inhabiting the space of reasons

and argue that there are no value properties, that value words serve to express liking

and disliking, or some such.

The idea that scientific explanations will expose non-naturalistic ones as illusions

is an important philosophical position. To rule non-natural accounts of meaning

out of the discussion merely because they are not natural science would be

to refuse to engage in genuinely philosophical dialogue. No one could have less

reason to avoid such dialogue than Fodor. He is thoroughly at home in a dialec-

tical setting, a paradigm of a bold and sporting contributor. His book will

undoubtedly be valuable to the science of the mental. It should also challenge general

philosophers.

University of VirginiaCharlottesville, VA 22903, USA

[email protected]

Inhabiting the Space of Reasoning

JEREMY WANDERER

1

Recent accounts of differing contemporary approaches to mind and language portray

them as engaged in a kind of Homeric struggle between two warring camps,

neo-Cartesian and neo-Pragmatist.1 One central battlefront concerns the potential

autonomy of semantics from pragmatics. To say that semantics is potentially auton-

omous from pragmatics is to allow that there can be a semantic theory that makes

no potential contribution to pragmatic theory. Neo-Cartesians affirm, whilst

neo-Pragmatists deny, the potential autonomy of semantics from pragmatics.

A Homeric struggle calls for heroes; heroes in the neo-Pragmatist camp are said to

include Dummett, Brandom, Rorty, McDowell, Davidson and (possibly) Sellars,

whilst heroes in the neo-Cartesian camp are said to include Dretske, Fodor and

Lepore. Here we have a basic divide in contemporary philosophy of language, one

that John Macfarlane has dubbed as perhaps the most significant divide of all.2

The distinction between pragmatics and semantics used here is the distinction

between theorizing about language use and acts of thinking on the one hand, and

theorizing about the meaning or content of that which is used and thought on the

other. In rejecting the potential autonomy of semantics from pragmatics, the neo-

Pragmatist need not reduce semantic norms to, nor identify them with, some subsec-

tion of pragmatic ones, nor claim that it must be possible to derive determinate

semantic content from a suitably rich description of the proprieties of linguistic

Analysis Reviews Vol 70 | Number 2 | April 2010 | pp. 367378 doi:10.1093/analys/anp147 The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust.All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected]

1 Quoted phrases in this paragraph echo Strawson (2004: 132), in his influential depiction

of another basic divide in the philosophy of language.

2 Macfarlane (forthcoming). This divide is further discussed in Wanderer (2008), fromwhich this paragraph is drawn.

critical notices | 367

practice. Rather, the neo-Pragmatist makes a supposition about the goal of semantic

theory, to the effect that it must sustain some explanatory link with an account of

language use as captured in pragmatic theory. As a result, the neo-Pragmatist denies

that there can be any point to arbitrating between disputes regarding the appropriate

characterization of determinate semantic content in a manner that makes no differ-

ence whatsoever to pragmatics.For the neo-Pragmatist, the correct characterization of language use is critical for

achieving an adequate conception of mindedness. One important distinction in this

regard is between normative and descriptive versions of neo-Pragmatism. Loosely, the

difference is between thinking of the kinds of acts that comprise language use in terms

of the function that instances of such kinds ought to perform, and thinking of such

kinds in terms of the functional role they do play in the context of some relevant larger

system. Although the descriptive neo-Pragmatists may use normative terminology in

their pragmatic theory, it is ultimately to be eliminated from or reduced to or identi-

fied with some suitable group of non-normative terms. For the normative neo-

Pragmatist, in contrast, it is norms all the way down, at least in the sense that any

pragmatic theory can and must make use of irreducibly normative terminology.Another issue for the neo-Pragmatist concerns the kinds of acts deemed essential to

language use. Many neo-Pragmatists seem content to treat linguistic practice as essen-

tially involving just one kind of performance the speech act of asserting. Brandom,

for example, is explicit about this, endorsing this privileging of the speech act of

asserting over and above all other speech acts under the heading of linguistic ratio-

nalism.3 Given the close relationship between semantics and pragmatics for the neo-

