erkenntnis volume 51 issue 2-3 1999 [doi 10.1023%2fa%3a1005531017804] -- robert b. brandom, making...

8/16/2019 Erkenntnis Volume 51 Issue 2-3 1999 [Doi 10.1023%2Fa%3A1005531017804] -- Robert B. Brandom, Making It Exp…

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BOOK REVIEW

Robert B. Brandom, Making It Explicit. Reasoning, Representing, and Dis-cursive Commitment , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994,741 pp., US$ 49.95

1. INTRODUCTION

Robert Brandom’s Making It Explicit is an unusual book on the Anglo-American scene: its length of 740 pages reminds one more of the con-tinental tradition of long scholarly works than of the analytic traditionof concise papers. Undoubtedly, some portions of the work could beshortened. But making it explicit requires a book of considerable length.

What Brandom achieves is a convincing elaboration of the view of inten-tionality as a linguistic, normative and social-pragmatic affair. Since thisview and its cognates such as semantic holism and social holism have beenset out in particular by Wilfrid Sellars in his famous essay “Empiricism and

the Philosophy of Mind” in 1956 (most recent edition with an introductionby R. Rorty and a study guide by R. Brandom Cambridge (Massachusetts):Harvard University Press 1997), they remained on more or less a program-matic level. Consequently, many people have objected to semantic holism

and social holism in particular that these positions are unable to be formu-lated in such a way that they meet the standards of analytic argumentation.Against this background, Brandom offers a detailed elaboration of theSellarsian programme. (As to this context, compare the book symposium

on Making It Explicit in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57

(1997), pp. 153–204).Brandom thereby is part of the recent revival of pragmatism in Amer-

ican philosophy. But in distinction to philosophers such as Richard Rorty,

John McDowell and Hilary Putnam in his recent essays, Brandom cashes

the positions which he defends out in clear analytical argument. Whetheror not one sympathizes with Brandom’s project, his book should be takeninto consideration even by the mainstream of today’s philosophers, who

favour some sort of a naturalization of epistemology.

Erkenntnis 51: 333–346, 1999.


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2. A NORMATIVE PRAGMATICS

Brandom starts with the rule-following considerations which are famil-

iar from Saul Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein on

Rules and Private Language, Oxford: Blackwell 1982). According toKripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein, any finite sequence of examplesor of actions instantiates infinitely many rules. Consequently, (a) there are

infinitely many possible ways of continuing any such sequence in any newsituation, and (b) for any new situation, it is not determined what is thecorrect way to go on. The problem of rule-following then is this one: Whatcan select for us one of infinitely many rules so that for us one way of going on is singled out as the correct one?

Brandom follows Kripke in claiming that a naturalistic account in termsof dispositions to behaviour is not able to solve the problem of rule-

following: according to Brandom, any dispositions can be specified ininfinitely many ways (pp. 26–30). Furthermore, Brandom, like Kripke,argues that assuming meanings beyond the spatio-temporal realm does notsolve the problem of rule-following either: according to Brandom, thesemeanings would be explicit rules; instead of these meanings being able toguide our actions, we would end up in an infinite regress of rules (pp. 18–

26). The alternative to both a reductionist account of rule-following and anaccount that reifies rules is, in the light of Kripke as well as in the light of Brandom, a pragmatic account in terms of social practices. Social practicesare necessary in order to (a) select for a person one of infinitely many

meanings in a finite sequence of examples or of actions and (b) enable aperson to have a distinction between correct and incorrect rule-followingat her disposal.

The social story which Brandom tells in the first chapter of his book

is distinct from the one which Kripke offers in three important respects.Firstly, Kripke conceives the social account as a sceptical solution to asceptical paradox of rule-following. The solution is sceptical, because,according to Kripke, it yields only assertibility conditions, but not truth

conditions for the ascription of intentional states to a person. By con-trast, meaning scepticism is of no importance for Brandom’s project. Forhim, the social story is a systematic reconstruction of the necessary andsufficient conditions under which persons can be in states that have a

determinate propositional content.

