We focus on issues of learning assessment from the point of view of an investigation of philosophical elements in teaching. We contend that assessment of concept possession at school based on ordinary multiple-choice tests might be ineffective because it overlooks aspects of human rationality illuminated by Robert Brandom’s inferentialism––the view that conceptual content largely coincides with the inferential role of linguistic expressions used in public discourse. More particularly, we argue that multiple-choice tests at schools might fail to accurately assess the (...) possession of a concept or the lack of it, for they only check the written outputs of the pupils who take them, without detecting the inferences actually endorsed or used by them. We suggest that school tests would acquire reliability if they enabled pupils to make the reasons of their answers or the inferences they use explicit, so as to contribute to what Brandom calls the game of giving and asking for reasons. We explore the possibility to put this suggestion into practice by deploying two-tier multiple-choice tests. (shrink)

We offer an alternative to two influential accounts of virtue epistemology: Robust Virtue Epistemology and Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology. We argue that while traditional RVE does offer an explanation of the distinctive value of knowledge, it is unable to effectively deal with cases of epistemic luck; and while ALVE does effectively deal with cases of epistemic luck, it lacks RVE’s resources to account for the distinctive value of knowledge. The account we provide, however, is both robustly virtue-theoretic and anti-luck, having the (...) respective benefits of both rival accounts without their respective shortcomings. We describe this view here. (shrink)

To be committed to the truth of a proposition is to constrain one’s options in a certain way: one may not reason as if it is false, and one is obligated to reason as if it is true. Though one is often committed to the truth of the propositions that one believes, the states of belief and commitment are distinct. For historical reasons, however, they are rarely distinguished. Distinguishing between the two states allows for a defense of epistemic deontology against (...) the charge that beliefs are not under the voluntary control of believers, and so cannot be subject to deontic evaluation. It also allows for the resolution of some disputes between naturalists and non-naturalists in epistemology, and permits us to account for obvious facts about the connection between belief and truth in a theoretically parsimonious way. (shrink)

Science provides us with representations of atoms, elementary particles, polymers, populations, genetic trees, economies, rational decisions, aeroplanes, earthquakes, forest fires, irrigation systems, and the world’s climate. It's through these representations that we learn about the world. This entry explores various different accounts of scientific representation, with a particular focus on how scientific models represent their target systems. As philosophers of science are increasingly acknowledging the importance, if not the primacy, of scientific models as representational units of science, it's important to (...) stress that how they represent plays a fundamental role in how we are to answer other questions in the philosophy of science. This entry begins by disentangling ‘the’ problem of scientific representation, before critically evaluating the current options available in the literature. (shrink)

Visual arguments can seem to require unique, autonomous evaluative norms, since their content seems irreducible to, and incommensurable with, that of verbal arguments. Yet, assertions of the ineffability of the visual, or of visual-verbal incommensurability, seem to preclude counting putatively irreducible visual content as functioning argumentatively. By distinguishing two notions of content, informational and argumentative, I contend that arguments differing in informational content can have equivalent argumentative content, allowing the same argumentative norms to be rightly applied in their evaluation.

A close reading of Descartes’ works, particularly his Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii, calls into question the common interpretation of Peirce’s ‘Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man’ and ‘Some Consequences of Four Incapacities’ as being anti-Cartesian. In particular, Descartes’ conception of intuition differs from Peirce’s, and on one plausible reading of Descartes his intuitionism actually mirrors Peirce’s inferentialism in key respects. Given these similarities between Descartes and Peirce, the dogmatic status of the anti-Cartesian interpretation of Peirce becomes evident.

