitude-transcendent rather than merely intersubjective. The latter part turns the former part more substantial. It amends the negative thesis that everybody can be wrong about the correctness of an assertion by the positive thesis that this possibility is warranted by the fact that immediate answers to the world constrain the correctness of an assertion. Precisely, these answers impose rational constraint. Thus, the notion of objectivity I assume has two components: attitude-transcendence and rational constraint by immediate answers to the world. The latter component says that these answers are caused by the way the world is but that they are simultaneously able to justify the assertion. It is intuitively plausible that empirical assertions have to be conceived as objective. But how is epistemological objectivity connected with content? Content is individuated by correctness conditions that state inter alia what entity an assertion is about and, therefore, content determines the extension and thus permits to find out the truth-value of an assertion. In consequence, content matters for the objectivity of empirical assertions. 4

Truth is extensional objective correctness. Cf. chapters 2.1f. on the distinction between intensional and extensional correctness.

12 The idea that content plays a role for objectivity can be strengthened into the idea that content is objective. Just as it is possible to be wrong about the truth-value of an empirical assertion, it is possible to be wrong about the appropriateness of its correctness conditions and, thus, about the appropriateness of contents themselves. Neither truth-value nor correctness conditions have to be endorsed in every linguistic practice that is appropriate to the way the world is. Consider the example of an individual who makes the assertion “This animal is a fish” when she spots a whale. The truth-value of this assertion depends upon whether one adopts the correctness condition “If this animal lives in water, then it is a fish” or rather the condition “If this animal lives in water and is not a mammal, then it is a fish.” In the former case the assertion is true, in the latter case it is false. There may be more than one appropriate net of correctness conditions and thus more than one appropriate way how to draw conceptual borders. To contest this suggests that truths and contents are merely found out. In order to avoid the other extreme, in which truths and contents are merely made, it is sufficient that the truth-value of an assertion and the appropriateness of its correctness conditions are negotiated in the course of a process. This process proceeds from the net of correctness conditions already acknowledged in a particular community and leads to a result that is independent of what anybody takes to be correct. The correctness of assertions, the appropriateness of their correctness conditions, and thus of their contents are constrained by immediate answers to the world. This occurs because performances or inner states that are caused by the way the world is, precisely observation reports or sense impressions, form part of this process. Having addressed the demand that content is to be conceived as objective, let us now consider why the reconciliation of this demand with a normative, social conception of content deserves a fresh look. First, I will show that Kripke’s way of carrying out normative, social semantics fails to account for objective content. I will also state why I think the question of how to do it better is still unsettled. Kripke specifies his important insight that content has to be conceived as normative and social by arguing that an individual masters content if the other members of her community assess her performances as being in accordance with their own. This suggests that

13 content is determined by a concurrence in the normative attitudes of the members of a community. Kripke can therefore be criticized for conceiving content in a purely intersubjective and thus relativistic way. He suggests that content depends on what a particular community takes to be correct. A relativistic conception of content runs counter to Kripke’s own intention. He does not only intend to criticize reductionist positions, but a more comprehensive range of positions that encompasses relativistic ones. In the same context in which he criticizes reductionist positions, he criticizes positions that do make room for correctness because they explicate content in terms of assessments but that only provide intersubjectivity when they identify correctness with the consensus of the community. Thus, Kripke intends to make room for objective content. He has to be blamed, however, for not answering the crucial question of how constitutive practice is to be characterized such that it fulfills this aim. The content-constitutive process of mutual assessments as it is specified in Kripke merely expresses what different individuals take to be correct from their respective point of view. Such process may happen to lead to a consensus but does not make room for a kind of correctness that is independent from what anybody or the community as a whole take to be correct. What exactly is the feature for which Kripke’s proposal fails and how can one do better? It suggests one must not take each individual’s actual normative attitudes into account, but rather the objectively correct ones. It is questionable, however, whether this device can be reconciled with a pragmatist5 account of content. The objectively correct normative attitudes need not be realized in any practice that may exist. They are merely a theoretical construct or an ideal limit. Besides this objection to the assumption of objectively correct normative attitudes, there is a second problem provided that these attitudes are presupposed in constitutive practice. In that case, the account of content becomes circular. Content is 5

Talk of a pragmatist position, just like the notion of practice, is understood in a broad sense: These notions refer to what is done. This encompasses both behavior and assessments, as opposed to what is the case. These notions do not entail that practice is conceived as social or normative, i.e. as mutual assessments.

14 identified by objective conditions for the correct use of an expression. If constitutive practice already exhibits objectively correct normative attitudes and if these attitudes reflect correctness conditions, then correctness conditions are presupposed as well; however, this is in conflict with the fact that correctness conditions form the subject matter that is supposed to be explicated in an account of content. Kripke’s plea for a normative account of content thus faces a dilemma. Either an approach exclusively proceeds from the actual normative attitudes but then fails to provide attitude-transcendence. Or it proceeds from the objectively correct ones but then the proposal is no longer pragmatist and becomes circular. The crucial task consists in elaborating how normative practice can provide attitude-transcendence without assuming objectively correct normative attitudes. (It is now clear why one cannot conceive the determination of content by normative, social practice as covariance of objective content on normative attitudes. The actual normative attitudes are not objective and the objectively correct ones do not fit with a pragmatist framework.) Kripke himself, contributions to the critical discussion of his proposal and current answers to the guiding question of this study either do not present a convincing solution to this dilemma or do not state clearly how such a solution could look like. The same holds for the demand to anchor content in the world. Kripke does not explicitly deal with this demand but it plays an important role in current answers to the guiding question. My theses with respect to the answers to the guiding question will be substantiated when briefly presenting and discussing these answers below. My thesis concerning contributions that intend to settle due to which features Kripke’s proposal fails will be developed in chapter 2.1. The question of how the content of empirical assertions can be normative, social and at the same time objective has not yet been adequately answered; therefore, it seems to be promising to dedicate the present study to it. Given my above specification of what is supposed to be understood by the normative, social and objective character of content, the precise guiding question of the present study reads as follows: How can our immediate answers to the world constrain the process of mutual assessments that constitutes content, such that everybody and even the community as a whole can be

15 wrong about the truth-value of an empirical assertion and about the appropriateness of its correctness conditions and thus of its content? The answers to this question that are to be considered shall be restricted in one important respect. At present, the most common form of social semantics is inferential role semantics, according to which the correctness conditions that individuate content are specified as inferential relations. Sellars (1953) pioneeredfor this kind of semantics. Therefore, I will specify social semantics as inferential role semantics. In a minute, I will outline the present study and in that context briefly present the approaches to be considered. Before, let me put the topic into a broader framework. The recent interest in this topic has to be seen in connection with the revival of pragmatism that has taken place since the 1970s. Rorty, who plays an important role in this revival, and like-minded authors are often regarded as having relativistic tendencies. Opposition to these tendencies has resulted in a movement that sticks to pragmatist insights but also intends to avoid relativism. Pragmatist approaches to content hold that content is determined by human practice. This practice may but does not need to be conceived as involving mutual assessments and thus as being normative and social. Nevertheless all pragmatist approaches face the dilemma elaborated in connection with Kripke. How can a pragmatist account of content make room for attitude-transcendence? In the present study, I focus on one particular motivation of a pragmatist approach to content, namely Kripke’s reflections on rule-following. I consider how the resulting normative, social conception of content can be reconciled with attitude-transcendence. But the broader aim of this study is to contribute to the general discussion of how an account of content can be pragmatist without buying into relativism. Let me broaden the frame of this study once more by localizing the topic in the history of philosophy. In order to make such localization intelligible it is important to stress that the topic is not only a semantic problem (which has both an epistemological and an ontological dimension) but at the same time a genuinely epistemological one. The semantic problem has already been formulated: How can the content of empirical assertions be normative, social and at the same time objective? This encompasses the epistemological dimension of how it can be settled in the course of a

16 process of mutual assessments which content an individual is to be ascribed. And it encompasses the ontological dimension of how such process constitutes content. The semantic problem can be transformed into the following genuinely epistemological one: How can assertions be true or objective if their contents are normative and social? A formulation that covers both problems is indicated above when I explain that content does not only play a role for the objectivity of an assertion but is objective itself: How is it possible to steer a middle course between the idea that truths or contents are merely made and the idea that they are merely found out? This problem does not only matter for pragmatist approaches. Its first prominent formulation goes back to Kant and occupies philosophy up to this day: How can spontaneity be reconciled with receptivity? Spontaneity is the component of human cognitive faculties that effectuates that truths or contents are in a way made. Receptivity is the component that effectuates that they are in a way found out. A position that is biased towards the former component is relativistic. Contemporary warnings that one must not be biased towards the latter component is Sellars’s (1956) demand to avoid the “Myth of the Given,” see chapter 3.3. Sellars’s basic idea is that every item that is able to justify an assertion stands in need of justification itself (instead of being already at hand). A similar warning is Putnam’s demand to avoid “metaphysical realism.” Metaphysical realism claims that a set of forms, universals or properties is pre-existent to any human practice. This thesis implies that the structure of possible true assertions and their contents is fixed in advance, cf. e.g. Putnam (1994), p. 448. How the different approaches that I will consider can be characterized and how they are to be assessed shall now be presented in the course of a brief outline of the present study. In chapters 1 and 2 the question to be considered is developed. The thesis that content is objective is explicated and motivated as well as the thesis that content is normative and social. The argument that the guiding question of this study has not yet been answered adequately is demonstrated in that Kripke’s way of carrying out normative, social semantics does not do justice to the objectivity of content. Furthermore, I show that the intense critical discussion of Kripke’s proposal has not yet fully clarified what the reasons for Kripke’s failure are. In order to justify the choice of alternatives I will consider, precisely

17 my consideration of non-reductionist naturalism, I argue that Kripke’s arguments rule out a broader range of approaches than just reductionist ones but that his arguments and their critical discussion do not imply a rejection of naturalistic approaches in general, be they reductionist or nonreductionist. Finally, I specify the notion of content in a way that conceives content as inferential role and simultaneously does justice to epistemological (and thus semantic) objectivity. In chapters 3 and 5 I discuss two currently proposed answers to the guiding question, a naturalistic one and what I call a “primitivist” answer. I consider Esfeld’s (2001a) approach as an example for the naturalistic answer (other proponents are Pettit (1993) and Haugeland (1998))6 and Brandom’s (1994) approach as an example for the primitivist one (another proponent is McDowell (1994)). A third, existentialist answer is based upon a pragmatist reading of Heidegger. This answer has not been carried out in detail, therefore, one can only partially settle how it intends to account for objective content. Some authors mention this reading of Heidegger in order to argue that constitutive practice already makes room for objective correctness even if this practice is conceived as preconceptual. This thesis allows for a middle way between the naturalistic and the primitivist approach. The middle way looks promising because both approaches seem to be equally unacceptable. I will show in a minute that the former approach conceives constitutive practice as pre-conceptual but fails to provide objectivity and that the latter provides objectivity but starts out from conceptual articulation. Proponents of the middle way argue that this feature makes the account of content circular. In chapter 4 I consider the existentialist approach in the context of a particular aspect of the guiding question, namely in the context of the question whether objectivity presupposes conceptual articulation. The naturalistic approach proceeds from individuals who mutually sanction each other’s performances on the basis of what the respective interpreter, as opposed to the respective actor, actually takes to be correct. Sanctions are conceived as positive or negative reinforcements of behavior. 6

Only the more recent Haugeland is to be considered in this context. Haugeland (1982), in contrast, can be criticized on similar grounds like Kripke (1982).

18 They set off a process in the course of which the proper conditions for a particular performance are found out. They consist in the circumstances under which the individuals’ normative attitudes, with respect to the performance, concur. This process brings about content. Content consists in the rules, precisely in the rules of inference, that underlie the proper conditions. The proponents of such a story argue that they enable attitudetranscendence because they hold that sanctions introduce an “external perspective.” Content is meant to be anchored in the world because some normative attitudes are based upon immediate answers to the world. Precisely, normative attitudes may be based upon the outcomes of reliable differential responsive dispositions (RDRDs) to a common physical environment. These dispositions are conceived as natural, i.e. they are taken not to be formed by human practice. A disposition to do X – here: to answer to the world – is reliable if a subject will not fail to do X under circumstance Y. It is differential if the subject will not do X unless under circumstance Y, cf. Rödl (manuscript), pp. 7f. RDDRs are manifested in sense impressions. (In principle, RDRDs can also be manifested in observation reports. But in the naturalistic approach observation reports cannot be invoked in order to explicate how constitutive practice anchors content in the world because this practice is conceived as pre-conceptual. I will argue in a minute that constitutive practice is such characterized.) Sense impressions impose rational constraint on content because they can serve as reasons in an assessment of assertions once content and thus conceptual practice have been brought about. At this point, I clarify the distinction between conceptual and constitutive practice. Conceptual practice settles whether assertions are applied in concurrence with their correctness conditions and whether it is with things in the world as the assertion claims it is. Constitutive practice, in contrast, settles which correctness conditions an assertion is to be ascribed and thus how its content is to be formulated. Constitutive practice may assess exclusively non-linguistic performances. In that case it is pre-conceptual. But it may also assess assertions and inferences as I will address shortly. In that case conceptual and constitutive practice are merely two different aspects of one and the same process.

19 Two further features of the naturalistic approach are worth being pointed out. I have already said that sanctions and normative attitudes are explicated in terms of responsive dispositions that are naturally reliable and differential. This means that sanctions, normative attitudes and RDRDs can be explicated in non-normative, that is naturalistic, terms, precisely in terms of dispositions of behavior. The naturalistic conception of normative vocabulary is the first feature I address. Second, the approach explicitly commits itself to a pre-inferential, pre-rational, and preconceptual starting point. Proceeding from pre-conceptual practice has the consequence that the immediate answers to the world that play a role in constitutive practice do not yet possess content. They must rather be spelled out as the world’s impressions on our senses. These impressions are caused by worldly entities and, in turn, cause linguistic and nonlinguistic performances. They may be conceived as providing rational constraint only in retrospect. The primitivist answer proceeds from the actual normative attitudes in combination with a distinction between perspectives each individual draws when she interprets somebody else. The interpreter distinguishes what the interpretee takes to be correct from what the interpretee would correctly take to be correct. The latter takes into account which inferential connections the interpretee endorses and of what follows from her net of normative attitudes in the light of the interpreter. (This does not mean to invoke objectively correct normative attitudes. All assessments are thoroughly perspectival because they reflect the interpreter’s view of what somebody would correctly take to be correct.) The primitivist approach conceives the process of mutual assessments as giving and asking for reasons for assertions. What is negotiated in the course of this process is the correctness of inferences in which an assertion is involved. It is negotiated from what other assertions it can be inferred and what, in turn, follows from it. This process determines inferential relations among contents. These relations individuate content. This rationally or inferentially articulated distinction between perspectives is meant to lead beyond that which is arbitrarily taken to be correct by an individual or by a community. Also, content is considered anchored in the world because the relata of inferential relations can also be the contents of observation

20 reports. Observation reports are the kind of manifestations of RDRDs the primitivist approach makes use of in place of the world’s impressions on our senses the naturalistic approach invokes. As in the naturalistic approach, assessments (sanctions) and normative attitudes are based upon RDRDs but the primitivist approach does not consider RDRDs natural. An observer rather has to be assessed as reliable by other members of her community. Such assessment is carried out by checking whether the observer is committed to the presence of proper conditions and to inferences from proper conditions to her observation report. The way manifestations of RDRDs (here: observation reports) help to anchor content in the world correspondingly does not consist in their providing a foundation for objectivity. Observation reports are rather always preliminary regress-stoppers in the justification of assertions and inferences. The answer to the question how content is anchored in the world does not only read that observation reports can be justified as being reliably caused by worldly entities. A second answer7 results from the assumption of a conceptually articulated world:. The world is taken to consist of facts that are conceived as the contents of true thoughts. Such an ontological position shall in the following be called “conceptual realism.” Again two further features are pointed out. The first concerns the conception of the normative vocabulary that figures in this account of content. Assessments based upon the above-mentioned distinction between perspectives cannot be explicated in terms of dispositions of behavior. These assessments are ultimately based upon normative attitudes. In consequence, normative attitudes must be treated as basic. And if RDRDs are not natural but require assessments then they must be explicated ultimately in normative terms as well. The approach is primitivist, because normative vocabulary is part considered as basic (this holds for normative attitudes) and part explicated in terms of this fundamental vocabulary (this holds for assessments and RDRDs). The second feature has already been pointed to when I have addressed how the approach intends to enable objectivity. The process of mutual assessments is conceived as a giving 7

It is an important question whether this answer is independent from or related with the first one.

21 and asking for reasons that considers the antecedences and consequences of assertions. As a consequence, constitutive practice is rational and inferential. This process also settles which worldly entities assertions are about. The reason is that it takes observation reports into account the reliability of their being caused by worldly entities is assessed in the course of this process. Constitutive practice is conceptual because this process takes aboutness into account. Proceeding from conceptually articulated practice has the consequence that immediate answers to the worlds may be conceived as observation reports. The features in dispute among both approaches permit formulation of the questions that have to be answered if one wants to state how constitutive practice must be characterized so that it makes room for objectivity. These questions are: F1 Which kind of distinction is drawn between different perspectives? Does it consist in the contrast between what interpreter and interpretee subjectively take to be correct or does it consist in each interpreter’s distinction between what is correct from the interpretee’s point of view and what is correct in the light of the inferential connections the interpretee and the interpreter endorse? This question is related to the problem of how one can avoid the dilemma that an approach does not make room for attitudetranscendence if it merely considers the actual normative attitudes or fails to provide a pragmatist, non-circular account of content if it presupposes objectively correct normative attitudes. F2 Is content anchored in the world by natural RDRDs or by observation reports the reliability of which has to be settled in the course of the process of mutual assessments? And how is conceptual realism to be judged? The distinguishing features formulated in F1 and F2 go hand in hand with two others: F3 Assessments (sanctions) and the underlying normative attitudes are in some cases based upon RDRDs. But are RDRDs natural or nonnatural? And thus: Can RDRDs be described in non-normative terms, precisely in terms of dispositions of behavior, or do they have to be

22 described in normative terms, precisely in terms of reliability assessments and thus normative attitudes? A non-natural conception of RDRDs and the assumption of the more sophisticated distinction between perspectives alike have the consequence that assessments must be explicated in terms of normative attitudes that are treated as basic. One can therefore also ask the following question: Can assessments and normative attitudes be described in non-normative terms or must normative attitudes be treated as basic? The combination of the two partial questions concerning the description of normative vocabulary comes up to the question of whether semantic naturalism can be defended. F4 Is it sufficient to conceive constitutive practice as intersubjective or must it be attitude-transcendent? Below I will argue that the kind of distinction between perspectives the primitivist approach assumes on the stage of constitutive practice permits one to conceive assertions and their contents as attitudetranscendent. I will also argue that the kind of distinction the naturalistic approach assumes only permits one to conceive assertions, inferences, and the non-linguistic performances it proceeds from as intersubjective. The respective distinction between perspectives enables the respective kind of correctness both on the stage of up-andrunning conceptual practice and on the stage of constitutive practice. As a consequence, these arguments entail that not only conceptual practice but also constitutive practice has to be conceived as attitudetranscendent. The two approaches also answer the following question differently: F5 Can constitutive practice be conceived as pre-rational, pre-inferential and pre-conceptual or not? The naturalistic approach explicitly affirms this question. The primitivist approach, in contrast, starts out from rational, inferential and conceptual practice because it characterizes mutual assessments as giving and asking for reasons for assertions. How are the distinguishing features to be assessed? Here is a sketch of the arguments I develop throughout this study:

23 F1 If one proceeds from the actual normative attitudes in combination with each interpreter’s distinction between perspectives, one can avoid the dilemma that an account of content either does not provide attitude-transcendence or fails to be pragmatist and moreover becomes circular. This result will be achieved in two steps: First, I argue that the distinction between what different individuals take to be correct themselves fails to account for attitude-transcendence (chapter 3.1). This simple distinction between perspectives assumed by the naturalistic approach only allows for consensus among the members of a community. It does not entail anything that deserves to be called “external perspective.” The naturalistic approach avoids the second horn of the dilemma because it proceeds from the actual normative attitudes but not the first one. Second I argue that the more sophisticated distinction between perspectives that the primitivist approach assumes enables attitudetranscendence (chapter 5.2). This approach distinguishes what an individual actually takes to be correct from what she would correctly take to be correct on the basis of the best reasons that are available to her and to her interpreter. Every assessment is thoroughly perspectival because it reflects what the interpreter thinks somebody would correctly take to be correct. It is possible to question every assessment anew on the basis of further reasons. One might be tempted to argue that attitude-transcendence cannot be achieved by merely replacing an arbitrary consensus that is the result of pre-rational practice with a preliminary consensus that is based upon the best reasons available at a given point of time. In order to meet this objection, one has to add that the sophisticated distinction between perspectives permits one to go beyond that which anybody or the community as a whole take to be correct only if observation reports form part of the process of giving and asking for reasons. Disagreements among individuals can then be settled with regard to the way the world is. Both aspects of objectivity – attitude-transcendence and the constraint, which the immediate answers to the world impose upon correctness – are thus intertwined. How the consideration of observation reports anchors correctness in

24 the world will be stated in the course of the consideration of F2. In sum, it can be said that the approach avoids the dilemma because the sophisticated distinction between perspectives in combination with the role observation reports play enable attitude-transcendence while the perspectival character of all assessments shows that the approach does not invoke objectively correct normative attitudes. F2 Content cannot be anchored in the world by invoking natural RDRDs. Surprisingly enough, non-natural RDRDs do anchor content in the world. Observation reports, that are manifestations of RDRDs, have to be assessed with regard to their being reliably caused by worldly entities. And such assessments can be convincingly modelled by considering the inferential connections in which observation reports stand. Conceptual realism is an important consequence of the reading of the primitivist approach I propose. Sellars claims that any item that can justify an assertion has to be an assertion itself and therefore stands in need of justification. The manifestations of RDRDs are supposed to justify empirical assertions. Given Sellars’s point RDRDs cannot be conceived as natural because their manifestations have to be assessed with regard to their reliability (chapter 3.3). This does not only apply for an individual’s training period but for every instance of an immediate answer. Conceiving RDRDs as natural runs counter to the pragmatist framework (this point is already adumbrated in chapter 3.1) and is a type of Myth of the Given. This central argument against the assumption of natural RDRDs can be amended by the following point (chapter 5.1). In order to show that RDRDs are reliably caused by worldly entities, one has to state which entity an observation report is about and prove that this entity is present. This task can be fulfilled by settling the intersection of different causal chains that lead from one single entity to different tokens of one and the same observation report. (In the naturalistic approach such examination of RDRDs is only possible after content has been brought about.) The intersection is the proximal stimulus, i.e. the stimulus that is farthest away from the observation report. It is the entity the report is about. The other nodes of the causal chains are

25 more or less distal stimuli, i.e. stimuli that are near to the observation report. They are, for example, stimulations of the brain or of sense organs. Following Davidson, I call this attempt to settle the aboutness of an observation report “triangulation.” Triangulation fulfills its explanatory aim only if it is specified in a particular way.: Even if one acknowledges that the consideration of causal chains alone does not avoid indeterminacy of aboutness and therefore takes a social dimension into account (this means to consider which tokens of observation reports and which entities appear similar to us) indeterminacy is still not avoided. It is rather required to take inferential connections into account. But the naturalistic account cannot take inferential connections into account because it starts out from pre-inferential practice. In the following paragraph, I will state how the consideration of inferential articulation besides causal connections avoids indeterminacy. That manifestations of non-natural RDRDs, precisely observation reports, do anchor content in the world follows from the fact that inferential triangulation does without the assumption of natural reliability and at the same time avoids indeterminacy of aboutness (chapter 5.2). According to this version of triangulation an observation report is reliably caused by a worldly entity if the report can be inferred from the presence of its the proper conditions. In order to fulfil this device, it is, of course, not sufficient that an observer claims that the circumstances apply which she considers as the proper conditions. In order to avoid that the interpreter’s perspective is privileged, interpreter and observer have to settle in the course of mutual assessments whether the observer is committed to inferences from proper conditions to the report and whether she is also committed to the premises of these inferences. In order to understand conceptual realism properly, one must see that the facts that are supposed to be identical with contents do not constrain contents. What constrains contents is rather the way the world appears to us perspectivally, although on the basis of the most successful coping with it (chapter 5.4). Understood as such, conceptual realism does not lie in the way of an account that stresses

26 that human practice plays a self-sustained role for the constitution of content. Conceptual realism is rather an important consequence of the primitivist approach because this ontological thesis makes clear that content is both in a way found out and in a way made. It is found out because our immediate, perspectival answers to the world can be assessed with regard to their reliability. Contents and the facts they are identical with are the ideal limit of a process that involves such assessments. And they are made because the starting point and the preliminary results of this process are thoroughly perspectival. Conceptual realism, understood as a proposal of how content is supposed to be anchored in the world, is problematic only if it is falsely conceived as a thesis that is unconnected with the process of mutual assessments. F3 Semantic naturalism has to be rejected. This means precisely that assessments (sanctions) are based upon normative attitudes that cannot be explicated in terms of natural RDRDs. Normative attitudes must rather be treated as basic. This objection to semantic naturalism follows from the assessment of the two kinds of distinctions between perspectives and the two conceptions of RDRDs that have been discussed in F1 and F2. The distinction between perspectives that is assumed by the primitivist approach has turned out to be decisive for the constitution of objective content. It presupposes assessments that are even ultimately explicated in terms of normative attitudes. Conversely, the simpler distinction between perspectives the naturalistic approach assumes only makes room for intersubjectivity. This approach cannot formulate a more sophisticated distinction between perspectives because it explicates normative attitudes in non-normative terms, that is in terms of dispositions of behavior. As a consequence, it is decisive to explicate assessments in terms of normative attitudes and to treat the latter as basic. The assumption of natural RDRDs implies that RDRDs can be explicated in terms of dispositions of behavior. The rejection of natural RDRDs, in contrast, stems from the insight that responsive dispositions have to be assessed with respect to their reliability so that

27 they are ultimately based upon normative attitudes. This point in favor of a normative explication of RDRDs moreover amends the argument I have presented in the preceding paragraph in favor of a normative explication of assessments by providing a second argument. That argument is that assessments that are based upon immediate, reliable responsive dispositions have to be explicated in terms of normative attitudes. F4 Already constitutive practice has to possess resources for attitudetranscendent correctness. If the naturalistic account is mistaken in claiming that naturalistically conceived sanctions introduce an external, attitude-transcendent perspective, then it conceives both conceptual and constitutive practice as intersubjective, even though this is against the intention of its proponents. And if the way the primitivist account characterizes the process of mutual assessments permits one to consider assertions and inferences as attitude-transcendent, then already constitutive practice possesses resources for attitude-transcendence (chapters 3.1 and 5.2). The comparative evaluation of the two approaches provides a first motivation of the demand that constitutive practice be considered as attitude-transcendent. But proceeding from attitude-transcendent constitutive practice can only be considered as a condition of adequacy for an account of content if the attempt to provide attitudetranscendence on the basis of merely intersubjective constitutive practice can be criticized (chapter 3.2). But the naturalistic approach does not undertake such an attempt; constitutive practice is merely intersubjective. Such an attempt turns out to be objectionable if one follows Brandom in criticizing a two-step model of content. According to this model, content is constituted in a first step and only then brought in front of the “tribunal of experience.” This means that only then is it examined whether content is appropriate to the way the world is. This model must be rejected if questions concerning facts and semantic questions cannot be told apart. F5 Choosing a rational, inferential, and conceptual starting point is required in order to enable objectivity. Such a starting point can be

28 defended against the objection that it makes an account of content circular. According to Sellars an observation report can be said to be reliable only if it is assessed as reliable by the members of a community. In order to carry out such an assessment one has to consider whether the observer is ready to infer her report from proper conditions so that the report permits one to infer the presence of the entity the report is about. If one modifies Sellars’s position, basically the same idea gets expressed in the demand to consider whether the observer can be attributed commitments to inferences that interrelate proper conditions with the report and to the presence of these conditions. No matter whether one formulates Sellars’s idea in the original or in the modified way, the process of mutual assessments that makes up constitutive practice has to be conceived as inferential or rational and as conceptual (chapter 3.3). The assumption of objectively correct normative attitudes makes an account of content circular. But does proceeding from conceptually articulated practice not imply a similar circularity (chapter 5.3)? This question can be negated. That the process of mutual assessments presupposes conceptual resources does not mean that anything that is objectively correct is presupposed. All the preliminary results of the process of mutual assessments are thoroughly perspectival. Besides an assessment of the distinguishing features between the two kinds of approaches, and thus besides the development of the features a promising account of content has to possess, two side-issues are dealt with (chapter 5.1). I have argued earlier that the thesis that content is social is not sufficiently motivated in Kripke. This thesis can be justified in the framework of the proposed answer to the guiding question by pointing out that all assessments are perspectival. As a consequence, it is important to find out jointly what is correct. The justification of the social character of content is the first side-issue. The second side-issue consists in pointing out why different aspects of the present discussion context are interrelated. The interrelation of the epistemological and the ontological dimension of the rule-following problem, and thus the interrelatedness of up-and-running conceptual and constitutive practice, is not convincingly argued for in

29 Kripke. Moreover, I did not give a sufficiently strong argument when I claimed above that the objectivity of assertions and of contents is connected. All these interrelations result from the fact that the process of mutual assessments, as the primitivist approach models it, simultaneously negotiates the correctness of assertions and of inferences and thus of contents. In conclusion, I sum up the evaluation of the naturalistic and the primitivist approach and of the existentialist approach that has been considered only in passing: The simple distinction between perspectives the naturalistic approach assumes fails to provide attitude-transcendence. The approach does not get beyond such distinction between perspectives because it conceives sanctions in non-normative terms. Besides the simple distinction between perspectives and the underlying non-normative conception of sanctions, the approach is criticized for choosing an intersubjective starting point. This feature entails a problematic two-step model of content. The proposal to anchor content in the world by invoking natural and thus nonnormatively explicable RDRDs runs counter to a pragmatist framework and is a kind of the Myth of the Given. It is required to model an assessment of immediate answers to the world with respect to their reliability. Such assessment is, however, ruled out as long as the approach chooses a pre-rational, pre-inferential and pre-conceptual starting point. The existentialist approach is motivated by the insight that the naturalistic approach fails to provide objectivity in combination with the view that proceeding conversely from conceptually articulated practice makes an account of content circular. This view has turned out to be wrong so that the motivation of the existential approach is indefensible. Moreover, this approach is not viable because its basic idea that objectivity does not require conceptual articulation is indefensible as well. How is the primitivist approach to be assessed? The reading I develop shows that it provides a convincing answer to the guiding question. A fresh look at this question seems nevertheless promising because the approach does not make sufficiently clear that it does not presuppose objectively correct normative attitudes and that conceptual realism is a consequence of the proposed answer to the guiding question and not a problematic thesis that is unconnected with the process of mutual assessments.

31

Part I The problem 1 The objectivity of content This study is situated in the broader context of the discussion of how the content of empirical assertions can be normative, social, and at the same time objective whereby social semantics refers to inferential role semantics. The aim of this and the following chapter is to prepare the groundwork for addressing this question. In this chapter I will develop an adequate understanding of objectivity and explain what it means for content to be objective. In order to develop an adequate understanding of objectivity it is helpful to distinguish between an ontological, an epistemological, and a semantic sense: In an ontological sense, the notion of objectivity means that the elements of certain classes of entities exist independently of human cognitive faculties. And they would be the way they are even if there were not any human beings. Or: They were the way they are even before there were any human beings. A thesis concerning the existence or the nature of worldly entities is, however, not the sense of objectivity that is (primarily) relevant to the present context. Shifting the point of view away from worldly entities and towards the mental acts or states that are about, refer to or represent those entities, yields an epistemological sense of objectivity. Judgments and beliefs are paradigmatic. They are mental items that are manifested in linguistic items like sentences or assertions. The contents of these kinds of mental and linguistic items thus possess a similar structure: The contents of both mental and linguistic items can be formulated in that-clauses, so that they can be called propositional or – following Frege – conceptual contents. The context of the present discussion is the content of (assertional) sentences, or assertions.1 Instead of assertions I will often speak of claims in the sense of claimings: A claiming is a linguistic performance that means to be 1

This means that I am not going to consider non-conceptual contents, e.g. the contents of perceptions as they have been modeled by Peacocke (1992). For a more general characterization of content cf. Peacocke (1994).

32 objectively correct, that can be assigned objective correctness conditions. Claims in the sense of what is claimed are contents. Before saying what epistemological objectivity is, and what it means to call an assertion objective, let me say what I understand by empirical assertions. Throughout this study I shall constrain my consideration to these assertions. The reason is that empirical assertions can be less problematically conceived as objective than other kinds of assertions can. I call those assertions empirical that speak about such entities in the physical world that can be experienced. To be experienced is supposed to mean that we can reliably and differentially answer to these entities, that we have reliable differential responsive dispositions (RDRDs) with respect to them. But this is not enough: To call assertions empirical requires that RDRDs play a role in settling their correctness. In summary, the following features characterize empirical assertions: 1

Empirical assertions speak about entities in the physical world.

2

These entities can be experienced. This means: 2a We have RDRDs with regard to these entities. 2b RDRDs play a role in settling the correctness of empirical assertions.

Observation reports are only one kind of empirical assertion. They are not inferred (they are “non-inferential”) and are therefore immediate answers to the world that are at least under proper conditions reliable and differential. Therefore, they can be conceived as instantiations of RDRDs. “This animal is a fish” is an example of an observation report. But here are some different examples of the broad range of empirical assertions that are not observational but rather inferential: “Most houses in Greece are painted in white” (a generalized assertion is inferential because it requires induction), or “Men cannot fly” (a modal assertion is inferential because it requires grasping incompatibilities). How are empirical assertions distinguished from other kinds of assertions? Not all physical entities can be experienced. Therefore empirical assertions are distinguished from theoretical assertions that speak about physical entities that cannot (yet) be experienced. On the same grounds they are also delimited from some kinds of sentences that speak about the past or the future. Conversely, not all

33 entities that can be experienced belong to the physical realm. This distinguishes empirical assertions from e.g. moral or aesthetic ones. And finally, empirical assertions are traditionally contrasted with analytic ones which may – like “All bachelors are unmarried men” – speak about physical entities that can be experienced. Their correctness, however, is not taken to be connected with our RDRDs. Let us return to the notion of epistemological objectivity. What sort of claim is made in calling an assertion objective? The assertion is claimed to be true as opposed to being taken to be true. To put things this way means that I understand objectivity as objective success, not as objective purport. If objectivity is understood as objective purport, calling something objective means claiming that it is possible to settle or find out whether it is true or only taken to be true. Let me illustrate the difference by an example: “This animal is a fish” is objective in the sense of objective success if applied to a goldfish, not if applied to a whale. But regardless of which animal this claim is applied to, it is objective in the sense of objective purport. No matter how objectivity is conceived, objectivity and truth are intimately connected. But calling something objectively correct and calling it true can only be identical claims if objectivity is objective success. It should be kept in mind how objectivity is conceived, although for the following it is not decisive which conception is chosen. The notions of truth and objectivity – which I use nearly interchangeably2 – both designate a particular kind of correctness, a kind of correctness that is proper to empirical assertions. This notion of correctness generally draws a distinction between what is correct and what is taken to be correct. How the correctness of empirical assertions is to be characterized, and thus what objectivity precisely means, will now be discussed by considering different kinds of correctness that result from the way the former part of the distinction – what is correct – is spelled out. The weakest kind of correctness results if what is taken to be correct is set against what is correct in the light of a privileged perspective. This usually means that correctness coincides with the consensus of a particular community. It is 2

Truth is extensional objective correctness. Cf. chapters 2.1 and 2.2 on the distinction between extensional and intensional correctness.

34 conceived as intersubjectivity. Objectivity, however, is hardly characterized in such a relativistic way. I do not have the space to offer a detailed argument against a relativistic conception of objectivity. While it is obvious that it is rather weak, it is not so obvious that it is trivial as a frequent objection maintains.3 All that is important in the present context is the intuition that empirical assertions are not merely intersubjective, but that their correctness goes beyond what anybody takes to be correct insofar as it is constrained by our answers to the world. I have already made use of this intuition when I stated what is to be understood by empirical assertions: RDRDs to the physical world are supposed to play a role in settling their correctness. (In the case of assertions whose correctness is not linked up with RDRDs to the physical world, as opposed e.g. to the social world, it is much more arguable whether their correctness goes beyond intersubjectivity as the vivid debates concerning e.g. the status of temporal or moral assertions show.) Let us therefore consider a stronger kind of correctness, according to which something is correct no matter whether anybody takes it to be correct – so that everybody, even the community as a whole, can be wrong. Correctness is conceived as attitude-transcendence. According to a third proposal correctness is universal validity. This is e.g. Kant’s conception of objectivity: “Es sind daher objective Gültigkeit und nothwendige Allgemeingültigkeit (vor jedermann) Wechselbegriffe, und ob wir gleich das Object an sich nicht kennen, so ist doch, wenn wir ein Urtheil als gemeingültig und mithin nothwendig ansehen, eben darunter die objective Gültigkeit verstanden”, Kant (1783), § 19, p. 79.

Kant calls objective that which is with necessity universally valid. This means that a correct assertion has to be endorsed by each person, no matter what else she endorses, no matter what physical world she lives in. Universal validity and attitude-transcendence are similar insofar as both of these kinds of correctness are formulated in modal terms: Attitudetranscendence is conceived in terms of the constant possibility of being

3

Cf. e.g. Putnam (1981) and Putnam (1982), intended especially as an objection to Rorty (1979).

35 wrong, universal validity in terms of the necessity of endorsing a particular assertion. Intersubjectivity, in contrast, means factual consensus. On the one hand I think talk of universal validity is misleading although, on the other hand, renouncing it does not lead to a relativistic position. It leaves room for an appropriately spelled out conception of attitudetranscendence. Let me explicate: I have pointed out in the introduction to this study that there are not any particular assertions that have to be endorsed in every linguistic practice that is appropriate to the way the world is. To contest this suggests that truths are merely found. On the other hand, truths must not be conceived as being merely made. But this demand can be fulfilled without adopting the position just criticized. The demand can be fulfilled if the assignment of a truth-value to an assertion is settled in the course of a process that proceeds from the net of correctness conditions already endorsed in a particular community, provided that this process leads to a result that is independent of what anybody takes to be correct. My reservation about the notion of universal validity – about the claim that a true assertion has to be endorsed by everybody – consists in the fact that it suggests that truths are merely found. To reject such a suggestion does not mean, however, that truths are merely made. Put alternatively, this rejection does not mean to negate that – once social practice has evolved and correctness conditions have been established – an assertion that is true today was also true in the past (even before there was any social practice) and will also be true in the future. Given the objections both to intersubjectivity and to universal validity, empirical assertions have to be conceived as attitude-transcendent. But attitude-transcendence alone does not do justice to the abovementioned intuition with respect to empirical assertions, namely that their correctness is anchored in the world. The negative claim that everybody can be wrong about the correctness of an empirical assertion rather has to be amended with a positive claim that takes our answers to the world into account. And there is a second, more principled argument why the negative claim has to be amended with the positive one: I think the possibility of error, mentioned above, would be vacuous unless this idea were warranted by something pre-existent to every social practice, once social practice has evolved. Similarly, all notions that invoke such error – the notions of

36 attitude-transcendence, truth, or objectivity – would in that case be vacuous. But what can provide the required warrant? The proposals that have been made in the philosophical literature are either transcendental approaches or approaches that invoke a feature common to every social practice. (A third group of approaches is a hybrid of transcendental and social ones at the same time.) Proposals of the second kind can be further subdivided into two groups according to which feature of social practice is taken to be decisive: It is either the consensus of an idealized community or the structure of social practice. Let me illustrate the resulting three kinds of approaches with some examples: Kant’s proposal is transcendental. He calls objective what is necessarily universally valid. And what holds necessarily is for him what holds a priori – it does not presuppose experience, but rather enables it. Those pragmatist approaches that take truth and objectivity to be guaranteed by the consensus of an idealized community come in two kinds: They either idealize the result of a social process or its conditions. (Approaches that idealize the conditions of a process are not only pragmatist but at the same time transcendental.) Peirce’s approach is paradigmatic of the former kind. Putnam’s (1981) approach and Apel’s and Habermas’s discursive theories of truth are paradigmatic of the latter kind. Pragmatist approaches that take truth and objectivity to be guaranteed by the structure of social practice have been formulated by Blackburn (1984), Wright (1992) and Brandom (1994). I will not discuss these different proposals any further. My feeling is rather that if any of them is supposed to be convincing, it has to take the way the world is into account: The transcendental conditions of truth, the consensus of an idealized community, or the structure of social practice have to allow for grasping how it is about the world.4 And if it is supposed to be decidable whether an assertion is appropriate to the world, if the idea of such appropriateness is supposed to be operational, this can only mean that a convincing position has to take our answers to the world into account. To 4

This does not mean to negate that there are different possible ways to cognize the world. To assume, in contrast, that there is a world as such waiting for being cognized is an idea that belongs to the rejected view that truths are merely found.

37 repeat, we can say that objectivity is conceived as attitude-transcendence that is warranted by the way the world is, or – provided the appropriateness to the world is supposed to be cognizable – by our answers to the world. To round off the conception of objectivity I am developing, let me say one more word on the constraint imposed by our answers to the world: These answers provide a rational constraint insofar as they can serve as reasons in a justification of claims. And they are hooked on to the world insofar as they are caused by the way the world is. They can be spelled out as instantiations of RDRDs such as observation reports or, more generally, non-inferential reports, because these items belong both to the causal and to the rational realm. In the preceding paragraph I have said why it is our answers to the world, not the world itself, that impose a constraint upon our assertions. But it is not yet clear why these answers have to belong to the rational realm. This issue will be dealt with in chapter 5.4. To sum up: Epistemological objectivity means that everybody and even the community as a whole can be wrong about the correctness of assertions – precisely: about their truth-value – because it is rationally constrained by our answers to the world. This implies that epistemological objectivity is based upon ontological objectivity. Up to now, I have only spoken about empirical assertions when explicating what I mean by epistemological objectivity. Let us now consider how their contents are related to epistemological objectivity. The notion of content will be considered in detail in chapter 2.2. But as a starting point we can make use of the following characterization: Content is individuated by correctness conditions. In the case of empirical content, it is individuated by conditions of attitude-transcendent correctness that anchor an assertion in the world (conditions of objective correctness). These conditions state inter alia what worldly entity an assertion is about, it determines the referent or the extension.5 This means that it states what has to be the case

5

The notion of extension – which I prefer – is more general than the notion of referent. The latter is usually constrained to what singular terms refer to, namely objects. The former encompasses also the entities that general terms and sentences refer to, often conceived as sets of objects or as properties in the case of general terms and as truth-values or facts in the case of sentences. (In order to be more precise, one

38 – what entity has to be present – if the assertion is supposed to be true. As a consequence, content permits us to find out the correctness (the truthvalue) of an assertion. Therefore it matters for the objectivity of empirical assertions. The decisive idea that content permits us to find out the truth-value of an assertion does not only follow from the thesis concerning what individuates content; it can also be justified on independent grounds. Only these grounds permit to state why I have held above that the primary subject matter of epistemological objectivity is the content of assertions, not assertions themselves: While all tokens of the assertion “Snow is white” – e.g. the tokens uttered by speakers A and B – belong to the same type, different types of assertions may be assigned the same content – e.g. the types “Snow is white” and its German translation “Schnee ist weiß.” Truth is not determined by the type of an assertion (and thus even less by its token, a concrete assertion), but by its content – because otherwise it would be impossible to translate assertions expressing propositional attitudes, cf. Church (1950): The translation of the assertion “I believe ‘Snow is white’” (where “Snow is white” is an assertion type) into “Ich glaube ‘Schnee ist weiß’” does not necessarily preserve its truth-value whereas the translation of the assertion “I believe that snow is white” (where “that snow is white” expresses the content of “Snow is white”) into “Ich glaube, dass Schnee weiß ist” does: Assume that the original assertion is made by a speaker of English who does not speak any German. She believes the content of the assertion “Snow is white” but not the content of the assertion “Schnee ist weiß.” The true claim “I believe (the content of) ‘Snow is white’” turns into the false claim “Ich glaube (den Gehalt von) ‘Schnee ist weiß’” whereas both “I believe that snow is white” and “Ich glaube, dass Schnee weiß ist” are true – the content of “Snow is white” is either expressed by the phrase “that snow is white” or by its German translation “dass Schnee weiß ist.”

would have to say that the referents of singular terms are particulars. Particulars encompass not only objects, but also events, processes etc., cf. Brandom (1994), p. 360, note 14.)

39 Brandom understands by objectivity that every speaker as well as the community as a whole may be wrong about the truth-value of an assertion and also about the correctness of its application whereby both kinds of error depend on the way the world is. “…it is a critical criterion of adequacy of any account of the use of empirical concepts that it be able to explain how in the end objective proprieties governing that use can come into play – how claims can be understood as true or false regardless of whether anyone or everyone takes them to be so, depending rather on how things are with what the claims are about”, Brandom (1994), p. 212, note 11. “[An explanation of the objectivity of concepts] takes the form of a specification of the particular sort of inferential structure social scorekeeping practices must have in order to institute objective norms, according to which the correctness of an application of a concept answers to the facts about the object to which it is applied, in such a way that anyone (indeed everyone) in the linguistic community may be wrong about it”, Brandom (1994), p. xvii.

The first aspect of correctness – correctness with respect to the truth-value of an assertion or epistemological objectivity, which is highlighted in the first quotation – has just been explicated. The second aspect of correctness – correctness with respect to its application, which is highlighted in the second quotation – will be called semantic objectivity. In the following I will explicate the latter aspect and discuss whether objectivity should not only be understood in an epistemological but also in a semantic sense. What does it mean to say that every speaker as well as the community as a whole can be wrong about the correct application of an assertion? A suitable interpretation seems to be that every speaker as well as the community as a whole can be wrong about the question whether one applies an assertion in accordance with the correctness conditions that make up its content. Assuming inferential role semantics this question can be formulated alternatively by asking whether one applies an assertion in accordance with the inferential relations6 that make up its content. If one

6

Inferences are pragmatic transitions from one claiming to another. Inferential relations, in contrast, are semantic relations between contents. This contrast can also be found in Brandom (2002a) who follows Harman (1984) in distinguishing between inferences and implications. This terminological distinction draws a dividing line between (subjective) processes and (objective) relations: Harman (1973), p. 48 points

40 adds that objectivity is supposed to be guaranteed by the way the world is, semantic objectivity can be spelled out in the following way: Every speaker as well as the community as a whole can be wrong about the question whether inferential relations are appropriate to the world. This is a stronger claim than the idea that one can be wrong about the truth-value of an assertion and that content – characterized in terms of correctness conditions – matters for the objectivity of assertions insofar as it permits to find out whether they are true. Semantic objectivity implies that content is objective. (Having developed a characterization of semantic objectivity, let me point out that the initial proposal to set correctness with respect to the truth-value of an assertion against correctness with respect to its application is misleading. This suggests that content – precisely its correctness conditions or, more precisely, its inferential relations – was constituted in a first step while it was applied only in a second step. Brandom’s well taken rejection of this two-step model of content is presented in chapter 3.2. In order not to suggest a two-step model of content it is preferable to characterize semantic objectivity in terms of the possibility to be wrong about the appropriateness of inferential relations.) I think semantic objectivity can be defended. Content is objective because, in the same way as it is possible to be wrong about the truth-value of an empirical assertion, it is possible to be wrong about the appropriateness of its correctness conditions. As I have already said when criticizing universal validity, it is not necessary for someone to endorse a particular assertion and its correctness conditions, no matter what else she endorses. But in order to get beyond mere intersubjectivity, it has to be possible to settle in the course of a process of mutual assessments whether an assertion and – we can now add – its correctness conditions, its content, are appropriate to the way the world is, given the net of correctness conditions that is already endorsed in a particular community. To conclude, let me formulate some possible objections to semantic objectivity. One might argue that the idea according to which content itself is objective has to be rejected on the grounds that only what has assertional out that the notion of inference is ambiguous – it both denotes a process and an abstract structure.

41 force – judgments, beliefs or assertions – is called true or false and thus objective. Therefore, content itself cannot be called true – it is no truthbearer – or objective. This objection can easily be rebutted by arguing that content can mediately be called true or objective, namely insofar as it manifests itself in true assertions. A second, weightier objection to semantic objectivity is that it is possible to use an expression correctly, thereby saying something that is false, cf. Wikforss (2001), pp. 204-215. Wikforss formulates this point as an objection to a conception of the normativity of content, according to which semantic correctness coincides with truth. In chapter 2.2, after giving a more elaborate account of content, I will discuss how this objection can be dealt with. I will argue that the objection is based upon a confusion of the correctness claim that is in play when one makes an assertion with the one that is in play when the appropriateness of its correctness conditions is at issue. To sum up the argumentation of this chapter, I have first made clear that content matters for the objectivity of empirical assertions so that one kind of objectivity relevant to the present study is epistemological. Then I have argued on what grounds content itself can be considered to be objective, what arguments speak in favor of semantic objectivity. Both semantic and epistemological objectivity are characterized as the claim that everybody can be wrong about the appropriateness of an item – be it an assertion or its content – to the way the world is.

43

2 The normative and social character of content In the preceding chapter I have worked out how the idea that content is objective is supposed to be understood and how it is motivated. In this chapter I will discuss how the requirement to conceive content as normative and social is motivated, how it is supposed to be understood, and why the question how content can be normative, social and at the same time objective deserves a new look (section 2.1). Subsequently, I will specify how content can be understood in a way that matches both the account of objectivity I have developed and normative, social semantics, specifically inferential role semantics (section 2.2). Finally, I will discuss in a more detailed way how the normativity involved in content is to be understood. I will compare the normativity theses I discuss with what is at issue in the current debate concerning the “normativity of meaning” that has been inspired by Kripke (section 2.3). 2.1 Kripke: A social, normative account of content First, a commitment to normative, social semantics will be motivated and explicated by considering Kripke’s (1982) reflections on rule-following (section 2.1.1). Subsequently, my treatment of the question how content can be normative, social, and at the same time objective will be motivated by arguing that this question remains unsettled both in Kripke’s reflections themselves and in critical replies to them: I will point out that Kripke’s own proposal for a normative, social semantics fails to allow for attitudetranscendence because it characterizes rule-constitutive practice exclusively in terms of the actual normative attitudes individuals have. The content of empirical assertions, however, has to be conceived as objective, which encompasses two aspects: It has to be attitude-transcendent, and anchored in the world. (Only the former aspect plays a role in Kripke, and will be dealt with in this chapter.) I will hold that the current debate on Kripke has not yet stated which positive feature is decisive in order to avoid Kripke’s failure to provide attitude-transcendence. There rather is a dilemma how an account of content can be pragmatist (or, more specifically, normative and social) and provide attitude-transcendence at the same time (section 2.1.2). (In the following chapters the motivation of my dealing with this question will be completed by giving evidence that

44 even those proposed answers that intend to meet the insights from the critical debate on Kripke have at least not stated clearly enough how a convincing solution to both aspects of objectivity would look.) Finally, I will make clear that (non-reductionist) naturalistic semantics cannot (yet) be revealed to be ruled out by a critical discussion of Kripke’s reflections. This argument is important because otherwise my consideration of naturalistic approaches in chapter 3 would be superfluous (section 2.1.3). 2.1.1 Why is semantics normative and social? In the first place I will briefly say what Kripke’s rule-following problem consists in. Then I will establish a connection between the rule-following problem and the subject matter of the present study, namely the problem of what constitutes content, making clear that the latter problem is part of one particular dimension of the former problem: I deal with the ontological, instead of the epistemological, dimension of the rule-following problem whereby my consideration is constrained to contents, not to rules in general (section 2.1.1.1). In the remaining sections I will discuss the general outline of Kripke’s proposed solution to the rule-following problem. Building upon Kripke I will first argue why and in what sense the constitution of rules has to proceed within normative practice (section 2.1.1.2). Subsequently, I will argue on what grounds one can also follow Kripke in holding that rules are constituted by social practice (section 2.1.1.3). 2.1.1.1 The rule-following problem and content Kripke considers the question under which conditions an individual can be said to grasp, under which conditions she can be ascribed, a particular rule. He connects this epistemological dimension of the rule-following problem with an ontological one that questions under which conditions a particular rule can be said to exist, and what constitutes a particular rule, cf. Boghossian (1989), pp. 515f. on the distinction between both dimensions.1

1

Precisely, talk of following (grasping, ascribing) a rule is always an epistemological issue. It is for the sake of adopting a well-introduced coinage of terms that I talk of the rule-following problem also when I mean the problem of what constitutes rules. Only from the next section onwards, when I constrain my consideration to contents instead

45 What is a rule and how is it related to content, the subject matter of the present study? A rule like “Form the sum of both numbers” (the plus rule) can be characterized as an item that formulates intensional and extensional correctness conditions for linguistic of non-linguistic performances. A rule is applied extensionally correctly if the performance has the correct outcome. It is applied intensionally correctly if the outcome results from an appropriate procedure. An extensional correctness condition for the abovementioned rule is e.g. “The number on the right-hand side of the equation sign is correct if it equals the sum of both numbers on the left hand side.” Put more concretely, the rule is applied extensionally correctly if the answer to the addition task “2 + 3” is “5.” An intensional correctness condition is e.g. “The number on the right-hand side of the equation ‘x + y’ is correct if the individual has first counted x fingers and then counted y more fingers.” If the content of an assertion is individuated by the assertion’s (intensional) correctness conditions, content can be conceived as a particular kind of rule. (My all too brief sketch of both kinds of correctness will be spelled out in section 2.2, where I will also present in detail what I understand by content, and will explicate my claim that content is individuated by intensional correctness conditions.) What does it mean to follow a rule? Rule-following is the possibility to continue a series of performances in the same way, to be in a way guided in one’s performances. A necessary precondition for any account of rulefollowing – which is, however, not sufficient for all kinds of rule-following – is therefore that it makes room for a distinction between performances that are correct and those that are incorrect, at least in the minimal sense that identifies correctness with intersubjectivity. In the literature Kripke’s precondition for rule-following has been formulated in two major ways that are both more sophisticated than the precondition I have attributed to him: It is either distinguished between intensional and extensional correctness (cf. Glüer (1999), p. 91) or between a normativity aspect and an infinity aspect, cf. Esfeld (2001a), p. 100. How are both proposals related to mine and how, in case they diverge from of rules in general, will I be more precise, distinguishing between conceptual and content-constitutive practice.