Secondly, Kripke’s social story can be read in such a way that it is builton asymmetric I–we relations between individuals and a community. Anindividual is integrated into a community, her performances are judged by

the community according to its standards, and the individual adapts herself


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entitlement to certain claims. There are no commitments in the world

without persons taking each other to be committed to something. Bran-dom elaborates on this normative pragmatics in terms of what he calls

deontic scorekeeping: members of a social community act as scorekeepersof each other’s commitments and entitlements in making claims (Chapter

3, in particular, pp. 159–161 and pp. 180–190). He takes up the idea of scorekeeping in social practices from David Lewis (“Scorekeeping in aLanguage Game” in Philosophical Papers. Volume 1, Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press 1983, Chapter 13, in particular pp. 236–240). Commitments

and entitlements thus arise in the lights of a scorekeeper who takes a personto be committed or entitled to certain claims.

This conception implies the following: if one ascribes a belief p to aperson, one ascribes to her that she is committed to the beliefs q, r , s as

well. This is not an instance of the is–ought fallacy (see, by contrast, theobjection of P. Engel, “Wherein lies the Normative Dimension in Meaning

and Conceptual Content?”, forthcoming in Philosophical Studies, section1). For the statement that a person has a belief p is explained in terms of the person committing herself to p. Thus, having a belief p is analogous

to subscribing to a commitment such as, for instance, the commitment todonate money to a charity. If a person commits herself to donate money toa charity, then she ought to donate money to a charity. In short, Brandom’sclaim is the following: what distinguishes belief states (and intentional

states in general) from other mental states (such as, for instance, being inpain) as well as physical states (such as, for instance, being six feet tall) isa normative feature – being in a belief state is undertaking a commitment.Thus, by ascribing beliefs to persons, one describes the commitments

which these persons undertake.Consequently, Brandom’s normative pragmatics does not commit us toabandoning a position according to which one can describe the beliefs of a person and describe what the meaning of a belief is. The meaning of a

belief of a certain type are those other beliefs to which one is committed,entitled and to which entitlement is precluded in the lights of the membersof one’s community. These relations to other beliefs are the – normative– facts which constitute the meaning of a belief, and these relations in-

dividuate a belief. (M. Lance and J. O’Leary-Hawthrone, The Grammar of Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997, Chapter 3, bycontrast, go farther and consider meaning claims as being prescriptive inthemselves).

Brandom considers it to be a major advantage of his account in compar-ison to causal-functional accounts of beliefs that it makes the phenomenonof inconsistent beliefs intelligible: inconsistent beliefs are incompatible


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commitments. That is, by committing oneself to one claim p entitlement

to another claim q is precluded; one is, as it happens, however, alsocommitted to q (pp. 160, 196, 238, 245, 270, 332, 606).

This normative pragmatics is a twofold holism. It is a social holism,because, with respect to being in states which have a definite propositional

content, a person is dependent on there being other persons with whom sheenters into practices of deontic scorekeeping of each other’s commitmentsand entitlements. Having thoughts with a determinate content thus is asocial affair. Furthermore, this normative pragmatics is a semantic holism:

a claim (or a belief) has a meaning or a propositional content owing tonormative relations of commitment, entitlement and precluded entitlementto other claims as determined by deontic scorekeeping. Thus, with respectto its having meaning, a claim is dependent on other claims to which it

bears these relations.

3. AN INFERENTIAL SEMANTICS

Making It Explicit means making explicit what is implied in the socialpractices in which we treat ourselves as thinking beings. The first stepin this project is the sketched normative pragmatics of treating people asbeing committed to, entitled to or precluded from being entitled to certain

claims. The second step is building an inferential semantics on this prag-matics. According to such a semantics, the meaning of a claim consists inits inferential relations to other claims. Brandom translates the describednormative relations in the following way into inferential relations in the

second chapter of his book:(a) commitment : There are claims which are entailed by a claim of the

type p in the sense that they can be deduced from p. For instance, the

claim that it is raining in London entails the claim that London exists.(b) entitlement : There are claims which are supported by a claim of the

type p in the sense that p supports an induction to them. The claimthat it is raining in London supports the claim that the temperature

