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REVIEW OF Making it Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment BY ROBERT BRANDOM .
Abstract
REVIEW
... We approach our research question via the theories of instrumental orchestration (Trouche, 2004), instrumental genesis (Lonchamp, 2012;Guin & Trouche, 2002) and inferentialism (Brandom, 1994). Instrumental orchestration provides us with an analytical lens on arranging and utilizing technology in the orchestration of mathtalk, in terms of a collective instrumental genesis (Drijvers et al., 2010). ...
... We use the construct of instrumental orchestration (Trouche, 2004) to conceptualize a teacher's intentional and systematic organization and use of technology to guide math-talk in terms of a collective instrumental genesis (Drijvers et al, 2010). We then conceptualize collective instrumental genesis from the semantic theory of inferentialism and, in particular, from the Game of Giving and Asking for Reasons (GoGAR) (Brandom, 1994). ...
... Instead, following Drijvers and colleagues' notion of a collective instrumental genesis, we look at how artefacts take a position and are used as instruments in a social and pragmatic practice of reasoning and meaning-making in mathematics. In particular, we aim at giving account of how teachers orchestrate situations by means of technology, in order to guide a collective instrumental genesis in the frame of the game of giving and asking for reasons (Brandom, 1994). ...
The purpose of this study is to further our understanding of orchestrating math-talk with digital technology. The technology used is common in Swedish mathematics classrooms and involves personal computers, a projector directed towards a whiteboard at the front of the class and software programs for facilitating communication and collective exploration. We use the construct of instrumental orchestration to conceptualize a teacher’s intentional and systematic organization and use of digital technology to guide math-talk in terms of a collective instrumental genesis. We consider math-talk as a matter of inferential reasoning, taking place in the Game of Giving and Asking for Reasons (GoGAR).The combination of instrumental orchestration and inferential reasoning laid the foundation of a design experiment that addressed the research question: How can collective inferential reasoning be orchestrated in a technology-enhanced learning environment? The design experiment was conducted in lower-secondary school (students 14–16 years old) and consisted of three lessons on pattern generalization. Each lesson was tested and refined twice by the research team. The design experiment resulted in the emergence of the FlexTech orchestration, which provided teachers and students with opportunities to utilize the flexibility to construct, switch and mark in the orchestration of an instrumental math-GoGAR.
... Paradigmatic beliefs are the reasons why researchers choose or use certain qualitative methods (paradigms are answers to why-questions). Another way of conceptualizing this relation seems instead to be virtually absent in QRME but is often discussed in philosophy (Audi, 2015;Brandom, 1998). According to this alternative conceptualization, paradigms explicate, or define, or rationalize qualitative methods. ...
... According to this alternative conceptualization, paradigms explicate, or define, or rationalize qualitative methods. To explicate is to make something explicit (Brandom, 1998), that is, to provide a conceptualization or definition that can put into words what is implicit, and, at the same time, providing a story of methods that makes their choice or use rationally justified (answering to what-is-questions). ...
... a. Paradigms explicate method choices b. Paradigms explain method choices These terms are conceptualized as contrasting in the philosophical literature (Audi, 2015;Brandom, 1998). In my discussion, I will adhere to Audi and Brandom's concept of explication, but the tension I discuss is different. ...
In this paper, I discuss and critically assess how the relationship between philosophy of science and qualitative methods is presented and discussed in research on qualitative research methods education (QRME) and qualitative methods textbooks. I argue that both typically convey the idea that philosophy of science guides or influences the use and choice of qualitative methods but are often unclear about how this influence works. I propose two conceptualizations of the relationship between philosophy of science and qualitative methods: philosophical assumptions can either explicate or explain qualitative methods. I argue that both approaches have pedagogical rewards, but that whereas the explanation approach is explicitly or implicitly used in many examples of research on QRME and textbooks, the explication approach has not had wide application. I conclude by arguing that the lack of clarity and the absence of discussion about explication are potential problems for qualitative research methods education.
... By denoting song transmission as a cultural practice -be it informal or formal -I rely on the practice idiom that is widely used in social sciences and philosophy (e.g., Brandom, 1994;Turner, 1994;Schatzki, 1996;Rouse, 2007). For Turner, practice is variously interchangeable with tradition, tacit knowledge, paradigm, presupposition, and much more, whereas Rouse emphasizes norms as a constituent of practices: ...
... I will take up this conception in section "The Musico-Linguistic Rules: The Grammar of Songs for Children", when I introduce a grammar of songs for children. There is a consensus to conceive of norms as generic and broad notions and rules as types of norms that are made explicit (see e.g., Brandom, 1994). ...
From a biological point of view, the singing of songs is based on the human vocal learning capacity. It is universally widespread in all cultures. The transmission of songs is an elementary cultural practice, by which members of the older generations introduce both musico-linguistic rules and affect-regulative means to the younger ones. Traditionally, informal singing in familiar settings primarily subserves affect-regulation goals, whereas formal song transmission is embedded in various normative claims and interests, such as preserving cultural heritage and representing collective and national identity. Songs are vocal acts and abstract models that are densely structured and conform to cultural rules. Songs mirror each generations’ wishes, desires, values, hopes, humor, and stories and rest on unfathomable traditions of our cultural and human history. Framed in the emerging scientific field of didactics, I argue that research on formal song transmission needs to make explicit the norms and rules that govern the relationships between song, teacher, and pupils. I investigate these three didactic components, first, by conceptualizing song as rule-governed in terms of a grammar, with songs for children representing the most elementary musico-linguistic genre. The Children’s Song Grammar presented here is based on syllables as elements and on syntactic rules concerning timing, tonality, and poetic language. It makes it possible to examine and evaluate songs in terms of correctness and well-formedness. Second, the pupils’ learning of a target song is exemplified by an acoustical micro-genetic study that shows how vocalization is gradually adapted to the song model. Third, I address the teachers’ role in song transmission with normative accounts and provide exemplary insights into how we study song teaching empirically. With each new song, a teacher teaches the musico-linguistic rules that constitute the respective genre and conveys related cultural feelings. Formal teaching includes self-evaluation and judgments with respect to educational duties and aesthetic norms. This study of the three-fold didactic process shows song transmission as experiencing shared rule-following that induces feelings of well-formedness. I argue that making the inherent normativity of this process more explicit – here systematically at a descriptive and conceptual level – enhances the scientificity of this research domain.
