Brandom, Wittgenstein, and Human Encounters
Abstract
There are several similarities between Robert B. Brandom’s and the later Wittgenstein’s views on linguistic meaning. Like Wittgenstein, Brandom rejects representationalism and takes linguistic practices to be the basis where all meaning rests. His inferentialism is a holistic view, already envisaged by Frege. The idea of a language game connects Brandom to Wittgenstein, although Wittgenstein’s idea has also been developed in various other directions. However, unlike Wittgenstein, Brandom pays special attention to the game of giving and asking for reasons. This difference already suggests that Brandom has a strong ethical overtone in his philosophy of language. For Wittgenstein, normativity seems to be normativity of language, while for Brandom it is basically normativity of actions for which persons are responsible. Brandom’s philosophy, which is loaded with deontic vocabulary, is a philosophy of human encounters. The present paper studies this very aspect of Brandom’s thought. It focuses on his theory of assertions in his Making It Explicit (1994) and elaborates a view of assertions that is possible on Wittgenstein’s terms. The paper then reappraises Wittgenstein’s views on philosophy and philosophical, particularly ethical, propositions. It seeks to show that Wittgenstein comes closest to the Brandomian ethical model of discursive practice in his comments on the limits of language. These comparisons also reveal that Brandom and Wittgenstein agree on the nature of ethical vocabulary; neither of them goes in for ethical theorizing. Brandom’s later works, such as his Reason in Philosophy (2009b), open up new perspectives on his ethical thought. This paper is primarily a study of the role that ethics plays in his philosophy of language in 1994.
References
Brandom, Robert B. (1994). Making It Explicit. Reasoning, Representing & Discursive Commitment. Cambridge, MASS.: Harvard.
Brandom, Robert B. (2000). Articulating Reasons. An Introduction to Inferentialism. Cambridge, MASS.: Harvard.
Brandom, Robert B. (2009a). “Metaphilosophical Reflections on the Idea of Metaphysics”. The Harvard Review of Philosophy XVI, pp. 44–57. Doi: https://doi.org/10.5840/harvardreview20091614
Brandom, Robert B. (2009b). Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas. Cambridge, MASS.: Harvard. Doi: https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674053618
Brown, Jessica and Cappelen, Herman (eds.) (2011). Assertion: New Philosophical Essays. New York: Oxford University Press. Doi; https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199573004.001.0001
Cappelen, Herman. (2011). “Against Assertion”. In Brown and Cappelen (2011), pp. 21–47. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199573004.003.0002
Diamond, Cora (1996). “Wittgenstein, mathematics, and ethics: Resisting the attractions of realism”. In Hans Sluga and David G. Stern (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 226–260. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521460255.008
Frege, Gottlob (1879). Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens (BS), Halle a.S.: Verlag von L. Nebert; reprinted in Frege (1964), 1-88; the English translation in J. van Heijenoort (ed.), From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1979–1931, 1971, Cambridge, MASS.: Harvard, pp. 1 – 82.
Frege, Gottlob (1964). Begriffsschrift und andere Aufsätze, hrsg. von I. Angelelli. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.
Frege, Gottlob (1967). “Der Gedanke” (1918). In Kleine Schriften (KS), hrsg. von I. Angelelli. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, pp. 342 – 361.
Goldberg, Sanford. C. (2015). Assertion: On the Philosophical Significance of Assertoric Speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Doi; https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732488.001.0001
Haaparanta. Leila (2018). “Inferentialism and the Reception of Testimony”. In O. Beran, V. Kolman, and L. Koreň (eds.), From Rules to Meanings: New Essays on Inferentialism, New York: Routledge, pp. 334–346. Doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315103587-19
Haaparanta, Leila (2019). “Frege, Carnap, and the Limits of Asserting”. In H. Appelqvist (ed.), Wittgenstein and the Limits of Language, New York: Routledge, pp. 115-132.
MacFarlane, John (2011). “What Is an Assertion?” in Brown and Cappelen (2011), 79–96. Doi; https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199573004.003.0004
Overgaard, Søren (2007). “The ethical residue of language in Levinas and early Wittgenstein,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 33: pp. 223–249. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453707074141
Peregrin, Jaroslav (2014). Inferentialism. Why Rules Matter, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137452962
Sellars, Wilfrid (1974). “Meaning as Functional Classification,” Synthese, 74, pp. 417–437. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00484606
Waismann, Friedrich (1979). Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, conversations recorded by Friedrich Waismann, edited by Brian McGuinness, translated by Joachim Schulte and Brian McGuinness, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1961). Tractatus Logico–Philosophicus (TLP), translated by David Pears and Brian McGuinness. London: Routledge.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1969). On Certainty (OC), edited by G.H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1965). “Lecture on Ethics” (E), The Philosophical Review 74: pp. 3–12.
Copyright (c) 2019 Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