will go down in London.(c) precluded entitlement : There are claims which are excluded by a

claim of the type p in the sense that endorsing p precludes onefrom endorsing these claims. Claiming that it is raining in London

precludes one from claiming that the sun is shining in London.In any inferential semantics it is crucial to employ the notion of material

inferences. Not every inference that is logically correct can be considered

as contributing to the meaning of a claim. For instance, any two true claims


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can be connected by a conditional in a logically correct way. The task for

an inferential semantics is to explain the notion of a material inferencewithout presupposing meaning, since meaning is to be accounted for in

terms of inferences. Brandom accomplishes this task by basing an inferen-tial semantics on a normative pragmatics. What is founded by the relations

of commitment, entitlement and precluded entitlement are material infer-ences which give rise to meaning and which can then be made explicitin formal, logical rules for inferences (pp. 97–105, 132–134). Brandomconceives logic as making explicit relations of commitment and entitle-

ment between claims that speakers endorse in a linguistic community. Forinstance, he introduces the logical notion of negation or incompatibilitybetween two claims in terms of commitment to the one claim precludingentitlement to the other claim (in particular p. 160).

If one regards the meaning of a claim as consisting only in its infer-ential relations to other claims, then one provokes the objection that the

distinction between beliefs which are acquired by perception and beliefswhich are acquired by inference from other beliefs is not taken into ac-count. Moreover, in this case, it is not clear how a solution to the problem

of rule-following is achieved: these relations to other claims do not tellus when it is appropriate to make a claim of a certain type. Thus, even if these inferential relations based on a normative pragmatics are sufficient toyield conceptual content, we now face the problem of rule-following in the

form how to apply a rule with a determinate content. There are two mainpossibilities to meet these objections: one can either say that an inferentialcontext is only part of the meaning of a claim, or one can broaden thenotion of an inferential context.

Brandom argues in favour of the latter possibility. Basing himself onSellars, he offers an account of the inferential context of a claim of thetype p in terms of (a) non-inferential language entries such as claims thatare acquired by perception, (b) linguistic relations to other claims, and

(c) language departures such as actions as appropriate practical inferencesof a claim (pp. 119–121, 131–132, 221–226, 233–243; and see Sellars“Some Reflections on Language Games”, §§18–21, pp. 327–330 in Sci-ence, Perception and Reality, London: Routledge 1963). For instance, if

one claims that there is a tiger approaching, running away is a suitablepractical inference of this claim.

Brandom’s point is that for claims which are acquired by perceptionto have meaning, appropriate circumstances of application are not suffi-

cient; to know what such claims mean, we need inferential relations toother claims. He thereby turns the objection from claims which are ac-quired by perception into an argument in favour of an inferential semantics.


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Moreover, appropriate circumstances of application can be accounted for

in his normative pragmatics as circumstances under which a person isentitled to make a claim such as “This is red”. Conceiving an inferential

semantics in such a manner that it includes both non-inferential circum-stances of application as well as practical inferences brings Brandom’s

position close to a Wittgensteinian pragmatism according to which themeaning of a claim is its position in a whole form of life. Coming back tothe problem of rule-following, we now see an argument for working the so-cial solution to this problem out in terms of a normative pragmatics which

is built on normative relations between claims and thus is a foundation foran inferential semantics: to be sufficient to provide meaning for a claim of the type p, social practices have to determine not only circumstances inwhich one is entitled to make such a claim, but also a context of moves to

other claims.One of the main achievements of Brandom’s book is to develop an

inferential semantics in detail. He explains the contribution which singularterms and predicates make to the meaning of a sentence by the mannerin which they function in substitution, namely the consequences which

their substitution has for the inferential role of the sentences that are gen-erated by such substitution. Consider one of Brandom’s examples of asubstitution of singular terms: if the inference from “Benjamin Franklinwalked” to “The inventor of bifocals walked” is a good one (in the sense

of a material inference that is accepted in the relevant community), thenso is the inference from “The inventor of bifocals walked” to “BenjaminFranklin walked”. If the substitution of singular terms results in good in-ferences, then these inferences are reversible. Singular terms can therefore