In this paper I argue that to understand minded agency – the capacity we typically find instantiated in instances of human behaviour that could sensibly be questioned by asking “What did you do?” – one needs to understand childhood, i.e. the trajectory of learning to act. I discuss two different types of trajectory, both of which seem to take place during childhood and both of which might be considered crucial to learning to act: a growth of bodily control (GBC) and (...) a growth in taking responsibility (GTR). The discussion of GTR takes up about half of the entire paper. In the final two sections I argue that GTR is the most promising trajectory in terms of which to understand a child’s process of learning to act. (shrink)

How can we theoretically and philosophically study the problem of values and authority in the context of education? The chapter uses the framework of action theoretical semiotics developed mainly on the conceptual structures of Greimassian semiotic theory. This detailed and elaborated theory of human discourse (utilized usually in terms of literary and “cultural” texts) will be expanded by biosemiotic and Peircean points of view to fit in the special problem area of education as transformation or extension from the biosemiotic and (...) zoosemiotic sphere to anthroposemiotic sphere: from nature to culture. The main theoretical starting point for action theoretical semiotics is the concept of meaning which is defined as relationship of an object to the action of the subject. The chapter will connect the action theoretical semiotics to the conception of Bildung and modern idea of the normativity of the rational inference by, e.g., contemporary philosopher of semantics Robert Brandom, to consider the educational implications of this semiotic view. (shrink)

There has been much debate over whether to accept the claim that meaning is normative. One obstacle to making progress in that debate is that it is not always clear what the claim amounts to. In this paper, I try to resolve a dispute between those who advance the claim concerning how it should be understood. More specifically, I critically examine two competing conceptions of the normativity of meaning, rejecting one and defending the other. Though the paper aims to settle (...) a dispute among proponents of the claim that meaning is normative, it should be of interest to those who challenge it. After all, before one takes aim, one’s target needs to be in clear view. (shrink)

There are a number of debates that are relevant to questions concerning objectivity in science. One of the eldest, and still one of the most intensely fought, is the debate over epistemic relativism. —All forms of epistemic relativism commit themselves to the view that it is impossible to show in a neutral, non-question-begging, way that one “epistemic system”, that is, one interconnected set of epistemic standards, is epistemically superior to others. I shall call this view “No-metajustification”. No-metajustification is commonly taken (...) to deny the objectivity of standards. In this paper I shall discuss two currently popular attempts to attack “No-metajustification”. The first attempt attacks no-metajustification by challenging a particular strategy of arguing in its defence: this strategy involves the ancient Pyrrhonian “Problem of the Criterion”. The second attempt to refute No-metajustification targets its metaphysical underpinning: to wit, the claim that there are, or could be, several fundamentally different and irreconcilable epistemic systems. I shall call this assumption “Pluralism”. I shall address three questions with respect to these attempts to refute epistemic relativism by attacking no-metajustification: Can the epistemic relativist rely on the Problem of the Criterion in support of No-metajustification? Is a combination of Chisholmian “particularism” and epistemic naturalism an effective weapon against No-metajustification? And is Pluralism a defensible assumption? (shrink)

Literacy, specifically the use of writing for rational purposes, adds a new dimension to the traditional problem of the relation between language, thought and rationality. Central to rational thought are the logical relations expressed by such terms as “is”, “or”, “and” and “not”. Whereas some see these concepts as fundamental and innate, it is here argued that such terms exhibit a diverse range of uses in speech and thought but through literacy and education they become explicit objects of thought and (...) formalized or ‘normed’ into logical operators as part of a literate rationality. This more formal orientation to language is seen as metarepresentational and may be shown to have both an historical and a developmental trajectory. (shrink)

Within contemporary philosophy of mind, it is taken for granted that externalist accounts of meaning and mental content are, in principle, orthogonal to the matter of whether cognition itself is bound within the biological brain or whether it can constitutively include parts of the world. Accordingly, Clark and Chalmers (1998) distinguish these varieties of externalism as ‘passive’ and ‘active’ respectively. The aim here is to suggest that we should resist the received way of thinking about these dividing lines. With reference (...) to Brandom’s (1994; 2000; 2008) broad semantic inferentialism, we show that a theory of meaning can be at the same time a variety of active externalism. While we grant that supporters of other varieties of content externalism (e.g., Putnam 1975 and Burge 1986) can deny active externalism, this is not an option for semantic inferentialists: On this latter view, the role of the environment (both in its social and natural form) is not ‘passive’ in the sense assumed by the alternative approaches to content externalism. (shrink)