... Desde una perspectiva wittgensteniana lo que (TN) destaca es que ni el significado existe con independencia de la normatividad, ni la normatividad con independencia del significado (SC §62), sino que ambos son dos caras de la misma moneda y son, por tanto, inseparables. Brandom (1994), defiende (TN) en este tenor retomando la concepción que Wittgenstein mantuvo sobre las reglas y caracterizándola como una concepción pragmatista (p. 21) para defender: a) que usar un lenguaje tiene que ver más con la adquisición de habilidades sociales o con saber cómo usar correctamente dicho lenguaje que con el conocimiento previo de reglas semánticas (saber proposicional); b) que las reglas vigentes al momento de usar el lenguaje se encuentran implícitas en nuestras prácticas lingüísticas que no son sino prácticas sociales instituidas a partir nuestro modo de usar palabras y conceptos y de las actitudes que adoptamos respecto a la corrección o incorrección de eso que hacemos. ...
... Tales objeciones hacen inviable al intelectualismo, luego, si hay razones para abandonar el intelectualismo, las mismas razones valen para abandonar MD normativity, lo cual implica, a su vez, rechazar cualquier concepción de las reglas como algo que precede al significado. En la cuarta sección, presentaré más a detallé CPSR indicando cómo es que, de acuerdo con Brandom (1994), las reglas explícitas (en forma de prescripciones) dependen de una forma más fundamental de reglas implícitas en las prácticas sociales o en lo que hacemos y cómo esto conlleva una respuesta a la pregunta metasemántica. ...
... As a phrase, and as a set of interconnected arguments, the idea of the "myth of the given" originates in Wilfrid Sellars's "general critique of the entire framework of givenness" in his wide-ranging 1956 article, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (EPM I §1). 1 Sellars's critique of philosophical conceptions of the given as a "myth" that conceals a variety of philosophical confusions 2 was then subsequently defended in highly influential books by Rorty (1979), Brandom (1994), andMcDowell (1996). The idea of the given and its alleged problematic status continues to be at the center of heated controversies about foundationalism in epistemology, about "conceptualism" and nonconceptual content in the philosophy of perception, and about the nature of the experiential given in phenomenology and in the cognitive sciences. ...
... Rorty, for example, highlighted Sellars's emphasis on the social aspects of normative reason-giving in relation to one's peers, vividly distinguishing questions of causation from questions of justification. Rosenberg (2007), Brandom (1994), and McDowell (1996, 2009) developed the Kantian strands in Sellars's thought and argued that not only epistemic justification but more fundamentally the very possibility of having any conceptually contentful empirical thought or intentionality about a world of at all requires a background of conceptual capacities, normally expressible in a natural language, that serve as implicit criteria of correctness and incorrectness of application. 7 On these neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian views there is no conceptual content or intentionality properly speaking in the first place without a background "space" of rational normativity of this kind. ...
The idea of ‘the given’ and its alleged problematic status as most famously articulated by Sellars (1956, 1981) continues to be at the center of heated controversies about foundationalism in epistemology, about ‘conceptualism’ and nonconceptual content in the philosophy of perception, and about the nature of the experiential given in phenomenology and in the cognitive sciences. I argue that the question of just what the myth of the given is supposed to be in the first place is more complex than has typically been supposed in these debates, and that clarification of this prior question has surprising consequences. Foundationalism was only one of Sellars’s targets, and this not only in the familiar sense that the more fundamental issues at stake concern the very ‘objective purport’ or intentionality of our empirical thinking in general. When pushed further still, Sellars’s critique in fact hinged on his diagnoses of implicit framework-relative or ‘categorial’ metaphysical presuppositions he exposes in givenist views. Furthermore, the key to his critique accordingly turns out to rest on implicit assumptions concerning the in principle revisability or replaceability of any such presuppositions, whether ‘innate’ or acquired, and including Sellars’s own. Another key result is that widespread assumptions that Sellars’s famous critique is simply inapplicable or irrelevant to either ‘thin’ nonconceptualist views of the given (such as C. I. Lewis’s), since they are ‘non-epistemic’; or alternatively, irrelevant to ‘thick’ conceptualist and phenomenological analyses (since they, too, reject ‘sense-data’ or the ‘bare given’)–both turn out to be mistaken.
... Thus, mastering the meaning of a word-understanding it-is mastering a bundle of rules. So, by replacing the background of representational theories of meaning with the background of a use 17 See Brandom (1994); see also Peregrin (2014). 18 See, e.g., Kusch (2006). ...
... 29). A similar approach is taken byDavidson (1984) and his followers(Lepore & Ludwig, 2007) and by various exponents of the use theories of meaning to be discussed later(Brandom, 1994;Dummett, 1993;Horwich, 1998) etc. Also partisans of denotational semantics, such as the exponents of post-Carnapian formal semantics(Cresswell, 1973;Montague 1974;Cann 1993; and also some followers ofDavidson, like Larson & Segal, 1995) build theories which are not based on intentionality.Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. ...
The heyday of discussions initiated by Searle's claim that computers have syntax, but no semantics has now past, yet philosophers and scientists still tend to frame their views on artificial intelligence in terms of syntax and semantics. In this paper I do not intend to take part in these discussions; my aim is more fundamental, viz. to ask what claims about syntax and semantics in this context can mean in the first place. And I argue that their sense is so unclear that that their ability to act as markers within any disputes on artificial intelligence is severely compromised; and hence that their employment brings us nothing more than an illusion of explanation.
... But this won't be compatible with denying Alternative, nor with Referential Normativity, since by hypothesis the platitudes that ourselves and the Alternative community endorse will be different. 27 Brandom (1994). 28 For a similar kind of argument, see Werner (2020, pp.145-146). ...