46 mine, are they to be assessed? Let us begin with the first one. It is of course important to distinguish between intensional and extensional correctness because both may fall apart. If we stick to the example, an individual may give the extensionally correct answer, “5,” although she has not calculated it in any way but has, perhaps, merely guessed. That intensional correctness may conversely go without extensional correctness also applies although this does not become clear from the example considered. I will justify this latter claim in section 2.2 where I will give an example of both kinds of correctness in content. The reason why I do not formulate the precondition for rule-following in terms of two different kinds of correctness will also become evident in that section. There I will make clear that what is at issue in the present study is intensional correctness, so that my formulation of the precondition for rule-following (or – what I deal with – the constitution of content) can then be specified as intensional correctness. Let us now turn to the second proposal for formulating the precondition for rule-following. How is it to be understood? To claim that normativity forms a precondition for rule-following means at least that a rule draws a distinction between correct and incorrect performances whereby the minimal reading of correctness is intersubjectivity, see section 2.1.1.2 on the notion of normativity. (It does not become fully clear, however, what exactly Esfeld understands by normativity.) The infinity aspect of rulefollowing demands that a rule can be applied to infinitely many instances. How is this proposal to be assessed? The infinity aspect will turn out to be irrelevant for the ontological dimension of the rule-following problem with which I am concerned. My above-stated precondition, rather, coincides with the minimal understanding of the normativity aspect just sketched. Given the argumentative aims of the present study, a very stripped-down reading of Kripke is sufficient. This reading is not only stripped down with regard to his precondition for rule-following – which we have just discussed – but also with regard to the approaches he rejects on the grounds that they fail to meet this precondition, as well as with regard to his notion of normativity. As far as approaches he rejects are concerned, I do not consider how the rejection of reductionist approaches which I ascribe to Kripke and defend with him is related to the debates about how

47 his rejection of “straight” or – as it is also put in the literature – “factualist” approaches is to be interpreted and whether this rejection can be justified. Rejecting a straight solution means to claim that there is no fact that constitutes a rule: “...Wittgenstein’s solution to his problem is a sceptical one. He does not give a ‘straight’ solution, pointing out to the silly sceptic a hidden fact he overlooked, a condition in the world which constitutes my meaning addition by ‘plus’. In fact, he agrees with his own hypothetical sceptic that there is no such fact...”, Kripke (1982), p. 69.

Kripke, however, does not explain what he means by a constitutional relation. Different interpretations of Kripke’s claim have been proposed by Boghossian (1989) (who moreover holds that this claim is indefensible) as opposed to Wilson (1998) and Haukioja (2000). As far as normativity is concerned, I will not discuss the multifarious notions of normativity Kripke presents. Instead, I will constrain myself to a conception of normativity as that which draws a distinction between what is correct and what is incorrect. The constraints the abovementioned precondition imposes upon solutions to the rule-following problem can be considered as the criteria of adequacy for such solutions. These criteria of adequacy will be developed in the course of a critical consideration of solutions proposed in different kinds of approaches: In the following section, 2.1.1.2, I will consider the approaches Kripke himself criticizes, and will conclude that rules have to be constituted by a kind of practice that is normative, in the sense that it at least makes room for correctness as intersubjectivity, and social. Turning to content, I will develop more specific criteria by critically considering first Kripke’s own proposal (section 2.1.2) and then more recent ones (chapters 3 and 5). In order to round off the presentation of what Kripke’s rule-following problem consists in, and in order to prepare at the same time the consideration of how the rule-following problem is related to the constitution of content, let us consider the disputed issue of whether Kripke is justified in assuming that the epistemological and the ontological dimensions come in a package – that a solution to one dimension of the problem simultaneously provides a solution to the other. This consideration

48 is important because Kripke does not explicitly justify this assumption. The most important question in this context is whether Kripke’s assumption matters for this study. After having answered this question affirmatively I will briefly consider some objections to this assumption and how it can be defended. I will argue that none of the arguments is convincing, and will adumbrate how Kripke’s assumption will be revealed to follow from the present study. At first sight, the interrelatedness of both dimensions does not seem to be decisive, because I deal exclusively with the ontological dimension whereas Kripke considers explicitly (or even primarily) accounts of rulefollowing that intend to provide an answer to this dimension. But the reasons he offers against these answers only apply to the epistemological dimension. Therefore an interrelatedness of both dimensions is crucial if one wants to follow Kripke in his rejection of these answers and in his corresponding plea for a normative, social account of rule-following. My repeatedly mentioned claim with respect to the subject matter of this study will become evident at the end of this section, 2.1.1.1, and my claim with respect to Kripke’s argumentative aim as compared to the reasons he offers will become evident in the following section, 2.1.1.2. Having seen that an interrelatedness of both dimensions is decisive, let me now substantiate my claim that both pro- and con-arguments with regard to the interrelatedness of both dimensions fail to be convincing. McGinn holds that a solution to the one dimension of the rule-following problem does not imply a solution to the other: “For we do not generally suppose that once we have an account of the nature of the subject-matter of a class of sentences we have thereby solved the epistemological problems associated with those sentences: to explain what the truth of statements about the external world (for instance) consists in is not yet to solve the problem of justifying our claims to know truths about that sector of reality… Conversely it is not guaranteed that an answer to the epistemological problem will provide us with an answer to the metaphysical problem; for it might be that what serves as a reason for using a sign in a certain way does not add up to a fact that constitutes meaning something”, McGinn (1984), p. 150.

Knowing the nature of the subject matter of a class of sentences does not imply knowing what would count as its justification, and vice versa. This

49 general argument is surely correct. But general as it is, it does not rule out the possibility that the specific problems Kripke considers are connected. Wright (1989), in contrast, holds that the ontological dimension is the crucial point in Kripke’s reflections, so there is no separate epistemological dimension. In section 2.1.1.2 I will show that Wright is correct in stressing the importance of the ontological dimension. But I fail to see why this importance rules out a self-sustained epistemological dimension: A distinction between both dimensions is thinkable insofar as it is thinkable that rules are constituted by a kind of practice that does not yet possess the features that up-and-running rule-following practice possesses. Such a distinction between the features of both levels of practices stands inter alia behind the naturalistic accounts of rule-following I will consider. I have already adumbrated that I intend to treat an ontological issue. Let me now make this point intelligible by considering how the rule-following problem is related to the constitution of content. If content is a particular kind of rule, Kripke’s reflections on rule-following also apply to the problem of grasping or ascribing content – conceptual practice – just like to the problem of what constitutes content. In the following I am interested exclusively in Kripke’s reflections insofar as they bear upon the latter problem. And if Kripke is right that rules (contents) have to be conceived as being constituted by normative practice (cf. section 2.1.1.2), the subject matter of the present study is the consideration of content-constitutive practice. Given the specification of my subject matter, I will focus in the following on Kripke’s reflections insofar as they bear upon ontological issues. But until the end of section 2.1.1 I will talk about rules in general, not about the constitution of content. The reason is that in this section I will deal with accounts that fail to meet the general precondition formulated above for rules, namely accounts that do not make room for rules that formulate at least intersubjective correctness conditions. Given the claim that content formulates objective correctness conditions, the considered precondition is necessary, but not sufficient, for content.

50 2.1.1.2 Rules as being constituted by normative practice I will now consider Kripke’s solution to the rule-following problem, in order to justify the idea that rules have to be constituted by normative practice. Kripke considers different accounts of rule-following and argues that they all fail to settle which rule an individual can be ascribed (this corresponds to the epistemological dimension) or that they fail to make room for the existence of a rule (this corresponds to the ontological one). The reason seems to be that they all intend to explicate rules exclusively in non-normative terms, i.e. in terms of facts. The facts at issue can either be natural facts (e.g. natural dispositions of behavior), mental facts (e.g. ideas or mental representations), social facts (behavior as it has evolved in social practice) or semantic facts (contents). Given the exegetical problem of how to characterize a straight or factualist position, such a position cannot be identified with a reductionist one. Therefore not all so-called factualist approaches that have been defended contrary to Kripke are necessarily reductionist. Let me nevertheless give some examples of the broad range of factualist approaches, which have been defended. I thereby wish to illustrate the above classification of different reductionist approaches (one would have to consider each of the examples in detail in order to tell whether it is reductionist):2 Natural facts are assumed in Dretske’s information theoretical approach as well as in the teleological approaches of Millikan and Papineau, which build upon functional explanations in biology. Millikan (1990) critically deals with Kripke along these lines. Prominent proponents for the assumption of mental facts (which may in turn be based upon natural facts) are Fodor and Chomsky. Chomsky (1986) critically discusses Kripke. Social facts (which again may be based upon natural facts) are assumed by all those authors who (contrary to their intentions) propose a social version of dispositionalism: Kripke (1982) himself, Wright (1980) and Haugeland (1982) will be critically considered

2

Cf. Esfeld (2003) for a brief overview of different factualist positions. Cf. also McGinn (1984) who opposes Kripke by offering a comprehensive defence of straight solutions.

51 in section 2.1.2. (The latter three approaches are clearly non-reductionist.) Katz (1990)) defends semantic facts critically dealing with Kripke.3 Positions that explicate rules exclusively in terms of facts will in the following be called reductionist. The rule-following problem ultimately leads to the skeptical challenge that rules – once they do not consist in facts – do not exist at all, that rule-following is impossible: In the same way that reductionist accounts do not make room for settling which rule is at issue, they do not make room for performances to be correct (to be an instantiation of a rule) even in the weakest sense of correctness. Such correctness is a minimal precondition for the existence of any rule – not only of content – and thus for rule-following in general. Given the objection to reductionist accounts of rules, and given the unacceptability of a position that denies that there are any rules at all, the only alternative is to explicate rules in normative terms. This is the solution Kripke proposes. To explicate rules in normative terms more specifically means to explicate them in terms of assessments of performances as correct or incorrect and in terms of the normative attitudes – attitudes as to what is taken to be correct – that become manifest in such assessments. And provided that one does not conceive normative facts as pre-existing to any practice, one can attribute to Kripke the view that rules are constituted by normative practice, understood as a practice of assessments as correct or incorrect. A consequence of meeting the precondition for rule-following by conceiving constitutive practice in terms of assessments is that this kind of practice already makes room at least for intersubjective correctness. I now wish to carry out this sketch of Kripke’s line of argument in greater detail: First I will highlight the importance of the problem Kripke formulates by comparing it with traditional kinds of skepticism and with alternative problems as they have been formulated by Quine and Goodman. Then I will present my reading of Kripke, according to which he argues that reductionist answers to the ontological dimension of the 3

Note, however, that Kripke does not explicitly reject semantic facts. He only criticizes some approaches that take semantic facts to be primitive (“irreducible”) in the sense of not being explicable in non-semantic terms. Kripke’s criticism is, however, not very convincing, cf. McGinn (1984), pp. 159-164.

52 rule-following problem do not settle whether a performance is correct or, under the assumption of a connection between both dimensions, that they do not make room for correctness and thus fail to meet the minimal precondition for rules (and up-and-running rule-following practice, an aspect I will set aside in the following). Finally, I will explicate why and in what sense meeting this precondition requires that rule-following be conceived as normative. What distinguishes the skepticism discussed by Kripke from traditional kinds of skepticism is its ontological dimension. Traditional kinds of skepticism are epistemological – they question whether one can ever know for sure whether something is true. They question e.g. whether one can ever have knowledge about the external world or about other minds. They do not ask the more fundamental question whether one can ever understand (grasp) what one means and thus whether one means anything at all. The challenge of stating whether one’s knowledge claims have any content at all is exactly the ontological point Kripke deals with. Boghossian rightly remarks that “…Kripke merely chooses to present the constitutive problem in an epistemological guise”, Boghossian (1989), p. 515.

Hume’s skepticism with respect to induction – how do we know that a particular correlation holds for infinitely many instances? – is an important example for epistemological skepticism. Assuming that a law is to be conceived as a regularity that holds for infinitely many instances, Hume questions how we can ever know that a correlation is lawful. He does not question whether there are any laws, regularities or rules. Similar problems like the one Kripke formulates have been presented by Goodman (1954), pp. 72-81 (“The New Riddle of Induction”) and Quine (1960). But Kripke can be conceived as generalizing both authors’ arguments. Goodman formulates a “new riddle of induction” according to which it seems to be impossible to settle whether something is e.g. green or “grue,” i.e. green when first examined before time t and blue when first examined afterwards. But this only questions whether we can know that a rule holds for infinitely many instances. It belongs to the epistemological dimension of rule-following and is therefore not distinguished from traditional kinds of skepticism.

53 Quine points to an indeterminacy of meaning and an inscrutability of reference. What does this mean? According to an intuitive understanding of meaning, meaning is what an assertion has in common with its translation, cf. Quine (1960), p. 32. Precisely, Quine conceives this common basis as intersubjectively shared dispositions to react to nonverbal stimuli. Quine distinguishes between meaning and reference (or what I call content): The meaning of a sentence does not determine its reference because reference requires a consideration of subsentential structures. Meaning is indeterminate because there may be incompatible translation manuals that match empirical evidence equally well, precisely: the abovementioned dispositions of behavior. Two translation manuals are incompatible if the truth-values of the translated sentences differ from each other. And they are equally appropriate to empirical evidence if they allow for the translation of the same number of sentences that are taken to be true in the original language into true sentences. The appropriateness of translation manuals depends upon the number of sentences that have the same truth-value in both languages, because translation observes the principle of charity: An appropriate translation manual must allow for ascribing as many concurring beliefs as possible to a speaker. Assuming that most of the translator’s beliefs are true, this means to ascribe to her as many probably true beliefs as possible. The indeterminacy of meaning, i.e. the possibility that different sets of true sentences match equally well empirical evidence, results from Quine’s (1951) evidential holism, i.e. a sentence can only be appropriate to the whole of empirical evidence, and the resulting need for applying the principle of charity. The inscrutability of reference, in contrast, stems from the fact that translations of a sentence that differ on the subsentential level insofar as they involve different referents may leave the truth-value of the sentence unchanged: It can never be settled, for example, whether a sentence that in the original language speaks about “gavagais” refers to rabbits or rather to undetached rabbitparts. Note that indeterminacy of meaning and inscrutability of reference are claims that are not linked with each other. Indeterminacy of meaning does not imply inscrutability of reference. And inscrutability of reference does not give rise to incompatible translation manuals and thus to indeterminacy of meaning: The truth-value of the translation for “There is

54 a gavagai” remains unchanged, no matter whether it is translated by “There is a rabbit” or by “There is an undetached rabbit-part.” Now what is the relation between Kripke’s problem and Quine’s? In the same way that I deal only with particular rules (namely contents) so that my focus is more constrained than Kripke’s, in the present study I will only deal with inscrutability of reference (not indeterminacy of meaning). The major restriction of Quine’s arguments as compared to Kripke’s, however, does not consist in Quine’s not dealing with rule-following in general. It rather consists in Quine’s exclusively explicating translation, meaning, and reference in terms of behavior. Therefore, Quine can be referred to at most in order to exclude accounts of rule-following that invoke natural facts, not facts in general. (Note, however, that Quine does not conceive his indeterminacy or inscrutability claim as a problem that has to be solved. He merely affirms it.)4 Having pointed to the weight of the skeptical challenge Kripke considers, let us now see what kind of approaches to the rule-following problem can be ruled out on the rounds that they do not meet the condition for rulefollowing or, in other words, that they do not provide an answer to the skeptical challenge. Kripke critically considers the following proposals for how to account for rule-following: 1

Rule-following is explicated in terms of an algorithm.

2

Rule-following is explicated in terms of dispositions of behavior. According to another version of this proposal it is explicated in analogy with the way a machine works.

3

Which rule is at issue is determined by the simplest hypothesis.

4

A rule is conceived as a mental entity, e.g. as a quale or as an inner picture. Grasping a rule can therefore be conceived as introspectively accessible awareness of a rule.

5

A rule consists in a semantic fact like Frege’s “Sinn” or “Bedeutung.”

All of these proposals except the third one are intended to provide answers to the ontological question what constitutes a rule, not to the 4

I am grateful to Professor Spohn for this point.

55 epistemological question how to cognize which rule is at issue. Kripke’s reply to the third proposal is that it does not offer an answer to the skeptical challenge. The skeptical challenge is not an epistemological, but rather an ontological, problem. Therefore, we can say that Kripke primarily treats the ontological dimension of the rule-following problem. All of these proposals explicate rule-following exclusively in terms of facts, so that Kripke can be interpreted as rejecting reductionist accounts. There is a hint that he intends to rule out a broader range of accounts when he also briefly criticizes a particular kind of approach that make use of normative vocabulary: He criticizes approaches that take rules to be determined by a concurrence in the way members of a community mutually correct each other, on the grounds that these approaches are nothing but the social version of a disposition theory so that some (!) of the objections to disposition theories also apply to these pragmatist accounts. As I will show in section 2.1.1.3, all non-reductionist accounts make room for correctness in the sense of a consensus among the members of a community. But, as I will show in section 2.1.2, not all of them make room for a stronger kind of correctness. Therefore, Kripke’s rejection of what he calls the social version of a disposition theory makes clear that he intends to make room for attitude-transcendence rather than intersubjectivity. But Kripke does not state which feature approaches that provide attitudetranscendent correctness have to avoid or to possess. Therefore it is impossible to specify which broader range of approaches he has in mind. There is in any case no hint that he intends to rule out a range of approaches that encompasses also all those approaches that ultimately appeal to facts. This range of approaches encompasses proposals that explicate the normative vocabulary required in an account of rulefollowing, assessments and normative attitudes, in terms of facts, e.g. in terms of natural dispositions of behavior. A rejection of this range of approaches would imply a principled rejection of non-reductionist kinds of naturalism, which are non-reductionist positions that invoke natural facts. Kripke’s argument against the accounts he considers is that they lead to an infinite regress of interpretations: He adopts Wittgenstein’s point that looking upon rule-following as the interpretation of a rule (as formulating explicitly what fact the rule consists in, no matter whether such an

56 interpretation takes the form of an algorithm, an inner picture or any other form) has the consequence that every interpretation has to be interpreted itself. This leads to an infinite regress of interpretations: “Unser Paradox war dies: eine Regel könnte keine Handlungsweise bestimmen, da ” jede Handlungsweise mit der Regel in Übereinstimmung zu bringen sei , Wittgenstein (1953), § 201.

(Now we also see more clearly what the skeptical challenge consists in: It consists in demanding an answer to the paradox that rule-following either has to be conceived as interpretation or that there are not any rules at all.) The objection that rule-following leads to an infinite regress once it is conceived as an interpretation goes hand in hand with two other objections: First, the skeptic can always reply that there is room for non-standard interpretations of the rule. Second and decisively, it can never be settled whether a performance is correct or not. But not all of the accounts considered necessarily make appeal to facts that have to be interpreted by the rule-followers. Rule-following conceived as interpretation requires that the rule-followers be able to state the facts in question explicitly. Kripke also considers accounts that assume facts that remain implicit in rule-following practice: Invoking dispositions and mental entities does not necessarily presuppose the interpretation model. These proposals can be formulated in ways that appeal to rule-following as interpretation, e.g. if they are associated with the way a machine works or with an inner picture respectively. But they need not be formulated in such a way. One of Kripke’s arguments against dispositional accounts, regardless of whether they invoke explicit or implicit facts, is that they do not allow for a performance to be wrong, and therefore do not make room for the notion of correctness. And I think one can generalize this argument as applying to all accounts that explicate rule-following exclusively in terms of facts, i.e. as applying to reductionist accounts in general. It is now evident that Kripke’s replies to the ontological proposals considered only touch upon an epistemological dimension: He only criticizes the proposals for failing to settle which rule is correct or for failing to make room for a performance to be wrong. A convincing answer to the ontological dimension can therefore only be taken from Kripke if the two dimensions are revealed to be connected. If both dimensions of the

57 rule-following problem are connected, the upshot of Kripke’s reflections is that reductionist accounts of rule-following fail to make room for correctness and therefore do not meet the precondition for the existence of rules. The consequence to be drawn from the rejection of the interpretation model is that rules cannot be formulated explicitly, but that they must be conceived as being implicit in human practice. And the failure of reductionist accounts in general, regardless of whether one assumes facts that can be stated explicitly by the rule-followers or whether such facts are conceived as being implicit in rule-following practice, implies that rulefollowing must not be explicated exclusively in descriptive terms (i.e. in terms of facts), but rather in normative ones. Given the connection between both dimensions of the rule-following problem, rule-constitutive practice must also make room for a distinction between correct and incorrect performances, and therefore has to be explicated in normative terms as well. I have just attributed to Kripke the idea that the rejection of the accounts considered above implies a commitment to normative constitutive practice. I now wish to explain further, and thereby justify, my understanding of normativity in the sense of correctness. The normative realm can be distinguished from the descriptive one by making appeal to pro- or conattitudes, i.e. normative attitudes in a general sense of this term. Taylor (1961) further divides the normative realm into the prescriptive and the evaluative realms. The former deals with what one is obliged, permitted, or not permitted to do. The latter is subdivided into what is evaluated according to standards (i.e. what is good) and what is evaluated according to rules (i.e. what is right or, using the present terminology, what is correct). The subject matters of evaluations according to rules are performances. The subject matter of evaluations according to standards is everything else – e.g. properties or states of affairs. The kind of normativity relevant to the present study is evaluations according to rules. (Why it is not evaluations according to standards is evident: What is at issue are linguistic performances. Why it is not prescriptions will be argued in section 2.3.)

58 How can the classification of different kinds of normativity be applied to rule-following? A descriptive account of rule-following usually conceives as behavior the performances by which members of a community react to each other’s performances. A normative account conceives them as sanctions. An evaluative account specifies sanctions as assessments. This means that the normative attitudes that are manifested in sanctions are conceived as what is taken to be correct. A prescriptive account specifies sanctions as prescriptions. This means that it conceives normative attitudes as what is taken to be obligatory, permitted or not permitted. (In what follows, talk of sanctions and normative attitudes will, however, exclusively be understood in the evaluative sense.) The decisive precondition for something to be obligatory is that one is free not to do what one ought to do. This idea will be spelled out in section 2.3. 2.1.1.3 Rules as being constituted by social practice Kripke does not only hold that rules have to be conceived as being constituted by normative practice, but that they must also be conceived as being constituted by social practice, i.e. by a practice of mutual assessments: An individual can only be said to follow a rule if the correctness of her performances is corrected (“checked”) by others: “The solution turns on the idea that each person who claims to be following a rule can be checked by others. Others in the community can check whether the putative rule follower is or is not giving particular responses that they endorse, that agree with their own”, Kripke (1982), p. 101.

Kripke thinks the private language argument (cf. Wittgenstein (1953), § 243ff.), that it is impossible that there be a language that only one individual understands, an impossibility that goes hand in hand with the thesis that content has to be conceived as being determined by social practice, follows from his solution to the rule-following problem. But I think Kripke’s view is mistaken. The private language argument can only be taken to follow from the solution to the rule-following problem if this solution encompasses the social character of rule-following: There cannot be any conditions for private rule-following provided that the rules are constituted by social practice (cf. also Stegmüller (1989), pp. 119-121). But this aspect of the solution has not yet been justified. The private language argument therefore has to be justified in a different way than by

59 pointing to the rule-following problem. Why should it be impossible that an individual’s assessments alone constitute objective content? If all assessments are perspectival, i.e. if they are based upon what the interpreter takes to be correct, individuals have to mutually assess each other in order not to privilege a particular perspective and thus in order to make room at least for intersubjectivity. For an illustration of the premise of this argument see chapter 5.1. To sum up, what is to be understood by the thesis that content is normative? As a starting point I have formulated the normativity thesis in its most general (but also in its most anaemic) sense, according to which the constitution of rules always has to be explicated in normative vocabulary. This non-reductionist claim has then been refined, yielding the following thesis: Rules are determined or constituted by normative social practice, namely by a process of mutual assessments or sanctions by the members of a community, assessments that classify performances as correct or incorrect. Or, as it is often put in current contributions to the present discussion context, rules are constituted by a process of mutual assessments. The assessments themselves are explicated in terms of the normative attitudes that become manifest in such assessments. An account that conceives rule-following in terms of a process of mutual assessments of performances possesses the resources for meeting the minimal precondition for any kind of rule-following, namely to provide correctness in the sense of intersubjectivity: There is no obstacle for this process to lead to a consensus. But unless the account is further specified, it does not rule out approaches according to which correctness consists in such consensus. How to provide attitude-transcendent correctness – which is a precondition for content – will now be discussed in section 2.1.2. In general, a major task of this study is to deal with the question what features constitutive practice has to exhibit in order to make room for objective content besides being normative. In the next section a critical consideration of Kripke’s own way of spelling out social, normative semantics will yield two possible features of constitutive practice, which are worth careful consideration. In chapters 3 and 5 a comparison of two approaches on how

60 to make room for objective content yields these and three further features of constitutive practice as points that are currently in dispute. 2.1.2 Objections to Kripke’s specification of his pragmatist account of rule-following In this section I will first argue that Kripke’s pragmatist account of rulefollowing fails to make room for attitude-transcendence, which is a precondition not for rules in general, but for content. (Given the subject matter of the present study – the constitution of content – in the following I will mostly speak of content rather than of rules in general, even when I refer to Kripke’s more generally formulated reflections.) Then I will discuss what features of content-constitutive practice might be responsible for this failure. I will argue that the features that have been proposed in the current debate on Kripke at least do not allow for a positive statement how to do better than Kripke. These features include: taking symmetrical Ithou-relations into account, avoiding regularism, taking the correct as opposed to the actual normative attitudes into account, taking the participant’s perspective into account or explicating the normative attitudes that figure in a non-reductionist account of content in normative terms themselves. One can say that Kripke fails because he exclusively takes each individual’s actual normative attitudes into account. But it remains to be settled what feature would improve his approach. Invoking the opposition between the actual and the correct normative attitudes is not a helpful strategy because it leads to a dilemma about how an approach can both be pragmatist and provide attitude-transcendence. In section 2.1.1 I argued that a minimal precondition for rule-following is to make room for correctness in the sense of intersubjectivity. This precondition rules out all reductionist accounts. Positively formulated, it is met by all accounts that conceive rule-following in terms of mutual assessments of performances. But Kripke’s objection to the social version of the disposition theory I have briefly mentioned in that section makes clear that he intends his own proposal to make room for attitudetranscendence. He therefore does not so much deal with rule-following in general, but with items like contents, items that formulate attitudetranscendent correctness conditions. Let me now give evidence for this interpretation of Kripke. Kripke makes clear that the kind of correctness

61 that rule-following is supposed to allow for must not consist in the consensus of the community: “Wittgenstein’s theory should not be confused with a theory that… the value of the function we mean by ‘plus’ is (by definition) the value that (nearly) all the linguistic community would give as the answer.”

The reason is that otherwise “… the theory would be a social, or community-wide, version of the dispositional theory, and would be open to at least some of the same criticisms as the original form”, both quotations are taken from Kripke (1982), p. 11.

But despite Kripke’s aim to make room for attitude-transcendence, he seems to privilege the community’s perspective. He seems to do this by specifying his commitment to a normative, social account of content in the following way: A particular content can be ascribed to an individual if the individual’s performances are assessed by other members of the community as being in concurrence with their own: Remember the passage I have already quoted in the preceding section: “Others in the community can check whether the putative rule follower is or is not giving particular responses that they endorse, that agree with their own”, Kripke (1982), p. 101.

This objection leads to the demand that the process that constitutes content is conceived in terms of symmetrical I-thou-relations, cf. Esfeld (2001b), section 4. Stressing I-thou relations is important in order not to hypostatize the community. This would lead to a particular version of privileging the community, namely to the view that an individual is assessed by the community as a whole, rather than simply by another member of her community. And making clear that I-thou relations have to be conceived as symmetrical avoids that any member or any group of members of the community – e.g. linguistic experts on some field – are considered to be unquestionably authoritative. But important as symmetrical I-thou relations are, this feature alone only makes room for correctness in the sense of communal consensus. It only has the effect that the process of mutual assessments proceeds in a “democratic” way, and that every concurrence is only a preliminary one which can be questioned by any individual who disagrees.

62 Let us therefore consider Brandom’s (1994) and McDowell’s (1984) critical dealing with Kripke, the early Haugeland (Haugeland (1982)), and Wright (1980). Both Brandom and McDowell hold that Kripke and Wright – and the same would apply to Haugeland – (seem to) privilege the community and therefore cannot make room for attitude-transcendence.5 On what concerns Kripke, I have motivated this criticism by the above quotation from him. On what concerns Wright, the criticism can be supported by the following quotation: “None of us unilaterally can make sense of the idea of correct employment of language save by reference to the authority of securable communal assent on the matter; and for the community itself there is no authority, so no standard to meet”, Wright (1980), p. 220.

The second half of the quotation seems to demonstrate that Wright is even aware that conceiving correctness in terms of concurrence in assessments (“communal assent”) has the consequence that correctness is nothing but the consensus of the community. The following passage from Haugeland suggests that the criticism can be applied to him as well: “Imagine a community of… conformists. ‘Conformism’ here means… censoriousness – that is, a positive tendency to see that one’s neighbors do likewise, and to suppress variation. This is to be thought of as a complicated behavioural disposition, which the creatures have by nature (‘wired in’). It presupposes in them a capacity to react differentially (e.g. perception), and also some power to alter one another’s dispositions more or less permanently (compare reinforcement, punishment, etc.)”, Haugeland (1982), p. 15f.

But Brandom and McDowell do not content themselves with this criticism. They rather offer a multiple diagnosis for what features of the approaches lay themselves open to this criticism. Let me first present Brandom’s and McDowell’s line of argument and then assess the features at issue. Brandom’s objection to Kripke and Wright is that certain of their formulations suggest that they privilege the community. The broader context of this objection is a critical dealing with what Brandom calls

5

For a differentiated account of whether Kripke actually can be criticized for privileging the community or at least for conceiving I-thou-relations as asymmetrical cf. Esfeld (2001a), pp. 121f.

63 “regularism,” cf. Brandom (1994), pp. 26-42. Insofar as the criterion for correctness is the fact that others assess an individual’s behavior as being in concurrence with their own, both authors consider the correctness conditions that content formulates as consisting in regularities, even if not in regularities of individual behavior but in regularities in the way the members of a community assess each other. Brandom objects to this as well as to all other conceptions of correctness as regularity – positions he labels “regularism” – that they do not enable the application of a rule or an assertion to novel cases and therefore are an obstacle to attitudetranscendence: “… the gerrymandering argument challenges them [regularity theories] to pick out a unique specification of the regularity in question, sufficient to project it so as to determine the application of the norms to novel cases”, Brandom (1994), p. 41.

Regularist positions lead to relativism so that what is taken to be correct (here: by a community) is correct. It is possible to distinguish four different kinds of regularism. The first and second kinds claim that rule-following can be explicated in purely descriptive terms, usually in terms of behavior, whereby the type of behavior in question is either individual or communal. These kinds of regularism coincide with reductionist accounts of rule-following. The third and the fourth kinds claim that rule-following has to be explicated in nondescriptive terms to begin with, usually in terms of assessments, whereby again either individual or communal assessments are at issue. These kinds of regularism are non-reductionist. It is the fourth kind of regularism that Kripke, Wright and Haugeland are accused of. Brandom interrelates the demand to avoid regularism with the demand to take into account the correct, rather than the actual, normative attitudes. He criticizes Haugeland’s approach, which is classified as a kind of regularism as well, for conceiving sanctions in a learning-theoretic sense, i.e. as reinforcements of behavior, cf. Brandom (1994), pp. 34-36 and the above quotation from Haugeland. This implies that Haugeland only takes the actual assessments into account. Taking this to be objectionable, Brandom makes the general suggestion: “If the normative status of being incorrect is to be understood in terms of the normative attitude of treating as incorrect by punishing, it seems that the

64 identification required is not with the status of actually being punished but with that of deserving punishment, that is, being correctly punished”, Brandom (1994), p. 36.

McDowell, too, objects at least to Wright that he privileges the community. McDowell thinks that making appeal to what the community concurs upon excludes what he calls “ratification-independence:” “But it is only going out of step with one’s fellows that we make room for; not going out of step with a ratification-independent pattern that they follow. So the notion of right and wrong that we have made room for is at best a thin surrogate for what would be required by the intuitive notion of objectivity”, McDowell (1984), p. 328 with respect to Wright.

Ratification-independence means independence of what anybody “ratifies” or takes to be correct. Therefore ratification-independence is synonymous with attitude-transcendence. But this is only the overture to a much more devastating objection: McDowell objects to Kripke and Wright that they have learned only half of Wittgenstein’s lesson – they avoid “Scylla” but remain taken by “Charybdis.” According to McDowell, Wittgenstein rejects both a conception of rule-following as interpretation (Scylla) and as having a nonnormative basis (Charybdis): “Wittgenstein’s problem is to steer a course between a Scylla and a Charybdis. Scylla is the idea that understanding is always interpretation. This idea is disastrous because embracing it confronts us with… the choice between the paradox that there is no substance to meaning, on the one hand, and the fantastic mythology of the super-rigid machine, on the other. We can avoid Scylla by stressing that, say, calling something ‘green’ can be like crying ‘Help!’ when one is drowning – simply how one has learned to react to this situation. But then we risk steering on to Charybdis – the picture of a basic level at which there are no norms; if we embrace that… then we cannot prevent meaning from coming to seem an illusion”, McDowell (1984), pp. 341f.

Scylla is a dilemma whose first horn is the skeptical paradox presented in section 2.1.1: If rule-following cannot be conceived as interpretation – this would require for every interpretation further interpretation so that it would lead to an infinite regress of interpretations – then there is not any rulefollowing at all. The second horn of the dilemma is a conception of rulefollowing according to which it consists in grasping a pattern that extends itself to novel cases, cf. McDowell (1984), pp. 352f. This is the mythology

65 of the super-rigid machine, Wittgenstein’s picture according to which the pattern is a set of rails that has already been laid out. It does not become very clear what exactly McDowell’s characterization of Charybdis as the assumption of a non-normative basis of rule-following is supposed to mean. The most obvious interpretation to me is that Charybdis refers to the sort of non-reductionist account of rule-following that explicates the normative vocabulary it makes use of in non-normative terms. When I speak in the following about Charybdis without any further specification, this interpretation is meant. Brandom, however, identifies Charybdis with regularism, cf. Brandom (1994), p. 29. His reading of Charybdis matches the fact that what McDowell actually criticizes in Wright is his explicating rule-following in terms of regularities of behavior that is accompanied by regularities of assessments: “The picture Wright offers is, at the basic level, a picture of human beings vocalizing in certain ways in response to objects, with this behavior (no doubt) accompanied by such ‘inner’ phenomena as feelings of constraint, or convictions of the rightness of what they are saying”, McDowell (1994), p. 336.

No matter how exactly Charydis is conceived, why is it objectionable in McDowell’s eyes? Charybdis not only makes it impossible to get beyond the consensus of the community. Charybdis also makes it impossible to speak of rules or norms6 at all; note the remark “we cannot prevent meaning from coming to seem an illusion” in the second quotation from McDowell. This means that Charybdis does not make room for any kind of correctness, not even in the sense of intersubjectivity. Why do Kripke and Wright abide with Charybdis or buy into its consequence, namely ruling out correctness? Wright conceives correctness as communal assent and thus – I think even consciously – renounces attitude-transcendence. But according to McDowell, this ultimately rules out any kind of correctness: “But the trouble is… that the denial of ratification-independence… yields a picture of the relation between the communal language and the world in which norms are obliterated”, McDowell (1984), p. 347.

6

The notions “rule” and “norm” are used synonymously throughout this study.

66 The reason for his rejecting attitude-transcendence is a false understanding of Wittgenstein’s complex problem as it has been characterized above. Wright falsely identifies the rejection of the idea that rule-following means grasping a ratification-independent pattern that extends to novel cases – this idea is the second horn of the dilemma that makes up Scylla – with the rejection of the idea that it is impossible to grasp a ratification-independent pattern at all, an impossibility that according to McDowell is linked with Charybdis, cf. McDowell (1984), p. 353. In a nutshell, Wright’s attempt to avoid Scylla makes him fall prey to Charybdis. This diagnosis also applies to Kripke: According to McDowell, Kripke overlooks Wittgenstein’s (1953) warning against Charybdis. Kripke’s answer to the skeptical paradox – his attempt to avoid the first horn of the dilemma Scylla consists in – simply does not take into account Wittgenstein’s follow-up to the first three sentences of his § 201: “Unser Paradox war dies: eine Regel könnte keine Handlungsweise bestimmen, da jede Handlungsweise mit der Regel in Übereinstimmung zu bringen sei. Die Antwort war: Ist jede mit der Regel in Übereinstimmung zu bringen, dann auch zum Widerspruch. Daher gäbe es hier weder Übereinstimmung noch Widerspruch. Daß da ein Mißverständnis ist, zeigt sich schon darin, dass wir in diesem Gedankengang Deutung hinter Deutung setzen; als beruhige uns eine jede wenigstens für einen Augenblick, bis wir an eine Deutung denken, die wieder hinter dieser liegt. Dadurch zeigen wir nämlich, dass es eine Auffassung einer Regel gibt, die nicht eine Deutung ist; sondern sich, von Fall zu Fall der Anwendung, in dem äußert, was wir ‘der Regel folgen’, und was wir ‘ihr entgegenhandeln’ nennen.”

McDowell mentions another feature of these accounts that causes them to fail. The practice of mutual assessments is explicated in a way that permits it to be described by an interpreter or a semantic theorist who is conceived as a detached observer. The interpreter does not take the participant’s perspective, cf. McDowell (1994), pp. 350f., especially: “...shared membership in a linguistic community is not just a matter of matching the aspects of an exterior that we present to anyone whatever, but equips us to make our minds available to another, by confronting one another with a different exterior from that which we present to outsiders”, p. 350. “… a linguistic community is conceived as bound together, not by a match in mere externals (facts accessible to just anyone), but by a capacity for a meeting of minds”, p. 351.

67 If an interpreter who takes the participant’s perspective describes such a practice, her description is at the same time an assessment. The interpreter’s role coincides with the participant’s. To sum up the criticism formulated by Brandom and McDowell, the possible features for which Kripke’s and similar approaches fail are the following: 1

Constitutive practice must not be explicated in terms of regularities (regularism). But it is not immediately evident how an approach that avoids regularism can be positively characterized.

2

The normative vocabulary that figures in a non-reductionist account of content (assessments, normative attitudes) must not be explicated in non-normative terms, that is in terms of facts. Such normative vocabulary rather has to be conceived as basic.

3

Constitutive practice must not be explicated exclusively in terms of each individual’s actual normative attitudes. This suggests that the correct normative attitudes have to be taken into account. And talk of the correct normative attitudes seems to say that one has to consider what is correct, whether or not anybody takes it to be correct.

4

Constitutive practice must not be described by a detached observer. The interpreter of such practice, the semantic theorist, rather has to take the participant’s perspective.

Let us now see how these features are related. This will help to consider subsequently whether avoiding the respective feature is decisive in order to make room for attitude-transcendence. In order to understand the interrelatedness of the features, one has to keep two questions distinct: First, is it possible that a practice of mutual assessments is only described without being at the same time assessed? To answer this question is to state whether the interpreter of such a practice can be conceived as a detached observer or whether she has to be conceived at the same time as a participant. Second, is it possible to describe the mentioned assessments in a kind of vocabulary that says what is the case as opposed to a kind of vocabulary that says what is correct? This is the question whether assessments can be explicated in non-normative vocabulary, precisely in terms of dispositions of behavior, or whether they have to be conceived as

68 basic. These questions differ from each other: A detached observer only describes. But it is possible to make descriptive use of normative vocabulary, cf. Schnädelbach (1992), especially pp. 91-93. Therefore her description can make use either of descriptive or of normative vocabulary. In the former case she merely states how individuals behave. In the latter case she states what is taken to be correct in the practice at issue, without adopting normative attitudes towards that practice herself. The relation between the mentioned features is as follows: A detached observer describes the practice at issue from an external standpoint, i.e. she describes without at the same time assessing. Therefore she only has access to what is actually taken to be correct. She cannot state what is from her point of view correctly taken to be correct. In order to give such an account the interpreter of the practice, the semantic theorist, has to participate in the practice she describes. Above, I have said that it is not easy to tell what avoiding regularism means. What seems most convincing to me is the following: The criticism that it is not sufficient to state the regularities exhibited by the individuals’ assessments corresponds to the demand that the description the semantic theorist gives of these assessments be at the same time an assessment of her own. All three features mentioned up to now are therefore interrelated. The assumption of a detached observer and the assumption of regularism boil down to an exclusive consideration of the actual normative attitudes. But it is quite another issue whether normative attitudes can be explicated in non-normative terms, that is, in terms of natural RDRDs. I argued in the preceding paragraph that a detached observer’s perspective is not to be confused with a non-normative explication of normative vocabulary. In addition, the opposition between actual and correct normative attitudes, which underlies the detached observer’s perspective just like it underlies regularism, is not to be confused with the question whether normative vocabulary can be explicated in non-normative terms. If RDRDs are natural, both actual and correct normative attitudes can be naturalized. We thus have three interrelated features and a fourth distinct one. (If the fourth feature is distinct from the others, Brandom is wrong to identify regularism as what I have taken to be the primary meaning of McDowell’s Charybdis. I have argued rather that regularism coincides with the

69 perspective of a detached observer.) How are these features related to the objection that there is no room made for attitude-transcendence? To consider only the actual normative attitudes the members of a particular practice have is only to make room for a consensus among these individuals. It may be a “democratic,” always preliminary consensus provided that no individual or the community as a whole is privileged. But this does not substantially change the situation. This overly simple characterization of the practice at issue thus has to be avoided. But how must it be amended in order to do better? Setting the correct normative attitudes against the actual ones is not helpful because it leads to the dilemma of how an approach can both be pragmatist and make room for attitude-transcendence: If an approach considers only the actual normative attitudes (normative attitudes that are realized in a particular practice), it fails to provide attitude-transcendence. But if it takes into account the correct ones (which need not be realized in any practice) it fails to be pragmatist. And if the correct normative attitudes are presupposed in constitutive practice, the approach moreover becomes circular. Therefore, a feature of the simple picture other than its not mentioning the correct normative attitudes must be wrong. If regularism and the detached observer both take only the actual assessments into account, these other two features also have to be rejected. Although I will in the following concentrate on the underlying feature, for now I will consider them separately. Let us begin with regularism. Reductionist kinds of regularism fail to make room for any kind of correctness. The same applies to the kind of regularism that invokes individual assessments, provided that one is committed to a social practice account of content in order to make room for minimal correctness, an issue that has not been conclusively settled in the preceding section. A regularism that invokes mutual assessments clearly makes room for such correctness. But as every regularity account of content only considers the actual normative attitudes, even this most sophisticated kind of regularism fails to make room for attitude-transcendence. Conceiving the interpreter of conceptual practice as a detached observer has, however, a more devastating consequence than has become evident so far: When examined more closely, it becomes clear that it does not even

70 make room for intersubjectivity: The interpreter’s description does not even tell what the community actually takes to be correct, what it concurs upon. How the interpreter describes what she observes at a given time is arbitrary because there is always only a finite number of observations available to her, leaving open how the members of the community would go about assessing each other. McDowell is therefore right that an approach that does not take the participant’s perspective into account rules out any kind of correctness. In the following, however, I will not put forward such a devastating objection against the approaches of Kripke and others (including the naturalistic ones to be considered) but will assume rather that they can allow for intersubjectivity. The reason why I neglect McDowell’s point is that at second glance, the detached observer’s perspective – and regularism – turn out to figure in the context of a different question than the one I deal with. McDowell’s question is how a semantic theorist must proceed in order to capture the correctness implicit in the considered practice. Possible answers are that the semantic theorist must not only describe but must also assess or that she must not only state what regularities the individuals’ assessments show. But I wish to state which properties a practice must possess, which capacities its participants must exhibit, which kind of vocabulary they (implicitly) must master. A possible answer to this question is that the individuals only master the notion of what is actually taken to be correct, not of what is correctly taken to be correct. My issue can certainly be reformulated into the problem of what kind of vocabulary the semantic theorist must use: Is it possible, for example that the assessments in which the correct normative attitudes become manifest are described in terms of behavior, or must normative attitudes be considered as basic? But raising such a problem comprises only part of what McDowell is after: The demand to conceive normative attitudes as basic is quite another thing than the demand for the interpreter to carry out assessments of her own. If the three features discussed in the preceding pages belong to different questions, I have to refine the way I have conceived the relation among them. A detached observer and a regularist approach turn out not even to capture the actual normative attitudes so that they do not even allow for intersubjectivity. But considering only the

71 actual normative attitudes, which requires respecting the participant’s perspective and to avoid regularism, only fails to provide attitudetranscendence. I do not wish to examine whether McDowell’s strong objection applies to Kripke, Wright, and the early Haugeland. But the example of a naturalistic approach I consider in chapter 3 accentuates the importance of the participant’s perspective. Therefore I think McDowell’s objection at least does not apply to this approach. The feature we have not yet assessed at all is an explication of mutual assessments in non-normative terms, that is, in terms of facts. At the moment, I cannot see why it should be objectionable at all. Therefore I do not see whether Charybdis actually rules out attitude-transcendence. But I think that, pace McDowell, it does not exclude correctness in general. To recap: The question of what kind of vocabulary must be used to describe assessments is different from the question whether the semantic theorist herself must assess. But only the latter question matters for the problem of whether the actual normative attitudes can be captured at all and thus whether any kind of correctness is possible. If the detached observer’s perspective and regularism rule out any kind of correctness, avoiding these features is clearly not sufficient for attitudetranscendence. Therefore these features will be neglected in the following. Two features will be further considered in this study. The first is the exclusive consideration of the individuals’ actual normative attitudes. This clearly rules out attitude-transcendence, but not intersubjectivity. It is important to consider this because it is still unsettled how the simplistic conception of mutual assessments has to be modified such that attitudetranscendence is provided. The other feature to be considered further is the non-normative explication of normative vocabulary. It will be considered because it has not yet become evident whether this matters for attitudetranscendence or not (I promise, it does). In section 2.1.1, I referred to Kripke in order to formulate a precondition for any kind of rule-following, namely that a rule has to formulate conditions for at least intersubjective correctness. The critical consideration of accounts of rule-following has then yielded the condition of adequacy that a rule has to be constituted by normative, social practice. In this section I have started to consider the problem that will occupy us

72 until the end of this study, namely how this condition of adequacy has to be adapted if what is at issue are not rules in general, but content, which formulates conditions for attitude-transcendent correctness. Precisely, how must constitutive practice be characterized such that content formulates such correctness conditions? In this section it has become clear that taking exclusively each individual’s actual normative attitudes into account is not sufficient in order to make room for attitude-transcendent correctness. But what does this mean positively? And how does such correctness make appeal to the way the world is? Promising answers to these questions all exhibit the following features: First, they build upon Kripke by being nonreductionist. Second, from his failure to provide attitude-transcendent correctness, they learn that it is not sufficient to consider exclusively the actual normative attitudes. They rather concur in adopting some of the features that play a role in the discussion why Kripke fails: They take symmetrical I-thou-relations into account, intend to avoid regularism, and invoke the participant’s perspective. The crucial question, however, is what the approaches set against an exclusive consideration of actual normative attitudes. 2.1.3 Semantic naturalism On the basis of Kripke’s arguments, I have ruled out all those accounts that reduce content to facts. This implies that reductionist kinds of naturalism, which reduce content to natural facts such as dispositions of behavior, have to be rejected. The critical discussion of Kripke’s own proposal for how to conceive content has then broadened the range of objectionable approaches: We have come to see that an approach must not exclusively take each individual’s actual normative attitudes into account. Kripke fails because he does not respect this point. How this broader range is to be characterized has, however, not yet been fully settled: What is missing is a proposal for moving positively beyond the exclusive consideration of actual normative attitudes, given that proceeding from the attitudetranscendently correct normative attitudes would be equally problematic. This issue will preoccupy us at length in the following chapters. But it is also not yet settled whether normative attitudes that figure into an account of content can be explicated in non-normative vocabulary, in terms of natural dispositions of behavior. In other words: It is not settled whether

73 semantic naturalism, as I understand the term, is admissible or not. In this section I wish to take a first glimpse at this issue. My question reads: Does the critical discussion of Kripke as it has been presented so far already rule out semantic naturalism in general, whether or not it is reductionist? If this were the case it would be pointless to discuss a naturalistic approach. In order to answer this question I will first make clear what is usually understood by naturalism. Then I will point to the notion of supervenience that is often regarded as a minimal precondition for naturalism and as capable of providing non-reductionist naturalism. Both the usual characterization of naturalism and supervenience are subsequently put into relation with the sense of naturalism I make use of throughout this study. After clarifying my understanding of naturalism I will state how naturalism is connected with the mentioned reason for Kripke’s failure, holding that the critical discussion of Kripke has not (yet) ruled out naturalistic positions in general. With what right have I called an approach that explicates normative attitudes in non-normative terms, in terms of natural dispositions of behavior, a kind of non-reductionist naturalism? In order to answer this question let us see what is usually understood by non-reductionist naturalism and how my characterization matches this understanding. A suitable criterion for a naturalistic approach in general is that it excludes emergent properties. Only mechanistic, as opposed to emergent, properties are taken to be naturalistically acceptable, cf. Beckermann (1999), pp. 216227. Mechanistic and emergent properties can be roughly characterized as follows: Both kinds of properties depend in a lawful way upon the microstructures of the systems to which they belong. But emergent, in contrast with mechanistic, properties cannot even in principle be deduced from knowledge of all those properties that are possessed by the system’s components in isolation or in different arrangements. Another criterion for naturalism is what has come to be known as “ontological dependence:” “… for each instantiation of property M there are instantiations of natural properties and relations, P, P*,…, that together with natural laws and causal relations among the P instantiations metaphysically entail M’s instantiation”, Loewer (1997), p. 108 (the carets after “P*” appear in the original).

74 Metaphysical entailment means that “[t]he proposition that Fx is metaphysically entailed by conditions K just in case K together with a characterization of the nature of F logically imply Fx”, Loewer (1997), p. 122, note 4.