There are still on-going debates on what exactly is wrong with Prior’s pathological “tonk.” In this article I argue, on the basis of categorical inferentialism, that two notions of inconsistency ought to be distinguished in an appropriate account of tonk; logic with tonk is inconsistent as the theory of propositions, and it is due to the fallacy of equivocation; in contrast to this diagnosis of the Prior’s tonk problem, nothing is actually wrong with tonk if logic is viewed as the (...) theory of proofs rather than propositions, and tonk perfectly makes sense in terms of the identity of proofs. Indeed, there is fully complete semantics of proofs for tonk, which allows us to link the Prior’s old philosophical idea with contemporary issues at the interface of categorical logic, computer science, and quantum physics, and thereby to expose commonalities between the laws of Reason and the laws of Nature, which are what logic and physics are respectively about. I conclude the article by articulating the ideas of categorical logical positivism and pluralistic unified science as its goal, including the unification of realist and antirealist conceptions of meaning by virtue of the categorical logical basis of metaphysics. (shrink)

Robert Brandom holds that what we mean is best understood in terms of what inferences we are prepared to defend, and that such a defence is best understood in terms of rule-governed social interactions. This manages to explain quite a lot. However, for those who think that there is more to making correct/incorrect inferences than obeying/breaking accepted rules, Brandom’s account fails to adequately capture what it means to reason properly. Thus, in an effort to sketch an alternative that does not (...) rely primarily on peer pressure, I draw on the work of C. S. Peirce. Peirce argued that, when we reason, we manipulate abstract diagrams in order to observe what results. Since some manipulations are barred by the self-same nature of the diagrams, I try to show that this qualitative incompatibility, which I dub “contrapiction,” is a good reason to regard some reasoning as bad. (shrink)

The idea that certain philosophical debates are "merely verbal" has historically been raised as a challenge against (large parts of) metaphysics. In this paper, I explore an analogous challenge to large parts of epistemology, which is motivated by recent arguments in experimental philosophy. I argue that, while this challenge may have some limited success, it cannot serve as a wedge case for wide-ranging skepticism about the substantiveness of epistemological debates; most epistemological debates are immune to the worries it raises.

In his program of analytic pragmatism, Robert Brandom has presented a thoroughgoing reinterpretation of the place of analytic philosophy in the history of philosophy by linking his own non-representational ‘inferentialist’ approach to semantics to the rationalist – idealist tradition, and in particular, to Hegel. Brandom, however, has not been without his critics in regard to both his approach to semantics and his interpretation of Hegel. Here I single out four interlinked problematic areas facing Brandom's inferentialist semantics – his approach of (...) perceptual content, to de re attitudes, to perceptual experience and to modality, and then go on to contrast the different approach to these issues that is found in Hegel. While Hegel can helpfully be understood as anticipating an inferentialist semantics as Brandom claims, his is a weak inferentialism in contrast to Brandom's strong version. With his weakly inferentialist approach Hegel can, I suggest, be seen as providing a solution to the tangle of problems.. (shrink)

This paper argues against the priority of pure, virtue-based accounts of argumentative norms [VA]. Such accounts are agent-based and committed to the priority thesis: good arguments and arguing well are explained in terms of some prior notion of the virtuous arguer arguing virtuously. Two problems with the priority thesis are identified. First, the definitional problem: virtuous arguers arguing virtuously are neither sufficient nor necessary for good arguments. Second, the priority problem: the goodness of arguments is not explained virtuistically. Instead, being (...) excellences, virtues are instrumental in relation to other, non-aretaic goods—in this case, reason and rationality. Virtues neither constitute reasons nor explain their goodness. Two options remain for VA: either provide some account of reason and rationality in virtuistic terms, or accept them as given but non-aretaic goods. The latter option, though more viable, demands the concession that VA cannot provide the core norms of argumentation theory. (shrink)

