This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Hegel's Introduction Sense Certainty Perception Force and Understanding Hegel's Epistemological Analysis in the Phenomenology of Spirit Conclusion References Further Reading.

Dans laScience de la logiqueet dans l’Encyclopédie des sciences philosophiques,Hegel reconstruit la philosophie critique de Kant en développant i) une logique transcendantale dans laScience de la logiqueet dans laPhilosophie de la nature; ii) une conception pragmatique de l’a priori; et iii) une caractéristique-clé de l’usage du verbe «réaliser» en relation avec les concepts et les principes. Chacun de ces trois éléments constitue un aspect central de la sémantique spécifiquement cognitive de Hegel, que celui-ci développe, en partant de la thèse kantienne (...) de la référence cognitive singulière, en un réalisme pragmatique systématique. (shrink)

Robert Brandom and John McDowell pursue similar, yet strikingly different approaches to a shared problem: that of how we can be answerable to the world in our beliefs about it in the wake of Sellars' critique of the myth of the given. While McDowell attempts to rehabilitate the idea that experience is capable of providing justifications for our beliefs, Brandom constructs a sophisticated social-pragmatist account of the objectivity of our conceptual commitments in which experience is, as he says, not one (...) of his words. In this article, I argue that McDowell is right in stressing the indispensability of the idea of experience, but that he is wrong in believing that Brandom lacks the resources for making sense of the idea of being answerable to the world in experience. Especially when we expand Brandom's account of discursive practice to include its relation to what he has called practical intentionality, his work provides the resources for an answer to McDowell's concerns, but only if it is understood not as an attempt to simply deny McDowell's claims about experience, but as an attempt to explain what we must be capable of doing in order for experience, in McDowell's sense, to be possible. (shrink)

In this paper we consider whether a pragmatics of semantic content can be a useful approach to legal interpretation. More broadly speaking, since a pragmatic conception of meaning is a component of inferential semantics, we consider whether an inferentialist approach to legal interpretation can be useful in dealing with some problems of this important aspect of law. In other words, we ask whether Legal Inferentialism is a suitable conception for legal interpretation. In Section 1 we briefly consider the semantics/pragmatics debate (...) in contemporary philosophy of language and in relation to legal interpretation. In Section 2 we discuss the relations between a pragmatics of semantic content and an inferentialist conception of content. In Section 3 we consider how Inferentialism can be applied to legal interpretation. Finally, in Section 4 we consider some possible advantages and drawbacks of Inferentialism applied to legal interpretation and adjudication. (shrink)

In this paper we consider whether a pragmatics of semantic content can be a useful approach to legal interpretation. More broadly speaking, since a pragmatic conception of meaning is a component of inferential semantics, we consider whether an inferentialist approach to legal interpretation can be useful in dealing with some problems of this important aspect of law. In other words, we ask whether Legal Inferentialism is a suitable conception for legal interpretation. In Section 1 we briefly consider the semantics/pragmatics debate (...) in contemporary philosophy of language and in relation to legal interpretation. In Section 2 we discuss the relations between a pragmatics of semantic content and an inferentialist conception of content. In Section 3 we consider how Inferentialism can be applied to legal interpretation. Finally, in Section 4 we consider some possible advantages and drawbacks of Inferentialism applied to legal interpretation and adjudication. (shrink)

Pragmatism in semantics is hampered by its proponents' tendency to tie understanding too closely to our mastery of epistemic practice. Both Brandom's inferentialist semantics and the anti-realist semantics championed by Dummett and Tennant amply illustrate this tendency. As a consequence, neither theory can successfully handle cases of the innocuously unknowable in which two sentences, though mutually consistent, nonetheless cannot be known to be true together. On Brandom's account, such sentences are treated as being mutually inconsistent after all. According to both (...) Dummett's and Tennant's version of anti-realist semantics, we cannot know that there are any true sentences of this kind. Neither result is the least acceptable, whence either theory fails. The lesson to be learnt from this failure is that understanding should not be identified with the ability to reach warranted verdicts, but with the ability to think, where thinking is constitutively involved in, but nonetheless distinct from judging. (shrink)