Put conversely, this means that naturalism has to make room for what is often called upward (and thus asymmetrical) determination of non-natural properties by natural ones. Note that talk of determination and dependence in this context is to be understood in a stronger sense than I use these notions. I understand by determination any kind of covariance. In the context of the present debate concerning naturalism, however, determination is conceived as metaphysical entailment which in turn involves logical implication. How is reductionist and non-reductionist naturalism to be specified? It is controversial how the notion of reduction is to be characterized. But this problem can be neglected here. It is sufficient roughly to characterize a reductionist position as a position according to which the properties of the reducible domain are nothing but the properties of the reduction basis; the properties of one kind only seem to be different from the properties of the other kind. (Reductionism, thus understood, excludes an asymmetrical relation between natural and non-natural properties. It thus runs counter to the basic idea of naturalism.) Historically, this characterization has been specified in two major ways. On the one hand the relation between both kinds of properties has been conceived as analytic. According to semantic physicalism, the properties of the reducible domain can be defined or analysed in terms of the reduction basis. On the other hand this relation has been conceived as nomological. This is what the more recent identity theory has claimed which assumes bridge laws between different types of entities. A non-reductionist position can be characterized as making room for the multi-realizability of properties by renouncing bridge laws. For the aims of the present study it is sufficient to conceive a reductionist position that has been further stripped-down, meaning only that it explicates content exclusively in non-normative terms. Such explication is, I think, a necessary precondition for reduction in any of the senses mentioned above. A candidate for a non-reductionist kind of determination of the elements of one family of properties B by another family of properties A is

75 supervenience, cf. McLaughlin (1995) for an excellent characterization of supervenience. A supervenience of non-natural properties on natural ones is currently considered to be the most promising way to establish nonreductionist naturalism. (But see below for a brief critical discussion of the suitability of this conception for this aim.) What is to be understood by supervenience and why is it considered a candidate for non-reductionist naturalism? Supervenience can be characterized as modal covariance between two families of properties: The supervenient B-properties cannot vary without variation of the A-properties. Or, conversely, A-properties cannot be indiscernable unless B-properties are. A weaker thesis would be de facto covariance. A stronger thesis would be an explanatory, e.g. causal, relationship. Supervenience is a candidate for a non-reductionist position because the elements of the supervening family B may covary asymmetrically with the elements of the subvening family A, i.e. a difference among B-properties also means a difference among Aproperties, but not necessarily vice versa. Three kinds of supervenience can be distinguished. According to strong supervenience, B-properties supervene on A-properties in case two objects that possess different B-properties in the actual world also have to possess different A-properties in all those possible worlds in which they possess different B-properties. An alternative formulation is that the necessary covariance holds necessarily. A characterization that Kim (1984) proves to be equivalent (at least under certain premises) is a necessary coextensitivity between A- and B-maximal properties F and G7 that holds necessarily: “A strongly supervenes on B just in case, necessarily, for each x and each property F in A, if x has F, then there is a property G in B such that x has G, and necessarily if any y has G, it has F”, Kim (1984), p. 165.

According to weak supervenience, B-properties supervene on A-properties in case two objects that possess different B-properties in the actual world also have to possess different A-properties in that world. An alternative formulation is that the necessary covariance holds contingently. A characterization that is equivalent (under certain premises) is a necessary 7

A- and B-maximal properties are the strongest consistent properties constructible in A and B, cf. Kim (1984), p. 158.

76 coextensitivity between A- and B-maximal properties F and G that holds contingently: “A weakly supervenes on B if and only if necessarily for any property F in A, if an object x has F, then there exists a property G in B such that x has G, and if any y has G, it has F”, Kim (1984), p. 163.

Global supervenience is the claim that if two possible worlds differ in Bproperties they also have to differ in A-properties. A decisive difference between strong and weak supervenience on the one hand and global supervenience on the other hand is that only the latter excludes propertyto-property correlation, precisely, necessary coextensitivity among A- and B-properties. It is controversial whether supervenience actually is a suitable notion in order to provide a non-reductionist position that is at the same time naturalistic. In several essays – most of them can be found in Kim (1993) – Kim critically discusses this view. As I will make clear below, this problem does not matter for the present study. But for the sake of completeness, let me briefly sketch Kim’s argument: He rejects the idea that strong supervenience is non-reductionist, and argues that weak supervenience is too weak for providing a dependence relation between both families of properties. In other words, it is too weak to deserve to be called naturalism. Kim further argues that global supervenience is equivalent with strong supervenience, at least provided certain premises hold. Therefore, the objection to strong supervenience applies to global supervenience as well. In his arguments, Kim characterizes a reductionist position as involving the “strong connectibility thesis.” This thesis says that “[e]ach primitive predicate P of the theory being reduced is connected with a coextensive predicate Q of the reducer in a biconditional law of the form: ‘for all x, Px iff Qx’; and similarly for all relational predicates”, Kim (1990), p. 19.

The dependence relation Kim speaks of is not to be confused with the much looser talk of determination or dependence as it underlies the present study. Kim lacks a clear characterization of what he calls metaphysical or ontic dependence; this notion has to be specified, I think, as ontological dependence, a notion I have characterized above. Kim’s objections to supervenience can be summed up as follows: Weak and global

77 supervenience allow for nonreducability, but not for ontological dependence. Strong supervenience, in contrast, allows for ontological dependence, but turns out to be reductionist. This last claim can most easily be made plausible if one takes into account that the necessarily holding modal coextensitivity of A- and B-properties that characterizes strong and only strong supervenience corresponds to the lawful correlation that characterizes strong connectibility. Besides Kim’s objections to supervenience as a suitable conception for providing non-reductionist naturalism, there are two further objections that are frequently mentioned: First, any kind of supervenience is too weak for formulating naturalism because it does not rule out emergent properties. Second, it does not guarantee that modal covariance holds asymmetrically: Sure, nothing rules out that the modal covariance holds asymmetrically. This is why supervenience seems to be so suitable for non-reductionist naturalism. But on the other hand there is no feature that effectuates that the modal covariance does hold asymmetrically. The usual classificatory criteria of naturalism are mechanistic (as opposed to emergent) properties, ontological dependence, and finally supervenience as a proposal how to spell out non-reductionist naturalism. How are these criteria related to my talk of naturalism which refers to an explication of normative vocabulary in non-normative terms (and thus always refers to a non-reductionist position)? These classificatory criteria can be formulated as a particular explication of some kind of vocabulary in terms of another. Let me spell out the relation between supervenience and my understanding of naturalism: First, one has to take into account that with respect to semantic naturalism the supervenience of non-natural properties on natural ones has to be specified as a supervenience of normative properties (normative attitudes) on non-normative ones (natural dispositions of behavior). The relata of the supervenience relation that matter for semantic naturalism correspond to explicans and explicandum in the explication I am after. All that now has to be done in order to justify my talk of a naturalistic position is to show how supervenience is related to explication: In the preceding paragraphs I have conceived of supervenience – as it is mostly done – as an ontological notion, referring to different kinds of properties. But one can also make an epistemological use of this notion. In

78 that case all that has been said simply has to be restated in terms of different kinds of descriptions, vocabularies, or theories. Most generally, supervenience can then be characterized by saying that the supervenient description in normative terms cannot vary without variation of the description in non-normative terms. If one conceives supervenience as an epistemological notion, it becomes evident that the understanding of nonreductionist naturalism as involving a supervenience of non-natural vocabulary on natural vocabulary – instead of non-natural property families on natural property families – is a specification of the understanding I have presupposed, namely an explication of normative vocabulary in non-normative terms. Such explication is a broader claim than supervenience. It requires, I think, covariance but not necessarily modal covariance. If moreover one takes into account that supervenience is a necessary, but probably not sufficient, precondition for providing what is usually considered to be criteria for naturalism, my understanding of naturalism is stripped-down in a double way as compared to the usual one. It now also becomes clear in which sense a fallout of this study is a critical assessment of naturalism in the full-blown sense of this term: When I will reject a non-normative explication of normative vocabulary I thereby mean to rule out a supervenience relation between these kinds of vocabulary, on the one hand, and attempts to formulate a naturalistic position on the basis of such supervenience, on the other. If supervenience is a minimal, although probably not sufficient, precondition for naturalism, it becomes possible to rule out semantic naturalism in general. Put conversely, it becomes possible to reject full-blown naturalism on the grounds that it does not allow for an explication of one kind of vocabulary in terms of another and therefore does not allow for supervenience as a precondition for naturalism. It also becomes evident that the problem whether supervenience can provide naturalism need not bother me. The point at which I criticize naturalism is more fundamental. Let us come back to the initial question: Is naturalism ruled out, given the critical discussion of Kripke? The answer is no: I have argued that a supervenience claim of normative terms on natural ones, as it characterizes many current naturalistic positions, is closely related to one of the features that have been discussed as possible reasons for Kripke’s failure, namely a

79 non-normative explication of normative terms. It has however not (yet) become obvious on what grounds the latter feature should be problematic. 2.2 The notion of content Building upon the early Frege and Brandom, I will now give an account of conceptual content that matches both the developed account of objectivity and inferential role semantics (section 2.2.1). Then I will argue that the Frege-Brandom proposal is promising because it avoids the standard objections to inferential role semantics (section 2.2.2). A side-effect of these considerations is a more precise characterization of Frege’s notion of sense (“Sinn”) than the one I gave at the outset. Finally, I will complete my consideration of Frege’s terminology by taking a more careful look at Frege’s notion of “Bedeutung.” On the basis of the characterizations of the two most important semantic notions in Frege – sense and Bedeutung8 – it will be possible further to specify what is meant by content, and to reconsider the question from chapter 1 whether semantic objectivity can be defended (section 2.2.3). 2.2.1 The Frege-Brandom proposal Before considering the Frege-Brandom proposal let me recapitulate what I have said about content up to now: In chapter 1 I said that content is characterized in terms of correctness conditions; more precisely, in terms of conditions for the objective correctness of assertions. Given that these conditions state inter alia what worldly entity an assertion is about, content determines the extension of an assertion. This means that it states what has to be the case if the assertion is supposed to be true. It thus permits us to find out the truth-value of an assertion. In chapter 2.1 I added that a rule formulates intensional and extensional correctness conditions. Given that contents are a particular kind of rules, one can also distinguish intensional and extensional correctness conditions of contents. Finally, I have put forward the thesis that content is individuated by intensional correctness conditions (whereas I said in 8

Frege’s talk of Bedeutung is usually translated as reference. In order to avoid confusion of this notion with the notion of reference as it underlies this study I leave Frege’s term untranslated.

80 chapter 1 that truth is extensional objective correctness). These all too briefly stated ideas give rise to several questions, e.g.: What exactly is content and how is it articulated? How does it determine the extension of an assertion? Is determining the extension sufficient for settling the truthvalue? I will return to these questions at the end of this section when summing up the developed account of content. The account of conceptual content I will now develop builds upon what the early Frege – precisely Frege (1879) – correspondingly calls “begrifflicher Inhalt.” Begrifflicher Inhalt – or, what I take to be synonymous, Frege’s (1892b) and Frege’s (1918) notion of sense – is the aspect of an assertion that is relevant for its truth-value insofar as it assigns an extension to the assertion. Begrifflicher Inhalt therefore matches the developed account of objectivity. Inferential role semantics understands content as being individuated by its role in reasoning or drawing inferences. Referring to Brandom (1994), pp. 94-96, I will show that Frege conceives begrifflicher Inhalt as being individuated by inferential relations.9 As a consequence, begrifflicher Inhalt also matches inferential role semantics. In the following I will first present how Frege conceives begrifflicher Inhalt and related notions. Then I will show that Brandom largely adopts this conception and point out how he deviates from Frege and why. Frege (1879), §§ 2f. considers the content of judgments, i.e. the content of what can be true or false (“judgeable content” or “beurteilbarer Inhalt”). Frege then further restricts his considerations to the part of the judgeable content that is relevant for possible inferences from the judgment. This is what he calls begrifflicher Inhalt. It is individuated by the inferential relations a judgment, a sentence or – as I prefer to say, deviating from 9

Inference is a notion that belongs to pragmatics, to the use of language. An inference is a doing; more precisely, a transition from one assertion to another. If an individual assesses an inference as correct this does not necessarily mean that she also assesses other instances of the same inference or similar inferences as correct. Inferential relation, in contrast, is a semantic notion. It refers to what is responsible for the truthvalue of an assertion. An inferential relation connects contents. Therefore it holds for more than one combination of assertions. The pragmatic notion of inferential significance is formulated in terms of inferences, the semantic notions of sense and inferential content in terms of inferential relations.

81 Frege’s choice of words – an assertion is involved in: These inferential relations sort assertions into classes of equal content. Content can thus be characterized as an equivalence class of assertions that are intersubstitutable salva veritate. This means that it is the aspect of an assertion that is relevant for its truth-value. Let us consider as an example for what is to be understood by begrifflicher Inhalt and judgeable content the assertion A, “The man over there holds a glass of vodka.” The begrifflicher Inhalt of this assertion is the class of assertions that encompasses, in addition to the original assertion, the assertions that result from such substitutions of components in the original assertion that do not change its truth-value. Such substitutional variants are e.g. “The guy over there holds a glass of vodka” (B), “The man in the corner holds a glass of vodka” (C), “The man over there has a glass of vodka in his hand” (D), “The man over there holds a glass of the most famous Russian alcoholic drink” (E). The equivalence class of A thus encompasses A, B, C, D and E. Thus characterized, begrifflicher Inhalt has an inferential structure insofar as assertions that can be assigned the same equivalence class are involved in the same inferential relations. From any of the assertions A to E it can for example be inferred “The man over there does not hold a glass containing water” (F), or “The man over there does not do a handstand” (G). Conversely, A can be inferred from “All the guests at this party hold a glass of vodka” (H). Instead of characterizing the content of A as the class of assertions A, B, C, D and E, one can therefore characterize it alternatively as the set of inferential relations “If A, then F,” “If A, then G,” and “If H, then A.” What exactly is the relationship between begrifflicher Inhalt and truth? In order to see this, one has to assume that begrifflicher Inhalt and what the later Frege calls sense are identical notions. Frege (1892b) and Frege (1918) calls the part of the “Inhalt” (content)10 of an assertion that is relevant for its truth-value its sense, or the thought (“Gedanke”) associated 10

In order not to confuse the notions Inhalt and begrifflicher Inhalt, and in order not to overlook that my talk of (conceptual) content will be revealed to be more constrained than Frege’s notions of sense and begrifflicher Inhalt, I leave the two abovementioned Fregean terms untranslated.

82 with the assertion. What is usually called the coloring of an assertion,11 which consists for instance in its emotional aspect, is part of the Inhalt but remains without influence on the truth-value. And the force (“Kraft”) of an assertion Frege (1892b) and Frege (1918) speaks about, which is nowadays mostly called modus and indicates whether something is for example an assertive or an interrogative assertion, does not belong to the Inhalt at all. Judgeable content apparently goes beyond begrifflicher Inhalt in the same way that Inhalt goes beyond sense: What forms the difference between jugdeable content and begrifflicher Inhalt, as Frege presents this difference, largely corresponds to the coloring of an assertion, which distinguishes Inhalt from sense. Frege’s example of cases where identical begrifflicher Inhalt goes with different judgeable content is a pair of assertions that are distinguished from each other in that the one is formulated in active voice and the other in passive voice: “At Plataeae the Greeks conquered the Persians” and “At Plataeae the Persians were conquered by the Greeks,” Frege (1879), § 3. When Frege explicates this example he accentuates that begrifflicher Inhalt and judgeable content are distinguished insofar as the latter encompasses those aspects of an assertion that lead the attention of the hearer to particular components of it – in the first case to the Greek, in the latter one to the Persians. Given these similarities, identifying Frege’s (1892b) and Frege’s (1918) sense with Frege’s (1879) begrifflicher Inhalt, and the late Frege’s Inhalt with the early Frege’s judgeable content, seems to be justified. Therefore, I am at liberty to characterize not only sense, but also begrifflicher Inhalt as the aspect of an assertion that is relevant for the truth-value of that assertion since it assigns an extension to the assertion. With respect to the example I have chosen for illustrating begrifflicher Inhalt (or, we can now add, sense) both judgeable content and Inhalt can be conceived as being distinguished from begrifflicher Inhalt or sense insofar as the former notions additionally take the difference between “man” and “guy” into account.

11

Frege (1918) deals with this component of the Inhalt but he does not introduce a specific notion for it. He rather contents himself with the following comparison: “Was man Stimmung, Duft, Beleuchtung in einer Dichtung nennen kann, was durch Tonfall und Rhythmus gemalt wird, gehört nicht zum Gedanken”, p. 37.

83 In the preceding paragraph I have characterized Frege’s notions of sense and begrifflicher Inhalt as what is relevant for the truth-value of an assertion. Why is an identification of both notions required if one wants to invoke Frege in order to work out a conception of content that matches both the developed account of objectivity as well as inferential role semantics? Invoking the early Frege’s notion of begrifflicher Inhalt is important because this notion is inferentially articulated. Invoking the notion of sense permits us to say that sense or begrifflicher Inhalt permits us to find out the truth-value of an assertion by correlating it with its extension, with the entities it claims to apply to. Frege (1892b) characterizes the sense of a proper name as the mode of presentation of an object, the way we refer to it. In combination with the Fregean principle according to which the sense of an assertion is constituted from the senses of its components, it follows that the sense of an assertion determines which objects the assertion is mediately correlated with. To summarize: Building upon Frege, what I call conceptual content can be conceived as that which correlates an assertion with its extension so that the truth-value of the assertion can be settled. At the same time it is individuated by inferential relations. In view of the following comparison with Brandom, let me point out that for Frege both subsentential and freestanding expressions immediately refer: Proper names refer to objects, predicate expressions to concepts – which are conceived as functions from objects to truth-values – and assertions refer to truth-values. Given that conceptual content correlates an assertion with its extension, conceptual content can be characterized most generally as that which an assertion speaks about, refers to, or represents. Features of an assertion that go beyond settling whether things in the world are as the assertion claims they are – Frege’s Inhalt or judgeable content – can be characterized as what is said or expressed in an assertion.

84 To sum up, let me give a synoptic overview of the Fregean notions I have introduced up to now: Frege (1892b), Frege (1918): Inhalt Frege (1879): judgeable content (beurteilbarer Inhalt) ● what is said or expressed by an assertion. Frege (1892b), Frege (1918): thought (Gedanke), sense (Sinn) Frege (1879): begrifflicher Inhalt

Frege (1918): coloring

● the part of the Inhalt or judgeable content that permits ● features of an assertion the truth-value of an assertion to be settled insofar as which do not matter for its this part correlates the assertion with its extension. truth-value. ● what an assertion speaks about. ● inferentially articulated; more precisely, it is conceived as an equivalence class of assertions that are substitutable salva veritate.

In the following we will see that Frege’s semantic notion of begrifflicher Inhalt, or sense, is not identical with what I call (conceptual) content. This will become clear first from a comparison of Frege’s terminology with Brandom’s notion of “inferential content,” and then from pointing to an irreconcilability of two dimensions in Frege’s notion of sense. In the following, I will speak of sense both when referring to Frege and when discussing current approaches that still fall prey to such irreconcilability in their semantic notion. Because Brandom’s inferential content corresponds to what I call content, I sometimes also speak of content when I discuss Brandom’s views. In view of the following comparison with Brandom, it is helpful to characterize Frege’s account of the sense of an assertion by the following components: 1a The sense of an assertion is individuated by the inferential relations in which the assertion is involved. 1b Therefore, sense can be characterized as what different assertions can have in common. More specifically, for Frege (1892b) sense is cognized or grasped by interlocutors (he speaks of “auffassen”).

85 2

Sense permits us to find out the truth-value of an assertion by correlating it with its extension.

3

Not only subsentential expressions but also assertions immediately refer.

I will now present Brandom’s conception of content. I will show that it largely corresponds to Frege’s notion of sense, but will point out that Brandom deviates from Frege in rejecting features 1b and 3, and will discuss why he does so. Brandom takes inferential content to be constituted by normative pragmatics, i.e., by a process of mutual assessments of claimings. In chapter 5.1 this process will be presented in detail. Here I will only focus on the semantic notions that play a role in it. What an individual utters a claiming, what she expresses or grasps is its perspectival “inferential significance.” This can be defined as the set of inferences that relate the claiming with its possible consequences and antecedences, relative to an individual’s auxiliary commitments: “... the inferential significance of a claim (what its consequences are and what would count as evidence for it) depends on what auxiliary hypotheses are available to serve as collateral premises”, Brandom (1994), p. 475.

An auxiliary commitment can be characterized roughly as an assertion that is inferentially related to the original assertion, and the acknowledgment of which has an impact upon the correctness of the original assertion. In order to illustrate what is meant by inferential significance, let us consider once more the above example – the assertion “The man over there holds a glass of vodka” (A) – and two individuals (speakers or, as Brandom would put it, scorekeepers), S1 and S2. Let us assume that S1 knows that the man is at a party where both vodka and wine are served, so that instead of vodka he could equally have chosen wine. This knowledge is S1’s auxiliary commitment, auxS1. Then S1’s inferential significance with respect to this assertion, ISS1(A), encompasses the inference “If the man over there holds a glass of vodka, this is because he prefers vodka to wine” (“If A, then I”). S2, in contrast, has observed that the man was just putting the glass to his mouth when someone asked him a question (auxS2). Therefore her inferential significance with respect to the same assertion,

86 ISS2(A), encompasses the inference “The man just wanted to drink, therefore he holds the glass in his hand (instead of putting it on a table nearby)” (“If A, then J”). Brandom’s notion of inferential significance is clearly distinguished from Frege’s notion of sense insofar as the former is perspectival whereas the latter is not. In drawing a dividing line between this notion and mental imagination (“Vorstellung”) or intuition (“Anschauung”), Frege (1892b) and Frege (1918) emphasizes that sense is not to be conceived as subjective. A Brandomian notion that is more closely related to sense is inferential content: Starting out from individual inferential significances,12 the process of mutual assessments constitutes the inferential content of a claiming. Different linguistic performances are assigned the same inferential content if they have the same inferential role, i.e. if they play the same role in drawing inferences. Brandom thus acknowledges feature 1a from the Fregean account of sense. Having the same inferential role means, more precisely, that substituting one performance for another in materially correct13 inferences (or, in Brandom’s terms, materially good ones) does not turn them into incorrect (bad) ones. Such substitution does not change their truth-value, cf. Brandom (1994), p. 343f. This means that Brandom also adopts the first half of feature 2, namely insofar as it deals with truth. Inferential content can be defined as “…the equivalence class of claims defined by preservation of goodness of inference on intersubstitution within the class…”, Brandom (1994), p. 348.

12

In which way do inferential significances form part of a process of mutual assessments? How are they related to what I have up to now conceived as the basis of such a process, namely normative attitudes, which state what is taken to be correct? Inferential significance states which inferences an individual would acknowledge in the course of such process, which inferences she would take to be correct. 13

Material, as opposed to formal, inferences are inferences the correctness of which does not only depend upon the content of the logical, but also upon the content of the non-logical, vocabulary they contain, cf. Brandom (1994), pp. 97f.

87 This corresponds exactly to Frege. Just like Frege, Brandom offers an alternative, inferential definition of his semantic notion: He conceives inferential content as a non-perspectival function that relates auxiliary commitments to inferential significances, cf. Brandom (1994), p. 482. In terms of the above example, inferential content is a function that makes clear that ISS1(A), and thus “If A, then I,” results from auxS1 and ISS2(A), and thus “If A, then J,” results from auxS2. In order to compare Brandom’s inferential definition with Frege’s, let us once more come back to the above example. A, B, C, D and E is the equivalence class that characterizes both the Fregean sense and the Brandomian inferential content that are associated with A. Frege’s sense is alternatively characterized in terms of inferential relations such as “If the man over there holds a glass of vodka, then he does not hold a glass containing water” (“If A, then F”), “If the man over there holds a glass of vodka, then he does not do a handstand” (“If A, then G”), and “If all the guests at this party hold a glass of vodka, then the man over there holds one, too” (“If H, then A”). At first sight, these inferential relations seem to be independent of auxiliary commitments. (Why Frege has to take such an assumption will become evident below.) Brandom, however, explicitly conceives the correctness of inferential relations as relative to auxiliary commitments. Inferential content therefore differs from Frege’s sense since it cannot be conceived as a set of attitude-transcendent inferential relations. But how can inferential content then still be conceived as objective? How can inferential content in the sense of an equivalence class and in the sense of a function be the outcome of a process of mutual assessments that proceeds from perspectival inferential significances and from the respective auxiliary commitments? The mechanism by which this process constitutes content will be considered in chapter 5.1. What I am after here in posing these questions is only to see how inferential content can be defined on the basis of inferential significances. Before considering these questions, let me defend Brandom’s view that the correctness of inferences is perspectival. I will do this by showing that, at second glance, even the inferential relations I have mentioned when illustrating Frege’s sense or begrifflicher Inhalt depend upon auxiliary commitments: The inference “If the man over there holds a glass of vodka,

88 then he does not hold a glass containing water” (“If A, then F”) seems to be a perfect example for an analytic assertion. In order to justify it, one might argue that vodka is not identical with water so that a glass that contains vodka cannot contain water. But this conclusion is only permitted if the term water is supposed to designate a drink – an alternative to vodka – rather than the chemical substance H2O. Otherwise the glass contains about 60% water. And similarly, the other inferences are relative to auxiliary commitments. The inference “If the man over there holds a glass of vodka, then he does not do a handstand” (“If A, then G”) only holds in case he is not capable of holding a glass with his foot. And “All the guests at this party hold a glass of vodka, therefore the man over there also holds a glass of vodka” (“If H, then A”) only holds in case he is a guest, not the host who is notoriously abstinent. How can content-as-equivalence-class result from perspectival inferential significances? Let us assume that S1 utters A and associates ISS1(A) with it. S2 utters a different claiming, B, and associates ISS2(B) with it. Now we substitute B for A in all those inferences that make up ISS1(A) and vice versa. If A and B have the same inferential content, this procedure does not change the truth-value of any inference involved. Having shown how content-as-equivalence-class results from inferential significances, let us now see how content-as-function does. I have just considered how A and B can be revealed to be equivalent, proceeding from the inferential significance S1 associates with A, and the inferential significance S2 associates with B. Once A and B have turned out to be equivalent, instead of considering the inferential significance S1 associates with her claiming A, ISS1(A), and the inferential significance S2 associates with her deviating claiming B, ISS2(B), it is possible to consider the inferential significances both individuals would associate if they uttered the same claiming, namely ISS1(A) and ISS2(A) (or ISS1(B) and ISS2(B)). If one now correlates these inferential significances with the respective auxiliary commitments auxS1 and auxS2, the content of A (or B) can be formulated as a function from auxiliary commitments to inferential significances. Brandom’s definition of content does not invoke attitudetranscendent inferences, but rather inferences that are perspectival insofar as they depend upon the respective auxiliary commitments. Nevertheless

89 content can be conceived as objective because the process of mutual assessments settles which inferential significances are to be assigned which auxiliary commitments, leading to a result that is independent of what anybody takes to be correct. Let me add that Brandom’s conception of content can be conceived as being characterized in terms of inferential relations even if his definitions do not explicitly mention them: If inferential significances – sets of inferences – are assigned auxiliary commitments, they are assigned conditions under which these inferences are correct. This makes it possible to formulate, between claimings, relations that hold in all cases in which these conditions are fulfilled. This point is important because in chapter 5.1 I will give evidence that Brandom explicitly gives a third definition of content according to which content is characterized in terms of inferential relations. To sum up the comparison between Frege and Brandom so far, one can say that Frege’s characterization of sense and Brandom’s characterization of inferential content show similarities, but also important differences: Both authors concur in characterizing the respective notion as an equivalence class. In Brandom’s case, however, this equivalence class does not go hand in hand with a set of attitude-transcendent inferences. Rather, it results from switching from one perspective – from one set of inferences – to another: S1’s claiming A has the same content as S2’s claiming B if substituting B for A in the inferences that make up the inferential significance S1 associates with A does not change the truth-value of those inferences. In the Fregean framework it is important to conceive inferential relations as independent from auxiliary commitments, because Frege explicitly renounces the view that sense is subjective while simultaneously thinking that it is grasped by a competent speaker. Brandom in contrast, conceives inferential content as objective, but not as grasped, as I will show below. What is grasped is only the perspectival inferential significance. These authors’ disagreement over whether inferential relations depend upon auxiliary commitments is based upon the more fundamental disagreement over the question whether what they call sense or inferential content is grasped or not. This fundamental disagreement will continue to preoccupy us.

90 How is the notion of inferential content related to other notions Brandom uses? To grasp a concept means to master the mentioned function from auxiliary commitments to inferential significances, cf. Brandom (1994), p. 635. And a concept is identified with the conceptual role of an expression, cf. Brandom (1994), p. 622. The notions “inferential content,” “conceptual content,” “concept,” and “conceptual” or “inferential role” can be used interchangeably. Mostly, I will in the following speak of content point-blank when discussing Brandom. On the preceding pages I have presented Brandom’s semantic notion, inferential content. I have compared it with Frege’s notion of sense and pointed out that both notions refer to an inferentially articulated item that allows us to find out the truth-value of a sentence (features 1a and 2). But these are not all the similarities between both notions. Brandom also acknowledges the second half of feature 2 which characterizes sense or content as what interrelates an assertion with its extension: The extension of an assertion – precisely, of an observation report – is given by the intersection of different causal chains that link the expression with the worldly entity it is about. This intersection is found out in the course of the social process of giving and asking for reasons that considers the inferential connections the report is involved in. How exactly this works will be explicated in chapter 5.1. Let us now turn to feature 3. Brandom rejects it. He holds that only subsentential expressions, but not assertions (immediately) refer to or represent worldly entities, cf. Brandom (1994), pp. 67-72: If assertions are said to refer immediately – not mediately qua the subsentential expressions they contain – they are usually said to refer to facts. (Even Frege, according to whom assertions refer to truth-values, can at the same time be attributed the position that all true assertions refer to one big fact, namely “the true.”)14 The idea that assertions refer to facts is ruled out by Brandom’s conception of facts as the contents of true claims. Brandom, moreover, justifies his rejection of this idea with the argument that an account of aboutness need not make any use of the standard theory of 14

For such a reading of Frege and a rejection of the assumption of facts on the grounds that all true assertions refer to the same fact cf. Davidson (1969).

91 intentionality (cf. Searle (1983)) which takes propositional intentionality (Brandom speaks of “that-intentionality”) to be prior to object-representing intentionality, the intentionality of subsentential structures (“ofintentionality”). The way propositional contents are about parts of the world can be explained on the basis of the latter kind of intentionality alone.15 A further deviation from Frege concerns feature 1b – the thesis that sense or content is what different assertions can have in common. Brandom rejects the idea that communication is based upon shared sets of inferences that are grasped by different interlocutors or that are expressed in different claimings. Such sets of inferences are neither necessary nor sufficient for content, with content understood as a means for communication, cf. Brandom (1994), pp. 477-482, 633-636: They are not necessary for communication because it is always possible to diverge with respect to the empirical antecedences and consequences in which a claim stands while a speaker is still considered as being able to communicate – i.e. as making herself understood – and thus as mastering content: “...endorsement even of these privileged inferences can still vary from perspective to perspective. There can be different views about what the laws of nature are, for instance, just as there can be differences about the colors of John Deer tractors and ripe Winesap apples. Failure to agree about such large-scale empirical matters does not preclude the interlocutors from nonetheless having a hold on the same concepts”, Brandom (1994), p. 635.

This thesis looks convincing to me. Let us assume that an individual claims “There is a swan” while she does not endorse “There is a black water bird.” Her deviation from the way others speak about swans can always either be interpreted as semantically incorrect or as a convincing proposal to redraw conceptual borders due to the fact that one has encountered animals that only differ in their color from the usual, white swans. Only in the former case does the individual not master the content of her claiming “There is a swan.”

15

Oral information. – Cf. Brandom (1994), p. 68 for the distinction between both kinds of intentionality.

92 Grasping a finite set of inferences is not sufficient because content is not only determined by inferences but also by auxiliary commitments: “...mastery of a special subset of distinguished inferences... is not in general sufficient for grasp of a concept. For such grasp requires that one be hooked up to the function that takes as its argument repertoires of concomitant commitments available as auxiliary hypothesis and yields inferential significances as its values”, Brandom (1994), p. 635.

As a consequence, an answer to the question which inferences are linked with a claim depends upon the respective auxiliary commitments. There does not exist a fixed set of inferences whose endorsement would characterize mastery of content. This thesis, too, is convincing. In chapter 5.1 I will show that the semantically correct application of an assertion does indeed depend upon the respective auxiliary commitments. Macbeth (1997) critically discusses Brandom’s arguments. Let me present her objections and explain why I do not find them convincing. Macbeth acknowledges Brandom’s point that communication still works even if the interlocutors do not endorse the same inferences. But she negates that this point has the consequence that sheared sets of inferences are not necessary for communication because “... one need only have enough of the right moves, where it is not settled in advance how much is enough”, Macbeth (1997), p. 173.

Macbeth’s point can be rejected as follows: The claim that a particular set of inferences matters for communication is without any practical importance if one cannot state which elements of this set are relevant. Recall Brandom’s claim that, due to the importance of auxiliary commitments, a particular set of inferences is not sufficient for communication. Macbeth objects that auxiliary commitments permit us to draw particular inferences from an assertion, but that these performances do not belong to the application of its content: “Given only the inferential proprieties Sellars recognizes as governing descriptive terms one is unable to draw conclusions about, say, the colour of certain tractors on the basis of auxiliary hypothesis about who made them. But... such conclusions ought not to be derivable”, Macbeth (1997), pp. 173f.

Macbeth is right if one follows Sellars (1948) in conceiving content in terms of counterfactually robust inferences. But Brandom has given an

93 argument why content should not be conceived in this way. I have said why I think this argument is convincing. Macbeth, however, only adopts Sellars’s view without giving an argument why it should be preferred to Brandom’s. What are the consequences of Brandom’s rejection of shared sets of inferences? Does it really imply a rejection of the idea that content is what different assertions can have in common? Is Brandom entitled to reject this idea? These are the questions I will deal with in the rest of this section. Above, I have made a proposal about how to derive content proceeding from inferential significances that need not have any inferences in common. Therefore it is unclear why the notion of content should have to be abandoned once individuals do not acknowledge the same inferences. Let us consider step by step the consequences of a rejection of shared sets of inferences. It surely disenables the view that content is grasped by the interlocutors, that it is expressed by their performances. The interlocutors do not grasp content-as-equivalence-class because a competent interlocutor – i.e. an interlocutor who is able to participate in the process of mutual assessments that settles the correctness of assertions just like it constitutes content – does not need (implicitly) to know which claims are equivalent. Neither do the interlocutors grasp content-as-function if this is supposed to mean that an interlocutor is able to master a particular function, if she is supposed to know (implicitly) which inferential significances are assigned which auxiliary commitments. Presupposing knowledge of one or another kind would undercut the self-sustained role the process of practical negotiations plays in constituting content. The process would no longer bring anything about that did not exist previously. But how in the light of these arguments can Brandom still hold that grasping a concept means mastering a function that relates auxiliary commitments to inferential significances? He can defend this thesis if mastering such a function is conceived as navigation between different perspectives. This idea has already been present in the above consideration about how to derive content from different inferential significances. Grasping a concept consequently does not mean anything more than being able to participate in a process that finds out which commitments are related to which sets of

94 inferences. It does not mean grasping a particular function.16 But if it is not a particular function that is grasped, then the idea that content is grasped becomes vacuous, so that in the following it shall be abandoned altogether. Brandom’s objection to content as what is expressed or grasped corresponds to Putnam’s (1975) well-founded objection to the view that content is in the head. I will come back to Putnam in the following section. Now the communication models Brandom rejects and adopts can be specified. To begin with, I had only said that communication is not based upon shared sets of inferences. The inferential significances which different interlocutors associate with a claiming need not have any inferences in common. Now we have come to see that only inferential significance is grasped, not content. Therefore one can add that communication is not based upon shared contents. Put alternatively, this means that the traditional model of communication as conveyance of information from a sender to a recipient can no longer be sustained. Brandom rather understands communication as navigation between different perspectives: “The fact that the word ‘I’ can never have the significance in my mouth that it does in yours… in no way precludes my understanding what you express by using it. Communication… essentially involves intralinguistic interpretation – the capacity to accommodate differences in discursive perspective, to navigate across them”, Brandom (1994), p. 588. And: “Mutual understanding and communication depend on interlocutors’ being able to keep two sets of books, to move back and forth between the point of view of the speaker and the audience…”, Brandom (1994), p. 590.

Moreover, it is articulated by a dual structure of authority and responsibility: Making a claim means emitting a re-assertion license and undertaking the commitment to justify it on request. The question whether

16

Mastering content thus coincides with mastering language, not a language. An unavoidable loss that goes with Brandom’s deviation from Frege is thus that he cannot give an account of what it means to grasp a particular content or to master a particular language. In other words: He does not take the conventional aspect of language use into account. As we will come to see, content is conceived as an ideal limit of a concrete process of mutual assessments.

95 an account of communication can do without shared contents will be discussed in the following section. If the idea that contents are grasped is rejected, then feature 1b according to which senses or contents are common to different assertions apparently cannot be fleshed out but has to be rejected as well. But this would be a hasty conclusion. To say that content is common to different assertions is all right provided that this only means that it is constituted by different interlocutors, not that mastering content has to be presupposed in successful communication. But it seems that the notion of content, once it does not play any role in explaining communication, apparently does not fulfill any function and has to be abandoned altogether, for the following cf. especially Brandom (1994), pp. 473-490. Brandom indeed gives two reasons for renouncing the notion of content, understood as a function from auxiliary commitments to inferential significances. First, use is not grained sufficiently finely in order to determine a particular function, cf. Brandom (1994), pp. 482f. This corresponds exactly to the objection to a conception of content as a particular function I have put forward above. I have claimed that such a conception of content undercuts the self-sustained role the process of mutual assessments is supposed to play in the constitution of content. In other words: At least a conception of content as a particular function does not match a pragmatist approach to semantics. According to Brandom’s second argument, content-as-function can in principle be considered as being implicit in social practice. But this idea is without any practical importance because the function can never be spelled out in a nonperspectival way, cf. Brandom (1994), p. 485. This argument amounts to the same thing as the before-mentioned one: Content is renounced because it does not become manifest in social practice. (It is not, however, fully clear from “Making It Explicit” whether Brandom actually wishes to give up the notion of content, since even at the end of this book he defines grasping a concept as mastering a function from auxiliary commitments to inferential significances. And the notion of content still plays a prominent role in Brandom’s more recent work such as in Brandom (2002a).) But should one actually renounce the notion of content? The insight that content does not become manifest in social practice does not yet

96 recommend renouncing this notion; it might still play a role as a theoretical construct. And indeed, I will argue in chapter 5.2 that individuals who do not have semantic vocabulary like “content” at their disposal must nevertheless be interpreted as mastering content. Content which is thus conceived as a theoretical construct at the disposal of the semantic theorist plays an important role in making explicit how perspectival practice nevertheless makes room for attitude-transcendence. If the practice must be attributed content, then the notion of content is indispensable. To sum up, we can say that the notion of content as it underlies this study largely corresponds to the Fregean conception of sense but provides it with three modifications in order to be compatible with Brandom’s approach. First, while both authors characterize sense or content as an equivalence class of assertions, the alternative inferential formulation of the respective notion differs: Brandom, as opposed to Frege, does not conceive content as a set of attitude-transcendent inferences. Objective content is rather based upon assignments of sets of inferences to sets of individual auxiliary commitments. Second, only subsentential expressions, but not assertions, immediately refer. Finally and most important, the idea that sense or content is common to different assertions has to be carefully specified: This idea is not supposed to imply that content is grasped. It can rather be paraphrased as saying that content is constituted by different interlocutors. To conclude, let us come back to the questions raised at the beginning of this section and see whether we are now able to answer them: What exactly is content? Building upon Frege, the content or – a notion I use synonymously – the intension of an assertion says what the assertion speaks about. How is content articulated, i.e. how can one specify the correctness conditions that individuate content? Given the answer to the question what content is, content can be conceived as being individuated by such correctness conditions that tell what has to be examined in order to settle whether it is with things in the world as the assertion claims it is. In section 2.1 I called such correctness conditions intensional. (This makes sense, once content and intension are used synonymously.) Moreover, content can be conceived both as an equivalence class and as inferentially articulated, whereby Brandom specifies inferential articulation by conceiving content as a function from auxiliary commitments to sets of

97 inferences. How does content determine the extension and permit us to settle the truth-value of an assertion? Content tells us what entities have to be considered in order to settle whether it is with things in the world as the assertion claims it is. It tells what entity a true assertion applies to, what entity it applies to if things are is as the assertion claims they are. These entities form its extension. Therefore one can say that content determines the extension of an assertion. But determining the extension of an assertion is not sufficient for settling its truth-value, i.e. its extensional correctness. Formulating the conditions that permit to find out whether it is with things in the world as the assertion claims it is, however, is a precondition for finding out whether it is the way the assertion claims it is. Therefore content permits to find out the truth-value of an assertion. In section 2.1 I gave an example that showed how intensional and extensional correctness of a rule of action – the plus rule – were to be distinguished from one another. Let me now illustrate such a distinction for content, and thereby show why intensional and extensional correctness have to be considered if an assertion is supposed to be true. Let us consider the content of the assertion “This animal is a fish.” It is applied extensionally correctly if things are the way it claims they are, precisely if the animal in question is a fish. In the framework of inferential role semantics, content consists in the inferential relations in which the assertion is involved. These inferential relations connect the assertion with other assertions, inter alia with reliable, differential observation reports. Inferential relations say what has to be examined in order to find out whether things in the world are as the assertion claims they are insofar as these inferential relations are finally linked up with observation reports. An assertion is applied intensionally correctly if the speaker is ready to acknowledge the inferences that interrelate it with other assertions. Intensional correctness does not require that the consequences of the inferences at issue be correct. Otherwise intensional correctness would entail extensional correctness. “This animal is a fish” is applied intensionally correctly if the speaker would acknowledge the claims that the animal in question lives in water, that it is not a mammal, that it spawns, that a fish can reliably and differentially be observed. Intensional, as opposed to extensional, correctness does not require that the animal do

98 live in water, etc. And conversely, an assertion that is extensionally correct need not be applied intensionally correctly. It is now clear that content is characterized in terms of conditions of intensional correctness and that semantic objectivity – the subject matter of the present study – deals with the appropriateness of conditions of intensional correctness. Epistemological objectivity – the truth of assertions – is in contrast objective extensional correctness. 2.2.2 Objections to inferential role semantics The Frege-Brandom proposal is promising because it avoids the three standard objections to inferential role semantics:17 First, it has been criticized that the inferential role alone does not account for the relation between language and the world. This objection – which is in the following called the “language-world objection” – goes back to Putnam (1975), who has worked out that there are two irreconcilable features in the Fregean notion of sense. Each feature is required for one out of two functions these notions are supposed to fulfill. These functions are therefore also irreconcilable. Let us consider Putnam’s argument in detail: On the one hand sense is characterized as that which determines the extension of an assertion. This semantic or referential dimension is supposed to account for the relation between language and the world. On the other hand it is characterized as what is grasped by (average) speakers. This cognitive dimension is supposed to account for the relation between language and use. What is grasped is often specified as inferential role, the role sense plays in reasoning or drawing inferences. If sense is supposed to determine the extension and thereby account for the language-world relation, the extension must not be grained more finely than sense itself. It is to be ruled out that the same assertion can be assigned different extensions, that “This is water” is true for H2O on Earth and for XYZ on Twin Earth. It is to be

17

Cf. Lepore (1994) for an overview of objections to such semantics. Cf. Esfeld (2001a), chapter 2.3 for a discussion (and defence) of Brandom’s approach considering the objections with respect to change of belief and communication on the one hand and compositionality on the other hand.

99 ruled out that truth becomes context-relative. But what accounts for the language-use relation must be conceived as being grasped. And Putnam’s Twin Earth thought experiment shows that the extension can be grained more finely than what is grasped: It is conceivable that on Earth and Twin Earth a natural kind term (e.g. “water”) induces the same psychological state although it has different conditions of reference (e.g. because its chemical structure is H2O on Earth and XYZ on Twin Earth). Going beyond what Putnam says explicitly, one can add that a natural kind term’s inducing the same psychological state implies that it is correlated with the same linguistic and non-linguistic behavior and thus goes with the same inferential role. Putnam’s argument then shows that the same inferential role can go with different, context-dependent extensions. According to a variation of this example – a variation that is constrained to what is grasped by the average speakers of one and the same linguistic community instead of considering communities that differ insofar as they do not share the same physical environment – the inferential roles an average speaker of English associates with the natural kind terms “beech” and “elm” are identical although their extensions are not. Both variations of Putnam’s example show that a theoretical notion that is grasped and thus accounts for the language-use relation can go with different, context-dependent extensions. Therefore, it cannot be identical with a theoretical notion that determines the extension and therefore accounts for the language-world relation: To say that an item determines the extension means that a difference in the extension presupposes a difference in the determining item. Both tasks cannot be fulfilled by one and the same theoretical notion. Content, the subject matter of the present study, cannot be conceived as being grasped if it is supposed to account for the language-world relation. It cannot be conceived as inferential role, the role an expression actually plays in drawing inferences. Already in the preceding section we have come to see that the notion of sense differs from what I call content (Brandom’s inferential content) in that the former both determines the extension and is grasped. This finding can now be formulated alternatively by saying that the notion of sense comprises both a cognitive and a referential dimension. Content, in contrast, corresponds only to the referential aspect of sense whereby this aspect is at the same

100 time inferentially articulated. This means that it is articulated by inferential relations that form the ideal limit of actual inferential practices. Putnam proposes to solve his problem by claiming that content – or what he calls meaning – is not “in the head,” i.e. that it goes beyond an average speaker’s psychological state, beyond what a speaker grasps. Instead of packing two irreconcilable features and explanatory functions into one notion, what Frege calls sense, he distinguishes between meaning, which permits us to settle the truth-value and therefore accounts for the languageworld relation, and “stereotype,” which corresponds to the inferential role and therefore accounts for the language-use relation. Linguistic use is explicated in terms of the average speaker’s mastering of a stereotype. The stereotype is only one of the aspects that characterize meaning: Meaning can be characterized by syntactic and semantic markers, the stereotype and, most important, the extension. “Beech” and “elm” as these terms are used in English as well as “water” as it is used on Earth and on Twin Earth have the same stereotype, but not the same meaning. Adopting Putnam’s (1975), p. 191 example for water, its syntactic markers both on Earth and Twin Earth are “mass noun” and “concrete,” its semantic markers “natural kind” and “liquid,” and the stereotype encompasses “colorless,” “transparent,” “tasteless,” and “thirst-quenching.” Only the extension is different: On Earth it is H2O and on Twin Earth it is XYZ. Putnam’s examples show that the same inferential role may go with different, context-dependent extensions. This possibility gives rise to the device that what is grasped and therefore accounts for the language-use relation, e.g. the inferential role, must not at the same time be taken to determine the extension and therefore be invoked in order to account for the language-world relation. But conversely, the same extension may also go with different, context-dependent inferential roles. A well-known example of such a case can be found in Frege (1892b): The notions “Hesperus” and “Phosphorus” have different inferential roles but the same extension. Two further examples are offered by Kripke (1979): First, bilingual Pierre does not realize that “London” and “Londres” are coextensive. Second, an average bilingual speaker of English and French does not know that “beech” and “hêtre” are co-extensive. Examples like these give rise to a second objection to inferential role semantics: Under

101 the premise that inferential role is holistic, context-dependent inferential roles have the consequence that no individual can have any content (and thus belief) that is diachronically stable. But without diachronically stable content it becomes questionable how rationality is possible. And there is a second aspect of the same basic objection: Context-dependent inferential roles also make it impossible for two speakers to share content, so communication apparently becomes impossible. The second objection to inferential role semantics thus comprises both the intrapersonal problem of stable content under change of belief and the interpersonal problem of communication. It will be called the “belief/communication objection.” Having by now presented Putnam’s Twin Earth example and Frege’s Hesperus-Phosphorus example, let me rehearse the upshot of both types of examples and consider how both authors’ points are related: Frege argues that sense – which is conceived as being grasped – determines the extension. This means that every difference in the extension presupposes difference in sense. His Hesperus-Phosphorus example shows that the converse relation does not apply: If the extension were to determine sense, then every difference in sense would have to be accompanied by a difference in the extension. But Frege’s example shows that a difference in sense can go without a difference in the extension. Putnam’s example shows that difference in the extension may go without difference in sense. Putnam argues that Frege’s claim that sense determines the extension requires that sense – or at least the dimension of sense that determines the extension, i.e. the referential dimension of sense – is therefore not in the head but rather context-relative. In order to meet Frege’s point that sense determines the extension, it is necessary to respect Putnam’s point. Let us come back to the critical discussion of inferential role semantics. The precondition for avoiding the language-world objection has become sufficiently clear: Building upon Putnam, what accounts for the referential dimension of content must not be grasped. It is not yet evident, however, how the belief/communication objection can be avoided. The only possibility in sight is to renounce a holistic conception of (the cognitive dimension of) content if one adopts the idea that this notion has to be conceived as intra- and interpersonally stable in order to account for rationality and communication. But this proposal does not look very

102 promising: Inferential role semantics can only avoid being holistic if it assumes – pace Quine (1951) – the analytic-synthetic distinction and claims that the content-constitutive inferences are analytic. These inferences are then opposed to other, synthetically valid, inferences an assertion stands in, cf. Fodor/Lepore (1992), pp. 178-181 who moreover argue that such a position would be circular. In the following I will consider whether different inferential role semantics avoid both objections that have been formulated so far, and, in case they do, how they do this: Do they take into account Putnam’s diagnosis, according to which content can only account for the language-world relation if it is not supposed to account at the same time for the languageuse relation, if it is not conceived as inferential role, as grasped? And do they avoid the belief/communication objection? Having criticized all proposals, I will then show that Brandom does avoid both objections, thereby arguing that the belief/communication objection can be avoided if one does not invoke an intra- or interpersonally stable item in order to account for rationality and communication. There are two kinds of conceptual or inferential role semantics that explicitly intend to avoid the language-world objection: First, Harman (1982)18 conceives conceptual roles – which he characterizes as the functional roles in a person’s psychology – as “long-armed conceptual roles” (Block (1986), p. 636), i.e. as reaching out into the world: “A theory of conceptual role semantics involves the following two claims: 1. The meanings of linguistic expressions are determined by the contents of the concepts and thoughts they can be used to express. 2. The contents of concepts and thoughts are determined by their functional role in a person’s psychology”, Harman (1982), p. 242. “There is no suggestion that content depends only on functional relations among thoughts and concepts, such as the role a particular concept plays in inference… Also relevant are functional relations to the external world in connection with perception, on the one hand, and action, on the other”, Harman (1982), p. 247.

It is not fully clear whether the functional roles are inferentially articulated through and through. Harman rather points out that the functional role is 18

For a similar exposition at greater length cf. Harman (1987).

103 not constrained to reasoning (drawing inferences) but also encompasses perception and action. This suggests that at least perception is not conceived as inferential. (Action may be conceived as inferential in Harman’s approach because reasoning encompasses practical reasoning.) But Harman’s approach leaves room for conceiving functional role as entirely inferentially articulated: It leaves room for characterizing functional role by inferences that start out from reports about perceptions. In that case Harman’s functional role would be similar to – although, as I will point out below, not identical with! – Brandom’s inferential role (inferential content). Taking such inferences into account guarantees that conceptual roles reach out into the world. How is Harman’s proposal to be assessed? Conceptual role is supposed to provide the language-use relation insofar as it is grasped, for it is a functional role in a person’s psychology, and at the same time the language-world relation, for it is long-armed. It thus encompasses both the cognitive and the referential dimension of sense. Therefore, Harman’s proposal misses Putnam’s point according to which the cognitive and the referential dimension cannot be packed into one notion. Harman’s proposal falls prey to the language-world objection. Whether it avoids the belief/communication objection or not, however, cannot be settled: This objection cannot be avoided as long as a holistically conceived cognitive dimension of sense is supposed to account for communication and rationality. But Harman keeps silent on these issues. Loar (1982) objects also that Harman does not account for the relation between language and the world. But while I have based this objection on the fact that Harman situates even the referential dimension of sense in the head, Loar offers a different argument that leads to the same result: He argues that Harman’s conception of long-armed conceptual roles is ad hoc. In order to make this objection intelligible, let us first briefly consider how Loar reads Harman: “Harman suggests that ‘the content of a person’s concept is determined by its functional role in some normal context’. Now, on the face of it, this is incompatible with Harman’s leading idea that content is a matter of conceptual role”, Loar (1982), p. 279.

104 “…‘the content of a person’s concept is determined by its functional role in some normal context’ could be true in the sense that the functional role of a thought determines a reference function, and the content (in the sense of reference) is the value of that function for that thought’s relevant contextual factors”, Loar (1982), pp. 279f.