Imagine coming across an alternative community such that, while they have normative terms like 'ought' with the same action-guiding roles and relationships to each other, their normative terms come to pick out different properties. When we come across such a community, or even just imagine it, those of us who strive to be moral and rational want to ask something like the following: Further Question: Which set of concepts ought we use—theirs or ours? The problem, first raised by Eklund (Choosing normative concepts. Oxford University Press, 2017), is that on almost any metasemantic theory, Further Question cannot be stated in a way that captures the spirit of what we want to ask. This is because any way of asking the question makes use of our own normative concepts, and thus their reference is already fixed on the properties that our current normative concepts refer to. Any purported solution to this problem must meet two conditions. First, it must capture the spirit of what Further Question is intuitively attempting to ask. Second, it must reframe the inquiry in a way that makes the answer neither trivial nor ineffable. In this paper, I propose a solution to this problem by appeal to edenic representation, inspired by, but not identical to, Chalmers’ (The character of consciousness. Oxford University Press, 2010) notion of edenic content. The rough idea here is that representation is edenic to the extent that the representational vehicle mirrors, in quality and structure, the represented property. I argue that a reframing of Further Question in terms of edenic representation can capture the spirit of the question, without collapsing it into a question with a trivial or ineffable answer. Thus, the realist about normative properties can face the problem of the alternative normative community head on, without collapsing into incoherence or triviality. If correct, this solution is of further interest to any metanormative realist concerned with metasemantic questions, because it can tell us more about how the proper representation of the robustly normative would look.
... Moral norms concern what is right and wrong. They are not a part of the physical world, so how do they arise (Brandom, 1994)? We don't observe an understanding of commitment, obligation, and right and wrong in other species. ...
Like other aspects of child development, views of the nature and development of morality depend on philosophical assumptions or worldviews presupposed by researchers. We analyze assumptions regarding knowledge linked to two contrasting worldviews: Cartesian-split-mechanistic and process-relational. We examine the implications of these worldviews for approaches to moral development, including relations between morality and social outcomes, and the concepts of information, meaning, interaction and computation. It is crucial to understand how researchers view these interrelated concepts in order to understand approaches to moral development. Within the Cartesian-split-mechanistic worldview, knowledge is viewed as representation and meaning is mechanistic and fixed. Both nativism and empiricism are based in this worldview, differing in whether the source of representations is assumed to be primarily internal or external. Morality is assumed to pre-exist, either in the genome or the culture. We discuss problems with these conceptions and endorse the process-relational paradigm, according to which knowledge is constructed through interaction, and morality begins in activity as a process of coordinating perspectives, rather than the application of fixed rules. The contrast is between beginning with the mind or beginning with social activity in explaining the mind.
... Ahora bien, dado que esta estructura está constituída por las relaciones lógicas que el concepto a analizar tiene con otros conceptos, me atrevo a inscribir la teoría propuesta en la categoría de las teorías inferencialistas o teorías del papel conceptual o inferencial de los conceptos. Se trata de teorías de muy diversa índole que han sido sostenidas con profundas diferencias por, entre muchos otros, Harman 1982, Block 1986, Brandom 1994y Peacocke 1992, y que se remontan en última instancia al segundo Wittgenstein. En términos canónicos estas teorías entienden que cada concepto está constituido por el conjunto de inferencias a las que da lugar, que autoriza o prohíbe. ...
En este trabajo presento dos tipos de conceptos, los conceptos psicológicos y los conceptos de color y sugiero una ampliación de la tesis externista que defiende Axel Barceló en su libro Sobre el análisis.
... Thus, I will take expressivism to give the meanings of uses of language in terms of what they serve to do, which, when we understand what it is to express a mental state in the way suggested above, is another way of putting the suggestion of giving the meanings of uses of language in terms of the mental states they express. This metasemantics can be fairly deemed "inferentialist" (see Brandom 1994Brandom , 2000. ...
... " "Somewhat similar to the information behaviour situation, in the case of information literacy most of the process models, lists of information-related competences and skills and lists of threshold concepts do not address directly and explicitly the development of understanding, in the sense of gaining coherent explanatory knowledge." 19 Dabei gehen Bawden und Robinson davon aus, dass Wissen und Verstehen die wichtigeren Kategorien sind: ...
... 33. Hart (1961) and Raz (1982). Something like this view as applied to language is espoused by many, including Brandom (1994), who calls it "phenomenalism," and Lance & O'Leary-Hawthorne (1997), p. 62. ...
Many of the most important social institutions—e.g., law and language—are thought to be normative in some sense. And philosophers have been puzzled by how this normativity can be explained in terms of the social, descriptive states of affairs that presumably constitute them. This paper attempts to solve this sort of puzzle by considering a simpler and less contentious normative social practice: table manners. Once we are clear on the exact sense in which a practice is normative, we see that some practices can be normative in an interesting and non-trivial sense, but also explicable with merely descriptive resources. In addition to arguing that it is possible to explain normative practices with descriptive resources, this paper presents and defends just such an explanation—an account of the nature of table manners that appeals only to descriptive states of affairs.
... This has become an area of considerable significance in recent years. The complexity of the issue is great indeed with issues ranging from enquiries into moral norms, at a macro level (Korsgaard, 1996), to considerations of the distinctive nature of human awareness and responsiveness to reasons, at a micro level (Brandom, 1994). Here our concern with normativity focuses on the relation of norms to knowledge or in more Deweyian terms of normativity to knowing. ...
... At issue here are relations of material (in)compatibility among commitments, meaning that the validity of inferences depends on what the terms mean-and what they mean depends on the practices in which they have their point and purpose (Brandom 1994;Laden 2012;Kukla and Lance 2009). Drawing these inferences (from your commitments and theirs) is not just a mental exercise of tracing pre-established connections that could just as well be performed in isolation and abstraction from a concrete situation. ...
This essay contributes to developing a new approach to political legitimacy by asking what is involved in judging the legitimacy of a regime from a practical point of view. It is focused on one aspect of this question: the role of identity in such judgment. I examine three ways of understanding the significance of identity for political legitimacy: the foundational, associative, and agonistic picture. Neither view, I claim, persuasively captures the dilemmas of judgment in the face of disagreement and uncertainty about who “I” am and who “we” are. I then propose a composite, pragmatic picture. This view casts the question of political legitimacy as an existential predicament: it is fundamentally a question about who you are—both as a person and as a member of collectives. The pragmatic picture integrates rational, prudential, and ethical qualities of good judgment that were heretofore associated with mutually exclusive ways of theorizing legitimacy. It also implies that the question of legitimacy cannot be resolved philosophically.
... 40 Granting the general feasibility of the distinction between the cognitive up-above and down-below as drawn here, we have natural-seeming habitats for explicit articulable belief and also for belief that's tacit and implicit. 41 39 Works of note incorporating different epistemological assumptions from mine include [1,8,9,13,31,49]. Notwithstanding the differences, these works are rich sources of empirically relevant data and some interesting working hypotheses, not all of which conflict with my own. ...
