Rationality and the variety of language games
Abstract
One of the most striking clashes between the results of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reflections on language games and Robert Brandom’s normative analysis of pragmatics concerns the pride of place granted by the latter to assertional practices. While Wittgenstein believes that there is no privileged language game, Brandom maintains that the game of giving and asking for reasons is fundamental for the possibility of any linguistic practice to be properly meaningful. Recently, Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lance proposed to generalize Brandom’s normative pragmatics in order to provide a more fine–grained analysis of the normativity that governs discursive practices. It is a courageous enterprise that challenges the predominance of the cognitive approach in pragmatics by underpinning a different way to understand the notion of meaning. Their proposal, however, requires to take into account many different sorts of speech acts on a par and, by doing so, it is in tension with Brandom’s approach. This paper explores the shape of this tension in order to see whether or not a unitary characterization of rationality can be envisaged in Wittgenstein’s and Brandom’s way of accounting for the ability to deploy conceptual contents in linguistic practices.
References
Belnap, Nuel (1990). “Declaratives Are Not Enough”. Philosophical Studies 59 num. 1: pp. 1–30. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00368389
Bezuidenhout, Anne (2017). “Contextualism and Semantic Minimalism”. In The Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. Yan Huang. pp. 21–46. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Borg, Emma (2004). Minimal Semantics. Oxford: Claredon Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/0199270252.001.0001
Brandom, Robert (1983). “Asserting”. Noûs, vol. 17, num. 4: 637–650. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2215086
Brandom, Robert (1984). “Reference Explained Away”. Journal of Philosophy, vol. 81, num. 9. pp. 469–492. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2026268
Brandom, Robert (1988). “Inference, Expression, and Induction”. Philosophical Studies, vol. 54, num. 2: pp. 257–285. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00354516
Brandom, Robert (1994). Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
Brandom, Robert (2000). Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
Brandom, Robert (2008). Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199542871.001.0001
Brandom, Robert (2011). Perspectives on Pragmatism. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
Cappelen, Herman, and Ernie Lepore (2005). “A Tall Tale: In Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism.” In Contextualism in Philosophy: Knowledge, Meaning, and Truth, ed. Gerhard Preyer and Georg Peter, pp. 197–219. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carston, Robyn (2002). Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Oxford: Blackwell.
Dewey, John. (1925–1953). The Later Works of John Dewey [LW]. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Gazdar, Gerald (1979). Pragmatics: Implicature, Presupposition and Logical Form. New York: Academic Press.
Grice, Paul (1957). “Meaning”. Philosophical Review, vol. 66, num. 3: pp. 377–388. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2182440
Grice, Paul (1968). “Utterer’s Meaning, Sentence–Meaning, and Word–Meaning.” Foundations of Language, vol. 4, num. 3. p. 225–242.
Grice, Paul (1969). “Utterer’s Meaning and Intention”. Philosophical Review, vol. 78, num. 2: pp. 147–177. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2184179
Grice, Paul (1975). “Logic and Conversation”. In Syntax and Semantics, ed. Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, vol. 3, pp. 41–58. New York: Academic Press.
Habermas, Jürgen (2002). “From Kant to Hegel: On Robert Brandom’s Pragmatic Philosophy of Language”. European Journal of Philosophy vol. 8, num. 3: pp. 322–355. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0378.00114
Kukla, Rebecca, and Mark Lance (2009). “Yo!” and “Lo!”: The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
Kukla, Rebecca, and Mark Lance (2010). “Perception, Language, and the First Person.” In Reading Brandom On Making it Explicit, ed. Bernhard Weiss and Jeremy Wanderer. New York: Routledge.
McDowell, John (1984). “Wittgenstein on Following a Rule.” Synthese, vol. 58, num. 3: pp. 325–364. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00485246
McDowell, John (1994). Mind and World. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
McDowell, John (2005). “Motivating Inferentialism: Comments on Making It Explicit (Ch. 2).” In The Pragmatics of Making It Explicit, ed. Pirmin Stekeler–Weithofer, pp. 121–140. Amsterdam–Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Price, Huw (2004). “Naturalim Without Representationalism.” In Naturalism in Question, ed. Mario de Caro and David Macarthur. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
Recanati, François (2003). Literal Meaning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615382
Recanati, François (2010). Truth–Conditional Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199226993.001.0001
Ryle, Gilbert (1949). “Meaning and Necessity.” Philosophy, vol. 24, num. 88: pp. 69–76. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819100006781
Sbisá, Marina (2007). Detto Non Detto. Le Forme Della Comunicazione Implicita. Bari–Roma: Laterza.
Sellars, Wilfrid (1962). “Truth and ‘Correspondence’.” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 59, num. 2: pp. 29–56. Reprinted in (Sellars, 1963). doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2023294
Sellars, Wilfrid (1963). Science, Perception and Reality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Reprinted by Ridgeview, Atascadero, (1991).
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson (2004). “Relevance Theory.” In: The Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. Laurence R. Horn and Gregory Ward, pp. 607–632. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson (1986). Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tomasello, Michael (2008). Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/7551.001.0001
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953). Philosophical Investigations [PI]. Oxford: Blackwell. 2nd ed., 1958.
Copyright (c) 2019 Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