In the beginning, as they say, was the ‘pragmatic maxim’ of Peirce and James. Peirce’s early formulation of the maxim in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” ran as follows: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (Peirce 1878: 132; cf. Bernstein 2010: 2-3; and O’Shea 2008: 208-13) At its core, pragmatism thus originated as (...) a method for... (shrink)

This thesis explores attempts to characterise the structure of reality. Three notions stand out: Lewisian naturalness, Sider’s ‘structure’, and grounding, where the latter has become the most popular way to characterise the structure of reality in the contemporary literature. I argue that none of these notions, as they are currently understood, are suited for limning the metaphysical structure of reality. In the first part of the thesis I argue that, by the lights of the relevant theories, both naturalness and structure (...) fall short of the theoretical role carved out for those posits. In the second part of the thesis I present two challenges to the ‘orthodox’ conception of grounding. The first contests the standard assumption that grounding is asymmetric, both by citing what I take to be best described as symmetric instances of grounding, and by developing and arguing for a new theory of metaphysical structure – ‘metaphysical interdependence’ – which takes grounding to be nonsymmetric. The second challenge concerns the relationship between grounding and explanation, and leads to a dilemma for the grounding theorist. My proposed resolution to the dilemma is to adopt an antirealist approach to grounding, which I further motivate and develop in the final chapter. (shrink)

According to judgment internalism, there is a conceptual connection between moral judgment and motivation. This paper offers an argument against that kind of internalism that does not involve counterexamples of the amoralist sort. Instead, it is argued that these forms of judgment internalism fall prey to a Frege-Geach type argument.

This article considers the implications of inferentialist philosophy of language for debates in the historiography of philosophy. My intention is to mediate and refine the polemics between contextualist historians and ‘analytic’ or presentist historians. I claim that much of Robert Brandom’s nuanced defence of presentism can be accepted and even adopted by contextualists, so that inferentialism turns out to provide an important justification for orthodox history of philosophy. In the concluding sections I argue that the application of Brandom’s theory has (...) important limits, and that some polemics by contextualists against presentists are therefore justified. (shrink)

In the following I discuss the debate between epistemological internalists and externalists from an unfamiliar meta-epistemological perspective. In doing so, I focus on the question of whether rationality is best captured in externalist or internalist terms. Using a conception of epistemic judgments as “doxastic plans,” I characterize one important subspecies of judgments about epistemic rationality—focusing on the distinctive rational/functional role these judgments play in regulating how we form beliefs. Then I show why any judgment that plays this role should be (...) expected to behave the manner internalists predict. In this way, I argue, we can explain why our basic toolbox for epistemic evaluation includes an internalist conception of rationality. (shrink)

The paradox of Wigner’s friend challenges the objectivity of quantum theory. A pragmatist interpretation can meet this challenge by judicious appeal to decoherence. Quantum theory provides situated agents with resources for predicting and explaining what happens in the physical world—not conscious observations of it. Even in bizarre Wigner’s friend scenarios, differently situated agents agree on the objective content of physical magnitude statements while, normally, quantum Darwinism permits agents equal observational access to their truth. Quantum theory has nothing to say about (...) conscious experiences. But it does prompt us to reexamine the significance of everyday claims about the physical world. (shrink)

Which concepts should we use to think and talk about the world and to do all of the other things that mental and linguistic representation facilitates? This is the guiding question of the field that we call ‘conceptual ethics’. Conceptual ethics is not often discussed as its own systematic branch of normative theory. A case can nevertheless be made that the field is already quite active, with contributions coming in from areas as diverse as fundamental metaphysics and social/political philosophy. In (...) this pair of papers, we try to unify the field, reflecting on its basic nature, structure, and methodology. (shrink)