There are several features of law which rightly draw the interest of philosophers, especially those whose expertise lies in ethics and social and political philosophy. But the law also has features which haven’t stirred much in the way of philosophical investigation. I must say that I find this surprising. For the fact is that a well-run criminal trial is a master-class in logic and epistemology. Below I examine the logical and epistemological properties of greatest operational involvement in a criminal proceedings, concepts such as evidence, proof, argument, inference, relevance, probability, and more. My principal objective is to expose the deep cleavage between establishment norms in epistemology and logic and standard practice in criminal proceedings. This gives us two options to reflect upon. In one, the establishment norms for the correct management of the concepts in question are basically sound. In that case, as I will show, common law criminal practice would be basically unsound; its convictions would be basically false and unjust. Seen from the other perspective, the criminal justice system would be basically sound, and its criminal convictions basically true and just. It turns out to matter that option one meets with widely spread common disbelief and is generally taken as contrary to common knowledge. What is needed here is an epistemology which gives these sentiments some air to breathe. I will argue that on balance it is the logico-epistemic establishment which requires some serious rethinking.
... An assertion conditions what the speaker can say as a consequence of performing this type of speech act. As Brandom (1994) argues, an assertion commits the speaker to defend herself if challenged by an addressee. And she defends her claim by giving reasons. ...
It is a fact that novel metaphorical utterances appear in natural language argumentation. It seems, moreover, that these put forward metaphorical propositions that can have different roles (data, warrants or claims) in argument structure. There can even be good argumentation which is indispensably metaphorical. However, not all metaphor theories provide an explanation of metaphorical meaning compatible with these claims. In this article, we explain the three main views on metaphorical meaning and show, analysing some examples, their consequences for metaphorical argumentation. Our analysis shows that only the cognitive view can explain that there are arguments which can only be generated using novel metaphors.
... For example, Williamson (2000, p. 243) argues that assertion is governed by the rule that one should only assert what one knows 5 and, according to Lackey (2007), the rule is that one should only assert what is reasonable to believe. 6 In Brandom's (1994) theory, whoever makes an assertion commits themselves to the truth of that assertion, which aligns closely with Searle's idea of commitment. Assertions, then, are a type of speech act that is inherently connected to truth, even if they can be used for a variety of purposes. ...
Harry Frankfurt characterised bullshit as assertions that are made without a concern for truth. Assertions, however, are not the only type of speech act that can be bullshit. Here, I propose the concept of argumentative bullshit and show how a speech acts account of bullshit assertions can be generalised to bullshit arguments. Argumentative bullshit, on this account, would be the production of an argument without a concern for the supporting relation between reasons and claim.
... Concerning philosophical notions of representation, I am as comfortable thinking in terms of a Millikan-style teleosemantics or a Brandomian inferentialism: according to teleosemantics, our thought about the world represents as it does in virtue of the proper functions those thoughts have with respect to their membership in reproductive lineages that have been passed on in human life; according to inferentialism, the representational dimensions of language are to be explained in terms of the roles that representations have in mediating inferences involving perception, action, and what we otherwise have reason to think about things (Millikan 1984 andBrandom 1994 are the two paradigmatic expositions of these positions). I employ some of Brandom's development of Sellars' ideas over the course of the book, but different explanatory frameworks offer useful resources for illuminating human cognition from different standpoints, and at least some of those resources can be put to work in explanations that do not presuppose the entirety of the respective frameworks (or so I hope to illustrate; see Millikan 2005 for a comparison of the views of Millikan and Brandom with respect to Sellars). ...
... For the problem of the difference between human and animal cognition, see Foster (2010). 4 See most notably McDowell (1994, 2003, 2009), Brandom (1994, 2009; for an overview cf. Redding (2007) and . ...
This article investigates Hegel's later theory of perception and cognition, identifying and analysing its general assumptions about the relation among the mind's activities. These often unremarked upon assumptions, I claim, continue to underwrite recent interpretive controversies. I demonstrate how a correct understanding of such assumptions points us toward an alternative interpretation of Hegel's model of the mind. I argue that this new model changes how we understand (a) Hegel's later notion of ‘non-conceptual content’ and (b) his distinction between human and animal minds—two areas that constitute the fault line dividing interpretations of late Hegel. To isolate the relevant assumptions, I use Matthew Boyle's influential conceptual distinction between ‘additive’ and ‘transformative’ models of rationality. I demonstrate that Hegel himself addresses the basic issues characterizing this distinction and clarify how approaching his work in these terms presents considerable interpretative and conceptual advantages, including allowing us to defend the position that Hegel adopts a ‘transformative’ framework of mind. To support this argument, this paper closely analyses Hegel's treatment of sensation ( Empfindung ), which has not yet been systematically addressed by scholars. I show how sensation can be best understood as part of Hegel's later ‘transformative’ framework for cognition. I also show how this framework can be extended to other parts of Hegel's theory.
... Robert Brandom(Brandom, 1994) has studied how the game of giving and asking for reasons is the basis not only of human rationality but also of the meaning of expressions and the capacity to make inferences. It is hard to simulate this game by observing it from afar. ...
Un imprescindible compendio filosófico y técnico sobre la Ciberpolítica y su estado de la cuestión. Editado en 2021 por el Instituto de Estudios Filosóficos de la Universidad de Coimbra.
La formidable coordinación de 14 capítulos de académicos de 13 universidades en 7 países, ha estado a cargo del Profesor Constantino Pereira Martins, quien nos introduce al tema:
"La actual pandemia de Coronavirus parece confirmar que hemos entrado en una segunda etapa de la Ciberpolítica. La urgente necesidad de un desarrollo más profundo hacia los problemas de salud que fusionan la robótica y la inteligencia artificial, el surgimiento de una sociedad sin rostro como una pesadilla de Levinas, es como si casi sintiéramos que no podemos mantener el status quo por sí solo, es decir, la humanidad por sí misma. La automatización del tejido social y laboral probablemente será nuestro próximo paso en la cadena de esta nueva era. El impacto de un cambio de paradigma es siempre un terreno fértil para la investigación académica: teorías de conspiración, ciencia ficción política, gobierno mundial, la exploración del espacio y colonias humanas, y toda la incógnita y la incertidumbre en la que estamos entrando. No hay riesgos sin coraje, miedo y esperanza. Esperemos estar a la altura de los desafíos a los que nos enfrentamos, con la certeza de que la vida se puede entender al revés, pero solo se puede vivir hacia adelante..."