According to Loar, Harman acknowledges that conceptual role alone does not determine what Loar calls content – the referential dimension of sense – because the extension correlated with a conceptual role is contextdependent. Therefore, referential sense is context-dependent as well. But even if the conceptual role does not immediately determine referential sense, it determines at least a reference function from contexts to referential senses. This connection between conceptual role and referential sense saves the idea that conceptual role reaches out into the world. Loar’s objection now is that this proposal is ad hoc: “What do the values of such reference functions have to do with conceptual role? They are themselves obviously not constituents of facts about conceptual roles. The natural kind H2O is not ‘in the head’. But if this is so, why should functions from contexts to such values be regarded as aspects of conceptual roles? Of course, given a conventional association of such reference functions with conceptual roles (one built into our semantic intuitions) it can appear that the latter determine the former. But the fact is that, unless there is a second level of semantic description and systematization, a level distinct from conceptual roles and independently motivated, simply to say that a certain aspect of content is determined by functional role plus ‘normal’ context is ad hoc”, Loar (1982), p. 280.

(From this Loar draws the conclusion that the functional structure of language has to be describable independently of the truth-conditional structure if the idea of conceptual role semantics is supposed to make sense, cf. Loar (1982), p. 275. This demand corresponds to Putnam’s demand not to use one notion in order to fulfill two different explanatory functions.) Let us now turn to the second proposal for how inferential role semantics can avoid the language-world objection, namely to dual aspect semantics, cf. e.g. Block (1986). Putnam’s distinction between stereotype and meaning can be considered as an early version of dual aspect semantics so that the following assessment holds for his proposal as well. Dual aspect semantics acknowledges that inferential role (“narrow content”) does not

105 determine the extension. The latter is only determined if inferential role is combined with another aspect of content or what I prefer to call sense in order to avoid confusion with the notion of content I make use of. This aspect is called “wide content.” It can be a causal theory of reference or a truth-conditions theory. The proponents of dual aspect semantics identify narrow content or inferential role with the cognitive dimension of sense and wide content with its referential dimension. Dual aspect semantics avoids the language-world objection because what is grasped – the inferential role – is not supposed to account for the language-world relation. Whether dual aspect semantics avoids the second objection again depends on how it conceives communication and rationality. These approaches, too, keep silent on these issues. The Frege-Brandom proposal, however, avoids both objections: First, it assigns what is grasped and what determines the extension to two different notions, inferential significance and inferential content, and thus avoids the language-world objection. This strategy is well known both from Putnam and from dual aspect semantics. But this strategy is only the first step in an account of how the language-world relation is explicated, of how linguistic practices are anchored in the world. Dual aspect semantics contents itself with the abovementioned strategy. Brandom, in contrast, explicates the relation between language and the world in a more detailed way: Inferential content is constituted by social, inferential practice. This practice also takes into account such inferences that possess a relatum that is not inferred itself, e.g. an observation report. Therefore inferential content is anchored in the world. A detailed presentation of how Brandom intends to do justice to the language-world relation will be given in chapter 5.1 when I consider social-inferential triangulation, i.e. his device how to settle which worldly entity an observation report speaks about. Note that when Brandom uses the notions of inferential content and inferential role synonymously, this means that he does not take the latter to be grasped. His conception of inferential role is clearly distinguished from the conception that is common in inferential role semantics. If inferential role is most generally characterized as the role in reasoning or in drawing inferences, this does not necessarily mean that it reflects a psychological state or concrete linguistic or non-linguistic behavior. In order to avoid

106 confusion I will not talk of inferential role with respect to Brandom. What is usually called inferential role is rather similar to Brandom’s inferential significance. The difference between Harman and Brandom now also becomes evident: Harman may conceive the relation between conceptual role and the world in a similar way to Brandom. Conceptual role may be thoroughly inferentially articulated and then reach out into the world insofar as it involves inferences that start out from observation reports. But Harman differs from Brandom in that he situates the item that is supposed to account for the language-world relation – conceptual role in Harman’s and inferential content in Brandom’s case – in the head. As a consequence, Harman – in contrast with Brandom – fails to avoid the language-world objection. The main advantage of Brandom’s version of inferential role semantics as compared to the ones considered above, however, lies in his offering an answer to the belief/communication objection: Brandom replaces the traditional conception of communication as based on shared contents, with a conception of communication as navigation between different perspectives. The former model of communication is tacitly presupposed in the criticism that holistic inferential role semantics makes communication impossible. Offering a different model of communication allows Brandom to reject this criticism while at the same time acknowledging that there are not any shared contents: Communicating with somebody – understanding her and imparting something to her – does not mean conveying content from a sender to a recipient. Communication rather consists in the process I described when I explicated Brandom’s notion of inferential content: This process negotiates whether the claimings which different individuals utter, and which they probably associate with different inferential significances, are manifestations of the same content. Brandom does not deal explicitly with the problem of diachronically stable beliefs. But I think he would argue in a similar way: There are not any diachronically stable beliefs. But this does not matter because rationality can be conceived as the result of intrapersonal navigation between the beliefs one has at different points of time. Such navigation settles whether these beliefs are manifestations of the same content.

107 Let us sum up the assessment of the considered proposals for avoiding both of the mentioned objections to inferential role semantics: The referential and the cognitive dimension of content are irreconcilable. The referential dimension can only be taken into account if it is not situated in the head. All of the considered proposals fulfill this requirement, except for Harman’s. How these proposals treat the problem of diachronically stable beliefs and the communication problem remains unclear, however. It can be solved in a convincing way if the traditional idea that communication presupposes shared contents (and, similarly, the idea that rationality presupposes stable beliefs) is abandoned. Only Brandom explicitly rejects this model of communication. To conclude, let us briefly consider a third objection that again applies to inferential role semantics insofar as this semantics is holistic. According to this objection such semantics is unable to take compositionality into account. This means that it is unable to take into account how the sense of an assertion is determined by the contents of the subsentential expressions it is composed of. Compositionality is considered as decisive for explaining linguistic productivity, i.e. the ability to produce novel assertions. Similarly, it is considered to be decisive for explaining linguistic systematicity: Human capacity to learn linguistic expressions is limited. Therefore an account of language has to make room for the construction of infinitely many assertions from a limited number of elements.According to Fodor/Lepore (1992), p. 177 the inferential role of an assertion not only depends on the contents of its components but also on the beliefs an individual has about the inferential role. It is therefore not compositional. Inferential role therefore cannot explain compositionality. Does the Frege-Brandom proposal also avoid this objection? I think it does: Brandom would accept the point that an inferentially articulated item such as his inferential content also depends on beliefs (more precisely, on auxiliary commitments), but would deny the conclusion that it is therefore not compositional. Compositionality only requires that freestanding content be a function of – and in this sense is determined by – subsentential contents. It is not required that subsentential content be specifiable antecedently to freestanding content, cf. Brandom (1994), pp. 354f.

108 2.2.3 A refined conception of content Let us recapitulate: The subject matter of the present study, content, builds upon Frege’s sense: The Fregean sense, or the begrifflicher Inhalt, has been characterized as what determines the extension while sense or begrifflicher Inhalt is at the same time inferentially articulated. But my talk of content is distinguished from the Fregean sense since I do not consider content to be grasped: Putnam (1975) argues that it is necessary to distinguish two dimensions in Frege’s notion of sense. What determines the extension (the referential dimension of sense) cannot coincide with what is grasped by a speaker (the cognitive dimension of sense). Content only corresponds to the referential dimension. The former dimension is linked up with truth and objectivity whereas the latter is subjective. With Putnam’s reflections in mind, a closer look at Frege shall now help further to specify the subject matter of the present study. This shall be done by explicating the distinction Frege draws between Sinn and Bedeutung, thereby working out that there are also two dimensions in his notion of Bedeutung and compare them with the two dimensions of sense just mentioned. Having thus specified the subject matter of the present study, I will finally come back to the question of whether semantic objectivity can be defended, and of how an apparent objection to such thesis can be rebutted. It is well known that Frege (1892b) distinguishes between the sense of an expression and its Bedeutung, which is nowadays mostly called reference. But Frege’s conception of Bedeutung is as ambiguous as his conception of sense: The Bedeutung of a proper name is an object. The Bedeutung of an assertion is a truth-value (whereby a truth-value is assimilated to an object; an assertion is correspondingly assimilated to a proper name). The Bedeutung of a predicate expression is called a concept (“Begriff”), cf. Frege (1892a). A concept is a function from particulars to truth-values, cf. Frege (1891). The Bedeutung of a proper name and a sentence can be called its extension. The Bedeutung of a predicate expression, however, is what permits the truth-value of an assertion to be settled. It rather corresponds to what I call content or to the referential dimension of the sense of an assertion.

109 The mentioned heterogeneity of Bedeutung has been forcefully worked out by Bell (1979) (who translates “Bedeutung” as “reference”), for the following cf. also Brandom (1986): “…Frege had not one, but two notions of reference… One notion is this: the reference of an expression is that extra-linguistic entity with which the expression has been correlated or which it picks out. The other notion of reference is that it is a property which an expression must possess if that expression is to be truth-valuable (to coin a phrase). By truth-valuable I mean such that it either possesses a truthvalue, or is capable of being used (and not just mentioned) in a sentence which possesses a truth-value”, Bell (1979), p. 42.

The first notion – Brandom (1986) calls it the relational dimension of reference – corresponds to what I have above called extension. The second one – Brandom (1986) calls it the non-relational dimension – seems to correspond to what I call content. Tugendhat (1970) adds to this picture that the non-relational dimension of Bedeutung should be characterized as truth-value potential, i.e. as the equivalence class of expressions which are intersubstitutable salva veritate: “…two expressions φ and ψ have the same truth-value potential if and only if, whenever each is completed by the same expression to form a sentence, the two sentences have the same truth-value”, Tugendhat (1970), p. 180.

In summary, we can say that Frege’s notion of sense has two dimensions – a cognitive and a referential one – and that the notion of Bedeutung is used ambiguously. For proper names and sentences it is the extension and for predicate expressions it corresponds to the way the referential dimension of sense is characterized. There are thus three different notions in play when Frege speaks of the sense or Bedeutung of an assertion: First, there is the cognitive dimension of sense. It can be characterized as what is grasped by a competent speaker. For short, I will call it cognitive sense. Second, there is the referential dimension of sense. It can be characterized as what determines the extension of an assertion. I think it corresponds to the nonrelational dimension of Bedeutung, which Bell characterizes as the property an assertion must possess in order for it to have a truth-value. Following Tugendhat, it should be specified as an equivalence class of assertions that are intersubstitutable salva veritate. This corresponds to the notion of content as it underlies the present study. To summarize my points thus far, I characterized the notion of content as what determines the

110 extension and therefore permits us to find out the truth-value of an assertion. At the same time it is articulated inferentially. The first part of this characterization, the one that is related to truth, is prominent in the definition of content as an equivalence class of assertions. The second, inferential part is prominent in the definition as a function from auxiliary commitments to sets of inferences. (In order to avoid confusion, I try to avoid the notion of reference. The way this notion is used in the literature is as ambiguous as Frege’s notion of Bedeutung. But in case it is used, it is meant to be synonymous with content.) Finally, there is the relational dimension of Bedeutung. It can be characterized as the entity an expression is about. (An assertion is only mediately correlated with entities, unless one conceives it as referring either to hypos-tatized truth-values or to facts.) In other words: It is the extension of an expression. The graphic illustrates these different notions: Frege (1892b) Frege (1879) characterization

Sinn (sense) cognitive dimension of sense

terminology in this cognitive sense study

Bedeutung begrifflicher Inhalt referential dimension of sense non-relational dimension of Bedeutung (conceptual) content reference

relational dimension of Bedeutung extension

Now it is also clear how the Fregean principle, according to which sense determines Bedeutung, is to be assessed. The assessment depends on whether the cognitive or the referential dimension of sense, cognitive sense or content, and the relational or non-relational dimension of Bedeutung, content or extension, is meant: If the cognitive dimension of sense is meant, the principle simply is false. It has become evident from Putnam’s Twin Earth thought experiments that the cognitive dimension of sense cannot determine the extension because the latter can be grained more finely. Because the cognitive dimension of sense is subjective, it also cannot determine content, something which is supposed to matter for the truth-value of an assertion or which is even conceived as objective itself. If the Fregean principle is supposed to say that the referential dimension of

111 sense determines the non-relational dimension of Bedeutung, it is tautological. Only if the Fregean principle means a relation between the referential dimension of sense and the relational dimension of Bedeutung does it become true: Content determines the extension. To conclude, let us reconsider whether semantic objectivity can be defended. In chapter 1 I have mentioned as a possible objection to this position that semantic objectivity rules out the possibility to speak semantically correctly while saying something false. This objection results from a conflation of intensional with extensional correctness. It can be rebutted in the following way: To use an assertion semantically correctly means to acknowledge those inferences that allow us to find out whether it is with things in the world as the assertion claims it is. Semantic correctness is understood as intensional correctness. But intensional correctness does not entail extensional correctness, namely that it is as the assertion claims it is. 2.3 The normative character of content in greater detail: the debate about the “normativity of meaning” Proceeding from Kripke’s reflections on rule-following, section 2.1 made clear that content is normative in the sense of being linked with evaluative practice: Constitutive practice has to be explicated in terms of mutual assessments of performances as being correct or incorrect. And although I usually focus on constitutive practice, the same holds for up-and-running conceptual practice. The minimal understanding of the normativity involved in constitutive practice – an understanding that results immediately from the characterization of content in terms of correctness conditions – is evaluative. At present, it is being intensively discussed whether content – or “meaning” as it is mostly put – is normative and, if so, in what sense.19 19

Recent contributions to this discussion can be found in Glüer/Pagin (1998/1999), Glüer (1999), especially chapter 6, the essays by Davidson, Mayer, Glock and Glüer in the special the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie (2000) has dedicated to this subject matter, Wikforss (2001) and the essays by Tietz, Schneider and Rödl in the special published in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie (2003).

112 As some of its contributors have denied the normativity of content in general – not only a particular kind of it, e.g. a prescriptive character of content – having a look at this debate is important in order to secure the legitimacy of the normativity thesis upon which my study is based. Besides, it has remained unsettled whether I am only entitled to conceive content as evaluative or whether it can moreover be conceived as prescriptive. Considering the mentioned debate also helps tackle this issue. In the following I will first present the normativity thesis discussed in the mentioned debate and compare it with the one that underlies the present study. Then I will present arguments that have been formulated against the normativity of content and discuss their importance for the present study. What is at issue in the current debate is the question whether content is intrinsically normative. This means that one does not consider an uncontroversial normativity of conceptual practice: It is uncontroversial that use is normative even in the sense of being prescriptive insofar as this feature does not exclusively stem from content, but, say, from the pursuit of saying the truth or from the goal of successful communication. To say that content is intrinsically normative, in contrast, means that it is constituted by norms. This thesis may then be specified saying that the norms that individuate content are prescriptive. And “constituted” – in the sense this term is used in this debate – does not only mean that content is determined by norms in the sense that content covaries with norms. It rather means that content is determined by norms that are antecedent to contents or that it results from a practice that already exhibits the norms that make up content. How is the currently discussed normativity thesis related to mine? I characterize contents – just like rules (norms) in general – in terms of the correctness conditions they formulate, more precisely in terms of inferential relations. These correctness conditions can be conceived as norms (rules) themselves. Therefore I take content to be determined by norms. But I do not take content to be constituted by norms. Just like in the present debate, I understand by content-constitutive features those features that have content as a result. But what determines content is merely meant to covary with it. Therefore I can hold at the same time that content is determined by – or characterized in terms of – norms and that it is

113 constituted by a practice that exhibits normative attitudes, but not yet the correctness conditions (inferential relations) and thus not yet the norms that make up content. If content-constitutive normativity is more modestly understood as the claim that content is determined by norms, not that it is constituted by them, then I defend an intrinsic normativity of content. On what concerns the proposed specification of intrinsic normativity, the normativity thesis I defend holds that content is evaluative rather than prescriptive. Given the difference between the currently discussed normativity thesis and mine, arguments against the former do not hold against the latter. This means that concluding from the rejection of the discussed normativity thesis a principled rejection of intrinsic normativity of content is premature. My normativity thesis indeed presents an alternative to the one that is rightly rejected. Let us now consider a comprehensive assault on the thesis that content is intrinsically normative. In this assault, which has been put forward by Glüer (1999,Glüer (2000), it is argued that the mentioned thesis has to be rejected regardless of whether constitutive norms are conceived as prescriptive. As a consequence, the thesis that content is normative is therefore abandoned altogether. Glüer first discusses the thesis that content-constitutive norms are prescriptive. This is supposed to mean that these norms say what ought to be done. Glüer argues that all norms for doings are prescriptive in a broad sense, cf. Glüer (1999), p. 164. But in a more specific sense – referring to what one is obliged to do, what is permitted and what is forbidden, i.e. in a sense according to which individuals are free not to do what they ought to do – the mentioned question has to be negated, cf. also Glüer/Pagin (1998/1999) and Glock (2000). In the following it is only this sense of the terms “prescriptive” and “ought” that I mean. Two important arguments against the prescriptive character of the assumed norms are these: First, according to the standard model for constitutive rules which goes back to Searle (1969), constitutive norms have the form “Doing A counts as doing B.” They do not have the form “One ought to do A,” cf. Glock (2000), p. 445 and for a similar point Glüer/Pagin (1998/1999), pp. 214-219. Second, if there is something that can guide action or be a reason for it, this means that the action could also

114 take a different course, that one is free either to perform or not perform the action in question. Only if such freedom exists can one be obligated to perform a particular action; in this case one can talk of there being prescriptive norms. But constitutive norms do not guide action: Even upon request they are not acknowledged as reasons for linguistic performances. There is no step that leads from the norm to the performance, cf. Glock (2000), p. 444. Similarly, one can add that prescriptive norms require that an individual can violate them, i.e. that she can intentionally act counter to them. But this possibility does not exist in the case of constitutive norms, except at the price of her intelligibility to others. After rejecting the view that constitutive norms are prescriptive, Glüer discusses whether the norms in question, once their prescriptive character is denied, can be conceived as content-constitutive at all. She questions, for example, whether they can be conceived as rules, as opposed to prescriptions and directives, in the sense of von Wright (1963), or as constitutive, as opposed to regulative, rules in the sense of Searle (1969). And similarly, Rawls (1955) distinguishes between rules that define a social practice and those that are nothing but the sum of preceding decisions. Glüer’s argument against a non-prescriptive conception of constitutive norms – and thus, more radically, against the idea that talk of constitutive norms makes sense at all – is the following: Constitutive norms cannot be prescriptive, given the arguments mentioned above. But they have to guide action – i.e. they have to be prescriptive – if they are supposed to constitute content. If they only enable a domain of actions, but do not guide action, then they cannot provide a distinction between a correct and an incorrect use of an expression: “Jetzt nämlich scheint die Idee, es seien Regeln, die Bedeutung bestimmen, semantische Normen seien also regulative, von vornherein in Gefahr zu geraten. Denn mit dem Minimalkonsens haben wir die Forderung akzeptiert, mithilfe bedeutungskonstitutiver Regeln für die Unterscheidungen von korrekt und inkorrekt aufzukommen. Regeln boten sich nun an, um den Unterscheid zwischen linguistisch korrekt und inkorrekt zu bestimmen. Dies leisten Regeln, indem sie einen Bereich von Handlungen überhaupt erst möglich machen. Dabei aber wird innerhalb dieses Bereichs keine weitere Unterscheidung in korrekte und inkorrekte Handlungen bestimmt...”, Glüer (1999), p. 187.

115 But as Searle does characterize constitutive norms as enabling a domain of actions, the idea of content-constitutive norms is paradoxical and has to be rejected. In other words: The assumption of constitutive norms is flawed insofar as these norms presuppose a relation they intend to explain, namely the relation between content and its correct application: “Die Regeln, die uns sagen, was wir tun müssen, um zu sagen, dass p, sind hier in der Tat solche Searlescher Form, aber ihre ‘Geltung’, ihre Wahrheit setzt bereits voraus, dass die fraglichen Zeichen die fragliche Bedeutung haben”, Glüer (1999), p. 195.

Constitutive norms are theoretically superfluous. I find the arguments against the assumed prescriptive character of constitutive norms are convincing. But one is only justified in generally rejecting the view that content is constituted by norms if this is supposed to mean that it results from a practice that already exhibits the norms that make up content. But I do not see what speaks in favor of this understanding of constitution. On the contrary, I do not see how the apparently circular claim can ever be defended that content, which is characterized in terms of norms, is brought about by norms antecedent to it (and I do not see that it has ever been put forward). In contrast to this view, I do not take norms to be antecedent to content. Content and the norms that characterize it are rather constituted equiprimordially proceeding from normative attitudes. Negating the normativity of content point-blank as Glüer does on the basis of the considered arguments is therefore premature. What does consideration of the mentioned debate contribute to the present study? Content can only be conceived as evaluative, not as prescriptive. Moreover, it is essential to understand the norms that make up the intrinsic normativity of content not as norms that constitute content, i.e. that are antecedent to content. To conclude, let me point out a flaw in Brandom’s treatment of normativity. He conceives pragmatics (conceptual practice) – and inferential significance, the notion pragmatics is based upon – as prescriptive. Such a conception has turned out to be illicit. He is right, however, in conceiving semantics as “non-normative,” provided that this only means that content is not prescriptive.

116 That Brandom clearly conceives pragmatics as prescriptive becomes evident from passages like this one: “As the term is used here, to talk of practices is to talk of proprieties of performance, rather than of regularities, it is to prescribe rather than describe”, Brandom (1994), p. 159.

And the fact that he explicates pragmatics in terms of commitments, entitlements, and precluded entitlements at least suggests that he takes pragmatics to be prescriptive. Just like the term “prescriptive” refers to what one is obliged, permitted, or prohibited to do, it can easily be taken to refer to what one is committed, entitled or not entitled to do. But Brandom’s vocabulary can also be understood in a merely evaluative sense. This is the sense I assume when I adopt his vocabulary throughout this study. On the other hand, Brandom stresses that content is not normative, at least in the sense of not being prescriptive which is the sense of “normative” that seems to underlie this quotation: “Concept is not strictly a normative concept… for its use does not codify commitment to a pattern of practical reasoning. It is a normatively significant concept, since its use has immediate normative consequences:… there is a difference between applying it correctly and incorrectly”, Brandom (2000b), p. 368.

As a consequence, inferential relations and contents are distinguished from inferences and inferential significances insofar as the latter are prescriptive whereas the former are not.

117

Part II Critical discussion of proposed answers 3 A naturalistic answer In this chapter I will present and criticize Esfeld’s answer to the guiding question of this study. In section 3.1 I will reconstruct his approach and put forward some objections. In sections 3.1 and 3.2 the objections will be amended. In section 3.2 I will argue that constitutive practice has to be conceived as attitude-transcendent if a two-step model of content is to be rejected on Quinean grounds. In section 3.3 I will point out that constitutive practice has to be conceived as rational (inferential) and conceptual on Sellarsian grounds. Before I start let me make a remark on the interpretation of the naturalistic approach. Having argued in chapter 1 why I think that epistemological and semantic objectivity go hand in hand with one another, I said that the guiding question of this study concerns both kinds of objectivity. But it is not that both kinds of answers to the guiding question clearly endorse an interrelatedness of both kinds of objectivity. In chapter 1 I pointed out that the considered primitivist account explicitly commits itself to semantic objectivity. The considered naturalistic approach, in contrast, only deals with epistemological objectivity and keeps silent on the question of whether content itself is objective. I find it difficult, however, to imagine how intersubjective content is supposed to account for the objectivity of assertions. Therefore I will in the following assume that the approach is after objective content. The crucial problem that this approach must solve, then, is to answer how the material from which it proceeds is supposed to constitute objective content and thus epistemological objectivity. But if the approach conceives content as intersubjective, then the crucial question is how intersubjective content can provide epistemological objectivity. Both problems, however, do not differ substantially from one another. The way content is conceived only pushes the crucial problem to the one or the other point. As a consequence, it does not bear upon my assessment of the approach how it conceives content. In the course of the presentation and discussion of the approach I will make explicit whether my interpretation depends upon the way content is conceived.

118 3.1 Presentation and a first critical assessment In this section I will discuss Esfeld’s approach as an example of a naturalistic approach that is at the same time pragmatist. (Since the range of approaches considered in this study is limited to pragmatist ones, the more popular naturalistic approaches to content that have been formulated by Dretske, Millikan, Papineau, Fodor, and others are not taken into account.) I will first give a general exposition of Esfeld’s answer to the guiding question and then work out and assess its decisive features. Esfeld tells the following story in order to reconstruct how objective content is constituted by social practice:1 1

It is part of the natural design of human beings that they possess reliable, differential dispositions that make them continue a series of doings in a determinate way. In other words, human beings possess natural RDRDs: “This step presupposes that persons… have a cognitive access to their environment. This cognitive access consists in reliable and differentiating response-mechanisms…”, Esfeld (2001a), p. 81.

2

Beings that have a similar biological constitution and live in the same physical environment have similar dispositions with respect to how they answer the environment.

3

Human beings moreover are disposed to adapting one’s own dispositions to those of others. And I think one should add that they are also disposed to influence the dispositions of others.

4

Given point 3, we can say that individuals mutually sanction each other’s doings. (The first-mentioned aspect of point 3 – the disposition to adapt one’s behavior – only warrants the efficacy of sanctions, the second one – the disposition to influence others’ behavior – ensures that they are carried out at all.) Sanctions are assessments of behavior

1

Cf. Esfeld (2000), pp. 396-398, Esfeld (2001b), Esfeld (2001a), chapters 3.2f., 5.2f. In the following I usually refer to and quote from Esfeld (2001a). Given the fact that Esfeld largely builds upon approaches by the more recent Haugeland and Pettit, cf. also Pettit (1993), pp. 76-108, 175-193, Pettit (1998), Pettit (1999) and Haugeland (1990), pp. 404-407.

119 as correct or incorrect, i.e. they express normative attitudes. Sanctions therefore introduce a distinction between what is taken to be correct by the individual that is assessed and what is correct in the light of the sanctioning individual. Language (and thus content) is not required at this stage: “No language is presupposed for this account”, Esfeld (2001a), p. 84.

Sanctions refer to non-linguistic behavior, to mere doings, and not to linguistic actions. More specifically, they are conceived in a learningtheoretic sense, namely as positive and negative reinforcements of behavior. 5

If individuals disagree on how to continue a series of doings and thereby impose sanctions on each other’s behavior, the disagreement may not only set off a process of mutual adaptation, but more importantly may set off a process that seeks to find out why the individuals disagree. Sanctions can thus be a means for finding out the inner and outer conditions under which individuals concur on how to continue the series of doings. Examples for these conditions are not being color-blind and presence of sufficient lighting conditions. These conditions can be conceived as the proper (or, put alternatively, the favorable, normal, or ideal)2 conditions for having a belief about something in the environment.

6

As soon as these conditions have been found out, the concurrence in the way of how to continue the series of performances can be seen as expressing a rule (norm), precisely a rule of inference. Assuming inferential role semantics, such rules make up content. The process of mutual sanctions can therefore be said to bring about content.

7

It is important to note, however, that social practice always constitutes a multitude of rules, i.e. an inferential context. The reason is that inferential role semantics is conceived as holistic (for a justification of

2

Pettit divides favorable circumstances into normal and ideal conditions, namely “… circumstances in which certain perturbing influences are absent, on the one hand; and circumstances, on the other hand, in which certain helpful factors – say, a wealth of information – are also present”, Pettit (1993), p. 92.

120 this specification, see chapter 2.2). A single rule only specifies conditions under which it is correct to apply a concept F by uttering the sentence “This is F.” If one combines inferential role semantics with semantic holism, an inferential context is required in order to settle what one means by uttering a particular assertion. The inferential context states what follows from the assertion and from what other assertions it follows. This account of content can be summed up as follows: Sanctions and the underlying normative attitudes are based upon natural reliable, differential dispositions to answer to the world (as well as upon natural dispositions to sanction each other’s behavior). If RDRDs are natural, i.e. not formed by human practice, RDRDs can be explicated in non-normative terms, i.e. in terms of behavior. Correspondingly, also sanctions are explicated in nonnormative terms. They are conceived as reinforcements of behavior. Individuals now mutually sanction each other’s non-linguistic behavior. These sanctions can set off a process that finds out the favorable conditions under which the individuals concur. It thereby brings about content: The content of a sentence can be characterized by the rules of inference that can be formulated with respect to these conditions. The naturalistic approach clarifies the claim from chapter 2.1 that the process of mutual assessments of performances as correct or incorrect constitutes content, since in that chapter it was not made clear which items were to be assessed and how such assessment could constitute content. The naturalistic approach specifies this process as follows. Assessments of nonlinguistic performances permit one to find out the proper conditions under which the individuals’ performances concur. They furthermore permit one to formulate rules of inference from proper conditions to what gets expressed in performances, i.e. to their contents. Given inferential role semantics, these rules of inference make up the contents of the performances. An alternative specification of this process will be considered in chapter 5.1. I think this approach is committed to two different supervenience claims. First, there is a supervenience of content on the actual normative attitudes. Second, the latter supervenes on natural dispositions: The step-wise story told above assumes that content can be explicated in terms of the individu-

121 als’ actual normative attitudes and the latter in terms of natural dispositions. Both of these explications can be specified as modal covariance between the respective terms (this yields an epistemological conception of supervenience) or property families (this yields an ontological one). The step-wise story therefore at least suggests that these supervenience claims are defended. That supervenience is indeed defended becomes evident from the following quotation: “… the argument from externalism says nothing against belief states supervening on physical states of the person in question plus her environment. Consequently, this argument is compatible with claims of global supervenience of the mental including the intentional as a whole on the physical as a whole”, Esfeld (2002a), pp. 157f.

To say that the mental and the intentional supervene on the physical is just to say that contents and normative attitudes (globally) supervene upon natural dispositions. The fact that the naturalistic approach is committed to supervience is important because this commitment points to the crucial problem that the naturalistic approach must solve. The exact nature of this problem depends on whether content is thought of as merely intersubjective or as objective. Let us see how this is so. In order to defend the two supervenience claims, the naturalistic approach must combine subjective phenomenalism with a non-primitivist position. Brandom takes phenomenalism to be the view that what is correct (content) is understood in terms of or supervenes on what is taken to be correct (normative attitudes). Where subjective phenomenalism considers the actual normative attitudes, normative phenomenalism considers the correct ones. (Note that this does not necessarily mean that the objectively correct normative attitudes are considered.) See chapter 5.1 for a more detailed presentation of Brandom’s notion of phenomenalism. I use the notion of normative non-primitivism in order to designate a position by which the normative vocabulary that figures in an account of content (normative attitudes) can be explicated in terms of or supervenes on non-normative vocabulary, precisely natural RDRDs. Normative primitivism, then, designates the converse of this position.

122 To begin with, let us assume that Esfeld conceives content only as intersubjective. In that case, the claim that content supervenes on the actual normative attitudes and the latter on natural dispositions does not by itself show how (epistemological) objectivity results from social practice. Brandom, in contrast, defends a view that objective content, and truth for that matter, supervene on the correct normative attitudes (normative phenomenalism). As I argue in chapter 5.2, this kind of supervenience does in fact account for objectivity. If Esfeld is to account for objectivity, the abovementioned supervenience claims must somehow be amended. Esfeld indeed does not constrain himself to these supervenience claims. After criticizing Brandom’s normative phenomenalism, he pleads for the following position: “… the attitude of taking something to be true, if correct, supervenes on what is true. Such supervenience is, of course, what we need in order to gain objectivity. This position thus amounts to the following: there are no norms in the world prior to and independently of our social practices. But, once there are social practices, what is true – and thus what are the correct normative attitudes – supervenes on the way the world is”, Esfeld (2001b), pp. 119f., cf. also Esfeld (2001a), p. 133.

So besides the two supervenience claims already discussed, he adds a third one, namely the supervenience of truth on the way the world is. (Fourth, he claims that the objectively correct normative attitudes supervene upon what is true. This point will in the following be neglected.) The decisive problem, then, is to justify this supervenience claim and this means to show how it results from the other two. The problem amounts to this: How can this approach account for epistemological objectivity on the basis of intersubjective content? If content is taken to be objective, then the different supervenience claims must be looked at differently. In that case, the supervenience of truth or objective correctness on the way the world is corresponds to the supervenience of content (where content is now objectively correct) on the actual normative attitudes and of the latter on natural dispositions all packed into one. But this does not substantially change the decisive problem. The question now is: How does the naturalistic approach account for semantic objectivity (and thus for epistemological objectivity) on the basis of the material it proceeds from. Since I assume that Esfeld conceives content as objective, it is this question that will be dealt with below.

123 Having presented the naturalistic approach, I will now work out its decisive features and assess them. First of all, Esfeld starts with each individual’s actual normative attitudes. That he invokes the actual normative attitudes is evident from his rejection of Brandom’s normative phenomenalism. When I say that Esfeld considers each individual’s normative attitudes, I am saying that he distinguishes between what one individual, S1, takes to be correct from her point of view and what another individual, S2, takes to be correct from her point of view. He does not, however, distinguish S1’s normative attitudes from S2’s assessment as to what S1, under consideration of S1’s perspective itself, would correctly take to be correct. One reason why I say that Esfeld merely adopts the simplest distinction between perspectives is that he does not sufficiently specify what forms S2’s assessment as to what is correct: “Sanctions can get a process of determining conceptual content off the ground, because they make available for a person a distinction between correct and incorrect actions by introducing an external perspective: there now is a distinction between what a person takes to be correct or incorrect and what is correct or incorrect in the light of others”, Esfeld (2001a), p. 83.

Nowhere in this quotation does he say that “what is correct or incorrect in the light of others” – S2’s claim as to what S1 would correctly take to be correct – is based upon something other than S2’s own perspective. The fact that Esfeld explicates assessments (sanctions) and normative attitudes in non-normative or naturalistic terms reinforces the view that he only makes a distinction between what different individuals take to be correct from their respective points of view. The naturalistic conception of these items stems from the fact that sanctions, in which normative attitudes become manifest, are conceived as reinforcements of behavior. As such, the more sophisticated distinction between perspectives that I sketched out before is not available to him. S2’s assessment of what S1 would correctly take to be correct, given S1’s own point of view, i.e. given what else she takes to be correct, does not simply become manifest in S2’s dispositions of behavior. S2’s assessment requires that she can distinguish what is taken to be correct by S1 from what is taken to be correct by S2 herself and on what grounds. Therefore such an assessment has to be explicated in terms

124 of normative attitudes. Normative attitudes cannot be further explicated but must be treated as basic. Note that Esfeld is a non-reductionist naturalistic, since he does not explicate content immediately in terms of dispositions of behavior. He first explicates it in terms of normative attitudes that are then explicated in terms of natural dispositions of behavior. Note also that once content has been established, sanctions can be imposed that cannot be explicated in nonnormative terms. I have pointed out that the naturalistic approach proceeds from each individual’s actual normative attitudes and that it explicates assessments and normative attitudes in non-normative vocabulary. How does this material give rise to attitude-transcendence? I have already pointed out that it is problematic to proceed from the actual normative attitudes alone, see chapter 2.1. A process of practical negotiations that is merely based upon a distinction between what different individuals take to be correct themselves – this being the simplest distinction between perspectives I have up to now attributed to the naturalistic approach – may lead to a consensus, but it does not possess the resources for attitude-transcendent correctness. Taking the objectively correct normative attitudes into account is neither promising. Therefore, one might try to find a way out of this predicament by specifying an approach that is based upon the actual normative attitudes in terms of the kind of distinctions between perspectives it draws. The decisive question concerning the plausibility of the naturalistic approach, then, is how it intends to make room for attitude-transcendence on the basis of the actual normative attitudes. Have we maybe overlooked the way the distinction between perspectives is specified? Esfeld only gives a brief hint on how he intends to tackle this task: Sanctions introduce an external perspective (see the last quotation from Esfeld) that is supposed to make room for attitude-transcendence. Precisely, this means that already constitutive practice – which is a process of mutual sanctions, based upon the distinction between what each individual takes to be correct herself – is meant to possess the resources for attitude-transcendence. What is meant by an external perspective? It would be absurd to say that Esfeld assumes a neutral perspective or a God’s eye point of view. This would most evidently run counter to his pragmatist framework. Neverthe-

125 less, he fails to clarify how an external perspective introduced by sanctions is to be understood. But this is still not the crucial point. Instead, the important question is whether sanctions, as they have been characterized in this approach, can make room for a distinction between perspectives that provides attitude-transcendence and that can thus be said to introduce an external perspective. In order to answer this question, it is important to remember that sanctions are explicated in non-normative vocabulary: They are conceived as reinforcements of behavior and are based upon natural dispositions to answer to the world. But sanctions that are explicated in non-normative (naturalistic) vocabulary only allow for a distinction between what is individually taken to be correct. Therefore the process of practical negotiations only allows for an arbitrary consensus. In other words, naturalistically conceived sanctions do not allow for an external perspective if this is supposed to account for attitude-transcendent correctness. To review, the process of practical negotiations only allows for an arbitrary consensus because it proceeds merely from a distinction between what different individuals take to be correct themselves. The non-normative explication of assessments and normative attitudes rules out the possibility of formulating a more sophisticated distinction between perspectives. The fact that constitutive practice only allows for intersubjective correctness of performances (although this practice is intended to allow for attitude-transcendence) implies that this practice is pre-conceptual. Content has been characterized as individuated by inferential relations which are conditions for the objective correctness of assertions and which are objective themselves. A commitment to pre-conceptual constitutive practice also follows from Esfeld’s explicit reference to pre-linguistic practice, see the quotation on p. 119 above. I take what is linguistic, as opposed to the merely verbal realm, to be what expresses content. If Esfeld understands the linguistic realm the same way, then conceiving constitutive practice as pre-linguistic implies that it is pre-conceptual. An interesting question is whether Esfeld conceives the process of practical negotiations as rational or inferential. That he does not conceive the process of practical negotiations as rational is shown by the fact that the process of practical negotiations does not presuppose language. He assumes a

126 close relation between a rational (or inferential) practice and a linguistic one: “An action is linguistic if not only reasons can be asked for it (as for any action), but also if it can be given as a reason”, Esfeld (2001a), p. 98.

Such interrelation makes sense in view of the constitution of empirical content. A linguistic-cum-conceptual practice comprises two features. It is both inferential and attitude-transcendent. A pre-linguistic practice can be inferential only if it neglects that inferences may proceed from observation reports. The consequence of this neglect is that the correctness of inferences cannot be assessed in a way that goes beyond mere intersubjectivity. But limiting the consideration to inferences, the relata of which are themselves inferred and thus renouncing attitude-transcendent correctness, is not appropriate to empirical content. Given the interrelatedness between the linguistic and the rational or inferential realm, Esfeld’s commitment to pre-linguistic practice involves a commitment to pre-inferential or prerational practice. Both rational, inferential structure and conceptual articulation are features that only arise after content has been negotiated. The process of practical negotiations brings about a qualitatively new structure. (Also attitude-transcendent correctness is supposed to arise with content although we have come to see that this cannot be effectuated.) Note that proceeding from pre-rational practice has the consequence that our immediate answers to the world cannot be conceived as observation reports. They can rather be conceived as the world’s impressions on our senses, items that may be conceived as fully belonging to the causal, as opposed to the rational, realm. See chapter 5.4 on the world’s impressions on our senses. They are caused by wordly entities and, in turn, cause, but do not justify other items such as observation reports. I have already pointed out that Esfeld conceives natural dispositions to answer to the world as reliable per se, as natural RDRDs. As such, they are invoked in order to explain how correctness depends on the way the world is and serve as a precondition for settling which entities assertions refer to or are about: “… the causal constraint from the environment ensures that our beliefs refer to certain items in the environment and thus that the truth value of our beliefs supervenes on the way the world is. But note that this position does not imply any dualism be-

127 tween reference as determined by causal relations and conceptual content as consisting in inferential relations. Instead, the conceptual content of our beliefs as consisting in inferential relations makes up for specific reference to items in the world owing to the way in which this content is determined by social practices in a physical environment”, Esfeld (2001a), p. 191.

The two issues of settling the intensional and extensional correctness of assertions and the correctness of their contents with regard to the way the world is and and of settling what an assertion is about are closely related to one another. Once it has been determined which worldly entity an observation report is about, it can be settled whether the report is intensionally correct – this means to state whether an inference from the report to the presence of the entity is endorsed – and whether the report is extensionally correct or true – this means to state whether the entity is present. Tackling both issues apparently requires the consideration of RDRDs. An observation report is assigned a worldly entity by considering the intersection of the causal chains that lead from the report – as it is made from different points of view or by different individuals – via different responses to proximal and distal stimuli to one and the same worldly entity, see chapter 5.1 on this account of aboutness which is called “triangulation.” Esfeld points out that social practice constitutes the proper conditions under which individuals agree on which answers to the world are correct. This means that Esfeld intends to reconcile the role he assigns to natural RDRDs with a social practice account of content by claiming that social practice is required in order to settle which of the natural dispositions are reliable. Esfeld does not adopt Brandom’s view that RDRDs require training so that they are not natural. He also does not follow Sellars and Brandom in holding that an individual can only be said to be reliable if she is assessed by others, which is a second reason why RDRDs are not natural. He only holds that social practice is required in order to settle which of the natural dispositions are reliable. But even this modest claim has the consequence that natural RDRDs can no longer anchor content in the world. In chapter 5.1 I will show that a causal-social account of triangulation that does not consider inferential connections leaves indeterminate what entity a response is about.

128 The approach oscillates between two equally unpalatable interpretations. The first interpretation assumes that the reliability of natural dispositions has to be assessed. In that case it remains obscure how content is anchored in the world. The second interpretation assumes that the importance of reliability assessments is neglected. In that case the approach becomes inconsistent since it violates its pragmatist framework. (This point will be expanded on in section 3.3 vis-à-vis Sellars’s argument in favor of reliability assessments.) In what follows, unless otherwise specified, I assume the latter reading. To sum up, the naturalistic approach can be characterized and assessed as follows: It starts with a process of mutual sanctions that is based upon each individual’s actual normative attitudes. The presumption that sanctions introduce an external perspective (whatever this is) is supposed to be avoid the objection that such a starting point cannot account for attitudetranscendence. I have argued, however, that explicating sanctions and normative attitudes in non-normative terms implies that sanctions cannot play the role that they are supposed to play. When the approach does not get beyond the simple distinction between perspectives, it conceives constitutive practice as merely intersubjective. (Note that this conception of constitutive practice is implied by the approach, but not intended.) The critique, then, comes down to the fact that the simple distinction between perspectives or proceeding from intersubjective constitutive practice are features that rule out attitude-transcendence. This stems from the fact that the naturalistic conception of sanctions and normative attitudes that underlies these features obstructs a more sophisticated distinction between perspectives that might be more promising. Moreover, this approach is committed to a pre-rational (pre-inferential) and thus pre-conceptual conception of constitutive practice. These features cannot yet be assessed. Furthermore, it conceives RDRDs as natural. They are supposed to anchor correctness and content in the world. This claim is also not defensible. Natural RDRDs cannot play the role they are to play if one takes into account that social practice is supposed to settle which natural dispositions are reliable. If this assumption is dropped, however, the proposal to anchor correctness and content in the world by invoking natural RDRDs that do not stand in need

129 of being assessed with respect to their reliability runs counter to the pragmatist framework of the considered naturalistic approach. 3.2 The rejection of the two-step model of content In the preceding section I criticized the naturalistic approach for proceeding from material that does not make it apparent how objectivity is supposed to come about. Precisely, the process of sanctions as based upon a distinction between what individuals take to be correct themselves has been shown to be problematic. The deeper reason why a more sophisticated distinction between perspectives cannot be defended is that sanctions are explicated in ultimately non-normative terms. The approach’s failure to account for objectivity not only says that conceptual practice fails to allow for the objectivity of content and assertions, but also that constitutive practice is conceived as merely intersubjective. Given the emphasis on an external perspective that is supposed to be introduced by sanctions, one must say that it proceeds from merely intersubjective practice, although this implication is not intended. But one might read the account as deliberately choosing such starting point, with the intent to account for a transition from such a starting point to objective conceptual practice. This would of course not change my objection. But in order to rule out such a proposal on principled grounds I will give some reasons why one should not conceive constitutive practice as intersubjective. Such an argument can be provided if one follows Brandom in rejecting a two-step model of content. This model holds that contents are first constituted and only then are assertions and contents brought before the “tribunal of experience.” Building upon Quine (as well as on Hegel), Brandom points out that the process of constituting contents (or what he calls concepts) and applying them is a single process. Applying contents involves examining the correctness of assertions and of contents themselves with regard to the way the world is. Alternatively, Brandom conceives these two aspects of the process as making concepts and finding out of what is correct. Brandom rejects the view that “…we freely make our concepts, and then a nonconceptual reality, which we find, somehow settles which of the claims we stake using those concepts are true or correct… I think this positivistic picture should be rejected. This is partly for Quinean

130 reasons: that making and finding are not intelligible except as abstractions from a single unified process”, Brandom (2000b), p. 360.

He points out that “[f]or him, it is a fantasy to see meanings as freely fixed independently and in advance of one applying those meanings in forming fallible beliefs that answer for their correctness to how things are”, Brandom (1999), p. 167.

If the two-step model of content is rejected, then constitutive practice has to possess the resources for assessing the correctness of inferences with respect to the way the world is. It is thus impossible that objectivity is only enabled after content has been constituted. Therefore the rejection of this model provides a principled reason why resources for attitude-transcendent correctness have to be presupposed right from the beginning of the content-constitutive process. Why should this model be rejected? The first quotation from Brandom shows that this model is to be rejected because it favors conceiving content as being found out over content as being made. This suggests that there is only one appropriate way to draw conceptual borders. That the two-step model must adopt such a view is, however, not evident to me. Let us therefore look for a more concrete argument against the two-step model. I think it has to be rejected if one cannot distinguish between questions about content and questions about facts. This distinction, in turn, can be criticized in different ways. Pointing to Quine’s rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction suggests itself here, since Brandom himself invokes Quine. But I do not think that Quine’s argument is convincing. Moreover, Brandom makes it clear that criticizing the analytic-synthetic distinction does not speak against the distinction between questions about content and questions about facts. What does speak against it, though, is a point Brandom makes against Sellars’s defence of it. I will look at the Quinean and the anti-Sellarsian points in turn. Quine (1951) criticizes what he calls the two dogmas of empiricism. The first dogma is the distinction between analytic assertions, the truth of which is based only upon their contents, and synthetic assertions, the truth of which depends upon the way the world is. True analytic assertions divide up into logical truths and truths that turn into logical truths once the subsentential expressions which they contain have been substituted for

131 synonymous ones. Logical truths are not further considered. (I think they still can be called purely analytic even if the rest of Quine’s argumentation should be convincing.) Quine then tries to make sense of the notion of analyticity by clarifying the notion of synonymy. He thereby employs the empiricist verification theory of content, according to which the content of an expression consists in its empirical method of verification. Given this assumption, two assertions are synonymous if their methods of empirical verification concur. Empirical verification can be spelled out in two different ways. First, it can consist in a report about sense data. But Quine tacitly agrees with Sellars when he objects that a pure sense data language is not available. Second, empirical verification can consist in an unequivocal assignment of empirical evidence to a particular assertion. Referring to Duhem (1906), Quine objects to this conception of empirical verification that knowledge is empirically underdetermined. Positively formulated, he defends a holism of evidence according to which a single assertion cannot be empirically verified. Only the whole net of assertions can be given empirical evidence: “…our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body”, Quine (1951), p. 38.

Having thus demonstrated that the notion of synonymy is not any clearer than the notion of analyticity, Quine abandons the analytic-synthetic distinction, the rejection of which goes hand in hand with the second dogma of empiricism. There are, however, at least two problems with this line of argument. First, Quine criticizes empiricism using a view that by today’s standards is hardly defensible, namely the verification theory of content, cf. also Esfeld (1999), pp. 36-43. Second, the issue whether knowledge is empirically underdetermined is in dispute, cf. e.g. Wilson (1980). Moreover, Duhem considers theories to be empirically underdetermined since one may revise any of its hypotheses in order to bring the theory into concurrence with empirical evidence. But Quine does not only defend a local holism. He claims that empirical evidence always backs the whole net of empirical assertions. Quine’s defence of such global holism requires extended argumentation, not just a reference to Duhem. The objection that the presumed global holism of evidence is at least not sufficiently justified shakes the whole line

132 of argument. Only global holism of evidence has the consequence that the content of one empirical assertion depends upon the contents of all others. And only such global holism of content speaks against the analyticsynthetic distinction. Even if the analytic-synthetic distinction were convincingly criticized, the distinction between questions about content and questions about facts would not necessarily be indefensible. Quine is mistaken when he thinks he has ruled out the latter distinction by ruling out the former: “The issue over there being classes seems more a question of convenient conceptual scheme; the issue over there being centaurs, or brick houses on Elm Street, seems more a question of fact. But I have been urging that this difference is only one of degree…”, Quine (1951), p. 43.

Indeed, Sellars (1948) defends the latter distinction in a way that is compatible with the rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction. He characterizes content in terms of those inferences that support counterfactual conditionals. These conditionals correspond to nomological relations and therefore hold in virtue of empirical grounds. So, what constitutes content is empirical, not analytic. Sellars’s defence of a distinction between both kinds of questions has been criticized by Brandom (1994), p. 633-636, who argues that mastering a particular kind of inferences, namely counterfactual ones, is neither necessary nor sufficient for content. In chapter 2.2 I presented and defended Brandom’s point. If it is convincing, then the Sellarsian distinction between both kinds of questions – and on these grounds also the more constrained analytic-synthetic distinction – can no longer be drawn. 3.3 Sellars’s antifoundationalism and its implications In this section I will amend my objections to the naturalistic account of content (see section 3.1) on the basis of Sellars’s argument against a foundationalist position. In what follows, I will first present his argument and then critic a particular aspect of his alternative to the rejected position. Finally, I will develop two bundles of objections to the naturalistic account based on Sellars’s critically reconstructed position. Sellars’s antifoundationalism, i.e. his rejection of the Myth of the Given, states that there are not any items that are able to justify assertions without

133 standing in need of justification themselves. This thesis can be argued for as follows: The only items that can justify assertions are further assertions. Therefore a justification of empirical assertions by sense data or observations as opposed to assertions about sense data or observations is doomed to failure. But an assertion is not only an item that can be given as a reason for a claim. It is also an item for which one can ask for reasons: “The kind of commitment that a claim of the assertional sort is an expression of is something that can stand in need of… a reason; and it is something that can be offered as a reason”, Brandom (1994), p. 167.

The justifying assertions stand in need of justification themselves. Therefore it is also impossible to base the justification of empirical assertions on a privileged kind of assertions, e.g. observation reports. Claiming that only assertions can justify other assertions and that they stand in need of justification themselves comes up to the rejection of “self-authenticitating nonverbal episodes:” “The idea that observation ‘strictly and properly so-called’ is constituted by certain self-authenticitating non-verbal episodes, the authority of which is transmitted to verbal and quasi-verbal performances when these performances are made ‘in conformity with the semantical rules of the language’, is, of course, the heart of the Myth of the Given”, Sellars (1956), section 38, p. 169.

Before I draw out Sellars’s argument, let me make two remarks. First, Sellars considers the justification of knowledge (and thus of beliefs) but not of assertions. But he considers knowledge that is propositionally articulated, that has propositional content: “… what is known, even in non-inferential knowledge, is facts rather than particulars, items of the form something’s being thus-and-so or something’s standing in a certain relation to something else”, Sellars (1956), section 3, p. 128.

Therefore, I think it is possible to formulate his argument in terms of assertions, the items in which such knowledge gets expressed. Second, Sellars only exemplarily starts out from a critique of sense data as a foundation for empirical assertions. But this is only one kind of the problematic Myth of the Given. Assertions that do not stand in need of justifi-

134 cation themselves is another kind of the Myth of the Given.3 Sellars turns his attention to it once he rejects the former kind. Other forms of the Myth of the Given consider material objects, universals, properties, real connections or first principles as self-authenticitating justifiers, cf. Sellars (1956), section 1, pp. 127f. These forms are, however, not explicitly dealt with by Sellars. In this section I concentrate on sense data theories. Other versions of the Myth of the Given will be considered in chapter 5.4. What do both forms of the Myth of the Given say, and on what grounds do they claim to have identified self-authenticitating justifiers? Sense data are the world’s immediate impressions on our senses, our responses to external stimuli. They are caused by the way the world is. The assumption, then, is that one cannot be wrong about them, and thus they do not stand in need of justification. Moreover, they are supposed to be able to justify noninferential and inferential assertions since they are taken to entail knowledge. (This does not mean that sense data are taken to possess content or that they are beliefs. This caveat is important because otherwise it would be unintelligible why Sellars criticizes the assumption of selfauthenticitating sense data on the grounds that only beliefs or what is conceptually articulated can justify. I think Brandom overlooks this point when he paraphrases Sellars’s claim that sensing provides knowledge (see below) as “‘S senses red sense content x’ entails ‘S noninferentially believes (knows) that x is red.’”, Brandom (1997), p. 129, accentuation AC.)