be arranged in classes of terms that yield reversible inferences (Chapter 6,in particular pp. 370–376).By contrast, if the substitution of predicates results in good inferences

in the mentioned material sense, then these inferences do not have to be

reversible. For example, if the inference from “Benjamin Franklin walked”to “Benjamin Franklin moved” is a good one, it does not follow that the in-ference from “Benjamin Franklin moved” to “Benjamin Franklin walked”also is a good one. Benjamin Franklin may have moved in another way

than by walking. Predicates can be arranged according to their strength of inference. Some predicates are inferentially weaker than others: everythingthat follows from the applicability of “moves” also follows from the ap-plicability of “walks”, but not vice versa (pp. 371–372). On the basis of

these considerations, Brandom develops an argument why sub-sententialstructure has to consist in singular terms and predicates in the first placein order to have full expressive power. He extends this argument to a tran-


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scendental argument why the world appears to us in the form of objects

with properties in the first place (Chapter 6, pp. 376–404).Furthermore, Brandom sets out an account of indexicals and demon-

stratives in terms of anaphora. He maintains that indexical tokeningscontribute to the inferential role of sentences by their anaphoric rela-

tions to other tokenings; through these relations they are intermeshed withsubstitutions. Brandom claims that the deictic function of indexicals isderivative from the anaphoric function of pronouns. He argues that therecan be languages which contain expressions that have a pronominal use,

but which lack expressions that have a deictic use, whereas the converseis not possible (Chapter 7, in particular pp. 464–466). Moreover, Brandomgives an account of “true” and “refers to” in terms of anaphora too: hesuggests regarding “true” as a an operator to construct a special kind of

prosentence and “refers to” as an operator to construct a special kind of pronoun (instead of indicating a word-world relation) (Chapter 5).

Hence, an inferential semantics can be developed in such a way thatit includes an account of sub-sentential elements such as predicates andsingular terms down to indexicals. Such an account can give a concrete

shape to the general claim that a concept or a word has a meaning only in-sofar as it is used in a sentence. Brandom’s inferential semantics preservescompositionality in the sense that the meaning of a sentence dependson its sub-sentential components, although his theory entirely works in

terms of sentences being the unit of meaning. Accordingly, his theoryworks only with conceptual content, even when it comes to singular termsand indexicals. It construes conceptual content as propositional content inthe first place, namely as the content of whole sentences, because only

propositional content can stand in inferential relations.Brandom not only achieves a detailed elaboration of an inferential se-mantics; his position also avoids the standard objections against such asemantics. If the meaning of a belief is conceived as consisting in the

inferential relations to the other beliefs which the person in question has,then it is questionable (a) how two persons can share beliefs with the samemeaning, given that no two persons have the same system of beliefs, and(b) how a person can continue to have beliefs with the same meaning, given

that she acquires new beliefs all the time so that new inferential relationsdevelop within her system of beliefs. However, according to Brandom, thebeliefs of a person are not individuated by their position in the systemof beliefs of that person. Instead, they are externally individuated: their

meaning consists in the normative relations of commitment, entitlementand precluded entitlement to other beliefs; these relations are determinedby social interactions of what Brandom calls deontic scorekeeping. Hence,


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the meaning of a belief is not determined by those other beliefs which a

person actually has, but by those other beliefs to which she is committedand entitled in the light of her fellows. Consequently, the two mentioned

problems do not arise: beliefs thus conceived can eo ipso be shared byseveral persons, and their meaning can change only as a result of social

interactions (compare pp. 478–479, 587–594).This position is a linguistic view of intentionality: it implies that having

beliefs is tied to speaking a public language (which does not have to beverbal); for the meaning of beliefs consists in inferential relations which

are determined in public, social interactions. However, Brandom does notsubscribe to the thesis that beliefs can be reduced to or eliminated in fa-vour of the expression of sentences. Such a thesis would commit him tothe task of developing an account of meaningful sentences that does not

have recourse to belief states of persons. Instead, Brandom classifies hisposition as a relational version of a linguistic approach to intentionality; it

is relational in the sense that beliefs can only be understood in relation totheir expression in a language, and meaningful expressions in a languagecan only be understood in relation to beliefs of a person (pp. 150–153,

230).