... Robert Brandom(Brandom, 1994) has studied how the game of giving and asking for reasons is the basis not only of human rationality but also of the meaning of expressions and the capacity to make inferences. It is hard to simulate this game by observing it from afar. ...
... See, Jackson and Jacobs (1980); Willard (1989); Gilbert (1996). 16 Notice that this dynamic of giving and asking for clear and valid reasons between Prover and Skeptic is an argumentative norm similar to that of Brandom (1994). 17 Novaes (2016, p. 2619) also makes this point. ...
Minimal adversariality consists in the opposition of contradictory conclusions in argumentation, and its usual metaphorical expression as a game between combating arguers has seen it be criticized from a number of perspectives: the language used, whether cooperation best attains the argumentative telos of epistemic betterment, and the ideal nature of the metaphor itself. This paper explores primarily the idealization of deductive argumentation, which is problematic due to its attenuated applicability to a dialectic involving premises and justificatory biases that are left hidden and unelucidated. To clarify the issue and offer up a solution, we consider minimal adversariality as an involuntary state of affairs before relating this interpretation to a link between rational persuasion and the attainment of epistemic betterment. Through this we see how the idealizing tendencies of minimal adversariality can be reduced even in argumentation involving premises whose justifications for any arguer are inaccessible to any other arguer.
... The young students were challenged to make value-laden critical interconnections between mathematics and society, because in such a language diverse classroom "embracing students' personal ways of knowing is intertwined with the socially and culturally normative inferences inherent in language(s)." Theoretically, the authors mainly frame their analysis with Wittgensteinian ideas, such as language games and, specifically, the language game of giving and asking for reasons (GoGAR) (Brandom, 1998(Brandom, , 2001. The authors argue that the conversations about the idea that "mathematics is bad for society" allowed the young students to see mathematics and society as interconnected and to grasp the political role of mathematics in society, and hence to become critically mathematical literate. ...
In this introductory chapter, we first set out our broad characterisation of critical math- ematics education, drawing on contemporary issues including, for example, global cli- mate change and rapid societal challenges. Critical mathematics education is driven by urgent, complex questions; is interdisciplinary; is politically active and engaged; is democratic; involves critique; and is reflexive and self-aware. This perspective leads us to argue for the necessity of critical mathematics education, for which we summa- rise three significant traditions derived from Freire, Foucault, and the Nordic School. Finally, we provide an overview and discussion of the contributions to this volume, and show how they apply critical mathematics education in unique ways that relate to the six previously described features of this approach. We conclude by reiterating the urgent necessity of applying critical mathematics education.
... Future work could also address the relation between neural networks for natural language inference and the philosophy of inferentialism (Brandom, 1994). ...
The chapter explores the meta-theoretical possibilities of a good theory of evidence in law in order to explain how it is possible to think of bridging the detached accounts of knowledge and of law in the field of legal evidence. Section 1 is a critical discussion of detachment between theories of legal evidence and those of law and looks into factors responsible for this detachment. Among those factors, the alleged dualism of ‘facts’ and ‘norms’ and ambiguities about judges’ epistemological theories are examined, concluding that there is no strictly nonnormative realm and that a normative metalanguage could be employed to specify both what happens and what is done. Section 2 focuses on the preconditions of a good-enough legal evidence theory which both accounts for acquiring knowledge and is compatible with one’s theory of law. Drawing on how foundationalism, externalism, internalism, coherentism and reliabilism bear on accounts of knowledge and law, a shift of focus with regard to epistemological theories is advanced: instead of (or alongside) thinking of epistemological accounts as accounts of knowledge, one can think of them as accounts of when it is proper to attribute knowledge. Likewise, if the gap between the detached theories is to be bridged, a perspective on law which is sensitive to the problems shared by the accounts of law and knowledge is sought and found in Robert Brandom’s inferential pragmatism. This theory is particularly useful to any account that intends to make sense of both our thoughts and actions (i.e. our cognitive and practical commitments). Section 2 closes with an exposition of the inferentialist account of law. Section 3 explains how the detached accounts of knowledge and law in the field of legal evidence can be brought together, following the common inferentialist lines connecting the pragmatist models of our cognitive activities of legal discursive practices. Finally, the legal syllogism is used as a test site for putting these ideas to work and is reinterpreted as a shortcut for the social route from legal reasoning to representing legal evidence. Following inferentialist lines, Sect. 3 shows how legal syllogism holds within nine implicit moves in the legal game of giving and asking for reasons. Each of these moves is made of commitments capable of serving both as premises and as conclusions of inferences relating it to other commitments and of related entitlements. Each of these moves is also inferentially connected with any other one and offers means for eliminating incompatibilities.
This essay defends the thesis that Dworkin’s and Brandom’s theories of law’s normativity are powerful not only with respect to common law but also with respect to civil law. Dworkin explained law as a specific genre of literature—the chain novel—where several authors collaborate in writing a novel and each author builds her chapter on the previous chapters in the chain by creatively interpreting them. Brandom built on Dworkin’s chain novel of law to illustrate his theory of normativity with respect to law. Law’s normativity, Brandom argues, arises through the discursive practice of law which is characterised by mutual recognition as a social and normative attitude. Dworkin and Brandom both developed their theories against a common law background and illustrated them with the practice of individual judges in the common law world. That seems to suggest that their theories of normativity are pointless and unproductive for civil law systems. Yet, this essay argues, Dworkin’s chain novel and Brandom’s normative fine structure of it are equally fruitful for our understanding of civil law. To support this thesis, rhetorical and stylistic characteristics of common law and civil law systems are examined with a focus on the role of legislation. Dworkin’s and Brandom’s theories are applied against the background of legal discourse in a broader sense—including not only judges but also other players of the law (like public officials, solicitors, barristers and the persons involved in legislation). The working of the law’s chain novel in practice will be illustrated with the law on the recognition of child marriages.