Brandom’s philosophical programme can be seen as a reversion of the traditional order of explanation in semantics. Whereas traditional semantic theories start with a grip on a notion like truth or reference, Brandom argues that it is also possible to begin with an analysis of the speech acts of what one is doing by making a claim in order to explain representational notions like truth and objectivity. Evaluating the explanatory values of Brandom’s theory, it therefore is necessary to ask to (...) what extent Brandom’s analysis of our linguistic practices is able to explain what other theories start with. That is, can linguistic practices in Brandom’s sense give an account of why we are capable of referring to language-external objects? And can they make evident why we take truth and falsity not to depend upon our beliefs or claims but upon an extra-linguistic reality? After a short discussion of Brandom’s answer to the first question, I argue that Brandom’s answer to the second is not sufficient and that it does not seem to be possible to give a sufficient answer within his theory. (shrink)

Two parallelism hypotheses have been adopted and the third one on their relationship has been put forward. The illocutionary logic hypothesis states that the logic of linguistic commitments runs parallel to the logic of intentionality. The normative pragmatics hypothesis states that the logic of utterances runs parallel to the logic of linguistic commitments. According to the third stance or the logic projection hypothesis, the logic of utterances is the origin of all other logics used in describing psychological and social realities. (...) Consequently, the imperative logic or logic of utterances constitutes an independent but not self-sufficient research topic. The logic of utterances manifests itself in its meaning effects such as deontic and bouletic ones. It can be studied only in relation to deontic logics of the hearer’s obligation and the speaker’s linguistic commitments and in relation to logics of intentionality of the speaker’s expression and the hearer’s impression. Therefore, research in logic of imperative and other utterances must include investigation of relations between logics. (shrink)

In Sein und Zeit Heidegger makes several claims about the nature of ‘assertion’ [Aussage]. These claims are of particular philosophical interest: they illustrate, for example, important points of contact and divergence between Heidegger's work and philosophical movements including Kantianism, the early Analytic tradition and contemporary pragmatism. This article provides a new assessment of one of these claims: that assertion is connected to a ‘present-at-hand’ ontology. I also indicate how my analysis sets the stage for a new reading of Heidegger's further (...) claim that assertion is an explanatorily derivative phenomenon. I begin with a loose overview of Heidegger's position and then develop a sharper formulation of the key premises. I go on to argue that existing treatments of the supposed link between assertion and the ‘present-at-hand’ are unsatisfactory, and advance a new, ‘methodological’, interpretation of that link. Finally, I sketch the implications of my interpretation for the further claim that assertion is explanatorily derivative. (shrink)

I outline Brandom’s theory of de re and de dicto belief ascriptions, which plays a central role in Brandom’s overall theory of linguistic communication, and show that this theory offers a surprising, new response to Burge’s (Midwest Stud 6:73–121, 1979) argument for social externalism. However, while this response is in principle available from the perspective of Brandom’s theory of belief ascription in abstraction from his wider theoretical enterprise, it ceases to be available from this perspective in the wider context of (...) his inferential role semantics and his doctrines of scorekeeping and of the expressive role of belief ascriptions in discourse. In this wider context, Brandom’s theory of belief ascriptions implies that Burge’s argument trivially fails to have the disquieting implications for psychological explanations that it is widely taken to have. Yet since this is not trivially so, Brandom’s theory apparently provides a false picture of our practice of interpreting belief ascriptions. I then argue that Brandom might as well accept the alternative picture of interpreting belief ascriptions that Burge’s argument presupposes: even in the context of his overall project, Brandom’s take on our practice of interpreting them does not afford belief ascriptions with the discursive significance Brandom claims they have. (shrink)