The other kind of the Myth of the Given holds that one cannot be wrong about a privileged kind of assertions, precisely assertions as to how things look or observation reports, i.e. non-inferential assertions as to how things are. Since they are assertions they can justify. In order to understand the argument against the Myth of the Given as outlined above, two questions have to be answered. First, why are only assertions able to justify assertions (point 1)? And second, why do all assertions stand in need of justification (point 2)? Both questions together come up to a justification of the 3

This position which has been defended by Ayer can be considered as a particular version of a sense datum theory. When I speak of sense datum theories I only mean the classical version that founds empirical assertions in what is not an assertion.

135 conception of assertion as what can serve as a reason and can be asked for a reason. I will consider them in turn. Ad point 1: The view that something that is not an assertion – but rather a sense datum – is able to justify assertions is based upon a confusion of causes with reasons. Sellars criticizes sense datum theories as inconsistent because they presuppose the following combination of claims: First, sensing – being immediately impressed by the world – provides knowledge. Second, the capacity to sense is unacquired. Third, the capacity to know facts is acquired. The second and the third claims are most plausible. Therefore one has to negate that sensings – items that are not assertions – can be bits of knowledge and are therefore able to justify assertions, cf. Sellars (1956), section 6, pp. 131f. The inconsistency in sense datum theories can be diagnosed as a confusion of causes with reasons. Talk of sense data confuses the world’s impressions on our senses as the causes for our seeing-that (and thus for our observation reports) with non-inferential knowledge as what may justify assertions, cf. Sellars (1956), section 7, pp. 132. Ad point 2: The parable of young John in the necktie-shop shows that mastering assertions as to how things look and observation reports presupposes mastering further assertions. One might think that claims about how things look do not stand in need of justification. This view, however, is indefensible. After having rejected sense data as foundations for empirical assertions, Sellars argues that these claims do not form a foundation. This point is the target of his discussion of “looks”-talk, cf. sections 10-20, pp. 140-149. One might think that an assertion like “X looks green” can be mastered without mastering other assertions. But the parable of young John in the necktie-shop (section 14) shows that only after John has come to master the proper conditions for making a report like “X is green (and not blue)” does he master “X looks green (and not blue).” This is because the latter assertion is conceived as a withheld endorsement of “X is green.” Endorsement is withheld by an individual because she takes it to be possible that the proper conditions do not apply. (It now becomes evident that the assertion “X looks green” only seems to be an observation report. The assertion mentions a reliable dispo-

136 sition to call X green, but it does not call it green, it does not say that the speaker is reliably disposed to claim that X is green, cf. Brandom (1997), p. 139.) As a consequence, “looks”-talk does not form an autonomous language game relative to “is”-talk: One cannot master “looks”-talk without mastering “is”-talk. Saying that an individual only masters “looks”-talk when she masters “is”-talk means that the former kind of talk is not selfauthenticitating. The individual is only justified in making a claim as to how things look if she masters the proper conditions for a claim as to how things are. But Sellars’s point is not only that assertions as to how things look do not form a foundation of empirical assertions. Observation reports – noninferential assertions as to how things are –also do not form such a foundation. This is because according to Sellars both kinds of assertions require that the speaker can justify her assertion inferentially. “X is green” can be justified by inferring from the proper conditions that are taken to apply to the endorsement of the claim that there is a green object. “X looks green,” in contrast, can be justified by inferring from the proper conditions that are taken maybe not to apply to the withholding of endorsement of the claim that there is a green object. If it is impossible that a speaker masters noninferential reports without being able to draw inferences, a pure observation language does not exist. Non-inferential reports do not form an autonomous stratum of language. The assumption of sense data can be criticized on the grounds that only assertions are able to justify. The assumption of self-authenticitating assertions can be criticized on the grounds that all assertions stand in need of justification. Besides, it now also turns out that there is a second objection to sense datum theories. If assertions about sense data – be they conceived as assertions as to how things look or as non-inferential reports as to how things are – stand in need of justification, then having reliable sense data, i.e. being reliably disposed to make the assertion in question, also stand in need of justification. Let me now spell out in greater detail how Sellars conceives the preconditions for mastering observation reports. An observation report is justified only if the observer is reliable, i.e. if she is disposed to give the correct answer A in every instance of the proper conditions C and only in case these

137 conditions apply. But reliability is not a natural property. An observer rather has to be assessed as reliable by other members of her community. This applies both during the training period where the observer learns to master the proper conditions (see Sellars’s parable of young John in the necktie-shop) and going beyond what Sellars says explicitly every time she makes a report. Such an assessment requires that not only the interpreter but also the observer herself are able to relate the report inferentially with other assertions. The importance of mastering inferences from proper conditions is already stressed when Sellars considers “looks”-talk. It is later specified as follows: “The first hurdle to be jumped concerns the authority which... a sentence token must have in order that it may be said to express knowledge. Clearly, on this account the only thing that can remotely be supposed to constitute such authority is the fact that one can infer the presence of a green object from the fact that someone makes this report. … The second hurdle is, however, the decisive one. For we have seen that to be the expression of knowledge, a report must not only have authority, this authority must in some sense be recognized by the person whose report it is. And this is a steep hurdle indeed. For if the authority of the report ‘This is green’ lies in the fact that the existence of green items appropriately related to the perceiver can be inferred from the occurrence of such reports, it follows that only a person who is able to draw this inference, and therefore who has not only the concept green, but also the concept of uttering ‘This is green’ – indeed, the concept of certain conditions of perception, those which would correctly be called ‘standard conditions’ – could be in a position to token ‘This is green’ in recognition of its authority”, Sellars (1956), section 35, pp. 167f.

According to this quotation, a reliable observer must be able to infer from her report the presence of the entity it is about. She must e.g. endorse the inference “If I observe a rabbit, then there is a rabbit.” This capacity constitutes what Sellars calls the authority of the observation report. This means that the report is reliable and can be made use of in the justifications others give for their claims. The authority of a report goes hand in hand with the observer’s responsibility to justify the report as reliable. This requires that the observer knows the proper conditions under which the observation report can be made and that she takes them to apply. She has to endorse e.g. the inference “If in bright daylight I see something that looks like a rabbit, then I observe a rabbit.” And since she claims “I observe a rabbit” she also endorses “It is bright daylight” (provided that she is rational).

138 Sellars’s important insight is that reliability presupposes inferential articulation. But it is in dispute whether his specification of this insight is appropriate, more precisely, his claim that the observer herself has to endorse upon request inferences that justify her report. What is in dispute is, in other words, his internalist conception of justification. Such a conception says that the reasons why an assertion (or a belief) is justified must at least in principle be accessible to the individual who makes the assertion (or holds the belief), cf. e.g. Bonjour (1992) on internalism and externalism of the justification condition of knowledge. According to a strong version, the individual must actually be aware of the justifying factors. According to a weak version, she must become aware of them once she draws her attention to them. (Becoming aware of them after having achieved additional information is, however, not sufficient for defending an internalist position.) According to an externalist position the assertion can be justified in purely causal terms. Brandom (1994), pp. 217-221 makes two objections to Sellars’s internalism. First, he criticizes Sellars’s view that it is necessary to justify one’s report inferentially. Precisely, it is necessary to identify the proper conditions under which the report can be made (from which the report can be inferred). This view neglects that it is also possible to justify one’s report by deferring to the authority of another individual. Brandom’s argument is surely correct. But I think it is not decisive because it does not rule out that at least one individual has to be able to justify her claim inferentially. Brandom’s second objection (which overlaps with the first one) is more important. It says that the observer need not acknowledge the proper conditions for a reliable report. This objection is based upon Brandom’s claim that an alternative, externalist conception of justification is available: “Sellars… is right that for a reliably elicited differential response to be a candidate for knowledge, the one making the knowledge claim must be in the space of reasons… Requiring this general capacity, of course, falls short of requiring that on each occasion the reporter must be able to justify the claim…” “Sellars is also right to insist that attributions of knowledge require not just reliability but at least implicit endorsement of the inference… from the occurrence of a report… to the endorsement of the claim. Where Sellars is wrong… is in thinking that

139 the one who endorses this inference must be the one who undertakes the claim to observational knowledge”, both quotations are taken from Brandom (1994), p. 220.

What does this mean? An observer is not only reliable if she endorses upon request an inference from the proper conditions to her report. She is already reliable if she can be attributed commitment to these inferences. Being committed to an inference means that according to the interpreter, S2, the observer, S1, would correctly endorse it. For a more detailed explication of the distinction between endorsement of a claiming (the acknowledgement of commitment to it) and the attribution of commitment to it see chapter 5.1. Cases where an observer makes her report iff the proper conditions apply although she does not acknowledge them upon request do exist. An example is the case of an individual who can reliably tell the sex of a newlyhatched chicken just by looking at it, even though she is not able to justify her response by stating criteria for it. In fact it may be that her response is not causally related to her visual perception – as she surmises – but to olfactory stimuli, cf. Brandom (2002b). The difficult question – one that Brandom does not really deal with – is in what case does S2 consider S1 as committed to inferences from the proper conditions to her observation report. In order to answer this question let me first broaden the conception of proper conditions beyond the way it has been presented so far. Proper conditions do not merely state how something looks under appropriate outer and inner circumstances, e.g. in bright daylight or in case the observer is not color-blind. They state in general from what other claim the observation report can be inferred. The justifying claims do not only encompass claims as to how things look in particular circumstances, but also further observation reports – non-inferential reports as to how things are – or inferentially derived assertions as to how things are. Justifying one’s report by pointing to a non-inferential or inferential claim as to how things are does not suggest itself in a case like “I observe a red object,” although one can justify also this report by claiming “The wave-length of the light emitted by the object is 750 nm.” Also in the chicken sexer example inferential justification does not suggest itself although the chicken sexer’s classification of chicks into male and female ones can in principle be justified by pointing to the visual or olfactory cri-

140 teria, which she is totally unaware of but nevertheless implicitly applies.4 More typical are cases where the capacity to make the report is acquired only after a sophisticated training process in the course of which inferential connections are learnt. An expert driver non-inferentially reports e.g. “I am driving too fast.” In driving school, she learnt: “If the speedometer shows more than 100 km/h and if I am driving on a Federal Highway in Germany, then I am driving too fast.” She has developed her sense for the appropriate speed by having repeatedly applied this inference. In the rabbit example used above the observer can justify her report by pointing to an inference like “If I observe a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail, then I observe a rabbit.” There are also two ways to interpret an observer as being committed to an inference from proper conditions to the observation report. These interpretations do not equally apply to the two kinds of proper conditions I have distinguished. If one considers how things look under particular inner and outer circumstances, then S2 must first of all examine in a sufficient number of instances whether S1 endorses the report iff the proper conditions (as S2 conceives them) prevail. This device, though, has two drawbacks. First, S1 need not acknowledge the proper conditions, but S2 would have to if she made the observation report. So this device does not really avoid an internalist position. The interpreter has to acknowledge the proper conditions, which would involve everybody if one considers a practice of mutual assessments where everybody is the interpreter of somebody else! The decisive, second drawback is that the interpreter’s perspective is privileged: What the interpreter considers as the proper conditions are the proper conditions. Both objections can be avoided if one assumes that the proper conditions are negotiated – i.e. that they are found out in the course of a process of mutual assessments – rather than already acknowledged by an individual. Attributed claims as to how things look in certain circum-

4

Quine holds that it is not settled in advance what counts as an observational concept and what counts as a theoretical one. As a consequence, any kind of practice that involves non-inferential claims can be assigned a thinkable practice where these reports are inferred so that any kind of non-inferential claims can be justified by pointing to their inferential connections.

141 stances can only be negotiated in a very restricted sense. They can be negotiated with respect to what circumstances are relevant, but not with respect to what it means that something has to look like an X in order to be an X. Only inferentially or non-inferentially related assertions as to how things are can be fully negotiated. An example for this procedure will be given in chapter 5.1. To sum up, in order to justify an observation report by pointing to proper conditions that state how things look under particular circumstances, an examination of the repeated instances in which the observer makes her report is required. A justification in terms of proper conditions that state how things are, in contrast, can either be given in this way or by examining and assessing the inferences the observer endorses. Both the examination of repeated instances of the report and the assessment of the inferences the observer endorses are important in order to settle the reliability of an observation report. Despite its drawbacks, the first is important insofar as observation reports are supposed to serve as regressstoppers. But the second is indispensable in order not to privilege the interpreter’s perspective. Therefore, it is to be preferred wherever possible. Moreover, the application of this way of justifying claims as to how things are is important in order to fully guarantee that observation reports are only preliminary regress-stoppers. Is it not a rather peculiar conception of reliability to distinguish two kinds of proper conditions and two ways how to interpret an observer as being committed to these conditions? Is it not more appropriate to identify proper conditions with the circumstances under which something looks in a particular way and to examine only under what circumstances an observation report is made in repeated instances? My conception of reliability indeed seems to be inappropriate. Interpreting an observer by considering what inferences and assertions she endorses, instead of examining in what cases she makes her report, does not yet state whether the observer makes her report if and only if the proper conditions apply. It settles intensional correctness if the endorsement of an inference from proper conditions to the report is examined and extensional correctness if the endorsement of its premise is examined, but not strictly reliability. When I speak of reliability in this study, I use this notion in an inexact manner, meaning that only in a concrete instance an observation report is correctly caused by our answers

142 to the world. But how can my conception of reliability be defended? The suggestion that one has to look at repeated instances of observation reports would have to be adopted only if the reason why observation reports anchor content in the world were their being regress-stoppers. But given the fact that they are only preliminary regress-stoppers this cannot be the reason. It is rather important that they are caused by our answers to the world, see chapter 5.2 on the role observation reports play. Moreover, in making room for fully negotiating the proper conditions, my conception of reliability has the advantage that it does not privilege the interpreter’s point of view. If one adopts this approach to what it means to attribute S1 commitment to reliability warranting inferences, then renouncing Sellars’s internalism does not negate rational or inferential capacities on the observer’s side tout court. Her reliability is settled in the course of a process of mutual assessments, see chapter 5.1 for the importance of settling correctness and thus reliability by mutual assessments. Therefore, she has to be able to participate in a game of giving and asking for reasons. Or, as Brandom quotes Sellars approvingly: She has to be in the space of reasons. This conception of justification differs from Sellars’s since it is externalist while still respecting his insight that an observation report has to be assessed by considering its inferential connections. Thus, it is an externalist position that differs from the usual one since it does not conceive reliability in purely causal terms. As a consequence of the proposed modification of Sellars’s conception of justification, Sellars’s formulation of the Myth of the Given has to be modified. The original formulation says that there are not any items that are able to justify assertions without standing in need of justification themselves. This is based upon the double thesis that only assertions are able to justify and that all assertions stand in need of justification. The first half of this thesis corresponds to Davidson’s claim that “…nothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except another belief”, Davidson (1983), p. 123.

143 The following formulation now turns out to be preferable: “…‘Nothing can count as a reason for endorsing a believable except another believable,’ where believables are the contents of possible beliefs, that is, what is propositionally contentful”, Brandom (1997), pp. 122f.

Or, in McDowell’s terms, one can say that “…nothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except something else that is also in the space of concepts”, McDowell (1994), p. 143.

The upshot of the critique against Sellars is that justification does not require beliefs but contents, where the attribution of content to a speaker does not presuppose that she endorses particular assertions and inferences. In chapter 5.4 we see that the insight that justification requires content is not sufficient in order to avoid the Myth of the Given. The critical presentation of Sellars’s line of argument has been concluded. I now want to exploit his antifoundationalism in two respects in order to further criticize the naturalistic account of content. The first aspect I wish to exploit is Sellars’s important insight that observation reports have to be assessed with respect to their reliability – both during the training period and every time an observer makes a report. As a consequence, RDRDs cannot be conceived as natural. A non-natural conception of RDRDs has two consequences. First, the existence of RDRDs alone can no longer anchor content in the world. One rather has to examine whether observation reports are manifestations of RDRDs. Second, although our responsive dispositions can be said to cause observation reports, RDRDs cannot be explicated in purely causal terms. They rather have to be conceived in normative terms, in terms of assessments. But does this mean that RDRDs have to be explicated in normative terms all the way down? Let me explain why I think it does. A normative explication of RDRDs all the way down does not only presuppose that observation reports have to be assessed. It also presupposes that assessments have to be explicated in terms of normative attitudes which are conceived as basic. But can the former precondition be fulfilled without fulfilling the latter? Is it thinkable that RDRDs presuppose assessments whereas the latter can be explicated in terms of dispositions of behavior? This is not thinkable because in that case the assessment of a report as reliable would be based upon dispositions of behavior that are not reliable themselves.

144 Both preconditions therefore cannot be separated. As a consequence, claiming that reliability presupposes assessments is sufficient for establishing the claim that RDRDs have to be explicated in normative terms all the way down. That assessments must not be conceived in terms of dispositions of behavior will be argued on more general grounds in chapter 5.1. What does the insight that RDRDs are not natural add to the critique against the naturalistic account? This account is mistaken in conceiving RDRDs as natural. Therefore its proposal to anchor content in the world by invoking natural RDRDs is doomed to failure. Moreover, its semantic naturalism according to which content is explicated in terms of assessments that are in turn explicated in terms of dispositions of behavior is indefensible. Finally and most important, conceiving RDRDs as natural buys into the Myth of the Given and runs counter to a pragmatist account of content according to which content is in a way made. But this is not the only set of objections that can be derived from Sellars’s antifoundationalism. The naturalistic account is also mistaken in proceeding from pre-rational, pre-conceptual practice. Let me explain. Sellars argues that an observation report can only be considered as being reliably caused by a worldly entity if one takes the inferences into account that justify the report. More generally formulated, this means that a distinction between performances that are correct with respect to the way the world is – that are objectively correct – and those that are incorrect presupposes that observation reports are integrated into an inferentially (or rationally) articulated practice. That already constitutive practice has to possess the resources for objectivity has been argued in section 3.1. If this point is combined with the Sellarsian point just made, constitutive practice has to be conceived as rational or inferential. I have characterized the conceptual realm as what is inferentially articulated in such a way that it formulates conditions for attitude-transcendent correctness. This means that the conceptual realm can be characterized in terms of those inferential connections that take reliable observation reports into account. Given this characterization of the conceptual realm one can alternatively express the point just made by saying that objectivity requires conceptual articulation.

145 Let me summarize the critical aspects I have identified in the considered naturalistic approach, the insights with respect to the features a convincing account of content has to possess, and also mention some still unsettled issues. First, I have criticized that the approach does not go beyond intersubjective correctness. As a diagnosis, I have suggested that proceeding from the actual normative attitudes in combination with a distinction between what different individuals subjectively take to be correct does not take us beyond intersubjectivity. Second, I have further diagnosed the failure of the considered approach by suggesting that in order to formulate a more sophisticated distinction between perspectives that does get beyond intersubjectivity, normative attitudes and the assessments (sanctions) in which these attitudes get expressed must not be explicated in non-normative vocabulary. A distinction between what an individual takes to be correct and what she would correctly take to be correct in the light of her interpreter can only be described in terms of normative attitudes. If I am right that such a distinction leads beyond intersubjectivity, adopting this distinction means considering normative attitudes as basic. And there is a third problematic feature besides the too simple distinction between perspectives and the underlying non-normative explication of assessments and normative attitudes. When the approach fails to get beyond intersubjectivity this does not only mean that it fails to account for the objectivity of content and assertions – objective conceptual practice – but that it also conceives constitutive practice as merely intersubjective, even though this is not intended. A merely intersubjective starting point has been criticized on principled grounds by considering arguments from Quine. Besides this complex of problematic aspects there is another one. Building upon Sellars, RDRDs have turned out not to be natural. Conceiving them as natural – as the naturalistic account does – runs counter to a pragmatist framework and leads to the Myth of the Given. Moreover, the proposal to anchor content in the world by invoking natural RDRDs is mistaken. Finally, the rejection of natural RDRDs (and a conception of assessments in terms of dispositions of behavior) speaks against the semantic naturalism, which the considered account adopts. Further building upon Sellars, one can also argue that constitutive practice has to be conceived as rational (or

146 inferential) and as conceptual since this practice has to possess the resources for objectivity. Two issues remain to be dealt with. First, it is still unsettled how a distinction between perspectives can be characterized so as to make room for attitude-transcendence even though it does not presuppose attitudetranscendently correct normative attitudes. Second, it is not clear how content can be anchored in the world without invoking natural RDRDs. I will come back to both issues in chapter 5.

147

4 A pragmatist reading of Heidegger – a middle position? In this section I will discuss a pragmatist reading of Heidegger (1927). According to such reading, Heidegger claims that objective correctness is already enabled by pre-conceptual practice. The Heideggerian approach is currently considered by some authors as a promising middle way between an objectionable naturalistic approach – an approach that proceeds from merely intersubjective practice and leaves obscure how the transition to objective correctness is supposed to come about – and an approach that proceeds from conceptual practice so that it apparently becomes circular. If the circularity claim is indefensible, as I will argue in chapter 5.3, then the proposed Heideggerian approach cannot be motivated as a middle way between two equally unacceptable strategies. And in chapter 3.3 I have invoked Sellars’s antifoundationalism in order to argue that conceptual articulation is required for objectivity. Therefore it is clear that the Heideggerian approach is indefensible. Given the importance of this approach in the recent literature, it seems to be useful to consider it in detail despite the objections to its motivation and to its viability. As it has only been sketched up to now but not carried out, one cannot compare it in a comprehensive way with the naturalistic and the primitivist approaches. I only make use of it in order to deepen the discussion of a particular feature of constitutive practice, namely the consideration of the question whether constitutive practice has to be conceptually articulated or not. In the following I will first present current approaches that refer to Heidegger in order to formulate a middle way between the two kinds of approaches mentioned (section 4.1). Then I will give textual evidence in favor of a pragmatist reading of Heidegger (section 4.2). Finally, I will discuss why the position attributed to him cannot be defended (section 4.3). 4.1 Protagonists of a pragmatist reading of Heidegger To give a pragmatist reading of Heidegger means especially to ascribe to Heidegger the claim that epistemic access to worldly entities is already enabled by practical coping with the world. Or, as Heidegger puts it, discovering (“entdecken”) entities is already possible in dealing with the available (“Zuhandenes”). The big issue in recent pragmatist approaches is to give an account of objectivity and thus to refute the objection that pragmatism

148 buys into relativism. On the foil of this explanatory aim, Heidegger must look promising to these approaches: Coping with the world is a specifically human practice that at the same time stands the test of the constraints the world imposes on it. The concrete constitution (Heidegger speaks of determination) of the structure of worldly entities and empirical contents that is enabled by practical coping with entities both in a way makes and finds out theses structures. A pragmatist reading of Heidegger has become prominent since the 1980s. Important proponents of such a reading are Haugeland (1982), Okrent (1988) and – in a different way – Dreyfus (1991). Haugeland’s famous slogan “All constitution is institution” is paradigmatic. It accentuates the importance of human practice for the constitution of entities and contents. It is not undisputed whether Heidegger can be interpreted in a pragmatist way, cf. e.g. Blattner (1992). But I will not discuss this exegetical problem. I am moreover not so much interested in the discussion of the basic pragmatist claim ascribed to Heidegger which I have formulated above, but in a particular specification of it: Protagonists of a pragmatist reading of Heidegger usually claim that Heidegger proceeds from pre-linguistic (or pre-conceptual) practice. This specific claim is disputed as well, cf. e.g. Lafont (1994). Again, the exegetical question shall be set aside. In the following section I only wish to make this reading of Heidegger plausible. In order to do this I will give textual evidence from Heidegger that speaks in favor of this reading. Esfeld (manuscript) and – in a less direct way – Haugeland (1995) invoke the reading of Heidegger sketched above in order to point out a middle way between a naturalistic and a primitivist answer to the question of how objective content can be constituted by social practice. Let me briefly present both Haugeland’s and Esfeld’s way of making use of Heidegger. Haugeland (1995), cf. especially pp. 230ff. makes use of Heidegger when he rejects the idea that the world is conceptually articulated. The rejection of this idea can be interpreted as a rejection of conceptual realism, which is a feature that figures in the primitivist answer I will consider. Haugeland’s thesis, in contrast, is that there is an intimacy between mind and world: The world is mental and mind is worldly, but both poles nevertheless differ from each other insofar as the world, as opposed to the mind, does not exhibit content. The world is mental only insofar as it is significant or mean-

149 ingful. This is supposed to say that worldly entities are interdependent, which corresponds to Heidegger’s idea that they are articulated by referential contexts (“Verweisungszusammenhänge”), and important to us, which corresponds to Heidegger’s idea that they are available. And the mind is worldly insofar as the meaningful is not a detached representation of the world but the world itself: “Of course, hammers and the like are ‘significant’ (and even ‘meaningful’) in the sense that they’re important to us, and interdependent with other things in their proper use. But that’s not the same as meaning in the sense of bearing content or having a semantics. Certainly! That's why they're not representations”, Haugeland (1995), p. 233.

Esfeld (manuscript), pp. 13-16 makes use of Heidegger in order to discuss a position according to which constitutive practice is explicated in normative terms, so that it may be able to distinguish between objectively correct and incorrect performances, although it is not yet conceptual. In that essay he gives a critical overview of possible conceptions of social practice in view of an account of content. First, he dissociates himself from the position defended earlier (however he explicitly only criticizes Haugeland (1998) and Pettit (1993)). He argues that a position that assumes a transition from sanctions that are explicated in non-normative terms, to fullblown conceptual practice that is ultimately explicated in terms of normative attitudes, ends up being indiscernible from a straight solution to the rule-following problem, precisely from a social version of a dispositional solution. Put alternatively, he claims that a non-normative explication of the most basic kind of sanctions comes up to a reductionist kind of naturalism. Putting a non-normative explication of sanctions in a box with reductionism implies two things. If a reductionist position does not make room for any kind of correctness (see chapter 2.1), a non-normative explication of sanctions also rules out any kind of correctness. As a consequence, nonreductionist naturalism – a position that explicates content in terms of normative attitudes that are, in turn, explicated in terms of dispositions of behavior – is not a self-sustaining position as compared to reductionist naturalism. I think these severe objections to a naturalistic account are justified, although I have given a more charitable interpretation of the naturalistic approach discussed in the preceding chapter. A non-normative expli-

150 cation of normative vocabulary has only been criticized on the grounds that it fails to get beyond intersubjective correctness. After criticizing a naturalistic account of content, Esfeld considers the opposite strategy that does not only explicate normative practice all the way down in normative terms, but more specifically proceeds from conceptual practice. He confronts this strategy with the objection that it is circular; for a presentation and critical assessment of this argument see chapter 5.3. This strategy is all the more unpalatable because Esfeld claims that proceeding from conceptually articulated practice buys into a gap between the world and our conceptualizations. Immediately after presuming a circularity of concept acquisition, he continues: “An diese Frage kann folgender zweiter Einwand angeschlossen werden: Wenn normative Einstellungen und begrifflicher Inhalt umfangsgleich und in sich abgeschlossen sind, wie sind dann normative Einstellungen an die physikalische Welt gebunden?”, Esfeld (manuscript), p. 15.

Let us first of all consider how the claims that normative attitudes and contents are co-extensional and closed are related to a strategy that proceeds from conceptual articulation. To call the realm of normative attitudes and contents closed means, I think, to claim that normative attitudes cannot be explicated in non-normative vocabulary so that contents, too, cannot ultimately be explicated in such vocabulary. Normative attitudes rather have to be conceived as basic. Treating normative vocabulary as basic is implied by proceeding from conceptual articulation. How the presumed coextensionality of normative attitudes and contents is related to such a starting point is, however, not intelligible to me. The thesis that proceeding from conceptual articulation leads to the mentioned gap can therefore be based at most upon the claim that normative attitudes and contents are closed. But what this claim has to do with the looming gap is not intelligible to me. Therefore, Esfeld’s argument that proceeding from conceptual articulation may lead to a gap between the world and our conceptualisations does not look convincing to me. For the sake of completeness let us also see how the other suggested consequence of a conceptual starting point is related to the gap. If contents were co-extensional with actual normative attitudes (and a pragmatist account of content must build upon the actual normative attitudes), there would exist the presumed gap. But

151 the co-extensionality claim is false: Content is not individuated by normative attitudes. It is rather an abstract limit of a process that proceeds from each individual’s subjective normative attitudes, but notwithstanding possesses the resources for settling objective correctness. (An important feature that enables objective correctness is the fact that each individual distinguishes between what the other takes to be correct and what is correct in her own view.) Given Esfeld’s objections to a naturalistic as well as to a primitivist approach, building upon Heidegger seems to be a way out of a dilemma formed by two equally unacceptable positions. But Esfeld realizes that what looks like a dilemma is actually a trilemma: He considers the Heideggerian position as indefensible because he follows Sellars (1956) in holding that a practice that allows for (objective) correctness has to be conceived as rational (inferential) and conceptual: “Wie kann etwas ohne begrifflichen Inhalt eine Norm sein?… Etwas ist nur dann eine Norm, wenn es begründbar ist; und etwas ist nur dann eine normative Einstellung, wenn das Wesen, das diese Einstellung hat, gegebenfalls eine – zumindest rudimentäre Begründung für diese Einstellung geben kann”, Esfeld (manuscript), p. 14.

(The question whether Heidegger actually fails to proceed from inferential practice, and how exactly the objection to his position therefore has to be formulated, will be considered in the following section.) 4.2 Textual evidence for a pragmatist reading of Heidegger The line of thought in Heidegger that gives rise to ascribing to him objectivity without assertion is the following: Heidegger proceeds from a practical coping with the world, dealing with the available (“Zuhandenes”, ready-to-hand). Only when such practice is disturbed, so that entities become what one may call, following Dreyfus (1991), unavailable, Beingthere (“Dasein”)5 becomes aware of the entities’ structure, their referential contexts. Already dealing with the available can therefore be characterized

5

Being-there is an entity that can question its Being: “Dasein ist Seiendes, das sich in seinem Sein verstehend zu diesem Sein verhält”, Heidegger (1927), § 12, pp. 52f., cf. already § 9. In other words: It is us insofar as we are minded, cf. Esfeld (2001c), p. 46.

152 as being implicitly inferential or rational. Heidegger points out that the stage of the unavailable allows for a particular kind of objectivity. This stage is, however, not yet assertional: The subject matter of an assertional (and moreover predicative) practice is the occurrent (“Vorhandenes,” present-at-hand), which includes objects with properties. I now wish to explicate this line of thought. First, I will give a more detailed characterization of the available, the unavailable, and the occurrent. I will show that according to Heidegger assertion only comes in with the occurrent, and will discuss what this is supposed to mean. Then I will show that Heidegger holds that objectivity already comes in with the unavailable and thus without presupposing assertion. The most primitive contact with the world is practical coping, dealing with what Heidegger calls the available: “Die nächste Art des Umganges ist... das... Besorgen...”, Heidegger (1927), § 15, p. 67. “Wir nennen das im Besorgen begegnende Seiende das Zeug”, Heidegger (1927), § 15, p. 68. “Die Seinsart von Zeug, in der es sich von ihm selbst her offenbart, nennen wir die Zuhandenheit”, Heidegger (1927), § 15, p. 69.

This way of being does not yet allow for being aware of the equipment’s structure, a structure Heidegger specifies as referential contexts. If one is unaware of how available entities are interrelated with other such entities, entities cannot be determined with respect to their structures; i.e. it cannot be settled how the dividing lines between entities are to be drawn. Heidegger calls such contact with the world “unthematic”: “Der Umgang mit Zeug unterstellt sich der Verweisungsmannigfaltigkeit des ‘Umzu’. Die Sicht eines solchen Sichfügens ist die Umsicht... Das Zuhandene ist weder überhaupt theoretisch erfaßt, noch ist es selbst für die Umsicht zunächst umsichtig thematisch”, Heidegger (1927), § 15, p. 69; the ellipse stands for several sentences.

That determination is indeed supposed to be conceived in the adumbrated way will be justified shortly. That Heidegger actually characterizes the thematic as what allows for determination – as I have tacitly assumed – will be shown below in the context of a consideration of Heidegger’s account of objectivity.

153 Practical coping with the world comes to a halt when the referential contexts are disturbed. Heidegger distinguishes three kinds of disturbances. The available can be in the modi of conspiciousness (“Auffälligkeit”), obstinacy (“Aufdringlichkeit”), or obstrusiveness (“Aufsässigkeit”). This means roughly that something malfunctions, that it is missing or that it lies in the way. These kinds of disturbances all result in one’s becoming aware of the equipment’s structure, of the referential contexts in which equipment stands: “In einer Störung der Verweisung – in der Unverwendbarkeit für... wird aber die Verweisung ausdrücklich”, Heidegger (1927), § 16, p. 74; the ellipse is in the original.

Following Dreyfus (1991), one can say that they all effectuate a transition from the available to the unavailable. How can dealing with the unavailable – and thus implicitly with the available – be further characterized? The referential contexts link equipment according to their “in order to” (“Um-zu”): “Zeug ist wesenhaft, ‘etwas, um zu..’... In der Struktur ‘Um-zu’ liegt eine Verweisung von etwas auf etwas”, Heidegger (1927), § 15, p. 68.

Remember also the quotation in the preceding paragraph where Heidegger mentions the “Verweisungsmannigfaltigkeit des ‘Um-zu’”. The “in order to” is at the same time an “if… so.” This is the case because the kind of interpretation that is proper to the (un-)available – Heidegger calls it deliberation (“Überlegung”) – is the “if...so”: “Die spezifische, umsichtig-auslegende Näherung des Besorgten nennen wir die Überlegung. Das ihr eigentümliche Schema ist das ‘wenn-so’...” “Das Schema ‘etwas als etwas’ ist schon in der Struktur des vorprädikativen Verstehens vorgezeichnet”, both quotations are from Heidegger (1927), § 69b, p. 359.

If the “in order to” is an “if… so,” then the structures individuals become aware of on the stage of the unavailable are inferential or rational. As a consequence, already dealing with the available is implicitly inferential or rational. In ontological terms this means that equipment is always already experienced as inferentially articulated. Above I have pointed out that Esfeld reads Heidegger as proceeding from a practice that has to be explicated in normative terms, but that is not infer-

154 ential. The latter claim turns out to be unjustified. The claim that he takes normative vocabulary to be basic is by the way a consequence of his proceeding from inferential practice. On what concerns Esfeld’s reading of Heidegger it remains unsettled along which different lines he would spell out his ascription of a non-naturalistic position to Heidegger given the fact that he does not ascribe to Heidegger an inferential starting point. And on what grounds does he opt against ascribing to him such a starting point? Although I do not concur with Esfeld’s reading of Heidegger, it has the important advantage of making Heidegger’s position more plausible: My reading makes it obscure how Heidegger can consistently conceive dealing with the (un-)available as inferential without conceiving it at the same time as conceptual. The first important feature of dealing with the (un-)available I have pointed to is that this kind of practice is inferential. Let me now turn to a second important feature. Saying that one becomes aware of the equipment’s structure is saying that it can now be determined with respect to its structure: “Hat das Dasein selbst im Umkreis seines besorgenden Aufgehens bei dem zuhandenen Zeug eine Seinsmöglichkeit, in der ihm mit dem besorgten innerweltlichen Seienden in gewisser Weise dessen Weltlichkeit aufleuchtet? Wenn sich solche Seinsmöglichkeiten des Daseins innerhalb des besorgenden Umgangs aufzeigen lassen, dann öffnet sich ein Weg, dem so aufleuchtenden Phänomen nachzugehen und zu versuchen, es gleichsam zu ‘stellen’ und auf seine an ihm sich zeigenden Strukturen zu befragen”, Heidegger, 1927 #65], § 16, p. 72, emphasis AC.

In this passage Heidegger makes clear that determination can be set off as soon as the stage of the unavailable is reached: A phenomenon and its structure – its referential contexts – flash up once practical coping is disturbed. The quotation moreover shows that determination is to be conceived as a process that is set off by a disturbance. Heidegger does not explicitly link determination with the thematic. (That he actually conceives the thematic as what allows for determination can best be taken from passages that I will cite when I consider his account of objectivity.) If we presuppose for the moment that the thematic actually comes in with the unavailable, dealing with the unavailable can be characterized as thematic interpretation, whereas dealing with the available can

155 be characterized as unthematic interpretation. Becoming aware of the equipment’s structure means becoming aware that equipment has already been interpreted (“ausgelegt”) whereby interpretation means to cognize something as something, cf. Heidegger (1927), § 32. One can thus distinguish between a pre-thematic kind of interpretation that is proper to the available,6 and a thematic one that is proper to the unvavailable. It is now also possible to state what speaks in favor of a pragmatist reading of Heidegger in a more general sense than the one I focus on. While I deal with the claim that Heidegger situates objectivity already in pre-conceptual practice, the more general claim holds that primitive human practice – coping with the world – already allows for epistemic access to entities and is constrained by the world. This passage gives evidence for the thesis that coping with the world (dealing with the available), as it is characterized by circumspection (“Umsicht”), allows for epistemic access to entities (discovering): “Die Umsicht entdeckt, das bedeutet, die schon verstandene ‘Welt’ wird ausgelegt. Das Zuhandene kommt ausdrücklich in die verstehende Sicht”, Heidegger (1927), § 32, p. 148.

And coping is constrained by the world: Being-there (“Dasein”) is always already in a world (Being-in-the-world, “In-der-Welt-Sein”). This means that it is familiar with the world (Being-in, “In-Sein”) and that the world can come into contact it (Being-at, “Bei-Sein”, cf. Heidegger (1927), § 12). In conclusion, one can attribute to Heidegger the view that epistemic access to entities is founded in a human practice that is constrained by the world. Heidegger calls this constraint facticity (“Faktizität”): “Der Begriff der Faktizität beschließt in sich: das In-der-Welt-sein eines ‘innerweltlichen’ Seienden, so zwar, daß sich dieses Seiende verstehen kann als in seinem ‘Geschick’ verhaftet mit dem Sein des Seienden, das ihm innerhalb seiner eigenen Welt begegnet”, Heidegger (1927), § 12, p. 56.

Let us now turn to the occurrent. The occurrent, as opposed to the available or unavailable, is equipment that has been dissociated from its practical contexts. Only the way of being that is called occurrentness brings about 6

“Der umsichtig-auslegende Umgang mit dem umweltlich Zuhandenen...”, Heidegger (1927), § 32, p. 149.

156 context-free entities such as objects with properties. Correspondingly, the occurrent can be characterized as what is the subject matter of assertions. How does Heidegger characterize assertion, and how does his characterization match mine? I conceive assertion as the manifestation of content in public language whereby content can be characterized as what permits one to find out what an assertion is about. This corresponds to Heidegger’s understanding of assertion. He takes assertion to have three essential features. The first feature is pointing out (“Aufzeigung”): “Aussage bedeutet primär Aufzeigung… Seiendes von ihm selbst her sehen lassen”, Heidegger (1927), § 33, p. 154.

Second, assertion is predication (“Prädikation”): “Aussage bedeutet soviel wie Prädikation. Von einem ‘Subjekt’ wird ein ‘Prädikat’ ‘ausgesagt’, jenes wird durch dieses bestimmt”, Heidegger (1927), § 33, p. 154.

Finally, assertion is communication (“Mitteilung”). Assertion in the sense of pointing out need not be addressed in the present context. Assertion in the sense of predication means that an assertion possesses content. This is because predication, just like content, states what objects and properties a linguistic item is about. Assertion as communication means that an assertion is a bit of public language. What exactly does it mean when Heidegger claims that assertion – and language, content and aboutness – only come in with the occurrent? In what way is the (un-) available self-sustained with respect to the occurrent? Does Heidegger simply claim that some instances of dealing with the (un-) available do not presuppose assertion? This is what Brandom (1997a) calls a “local independence” of the (un-) available with respect to the occurrent. Or does Heidegger claim that it is possible to deal with the (un-)available without having conceptual capacities at all? This is to hold that the (un-) available is autonomous with respect to the occurrent. Brandom (1997a) calls such thesis “global independence.” It is not easy to settle how Heidegger is to be interpreted. He seems to commit himself only to a local independence claim when he says: “Weil für das Sein des Da, d. h. Befindlichkeit und Verstehen, die Rede konstitutiv ist, Dasein aber besagt: In-der-Welt-sein, hat das Dasein als redendes In-Sein sich schon ausgesprochen. Das Dasein hat Sprache”, Heidegger (1927), § 34, p. 165.

157 In this quotation Heidegger relates talk (“Rede”) – which is constitutive for Being-there7 – with language. But shortly after this passage he makes a contradicting claim insofar as he now denies that talk is linked with a public means of communication and thus with language: “Der Mensch zeigt sich als Seiendes, das redet. Das bedeutet nicht, daß ihm die Möglichkeit der stimmlichen Verlautbarung eignet, sondern daß dieses Seiende ist in der Weise des Entdeckens der Welt und des Daseins selbst”, Heidegger (1927), § 34, p. 165.

I think this view can be considered as the primordial one in Heidegger. One can therefore attribute to him the claim that the (un-)available is autonomous. While the transition from dealing with the available to the unavailable results from an instability of the former kind of practice – it may always be disturbed – the transition to the occurrent is optional. Let me now give evidence that it is Heidegger’s view that objectivity does not presuppose the occurrent. Such evidence is important because the position attributed to Heidegger – the idea that objectivity does not require content – can be ascribed to him only insofar as he holds both that assertion (and content) only come in with the occurrent and that objectivity does not presuppose the occurrent. As I read Heidegger, he claims that there is a kind of objectivity that is proper to the unavailable. In order to back this thesis one has to consider what he says about the thematic. Therefore I will first prove and justify two claims formulated above. The first claim says that the thematic is characterized as what can be made subject matter of determination. The second says that the thematic does not require the occurrent. (Above I have already given evidence for the claim that determination is enabled as soon as the stage of the unavailable is reached. But I have not given evidence for an interrelation of determination with the thematic, so I am not yet entitled to the claim that the thematic does not presuppose the

7

The structural moments that are linked up with the disclosedness of being there are situatedness (“Befindlichkeit”), understanding (“Verstehen”), and discourse: “Erschlossenheit aber ist die Grundart des Daseins, gemäß es sein Da ist. Erschlossenheit wird durch Befindlichkeit, Verstehen und Rede konstituiert...”, Heidegger (1927), § 44, p. 220. Disclosedness of the world means access to the whole of referential contexts in which epistemic access to available entities (discoveredess) is founded.

158 occurrent.) The textual evidence I will give for these claims shows at the same time that Heidegger takes objectivity to be linked with the thematic or with the unavailable. Concluding, I will dispel the opposed view that he links objectivity only with the occurrent. Let us consider the following passage, which deserves to be quoted at length: “... auch Zuhandenes [kann] zum Thema wissenschaftlicher Untersuchung und Bestimmung gemacht werden, z. B. bei der Erforschung einer Umwelt, des Milieus im Zusammenhang einer historischen Biographie. Der alltäglich zuhandene Zeugzusammenhang, seine geschichtliche Entstehung, Verwertung, seine faktische Rolle im Dasein ist Gegenstand der Wissenschaft von der Wirtschaft. Das Zuhandene braucht seinen Zeugcharakter nicht zu verlieren, um ‘Objekt’ einer Wissenschaft werden zu können. Die Modifikation des Seinsverständnisses scheint nicht notwendig konstitutiv zu sein für die Genesis des theoretischen Verhaltens ‘zu den Dingen’”, Heidegger (1927), § 69b, p. 361.

This quotation shows several things simultaneously. It gives evidence that Heidegger characterizes the thematic as that which can be made the subject matter of determination, and that it does not require the occurrent. (In this quotation Heidegger links the thematic with the available whereas I have argued above that the thematic belongs to the unavailable. But the quotation does not actually contradict my reading of Heidegger. That Heidegger links the thematic with the available only stems from the fact that he does not use a specific notion, e.g. the notion of the unavailable, in order to characterize the way of being that is brought about when dealing with the available gets disturbed. That determination, which has been revealed to be linked with the thematic, results from such disturbance has been given evidence for above.) Moreover, Heidegger makes clear that neither scientific examination and determination nor a theoretic attitude towards things presupposes the occurrent. This implies, I think, that Heidegger holds that objectivity becomes possible with the thematic, and thus before the stage of the occurrent is reached. What could be a better means for providing objectivity than science and theory? But there are passages that seem to point in the opposite direction. Heidegger characterizes thematizing as a scientific projection of nature, an attitude that is proper to the occurrent because it brings about context-free entities:

159 “Der wissenschaftliche Entwurf des je schon irgendwie begegnenden Seienden lässt dessen Seinsart ausdrücklich verstehen, so zwar, daß damit die möglichen Wege zum reinen Entdecken des innerweltlichen Seienden offenbar werden. Das Ganze dieses Entwerfens... nennen wir die Thematisierung. Sie zielt auf eine Freigabe des innerweltlich begegnenden Seienden dergestalt, dass es sich einem puren Entdecken ‘entgegenwerfen’, das heißt Objekt werden kann”, Heidegger (1927), § 69b, p. 363.

Thematizing and thus the occurrent clearly allow for objectivity, as the continuation of this passage makes clear: “Die Thematisierung... gibt es [das Seiende] so frei, daß es ‘objektiv’ befragbar und bestimmbar wird”, Heidegger (1927), § 69b, p. 363.

But talk of the thematic is not to be confused with thematizing, cf. also Dreyfus (1991), pp. 82f. Only the latter requires entities that are isolated from their referential contexts and thus the stage of the occurrent. Given the distinction between the thematic and thematizing, the passages just quoted must not be read as evidence for the view that objectivity presupposes the occurrent. (A scientific or theoretic attitude – which may, as I have argued, provide objectivity without making use of context-free entities – is thus not always thematizing, i.e. scientific projection of nature.) I do not have the space to discuss how to spell out Heidegger’s idea that already the stage of the unavailable permits objectivity. Such objectivity requires a kind of intentionality or aboutness that does not invoke objects and properties. A consideration of Dreyfus (1991), especially chapters 3 and 4, might help to spell out such objectivity. Dreyfus correlates the available, the unavailable, and the occurrent with three different kinds of intentionality. The intentionality proper to the unavailable allows for being hooked onto entities that have only situational features (Dreyfus speaks of aspects), not properties. This kind of intentionality corresponds, I think, to the way Strawson’s (1959) “feature-placing statements” like “It is raining now” and “Here is water” can be about entities. 4.3 What is wrong with Heidegger? I have shown on what grounds Heidegger can be ascribed the view that a pre-assertional kind of practice can make room for objectivity, that the unavailable is autonomous with regard to the occurrent. In the following I will consider how to assess this view. In order to do this, I will characterize a treatment of the available and the unavailable in a different, non-

160 Heideggerian vocabulary. I wish thereby to show that objectivity is provided on the stage of the unavailable, but that this stage already presupposes conceptual articulation so that Heidegger’s distinction between the unavailable and the occurrent collapses. Dealing with the available – or unthematic interpretation – is practical coping with worldly entities. This idea can also be captured by saying that this kind of practice consists in applications of RDRDs. I will give an example for this kind of practice, and say why applying RDRDs is essential to it and why this does not presuppose conceptual capacities. An individual unthematically interprets something as something simply by treating it in a particular way. She interprets e.g. a round, red and yellow fruit which comes from a tree and is as big as a hand – an apple – as nourishment simply by eating it. Such dealing with an apple requires RDRDs with respect to apples as opposed to fruit that is unfit for consumption, provided that the practice is supposed to be relatively stable. If such RDRDs did not exist, the practice would not wait for a disturbance to come to a halt, but would break down from within. Unthematic interpretation does not, however, require a public means of communication. Entities are simply dealt with, not talked about. Moreover it does not require the capacity to draw inferences. Individuals need not be aware of the proper conditions – and of the inferential connections from proper conditions to performances; they can be said to observe if their performances are reliable. (Inferential and other capacities are only ascribed to individuals if their behavior must be described in these terms, not if it can be so described. What the must requires will shortly become evident.) As a consequence, unthematic interpretation does not require that individuals grasp concepts such as “nourishment.” The view that applying RDRDs does not presuppose inferential, conceptual capacities is further backed by the intuition that non-conceptual animals can also be said to have RDRDs. The important aspect about RDRDs is that they permit one to discriminate among entities and thus to individuate or to identify them. Discrimination and individuation alike mean to distinguish an entity from all others. Note that RDRDs as they matter on this stage do not necessarily pick out the entities our conceptual practices are about. Otherwise this account of dealing with the available would not fit with the claim from chapter 3.3 that RDRDs that do match our conceptual practices

161 presuppose conceptual capacities. (When I speak of RDRDs I usually mean this kind of RDRD.) Let us now turn to the unavailable and thus to thematic interpretation. If coping with entities on the basis of RDRDs is disturbed, individuals become aware of the inferential connections between proper conditions and performances that have implicitly guided these performances. This point is not identical with Heidegger’s claim that on the stage of the unavailable individuals become aware of the referential contexts – the inferential connections – the discriminated entities stand in. But it matches Heidegger’s claim insofar as immediate, pre-conceptual responses to entities – the world’s impressions on our senses – are semantically transparent: In these responses, entities are directly given to individuals; see chapter 5.4 on semantic transparency. (Immediate, linguistic responses to entities such as observation reports, responses that claim that something is the case, not how something is – are not semantically transparent.) Let us as an example examine a situation where somebody feels hungry while, in contrast with earlier instances, there are not any apples around. When the individual falls sick after having consumed other fruit, she realizes that she had always treated apples as nourishment but other fruit as unfit for consumption. This means that she becomes aware of the inferential relations she has implicitly applied, e.g. “If apple, then nourishment” and “If other fruit, then unfit for consumption.” Being able to discriminate between entities is necessary and sufficient for being able to tell correct and incorrect performances apart, a capacity that becomes manifest in the capacity to impose sanctions. But objectivity is only enabled in combination with awareness of the proper conditions that guide discrimination: Such awareness is required for being able to impose sanctions that link the correctness of performances to the way the discriminated entities are. As a consequence, Heidegger is right in holding that dealing with the unavailable is the stage where objectivity comes in. But Heidegger’s view that inferential articulation does not involve conceptual articulation cannot be maintained. Grasping inferential relations also means grasping concepts like “nourishment.” Heidegger’s claim that objective correctness – as it is provided on the stage of the unavailable – does

162 not require mastering content cannot be maintained. Heidegger’s distinction between the unavailable and the occurrent thus collapses. This objection makes necessary a further modification of Heidegger’s account of different kinds of practices. The transition from the available to the unavailable is a transition from a kind of practice that shows unacquired RDRDs, of the kind humans share with non-conceptual beings, to a kind of practice that permits one to settle the correctness of performances with regard to the way entities are. The latter kind of practice permits one to modify the original RDRDs, shaping RDRDs that are appropriate to our dealing with the world and that thus pick out the entities our conceptual practices are about. Heidegger is thus wrong when he holds that the transition from the available to the unavailable only brings to consciousness what has already been implicit in the more primitive kind of practice. Correspondingly, contrary to Heidegger, dealing with the available is not yet inferentially – and this would imply: conceptually – articulated. Human practice and non-human beings are only to be ascribed inferential, conceptual capacities if they show a kind of sanctions in which awareness of proper conditions becomes manifest. In a nutshell, the argument I have just sketched runs as follows: Becoming aware of inferential connections between proper conditions and reliable performances is a precondition for objectivity. As a consequence, objectivity presupposes inferential and thus conceptual capacities. This argument amends an argument that has already been developed which is applicable as a critique against Heidegger . According to Sellars, having RDRDs that match our conceptual practices presupposes conceptual capacities. The reason is that each time an individual makes a performance that manifests responsive dispositions, this performance has to be assessed with regard to its reliability. This requires a consideration of the inferential connections that can be attributed to the individual. To conclude, I wish to compare the objection to Heidegger that objectivity presupposes conceptual capacities so that the occurrent cannot be considered as autonomous with Brandom’s (1997a) corresponding claim that the (un-)available and the occurrent are intertwined: As I have already mentioned, Brandom distinguishes two ways in which the (un-)available can be self-sustained with respect to the occurrent. He calls these ways local and

163 global independence. Local independence means that not every dealing with the (un-)available presupposes assertion. Global independence means that dealing with the available forms an autonomous stratum. This means that it is possible to deal with the available without being able to put forward assertions: “Here it is necessary to keep in mind the distinction between local independence – it must be admitted that not all cases of interpretation are cases of assertion – and the global claim that the capacity to interpret could exist without being accompanied by the capacity to assert”, Brandom (1997a), p. 37.