This paper investigates whether, and if so, in what way, argumentation can be profitably described in speech-act theoretical terms. I suggest that the two theories of argumentation that are supposed to provide the most elaborate analysis of it in speech-act theoretical terms (namely van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst’s Pragma-Dialectics and Lilian Bermejo-Luque’s linguistic normative model of argumentation) both suffer from the same two flaws: firstly, their “illocutionary act pluralism” assumption and secondly, a lack of interest in where arguing belongs in the classification of illocutionary acts. I argue that these flaws derive from the authors’ reliance on an intention-based speech-theoretical framework. Finally, I adopt a deontic framework for speech acts in order to propose an alternative way of accounting for argumentation which seems to overcome the two limitations outlined above. According to this framework, argumentation may be conceived as a speech act sequence, characterized by the conventional effects brought about by the communicative moves (as illocutionary acts) of which it is composed.
Some African thinkers have argued that the governance systems in traditional
precolonial African societies were democratic, and the kind of democracy they
practised was consensual democracy. It was democratic because it ensured the
maximal participation of all members in the governance of the society, and it was
consensual because it involved the rational deliberation of issues where decisions
were primarily reached by consensus. The aim of this article is to examine, on the one
side, the nature of the demos and kratos in traditional African systems of governance
that warrants characterising them as democratic, and, on the other side, the decisionmaking
process that marks it as a distinctive form of democracy – consensual
democracy. Reflecting on Akan proverbs and archival records of deliberations, I
argue that the question of democracy in relation to the traditional African systems
of governance should be pursued not from how they cherish consensual decisionmaking,
but by how they uniquely conceptualise the demos and kratos in the political
experiences of African societies. This unique conception of people-power and the
institution of decisional dissensus is what distinguishes traditional African consensual
democracy from both populism and deliberative democracy.
The philosophy of language is central to the concerns of those working across semantics, pragmatics and cognition, as well as the philosophy of mind and ideas. Bringing together an international team of leading scholars, this handbook provides a comprehensive guide to contemporary investigations into the relationship between language, philosophy, and linguistics. Chapters are grouped into thematic areas and cover a wide range of topics, from key philosophical notions, such as meaning, truth, reference, names and propositions, to characteristics of the most recent research in the field, including logicality of language, vagueness in natural language, value judgments, slurs, deception, proximization in discourse, argumentation theory and linguistic relativity. It also includes chapters that explore selected linguistic theories and their philosophical implications, providing a much-needed interdisciplinary perspective. Showcasing the cutting-edge in research in the field, this book is essential reading for philosophers interested in language and linguistics, and linguists interested in philosophical analyses.
Solange wir nicht die ganze Geschichte [des] gebrochenen Denkens erzählt haben, bleibt nichts als Unsinn" (Pinkard 2018, S. 277) Hegels Erfahrungskonzept und seine Vorstellungen zur Bildung des Geistes wie auch seine Systemarchi-tektur und Logik sind bis heute Gegenstand vielgestaltiger Auseinandersetzungen und haben u.a. den mo-dernen systematischen Entwürfen der Pädagogik, philosophischen Systemen und Gesellschaftstheorien in Zustimmung, Weiterentwicklung und Ablehnung mit den Weg bereitet (vgl. Schnädelbach 2016, S. 197). Es ist die Radikalität Hegels, die systematisch beim Denken als Vollzug ansetzt und Auffassungen von Identität und Differenz als je offenes Problemverhältnis entwickelt, das ‚uns' betrifft: Unser Selbst-und Weltverhältnis erscheint auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen mit Zäsuren, Gegenläufigkeiten und Widersprüchen konfrontiert, die, wie Terry Pinkard es formuliert, beim "Bruch, den wir im Selbstbewusstsein von Anbe-ginn an finden," (Pinkard 2018, S. 277) einsetzt und in komplexen Reflexionsbewegungen etwa zu Fragen nach dessen Genese und Ausgestaltungsmöglichkeiten, nach Autonomie, Macht-und Herrschaftsverhält-nissen führt. Die Produktivität von Hegels facettenreichen Ausführungen zur Freiheit innerhalb von Rezeptionsweisen, die sein Denken auf psychologische Aspekte, auf Vorstellungen zu Recht und Geschichte, auf Moral, Öko-nomie und Freundschaft, auf Sittlichkeit, Ästhetik und Religion beziehen, wird an immer wieder aufflam-menden Rezeptionskonjunkturen, an einem umfangreichen Katalog an Neuveröffentlichungen in den letz-ten Jahren (speziell im Jubiläums-Jahr 2020) und an einer regen Hegelforschung sichtbar. So ist es etwa sein Sittlichkeitsbegriff, der die Polarisierung zwischen Rechts-und Linkshegelianismus im Kontext geschichtlicher Auseinandersetzungen hervorgebracht hat (vgl. Fulda 2003). Die Frontlinien zwi-schen den Schulen werden nicht zuletzt durch Karl Marx Kritik an Hegels Staat und der materialistischen Reformulierung von Hegels Dialektik verschärft. Hiernach öffnet sich ein Graben zwischen nationallibera-len Positionen und revolutionären Ansätzen in der Tradition von Marx, die auch in der französischen Re-zeption aufgrund der einflussreichen Hegel-Vorlesung von Alexandre Kojève an Relevanz gewonnen ha-ben. Neben weiteren Rezeptionslinien wie dem Neuhegelianimus (Dilthey 1974 [1905]; Windelband 2014 [1910] u.a.), dem Neomarxismus (Lukács 1954 [1948] und der frühen Frankfurter Schule) folgen Zeiten der Vergessenheit, die durch Kritiken, wie der von Karl Popper, ausgeweitet wurden. Mit dem Neohegeli-anismus, der sich seit dem Ende des 20. Jahrhundert formiert (McDowell 1994; Brandom 1998 u.a.), wer-den die Bemühungen zur Aktualisierung von hegelschen Begriffen wie Freiheit, Selbstbestimmung oder Vernunft und deren Begründung im Anschluss an Positionen analytischer Philosophie wieder intensiver. In diesem Kontext fächert sich eine breite Diskussion mit mannigfaltigen Facetten um die Begriffe der sozialen Freiheit und der Befreiung auf, in denen über die Möglichkeit der Verwirklichung sozialer Freiheit und der "Unruhe des Negativen" (Nancy 2011) im Sozialen verhandelt wird. Ein weiteres Diskussionsfeld bilden Auseinandersetzungen um den Subjektbegriff oder um Subjektivität, in denen die Frage nach auto-nomem Handeln und Entscheiden, nach normativer Verpflichtung und sozialer Teilhabe, irreduzibel auf praktische Vollzüge verweist. In diesen wäre die Referenz auf eine Subjektfigur konstitutiv unvollständig und prozessual im Zusammenhang mit den irreduzibel historischen Dimensionen von Macht und Herr-schaft, Kollektivität oder Formen des Gemeinsinns zu denken (Diese neu aufgenommenen intellektuell wie gesellschaftlich relevanten Herausforderungen finden auch in der Bildungs-und Erziehungsphilosophie ihre Resonanz. Aktuelle Studien von Krassimir Stojanov zum neohegelianischen Bildungsbegriff oder von Andreas Gelhard zur skeptischen Bildung sind einschlägige Beispiele dafür. Interessant erscheint dabei nicht zuletzt, dass die bislang mindestens in den disziplinären Rezeptionslinien häufig zu beobachtende Trennung von dezidiert philosophischen und etwa bildungstheo-retischen/-philosophischen Positionen mit Blick auf eindeutige fachliche Zuordnungen brüchig wird