This essay presents a new way of conceptualizing the problem of political obligation. On the traditional ‘normativist’ framing of the issue, the primary task for theory is to secure the content and justification of political obligations, providing practically applicable moral knowledge. This paper develops an alternative, ‘pragmatist’ framing of the issue, by rehabilitating a frequently misunderstood essay by Hanna Pitkin and by recasting her argument in terms of the ‘pragmatic turn’ in recent philosophy, as articulated by Robert Brandom. From this (...) perspective, the content and justification of political obligations cannot be determined in a way that is in principle separable from their application. This casts ‘political obligation’ not as a problem to be philosophically resolved, but as a political predicament that calls for a kind of practical engagement. The merit of this perspective is to draw our attention toward the conditions under which the problem appears as a lived predicament. (shrink)

How many notions of cause are there? The causality literature is witnessing a flourishing of pluralist positions. Here I focus on a recent debate on whether interpreting causality in terms of inferential relations commits one to semantic pluralism (Reiss 2011) or not (Williamson 2006). I argue that inferentialism is compatible with a ‘weak’ form of monism, where causality is envisaged as one, vague cluster concept. I offer two arguments for this, one for vagueness, one for uniqueness. Finally, I qualify in (...) what sense the resulting form of monism is ‘weak’.¿Cuántas nociones de causa hay? Hay un resurgir de posiciones pluralistas en la bibliografía sobre causalidad. Me ocuparé aquí de un debate reciente sobre si la interpretación de la causalidad en términos de relaciones inferenciales nos compromete con el pluralismo semántico (Reiss 2011) o no (Williamson 2006). Defiendo que el inferencialismo es compatible con una forma ’debil’ de monismo, donde la causalidad se presenta como un único concepto vago y de agrupación (cluster). Ofrezco para ello dos argumentos, uno sobre vaguedad y otro sobre unicidad. Finalmente, matizaré en qué sentido esta forma demonismo es ’débil’. (shrink)

rationality has increasingly been a target of attack in contemporary educational research and practice and in its place practical reason and situated thinking have become a focus of interest. The argument here is that something is lost in this. In illustrating how we might think about the issue, this paper makes a response to the charge that as a result of his commitment to the ‘Enlightenment project’ Vygotsky holds abstract rationality as the pinnacle of thought. Against this it is argued (...) that Vygotsky had a far more sophisticated appreciation of reason and of its remit. The paper proceeds first by examining the picture of Vygotsky that is presented in the work of James Wertsch, and especially his claim that Vygotsky was an ambivalent rationalist, goes on to provide an account of Vygotsky that corrects this picture, and develops this in the light of the work of Robert Brandom, who shares Vygotsky’s inheritance of Hegel. The conclusion towards which this piece points is that the philosophical underpinnings of Vygotsky’s work provide a radically different idea of rationality and epistemology from that characterised as abstract rationality and that this has significance for education studies. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that we should understand the direction of fit of beliefs and desires in normative terms. After rehearsing a standard objection to Michael Smith’s analysis of direction of fit, I raise a similar problem for Lloyd Humberstone’s analysis. I go on to offer my own account, according to which the difference between beliefs and desires is determined by the normative relations such states stand in. I argue that beliefs are states which we have reason to change (...) in light of the world, whereas desires are states that give us reason to change the world. After doing this, I show how the view avoids various objections, including two from David Sobel and David Copp. The paper ends by briefly discussing the relevance of the view to the Humean theory of motivation. (shrink)

In the debate between positivism and non-positivism the argument from relativism plays a pivotal role. The argument from relativism, as put forward, for instance, by Hans Kelsen, says, first, that a necessary connection between law and morality presupposes the existence of absolute, objective, or necessary moral elements, and, second, that no such absolute, objective, or necessary moral elements exist. My reply to this is that absolute, objective, or necessary moral elements do exist, for human rights exist, and human rights exist (...) because they are justifiable. (shrink)

