Daniel LaurierCorresponding author

Making ‘Reasons’ Explicit
How Normative is Brandom's Inferentialism?

Article
13/1 - Spring 2008, pages 127-145
Date of online publication: 30 mars 2016
Date of publication: 30 juin 2008

Abstract

This paper asks whether Brandom has provided a sufficiently clear account of the basic normative concepts of commitment and entitlement, on which his normative inferentialism seems to rest, and of how they contribute to explain the inferential articulation of conceptual contents. I show that Brandom's claim that these concepts are analogous to the concepts of obligation and permission cannot be right, and argue that the normative character of the concept of commitment is dubious. This leads me to replace Brandom's conception of inferential relations as relations between deontic statuses with one according to which they are to be seen as relations between entitlements and acknowledgements of commitments.

Cite this article

Laurier, Daniel. “Making ‘Reasons’ Explicit: How Normative is Brandom's Inferentialism?” Forum Philosophicum 13, no. 1 (2008): 127–45. doi:10.35765/forphil.2008.1301.10.