Brandom criticizes Heidegger for defending global independence although he is only entitled to local independence. Brandom rejects Heidegger’s “layer-cake model” on the grounds that assertion comes in if being-there adopts certain optional practices. Brandom is right in criticizing Heidegger’s global independence claim according to which it is not possible to deal with the unavailable – to make performances that can be objectively correct or incorrect – without mastering assertion. Brandom’s point can be spelled out by once more invoking Sellars: Every instance of ascribing objective correctness requires concepts because the responsive dispositions that play a role in such an ascription have to be assessed as reliable each time anew. This requires inferential practice. Brandom is right that the occurrent (assertion) and the (un-)available (immediate discrimination as it underlies our conceptual practices) are not globally independent. They are rather reciprocally sense-dependent on each other, which means that one cannot understand the one notion without understanding the other, cf. Brandom (2002c), p. 81 and chapter 5.1 on an explication of the notion of sense dependence. Instead of speaking of sense dependence it seems to be even more appropriate for me to say that Heidegger’s distinction between the unavailable and the occurrent collapses as I have proposed above. But how is Brandom’s claim to be understood that Heidegger is entitled to local independence according to which some instances of dealing with the (un-)available do not require assertion? Talk of local independence does not make sense as long as one conceives of dealing with the unavailable as a kind of practice that settles objectivity. It only makes sense, I think, in the context of concept acquisition. A precondition for concept acquisition to get off the ground is that an individual’s behavior must exhibit certain

164 regularities, certain unacquired and maybe not fully reliable differential dispositions. But training is required if these regularities are supposed to turn into more or less stable RDRDs that correspond to the conceptual borders we draw. Brandom’s distinction between global and local independence is thus to be interpreted as follows: An individual may lack concepts. But in that case she cannot be ascribed objective correctness. In all cases where objective correctness or incorrectness are to be ascribed, both during an individual’s training period and in cases where a community negotiates the correctness of assertions and the appropriateness of contents, one has to presuppose conceptual capacities.

165

5 A primitivist answer In this chapter I will develop and defend a particular reading of Brandom’s answer to the guiding question of this study. In section 0 I will reconstruct his approach. In section 5.2 I will argue that my reading of it allows for objectivity within a pragmatist framework. In section 5.3 I will complete my defence of it by dealing with the objection that it is circular. In section 5.4 I will give a detailed critique of conceptual realism. This critique forms a side-issue since conceptual realism has earlier turned out to be a superfluous feature in Brandom’s approach. 5.1 Presentation and a first critical assessment There are two different pieces in Brandom’s account of content: a scorekeeping piece and a Hegelian one. Brandom (1994) models the process of mutual assessments that constitutes objective content as what he calls, building upon Lewis (1979), deontic or – as I prefer to say – normative scorekeeping. In section 5.1.1 I will explain the scorekeeping model in detail. I will present the decisive features of this model and point out how it intends to account for objectivity. I will characterize conceptual realism, a feature that also figures in Brandom (1994) and that apparently goes beyond the scorekeeping model, as being superfluous provided the scorekeeping model does account for objectivity. In section 5.1.2 I will consider a second Hegelian account of content given in Brandom (2002a) and discuss how it fits with the scorekeeping model. I will argue that it does not possess any important aspects that go beyond the scorekeeping model. The particular reading of Brandom I wish to defend sets conceptual realism as well as Hegelian elements aside and conceives the constitution of content according to the way the scorekeeping model has been formulated in section 5.1.1. 5.1.1 The scorekeeping model In chapter 2.2 I characterized Brandom’s specification of the process of mutual assessments that is supposed to constitute content and argued that objective content is constituted proceeding from perspectival inferential significances and auxiliary commitments. Inferential significance was characterized as the set of inferences an individual takes to be correct when

166 she makes an assertion. Auxiliary commitments were characterized as claims that justify these inferences. Also content was characterized in two ways, either as an equivalence class of assertions or as a function from auxiliary commitments to inferential significances. But I focussed on the definition of the notions “inferential content” and “inferential significance,” whereas the process of mutual assessments was not considered. Section 2.2, moreover, mentioned, but did not explore the idea that navigation between perspectives is required in order to assign content to an assertion and thus to account for communication and rationality. I characterized this feature, following Brandom, in the following way: S1’s claiming A can be assigned the same content as S2’s claiming B if substitution of B for A in the inferences that make up S1’s inferential significance does not change the truth-value of these inferences. What it means, however, to say that the truth-value of inferences remains constant remained unclear. In the context of a social practice account of content, this claim has to be explicated in terms of what is taken to be true or correct. In the course of my presentation of the scorekeeping process I will spell out what is to be understood by navigation between perspectives since such navigation is decisive for objectivity. First, I will give a rough characterization of the central ideas and notions in connection with scorekeeping. Then, I will consider an example that shows how scorekeeping works and that fleshes out the following remarks.8 What is the basic idea captured by talk of scorekeeping? Conceptual practice is conceived as a game in which each of two players, S1 and S2, keeps book on the score of the other, i.e. each player keeps a scorecard for the other. The moves in this game are assertions and inferences in connection with these assertions. The scorecard is given by the respective scorekeeper’s claims as to what moves are correct. What does this idea contribute to the subject matter of the present study, the consideration of a process of mutual assessments that is supposed to constitute content? Talk of scorekeeping specifies mutual assessments not 8

Brandom (1994) introduces the distinction between normative attitudes and normative statuses that is decisive for the scorekeeping model in chapter 3.II, the scorekeeping model itself in chapter 3.IV.

167 so much because it introduces the idea of bookkeeping (I will show below that talk of bookkeeping is only a particular way of presenting the scorekeeping process) but rather because it accentuates that what is assessed are assertions and inferences, as opposed to pre-linguistic performances. The assessment of assertions proceeds via an assessment of inferences. In other words, the inferences S1 would correctly endorse, given the assertion she has made, determine her scorecard. The entries of the scorecard, normative statuses, are S2’s claims as to what inferences S1 would correctly take to be correct. Let us consider in a slightly more detailed way what the entries of a scorecard are. (In the preceding paragraph I have tried to keep things simple so that I have mentioned only one kind of normative statuses.) Claims as to what an individual would correctly take to be correct are commitments. But there are two more kinds of normative statuses: Claims as to what inferences S1 would correctly not take to be correct are precluded entitlements. Claims as to what she would either take or not take to be correct are entitlements. What distinguishes these kinds of normative statuses from each other can best be illustrated if one takes into account that the different kinds of normative statuses, items that belong to pragmatics, can be mapped onto different kinds of logical relations on the side of semantics. S1’s assertion A commits her to B if B can be deduced from A: The assertion “There is a rabbit” commits to the endorsement of “There is a vertebral.” The inference that links both assertions can therefore be called commitment preserving. She is only entitled to B if B can be induced from A: “There is a rabbit-kid” entitles to “The rabbit-mother must be nearby.” The inference that links both assertions can be called entitlement preserving. She is not entitled to B if this assertion is incompatible with A: “There is a rabbit” is incompatible with “There is a hare.” In order to simplify my presentation, I will consider only commitments and precluded entitlements. The crucial question concerning my characterization of normative statuses is what it means that something is correctly taken to be correct or endorsed. If “correctly” merely referred to what is correct from S2’s point of view, the process of mutual assessments would never get beyond intersubjectivity. If it referred, in contrast, to a neutral point of view, scorekeeping would assume normative attitudes that are justified no matter whether any-

168 body takes them to be correct. This would violate a pragmatist framework. A middle way consists in conceiving what is correctly endorsed as resulting from navigation between perspectives. This means to distinguish between what S1 takes to be correct when she asserts A and what follows from A in the light of S2, given what else S1 takes to be correct. Given this characterization of navigation between perspectives, it is possible to state concretely what makes up the scorecard for S1, given A. It encompasses commitments or precluded entitlements to the inferences that follow from A or that are incompatible with A in the light of S2, given what else S1 takes to be correct. In order to settle the correctness of A or of the inferences S1 endorses, these normative statuses have to be compared with what S1 endorses explicitly or upon request, namely A, inferences to and from A, observation reports and any other claimings S2 takes to be inferentially related to the entries of the scorecard. Why do I talk clumsily of what is correctly taken to be correct instead of characterizing commitments, entitlements and precluded entitlements as what one is obliged, permitted and not permitted to do? The reason is that pragmatics, and thus normative statuses, are not prescriptive but rather evaluative, see chapter 2.3. Is it also of importance that I speak neutrally of normative, rather than of deontic, scorekeeping? Let us see what is understood by the deontic realm. The deontic realm is part of the normative one. According to von Kutschera (1999) normative notions divide up into deontic notions (notions that give devices how to act) and value-notions (notions that are not immediately linked with the question how to act, but rather assess properties, states of affairs or even actions as intrinsically valuable). Transferring this distinction into Taylor’s (1961) terms (see chapter 2.1) one could say: Deontic notions are either prescriptive (e.g. “obliged,” “permitted,” or “not permitted”) or evaluative-according-torules (e.g. “correct” or “incorrect”) whereas value-notions are evaluativeaccording-to-standards (e.g. “good” or “bad”). Although the present study refers to the deontic realm so that speaking with Brandom about deontic scorekeeping would be perfectly all right, I will stick to my choice of words and speak about normative attitudes, statuses, scorecards and scorekeeping.

169 Let us now consider an example for scorekeeping. The major aim of the following presentation is to spell out its basic idea, namely to state how the assessment of assertions involves an assessment of inferences and how the latter is related to the constitution of content. In chapter 2.1 I argued that the constitution of rules (contents) has to be explicated via an assessment of performances as correct. This claim presupposes an intimate connection between the epistemological and the ontological dimension of the rulefollowing problem, a connection between settling whether a rule is applied correctly and constituting it. However, this connection has not been justified. Moreover, it has remained unclear how the mentioned claim can be spelled out. One proposal has been considered in chapter 3. Assessments of non-linguistic performances permit one to find out the proper conditions under which the individuals’ performances concur. These proper conditions permit the formulation of rules of inference from proper conditions to what gets expressed in performances. These rules of inference make up the contents of the performances. An alternative proposal will now be considered. Assessments of assertions proceed via assessments of inferences. An assessment of inferences means to state at the same time what inferences the content of an assertion allows for and thus to constitute its content. In the following, I will start out from assessments of assertions as intensionally and extensionally correct. That intensional correctness matters for the constitution of content is immediately plausible. It is for two reasons that I consider also extensional correctness. First, both kinds of correctness are settled in the same process. Second, being able to settle the extensional correctness of some claims is a precondition for being able to settle intensional correctness. Both reasons will be explained below. So far on the major aim of the following presentation. A secondary aim is to show how a conception of pragmatics in terms of normative scorecards can be derived from a characterization of pragmatics in terms of normative attitudes and inferential significances that has been given in chapter 2.2. If this explanatory strategy is successful, then the basic idea behind scorekeeping can as well be expressed without using the bookkeeping vocabulary. Let us assume that S1 asserts in a particular situation “There is a gavagai” (A).

170 Step 1: S2 finds out the inferential significance S1 assigns to A In order to assess A, S2 must first of all cognise what else S1 takes to be correct when she makes her claiming. In other words, S2 must cognise the inferential significance S1 associates with A, ISS1(A). In order to simplify, I assume that S1 and S2 roughly speak the same language and share a logical vocabulary. I assume that it is only that S2 does not know what S1 means by the term “gavagai.” Assuming that both individuals roughly speak the same language has the advantage that the inferential significance can be derived immediately from S1’s other linguistic performances, e.g. from those she makes in response to questions by S2. (In case both individuals’ ideolects differ wildly, the inferential significance has to be derived by radical interpretation, a device that largely works with nonlinguistic means, cf. Davidson (1973) and already Davidson (1967).) Let us assume that ISS1(A) is given by the following set of inferences: Inferential significance of S1 with respect to “There is a gavagai” (A) • If there is a gavagai, then it is naked, blind and helpless at birth. (If A, then C.) • If there are certain flies, then there is a gavagai around. (If D, then A.) • There is a gavagai, because I observe a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail. Or: If I observe a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail, then there is a gavagai. And I observe a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail. (If E, then A; and E.) Step 2: S2 formulates the inferential significance she assigns to her translation of A S2 would utter in the same situation “There is a rabbit,” B. It is initially plausible for her to translate “There is a gavagai” into “There is a rabbit” and thus to assign the same content to A as to B. What guides S2’s translation is her application of the principle of charity according to which the interpreter is supposed to maximize concurrence between the speaker’s beliefs and her own, cf. Davidson (1967). Under the assumption that most of the interpreter’s beliefs are true, this means to ascribe as many true beliefs to a speaker as possible. (A more careful formulation of the device to maximize concurrence between speaker and interpreter is given by Davidson (1975).) Translating A into B suggests itself on the basis of the

171 principle of charity because this leads to a concurrence between the speaker’s and the interpreter’s observations. That the translation is justified even if one takes into account what else S1 and S2 take to be correct (the inferential connections they link with A and B) will be proven below. Having translated A into B, S2 formulates her inferential significance with respect to B: Inferential significance of S2 with respect to “There is a rabbit” (B) • If there is a rabbit, then it is gregarious. (If B, then F.) • If there are certain flies, then there is sometimes a rabbit around. (If D, sometimes B.) • There is a rabbit, because I observe a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail. Or: If I observe a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail, then there is a rabbit. And I observe a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail. (If E, then B; and E.) At this point it is evident that the reason why S2 will find S1’s application of A intensionally incorrect is both individuals’ disagreement over the interrelatedness of flies with gavagais or rabbits. But let us proceed slowly. Step 3: S2 transfers S1’s inferential significance into her own terms Having cognised ISS1(A), S2 now substitutes B (or a subsentential component of B, here: “a rabbit”) for A (or a subsentential component of A, here: “a gavagai”) in all the inferences that make up ISS1(A): Substitutional variants of the inferences that make up ISS1(A) • If there is a rabbit, then it is naked, blind and helpless at birth. (If B, then C.) • If there are certain flies, then there is a rabbit around. (If D, then B.) • There is a rabbit, because I observe a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail. (If E, then B; and E.) Step 4: S2 considers whether S1’s reformulated inferential significance is compatible with her own inferential significance S2 now assesses these inferences. In order to settle whether S1 correctly takes an inference linked with A to be correct, S2 has to settle whether its substitutional variant is compatible with the substititutional variants of the other inferences S1 adopts (this demand is fulfilled unless S1 is irrational)

172 and with the inferences S2 links with B. There is only one inference adopted by S1, the substitutional variant of which is incompatible with an inference adopted by S2. S1’s endorsement of “If there are certain flies, then there is a gavagai around” once it is reformulated as “If there are certain flies, then there is a rabbit around” turns out to be incompatible with S2’s endorsement of “If there are certain flies, then there is sometimes a rabbit around.” S2 therefore assesses S1’s inference as being incorrectly taken to be correct by S1. It is now possible to give a first characterization of what is to be understood by navigation between perspectives. S2 assesses A by distinguishing between what S1 actually takes to be correct and what she would correctly take to be correct in the light of S2. What S1 actually takes to be correct encompasses A, but also the inferences she links with A. What she would correctly take to be correct results from S2’s consideration of whether S1’s normative attitudes are consistent in themselves and whether they are compatible with what follows from A in the light of S2. The presentation of scorekeeping so far and the characterization of navigation between perspectives cannot be the whole story, however, because S2’s normative attitudes are privileged. Why should one not solve the incompatibility between both inferences by taking the S2’s inference to be incorrect? A refinement of what navigation between perspectives means will be given below. It is now also possible to discuss what sense can be made out of the Brandomian claim that navigation between perspectives involves the demand that inferences must not change their truth-value or that they must remain true under substitution. It is a precondition for S1’s being justified in taking an inference to be true that the substitutional variant of this inference is compatible with the inferences S2 takes to be true (and also with substitutional variants of the other inferences S1 takes to be true). For the sake of simplicity I call this the demand that inferences remain true or correct under substitution. My reservation against the latter formulation stems from the fact that it suggests that an inference might have been correct only before the assessment via substitution has been carried out. This suggestion is clearly contrary to Brandom’s and my intention to defend a non-relativistic conception of correctness.

173 Step 5: Retrospective justification of S2’s translation of A into her own terms At this point in the scorekeeping process it can be reconsidered whether S2 is justified in having translated “There is a gavagai” (A) into “There is a rabbit” (B). The initial motivation for this translation was that S2 would have uttered B in the same situation as S1 had uttered A. The translation now turns out to be justified because it maximizes the number of inferences that remain correct under substitution, given the range of alternative interpretations of A available to S2. S2 might have translated A into “There is a hare” (G) even if this would have been initially less plausible because it would have lead to divergent observations. Let us assume that S2’s inferential significance with respect to G is given by the following set of inferences: Inferential significance of S2 with respect to “There is a hare” (G) • If there is a hare, then it is well-haired and sufficiently advanced at birth. (If G, then H.) • If there are certain flies, then there is sometimes a hare around. (If D, sometimes G.) • If I observe a small brown animal with a well visible, bushy white tail, then there is a hare. (If I, then G.) If A is taken to be synonymous with G, S1’s and S2’s inferences with respect to the animal’s features at birth and their inferences from their actual or possible observations are incompatible. None of the inferences remain correct under substitution. If A is interpreted as B, however, two out of three inferences remain correct. Therefore, S2 is justified in translating A into B instead of G. (If A were translated into “There is a rabbit or a hare” only the inference from flies to the animal in question would remain correct. Therefore this translation, too, is inferior to translation into B.) Let me now reformulate the assessment of inferences presented on the preceding pages in terms of normative scorecard. The scorecard S2 keeps for S1, given her assertion A, reflects what S2 takes to follow from A. At the present stage of the scorekeeping process it can immediately be derived from S2’s inferential significance with respect to B. It thus looks like this:

174 Scorecard for S1 in connection with A Commitments • There is a rabbit. (B) • If there is a rabbit, then it is gregarious. (If B then F.) • If there are certain flies, then there is sometimes a rabbit around. (If D, sometimes B.) • There is a rabbit, because I observe a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail. (If E, then B; and E.) Note that there is an alternative formulation of the scorecard: Instead of attributing S1 commitment to “If D, sometimes B” S2 can attribute her precluded entitlement to “If D, then B.” The commitment tells what follows from A in the light of S2. The corresponding precluded entitlement tells what she takes to be incompatible with A. On the basis of the first version of the scorecard, the inference “If D, then B” is incorrect because S1’s endorsement of it is incompatible with her commitment “If D, sometimes B.” On the basis of the second version, the inference is incorrect because S2 endorses it although she is not entitled to. In order to capture both cases in one characterization, one can say that an inference is incorrect if a normative status with respect to this inference is not acknowledged. Brandom is therefore right that the distinction between attributing and acknowledging a normative status is crucial for carrying out assessments in the course of the scorekeeping process. Step 6: Consequences from the assessment of inferences on the assessment of assertions and the constitution of content Up to now I have considered an assessment of inferences. Above I have claimed that an assessment of inferences is the basis for an assessment of assertions and at the same time constitutes content. Let me first state how an assessment of inferences is linked to constitution of content. Then I will consider in detail how an assessment of assertions is carried out. The connection between the assessment of inferences and the constitution of content can be formulated as follows: If S2 assesses the inference “If there are certain flies, then there is a gavagai around” (“If D, then A”) and its substitutional variant as incorrect she thereby claims that the content associated with A and B must not allow for these inferences. This means that the scorekeeping process draws conceptual borders and insofar constitutes

175 content. But how is it to be understood that a content must not allow for a particular inference, given the fact that the content cannot be characterized in terms of an attitude-transcendent set of inferential relations? S2 has to make clear that her own inference “If there are certain flies, then there is sometimes a rabbit around” is correct under the premise that she adopts a particular auxiliary commitment, e.g. “There are certain flies that gather around rabbits or hares,” auxS2, whereas S1’s inference is correct provided that she adopts a different auxiliary commitment like “There are certain flies that always gather around gavagais,” auxS1. The inferential content common to A and B then consists in a function that assigns auxS1 to ISS1(A) and auxS2 to ISS2(B). In order to make sense of the claim that a content must not allow for a particular inference, this claim has to be modified, saying that it must not allow for an inference, “If D, then A,” unless a particular auxiliary commitment, auxS1, holds. Let us now consider how the assessment of inferences permits one to assess assertions as intensionally and extensionally correct. In the present example, extensional correctness can be settled most easily: S1’s observation report “I observe a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail” (E) concurs with S2’s observation report. Therefore S2 assesses A as extensionally correct. In my example, settling extensional correctness does not seem to presuppose an assessment of inferences. I will show below in what way it does presuppose inferences and how extensional correctness is settled when the observation reports do not concur. Now what about intensional correctness? Having formulated content as a function from auxiliary commitments to inferential significances, S2 can settle whether she uses A intensionally correct by testing whether S1 is committed to auxS1.9 In order to carry out this test, S2 formulates a claim that she takes to be inferentially connected with auxS1, but not with auxS2. An example is the claim “There are certain flies that avoid solitary ani9

If one wanted to avoid bookkeeping vocabulary at this point, S2 would examine whether S1 endorsed auxS1 upon request. The advantage of the bookkeeping vocabulary lies in broadening the basis for ascriptions of correctness beyond what is explicitly endorsed. The bookkeeping vocabulary therefore makes such ascriptions easier. But it is not required on principled grounds.

176 mals,” J. This claim results from the assertion that certain flies gather exclusively around gavagais (auxS1) in combination with S2’s assumption that gavagais or rabbits are gregarious (“If B, then F”) and in combination with her further assumption that hares are solitary, K. S2 now examines whether S1 endorses this claim. If S1 does not (and therefore cannot be attributed auxS1) she is not entitled to her controversial inference “If there are certain flies, then there is a gavagai around” (“If D, then A”). This precluded entitlement in combination with her endorsement of this inference amounts to the claim that S1 does not use A intensionally correct. But what if S1 can be attributed auxS1? In that case the controversy with respect to the incompatible inferences cannot immediately be cleared up. S1’s assertion seems to be intensionally correct although in the light of S2 her inference is incorrect. In order to settle which of the disputed inferences is correct, S2 has to settle which of the auxiliary commitments is (extensionally) correct. She has to consider whether the flies are only observed in the vicinity of gavagais or rabbits or also in the vicinity of hares. Let us assume that empirical evidence speaks in favor of auxS1. As a consequence, S2 is not entitled to auxS2 so that her inference “If D, sometimes B” can no longer be defended. Her application of B is intensionally incorrect. But if empirical evidence speaks in favor of auxS2, then S1 is no longer entitled to auxS1 so that her inference “If D, then A” can no longer be defended. Her application of A is intensionally incorrect. The case where S1 endorses J so that she can initially be attributed auxS1 is important because we now come to see that assessing inferences – and thereby settling the intensional correctness of an assertion, A and B, and constituting its content – may presuppose settling the extensional correctness of claims, namely auxS1 and auxS2. This case is important for another reason. Initially, S2’s normative attitudes were assumed to be correct and so her point of view was privileged. Considering the correctness of auxiliary commitments now means to question whether her normative attitudes are justified. Taking auxiliary commitments into account thus permits one to refine the above characterization of navigation between perspectives. The assessment of S1’s assertion is still perspectival because it depends upon what follows from it in the light of S2. But there is no longer any single perspective that is privileged. More-

177 over, navigation between perspectives apparently permits one to get beyond a (democratic) consensus among the individuals. The assessment is now carried out with a more comprehensive range of what both individuals take to be correct so that the deeper reasons for their original assertions become evident. It thus becomes clearer what assumptions behind both individuals’ assertions have to be examined in order to settle whether these assertions are correct. In my example, the consideration of auxiliary commitments shifts the focus from the relation between flies and rabbits to the question of whether the mentioned flies are only linked with rabbits or rather with rabbits and hares. The adoption and the correctness of these auxiliary commitments, then, depends upon the question whether the animal at issue is gregarious or solitary, which S2 assumes to be a distinguishing feature between rabbits and hares. From here, it is easy to see how the story can go on. The next step can consist in examining the assumed distinguishing feature. The claim that the assessment of S1’s assertion goes hand in hand with an assessment of what S2 takes to be correct can be alternatively formulated as the claim that correctness is always settled by mutual assessments. Mutual assessments are important because an interpreter’s assessments are always perspectival, i.e. they are based upon her individual assumptions. The motivation of mutual assessments from the perspectival character of assessments provides a motivation for conceiving content as social, something that is lacking in Kripke (see chapter 2.1). Let me illustrate how taking auxiliary commitments into account changes S1’s scorecard. Let us assume that S1 endorses the claim “There are certain flies that avoid solitary animals” (J). In that case her scorecard is amended by a commitment to the inferentially related claim “There are certain flies that always gather around rabbits” (auxS1, reformulated in S2’s terms). Commitment to “If there are certain flies, then there is sometimes a rabbit around” (“If D, sometimes B”) is eliminated because this commitment has turned out to require commitment to “There are certain flies that gather around rabbits or hares” (auxS2). (In the alternative formulation of S1’s scorecard precluded entitlement to “If there are certain flies, then there is a rabbit around” (“If D, then B”) is turned into a commitment.) All the entries of S1’s deontic score are compatible with S1’s normative atti-

178 tudes. This shows that S1’s use of A is intensionally and extensionally correct. If in a subsequent step the correctness of J is examined, this changes the scorecard only if this claim turns out to be incorrect. In that case commitment to auxS1 turns into precluded entitlement. Precluded entitlement to auxS1 in combination with S1’s endorsement of an inferentially connected claim, J, makes her use of A intensionally incorrect. Revised scorecard for S1 in connection with A, provided that J is endorsed and J is correct Commitments • There is a rabbit. (B) • If there is a rabbit, then it is gregarious. (If B then F.) • If there are certain flies, then there is sometimes a rabbit around. (If D, sometimes B.) • There is a rabbit, because I observe a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail. (If E, then B; and E.) • There are certain flies that always gather around rabbits. (auxS1) This example makes it clear that extensional and intensional correctness or epistemological and semantic objectivity are always settled in the course of one and the same process. In chapter 1 a close connection between both kinds of objectivity were taken as intuitively plausible, but not justified. The example, moreover, makes it clear that two things are going on at the same time in the scorekeeping process: on the one hand, assessment of inferences and assertions and on the other hand constitution of content. This implies that conceptual practice, which deals with the correctness of assertions, and constitutive practice, which deals with the appropriateness of contents, cannot be separated. As a consequence, the epistemological dimension of the rule-following problem – the problem of how to settle what rule an individual follows (and thus to settle whether her performance is correct given the rule she is to follow) – and the ontological one – the problem of what constitutes a rule – are to be solved by pointing to one and the same process. Provided that one adopts this way of spelling out mutual assessments, then Kripke is justified in holding that the solution to the epistemological dimension also provides the solution to the ontological one. In chapter 2.1 this claim was found not to be justified by Kripke or by those authors who have tried to provide arguments for his claim.

179 In view of a comparison with the naturalistic approach, scorekeeping reveals several important features: First, it is giving and asking for reasons for an assertion, that is jointly settling the inferential connections of an assertion. (Moreover, not only does it proceeds from rational, inferential practice, but it also starts out from conceptual, i.e. representational, practice insofar as it takes observation reports into account.) Second, scorekeeping proceeds from the actual normative attitudes in combination with navigation between perspectives. (Brandom does not make it clear, though, that it proceeds from the actual normative attitudes. But if he assumed attitude-transcendently correct normative attitudes, he would violate his pragmatist framework. Moreover, I will explicate below that there is no evidence that he adopts the problematic view.) Navigation between perspectives means that in order to settle the correctness of a speaker’s assertion the interpreter has to consider whether the inferential connections the speaker endorses are compatible with what follows from the assertion in her own light. Both features are closely related. Talk of giving and asking for reasons points out that mutual assessments that are always in play. This means that no single perspective is privileged. Navigation between perspectives is a specification of the process of giving and asking for reasons because it entails that the process that settles correctness is nevertheless perspectival through and through. I will not usually distinguish between both features but rather consider the more specific one. The really important aspect shared by both features is that they point to the importance of reasons. I will return to this in a minute. Navigation between perspectives has two consequences. First, if it indeed allows for attitude-transcendence, then also constitutive practice allows for such a kind of correctness. Second, a process of mutual assessments that makes use of navigation between perspectives has to be spelled out in normative terms: S2’s assessment of A does not only depend upon whether she takes A to be correct herself. It also depends upon what else S1 and S2 take to be correct. If S2 assessed the correctness of A by considering only whether S1 takes A to be correct herself, the assessment could be manifested in behavior. But in the framework of the scorekeeping model, A is assessed as correct provided that S1 endorses J and J can be backed by re-

180 liable observations. The inferential articulation of such assessment cannot be manifested in behavior. Instead it requires that S2 masters normative (and logical) vocabulary. She has to master talk of what is taken to be correct (and of what follows from what). The assessments relevant to the scorekeeping model are explicated in terms of the normative attitudes which are in turn conceived as basic. What role does navigation between perspectives play in the scorekeeping model? In chapter 2.2 I supported Brandom’s view that navigation between perspectives allows for communication even if the interlocutors do not share a common set of inferences. This role, however, is not of interest in the present context. One can also read Brandom as claiming that navigation between perspectives permits us to get beyond mere intersubjectivity, since it anchors the correctness of assertions and contents in the world: “Given the way the world actually is (according to the Inspector) – in this case, given who actually was scurrying through the courtyard – the Constable has without realizing it committed himself to a claim that is true if and only if the Croaker is the fugitive. That is the objective content of his commitment… In keeping the two correlated stets of books10 on the Constable…, the Inspector implicitly distinguishes between the deontic status undertaken by the Constable and the deontic attitude adopted by the Constable”, Brandom (1994), p. 595.

In order to anchor the correctness of assertions and their contents in the world one has to fulfil two tasks: (1) one has to settle what entity an assertion is about and (2) whether it is with things in the world as the assertion claims it is. Finding out what an assertion is about is the goal of a process that settles the correctness of its inferential connections, its intensional correctness. Does “There is a gavagai” permits one to draw the conclusion “There is a rabbit,” “There is a hare,” or “There is a rabbit-or-hare?” Settling how it is with things in the world, in contrast, means settling an assertion’s extensional correctness. Provided that “There is a gavagai” is about a rabbit, judging the extensional correctness of this claim means telling whether there is a rabbit. In order to fulfill both tasks one has to examine ultimately the reliability of the observation report that is inferentially re10

I.e. in distinguishing between the Constable’s (reformulated) inferential significance and the normative scoreboard the Inspector keeps for him.

181 lated with the assertion in question. This is because a reliable observation report is caused by RDRDs and as such it establishes a link between our immediate answers to the world and our conceptualisations. In order to deal with the question how the correctness of assertions and their contents is anchored in the world, the question how the reliability of observation reports can be settled must first be considered. In order to settle the reliability of an observation report the interpreter must be able to attribute the observer commitment to inferences from proper conditions for the report to the report itself and commitment to the presence of these conditions, see chapter 3.3. To attribute to the observer the former kind of commitment means to justify the aboutness of the report insofar as this attribution justifies an inference from the observation report (provided that it is extensionally correct) to the presence of the entity it claims to be about. To attribute the latter kind of commitment means to settle the extensional correctness of the report. Both aspects in combination settle reliability because they permit an inference from the report to the presence of the entity of which it speaks. The way I have up to now dealt with aboutness and extensional correctness has been rudimentary, since it has not taken observation reports and their reliability into account. In order to settle aboutness I have only considered which translation of the original assertion permits one to ascribe as many correct inferences to the speaker as possible. Observation reports have not played a substantial role. Extensional correctness has up to now been handled in a rudimentary manner as well. Reliable observation reports have been invoked as a criterion for extensional correctness. But I have chosen the very special case where both individuals make the same observation report. The respective interpreter therefore considers the observer’s report as extensionally correct. Only if observation reports do not concur but rather lead to incompatibilities are the individuals induced to examine whether the proper conditions for reliable reports prevail. In the following, I will discuss how to fully incorporate aboutness and extensional correctness into the scorekeeping model. This will be done by considering Brandom’s social-inferential version of triangulation, cf. Brandom (1994), pp. 426-432. Triangulation in general says that in order to settle aboutness and extensional correctness one has to consider different

182 causal connections that lead from identical or different observation reports to one and the same entity. The general demand to conceive aboutness and extensional correctness11 in terms of triangulation can be said to stem from the rule-following problem or, similarly, from Quine’s inscrutability of reference. But what does an appropriate conception of triangulation look like? In order to spell out the basic idea behind triangulation, consider the two individuals, S1 and S2, in a new example. S1 is observing the street from behind a closed window when she suddenly says “There is Bello.” S2 is in the garden, separated from the street by a high hedge. She, too, suddenly claims out “There is Bello.” S1’s utterance is caused by a stimulation of a particular part of her brain. The stimulation of the brain is brought about by transmission of a signal from nerve-endings in her ear to this part of the brain. Finally, the stimulation of the ear is caused by the presence of a dog. S2’s claim is caused by a stimulation of a different part of her brain. The stimulation of her brain is caused by transmission of a signal from nerveendings in her eye to this part of the brain. The stimulation of the eye is again caused by the presence of a dog. As long as one considers one individual in isolation it is indeterminate which node in the causal chain is the extension of the respective claim. Is the claim about the one or the other proximal stimulus, namely a stimulation of part of the brain or of a sense organ? Or is it rather about a distal stimulus like Bello, the dog? Although we feel that the latter proposal is the right one, we have no reason to prefer the distal stimulus. Moreover, the fact that the stimulus is supposed to be reliably correlated with the observation report seems to speak against the distal stimulus. The more nodes there are between an observation report and what it is supposed to be about, the higher the risk that the correlation is not reliable.

11

Until I consider Brandom’s version of triangulation, I will only speak of aboutness. This is for the sake of simplicity because only Brandom’s version permits to settle the aboutness of an observation report without settling its extensional correctness. This thesis with respect to Brandom’s account will be justified .

183 Causal12 triangulation, as it has e.g. been proposed by Dretske (1981), at first sight avoids the indeterminacy of aboutness and offers an argument in favor of the distal stimulus. The node where the causal chains intersect is Bello, the dog on the street. Therefore the observation report can be said to be about Bello: S1

observation report “There is Bello”

S2

stimulation of part 1 of the brain

stimulation of part 2 of the brain

stimulation of the ear

stimulation of the eye Bello

But at second sight, purely causal triangulation is doomed to failure. It does not rule out that the response is about a disjunction of proximal stimuli instead of being about the distal stimulus. This claim is illustrated by the following graphic, which shows that the causal chains can also be interpreted in a deviating way:

12

Every kind of triangulation accentuates the importance of there being different chains from the observation report to the entity it is about. But this does not mean that triangulation has to involve different individuals, i.e. that it is always social. The different chains can also be accessible to one and the same individual. If triangulation is interpreted as an answer to the rule-following problem, then a purely causal, instead of a social or even a social-inferential, version of triangulation can be read as an answer to the rule-following problem that does not acknowledge Kripke’s plead for a social, normative solution. Why a social version of triangulation is required will become evident in a minute.

184

S1

observation report “There is Bello”

stimulation of part 1 of the brain

S2

stimulation of part 2 of the brain

stimulation of the ear or stimulation of the eye Bello

The first intersection of the causal chains is now at the node “stimulation of the ear or stimulation of the eye.” Therefore the observation report can be said to be about a stimulation of sense organs instead of being about a dog. But the problem now is that it is indeterminate whether the report is about stimulation of the ear, of the eye or of both. Let me formulate this criticism in another way: An important reason why the skeptic negates the possibility of rule-following is that one can always give non-standard interpretations of a rule, see chapter 2.1. This is what Brandom calls the gerrymandering problem: How is content to be conceived such that one cannot draw conceptual borders in arbitrary ways? An important form of the constant possibility of gerrymandering is the possibility to replace the original description of a particular content (e.g. the description “‘There is Bello’ is about Bello”) by a disjunction of features (e.g. “‘There is Bello’ is about a stimulation of the eye or of the ear”). Brandom calls this kind of gerrymandering “disjunctivitis.” Causal triangulation can be criticized for not avoiding this kind of gerrymandering. In order to do better one must not characterize triangulation exclusively as the intersection of two causal chains, but rather stress with Davidson (1989) that two individuals have to settle whether they find stimuli similar. It is we who decide where our causal chains intersect. As a consequence, these chains are not exclusively characterized in causal, but also in social, terms. Aboutness is fixed by the intersection of the causal chains that lead from observation reports which both individuals find similar to an entity that is also recognized by both individuals as similar to certain others (provided the entity is a property, not merely an object):

185 “The child finds tables relevantly similar; we also find tables similar; and we find each of the child’s responses to tables similar. Given these three patterns of response it is possible to locate the relevant stimuli that elicit the child’s responses”, Davidson (1989), pp. 197f.

But accentuating the social dimension of triangulation is not sufficient. Disjunctivitis at the proximal level is avoided, because proximal stimuli are not intersubjectively accessible. Individuals will instead connect responses they find similar with a distal stimulus like Bello. But this does not avoid gerrymandering at the distal level. Instead of referring to Bello, the observation report may also refer to Thera or to the disjunction Bello-orThera. A causal-social conception of reliability also underlies the naturalistic account of content. In chapter 3.1 I said that this account conceives reliability (and thus RDRDs) as a natural affair, i.e. RDRDs are not formed by human practice. More precisely, one can say that RDRDs can be explicated in terms of dispositions of behavior. This idea can now be specified by saying that what counts are shared dispositions of behavior – this corresponds to Davidson’s point that we find particular observation reports and entities similar – and that RDRDs can ultimately be in causal terms. In chapter 3.1 a natural conception of reliability has been criticized for being antipragmatist or for leading to the Myth of the Given. Now a second objection can be formulated. The aboutness of observation reports is indeterminate. This means that the attempt to anchor content in the world by invoking natural RDRDs does not only have the awkward consequence of being anti-pragmatist, but that it fails to fulfill its explanatory task. I will now argue that indeterminateness can be avoided if one takes inferential connections into account. RDRDs convincingly anchor content in the world if they are not conceived as natural but if the reliability of our responses to the world is assessed by taking inferential connections into account. If this is correct, then the deeper reason why the naturalistic approach fails to avoid indeterminacy and thus to anchor content in the world is its starting out from pre-inferential practice. The gerrymandering problem can be avoided if both individuals mutually assess the reasons they give for connecting an observation report with a particular part of the world. This means that the respective interpreter has

186 to settle whether the respective observer endorses inferences from proper conditions to the report and takes the proper conditions to apply. Before I spell out this idea, let me point out that specifying it in terms of the endorsement of inferences simplifies matters as compared to the insights developed in chapter 3.3 which have, on p. 174 above, been formulated as the thesis that reliability requires the attribution of commitment to – rather than endorsement of – the mentioned inferences and its premises: Even if an observer does not endorse an inference and its premise upon request, she can be attributed commitment to these items. In order to do this, the interpreter may examine in repeated instances whether the observer endorses the premise in the same situation in which she makes her observation report or whether she makes her report under particular inner and outer circumstances. Taking this kind of interpretation into account is indispensable in order to guaranteee that observation reports are regress-stoppers. This kind of interpretation of course need not only be applied to observation reports. It can be applied to all other kinds of claimings. Taking it into account would modify my whole presentation of the scorekeeping mode. It yields a completely different kind of commitments than the one I have introduced above. It yields commitments that do not depend upon the inferences S2 endorses, but only upon the S2’s observation of S1’s performances. For the sake of simplicity I will constrain this kind of interpretation to the ultimate step in a justificatory chain, i.e. to the case where an observation report is made under particular inner and outer circumstances. The other kind of interpretation, the consideration of whether an inference and its premise are endorsed by the observer, in contrast, treats aboutness and extensional correctness separately. Aboutness depends upon the assessment of the endorsed inference, extensional correctness upon the assessment of the endorsed premise. But this is not the only advantage to this kind of interpretation. In chapter 3.3 I formulated the idea that this kind of interpretation is required in order not to privilege the interpreter’s perspective. Basically the same idea can now be expressed by saying that it is required in order to avoid indeterminacy (or the possibility of gerrymandering) with respect to aboutness and extensional correctness. In order to give an inferential account of triangulation I come back to the gavagai example. I now assume that both individuals make incompatible

187 observation reports. S1 claims “I observe a hare” whereas S2 claims “I observe a rabbit.” It is therefore either impossible that both of these reports are about the same kind of animal or that both individuals speak truly about the animal at issue. In order to solve the incompatibility one has to examine which observation report is reliable, which individual respects the proper conditions for her report. If S1’s observation report “I observe a hare” is supposed to be reliable, S2 has to ascribe S1 an inference from proper conditions to the observation report and commitment to the premise of this inference. In chapter 3.3 I distinguished two different kinds of proper conditions. These conditions are non-inferentially and inferentially derived claims as to how things are and claims as to how things look under particular inner and outer circumstances. I now consider the first kind of conditions and then the second one. The second kind of conditions is crucial if observation reports are supposed to serve as regress-stoppers. What it means that something looks like an X cannot be further negotiated. Having justified the reliability of a report by pointing to this kind of proper conditions, the reliability can therefore only be questioned in a very constrained sense. All that can be questioned is whether the mentioned circumstances actually are relevant for the reliability of the report. The first kind of conditions is important because it can be negotiated in a more comprehensive way than the second one. The following graph shows the attributed inferential commitments linked with both individuals’ observation reports “I observe a hare” and “I observe a rabbit.” The incompatibility among their reports shows in the fact that the causal chains between the reports and the entity they purport to be about do not intersect. The causal chains that give rise to the observation reports are on gray background. The entities the reports purport to be about are in majuscules.

188 S1

S2

I observe something that looks like a small brown animal with a clearly visible, bushy white tail under sufficient lighting conditions and in a sober state.

I observe something that looks like a small brown animal with a clearly visible, bushy white tail under sufficient lighting conditions and in a sober state.

If I observe something that looks like a small brown animal with a clearly visible, bushy white tail under sufficient lighting conditions and in a sober state, then I observe a small brown animal with a well visible, bushy white tail.

If I observe something that looks like a small brown animal with long ears under sufficient lighting conditions and in a sober state, then I observe a small brown animal with long ears.

I observe a small brown animal with a clearly visible, bushy white tail.

I observe a small brown animal with long ears.

If I observe a small brown animal with a clearly visible, bushy white tail, then I observe a hare.

If I observe a gregarious small brown animal with long ears, then I observe a rabbit.

I observe a hare. stimulation of a part of the brain

I observe a rabbit. stimulation of a part of the brain

stimulation of a sense organ

stimulation of a sense organ

HARE

RABBIT

S1’s report is reliable if she is justified in claiming “There is a small brown animal with a clearly visible, bushy white tail” and “If there is a small brown animal with a well visible, bushy white tail, then there is a hare.” Let us assume that S1’s inference is revealed to be incorrect in the course of mutual assessments. What is correct is rather “If there is a small brown animal with a clearly visible, bushy white tail, then there is a rabbit.” In that case S1 only purports to speak about a hare. But she actually speaks about a rabbit. If one substitutes the bad inference for the good one and

189 does the same with the consequence drawn from the inference, the incompatibility disappears and both observation reports turn out to be about a rabbit. The consideration of inferences changes one of the two causal chains and makes them intersect. Gerrymandering at the distal level is ruled out because considering inferential connections permits to settle unequivocally whether what is at issue is a rabbit, a hare or a rabbit-or-hare. Let us assume, in contrast, that S1 is justified in endorsing her inference from an animal with a bushy white tail to a hare. Then “I observe a hare” speaks about a hare as it purports to do. But the incompatibility still exists. In that case S2 has to examine whether S1 is justified in endorsing the observation report that forms the premise of the considered inference, namely “I observe a small brown animal with a well visible, bushy white tail.” In order to carry out this task one could in principle invoke further assertions that are inferentially related with this report. But in order to make use of it as a preliminary regress-stopper S2 has to examine whether S1 makes this report iff the proper inner and outer circumstances for it apply. Maybe due to bad lighting conditions S1 has taken for a bushy white tail what is actually a white flower. In that case S1 does not respect the proper conditions. She therefore makes a false report about a hare. As a consequence, her report has to be corrected into “There is a small brown animals with a hardly visible, tiny tail and a white flower.” Similarly, all other items that mention an animal with a bushy white tail or a hare have to be corrected into items that mention an animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail and a flower or a rabbit. Then the incompatibility disappears as the modified graph shows. (How the above graph should be modified in case S1’s “I observe a hare” actually speaks about a rabbit can be easily seen by the reader.)

190 S1

S2

I observe something that would look like a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail and a white flower under sufficient lighting conditions and in a sober state.

I observe something that looks like a small brown animal with long ears under sufficient lighting conditions and in a sober state.

I observe something that looks like a small brown animal with long ears under sufficient lighting conditions and in a sober state.

If I observe something that looks like a small brown animal with long ears under sufficient lighting conditions and in a sober state, then I observe a small brown animal with long ears.

I observe a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail and a white flower.

I observe a small brown animal with long ears.

If I observe a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail and a white flower, then I observe a rabbit.

If I observe a gregarious small brown animal with long ears, then I observe a rabbit.

I observe a rabbit.

stimulation of a part of the brain

stimulation of a part of the brain stimulation of a sense organ

stimulation of a sense organ

RABBIT

Above I stated that triangulation is a device for how to settle the reliability of an observation report. Sellars’s thesis (presented in chapter 3.3) according to which a purely causal conception of reliability – in contrast with a conception that takes assessments and inferential connections into account – is not available has now been illustrated and confirmed by a critical consideration of causal triangulation.

191 In order to conclude the consideration of how content is anchored in the world, let me make one more remark: In chapter 3.3 I characterized the conceptual realm as inferentially articulated whereby the inferential connections have to involve observation reports in order to effectuate that assertions and the correctness conditions (inferential relations) that individuate their contents can be objectively correct. But there is also quite a different characterization of the conceptual realm. I introduced in chapter 2.2 the idea that content permits to find out what an assertion is about. How do both characterizations fit together? The answer is that the issue of what the assertion is about forms part of the issue what inferential relations are appropriate to the world. On the preceding pages, I have shown how aboutness can be accounted for in the context of social, inferential semantics. We have come to see that social-inferential triangulation is a means for picking out the distal stimulus an observation report is about and for settling its extensional correctness. Besides avoiding gerrymandering it has a further advantage over other kinds of triangulation because questions of aboutness and of extensional correctness can be treated separately. I introduced social-inferential triangulation as a means to anchor content in the world. Having pointed to the importance of causal connections in this context – to the causation of observation reports by RDRDs –, the way correctness is anchored in the world can now be specified: RDRDs anchor correctness in the world in the context of an assessment of the inferential connections observation reports stand in. In order to complete the consideration of how correctness is anchored in the world we have to consider how RDRDs are characterized. Brandom points out that RDRDs are not natural (at least not all of them). This means that they are not formed by a practice of mutual assessments. It is for two reasons that they are nonnatural. First, observation reports always have to be assessed as reliable. Second, reliable dispositions presuppose that the younger are trained by the elder on how to participate in an already up-and-running game. Brandom writes: “There will typically be some sorts of reports such that under appropriate reporting conditions (the same for all), essentially all the members of the linguistic community are reliable… Other sorts of reports involve… specialized training”, Brandom (1994), p. 222.

192 “The basis of observational knowledge, then, is that it should be possible to train individuals reliably to respond differentially to features of their environment by acknowledging doxastic commitments”, Brandom (1994), p. 224.

Training is a special case of reliability assessments in general because both during the training period and afterwards an observation report has to be assessed as reliable. Therefore, the first argument against the assumption of natural RDRDs encompasses the second one. In chapter 3.3 I argued that RDRDs have to be explicated in normative terms all the way down. Earlier in this section I argued why assessments have to be explicated in normative terms. As a consequence, it now turns out that all the normative terms that figure in an account of content – assessments (sanctions) and normative attitudes as well as reliability – either have to be explicated in normative terms or have to be considered as basic. Reliability is explicated in terms of assessments. They are in turn explicated in terms of normative attitudes that are treated as basic. Semantic naturalism therefore has to be rejected. Instead, one is committed to what I call normative primitivism, i.e. to the thesis that content (what is correct) has to be explicated exclusively in terms of normative attitudes (what is taken to be correct). Besides normative primitivism, Brandom feels committed to a similar, but not identical thesis, namely “normative phenomenalism,” cf. Brandom (1994), pp. 286-297: What exactly is understood by this thesis and how does it fit with the presentation of the scorekeeping model just given? Phenomenalism, as Brandom understands this term, is the thesis that what is correct is explicated in terms of and supervenes on13 what is taken to be correct. Usually phenomenalism is understood as a position with respect to physical properties that goes back to Mill or even Berkeley. It was prominent in logical empiricism (Mach) and has been defended again in sense datum theories (Moore, Russell, Ayer). It claims that either the cognition of physical properties or their being (remember Berkeley’s esse est percipi for the ontological version of phenomenalism) is based upon sense13

“... strategies here called ‘phenomenalist’ in a broad sense treat the subject matter about which one adopts a phenomenalistic view as supervening on something else...”, Brandom (1994), p. 292.

193 impressions, perceptions or sense-data. Something can be judged to be – or it is – a determinate physical property (e.g. red) if it looks like such a property (if it looks red) under suitable conditions. Alternatively, phenomenalism can be characterized as the claim that what is represented has to be explicated with respect to – or is based upon – representings. Phenomenalism understood as an explication of what is correct in terms of what is taken to be correct is central to a pragmatist account of content. But Brandom thinks it is important to defend normative, not subjective, phenomenalism. Normative, as opposed to subjective, phenomenalism is the thesis that what is correct is explicated (“explained”) in terms of what is correctly as opposed to what is actually taken to be correct: “The scorekeeping account incorporates a phenomenalist approach to norms, but it is a normative phenomenalism, explaining having a certain normative status in effect as being properly taken to have it”, Brandom (1994), p. 627.

The rejection of subjective phenomenalism is well taken because taking the exclusively actual normative attitudes into account rules out attitudetranscendence, see chapter 2.1. But normative phenomenalism seems to entail that attitude-transcendently correct normative attitudes are presupposed in an account of content. Such a proposal would be indefensible because it would run counter to a pragmatist account of content. If Brandom presupposed the correct normative attitudes, this would mean for him to propose a second answer to the question how attitude-transcendence is made room for in addition to the answer presented above. This answer would be incompatible with the pragmatist framework of the scorekeeping model and would give rise to the question why the latter should probably not be sufficient. But I think one must not read Brandom as invoking attitudetranscendently correct normative attitudes. The above characterization of the scorekeeping model in mind, normative phenomenalism can be seen as the demand to take into account what is correctly taken to be correct from the interpreter’s point of view, which in turn takes into account the reasons both individuals give for their position. So conceived, normative phenomenalism is the condensed formulation of how the scorekeeping model explicates content. Now we can see how normative phenomenalism is related to normative primitivism: If normative phenomenalism is explicated in terms of naviga-

194 tion between perspectives, then it says that content has to be explicated exclusively in terms of what is actually and correctly taken to be correct. As such, it encompasses normative primitivism. It specifies the latter thesis, since it makes clear that content has to be explicated in terms of what is correctly taken to be correct. But there is a thesis that apparently goes beyond the scorekeeping model, namely conceptual realism. This thesis states that the world itself is conceptually articulated since it consists of facts in the sense of the conceptual contents of true assertions (or thoughts): “The conception of concepts as inferentially articulated permits a picture of thought and of the world that thought is about as equally, and in the favored cases identically, conceptually articulated. Facts are just true claims”, Brandom (1994), p. 622.

Calling this thesis conceptual realism refers to Habermas, cf. Habermas (1999), p. 166. When Habermas chooses this label, he puts Brandom’s thesis in the tradition of an anti-nominalist position with respect to universals. The universal entities that Brandom conceives realistically (i.e. that he takes to be in the world) are propositional contents. They are universal insofar as they apply to different assertion tokens and types. Brandom uses conceptual realism to give an account of how content is anchored in the world. He makes use of this feature in order to state how our answers to the world, i.e. observation reports that are based upon RDRDs, impose a constraint on our conceptualizations. He thinks that conceptual realism avoids placing a gap between the world and our conceptualisations; such a gap may result if one rejects, as Brandom does, a representationalist account of the world’s impressions upon our senses: “Concepts conceived as inferential roles of expressions do not serve as epistemological intermediaries, standing between us and what is conceptualised by them. This is not because there is no causal order consisting of particulars, interaction with which supplies the material for thought. It is rather because all of these elements are themselves conceived as thoroughly conceptual, not as contrasting with the conceptual”, Brandom (1994), p. 622.