4. A PRAGMATIC REALISM INSTEAD OF A SOCIAL RELATIVISM

A representational semantics starts with what it considers to be word–world relations such as “refers to” or “is true of”. An inferential semantics,

by contrast, starts with relations among beliefs, claims or sentences. Thetask for an inferential semantics then is to explain the representationalfeature of beliefs on the basis of inferential relations, if it is to retain theposition that beliefs represent things and events in the world. However, if

an inferential semantics is based on a normative pragmatics which is con-ceived as a social solution to the problem of rule-following, then it seemsto be impossible to accomplish that task; for it seems that this positionleads to a social relativism which is incompatible with the very notion of

beliefs representing what there is in the world.Three levels can be distinguished in Brandom’s reply to this challenge.

The first level consists in employing the apparatus of his inferential se-mantics to give an account of representation in terms of inferences. Thus,

Brandom explains how singular terms refer to one individual in terms

of substitution, i.e., their being interchangeable: an equivalence class of singular terms stands for one individual (Chapter 6, in particular pp. 370–376). Furthermore, as regards indexicals, he claims that it is only by means

of anaphoric relations that an unrepeatable indexical tokening refers to an


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object (Chapter 7). Brandom thus explains the reference to objects in terms

of the relations of substitution and anaphora between linguistic items. Hisargument is that singular terms in isolation – or the utterance of isolated

sentences, in which such terms are employed – are not distinct from a mereresponse to stimuli. Such a response may be reliable and differentiating.

But that is not enough for it to be distinguishable from other responsesas a representation of something. It is relations to other linguistic items,such as the mentioned relations of substitution and anaphora, that makes aresponse to stimuli standing for an object.

What is more, Brandom traces the distinction between beliefs de dictoand beliefs de re back to the different perspectives from which the samepropositional content can be specified in social practices, in particular thedifference between acknowledging a commitment to a claim oneself and

ascribing commitment to a claim to another person (Chapter 8). He thenemploys this distinction to establish a distinction between subjective norm-

ative attitude and objective normative status (in particular pp. 593–597;compare pp. 52–55, 632–633). In translating beliefs de dicto into beliefsde re, a scorekeeper brings out which are the objects that the beliefs of a

person refer to in the scorekeeper’s perspective. According to Brandom,representation of objects is established in social interactions of ascribingbeliefs de re to each other. The social interactions on which referring toobjects thus depends are unproblematic against the background of a solu-

tion to the problem of rule-following which requires social practices forbeliefs to have meaning.

The ascription of beliefs de re to a person can go beyond the com-mitments which that person is prepared to acknowledge. For instance, if

Judith believes in 1999 that the president of the United States is the mostpowerful person in the world, a scorekeeper can ascribe to her to believeof Bill Clinton that he is the most powerful person in the world – eventhough it may be the case that Judith does not believe that Bill Clinton is

the most powerful person in the world, because she does not know that BillClinton is the president of the United States. Nonetheless, by believing thatthe president of the United States is the most powerful person in the world,Judith is committed to believing of Bill Clinton that he is the most powerful

person in the world. What is more, even if no one realized that Bill Clintonwere the president of the United States, anyone who claims that the pres-ident of the United States is the most powerful person in the world wouldbe committed to believing that Bill Clinton is the most powerful person

in the world. By translating beliefs into beliefs de re, Brandom’s accountallows for the possibility of commitments that outrun the commitmentswhich people acknowledge.


