|
|
School in Detail
INFEREINFERENTIALIST SCHOOLNTIALIST SCHOOL
SCHOOL IN DETAIL
Bob Brandom:
Reason, Expression, and the Philosophic Enterprise
|
Inferentialism as the result of the realization of the key role of "making it explicit" in philosophy
Text:
'Reason, Expression, and the Philosophical Enterprise' , in What Is Philosophy?, C.P. Ragland and Sarah Heidt (eds.), Yale University Press, 2001, pp. 74-95 (Czech translation 'Rozum, vyjádření a filosofie', Filosofický časopis 48, 2000, 419-437)
|
|
Michael Williams:
Meaning and Metaphysics: Sellars's Inferentialism
|
The relation of Sellars's inferentialism to his broader philosophical aims and concerns.
Recommended readings:
Sellars, W.: 'The Myth of the Given: Three Lectures on Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind', Feigl, H. & Scriven, M. (eds.): The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis (Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1956. Reprinted as Chapter 5 in Science, Perception and Reality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963; republished by Ridgeview Publishing Company, Atascadero, California, 1991). Republished as a book with an introduction by Richard Rorty, and a study guide by Robert Brandom (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).
Sellars, W.: "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man," in Frontiers of Science and Philosophy, edited by Robert Colodny (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962): 35-78. Reprinted in Science, Perception and Reality.
Sellars, W.: "Phenomenalism," a paper presented at the Wayne State University Symposium in the Philosophy of Mind in December, 1962. Published in Intentionality, Minds and Perception, edited by Hector-Neri Castañeda (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967): 215-74, with comments by Bruce Aune, and a reply by Sellars. Also published in Science, Perception and Reality.
Sellars, W.: "Some Reflections on Language Games," Philosophy of Science 21 (1951): 204-28. Reprinted in Science, Perception and Reality.
Sellars, W.: "Inference and Meaning," Mind 62 (1953): 313-38. Reprinted in Pure Pragmatics and Possible Worlds: The Early Essays of Wilfrid Sellars, ed. and intro. by Jeffrey F. Sicha (Reseda, California: Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1980).
Sellars, W.: "Concepts as Involving Laws and Inconceivable without Them," Philosophy of Science 15 (1948): 287-315. Reprinted in Pure Pragmatics and Possible Worlds.
|
|
James Conant:
Wittgenstein on Following a Rule
|
Overview of some of the most influential attempts to make sense of the discussion that runs from sections 185 to 201 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, including those of Kripke, Brandom, Cavell and McDowell.
Recommended readings:
Wittgenstein, L.: Philosophische Untersuchungen, Blackwell, Oxford; English translation Philosophical Investigation, Blackwell, Oxford, 1953; sections 83-87 and 185-201.
Brandom, R.: “Wittgenstein on Rules”, Appendix to Chapter Two of Making it Explicit, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1994.
Cavell, S.: “The Argument of the Ordinary”, in Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome (The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism: The Carus Lectures, 1988), University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988.
Kripke, S. (1982): Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.).
McDowell, J.: 'Wittgenstein on Following a Rule', Synthèse 58, 1984, 325-63.
McDowell, J.: ‘Meaning and Intentionality in Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy (1992) vol 17; reprinted in McDowell: Mind, Value, Reality (Harvard, 1998) pp.263-278.
John McDowell: “How not to read Philosophical Investigations : Brandom’s Wittgenstein”, in R. Haller and K. Puhl, eds., Wittgenstein and the Future of Philosophy: A Reassessment after 50 Years (Vienna: Holder, Pichler, Tempsky, 2002), pp. 245-56.
Minar, E.: "Paradox and Privacy: On §§201-202 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 54 (1994), pp. 43-75
Minar, E.: “Wittgenstein. and the ‘Contingency’ of Community,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1991): 203–234.
|
|
Björn Ramberg:
Anti-authoritarian Romantic Naturalism:
The Rortyan background to Brandom's rationalism
|
Rorty’s interpretation of pragmatism undermines the essential theoretical ambitions of metaphysics and epistemology, and challenges the very idea of philosophy as a distinct form of inquiry. Yet the most innovative and influential heir of Rorty’s thought is a system-building rationalist. This is our puzzle.
Recommended readings:
Rorty, R. (1979): Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press (chapter V: “Epistemology and Philosophy of Language”).
Rorty, R. (1989): Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Part I: Contingency).
Rorty, R., “Pragmatism without method,” in Sidney Hook: Philosopher of Democracy and Humanism, edited by Paul Kurtz, (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1983), pp 259-73, reprinted in Richard Rorty (1991), Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp 63-77.
Rorty, R, “Pragmatism, Davidson and truth,” in Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, edied by Ernest LePore (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), pp 333-68, reprinted in Richard Rorty (1991), Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp 126-150.