In section 5.4 I will discuss what gives rise to this gap and how it can be avoided. (Brandom embraces conceptual realism since it avoids both the impending gap and the Myth of the Given. How both problems are related will also become evident in that section.) I will also discuss why Brandom

195 thinks he needs this thesis in addition to the way I have presented the scorekeeping model. Already, though, we can say that it is superfluous if the scorekeeping model as it has been presented so far fulfills its explanatory task. To sum up, the scorekeeping model’s account of objective content exhibits the following features: Objectivity is supposed to be provided by a particular kind of giving and asking for reasons, namely by navigation between perspectives combined with social-inferential triangulation. The approach promises to provide attitude-transcendence within a pragmatist framework. It fits with a pragmatist framework because it proceeds from the actual normative attitudes and models the correct normative attitudes as what is correct in the light of the interpreter. And it makes room for attitudetranscendence because it considers the reasons both individuals give for their positions. These central elements of the scorekeeping piece have several consequences. First, the most important point is normative primitivism. Navigation between perspectives implies that assessments and the normative attitudes assessments are based upon cannot be explicated in terms of dispositions of behavior. Normative attitudes, then, have to be conceived as basic. And observation reports require reliability assessments. In consequence, RDRDs have to be explicated in normative terms as well. Therefore, content has to be explicated exclusively in normative terms. Second, if constitutive practice starts out from here, then constitutive practice possesses the resources for attitude-transcendent correctness. Finally, the characterization of the scorekeeping process as giving and asking for reasons, i.e. as rationally or inferentially articulated, in combination with a consideration of what a claiming is about implies that constitutive practice is conceptually articulated. Going beyond the scorekeeping piece, we have also discovered conceptual realism, the assumption of which provides a second proposal of how to anchor content in the world. My aim in this section was to show how a particular reading of Brandom accounts for objectivity. Whether his story is convincing will form the subject matter of section 5.2. But first, I will complete the presentation of

196 Brandom’s account of objectivity in light of how the scorekeeping model fits with the Hegelian one. 5.1.2 The Hegel model In this section I will consider the Hegel piece from Brandom (1999) and Brandom (2002a) with respect to the question how it fits with the scorekeeping piece. Can it be reconciled with the scorekeeping piece? Does it go beyond the latter? In order to answer these questions, I will focus on Brandom’s (2002a) three-stage process that is supposed to characterize constitutive practice. In order to motivate how Brandom comes to develop this process, I will first present the thought-experiment that Brandom (2002a) undertakes in order to develop an appropriate conception of content. The three-stage process illustrates the final stage in the experiment of thought. Subsequently, I will present this process. Although it is supposed to characterize constitutive practice, the way Brandom presents the process does not make it sufficiently clear whether it can be fully spelled out in terms of social practice. Therefore I will finally attempt to transfer the process into terms of social practice. In so doing it becomes evident that it is irreconcilable with a pragmatist framework and that its decisive point is superfluous provided that the scorekeeping piece fulfills its explanatory task. Setting the problematic aspects aside, the three-stage process does not really go beyond the scorekeeping piece. As a consequence, the Hegel piece can be neglected when presenting and discussing Brandom’s account of content. In order to show what constitutes content Brandom uses a thoughtexperiment. Three conceptions of content are set against one another and each succeeding one is motivated by criticizing the earlier one. The final stage of the thought-experiment results in conceiving content as a social process. This process – which forms the main issue of this section – is subsequently modelled in again three stages. Most interestingly, the first two stages repeat the first two stages of the thought-experiment. The process therefore plays a double role. It corresponds to the final stage of the thought-experiment and at the same time illustrates the thought-experiment as a whole. We will see whether it plays this double role convincingly or whether it conflates both roles.

197 Let me present the thought-experiment in detail. Brandom deals with the problem of how the determinateness of worldly entities and contents can be explicated. This is the question of how a particular entity or content can be individuated and thus be identified, i.e. of how it can be distinguished from all others and thus be picked out as the same again: “Determinateness is a matter of identity and individuation. It concerns how one thing is distinguished from others”, Brandom (2002a), p. 179.

The first proposal how to tackle this issue is that content is individuated insofar as the entity it is about is immediately, i.e. non-inferentially, discriminated from all others. This proposal fails in the light of an argument given by Sellars (1956), namely the argument that determinateness cannot be conceived as immediate. Instead it presupposes incompatibility relations: “The notion of immediacy presupposes determinateness of content, but cannot by itself underwrite it. Determinate content must be articulated by relations of material incompatibility. That realization entails rejecting the semantic atomism that lies at the core of what Wilfrid Sellars would later call the ‘Myth of the Given’…”, Brandom (2002a), p. 182.

In chapter 3.3 I expressed this idea by pointing out that according to Sellars a pure observation language is not available. Mastering the content of a non-inferential report requires that one is able to inferentially relate one’s report with other claimings. Given the failure of the first proposal, Brandom considers a second one according to which content is individuated exclusively in terms of incompatibility relations, a position he calls “strong individuational holism:” “Articulation by relations of material incompatibility is sufficient – all there is available to define it – for determinate contentfulness…”, Brandom (2002a), p. 183.

This conception of content is also not viable. The most obvious reason is that it runs into an infinite regress of characterizations of content. Brandom expresses the same idea in a more sophisticated way: Individuating content exclusively in terms of relations among contents makes the notion of relation unintelligible once the relata – contents – are dissolved into further relations. And if the notion of relation is unintelligible, the notion of content also becomes unintelligible, cf. Brandom (2002a), pp. 187f. Brandom

198 therefore finally suggests that content is determined by a social process that recombines both conceptions of content. In order to understand Brandom’s project better it is helpful to make some general remarks on the relation between immediate discrimination, identification and conceptual capacities. Immediate discrimination of entities, which is a capacity that may become manifest in observation reports, is based upon RDRDs with respect to these entities. Immediate discrimination distinguishes an entity from all others. It therefore individuates and identifies it. What is the difference between the capacity of immediate discrimination and the capacity to master content, given the fact that content – just like immediate discrimination – allows for an identification of entities? The answer is that mastering content includes the capacity to draw inferences from an immediate discrimination. This is the difference between responsive and conceptual classification of entities, cf. Brandom (1994), p. 89. RDRDs can be assigned to conceptual and non-conceptual beings alike. They belong to the causal, as opposed to the rational, realm since they cause answers to the world such as observation reports. Notwithstanding the assignment of RDRDs to the causal realm, I have considered the question whether the reliability of responsive dispositions requires conceptual capacities. I think this is also the question Brandom is after in his thoughtexperiment. But how does the claim that RDRDs presuppose conceptual capacities match the claim that they can also be assigned to non-conceptual beings? The answer is that the RDRDs of non-conceptual beings – or more generally: RDRDs that are either natural or that have only been formed by a process of training that makes use of sanctions in the sense of reinforcements of behavior – permit one to individuate entities, but they do not necessarily individuate them along the borders that are drawn by our concepts. The proper conditions that have to prevail if one is to speak of reliable, differential responsive dispositions – conditions that are implicitly mastered even by non-conceptual beings14 – need not correspond to the inferential 14

Let us assume that birds can discriminate particular shiny deeply red or nearly black fruit as food. They e.g. master the condition that similar looking fruit is consumable if it is on a tree (cherries), but that it is poisonous if it is on a bush (deadly nightshades).

199 relations that form the identity conditions of contents and the entities they are about. RDRDs that pick out exactly the entity that is also identified by contents – i.e. those that form the basis for observation reports – usually require training. When I talk of RDRDs, unless otherwise stated, I mean those that correspond to our conceptual borders and thus form the basis for observation reports. Let us now return to Brandom’s thought-experiment and consider the third stage in detail, i.e. the idea that content is constituted by a social process in three stages, cf. primarily Brandom (2002a), pp. 199-202. At the first stage, observationally accessible appearances are immediately, i.e. noninferentially, discriminated. Brandom makes it clear that such discrimination is supposed to be understood in an atomistic way. This apparently means that it does not require the ability to inferentially relate the report about the appearance with other claimings. Immediate discrimination in general, in contrast, only means that a report is not inferred, although calling it reliable may presuppose inferential capacities. Instead of speaking about appearances, Brandom also speaks about mere signs (proposition letters) or properties as what is immediately discriminated. I think all three versions are related insofar as the immediate discrimination of appearances and the underlying properties get expressed in signs. Mostly, I will in the following speak about immediately discriminated signs. On this stage, the individuals do not yet know anything about the contents of what they distinguish immediately. This is the reason why this stage is unstable. What is grasped immediately is not yet grasped as being determinate. A sign cannot be distinguished from others – it is not individuated – and cannot be identified as the same again. Given the fact that the first stage is unstable, on a second stage “practical incompatibility relations” among signs are introduced. These relations result from a process of sanctions that characterizes the transition from the first to the second stage. The role a sign plays in the process of sanctions is formulated exclusively in terms of these relations. This role is called the content of a sign. But practical incompatibility relations alone do not yield determinateness, because they are what Brandom calls “reciprocally sense dependent.” Brandom characterizes sense dependence as follows:

200 “Concept P is sense dependent on concept Q just in case one cannot count as having grasped P unless one counts as grasping Q”, Brandom (2002a), p. 194.

Reciprocal sense dependence with respect to practical incompatibility relations thus means that one relation cannot be grasped without grasping another relation and vice versa. Reciprocal sense dependence among the practical incompatibility relations that characterize content has the consequence that the notion of content becomes unintelligible: One runs into an infinite regress of characterizations of content. Therefore the practical incompatibility relations among signs are abstracted into “content-incompatibility relations” among inferential roles or contents. This means that on a third stage content is individuated by incompatibility relations. (Alternatively, it is conceived as an equivalence class of contents, cf. Brandom (2002a), pp. 201f. Brandom does not, however, fully specify this idea.) How does such an abstraction effectuate that contents become determinate? More precisely, how does it meet Brandom’s demand that determinateness requires that a third stage recombines incompatibility relations (that have been established on the second stage )with signs (that have been immediately discriminated on the first stage without grasping their contents, contents which have dissolved on the second stage into mere relations)? According to Brandom, the recombination can be effectuated once one takes into account that content-incompatibility relations among contents are asymmetrically sense-dependent on practical incompatibility relations among signs (whereas not only practical incompatibility relations but also content-incompatibility relations are symmetrically sense-dependent on each other). In order to reconstruct this idea I will first discuss how the asymmetric sense dependence of contents on practical incompatibility relations and the role it is supposed to play can be made intelligible. Which contents are connected by content-incompatibility relations cannot be stated without stating which immediately discriminated signs are connected by practical incompatibility relations because the former relations are abstracted from the latter. But practical incompatibility relations can be stated independently of content-incompatibility relations. Stating them only presupposes the ability to discriminate signs and a process of sanctions that constitutes practical incompatibility relations. Therefore, content-

201 incompatibility relations are only asymmetrically sense dependent on practical incompatibility relations. So far so good. But while the asymmetric sense dependence claim itself can be made intelligible, it is not clear how it permits us to bring immediately discriminated signs into the game again. It seems that signs and contents are still dissolved into the respective kind of relations. There is another aspect in the context of the asymmetric sense dependence claim one has to consider carefully. Brandom’s (2002a) central thesis on what concerns the constitution of content is called “objective idealism.” In what follows, I will first present this thesis and its derivation from what Brandom calls the “Harman point.” Then I will discuss whether it is consistent with the asymmetrical sense dependence just considered. This means to question whether the three-stage process can be conceived as an illustration of this thesis as intended. What Brandom calls the Harman point is Harman’s distinction between inferences and implications or, in a formulation I prefer, between inferential processes and inferential relations: “One must distinguish, and consider the relations between, inferential relations… and inferential processes”, Brandom (2002a), p. 192.

Let me first of all make clear what distinguishes inferential relations from inferential processes or from inferences, which are the subject matters of such processes, and why drawing such a dividing line is important. Inferences are doings, more precisely, transitions from one claiming to another. Inferential relations, in contrast, are relations between contents. The former notion belongs to pragmatics, the latter to semantics. It is important to conceive content in terms of inferential relations and not in terms of inferences, because assessments of inferences as correct only refer to concrete assertions whereas the notion of inferential relations introduces a generalization. Inferential relations are correctness conditions for all those assertions that have the same content. Let us now see how Brandom derives objective idealism from the Harman point. Brandom does not only transfer the Harman point from formal deductive logic to material inference but also extends it from commitmentpreserving inference (that corresponds to deduction, see section 5.1.1) to

202 incompatibility that is pivotal for content. Finally, he strengthens it: Mastering inferential relations consists in engaging in inferential processes, cf. Brandom (2002a), pp. 191-194 on his use of the Harman point. Objective idealism goes beyond this thesis only insofar as it takes the interrelatedness of relations and processes as reciprocal sense dependence, i.e. as the claim that relations cannot be understood without understanding processes and vice versa. If one adds first that the relations that individuate content are objective and even make up the structure of the world and second that inferential processes are a means of acknowledging error, an equivalent formulation of objective idealism says that relations in the world and processes of acknowledging error are reciprocally sense dependent: “… what one gets is a characteristic kind of reciprocal sense dependence claim: … One can understand the concept of a determinate objective world only to the extent to which one understands subjective15 processes of acknowledging error…”, Brandom (2002a), p. 196.

Objective idealism holds that the inferential relations that make up content and the inferential processes that settle who is wrong are reciprocally sense-dependent. Above we have seen that content-incompatibility relations are asymmetrically sense dependent on practical incompatibility relations. Content-incompatibility relations specify the content-constitutive inferential relations. Practical incompatibility relations are the outcome of the process of sanctions that settles correctness. Therefore, it is legitimate to substitute “inferential relations” with “content-incompatibility relations” and “inferential processes” with “practical incompatibility relations.” So reformulated, objective idealism turns out to be incompatible with the asymmetric sense dependence claim. Brandom’s central thesis, objective idealism, and the asymmetric sense dependence claim do not match. But this problem can easily be dispelled: By considering the model we gain the insight that objective idealism should be reformulated as an asymmetric sense dependence of inferential relations on inferential processes.

15

If one remembers that processes of acknowledging error as they have been characterized in the scorekeeping piece possess the resources for attitude-transcendent correctness, Brandom’s now calling such processes subjective is not appropriate.

203 The presentation of the three-stage process has now been concluded. The main problem that has arisen in the course of this presentation is that the role of the asymmetric sense dependence claim cannot be made intelligible. This finding lessens the value of the Hegel model, but it is not related to the original question, namely how the Hegel model fits with the scorekeeping model. That the three-stage process is meant as an account of constitutive practice becomes evident when Brandom points out that the transition from the first to the second stage has to be conceived in terms of sanctions. But on the whole the social dimension of this process remains dim. Therefore, I will now try to reformulate the three-stage process in terms of social practice. To begin with, let me make a general remark: With regard to such a formulation it does not seem very helpful to specify what is immediately discriminated in grammatical terms, namely as signs. It seems to be more helpful to specify it in pragmatic terms, as moves in social practice, precisely as non-inferential reports (observation reports). Let us start with the first stage. What can it mean in the framework of a social practice account of content that something is non-inferentially discriminated? Can this mean that it is atomistically discriminated? I have proposed that talk of atomistic immediate discrimination means that the immediately discriminated items – differential observation reports – do not require the ability to draw inferences. This in turn means that these reports are based upon natural RDRDs. But, as we have come to see in the presentation of the scorekeeping model, Brandom (1994) argues against natural RDRDs since he adopts Sellars (1956) argument that a pure observation language is not available. Therefore immediately discriminated items cannot be conceived as atomistic. Let us now turn to the second stage. What is decisive for its transfer into scorekeeping terms is to see that practical incompatibility relations among immediately discriminated signs or observation reports roughly correspond to the normative statuses assigned to inferences among assertions. Practical incompatibility relations and normative statuses alike result from a process of sanctions. And both items belong to pragmatics, not to semantics because both only hold for concrete (observational) assertions so that the formulation of content in terms of inferential relations among contents can be conceived as an abstraction from connections between assertions (in the

204 one case these connections are conceived as practical incompatibility relations, in the other as the inferences one is committed or entitled to). Having transferred the second stage into the well-known vocabulary from the scorekeeping piece, it is now possible to settle whether determinateness is not yet provided with the second stage but requires a third stage that reintroduces immediately discriminated items. In the scorekeeping piece a process that involves normative statuses is meant to be able to constitute objective content. Though ascriptions of normative statuses are perspectival, they nevertheless go beyond what anybody or even the community as a whole take to be correct. Brandom (2002a) is right that a particular content cannot be individuated exclusively in terms of its relations to other contents. Some contents must always – even if only preliminarily – be considered as individuated, in the last resort by immediate discrimination. But this does not require atomistically conceived immediately discriminated items or observation reports that do not involve the ability to draw inferences. Observation reports that are based upon RDRDs are only required as preliminary regress-stoppers. Such observation reports are available at every point of time in the scorekeeping process – before it has got started by questioning a claiming, e.g. an observation report, as well as after this process has come to a halt in having (preliminary) settled the correctness of the claiming. If the scorekeeping piece is successful in providing determinateness, determinateness is also provided with Brandom’s (2002a) second stage so that the third stage is superfluous. Why does Brandom overlook the fact that already the second stage allows for determinateness? The reason is that he neglects that observations reports form part of the process of sanctions that characterizes the second stage. He is led astray by the structure of the thought-experiment that exhibits a leap from the exclusive consideration of immediately discriminated items (observation reports) to the exclusive consideration of relations among them. Such a leap that makes observation reports suddenly disappear from sight does not figure in social practice where at every point of time some observation reports are considered as unproblematic. Conflation of the three-stage process with the thought-experiment also underlies the other objection I have made in the course of my comparison of this process with the scorekeeping piece. Only the thought-experiment, but not our so-

205 cial practice involves atomistically conceived immediate discrimination. Participation in a practice of mutual assessments requires inferential capacities. Although the third stage is superfluous in an account of how social practice makes room for determinateness, it is not completely useless. Its contribution lies in offering a definition of content. The notion of objective content does not figure in the second stage. (What is characterized on the second stage in terms of practical incompatibility relations is better not called content because it is perspectival!) If determinateness is provided on this stage of the social process although the outcome on this stage is perspectival through and through, then the notion of content is not part and parcel of such a process but rather has to be understood as its ideal limit. Only the third stage introduces the notion of content and characterizes it in terms of inferential relations. This is done by abstracting practical incompatibility relations into content-incompatibility relations or – in terms of the scorekeeping piece – by abstracting normative statuses with respect to inferences into inferential relations. This definition amends the two definitions from the scorekeeping piece. But it is not decisive whether content is defined as a function from auxiliary commitments to sets of inferences, as an equivalence class of assertions or in terms of inferential relations. And although an abstraction into inferential relations is not mentioned explicitly in the scorekeeping piece, it could be, given the fact that the three-stage process can be reformulated in terms of the scorekeeping model. Therefore Brandom (2002a) does not significantly go beyond the scorekeeping piece. To sum up, there are three main objections to Brandom’s three-stage model of content. The first one involves the presentation of the model itself, the other two derive from its comparison with the scorekeeping piece. First of all, it remains unclear how the third stage is supposed to work. It is unclear how asymmetric sense dependence between different kinds of relations brings atomistically conceived immediately discriminated items into the game again, items that are supposed to account for the determinateness of content. Second, atomistically conceived immediately discriminated items – observation reports that are based upon natural RDRDs – do not match the arguments against natural RDRDs Brandom has put forward in the context of the scorekeeping piece. Third, immediately discriminated items are

206 encompassed in the process of sanctions, which characterizes the transition from the first stage to the second stage of Brandom’s three-stage model of content (just like they are in play at every moment in the scorekeeping piece). As a consequence, the second stage yields determinateness so that the third stage is superfluous. The value of the third stage lies only in giving a definition of content that conceives content as being individuated by inferential relations, more precisely, by incompatibility relations, and thereby amends the definitions of content as an equivalence class and as a function developed in the context of the scorekeeping piece. But this definition is in principle already available to the scorekeeping piece. Therefore the three-stage process of content does not amend the scorekeeping piece in an important way. 5.2 How does a pragmatist reading of Brandom account for objectivity? In section 5.1 I pointed out that Brandom’s device of how to anchor content in the world and thus to get beyond mere intersubjectivity is navigation between perspectives in combination with social-inferential triangulation. Navigation between perspectives has been characterized as a kind of giving and asking for reasons that does not privilege any particular perspective – “giving and asking” means that what is at issue is always mutual assessments – but that nevertheless remains perspectival through and through. Every assessment depends upon what is correct in the light of the interpreter. Therefore, it is perspectival. But the interpreter takes into account the whole net of reasons the interpretee offers. The decisive aspect of navigation between perspectives that is meant to lead beyond intersubjectivity therefore consists in its pointing to a reasoning process. This reasoning process is anchored in the world insofar as it takes observation reports into account and assesses them with respect to their reliability, i.e. examines whether they are caused by reliable dispositions to answer differentially to worldly entities. This examination has been called socialinferential triangulation. In this section I will argue that this proposal of how to provide objectivity is convincing. I will proceed as follows: First, I will state why it is convincing and then compare my answer with a defence of Brandom’s account that can be found in the literature and with a particular element of

207 that can be found in the literature and with a particular element of Brandom’s own defence. Next, I will discuss whether the developed account of objectivity is strong enough. Finally, I will briefly examine objections that have been put forward in the literature against Brandom’s account of objectivity. I have claimed that what allows for objectivity is reasoning, provided that it takes observation reports into account. That reasoning is necessary for (objective) correctness has already been argued in chapter 3.3: If a foundationalist position cannot be defended and if, in consequence, RDRDs cannot be conceived as natural, then one has to assess observation reports with respect to their reliability. This is done by taking into account how they are inferentially related with other claimings. I will now turn to why I think such reasoning process is sufficient for objectivity. Given my definition of objectivity, the aim is to make room for a distinction between what anybody, including the community as a whole, takes to be correct and what is correct. Such a distinction requires pointing to something that is not at our disposal and that therefore constrains correctness. In order to see what kind of constraint the reasoning process provides, let us recapitulate how it is characterized. Individuals assess an assertion as correct or incorrect by solving the incompatibilities that show up if one considers the inferential connections linked with the assertion, the reasons given and asked for the assertion. Observation reports have to be taken into account in order to solve the incompatibilities. Let me give evidence for this idea by considering once more the example from section 5.1. It can be the case that an inference the speaker, S1, links with her assertion is incompatible with an inference the interpreter, S2, would link with it so that either S1’s or S2’s use of the assertion must be intensionally incorrect. S1 justifies the assertion “There is a rabbit” by the inference “If there are certain flies, then there is a rabbit around.” But S2 interrelates this assertion with “If there are certain flies, then there is sometimes a rabbit around.” Why does even solving such an incompatibility involve observation reports? The assessment of the incompatible inferences and thus the respective individual’s use of the assertion depends upon the endorsement of different claimings: A claiming like “There are certain flies that only gather around rabbits” justifies S1’s inference. A claiming like “There are

208 certain flies that gather around rabbits or hares” justifies S2’s inference. Provided that both individuals endorse the respective claiming, it is not evident that either of them uses the assertion intensionally incorrect. But the incompatibility between the inferences remains. At this point the assessment of the intensional correctness of the assertion is dependent upon the extensional correctness of the divergent claimings. Settling the extensional correctness of any item requires the consideration of observation reports that, in turn, have to be assessed as reliable. As a consequence, integrating observation reports into the process of mutual assessments is a precondition for ruling out incompatibilities. In the present example, one has to consider whether the flies are only observed in the vicinity of rabbits or also in the vicinity of hares. And if the former observation is made, settling its reliability means to examine whether the interpreter endorses an inference from the speaker’s observation of rabbits to the presence of gregarious animals, whether the interpreter acknowledges that the observation can only be made under sufficient lighting conditions and whether these lighting conditions prevail. So presented, the reasoning process provides a twofold constraint. First, taking reliable observation reports into account provides a constraint by the way the world is. This is because they are reliably caused rather than inferred. Note, however, that due to the fact that they have to be assessed themselves, saying that they provide a constraint only means that they are preliminary regress-stoppers in the process of mutual assessments: “Noninferential reports can function as unjustified justifiers: claimings that are treated as having a defeasible default status as entitled… So observation provides regress-stoppers, and in this sense a foundation for empirical knowledge”, Brandom (1994), p. 222.

Second, solving incompatibilities by considering inferential connections introduces a constraint insofar as it subjects the process of mutual assessments to rules of logic. In order to participate in any reasoning process whatsoever individuals have to grasp what it means that two items are incompatible or that one claiming follows from another. They have to master implicitly logical rules (“implicitly”, because they need not have specifically logical vocabulary at their disposal). Logical rules form the basis for everything individuals take to be correct and, therefore, cannot be drawn

209 into question themselves. This is why they can be said to form a constraint, cf. also Larmore (2001) for a similar argument with respect to what he calls norms of rationality. But note what saying this involves: An individual’s mastery of logical rules is expressed in her capacity to participate in the process of giving and asking of reasons as a whole, a process that ultimately involves a consideration of the way the world is. Mastering logical vocabulary thus does not mean mastering particular inferences, but rather mastering inferences in general. It does not mean mastering inferences that, when formulated explicitly, turn out to be good only due to the logical vocabulary they contain, but rather inferences the goodness of which depends upon all the vocabulary they contain and ultimately upon the way the world is. The constraint rules of logic provide is based upon the constraint provided by our answers to the world. But is attitude-transcendence really made room for if the process of mutual assessments is perspectival through and through, if every result of it can always be questioned anew? The answer I have given is not yet complete. It is decisive to understand it in the light of Brandom’s method of making explicit, cf. also Haag/ Sturm (2002), pp. 341f. on this method. It consists in legitimating a description of social practice in terms of a particular kind of vocabulary by pointing to particular structural elements of this practice. The participants of this practice, however, do not have this vocabulary at their disposal. They only implicitly master its content. By this way, Brandom intends to make explicit logical, semantic and intentional vocabulary which is consequently not at the explicit disposal of the participants. What does this method mean for the process of giving and asking for reasons? Whatever is taken to be correct on the basis of the best reasons available at a given point in time can always be questioned anew on the basis of further reasons. So what has been assessed as incorrect at one point can be assessed as correct in the light of further reasons. S1’s inference “If there are certain flies, then there is a rabbit around” is first assessed as incorrect on the grounds that it is incompatible with S2’s inference “If there are certain flies, then there is sometimes a rabbit around.” But later both inferences are assessed as correct on the grounds that S1 and S2 endorse the claims “There are certain flies that only gather around rabbits” and “There are certain flies that gather around rabbits and hares” respectively. But if

210 the one or the other of these claims cannot be backed by an appropriate observation report, the connected inference has to be assessed as incorrect again. Therefore, the participants in the reasoning process can never state what is correct or incorrect but only what is taken to be correct on the basis of the best reasons available at a given point in time. A practice characterized as such can, however, be described by saying that individuals make claims as to what is correct and corroborate or revise them by giving and asking for reasons. The practice, moreover, must be described in such a way and not as saying that individuals make and examine claims as to what is taken to be correct. In order to speak of a game of giving and asking for reasons the moves in this game – assertions – have to be conceived as claims as to what is correct. Only an individual’s claim as to what is correct commits her to justify it upon request – by inferring it from a claiming, by deferring to the authority of another individual or by making an observation report – and entitles others to use it as a premise in the reasons they give, cf. Brandom (1994), pp. 167-175 on this characterization of assertion. Although the participants in the reasoning process are supposed to not have the notion of correctness at their disposal, they master the notion of correctness implicitly. Given the fact that settling the correctness of inferences means assessing whether an assertion is applied in accordance with its content, the participants can also be said to master the notion of content implicitly. Although the practice of giving and asking for reasons only shows perspectival results, it involves justifiable claims as to what is correct and can therefore be said to allow for attitude-transcendent correctness. It now becomes evident that the method of making explicit does not only consist in explicating a particular kind of vocabulary in terms of a practice that does not have this vocabulary at their disposal. It rather consists in justifying the ascription of a particular notion (here: the notion of correctness) to a practice although its participants can never conclusively spell out to what items the notion applies (what claims are correct). The ascription is justified if the practice possesses revisable criteria for stating to what items the notion applies.16 The point of the method thus consists in saying what

16

On the background of the method of making explicit according to which it can never be stated what is correct it now also becomes intelligible that objectivity is grounded in

211 kind of proof suffices in order to ascribe a practice the resources for objectivity.17 The notions of content and correctness are therefore important for making explicit that a practice possesses the resources for attitudetranscendence although all its results are thoroughly perspectival. What is correct – as opposed to what is taken to be correct, even on the basis of the best reasons available – does not depend upon what anybody takes to be correct. This distinction guides scorekeeping practice even if it cannot on principled grounds state what is correct. Whether the method of making explicit captures all we need in order to meet our intuitions with respect to objectivity will be considered below. The method of making explicit has moreover the advantage of accounting for objectivity without invoking an element that is alien to a pragmatist framework. Attitude-transcendently correct normative attitudes need not be presupposed. Therefore, it now becomes clear that the dilemma between approaches that exclusively take the actual normative attitudes into account and those that invoke the correct ones can be solved in the following way: Proceeding from the actual normative attitudes rules out attitudetranscendence if and only if this strategy is combined with a distinction between what different individuals take to be correct themselves, but not if it is combined with a distinction between what an individual takes to be correct and what she would correctly take to be correct in the light of her interpreter who considers what else the interpretee takes to be correct. Although no perspective is privileged in settling what an individual would correctly take to be correct, the result is still perspectival. Nevertheless, what is preliminarily considered as correct is not identified with what is structural features of social practice, not in its results. What is decisive is not correct claims (as results of social practice), but rather the reasoning process: “…the distinction between claims or applications of concepts that are objectively correct and those that are merely taken to be correct is a structural feature of each scorekeeping perspective”, Brandom (1994), p. 595. 17

This point of the method of making explicit is what I have earlier highlighted by saying that the notion of content (or correctness) is conceived as a theoretical construct or as an ideal limit. Calling correctness or content an ideal limit or a theoretical construct means that it can never be spelled out which assertions and inferences are correct and how a particular content is to be characterized.

212 correct since it is always possible to corroborate or to revise the preliminary result on the basis of further reasons. If one interprets the distinction between actual and correct normative attitudes as the distinction between what is subjectively taken to be correct and what would be correctly taken to be correct in the light of the best reasons available to an interpreter, the dilemma can be solved as follows. The first horn of the dilemma clearly must be avoided. But the second one turns out not to be really problematic, provided that talk of the correct normative attitudes does not refer to what is attitude-transcendently correct. The opposition between the actual and the correct normative attitudes is, however, easily misleading. It suggests that one has to bring the attitude-transcendently correct normative attitudes into play if one wants to get beyond a conception of correctness as communal consensus. What is in any case more important than an appropriately conceived opposition between actual and correct normative attitudes is the opposition between the simplistic and the more sophisticated distinction between perspectives. A similar defence of Brandom’s account of objectivity such as the one I have undertaken is given by Haag/Sturm (2002), pp. 335-338. What these authors take to be essential for objectivity is divided into two parts. First, they hold that navigation between perspectives shows that both individuals intend to refer to the same entities and ascribe each other this intention. They point out, however, that the assumption of a common world is not sufficient for objectivity. Therefore (and this is the second part of Haag’s and Sturm’s point), it is required that the speakers assess each other and thereby give and ask for reasons. Doing this means that the respective interpreter presumes what is actually correct, given the way the world is: “Der Unterschied zwischen objektiv richtigen Behauptungen und solchen, die bloß für richtig gehalten werden, ist ‘ein strukturelles Merkmal jeder Kontoführungsperspektive.’ [825] Die einzelnen Kontoführer weisen nicht nur Festlegungen zu und gehen sie ein, sondern sie beurteilen die Festlegungen anderer auch nach deren Berechtigung (und fordern bei Bedarf Gründe für deren Festlegungen ein). Jeder beurteilt demnach die Festlegungen anderer aus seiner eigenen Perspektive und beansprucht damit zugleich, das, was richtig ist, zu kennen”, Haag/Sturm (2002), p. 338.

The importance of the assumption of a common world is also stressed by Lafont (2001) who, however, argues that it runs counter to Brandom’s attempt to reconstruct objectivity within a pragmatist framework.

213 I think that the two structural features that Haag and Sturm consider important in Brandom’s account of objectivity answer two different questions. First, due to what structural element can individuals be ascribed referential purport to a common world? This question is answered by the way an interpreter transfers a speaker’s utterance into her own terms. Reference to a common world becomes even more clearer when one takes into account that navigation between perspectives corresponds to a distinction between a de dicto and a de re specification of a speaker’s normative attitudes. The de dicto specification states what a speaker actually endorses, e.g. “S1 says that a gavagai is always followed by certain flies.” The de re specification states how this is to be reformulated in the interpreter’s terms, e.g. “S1 says about a rabbit that it is always followed by certain flies.” It singles out the entity that has to be examined in order to settle whether it is with things in the world as S1 claims it is. The second question asks how it is found out what is correct. This question is answered by pointing to a process of mutual assessments of performances, a process that is giving and asking for reasons. Having reconstructed Haag’s and Sturm’s defence of Brandom, it can now be compared with mine. My defence of Brandom highlights the second part which Haag and Sturm single out in Brandom’s account of objectivity and in this connection I put a stronger accentuation on the importance of reasoning. In order to judge the importance of the two questions it is helpful to generalize them. The first one asks what structural element permits one to ascribe to individuals the purport to refer to a common world or the claim to know what is correct. The structural element that permits one to ascribe them the purport (the assumption or intention) to refer to a common world is a translation of the speaker’s assertion into the interpreter’s terms. The structural element that permits one to ascribe them the claim to know what is correct is the role assertions play in the process of giving and asking for reasons. The second question asks how such a purport or claim can be corroborated or revised. The structural element that provides an answer to this question is a kind of reasoning that also takes observation reports into account. Having specified the two questions it becomes evident that the answer to the first question is a precondition for the answer to the second question so

214 that the second question is more decisive than the first. My accentuation of the second question is therefore justified. I am not sure whether Haag and Sturm are sufficiently aware of the importance of this question and moreover of the importance of the reasoning process as compared to a process of mutual assessments in general. On the other hand, we focus on different aspects of the first question so that my accentuation of the importance of assertions and Haag’s and Sturm’s accentuation of the purport to refer to a common world amend each other. Just like talk of making and examining claims as to what is correct makes explicit what is implicit in asserting and reasoning, talk of reference to a common world makes explicit what is implicit in translating an assertion into the interpreter’s terms. If talk of the assumption of a common reality is justified as the outcome of the method of making explicit, then it must not be confused with the presupposition of a common reality. This mistake is apparently made by Lafont. Only a presupposition of a common reality can be characterized as an element that is alien to a pragmatist framework. An element in Brandom’s own defence of his account of objectivity is his objectivity proofs, cf. Brandom (1994), pp. 601-607 and, in less technical terms, Brandom (2000a), pp. 196-204. One can reconstruct Brandom’s argument as follows: Objectivity demands that anybody or all can be wrong with respect to any assertion whatsoever.18 This can be reformulated by saying that it is not that anybody or all cannot make a wrong assertion. A claim that would be objectivity prohibiting thus says that any individual, S, (or the community as a whole, C, that will in the following be neglected) cannot make a wrong assertion.19 This means that any assertion “S asserts 18

Error with respect to all assertions at the same time would be too strong of a demand. It would amount to epistemological skepticism. Epistemological scepticism is ruled out on the same grounds as is Kripke’s skepticism (which encompasses epistemological skepticism as the epistemological, in contrast with the ontological, dimension of the rule-following problem). This means that the one or the other kind of skepticism can only be formulated if one looks for a fact in which rule-following consists, not if one conceives rule-following in normative, social terms. 19

I do not deal with the converse objectivity prohibiting claim Brandom considers, namely that an individual (or the community as a whole) cannot be ignorant. This claim says that “p” entails “S asserts that p.”

215 that p” entails the assertion “p.” In order to demonstrate that the objectivity prohibiting claim does not apply one has to state an assertion that is incompatible with “S asserts that p” but not with “p.” If this is possible, then “S asserts that p” and “p” turn out to stand in different inferential relations and thus have different contents. This shows that objectivity is made room for since assertibility conditions – as they result from a (preliminary) consensus – and truth-conditions fall apart. Brandom gives two distinct kinds of examples for assertions that falsify the objectivity prohibiting claim: on the one hand “p” and on the other hand assertions like “Rational beings never evolved.” This objectivity proof has been put under pressure by Wingert (2000). He objects that in the formulation of the objectivity proof Brandom overlooks that “S asserts that p” involves a knowledge claim. In consequence, “S asserts that p” entails “p.” Therefore, one cannot state any assertions that are incompatible with “S asserts that p” but not with “p.” The examples Brandom gives are mistaken. Moreover, “If ‘S asserts that p’ then ‘p’” is not objectivity prohibiting, so that falsifying it does not prove objectivity. Brandom indeed conceives assertions as knowledge claims: “Assertions are paradigmatically knowledge claims, and the sort of belief they express is unintelligible except in relation to the possibility of assessing beliefs for their status as knowledge, as warranted and true”, Brandom (1994) p. 229.

His objectivity proof is therefore inconsistent. And conceiving assertions as knowledge claims is essential to a practice of mutual assessments as giving and asking for reasons. An assertion goes hand in hand with the speaker’s commitment to justify it upon request and with the hearer’s entitlement to reassert it. Brandom’s objectivity proof fails right from the beginning. Therefore, one cannot mend it by conceiving assertions as claims as to what is merely taken to be correct. I think Wingert is perfectly right. The importance of conceiving assertions as knowledge claims has already been stressed above. If this is acknowledged, it becomes clear that Brandom’s examples of assertions that are meant to falsify the “objectivity prohibiting claim” are mistaken: “p” is compatible with “S asserts that p” because both assertions have the same content. And as “Rational beings never evolved” is clearly incompatible with “S asserts that p” it is also incompatible with “p.”

216 Realizing the inconsistency in his line of argument and trying to mend it by conceiving assertions as claims as to what is taken to be correct while not seeing the real flaw in the line of argument is why, I speculate, Brandom has recently abandoned his conception of assertion. This change in his conception of assertion becomes evident from the following quotation: “In general, one ought to be entitled to one’s commitments, but the game of giving and asking for reasons has a point precisely insofar as we must distinguish between commitments to which one is not”, Brandom (2000a), p. 200, cf. also Rosenkranz (2001).

In this quotation Brandom says that there are commitments to which one is not entitled. This means to say that there are commitments and, thus, possible assertions that are not knowledge claims. Rosenkranz criticizes the change in Brandom’s conception of assertion. But his alternative strategy as to how to mend the objectivity proof equally overlooks that the attempted proof is mistaken right from the beginning. He proposes to mend the objectivity proof by abandoning Brandom’s definition of incompatibility according to which p and q are incompatible if commitment to p does not entail entitlement to q or if commitment to q does not entail entitlement to p. Instead of claiming that objectivity requires that “S asserts that p” does not entail “p,” it requires that “S claims that p” does not entail that p. One has to formulate the objectivity proof in terms of contents, not exclusively in terms of assertions. But this implies that objectivity cannot be tested by considering incompatibility relations that, belonging to pragmatics rather than semantics, apply to assertions, not to contents. If the design of Brandom’s objectivity proof is misguided, how then can one argue that the precondition “‘S claims that p’ does not entail that p” is fulfilled? The answer has already been given when I have defended Brandom’s account of objectivity: An Approach does not fulfill this precondition if it does not allow for an assessment of what is taken to be correct by the community. Such an assessment is e.g. ruled out if an approach only distinguishes what different individuals subjectively take to be correct. Brandom, in contrast, fulfills the precondition because reasoning permits to distinguish what is subjectively taken to be correct from what is correctly taken to be correct in the sense of what is justified on the basis of the best reasons available at a

217 given point of time. As compared to Brandom’s attempted objectivity proof, this answer has the advantage that it states due to what structural feature objectivity is (not) made room for, not merely that it is (not) made room for. I have now presented why I think that Brandom’s account of objectivity is convincing. But one might ask the critical question whether an account that never permits to spell out what is correct is strong enough. Obviously, the account does justice to the notion of objectivity I proceed from. The possibility that anybody and all are wrong does not require that one can state what is correct or incorrect. It only requires that one can tell what is without sufficient reasons taken to be correct. I will show shortly that also the intuitions Habermas (1999) links with objectivity are met . In order to further defend the account I will next discuss on what grounds the fact that one can never tell what assertions are correct and how content is to be spelled out might be problematic. Finally, I will discuss a further consequence of the defended account of objectivity, namely the possibility of drawing conceptual borders consistently in different ways. According to Habermas (1999), p. 152f. a conception of objectivity is supposed to do justice to two intuitions with respect to the use of “is correct” (or “is true”). First, there is the cautionary use of “is correct.” This means that we can never know which of our assertions or inferences are correct. What we claim to be correct can always turn out to be incorrect. Put alternatively, this means that we rub ourselves against a resistant reality. Second, what is correct is supposed to be independent of what anybody or all take to be correct. Put alternatively, this means that we refer to one and the same world. How do both intuitions match the elements I have earlier identified in the account of objectivity, namely the assumption of a common reality on the one hand, and the formulation and justification of claims as to what is correct on the other hand? The first intuition, the impossibility to state conclusively what is correct and the assumption of a resistant reality, is similar to the question of how the justification of claims as to what is correct can be reconstructed. This question has been answered by pointing to a reasoning process that takes our answers to the way the world is into account. On what concerns the second intuition, the conception of attitude-transcendent

218 correctness corresponds to the question of how claims as to what is correct can be formulated. This question has been answered by pointing to the role assertions play in the process of giving and asking for reasons. And the assumption of a common world is met by pointing to the way an individual’s utterance is transferred into the interpreter’s terms. The two intuitions Habermas mentions thus correspond to the two questions I have formulated earlier and, I think, an account of objectivity must answer. Having developed how they can be answered, also Habermas’s intuitions are revealed to be fulfilled. I now wish to pursue the question of whether it is problematic that one is unable to state which assertions are correct and unable to spell out content. The second issue can be dealt with very briefly: One might think that specifiable content is required in order to enable communication and rationality. This objection has already been rebutted in chapter 2.2. Communication and rationality are enabled by navigation between perspectives. They do not presuppose a notion of content according to which content can be spelled out, precisely: according to which it is conceived as a shared set of inferences. The first issue has to be considered at greater length. The two intuitions Habermas points to – the cautionary use of “is correct” and an attitudetranscendent notion of correctness – are linked with a third use of “is correct” that is often taken to be important. Correctness is considered as a goal of inquiry. If what is correct can never be spelled out, then this goal seems to be endangered. But this impression can be dispelled once this goal is appropriately conceived. Let me explain. It is often held that the uses of “is correct” as expressing caution, attitude-transcendence and a goal of inquiry are irreconcilable. If one takes the cautionary use to be undisputable, one therefore either has to abandon attitude-transcendence or correctness as a goal of inquiry. This is the reason why Davidson (2000b) proposes to give up the latter, cf. also Rorty (2000) (who, however, means to abandon both). But does the presumed irreconcilability really exist? I do not think so. The cautionary use in combination with attitude-transcendence is irreconilable with correctness as a goal of inquiry only if calling something correct means to say that it can be justified in front of everybody as well as in front of the tribunal of the way the world is. This point is also made by

219 McDowell (2000), p. 115 (who formulates it as a diagnosis why Rorty finds fault with correctness as a goal of inquiry, a diagnosis that at the same time contains the solution to the presumed irreconcilability): “The trouble comes if we take this ‘cautionary’ use to be expressive of a norm. That way, we persuade ourselves that we understand compellingness to any audience as a norm for our activities of inquiry, and for the claim-making that gives expression to their results. And now we are liable to picture this universal compellingness in terms of a conformity to reality that would need to be contemplated from outside any local practice of investigation.”

The norm that is linked with the cautionary use is the demand that what is called correct can be justified. For a defence of correctness as a goal of inquiry in combination with attitude-transcendence look at Bilgrami (2000) who, however, thinks he must abandon the cautionary use. The presumed irreconcilability does not exist, however, if calling something correct, making an assertion, means to express that one is ready to justify it. And this is, I think, the appropriate understanding if one takes semantic vocabulary, “is correct” or “to assert,” to make explicit what is implicit in a practice of giving and asking for reasons. Correctness as a goal of inquiry can be saved by pointing to Brandom’s method of making through logicalsemantic vocabulary explicit what is implicit in social practice. But one has to make clear what this goal is supposed to mean. It does not mean to find out more and more assertions or inferences that are correct but rather to make improvements in what we, on the basis of the best reasons available, consider as correct. Now I wish to present and problematize a further consequence of the defended account of objectivity, namely the possibility to draw conceptual borders consistently in different ways. This consequence follows from two features of the scorekeeping model. First, correctness can only be settled if there are incompatibilities. This means that triangulation rules out indeterminacy of aboutness only provided that deviating observation reports lead to incompatibilities. Indeterminacy is not ruled out if conceptual borders are consistently drawn in deviating ways. This is the case where identical or at least compatible observation reports are inferentially linked with assertions about different entities. The observation report “There is a small brown animal with a hardly visible, tiny tail” can be linked by one individual with the assertion “There is a rabbit” and by another individual with the

220 assertion “There are rabbit-parts” without thereby giving rise to incompatibilities. Triangulation examines the reliability of the link from observation reports to the entity it is about by looking for incompatibilities between the inferential chains between both poles. It now turns out that there are some cases in which triangulation cannot solve the Quine’s indeterminacy of aboutness or Kripke’s rule-following problem. That conceptual borders can be drawn in different ways secondly stems from the fact that correctness can be settled in different ways in case there are equally good reasons for different assessments. It is sometimes possible to retract either an observation report or an inference thereby claiming either extensional or intensional incorrectness, to retract the one or the other observation report or the one or the other inference. The examples considered in section 5.1 were construed such that there were always stronger reasons in favor of the one or the other of two incompatible items so that there was only a single way how to resolve the incompatibility. The finding that conceptual borders can be drawn consistently in different ways shall now be defended by three arguments. First, this finding is essential for a pragmatist account of objectivity, which conceives correctness and content as being made and simultaneously as being found out. Second, it does not violate the cautionary use of correctness and attitudetranscendence as these intuitions have been formulated. One can only find fault with this consequence if one strengthens them. The cautionary use of correctness has to be strengthened into saying that the constraint that our answers to the world exert has to be such that there is only one correct description of the world. Such a view is nowadays hardly defended. Attitudetranscendence has to be strengthened into universal validity, which amounts to saying that a correct assertion has to be endorsed by everybody and all (who is rational and has access to all possible evidence). In chapter 1 universal validity has been criticized as being misleading since it suggests that particular assertions have to be acknowledged in every linguistic practice that is appropriate to the way the world is. This view would run counter to the insight that correctness and contents are in a way made. Third, saying that it is possible to draw conceptual borders consistently in different ways is not meant to assume different conceptual schemes, an as-

221 sumption that has been criticized by Davidson. Davidson (1974) criticizes a dualism of conceptual scheme and content. He calls this dualism the third dogma of empiricism and criticizes Quine (1951) for sticking to it despite the fact that Quine rejects an analytic-synthetic distinction as well as the possibility to bring an isolated assertion in front of the tribunal of experience. Conceptual schemes are systems of assertions and inferential connections among them. The scheme-content dualism can take two forms. According to the one form, different conceptual schemes are set against contents that are given. This means that the same world can be described in different ways. According to the other form, different contents are set against a given conceptual scheme. This means that the same system of assertions can be used in order to describe different possible worlds. I think the Quinean dogmas of empiricism and Davidson’s dualism between conceptual scheme and content are all forms of the Myth of the Given and are therefore equally objectionable. It might seem that the possibility of drawing conceptual borders consistently in different ways commits us to the first form of the dualism which Davidson criticizes. But this is not the case since the entities that make up the world are constituted equiprimordially with content. This is the case because the individuation and identification of contents and of worldly entities go hand in hand, see section 5.1. To conclude, I will briefly review the arguments from the literature that say that Brandom does not succeed in making room for objectivity. I will focus on what I take to be the most decisive objection. Habermas (1999) argues that Brandom – unless one takes his conceptual realism into account – fails to make room for objectivity since he does not consider communal learning processes that are based upon experience. Other objections have been provided by Lafont (2001), Rosenkranz (2001) and Wingert (2000) who have been mentioned. On what concerns Rorty (1997)’s and Rorty (1998)’s approving ascription of a position that might be called relativistic, it is not so clear what the ascribed position really comes up to. Even Rorty does not intend to identify correctness with the consensus of the community when he characterizes “is true” as opposed to “is justified” as what one is able to defend in front of certain competent audiences in combination with the warning that one is maybe not able to defend it in front of others, cf. especially Rorty (1994), p. 979. It remains unclear, however,

222 what exactly it comes up to then. Therefore considering Rorty’s point is of little value. The same holds for the second point he makes: His rejection of progress as an accumulation of correct assertions – a view he ascribes to Brandom – is well taken (see above). Substituting this view by an undifferentiated “…pride in being farther from the cavemen” (Rorty (1997), p. 175), is too unspecific, however. Let us come back to Habermas. Habermas sees Brandom (1994)’s account of objectivity as involving two parts. First, there is the account from chapters 5-8 of Making It Explicit that elaborates on the scorekeeping model in a formal way. Second, there is the integration of perceptions into the scorekeeping model as it is presented in chapter 4 of Making It Explicit. Habermas claims that this twofold story does not yet provide objectivity. What he takes to be required and finds missing are two things. First, experience as it is dissolved from the dialogical, interpretative practice must be invoked in order to provide a basis for objectivity. Second, assessments of performances with respect to the question whether they fit the conventional use of language have to be amended by experiences at the level of the community. These experiences are supposed to enrich the knowledge about the world that is contained in the conventional linguistic norms. Similar demands are put forward by Levi (1996). It does not become clear, though, why these demands are formulated. But the claim that Brandom’s account fails and, therefore, stands in need of the proposed remedy can be rebutted as follows: Brandom’s account of objectivity as it is characterized by Habermas has to be considered as being in line with the scorekeeping model. So conceived, it becomes evident that Brandom’s account already takes experience into account, by pointing to the role observation reports play in the scorekeeping piece. Habermas considers these reports only as entries in the game of giving and asking for reasons and consequently ascribes residual empiricism to Brandom. One has to take into account, however, that they form part of this game since they have to be justified themselves. Then it becomes clear that the first demand is superfluous. The second demand is revealed to be fulfilled by pointing out that the constitution and application of contents form part of one single process, see chapter 3.2. This means that ordinary assessments of linguistic perform-

223 ances and acquisition of knowledge about the world that may modify our linguistic norms cannot be separated. Moreover, the training process, which every competent speaker has undergone, reflects experience in the sense of coping with the world: The elders have been through a process of coping with the world. By training the younger, they pass their coping experience on to them. 5.3 Circularity In chapter 3.3 I argued that constitutive practice has to be conceived as conceptually articulated. But one might feel that such a starting point, as it is taken by the approach considered in this chapter, makes an account of content circular. In what follows, I will consider two arguments why such a circularity should apply and refute both of them. Let me first restate what it means to proceed from conceptually articulated practice; this will later permit me to state which aspect of this practice is relevant for the respective circularity objection. A practice of mutual assessments is conceptually articulated if it involves inferences from one claiming to another that may be objectively correct. A practice possesses the resources for objective correctness if each interpreter distinguishes between what the interpretee actually takes to be correct and what she would take to be correct given her net of normative attitudes and given what follows from these attitudes in the light of the interpreter. A first circularity objection runs as follows: To explicate how content is constituted by social practice means to explicate how it is brought about by a social process. This objection presupposes that giving an account of content means writing a piece of natural history or at least a piece of as-if natural history, similar to Sellars’s (1956) Myth of Jones. This means to answer the question how conceptual content arises in a natural, nonnormatively describable, world. If the explanatory goal were to answer this question, then it would be illicit to conceive normative attitudes as basic. They would rather have to be explicated in terms of dispositions of behavior. But the navigation between perspectives mentioned above requires that normative attitudes are conceived as basic. If answering this question were at issue, then the circularity objection would apply. But answering it is not crucial for an account of content. An

224 account of how content is constituted by social practice is an account of how the inferential relations that individuate content are negotiated in the course of a social process. But the decisive aspect of such an account is not the question “How does it happen that natural beings come to possess content?” that is answered by natural history, but rather the question “What resources are required so that beings can be said to possess content?” or, put another way, “What kind of vocabulary is required in order to explicate content?.” Brandom (unpublished), p. 10 correspondingly points out: “As always, the question is not how the trick is done, but what doing the trick consists in – what has to be true of what one does in order to count as having done the trick.”