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The second level which can be distinguished in Brandom’s reply con-

cerns the solution to the problem of rule-following and the charge of socialrelativism. As mentioned above, Brandom stresses that his account works

in terms of symmetric I–thou relations between individuals instead of anasymmetric I–we relation between an individual and a community. This

enables him to conceive the social practices of deontic scorekeeping asbeing open- ended. Anything that is taken to be a commitment or an enti-tlement can at any time be challenged by a – new – interlocutor if a reasonis given. This point also applies to the commitments and entitlements on

which all the members of a community agree at a time. Thus, beliefs whichare shared by all the members of a community can be challenged too, albeitonly by a person who enters into taking part in the discursive practices of the relevant community. In his objectivity proofs in Chapter 8 (pp. 601–

607), Brandom shows that as a result of his conception of social practicesin terms of I–thou relations, the normative attitude of taking something to

be true can never be identified with its being true.Nevertheless, Brandom characterizes his theory as a normative phe-

nomenalism (pp. 626–628). Phenomenalism is to say that normative

statuses supervene on normative attitudes (pp. 46–52, 291–297). However,Brandom adds that these statuses do not supervene on the actual attitudesof the members of a community at a given time:

What follows from p cannot be identified with how I or anyone actually keeps score; it is

rather to be identified with a feature of correct scorekeeping (for it depends on what else is

true, not on what anyone takes to be true). (p. 627)

However, if the correct normative attitudes depend on what is true in dis-tinction to what anyone takes to be true, then it is questionable whetherthis position is a phenomenalism in any interesting sense. Saying thatnormative statuses supervene on the correct normative attitudes is not a

substantive supervenience claim, unless the correct normative attitudes areat some stage identified with what someone takes to be correct. SinceBrandom refuses, with good reason, to make such an identification, thesubstantive supervenience claim goes the other way round: the attitude of

taking something to be true, if correct, supervenes on what is true. Sucha supervenience is, of course, what Brandom needs in order to claim ob-

jectivity and to refute social relativism. Hence, we get to the followingposition: there are no commitments in the world prior to and independ-

ently of our social practices. But, once social practices have established

conceptual content, what is true depends on the way the world is.To show how a normative pragmatics and an inferential semantics can

account for representation and thus go with a realism, a third level is

necessary. Brandom has to address the worry that (1) all the inferential


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apparatus by means of which he seeks to explain reference and (2) the

open-ended process of correcting normative attitudes are a spinning in thevoid, because they come too late to ensure an intentional relation between

our beliefs and the world. John McDowell can be seen as developing sucha worry as an objection against a semantics that starts with inferential

relations among beliefs in his famous John Locke lectures ( Mind and World , Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard University Press 1994). InBrandom’s programme, this objection has to be countered on the levelof the social practices that determine the normative relations in which

the meaning of a claim consists. Brandom’s point is that the physicalenvironment is not outside these practices:

Discursive practices essentially involve to-ing and fro-ing with environing objects in per-

ception and action. . . . According to such a construal of practices, it is wrong to contrast

discursive practice with a world of facts and things outside it, modeled on the contrast

between words and the things they refer to. It is wrong to think of facts and the objects

they involve as constraining linguistic practice from the outside – not because they do notconstrain it but because of the mistaken picture of facts and objects as outside them. . . . The

way the world is, constrains proprieties of inferential, doxastic, and practical commitment

in a straightforward way from within those practices. (pp. 331–332, see also p. 632)

According to this quotation, the social practices by which the meaning of our beliefs becomes determined involve direct dealings with the physicalthings and events themselves. The identity conditions of these practices de-

pend on the physical things and events which they involve. Consequently,the physical environment exerts a – causal – constraint on these practicesfrom within these practices. Such a reply is available to Brandom, becausehis pragmatic realism is a direct realism: his inferential semantics enables

him to reject the view that there are representations which act as epistemicmediators between our beliefs and the world.The quotation above is taken from a section in which Brandom pro-

poses to identify the content of true claims with facts. He goes on tosay:

The world is everything that is the case, a constellation of facts. . . . those facts are structured

and interconnected by the objects they are facts about. (p. 333; see also p. 622)

This position can be seen as being subject to the objection which JulianDodd addresses to McDowell, namely that a Fregean notion of facts astrue propositions is conflated with a notion of facts as that of which the

world is composed (“McDowell and Identity Theories of Truth”, Analysis

55 (1995), pp. 160–165): according to Brandom, on the one hand, facts justare the contents of true claims. On the other hand, facts are what makes upthe world. Facts in this latter sense seem to be what facts in the former

sense are about – unless one goes for an absolute, Hegelian idealism in


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the sense of the position that the world is composed of the contents of

true beliefs. Brandom may intend to make room for such a position. Inthis case, there is no conflation of two notions of facts, although other

objections then apply. However that may be, the inferential semantics andnormative pragmatics which Brandom sets out can be regarded as being in

the first place about our epistemic access to a world which is independentof our practices. This semantics and this pragmatics are not tied to onespecific ontology.