Rorty, R, “Representation, social practice, and truth,” Philosophical Studies 54 (1988): 215-28, reprinted in Richard Rorty (1991), Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 151-161.
Rorty, R, “Robert Brandom on Social Practices and Representations,” in Truth and Progress, Richard Rorty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp 122-37.
Rorty, R, “Response to Brandom” in Rorty and His Critics, edited by Robert Brandom (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp 183-190.
Brandom, R., “Vocabularies of Pragmatism: Synthesizing Naturalism and Historicism,” in Rorty and His Critics, edited by Robert Brandom (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp 156-182.
|
|
Mark Lance:
Normative Pragmatism
|
There are many senses in which language can be said to be normative. Some are fairly trivial and uncontroversial, for example,
that there are normative facts which typically follow from semantic facts. But there are many deeper senses as well. In this tutorial we outline and survey ways in which the social pragmatist tradition anchored in the work of Wilfrid Sellars emphasizes normativity. We begin with some crucial methodological innovations, and explain the Sellarsian conception of meaning in terms of normatively defined role in a language game. This conception is arguably the most important starting point of Brandom's work and we trace some of the difference it makes.
We then turn to the content of meaning claims themselves, and a deeper sense of the normativity of meaning. This too is crucial to making sense of central Brandomian ideas, especially "explicitation".
Finally, we look at some of the philosophical payoff of this kind of normative pragmatism, by surveying accounts of representation, personhood, receptivity, and normativity itself, as developed by Brandom and other philosophers.
Recommended readings:
Sellars, W.: "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man," in Frontiers of Science and Philosophy, edited by Robert Colodny (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962): 35-78. Reprinted in Science, Perception and Reality.
Sellars, W.: "Some Reflections on Language Games," Philosophy of Science 21 (1951): 204-28. Reprinted in Science, Perception and Reality.
"A Semantical Solution of the Mind-Body Problem," Methodos 5 (1953): 45-82. Reprinted in Pure Pragmatics and Possible Worlds: The Early Essays of Wilfrid Sellars, ed. and intro. by Jeffrey F. Sicha (Reseda, California: Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1980).
Macbeth, D.: "The Coin of the Intentional Realm", Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 24: 143-166.
Brandom, R. (1979): 'Freedom and Constraint by Norms', American Philosophical Quarterly 16, 1979, 187-196.
Brandom, R. (1983): 'Asserting', Nous 17, 1983, 637-650.
McDowell, J. (1994): Mind and World, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.).
Lance, M.N. a J. O’Leary-Hawthorne (1997): The Grammar Of Meaning, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (chapters 1 -3)
Lance, M. (2000): 'The Word Made Flesh: Toward a neo-Sellarsian View of Concepts, Analysis, and Understanding', Acta Analytica 15, 2000, 117-135.
|
|
Michael Kremer:
Inferentialism and Logic
|
Possibly the most natural philosophical home for inferentialist accounts of meaning is in logic. We will discuss proof-theoretic explanations of the meaning of the logical constants, along with constraints on such accounts (conservativeness, harmony, autonomy). We will also discuss arguments deriving from such accounts in favor of intuitionistic over classical logic.
Recommended readings:
Main papers and chapters to be discussed:
(1) Prior, Arthur N., “The Runabout Inference Ticket,” Analysis 21 (1960): 38-39.
(2) Belnap, Nuel D., “Tonk, Plonk, and Plink,” Analysis 22 (1962): 130-134.
(3) Hacking, Ian, “What is Logic?” Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979), 285-319.
(4) Dummett, Michael, Frege: Philosophy of Language, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: 1981): 396-7, 453-455.
(5) Dummett, Michael, The Logical Basis of Metaphysics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Chapters 9, 11, 13, 200-220, 245-264, 280-300.
(6) Read, Stephen, “Harmony and Autonomy in Classical Logic,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 29 (2000): 123-154.
(7) Rumfitt, Ian, “‘Yes’ and ‘No’,” Mind 109 (2000): 781-823.
(9) Dummett, Michael, “‘Yes’, ‘No’, and ‘Can’t Say’,” Mind 111 (2002): 289-295.
Supplementary papers:
(10) One of the organizers of the conference has also written on this matter: Peregrin, Jaroslav, “Meaning as an Inferential Role,” Erkenntnis 64 (2006): 1-35.
(11) And the presenter once had something to say about it: Kremer, Michael, “Logic and Meaning: The Philosophical Significance of the Sequent-Calculus,” Mind 97 (1988), 50-72.
|
|
Paul Horwich:
Deflationism
|
An examination of the pros and cons of various alternative deflationary accounts of truth: - the redundancy theory, miminalism, tarski's theory, the sentence-variable analysis, prosententialism (including Bandom's anaphoric version of it), and disquotationalism.
|
|
|
|