Epistemic expressivism is the application of a nexus of ideas, which is prominent in ethical theory (more specifically, metaethics), to parallel issues in epistemological theory (more specifically, metaepistemology). Here, in order to help those new to the debate come to grips with epistemic expressivism and recent discussions of it, I first briefly present this nexus of ideas as it occurs in ethical expressivism. Then, I explain why and how some philosophers have sought to extend it to a version of epistemic (...) expressivism. Finally, I consider a number of objections and replies with the aim of giving the reader the tools needed to begin to evaluate the promise and prospects of epistemic expressivism. (shrink)

This article examines what is known about the cognitive science of working memory, and brings the findings to bear in evaluating philosophical accounts of central cognitive processes of thinking and reasoning. It is argued that central cognition is sensory based, depending on the activation and deployment of sensory images of various sorts. Contrary to a broad spectrum of philosophical opinion, the central mind does not contain any workspace within which goals, decisions, intentions, or non-sensory judgments can be active.Introduction: philosophers’ commitmentsMost (...) philosophers believe that our so-called “personal-level” propositional attitudes—our personal judgments, beliefs, goals, values, decisions, and intentions—are consciously accessible. Many will also allow, of course, that some of the processing that takes place within our perceptual faculties is inaccessible to us; and many will grant the possibility of unconscious attitudes, as well as processes of inference and decision mak. (shrink)

We are reliable about logic in the sense that we by-and-large believe logical truths and disbelieve logical falsehoods. Given that logic is an objective subject matter, it is difficult to provide a satisfying explanation of our reliability. This generates a significant epistemological challenge, analogous to the well-known Benacerraf-Field problem for mathematical Platonism. One initially plausible way to answer the challenge is to appeal to evolution by natural selection. The central idea is that being able to correctly deductively reason conferred a (...) heritable survival advantage upon our ancestors. However, there are several arguments that purport to show that evolutionary accounts cannot even in principle explain how it is that we are reliable about logic. In this paper, I address these arguments. I show that there is no general reason to think that evolutionary accounts are incapable of explaining our reliability about logic. (shrink)

In this article I intend to show the strict relation between the notions of “second nature” and “recognition”. To do so I begin with a problem (circularity) proper to the theory of Hegelian and post- Hegelian Anerkennung. The solution strategy I propose is signifi cant also in terms of bringing into focus the problems connected with a notion of “space of reasons” that stems from the Hegelian concept of “Spirit”. I thus broach the notion of “second nature” as a bridgeconcept (...) that can play a key role both for a renewal of the theory of Anerkennung and for a rethinking of the “space of reasons” within the debate between Robert Brandom and John McDowell. Against this background I illustrate the novelties introduced by the dialectical conception of the relation between fi rst and second nature developed by Hegel and the contribution this idea can make to a revisited theory of recognition as a phenomenon articulated on two levels. I then return to the question of the space of reasons to show the contribution the renewed conception of recognition as second nature makes to the definition of its intrinsic sociality as something that is not in principle opposed to a sense of naturalness. (shrink)

This paper provides an agonistic interpretation of Robert Brandom's social-pragmatic account of normativity. I argue that social practice, on this approach, should be seen not just as cooperative, but also as contestatory. This aspect, which has so far remained implicit, helps to illuminate Brandom's claim that normative statuses are ‘instituted’ by social practices: normative statuses are brought into play in mutual engagement, and are only in play from an engaged social perspective among others. Moreover, in contrast to a positivist or (...) conventionalist understanding of Brandom's work, it shows that the possibility of a critical stance toward existing practices is not only compatible with, but already implicit in this form of pragmatism. This can be made explicit with the notion of farcical practices: practices that are treated merely as if they institute genuine commitments and entitlements. Interpreting a practice as farcical is taking a critical stance toward it, and this possibility is inherent in Brandom's theoretical framework. This opens the way for a fruitful appropriation of Brandom's pragmatism for social and political philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter provides a critical overview of ten central arguments that philosophers have given in support of a distinction between the conceptual and the nonconceptual. We use these arguments to examine the question of whether (and in what sense) perceptual states might be deemed nonconceptual and also whether (and in what sense) animals and infants might be deemed to lack concepts. We argue that philosophers have implicitly relied on a wide variety of different ways to draw the conceptual/nonconceptual distinction and (...) that all ten of the arguments we discuss face considerable difficulties. (shrink)

