Abstract

In his recent John Locke Lectures – published as Between Saying and Doing – Brandom extends and refines his views on the nature of language and philosophy by developing a position that he calls Analytic Pragmatism. Although Brandom’s project bears on an extraordinarily rich array of different philosophical issues, we focus here on the contention that certain vocabularies have a privileged status within our linguistic practices, and that when adequately understood, the practices in which these vocabularies figure can help furnish us with an account of semantic intentionality. Brandom’s claim is that such vocabularies are privileged because they are a species of what he calls universal LX vocabulary –roughly, vocabulary whose mastery is implicit in any linguistic practice whatsoever. We show that, contrary to Brandom’s claim, logical vocabulary per se fails to satisfy the conditions that must be met for something to count as universal LX vocabulary. Further, we show that exactly analogous considerations undermine his claim that modal vocabulary is universal LX. If our arguments are sound, then, contrary to what Brandom maintains, intentionality cannot be explicated as a “pragmatically mediated semantic phenomenon”, at any rate not of the sort that he proposes.

Highlights

  • Over the past three decades or so, Robert Brandom has exerted an enormous influence on debates regarding the nature of language and philosophy

  • The strand in question concerns the contention that certain vocabularies have a privileged status within our linguistic practices, and that when adequately understood, the practices in which these vocabularies figure can help furnish us with an account of semantic intentionality

  • Brandom’s claim is that such vocabularies are privileged because they are a species of what he calls universal LX vocabulary –roughly, vocabulary whose mastery is implicit in any linguistic practice whatsoever

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Summary

Introduction

Over the past three decades or so, Robert Brandom has exerted an enormous influence on debates regarding the nature of language and philosophy. Brandom’s claim is that such vocabularies are privileged because they are a species of what he calls universal LX vocabulary –roughly, vocabulary whose mastery is implicit in any linguistic practice whatsoever On such a view, logical and modal vocabularies are privileged because they possess a kind of transcendental status. According to Brandom, this transcendental status, at least in the case of modal vocabulary, is important to characterizing the sort of intentionality essential to thought and language. We show that exactly analogous considerations undermine the claim that modal vocabulary is universal LX. We present our criticisms of this case; and, we turn our attention to modal vocabulary and argue that considerations exactly analogous to those discussed in Section 4 undermine the modal Kant-Sellars thesis. Draw out the implications of the forgoing discussion for Brandom’s account of intentionality

Analytic Pragmatism
Why Universal LX Vocabulary Matters
Terminological note
What Universal LX Vocabulary is and Why It Matters
Logic as Universal LX
Conditionals are Not Universal LX
Descriptive and Expressive Notions of VP-Sufficiency
The Modal Kant-Sellars Thesis and Its Philosophical Significance
Why Brandom’s Modal Kant-Sellars Thesis is False
The Normative Kant-Sellars Thesis
Intentionality as a Pragmatically Mediated Relation
Motivation: A Persistent Criticism of Semantic Pragmatism
The Pragmatist Responds
An Objection
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