Education in the future means reconstruction of its system. It means conducting reforms of the system as a whole, as well as the development of the idea of permanent education, coordinated with social needs and changes. The reform is not seen as a limited work but with a mission to create institutional frame for its constant improvements and perfecting. In the European integration process, the educational system needs to be in coordination with criteria and recommendations of the European Union, paying attention onto indicators of this system, which is defined by the EU standards. The text hereinafter represents the integral part of widely set and realized project Redefining Structures and the High Education Development Strategy, which was worked out during the period from 2013 to 2015 and delivered to the Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, i.e. Department for Education, Science, Technological Development and Informatics Society. This project was realized by a team in cooperation with central and regional groups in Serbia and regional countries, with seventy contributors included. The model of our high education structure involves the changes regarding the following: its openness, coverage and availability, funding, improving its quality and efficiency, coordination and mobility of the programs, as well as regarding the inspection and supervision work inside of it.
Key words: high education, redefining structures, development strategy, the pace of realization of the reforms.
Quite a few scholars claim that many implicata are propositions about the speaker's epistemic or doxastic states. I argue, on the contrary, that implicata are generally non‐epistemic. Some alleged cases of epistemic implicature are not implicatures in the first place because they do not meet Grice's non‐triviality requirement, and epistemic implicata in general would infringe on the maxim of quantity. Epistemic implicatures ought to be construed as members of a larger family of implicature‐like phenomena.
In this paper, we use some elements of the philosophical theories of Wilfrid Sellars and Robert Brandom for examining the interactions between humans and machines. In particular, we adopt the concept of the space of reasons for analyzing the status of artificial intelligent agents (AIAs). One could argue that AIAs, like the widely used recommendation systems, have already entered the space of reasons, since they seem to make knowledge claims that we use as premises for further claims. This, in turn, can lead to a sense of alienation because AIAs do not quite play by the rules of the space of the reason. We, therefore, ask somewhat pointedly whether aliens have entered the space of reasons. A closer look reveals that it is a misconception to consider AIAs as being (already) in the space of reasons. In fact, they should be seen as very sophisticated tools. Since these tools affect our own acting in the space of reasons, special regulations are required for their proper use.
Cette thèse porte sur une séquence d'enseignement-apprentissage CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) qui est le produit d'un travail de coopération entre une enseignante-chercheuse de physique et une professeure d'anglais LANSAD (LANgues pour les Spécialistes d’Autres Disciplines). En utilisant l'approche clinique de la TACD (Théorie de l’Action Conjointe en Didactique), une séquence construite autour de l'incertitude sur les mesures est analysée en détail afin d'étudier l'activité didactique produite en classe par rapport au potentiel épistémique de la séquence. L'étude identifie les conditions spécifiques de la séquence CLIL, et propose le cadre de la TACD comme outil pour le développement de futurs projets CLIL issus de travaux coopératifs.
Consider the set of inferences that are acceptable to use in all our theory building endeavors. Call this set of inferences the universal theory building toolkit, or just ’the toolkit’ for short. It is clear that the toolkit is tightly connected to logic in a variety of ways. Beall, for example, has argued that logic just is the toolkit. This paper avoids making a stand on that issue and instead investigates reasons for thinking that, logic or not, the toolkit is substructural. It is presented as a dialogue for the simple reason that it summarizes a range of dialogues on this subject that the author has had with various folks over the past few years. The method I use to investigate the toolkit is inspired in both philosophical and technical details by Alasdair Urquhart’s work on semantics for relevance logics from the early 1970s.
Contemporary democratic theory is focused on empowering the voices of citizens in collective decision-making. The opposite of voice is silence. Increasingly, citizens are remaining silent rather than vocally participating in politics. Among democratic theorists, silent citizenship is equated to civic disengagement and disempowerment. I expand this view by theorizing the conditions under which silence is also a political expression. My analysis identifies four types of silence that can politically communicate. The resulting framework draws out the communicative dimension of silence, providing new tools to assess the unique interpretative challenges and dangers that silent citizenship presents for a democratic system.
How can we overcome the rapidly ageing postmodernist paradigm, which has become sterile orthodoxy in marketing? This book answers this crucial question using fresh philosophical tools developed by New Realism. It indicates the opportunities missed by marketing due to the pervasiveness of postmodernist attitudes and proposes a new and fruitful approach pivoting on the signifcance of reality to marketing analyses and models. Intensifying reference to reality will boost marketing research and practice, rather than impair them; conversely, neglecting such a reference will prevent marketing from realising its full potential, in several contexts. The aim of the book is foundational: its purpose is not a return to traditional realism but to break new ground and overcome theoretical obstacles in marketing and management by revising some of their assumptions and enriching their categories, thereby paving the way to fresh approaches and methodological innovations. In that sense, the book encourages theoretical innovation and experimentation and introduces new concepts, like invitation and attrition, which can fnd fruitful applications in marketing theory and practice. That is meant to be conductive to the solution of important difculties and to the uncovering of new phenomena. The last chapter of the book applies the new approach to eight case studies from business contexts. This book will be of interest to philosophers interested in New Realism and to researchers, scholars, and marketing professionals sensitive to the importance and fruitfulness of reference to reality, for their own purposes.