Charles Peirce's diagrammatic logic — the Existential Graphs — is presented as a tool for illuminating how we know necessity, in answer to Benacerraf's famous challenge that most ‘semantics for mathematics’ do not ‘fit an acceptable epistemology’. It is suggested that necessary reasoning is in essence a recognition that a certain structure has the particular structure that it has. This means that, contra Hume and his contemporary heirs, necessity is observable. One just needs to pay attention, not merely to individual (...) things but to how those things are related in larger structures, certain aspects of which relations force certain other aspects to be a certain way. (shrink)

The notion of harmony has played a pivotal role in a number of debates in the philosophy of logic. Yet there is little agreement as to how the requirement of harmony should be spelled out in detail or even what purpose it is to serve. Most, if not all, conceptions of harmony can already be found in Michael Dummett's seminal discussion of the matter in The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. Hence, if we wish to gain a better understanding of the (...) notion of harmony, we do well to start here. Unfortunately, however, Dummett's discussion is not always easy to follow. The following is an attempt to disentangle the main strands of Dummett's treatment of harmony. The different variants of harmony as well as their interrelations are clarified and their individual shortcomings qua interpretations of harmony are demonstrated. Though no attempt is made to give a detailed alternative account of harmony here, it is hoped that our discussion will lay the ground for an adequate rigorous treatment of this central notion. (shrink)

Debates about the nature of practical knowledge and its relationship with declarative knowledge have, over the last ten years, been lively. Relatively little has, however, been written about the educational implications of these debates, particularly about the educational implications of the two broad families of positions known respectively as ‘Intellectualism’ and ‘Anti-intellectualism’. Neither has much appeared in the literature about what Ryle called ‘intelligence epithets’ or evaluative elaborations on attributions of know how. Yet the use of intelligence epithets is a (...) central feature of Ryle’s account of knowing how and that account cannot be adequately understood without an appreciation of their importance. The paper will offer a qualified defence of anti-intellectualism about practical knowledge, paying particular attention to the importance of intelligence epithets and, second, argue that anti-intellectualism offers the best opportunity for constructing a rationale for vocational and professional education that gives broad forms of agency, autonomous action and the pursuit of excellence their due place in such programmes. (shrink)

This book presents novel formalizations of three of the most important medieval logical theories: supposition, consequence and obligations. In an additional fourth part, an in-depth analysis of the concept of formalization is presented - a crucial concept in the current logical panorama, which as such receives surprisingly little attention.Although formalizations of medieval logical theories have been proposed earlier in the literature, the formalizations presented here are all based on innovative vantage points: supposition theories as algorithmic hermeneutics, theories of consequence analyzed (...) with tools borrowed from model-theory and two-dimensional semantics, and obligations as logical games. For this reason, this is perhaps the first time that these medieval logical theories are made fully accessible to the modern philosopher and logician who wishes to obtain a better grasp of them, but who has always been held back by the lack of appropriate ‘translations' into modern terms.Moreover, the book offers a reflection on the very nature of logic, a reflection that is prompted by the comparisons between medieval and modern logic, their similarities and dissimilarities. It is thus a contribution not only to the history of logic, but also to the philosophy of logic, the philosophy of language and semantics.The analysis of medieval logic is also relevant for the modern philosopher and logician in that, being the unifying methodology used across all disciplines at that time, logic really provided unity to science. It thus presents a unified model of scientific investigation, where logic plays the aggregating role. (shrink)