This objection is, I think, the upshot of Knell’s (2000), pp. 241f. critical dealing with Brandom. Reconstructing his very dense remarks, I read him as follows: He points out that Brandom’s talk of scorekeeping is ambiguous. Brandom does not distinguish clearly between social scorekeeping practice and scorekeeping as it is implicit in social practice. The former may, but need not, involve linguistic performances, i.e. performances in a public means of communication. In any case, scorekeeping practice ascribes normative statuses on the basis of normative attitudes. Therefore, it is, in any case, conceptually articulated. Scorekeeping as it is implicit in social practice, in contrast, is meant to be pre-conceptual. Knell argues that Brandom’s account of content would remain circular if scorekeeping practice were not founded in a pre-conceptual kind of practice that brings about content: “… die allgemeine Strategie, die semantischen Gehalte linguistischer Äußerungen durch diskursive Kontoführungspraktiken zu erklären, [kann] nicht ohne evidente Zirkularität auf sprachlich explizite Akte der Kontoführung zurückgreifen…, die bereits über Sinngehalt verfügen”, Knell (2000), p. 242.

He criticizes Brandom on the grounds that it remains dim how such a foundation would look. This line of argument corresponds to the circularity objection I have just considered so that it can be refuted. If the goal is not to state how content is brought about then it is not required to explicate a kind of scorekeeping that is conceptually articulated in terms of pre-conceptual practice. And just like I hold that a pre-conceptual kind of scorekeeping is not required, I

225 hesitate whether I would underwrite Knell’s reading of Brandom, whether there actually is such a kind of scorekeeping, and thus the presumed ambiguity, in Brandom. I would rather say that Brandom deliberately considers only conceptually articulated scorekeeping because he holds that even constitutive practice has to be conceived as conceptually articulated. The rejection of a layered model of different kinds of scorekeeping does not mean, however, that Brandom neglects pre-conceptual aspects of scorekeeping, aspects that belong to the causal realm. Observation reports that are caused by RDRDs are important in order to state how content is anchored in the world. Contrary to Knell’s presumption, Brandom therefore does not neglect pre-conceptual aspects of social practice. The objection from the explanatory goal of providing a piece of natural history is also considered, but refuted, by Esfeld: “Auf den Zirkularitätseinwand kann man zunächst so antworten: Es gibt verschiedene Theorien dessen, was begrifflicher Inhalt ist... Wenn man für begrifflichen Inhalt normative Einstellungen einsetzt, lernen wir etwas, und wir können darüber streiten, ob diese Theorie richtig ist”, Esfeld (2003), p. 15.

He rejects the idea that an account of content requires that content result from something that is not conceptually articulated. He points out that if content is, in contrast, explicated in terms of normative attitudes, that are considered as basic, such an account of content is only one among several others. It can be assessed according to its correctness and, if correct, teaches us something. Let me make one little critical remark against Esfeld’s point. Taking content to be individuated by normative attitudes is a problematic suggestion. If content is individuated by the actual normative attitudes, it cannot be objective. If it is individuated by attitude-transcendently correct normative attitudes, the pragmatist framework is violated. Therefore it is important to conceive content as being individuated by inferential relations, not by items that belong to pragmatics, i.e. inferences or normative attitudes with respect to inferences. Refuting the objection I have considered up to now is, however, not sufficient to defend an approach that proceeds from conceptually articulated practice. An account of content is not supposed to state how content is brought about by pre-conceptual practice. It is, rather, supposed to state

226 what capacities individuals must possess in order to participate in a process of practical negotiations. But if conceiving constitutive practice as conceptually articulated means that individuals already have to grasp content (what is correct), then one is again forced into circularity. This second objection can be refuted as follows. Sure, in order to avoid circularity one must take care not to assume that individuals grasp content, if this is supposed to mean that they endorse upon request inferences that are correctly linked with an assertion. The assumption that content is grasped amounts to the same thing as the assumption that individuals have objectively correct normative attitudes. That the latter leads to circularity has been argued from early on. But neither assumption is made. What is correct is not presupposed, but rather negotiated. But how is it possible, then, to start with conceptually articulated practice while at the same time refusing to presuppose what is correct? This question can be answered by pointing to the method of making explicit that has been presented in the preceding section. The kind of explication this account of content provides consists in stating what capacities the participants in social practice must possess in order to be able to justify whether an inference is correct, not in order to be able to tell what inferences are correct. If they possess these capacities, they are said to grasp implicitly content (to master the notion of correctness, to participate in conceptually articulated practice) even though all the results of this practice remain perspectival. These results are claims as to what is correct that are made on the basis of the best reasons available, but they are nevertheless fallible. Given this explanatory goal, the crucial capacity is a distinction between what is actually taken to be correct by an individual and what would be taken to be correct if one considered the whole net of her normative attitudes and what follows from these items in the light of her interpreter. If the attribution of content to a group of individuals only requires that they are able to justify inferences and if this, in turn, only requires a distinction between two kinds of perspectival normative attitudes, then what is correct is not presupposed. It is important to note that this account of content only states what it means to participate in conceptual practice in general. What it means to master a particular content can never be stated, given the understanding of content as an ideal limit of social practice, as an item that can never be spelled out

227 in a non-perspectival way. On the same grounds, a conventional aspect of language has to be neglected. The account only states what it means to master language in general, not what it means to master a particular language and its conventions. Therefore, the kind of explication of content that is provided on the basis of the method of making explicit does not meet the explanatory goal that Dummett (1975) links with what he calls a theory of meaning. A theory of meaning is a theory of understanding, i.e. it must state what someone knows when she masters the respective language. This explanatory goal divides up into two tasks. First, one has to explicate all the concepts that can be expressed in this language. But these concepts can already be grasped by someone who does not master this language but another one. Therefore, a second requirement is to assign to each concept a linguistic expression. Dummett’s explanatory goal can, however, only be pursued if contents are realized in a particular language. But this cannot be the case if content is supposed to be objective while linguistic practice is always perspectival. But renouncing this explanatory goal is not a loss. Abandoning the idea that particular contents are grasped by interlocutors or that contents are realized in concrete linguistic practices does not endanger the possibility of understanding as I have demonstrated in chapter 2.2. Therefore, the explication that is provided on the basis of the method of making explicit is sufficient. Also the second objection I have discussed has been made in the literature. After having rejected the first-mentioned objection, Esfeld (2003) formulates another one: “Wie kann eine Person Begriffe durch normative Einstellungen erwerben, wenn normative Einstellungen ohne Begriffe nicht möglich sind?”, Esfeld (2003), p. 15.

He apparently takes the suggested circularity objection with respect to the acquisition of concepts to be convincing. At least, he does not consider any possible refutations. Although he does not much spell out how this objection is to be understood, it can be made intelligible by assuming that the attitude-transcendently correct normative attitudes are presupposed. So conceived, it amounts to the objection just discussed and rejected. On what concerns the concrete point made by Esfeld – the problem of concept acquisition – I do not see why an approach that proceeds from conceptually

228 articulated practice should have any difficulties in giving an account of how concepts are acquired. The assumption that the community always already has to master concepts does not exclude that individuals start without any concepts and then are trained by members of the community. To conclude, the second objection and its remedy – the negotiation of what is correct – do not only apply to an approach that proceeds from conceptually articulated practice but also to a naturalistic approach. Pettit (2002), pp. 7-9 – an author who defends a naturalistic account – deals with a circularity that impends if the correctness of an observation report is explicated in terms of how something looks under proper conditions. This responsedependence of the correctness of observation reports seems to rule out objectivity if one stresses the subjective character of grasping how things look, see chapter 3.3. And it seems to lead to circularity if one stresses that what the proper conditions are does not depend upon how anybody or everybody conceives them. Both problems related with response-dependence are two sides of the same coin. They can be avoided if the proper conditions are negotiated. Note that only in the context of an approach that proceeds from conceptually articulated practice, does it have to be made intelligible how one can propose this remedy. This is done by pointing to the method of making explicit. Note also that in a naturalistic approach adopting this remedy comes up to something that is at least similar to a piece of natural history. When Pettit formulates the aim to give what he calls a genealogy of content by taking into account how proper conditions are negotiated, this is similar to a piece of natural history. 5.4 Conceptual realism At the end of section 5.1.1 I claimed that conceptual realism were not required in order to account for the objectivity of content, since the scorekeeping piece would in section 5.2 turn out to be convincing. This argument was based upon the assumption that conceptual realism is meant to be a self-sustained element in an account of how content can be objective, an element that goes beyond the features of scorekeeping practice I had developed. A reading of conceptual realism as a self-sustained element suggests itself because Brandom neither spells out how his ontological thesis

229 is supposed to result from the other features of the scorekeeping piece nor how it is justified at all. In this section I will give a more comprehensive assessment of this ontological thesis. First, I will deepen the point that as a self-sustained element in Brandom’s account of objectivity, it is superfluous. While Brandom commits himself to conceptual realism, a justification of this thesis can be found in McDowell. McDowell can be reconstructed as deriving the claim that the world is conceptually articulated from the claim that perceptions are conceptually articulated. The latter claim (just like the former one) is invoked in order to avoid a gap between the world and our conceptualisations. I will argue that Brandom is justified in rejecting McDowell’s account of perception as not being required in order to tackle this task and that conceptual realism is moreover problematic insofar as it does not avoid the gap and moreover buys into the Myth of the Given. Provided that a plausible alternative justification of conceptual realism is not in sight, Brandom’s own commitment to conceptual realism in order to avoid the gap therefore turns out to be superfluous, inconsistent and problematic (section 5.4.1). Then I will argue that conceptual realism, if it is conceived as a selfsustained ontological thesis, is exposed to the objections that have been put forward in the literature. According to these objections it either runs counter to a pragmatist account of content or fails to be about a resistant reality, depending upon the premise one proceeds from. In other words, it either conceives content as being merely found out or as being merely made (section 5.4.2). Finally, I will point out that conceptual realism is better not conceived as a self-sustained thesis, but rather as an idea that makes explicit what is implicit in the scorekeeping practice. So conceived, it is not superfluous but describes an important aspect of this practice, and can be defended without any inconsistency as well as without falling prey to the previous objections (section 5.4.3). 5.4.1 Avoiding a gap between the world and our conceptualisations In chapter 5.1 I put forward the claim that Brandom invokes conceptual realism in order to anchor content in the world and thus to account for objec-

230 tivity. Conceptual realism is made use of in order to state how our answers to the world impose a constraint upon our conceptualizations. Negatively formulated, it is considered as a means for avoiding a gap between the world and our conceptualisations, a gap that may result from the rejection of representationalism. In the following, I will explicate and assess the motivation of this thesis. My procedure is as follows.: First, I will argue that an antirepresentationalist position can be motivated by the wish to avoid the Myth of the Given and show how the mentioned gap may emerge if one adopts an anti-representationalist position (point 1).Thereafter, I will develop the decisive precondition for avoiding the gap by considering proposals that attempt to fulfill this task but turn out not to be convincing. This precondition is the demand to avoid an interface between the causal and the rational realm (point 2). Then, I will consider why McDowell thinks he needs conceptually articulated perceptions (in the following I will briefly speak of “conceptual perceptions”) in order to avoid the gap and how they are related to conceptual realism (point 3). Finally, I will criticize the assumption of conceptual perceptions on the grounds that it does not avoid the gap but rather buys into the Myth of the Given. And even if it were not exposed to these objections it would not be required in order to avoid the gap because Brandom’s scorekeeping piece as it has been presented and discussed in sections 5.1 and 5.2 fulfills this task convincingly (point 4). Ad point 1: Anti-representationalism avoids the Myth of the Given20 but may make the conceptual realm loose contact with the world. Representationalism is the position that assumes epistemic intermediaries between the world, on the one hand, and beliefs, judgments or assertions, on the other hand. The assumption of epistemic intermediaries is the assumption that the world’s impressions on our senses entail knowledge.21 20

This claim will be restricted below: Anti-representationalism avoids only a particular kind of the Myth of the Given.

21

The way the world’s impressions on our senses are conceived will play a central role in what follows. Alternatively, one can speak of perceptions as McDowell does. In the following, I will attempt to stick to the former choice of words or briefly speak of impressions unless, in the context of McDowell, I speak of perceptions. On what con-

231 Epistemic intermediaries are a particular kind of self-authenticitating justifiers. They are able to justify assertions because they entail knowledge. And they are considered as not standing in need of justification themselves because they are taken to be reliably caused by the way the world is. An example of the broad range of epistemic intermediaries that have been assumed throughout the history of philosophy are sense data as they have been considered in chapter 3.3. A more recent example is the use of representations as they figure in Fodor’s “representation theory of mind.” But the assumption of such items is not the only feature of representationalism. This assumption is usually linked with the idea that epistemic intermediaries, not worldly entities, are what empirical beliefs, judgments or assertions are directly about. Epistemic intermediaries are therefore conceived as mental images or representations of worldly entities. This idea is what gives represenationalism its name. Representationalism apparently has the following advantage: It avoids a gap between the causal realm and the rational one, between the world and its immediate impressions on our senses on the one hand and our conceptual practices on the other. But it has the drawback of buying into the Myth of the Given. In order to make this double thesis intelligible I will first state why it is important to avoid such a gap and what this task consists in. Then I will illustrate under what conditions the gap actually opens up. Finally, I will discuss what makes representationalism both attractive and problematic. The correctness of empirical assertions – and this means ultimately the correctness of observation reports – has to be anchored in the world. Observation reports have to be justified by pointing to the way the world is and this means by pointing to our reliable, immediate answers to the world. If this intuitively intelligible demand is not fulfilled, then one can say that there is a gap between a description in terms of what causes what (“causal realm”) and a description in terms of what justifies what (“rational realm”), the result being that our conceptual practices apparently no longer make contact with the world. In order to meet this demand our immediate answers to the cerns the linguistic items in which these impressions manifest themselves I will speak of observation reports.

232 world have to provide a rational, not merely causal, constraint upon observation reports. Instead of speaking about the aim to avoid a gap, I will mostlyspeak about the aim to provide rational constraint. How can causal and rational constraint be further specified? In order to answer this question one has to make clear that talk of immediate answers to the world – or of responses to external stimuli or of manifestations of RDRDs – can mean two very different things. First, it can mean noninferential reports, precisely observation reports. This is the kind of immediate answers I have considered up to now. Second, it can mean the world’s impressions on our senses. Causal constraint means that particular worldly entities reliably cause particular impressions, which in turn reliably cause particular observation reports. Worldly entities and impressions constrain observation reports. But it is not so clear whether impressions also have to be invoked in order to provide rational constraint. Rational constraint generally demands that observation reports are justified by our reliable, immediate answers to the world. One may either assume that rational constraint can be provided by considering their inferential connections with proper conditions or by taking impressions into account. The former assumption shall for the moment be set aside. If one assumes, in contrast, that rational constraint involves impressions, then it demands two things: First, impressions must be able to justify observation reports directly or indirectly. This means that they either have to be able to justify observation reports per se, i.e. due to the features they entail, or after they have been integrated into a process of giving and asking for reasons. Second, it must be possible that impressions are revealed to be justified themselves. It seems to be unintelligible, however, how impressions can justify observation reports directly or indirectly if they are characterized in purely causal terms. According to such a characterization they are caused by the way the world is and, in turn, cause observation reports, but they do not entail knowledge or belief and they do not possess content. These three features imply that impressions are either able to justify observation reports directly – if they entail knowledge or belief – or indirectly – if they possess content. A purely causal characterization of impressions looks problematic

233 because it seems to be unintelligible how impressions are supposed to justify observation reports unless they already possess some of these features. It is often considered as less problematic to conceive causally characterized impressions as justified themselves. If they are in a natural way reliably linked with worldly entities, then they are considered as justified per se. I, however, doubt this. Impressions must apparently be characterized in terms of knowledge, belief or content in order to take them as being justified. If it is unintelligible how impressions characterized purely in causal terms can justify and/or how they can be justified, then it is required that they already belong to the rational realm or at least partially if one sticks to the idea that their causal connection with worldly entities makes them justified per se. Considering them as belonging to the rational realm implies that they entail or possess properties, on the basis of which they can justify assertions directly or indirectly. More precisely, they have to be linked with knowledge, belief or content. I will illustrate the presumed objection to a purely causal characterization of impressions by critically considering Quine. To begin with let me point out that the claim that an approach does not provide rational constraint can be based upon the claim that it does not avoid indeterminacy of aboutness. Failing to avoid indeterminacy of aboutness means that the approach does not single out a reliable causal connection between the world or our answers to them and observation reports. As such, it does not provide causal constraint, which is at the least a necessary precondition for providing rational constraint. A purely causal characterization notwithstanding, Quine intends to provide rational constraint since he defends the view that at least one kind of assertions (or sentences) can be brought in front of the “tribunal of experience.”22 What he calls observation sentences (e.g. “There is a gavagai”) are

22

My presentation of the whole Quine-Davidson-Sellars complex builds upon McDowell’s (1994) presentation of Davidson’s critique against Quine, of Davidson’s own position and of Sellars, cf. especially McDowell (1994), pp. 13-18 and his appendix on Davidson, pp. 129-161. I refrain from assessing the exegetical appropriateness of McDowell’s reading of Sellars. Note that McDowell (manuscript) revises the way

234 sentences whose stimuli meanings do not change under additional information, cf. Quine (1960), § 10, pp. 40-46. Therefore, they can be translated without any indeterminacy of meaning by considering their stimuli meanings, i.e. the patterns of non-verbal consent or dissent with sentences in the presence of particular external stimuli. This means that observation sentences can be directly brought in to the tribunal of experience. Responses to stimuli justify the translation and thus the meaning of these sentences per se. Quine’s position is hardly intelligible. He does not state how causally characterized impressions are supposed to justify an observation report. But the decisive objection is the following. In chapter 5.1 a version of triangulation that only mentions causal connections without considering the way these connections are taken up in social practice has been revealed to leave indeterminate what worldly entities a sentence is about, i.e. is it about a distal stimulus or rather about a disjunction of proximal ones? Quine’s proposal equally mentions nothing but causal connections. As a consequence, it does not avoid such indeterminacy. It cannot settle whether it is correct to translate “There is a gavagai” with “There is a rabbit” or rather with “There is a stimulation of the eye-or-ear.” Therefore, it cannot be taken to provide any constraint by the way the world is, be it a causal or a rational one. The objection to causal triangulation being that one cannot distinguish whether a sentence is about a distal stimulus or a disjunction of proximal stimuli makes clear that Quine is mistaken in claiming that the meaning of an observation sentence – the kind of language-world relation that matters for the translation of sentence as a whole – can be brought in front of the tribunal of experience. This is all Quine claims. He consequently acknowledges that its reference cannot be settled by considering responses to stimuli. This is the kind of language-world relation that involves the subsentential structure of a sentence and therefore does not matter for the translation of sentence as a whole provided it does not change the inferential connections the sentence is involved in. Even in the case of an observation sentence like “There is a gavagai” Quine takes it to be indeterminate whether he conceives Sellars’s position: He no longer attributes to him a causal conception of the world’s impact on our senses.

235 it is about a rabbit, a hare or a rabbit-or-hare. It is thus indeterminate whether it has to be translated into “There is a rabbit,” “There is a hare.” or “There is a rabbit,” provided that all three translations stand in the same inferential connections in the linguistic practice. One can apparently provide rational constraint if one holds – as the representationalist does – that impressions are not to be characterized in purely causal terms but rather belong to the rational realm. The representationalist assumes that impressions entail knowledge and as such justify assertions per se. The representationalist combines this with the assumption that impressions do not stand in need of justification themselves because they are taken to be per se reliably caused by worldly entities. But the assumption of epistemic intermediaries – or self-authenticitating justifiers – implies that representationalism buys into the Myth of the Given, which is a view Sellars (1956) has criticized. Let us sum up. Representationalism holds that impressions belong to the rational realm in that they entail knowledge and thereby are able to justify assertions directly. Quine conceives impressions in purely causal terms but nevertheless thinks that they are able to justify assertions directly. The first approach turns out to be problematic because it buys into the Myth of the Given, the latter because it does not provide rational constraint. The upshot is that both approaches must be criticized for overlooking that impressions cannot justify directly. There are, nevertheless, two different strategies on how to counter this insight. On the one hand, one consider impressions belonging to the rational realm and argue that they only possess content but do not entail knowledge or belief. Impressions can be made use of in a justificatory process once their contents are endorsed, i.e. once they are transformed into beliefs about the way the world is. This is McDowell’s strategy. On the other hand one can adopt a purely causal characterization of impressions and argue that they can provide rational constraint only once they are made use of in a process of giving and asking for reasons. (How this is supposed to be effectuated needs some explication.) This is, for example, Davidson’s strategy. In a different form it also corresponds to the reading of Brandom that I have developed.

236 In order to assess both strategies one has to answer the following question: Must impressions already possess content in order to be used in such a process? This question forms the underlying theme of the rest of this section. In my discussion of point 2, I will criticize the Davidsonian approach, pointing out that the critique does not speak against a causal characterization of impressions in general. The upshot of the critique is rather a precise formulation of the precondition for rational constraint. This precondition is the demand to avoid an interface between the causal and the rational realm. It can in principle be met by both of the strategies I have distinguished, more precisely, by McDowell and Brandom. McDowell’s proposal will be motivated in point 3 and in point 4, it will be assessed by comparing it with Brandom’s. Ad point 2: In order to avoid the gap one has to avoid an interface between the causal and the rational realm. Davidson criticizes Quine for endorsing two irreconcilable views. A causally characterized impact on our senses cannot directly provide rational constraint. The consequence Davidson draws from his critique is that “…nothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except another belief”, Davidson (1983), p. 426.

This slogan corresponds to the specific (internalist) shape of Sellars’s antifoundationalism. It is, however, only negatively directed against two positions at the same time, namely Quine’s position, which does not take impressions to belong to the rational realm at all, and representationalism, which links impressions with knowledge but not with beliefs or contents, see chapter 3.3. The slogan does not yet say exactly what kind of position Davidson and Sellars positively defend. There are rather two possible responses to the critique against both proposals as I have just explicated. Correspondingly, the same modification of this slogan can be shared by McDowell, who underwrites the first kind of response by conceiving impressions as already conceptually articulated, and Brandom, who underwrites the second one by sticking to a purely causal characterization. As I have already mentioned in chapter 3.3 Brandom modifies Sellars’s claim into

237 “…‘Nothing can count as a reason for endorsing a believable except another believable,’ where believables are the contents of possible beliefs, that is, what is propositionally contentful.”

McDowell similarly proposes that “…nothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except something else that is also in the space of concepts.”

Both modifications only say that in order to be used in a process of giving and asking for reasons impressions have to be assigned content. This need not be spelled out by saying that impressions have to possess content antecedently to their being made use of in such process. It leaves room for the view that purely causally characterized impressions are assigned content only once they are made use of or that they do not figure in an account of rational constraint at all. But what is the position Davidson and Sellars defend? Just like Quine, they conceive impressions in purely causal terms. But they hold that impressions provide rational constraint once they are made use of in a justificatory process. Once one becomes aware of the causal connections, these connections can be pointed to in the course of the process. This at least is my reading of Davidson. McDowell, in contrast, thinks that Davidson deliberately settles with causal constraint in order to avoid the dilemma that is formed by the Myth of the Given on the one hand and failure to provide rational constraint on the other hand: “Davidson is clear that if we conceive experience in terms of impacts on sensibility that occur outside the space of concepts, we must not think we can appeal to experience to justify judgements or beliefs. That would be to fall into the Myth of the Given… According to Davidson experience is causally relevant to a subject’s beliefs and judgements, but it has no bearing on their status as justified or warranted”, McDowell (1994), p. 14.

McDowell’s reading of Davidson can be reconciled with his pointing out that Davidson integrates causally characterized impressions into the justificatory process: McDowell thinks this strategy cannot be considered as an attempt to provide rational constraint. He objects to this proposal that it fails to provide rational constraint: “In the picture common to Sellars and Davidson they [impressions] are opaque: if one knows enough about one’s causal connections with the world, one can argue

238 from them to conclusions about the world, but they do not themselves disclose the world to one… If we cannot conceive impressions as transparent, we distance the world too far from our perceptual lives to be able to keep mystery out of the idea that our conceptual lives, including appearings, involve empirical content”, McDowell (1994), p. 145.

I think this criticism is well placed. In chapter 5.1 I argued that Davidson’s causal-social version of triangulation, which mentions how causal connections appear to two or more individuals, leaves aboutness indeterminate. Although Davidson’s and Sellars’s view is less mysterious than Quine’s, Davidson and Sellars only partially succeed in spelling out how purely causal impressions are supposed to justify assertions. What is the reason why Davidson and Sellars fail to provide rational constraint? The comparison of causal-social triangulation that fails to avoid indeterminacy with inferential triangulation that does avoid indeterminacy permits us to formulate a general insight. Items that are supposed to be justified have to be inferentially and, thus, conceptually articulated. In the context of triangulation, these items were observation reports, but the point can also be transferred to impressions. Items that are supposed to be able to justify observation reports similarly have to be conceptually articulated. In the context of triangulation, the justifying items were inferences from proper conditions to the reports and the premises of these inferences. Still the point can be transferred to impressions. This double insight highlights the unintelligibility of how purely causal impressions are supposed to provide rational constraint. Impressions have to be assigned content if they are supposed to be made use of in the course of a process of giving and asking for reasons that provides rational constraint. This does not say, however, that they have to already possess content before they are made use of in this process. It is also thinkable that they are only attributed content in the course of this process or that they do not figure in the process at all. Both devices are reconcilable with a purely causal characterization of impressions. Besides the point that impressions have to be assigned content in order to provide rational constraint, the issue of how they can be considered justified antecedently to their integration into such process remains unintelligible to me. Instead, they would have to be justified themselves in the course of such process.

239 Davidson and Sellars thus overlook two points. First, they overlook the fact that impressions have to be assigned content in order to be able to justify assertions. Second, they are mistaken in their view that impressions are justified per se. If one combines both points, then one can say that Davidson and Sellars make the mistake of only partially integrating impressions into the rational realm, that is impressions are supposed to justify assertions after they are invoked in justificatory practice. Overlooking these points means that Davidson and Sellars still see an interface between the causal and the rational realm instead of assuming rational connections all the way down. The importance of avoiding an interface in order to provide rational constraint is also accentuated by Putnam (1994). The demand that impressions only justify indirectly – i.e. once they are integrated into the process of giving and asking for reasons – can now be refined into the precondition that an interface between the causal and the rational realm has to be avoided. This is the demand that impressions are fully integrated into the rational realm. This precondition is violated by two different kinds of approaches. First, it is violated by approaches that hold that impressions can justify assertions outside of this process. Examples of these approaches are representationalism on the one hand and Quine’s position on the other hand. But it is also violated by approaches that hold that impressions can justify assertions in the course of this process without possessing content and/or that take impressions to be justified antecedently to this process. Davidson and Sellars defend this kind of approach. The naturalistic approach considered in chapter 3 belongs in the same box as Davidson and Sellars. This approach also assumes an interface between the causal and the rational realm since it conceives reliable, differential dispositions to respond to external stimuli as natural. RDRDs are supposed to anchor content in the world and thus to provide rational constraint. Conceiving RDRDs as natural implies that responses to stimuli need not be justified from within social practice. Similarly, falling prey to the Myth of the Given is not the only objection to representationalism. As I have just pointed out, it assumes an interface between the causal and the rational realm. And one can show also for representationalism that this assumption has the consequence that rational constraint is not provided. Just like the Quinean and the Davidson approaches

240 do not avoid indeterminacy of aboutness, representationalism can be challenged by an epistemological skepticist. It is thinkable that our impressions are systematically wrong. We may be dreaming, be cheated by a malign demon or be brains in a vat. The objection that indeterminacy of aboutness is not avoided and the objection that epistemological scepticism threatens are not identical. The former is ontological, claiming that not even causal constraint is made room for whereas the latter only deals with rational constraint. Both objections are, however, closely related insofar as causal constraint is a precondition for rational constraint. Instead of there being a dilemma between failing to provide rational constraint (assuming an interface between the causal and the rational realm, leaving aboutness indeterminate and thereby making room for epistemological scepticism) and buying into the Myth of the Given as it might have appeared after the comparison between Quine’s approach and representationalism, both problems actually are two sides of the same coin. I have already provided evidence for this general claim by showing that representationalism can be criticized along both lines. Let me give further evidence for it by showing that the Quinean and the Davidsonian approaches besides failing to provide rational constraint also fall prey to the Myth of the Given. In order to give such evidence one has to make clear that the general characterization of the Myth of the Given as the assumption of selfauthenticitating justifiers is much broader than representationalism. I think it is useful to distinguish, following McDowell (1994), between the exogenous and the endogenous Given. Let us first see how McDowell draws the dividing line. He characterizes the approaches that Sellars primarily deals with – sense datum theories as a kind of representationalism – and Quine’s position as examples of the exogenous Given: “...nothing is Given from outside the evolving system of belief. The counterpart claim – the claim that nothing is Given from inside the understanding… - is in Sellars too… It is true that when Sellars debunks the Myth of the Given in detail, he focuses on the supposed external constraint…” “...he [Quine] tries to reject an endogenous Given without definitely rejecting an exogenous Given”, both quotations are from McDowell (1994), p. 136.

241 I go beyond McDowell in that I divide both kinds of the Myth of the Given into two sub-kinds. Approaches that commit themselves to the exogenous and the endogenous Given alike conceive impressions as being per se reliably caused by the way the world is and as such do not stand in need of justification. Approaches that assume an exogenous Given claim that impressions justify assertions directly. According to the one version of the exogenous Given, impressions justify assertions directly because they entail knowledge. This version corresponds to representationalism. (The assumption of self-authenticitating assertions, the second kind of the Myth of the Given considered in chapter 3.3, also belongs to this version of the exogenous Given, although it differs from all the versions considered in this section since it does not start out from impressions.) According to the other version, impressions are nevertheless characterized in purely causal terms. This is Quine’s position. Approaches that commit themselves to the endogenous Given claim that impressions justify assertions only once they are put to use in a process of giving and asking for reasons. According to the one version, impressions possess content and justify assertions once their content is endorsed in the course of the process. This version shows a certain similarity with McDowell’s position since he also claims that impressions possess content. Whether it actually considers these impressions self-authenticitating and, thus, falls prey to the Myth of the Given will be discussed below. According to the other version of the endogenous Given, impressions are characterized in purely causal terms. Nevertheless, it is held that impressions justify assertions once they are invoked in justificatory practice. This is Davidson’s and the naturalistic account’s view. (My claim from chapter 3.3 that the naturalistic account buys into the Myth of the Given is thereby confirmed and specified.) Also Sellars, contrary to his intention, is committed to this version of the Myth of the Given. Ad point 3: McDowell takes conceptual perceptions to be required in order to provide rational constraint and therefore defends conceptual realism. McDowell thinks that the world’s impressions on our senses – or what he calls perceptions – must already be conceptually articulated in order to provide rational constraint: “A genuine escape [from the Myth of the Given] would require that we avoid the Myth of the Given without renouncing the claim that experience is a rational con-

242 straint on thinking. I have suggested that we can do that if we can recognize that the world’s impressions on our senses are already possessed of conceptual content”, McDowell (1994), p. 18.

What exactly is to be understood by conceptual perceptions? If McDowell is supposed to be able to avoid a Myth of the Given similar to the kind representationalism falls prey to, then he must claim that conceptual perceptions are not yet perceptual judgments. Perceptions can justify assertions only if their perceptual content is endorsed. Only then can they be made use of in the process of giving and asking for reasons. This suggestion of what talk of conceptual perceptions means corresponds to Brandom’s reading of McDowell: “McDowell… construes perceptual experiences as not involving the sort of endorsement characteristic of judging or believing: perceptual experiences have judgeable, believable contents, but they are not judgments or beliefs. When a perceiver does advance from perceptual experience to judgment or belief, however, the experience can serve to justify the resulting commitment”, Brandom (2002b), p. 94.

McDowell does not only assume conceptual perceptions. He also adopts a conceptual articulation of the world in order to provide rational constraint so as to avoid the impending gap. He writes: “…there is no ontological gap between the sort of thing one can mean, or generally the sort of thing one can think, and the sort of thing that can be the case. When one thinks truly, what one thinks is what is the case”, McDowell (1994) p. 27.

What one thinks is conceptual content. As a consequence, the conceptual contents of true thoughts are identified with what is the case, with the facts that make up the world. How does the thesis that conceptual perceptions are required in order to provide rational constraint imply that the world has to be conceptually articulated in order to tackle this task? Conceptual perceptions imply a conceptual structure of the world because in these perceptions the world appears as conceptually articulated. This means that it is impossible to distinguish between the structure of perceptions and the structure of the world, that is to set a perception against its object and question the latter with respect to its structure. How can such view be argued for? It has been claimed that phenomenal consciousness – instances of grasping how something looks – is semantically transparent, cf. e.g. Van Gulick (1988).

243 Transferring this point to conceptual perceptions – instances of grasping something as something, grasping that something looks in particular way – we can say that these perceptions, too, are semantically transparent. This means that we do not become aware of the contents of our perceptions, we rather look through them onto the world. The world is directly given to us in our perceptions. Note that semantic transparency of conceptual perceptions entails that they cannot be wrong. I will come back to the implications of this point below, where I will also discuss whether the presumed transparency of conceptual perceptions is convincing. How would McDowell justify that conceptual perceptions are required for rational constraint? He apparently takes this proposal to be the only alternative to two equally unpalatable positions, namely to representationalism, which falls prey to the Myth of the Given, and to the Davidsonian approach, which fails to provide rational constraint. These two passages back this reading: “When we trace justifications back, the last thing we come to is still a thinkable content; not something more ultimate than that, a bare pointing to a bit of the Given”, McDowell (1994), 28f. “If one fails to see that conceptual capacities can be operative in sensibility itself, one has two options: either, like Davidson, to insist that experience is only causally related to empirical thinking, not rationally; or else… to fall into the Myth of the Given…”, McDowell (1994), pp. 62f.

But there is also a deeper reason. According to Brandom (2002b), McDowell delimits conceptual perceptions from “blind” responses to stimuli. These are non-inferential responses the individual cannot justify. An example is the case of an individual who can reliably tell the sex of a newly-hatched chicken by looking at it even though she is not able to justify her response, see chapter 3.3. Rational constraint requires pointing to items that are able to justify and that can be justified themselves. This means that it requires pointing to conceptually articulated items. McDowell thinks that a response that the individual herself cannot justify – although she can probably state what follows from it – does not permit her to formulate the full range of inferential connections and thus does not possess empirical content, cf. McDowell (1996b), pp. 296-298. He conceives justifica-

244 tion and content in an internalist way. On the basis of his internalism, he must consider conceptual perceptions as required for rational constraint. Note, however, that McDowell’s internalism of justification is distinguished from Sellars’s. It does not say that an individual that reliably responds to external stimuli has to be able to infer a report about her response from proper conditions for this report. McDowell takes it to be sufficient that the individual points to her authority by saying e.g. “I know (or see) that this chick is male,” cf. McDowell (manuscript), pp. 13f. The first point in this line of argument – the claim that impressions have to be attributed content if they are supposed to provide rational constraint – has already been found convincing. But in order to settle whether conceptual perceptions are required – or whether, in contrast, a purely causal characterization of impressions can be reconciled with this point – one has to settle whether impressions have to possess content antecedently to their being made use of in a concrete justificatory process. This means to settle whether it is sufficient to attribute content to impressions in the course of this process or whether rational constraint can be provided without mentioning impressions. Put alternatively, the decisive question is whether an internalist conception of justification has to be adopted can be defended. In chapter 3.3 I made the general point that internalism is not required. McDowell can be criticized for overlooking that an observer can be justified in making her report and can be attributed content if she can be attributed commitment to the justifying inferences and assertions. Such an attribution does not require her endorsement of any claims. This objection to McDowell, however, only speaks against his argument why conceptual perceptions are required for rational constraint. Whether his thesis that they are required can also be criticized will be considered in the following.

245 Ad point 4: The assumption of conceptual perceptions is neither successful in providing rational constraint nor required so that conceptual realism also has to be rejected.23 Does McDowell’s approach succeed in providing rational constraint – i.e. in avoiding an interface between the causal and the rational realm – and thus in avoiding the Myth of the Given? First, one might defend McDowell by arguing that he considers the conceptual articulation of perceptions as prior to their concrete use in a justificatory process, but not as prior to social practice point-blank, i.e. he does not consider perceptions justified per se. He rather stresses the importance of what he calls “second nature.” This means that reliable responses to external stimuli are acquired through training. But the decisive idea that underlies the assumption of an interface and the Myth of the Given is not the idea that reliable responses to external stimuli are unacquired but that they are – unacquired or not – selfauthenticitating. Therefore, the point just made is irrelevant. In order to defend McDowell it is rather decisive to point out that impressions that are assigned content can be justified themselves once they are made use of in the course of a process of giving and asking for reasons. This line of argument is, however, counteracted by the following point: If an individual has been appropriately trained such that she has acquired conceptual perceptions – perceptions she can justify as being reliable, in contrast with blind responses to stimuli – then the view that they are transparent involves that the individual cannot be wrong. As a consequence, once an individual has acquired conceptual perceptions they can be considered as reliable per se. They do not stand in need of justification but are rather selfauthenticitating. The presumed justification of conceptual perceptions by claiming “I know that…” does not deserve to be called a justification because it does not leave any room for the doubt that the individual might be wrong. Just like talk of justification is mistaken in this context, talk of

23

Contributions to the discussion between McDowell and Brandom concerning rational constraint and the role conceptual perceptions play in providing such constraint are – besides McDowell (1994) – Brandom (1996), McDowell (1996a), McDowell (1996b), Brandom (1998) (which is a short version of Brandom (1996)), McDowell (1998a), McDowell (1998b), Brandom (2002b) and McDowell (manuscript).

246 knowledge is mistaken. McDowell must not ignore Wittgenstein’s (1969) point that knowledge or reason presupposes the possibility of doubt. The fundamental problem in McDowell is the combination of a conceptual articulation of the world’s impressions on our senses with their being transparent and thus infallible. McDowell has to assume such transparency if conceptual articulation of impressions is supposed to entail conceptual articulation of the world. Therefore, one can alternatively put the fundamental problem as the combination of conceptual articulation of impressions with conceptual articulation of the world. If conceptual articulation of an item implies that it can be justified and if semantic transparency rules out such a possibility, then it is inconsistent to transfer semantic transparency from phenomenal consciousness and from responses to stimuli that do not possess content (semantic transparency with respect to these items seems to be defensible) to conceptual perceptions. Just like sense data theorists combine irreconcilable features in their conception of sense data – sense data are unacquired but already entail knowledge – so too does McDowell’s conception of conceptual perceptions. Perceptions possess content but are nevertheless semantically transparent and thus infallible. As a consequence, McDowell fails to provide rational constraint and does not avoid the Myth of the Given. Correspondingly, Brandom is mistaken when he claims that McDowell avoids the Myth of the Given: “Because he understands perceptual experience as requiring the grasp of concepts, McDowell avoids the Myth of the Given…”, Brandom (2002b), p. 93.

Brandom’s remark is correct insofar as what possesses content can be justified. He overlooks, however, that McDowell must conceive perceptions as semantically transparent in order to defend conceptual realism. But McDowell’s thesis that conceptual perceptions are required in order to provide rational constraint is not only problematic if and only if it is combined with conceptual realism. It also turns out to be superfluous on the grounds that there is a convincing alternative account of rational constraint that is based upon a purely causal characterization of impressions. The alternative is the reading of Brandom I developed and defended in sections 5.1 and 5.2: Observation reports can only be considered as being based upon reliable, differential responsive dispositions insofar as the worldly entities these reports are about are picked out by social-inferential triangula-

247 tion, i.e. in the course of a process of mutual assessments of the inferential connections that can be attributed to observers. As a consequence, RDRDs cannot be conceived as natural. They cannot be explicated in purely nonnormative vocabulary, i.e. in terms of behavior and causation. They rather presuppose assessments that are based upon inferences and assertions and thus presuppose conceptual articulation. The world’s impressions on our senses can be characterized in purely causal terms (at least if one neglects the question whether this characterisation allows for considering them reliable). One might be tempted to interpret this proposal as saying that content is assigned to impressions only in the course of their use in a process of giving and asking for reasons. But a closer examination of triangulation reveals that impressions do not play any self-sustained role in rational constraint. Observation reports are justified as reliable if they can be inferred from proper conditions, which permits one to infer from the reports to the entities they are about. Impressions only causally mediate between worldly entities and observation reports but do not justify the latter or are justified themselves. Brandom’s commitment to a purely causal characterization of impressions and his refusal to consider them as justifying observation reports at least indirectly becomes evident when he sets McDowell’s conceptual perceptions against a merely causal conception of what gives rise to observation reports: “Other thinkers who are careful to avoid the Myth of the Given do so by placing the interface between nonconceptual causal stimuli and conceptual response at the point where environing stimuli cause perceptual judgments. That is, they avoid the Myth by seeing nothing nonjudgmental that could serve to justify perceptual judgments, rather than just to cause them. …it is the line I take in my book”, Brandom (2002b), p. 93f.

The first sentence of the quotation is supposed to say that conceptual articulation can only be provided in the context of a practice of judgments or assertions. (That Brandom shows himself ready to acknowledge an interface is not a lucky choice of words since an interface lies in the way of rational constraint.) And he makes clear that he takes a purely causal characterization to be sufficient for rational constraint:

248 “Merely causally covarying sense impressions (part of the medium, not its objects or contents) will do, if rational constraint by the facts is all that is needed”, Brandom (1996), p. 255.

The difference between McDowell’s and Brandom’s proposal is twofold. First, according to Brandom only a practice of giving and asking for reasons constitutes conceptual articulation. This can also be formulated by saying that within social practice causal connections can be interpreted as rational since the members of a community assess each other as reliable or not. This latter point corresponds to an idea only Esfeld formulates explicitly, but very briefly, when he says that “...that very causal constraint can be regarded as rational from within these practices, because when it comes to rule-following, rationality has to open up itself in such a way that it includes the physical environment via these practices”, Esfeld (2001b), p. 128.

This idea also underlies Brandom’s approach. McDowell, in contrast, thinks that conceptual articulation is available antecedently to the concrete exercise of justificatory practice – even if it is not available antecendently to training. Second, impressions do not figure in Brandom’s account of rational constraint at all. What justifies observation reports are not impressions, which McDowell thinks he must conceive as already conceptually articulated, but the ultimate court of appeal are observation reports, which can be justified by considering their inferential connections with proper conditions. Given the critique against McDowell’s view that conceptual perceptions and thus conceptual articulation of the world are a probate and even a required means in order to provide rational constraint and given the fact that an alternative justification of conceptual realism is not in sight, the critique equally applies to Brandom’s commitment to conceptual realism as a means for providing rational constraint. Given the fact that Brandom rejects the assumption of conceptual perceptions – that implies conceptual articulation of the world – his commitment to conceptual realism seems to be inconsistent.

249 5.4.2 Arguments against conceptual realism that have been formulated in the literature Up to now I have argued that conceptual realism is not required in order to provide rational constraint. I have also argued that it assumes an interface between the causal and the rational realm (and is, thus, unable to provide rational constraint) and buys into the Myth of the Given. The latter argument can now be supported by considering similar objections that have been formulated in the literature. These objections hold that conceptual realism either runs counter to a pragmatist account of content or fails to be about a resistant reality. Both objections are two sides of the same coin. The first version of this double-faced objection is based upon the premise that content is supposed to be constrained by our answers to the world. Under this premise conceptual articulation of the world apparently makes it questionable how human practice can play a decisive role in the constitution of content. Put alternatively, one is committed to the view that contents, which are constrained by our answers to the world, are merely found out or that the approach falls back into the Myth of the Given. These two aspects of the same point – conceptual realism being anti-pragmatist and buying into the Myth of the Given – correspond to Habermas’s (1999) objection to Brandom. But the objection can also be formulated the other way around if one stresses the idea that content is, in a way, made. The combination of this view with the idea that the world itself is conceptually articulated makes it questionable how assertions can be about something that is independent of human practice. (“Independent” is supposed to mean that something is resistant to human practice.) As a consequence, conceptual realism is unable to provide rational constraint. This is Esfeld’s (forthcoming) argument against conceptual realism. I will now present both versions of this objection in detail and comment upon them. Habermas argues that conceptual realism is a feature that is alien to Brandom’s social account of objectivity. Habermas thinks that this feature is added because Brandom’s social practice account alone cannot provide objectivity: “Eine pragmatistische Erklärung [der Sedimentierung des Weltwissens im Sprachwissen], die zum Aufbau seiner Theorie passen würde, kann aber aus der phänomenalistischen Sicht eines verstehenden Interpreten allein nicht entwickelt werden...

250 Deshalb sieht sich Brandom zu einem Begriffsrealismus genötigt, der jedoch die diskurstheoretisch ansetzende Analyse der in der Sprache ‘erscheinenden’ Realität durch Aussagen über die Struktur der Welt ‘an sich’ unterminiert”, Habermas (1999), p. 162.

Habermas’s diagnosis that Brandom needs this ontological thesis because his pragmatist account of objectivity fails is indefensible. I hope section 5.2 made my reading of this account look convincing. Habermas’s claim that conceptual realism is alien to a pragmatist account, however, matches the result from the preceding section. I have just shown that conceptual perceptions are not fully integrated into a process of giving and asking for reasons if they are considered as transparent and thus self-authenticitating. A consequence of attributing to Brandom an anti-pragmatist strain is Habermas’s objection that concepts merely reflect the way the world is: “Die begrifflichen Verhältnisse der Welt werden in unseren Argumentationsspielen, so scheint es, bloß diskursiv entfaltet und schlagen sich auf diese Weise in den begrifflichen Strukturen unseres Welt- und Sprachwissens nieder”, Habermas (1999), p. 166.

And further below that page: “Die Erfahrung wird vielmehr zum Medium herabgestuft, über das sich die an sich existierenden Begriffe dem aufnehmenden menschlichen Geist einprägen.”

This says that – under the premise that content is supposed to be constrained by the way the world is – conceptual realism can be considered as deciding the tension between content as being merely found out and as being merely made in favor of the former. Just like Habermas’s claim that conceptual realism is alien to a pragmatist account of content, this closely related claim also matches the preceding section where I argued that conceptual realism buys into the Myth of the Given. Brandom calls Habermas’s claim that concepts merely reflect the way the world is semantic passivity. A very similar thesis – which Habermas, however, does not explicitly discuss – is what Brandom calls epistemic passivity. If knowledge consists in cognizing pre-existent facts, then it is merely receptive; spontaneity is neglected, cf. Brandom (2000b), pp. 357, 359. In order to further back my claim that Habermas’s objection is correct, let me critically consider how Brandom attempts to defend himself against the view that conceptual realism implies epistemic and semantic passivity.

251 Brandom rebuts a commitment to epistemic passivity with the argument that the assumption that an independent or resistant world rationally constrains our conceptual practices does not assume that the correctness of assertions can be settled from a neutral or a God’s eye point of view: “Seeing our discursive practice as embedded in a world of facts that are independent of that practice, and seeing our claims as answering to those facts for their correctness, in no way involves commitment to a spectator theory of knowledge”, Brandom (2000b), p. 358.

This remark is surely correct, but it is not a response to Habermas’s criticism: Brandom neither states why the assumption of a world of conceptually articulated facts should be innocent, nor does he spell out how his pragmatist account of content is reconcilable with conceptual realism in a way that the latter avoids epistemic passivity. It is therefore more helpful to see how Brandom rebuts the objection of semantic passivity. He replies that conceptual realism is compatible with or even follows from a pragmatist account of content: “The recognition of an independent, conceptually structured objective reality is a product of the social (intersubjective) account of objectivity…”, Brandom (2000b), p. 360.

That conceptual realism is incompatible with a pragmatist account of content has been affirmed above. In which sense it can be considered as a consequence of such an account if the assumption that it is a self-sustained element is abandoned (and how the presumed objections then loose their basis) will be shown in the following section. Let us turn to Esfeld’s argument against conceptual realism. To begin with, he claims that conceptual realism equates propositional contents with the facts that true assertions refer to. As a consequence, conceptual realism does not take an assertion’s content to be grained more finely than its referent. But this means, he goes on, to assume a strange ontology. This first objection to conceptual realism is amended by a second one: Given the identification of propositional contents with the facts that true assertions refer to, Esfeld doubts whether Brandom’s approach can explain reference to entities that are independent of our practices, i.e. he doubts whether it succeeds in explaining objectivity, cf. Esfeld (forthcoming), p. 5. This doubt – which is his decisive objection to conceptual realism – says that

252 conceptual realism can be considered as deciding the tension between content as being merely found out and as being merely made in favor of the latter, if one stresses that content is constituted by social practice. This doubt is correct on the same grounds as Habermas’s objection is. Conceptually articulated impressions can in principle be justified within the justificatory process. But they are at the same time considered transparent and thus infallible so as to derive conceptual realism from the assumption of conceptual perceptions. An infallibility of our impressions that something appears so-and-so – as opposed to how our impressions something appears – can, however, hardly be defended. As a consequence, what is considered as correct is arbitrary. The way Esfeld justifies his principal objection, however, cannot be defended. Esfeld’s premise according to which conceptual realism equates propositional contents with the facts that true assertions refer to, does not apply. Brandom explicitly denies that facts, not only objects with properties, are referred to. But although Brandom cannot be taken to identify propositional content with the facts that true assertions refer to, the consequence Esfeld draws from the ascribed identification is correct. Worldly entities – the facts propositional contents may be identical with and the objects and properties subsentential expressions may be about – are as finely grained as propositional and subsentential contents. This, however, does not mean to assume a strange ontology, provided that one conceives the notion of content in an appropriate way. It can justly be taken to be standard that cognitive sense is more finely grained than extension (see Frege’s Hesperus-Phosphorus example). But a theoretical notion that is supposed to account for the language-world relation – content – must not be conceived as being in the head (see Putnam’s Twin Earth example). Content therefore must not be confused with cognitive sense. If, contrary to the standard view, the world were as finely grained as cognitive sense and if the latter were identical with content, then contents would indeed be merely made and objectivity disenabled. But the assumption that the world is as finely grained as content, understood as the referential dimension of Frege’s sense, does not have this consequence.

253 5.4.3 Conceptual realism and the method of making explicit But is conceptual realism to be conceived as a self-sustained element in Brandom’s account of objectivity? The question is to be negated: Contents and worldly entities are constituted in one and the same process (see section 5.1) whereby both are an ideal limit or a theoretical construct of this process. What provides rational constraint, therefore, cannot be these constituted entities but our immediate responses to something that is resistant to our practices while still waiting to be constituted in its structures. So understood, conceptual realism is a consequence of Brandom’s account of content. Conceptual realism is an idea that permits us to describe social practice explicitly even though an exact correlate to the description need not be implicit in this practice. Just like the notions of content and correctness, it has to be understood on the basis of the method of making explicit. Just like the ascription of content and correctness to scorekeeping practice can be reconciled with the fact that all its results are thoroughly perspectival (see section 5.2), conceptual realism can be reconciled with the fact that this practice is constrained by resistant entities whose structures, however, are not yet constituted. But just like the notions of content and correctness are important for making explicit that such practice possesses the resources for attitude-transcendence, conceptual realism is important for making explicit that social practice succeeds in anchoring correctness and content in the world, i.e. that social practice is rationally constrained by the way the world is. Conceptual realism is important because it captures the idea that contents and worldly entities are equally in a way made and in a way constrained by a resistant world. It is made insofar as the starting point and the preliminary results of this process are thoroughly perspectival. And it is found out insofar as our immediate, perspectival answers to the world can be assessed with regard to their reliability. Contents and the facts they are identical with are the ideal limit of a process that involves such assessments. If one conceives conceptual realism on the background of the method of making explicit, it is not superfluous, but important. It is moreover not inconsistent with other views Brandom defends because it does not presuppose the problematic assumption of conceptual perceptions. And finally, it is not exposed to the double objection of either failing to provide rational

254 constraint or buying into the Myth of the Given. This is because what constrains our conceptual practices is not constituted entities but what pretheoretically appears as resistant to our practices.

255

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