5. THE VIEW OF OURSELVES

What is the view of ourselves that results from Brandom’s account of in-tentional states? Brandom traces his emphasis on the normative back toKant’s distinction between causal–factual and normative issues in contrast

to Descartes’ distinction between physical and mental substance (pp. 9–11, 623). That is to say: we are distinct from the natural world by treatingourselves as beings that have normative attitudes. The description of norm-ative attitudes cannot be reduced to a description in naturalistic terms.However, this distinction does not have to be treated as an ontologicaldifference that amounts to intentional states having a being beyond the

physical. Brandom’s project thereby fits into the position – which may becalled Kantian – neither to reduce the intentional to the physical nor to reifythe intentional to a being over and above the physical. The position whichavoids both these pitfalls is a conception of intentionality as an activity that

is liable to normative assessments.If we as thinking and acting beings are, as far as ontology is concerned,

not anything over and above the physical, although the description of ourselves as thinking and acting beings cannot be reduced to a description

in physical terms, an account is called for how normative attitudes andstatuses are embedded in the physical. Brandom sketches the possibility of such an account in terms of sanctions in which normative attitudes becomemanifest (pp. 34–36). Nonetheless, a more detailed account of how we get

to follow rules on the basis of our natural equipment would be desirableto show how normative attitudes fit into the physical. Over and aboveBrandom’s consideration of the views of his Pittsburgh colleagues JohnMcDowell and John Haugeland, a discussion of elaborate reconstructions

of norms on a physical basis – such as the one of Philip Pettit (The Common

Mind , Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993, pp. 76–108) – could havebeen helpful to make Brandom’s account more clear.

Brandom does not commit himself to the view that the mental su-

pervenes on the physical, even if not more than global supervenience is


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claimed; consequently, he does not commit himself to the stronger view

that intentional states including normative attitudes are realized as phys-ical states (without having to be identical with physical states). Instead,

he emphasizes that the distinction between non-normative and normativevocabulary can only be drawn in the vocabulary of a normative metalan-

guage (pp. 623–626). However, this observation cannot replace an accountof the relationship between physical and normative facts.

It is difficult to see what Brandom gains by refusing to endorse com-mitments such as the one to psycho-physical supervenience or the one to

the physical realization of intentional states (unless he intends to leave thedoor open for a Hegelian idealism). Within Brandom’s normative prag-matics, there is nothing which precludes the view that the actual normativeattitudes of people as well as what the correct normative attitudes are su-

pervenes on the physical, at least if the physical is taken globally. The onlything which Brandom’s argument excludes is a reduction of the normative

vocabulary to a non-normative vocabulary. But if this anti-reductionism isto go with a Kantian position according to which we are characterized bynormative practices in contrast to a Cartesian, ontological dualism, then a

story of how our normative attitudes are embedded in the physical worldwould be helpful. To put the matter in a concise, paradoxical manner, in or-der to make the position that it is the normative which distinguishes us fromthe physical more persuasive, more naturalism than Brandom is prepared

to commit himself to would be appropriate – as far as a reconstruction of normative attitudes on a natural basis of dispositions is concerned and, inparticular, as far as the supervenience of the intentional on the natural isconcerned. Nonetheless, Brandom’s book is the first detailed elaboration

of the position that it is normative attitudes which distinguishes us, insofaras we are thinking and acting beings, from the physical. It will hopefullycontribute to giving that position the attention it deserves in contemporaryphilosophy of mind.

Fachgruppe Philosophie

Universität Konstanz MICHAEL ESFELD

Fach D24

D-78457 Konstanz

E-mail: [email protected]

erkenntnis volume 51 issue 2-3 1999 [doi 10.1023%2fa%3a1005531017804] -- robert b. brandom, making...

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