Towards an Analytic Pragmatism

2009 April 19

Introduction to tutorials

tutorials

• Today:• Carlo Penco: Assertion and inference• Italo Testa: Some Pragmatist Themes in Brandom's

Reconstructive Rationality (on: Tales of the Mighty Dead)• Raffaela Giovagnoli: Brandom and "The Logicist's Dilemma”

(on: Ch. II of Between Saying and Doing)

Tomorrow:• Daniele Santoro: Modality, Normativity, and Incompatibility: A

conceptual map of Analytic Pragmatism• (on Ch. IV and V of Between Saying and Doing)• Giorgio Bertolotti: Pragmatism and Intentionalilty

(on: Ch. VI of Between Saying and Doing)

1. Background

2. Humans & Parrots on inference

3. Assertion

4. Holism

5. Anaphora

1

background

Kant

James-Peirce Frege

Carnap Wittgenstein

Sellars Dummett

Brandom

Wittgenstein: Dummett: (& Gentzen)Language games Meaning as Justification

Sellars: Game of giving and asking for reasons

David Lewis:Rorty: Scorekeeping & L.G.Avoid “representations”Phil. Mirr.Nat.

Chastain:Davidson: rigidity (Kripke, Kaplan) asHolism anaphora

2

Humans and parrots on inference

Inferential semantics

Knowing the meaning = ability to give and ask for reasons (Sellars)

Dummett: give justifications: premises from which the sentence comes

Brandom: inferential role semantics

The meaning of a sentence is its inferential role:

the set of its premises and consequences

Humans & parrots

Rrrred!

Hume: parrots do not have ideas

Brandom: parrots do not have an inferential network

Humans do: “it is red, therefore..

it has a color, it is not blue,…

and I can say it because my perception system is OK

Normative pragmatics

Inferential semantics is embedded in a normative dimension

the key concept is the concept of assertion

making an assertion is to get a normative status

felicity conditions of the speech act of assertion

3

Assertion

To make an assertion is to master the game

(of giving and asking for reasons)

NORMATIVE DIMENSION:

(1) I have rights (reasons) to assert p

I assert p = entitlements [permissions] (2) I am committed to accept its conseguences

committments [obligations]

Asserting and reporting

Entitlements & commitments are normative statusesbut We attribute normative statuses to others:we have normative attitudes

To attribute entitlements & commitments to others = practicall attitude

Just reporting - (practical attitude implicit in scorekiiping)

Acknowledging (making it explicit) Ascribing beliefs or commitments Undertaking as my own commitment

example

Prosecutor:

The defence attorney believes a pathological liar is a trustworthy witness

Defence attorney:

Not so; what I believe is that the man who just testified is trustworthy witness

Proscutor:

Exactly, an I have presented evidence that the man who just testified is a pathological liar

The disagreement is no whether liars are trustworthy witnesses:)

How to make explicit the division of the responibility involved in the report?

Using de dicto-de re distinction to express

different attitudes for attributing beliefs to others

The defense attorney claims of [what I believe to be] a pathological liar that he is trustworthy witness

4

Holism

Every assertion is given in a networks of

entitlements (premises or justifications) and

commitments (accepting consequences)

However there is no apriori definition of which entitlements or comitments are the right ones

How communication can be successful if there is no agreement on the meanings ou our

assertions?

holism and communication

If we don’t share the same meaning

How can we agree or disagree on what we say?

Communication is not apriori sharing of meanings but

cooperating in a joint activity of

converging towards the same meanings

assessing the meanings

searching for objectivity

5

Anaphora

(1) Kaplan tought us the central role of tokens over types sentences with indexicals (I, here..) and demonstraties (that..) are not evaluable unless we refer to the context of utterance

(2) The mistake of Kaplan (and Keipke) is to think in “naturalistic terms” as if “that”, “this” were explessions whose unique role is the prolungation of the phisical direction of the fingers

(3) The role of indexicals and demonstrative is fundamentally linked to anaphora: “this bottle is full of water; do you want it?”

(4) Indexicals and demonstratives can be considered “anaphoric initiators” (at the beginning of an anaphoric chain)

(5) The idea of causal chain in Kripke’s theory of direct reference is an obscure way to speak of “anaphoric chains”. Anaphora is what permits to reconstruct the different attitudes in discourse

Anaphora

“this” does not work alone

because

To recognize an object you need to have a criterio of identity

(no entity without identity), (Frege-Quine)

you need to recognize the object as the same object you need to be able to refer to it anaphorically

There cannot be deixis without anaphora

deixis presupposes anaphora

Conclusion: Two steps in MIT

(1) Inferential Semantics inside Normative Pragmatics

meaning is explainde in a normative dimension of entitlements and commitments and attitudes over these entitlements or commitments

(2) The social route from Reasoning to Representing

objectivity and representation are the result of a social practive of the network of our attitudes towards our entitlements and inferential commitments.

The End

• R. B. Brandom, Making it Explicit. Reasoning, Representing and Discursive Commitment, Harvard U.P. Cambridge (Mass), 1994

• R. B. Brandom, Articulating Reasons, An Introduction to Inferentialism, Harvard U.P Cambridge (Mass), 2002

• R. B. Brandom, Between Sayng & Doing, towards an Analytic Pragmatism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008