This chapter deals with the question of ‘how we ought to go on’ in a world that is characterised by cultural pluralism and uncertainty. To that end, it explores how practice approaches in International Political Theory have recently highlighted the centrality of ‘practical judgement’ in guiding actors’ moral reasoning. ‘Practical judgement’ thus conceived turns out as an important element in advancing a practice-minded ethics, which discards moral reasoning based on a priori fixed principles and instead foregrounds humans’ experiential dimension as a source for the normative evaluation of practices. Along these lines, practices are normative and the decision of how we ‘ought to’ go on in the world is as practical an affair as it is deeply infused with ethical questions of how to do ‘good’. In combining analytical and normative enquiries into global politics, such practice-minded ethics promises to reconcile the long-standing division between International Political Theory and International Relations.
If, as Hegel claims, all philosophy is idealism, then defining his philosophy in these terms makes his idealism a metaphilosophy. This most obvious fact about his definition is the most overlooked. It is the key to a definitive, comprehensive and clear-cut interpretation of Hegel’s idealism. If Hegel defines all philosophy as idealism and thus his own idealism as a metaphilosophy, then his own idealism must be both the same as the old philosophies in this respect and also different in the sense that it embodies self-conscious awareness. Hegel divides philosophy into pre-reflective, pre-speculative, unconscious idealism and his own reflective, speculative, thus self-conscious, absolute idealism. Missing this obvious fact is the Achilles’ heel of Stern’s non-mentalistic interpretation in the only other in-depth study of this topic, the object of this article’s critique. If Hegel’s idealism is a metaphilosophy, then it is a radical mentalistic ontology of mind and its thoughts.
Conceptual engineers have recently turned to the notion of conceptual functions to do a variety of explanatory work. Functions are supposed to explain what speakers are debating about in metalinguistic negotiations, to capture when two concepts are about the same thing, and to help guide our normative inquiries into which concepts we should use. In this paper, I argue that this recent “functional turn” should be deflated. Contra most interpreters, we should not try to use a substantive notion of conceptual functions to handle various problems for conceptual engineering. The primary accounts of function appealed to by conceptual engineers, namely etiological and system functions, are not suited to handle many of the problems functions are supposed to handle, and it’s dubious whether any other account of function would do better. Instead of trying to use substantive functions to solve theoretical problems, we should deflate those problems themselves by focusing only on what matters to us, as speakers or theorists, in a given inquiry.
It is largely assumed that conceptual engineering is essentially about revising, introducing, or eliminating representational devices, in particular the intension and extension of words and concepts. However, tying conceptual engineering too closely to representations is risky. Not everyone endorses the notion of representation as theoretically helpful or even real. Not everyone thinks that concepts or meanings should be understood in terms of the notion of representation. Does this mean that conceptual engineering is not interesting or relevant for these skeptics? In this paper, I motivate and propose a non-representationalist construal of conceptual engineering. I argue that conceptual engineers can be understood as primarily engineering linguistic entitlements and commitments rather than representational devices. Note that this account is non-representationalist, but explicitly not anti-representationalist. Representations may play a significant role when it comes to justifying and completing commitment engineering projects.
In Making it Explicit Robert Brandom claims that perspectivally hybrid de re attitude ascriptions explain what an agent actually did, from the point of view of the ascriber, whether or not that was what the agent intended to do. There is a well-known problem, however, first brought to attention by Quine, but curiously ignored by Brandom, that threatens to undermine the role of de re ascriptions in the explanation of action, a problem that stems directly from the fact that, unlike de dicto ascriptions, they permit the attribution of inconsistent attitudes to agents. I propose a solution to the problem which I believe is consistent with Brandom’s approach to the nature of intentionality and the explanation of action.
Huw Price holds that a recognizable version of expressivism about normative and modal language can be “globalized” so as to apply to all areas of discourse. He focuses on globalizing the anti-representationalism of expressivist theories. By contrast, this paper’s topic is the seldom-discussed way Price seeks to globalize the expressivist view that “non-descriptive” discourse exhibits subjectivity. I argue that Price’s own argument against the possibility of a purely objective domain conflicts with his anti-representationalism and is self-undermining. I then defend a different strategy for arguing that a kind of subjectivity can emerge even in domains traditional expressivists have regarded as purely objective. I do so by using an account of assertoric practice to offer a new solution to a puzzle concerning how to describe contingent histories in the use of natural kind terms.
Normativists argue that the mind is essentially normative and any adequate account of our mental attitudes must involve normative terms and judgments. In particular, one brand of Normativism defends the claim that mental attitudes are defined by constitutive norms. Against this, Anti‐normativists have offered non‐normative accounts of mental states.The goal of this paper is to bolster Anti‐normativism by undermining one key argument in favor of Normativism.
Traditional rationalist approaches to a priori epistemology have long been looked upon with suspicion for positing a faculty of rational intuition capable of knowing truths about the world apart from experience. Conceptualists have tried to fill this void with something more empirically tractable, arguing that we know a priori truths due to our understanding of concepts. All of this theorizing, however, has carried on while neglecting an entire cross section of such truths, the grounding claims that we know a priori. Taking a priori grounding into account poses a significant challenge to conceptualist accounts of a priori knowledge, as it is unclear how merely understanding conceptual connections can account for knowledge of grounding. The fact that we do know some grounding truths a priori, then, is a significant mark in traditional rationalism’s favor, and the next frontier for those who aim to eliminate the mystery surrounding a priori knowledge.
In this chapter, we report on a small-scale critical mathematics education project in a Swedish classroom with students of varied language backgrounds. The project departed from the student Arvid’s statement “Mathematics is bad for society”. Our research interest was twofold. We wanted to explore what knowledge is being (re)produced by students as they try to connect and reason with a statement like “Mathematics is bad for society”. We were also interested in how students in this classroom, in which they do not have shared mother tongues, can express and (dis)acknowledge knowledge when reasoning about mathematics in society. We found that when the students (and their teacher) grappled with unpacking critical aspects such as “mathematics in society”, their reciprocal assessment of claims was based on their individual ways of knowing and talking, and tended to shape both their actions and the outcome of their efforts. We show that the discussion around critical aspects of mathematics in society that came to the fore was intertwined with both students’ and the teacher’s (lack of) meta-understanding of language diversity.
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