Pragmatist, it is not surprising that privileging asserting in this manner has an impact

on semantic theory too. Specifically, this rationalist conception of pragmatics results

in a semantic theory that places a primacy on declaratival content, that is, on the kind

of things that are asserted in an act of asserting. As a result, Wilfrid Sellarss gripping

image of a space of reasons is construed as a space whose topography is that of

inferential relations between propositions.In Yo and Lo, Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lance (K&L) place themselves firmly on

the side of the normative neo-Pragmatists, and much of the book is best read as an

internecine conflict amongst comrades-in-arms.4 The nub of this localized feud con-

cerns the privileging of the declaratival speech act in the manner just noted, and the

concomitant characterization of the space of reasons in propositional terms. For

K&L, such normative neo-Pragmatists are guilty of what they term the declaratival

fallacy. The book provides rich and detailed outlines of other non-declaratival

types of speech acts; applies these types to dispel long-standing difficulties in

areas such as meta-ethics and epistemology; argues for the necessary inclusion of

some of these types in any conception of linguistic practice; and aspires to reconceive

the image of a space of reasons that is shorn of commitment to the primacy of the

declarative.

3 For example, Brandom (2000: 145).

4 Yo! and Lo!: The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons by Rebecca Kuklaand Mark Lance (Harvard University Press, 2009, xiv 240, pp. 36.95).

368 | critical notices

2Following K&L, think of a speech act as an act performed by agents in a discursive

community that strives to change the normative status of others in that community,

such as the various obligations and permissions to perform associated with agents in

the community. A token utterance is an instance of particular kind of speech act in

virtue of its striving to play the pragmatic function associated with that speech act.

This is a claim about the structural function of the act as it operates within such a

community, and not reducible to what the actor intends the act to achieve, nor what

any instance of so acting will actually or conventionally achieve (13). Token utter-

ances may have various pragmatic functions and thus instantiate more than one type

of speech act.Thought of as functions, such speech acts will have inputs namely, the norms

governing the conditions of appropriate performance, and outputs namely, the

changes in normative status that the act strives to produce. According to K&L,

declaratives are an example of speech acts that have what they term agent-neutral

input and outputs. Take the newscasters claim that Bernie has been found guilty.5

The input of such a declarative is agent-neutral since it is a speech act that finds

grounding in the world in a way that is not specific to who is asserting. The output of

a declarative is agent-neutral since it seeks to impute the entitlement to assert this

claim to the discursive community in general, and demands that others allow it to

constrain their inferences and beliefs regardless of their personal normative positions

(1819).

Vocatives, in contrast, are an example of speech acts that have agent-relative inputs

and outputs. A friend yells out: Hey. This hail serves to express her recognition of my

presence, a recognition to be achieved by requesting my recognition of the appropri-

ateness of her hail through an act directed back to her. Thus, my subsequent nod of

the head accompanied by a howzit is the recognitive response that the vocative

strives to bring about. My response is an act of acknowledgement in return that

recognizes the call as having being made appropriately, as having reached its target

and as appropriately requesting the act of acknowledgment in return. The input to a

vocative is agent-relative: not everyone has the authority to appropriately hail me, to

engage me in this relationship of mutual recognition. The output of a vocative is

agent-relative: the act does not strive to alter the normative status associated with

everyone in a community but strives to give those hailed the obligation to recognize

my hail. Indeed, both input and output of the vocative are agent-relative in the par-

ticularly strong sense that the vocative is individuating and second-personal (143).

A vocative is individuating in that even if many people are hailed by a single utterance

(Hello Wisconsin) or even by many such simultaneous utterances, the vocative is

5 Though useful for illustrative purposes, this example is misleading, since it suggests thatthere is an association between the surface form of an utterance and the type of speech act

it instantiates. Since we have already claimed that one token utterance may instantiate

multiple speech acts, this cannot be the case. However, it is often the case in practice that

utterances with certain kinds of surface grammar will typically be associated with one kindof speech over the others it may instantiate. For example, the surface grammar of the

assertion: Bernie has been found guilty brings the declaratival function to the fore, but

does not preclude that same utterance instantiating other speech acts as well. The use ofexamples (here and below) should be treated in this light. (Cf. 212).


essentially from, and attaches to, one and only one individual it calls for your

recognition that I have been recognized by you. It is second-personal in that it not

only strives to make me aware of your recognition of me but that it makes a demand

on me to acknowledge my recognition through responding to you in a way that

expresses my recognition that you are holding me to so respond.These two distinctions, input versus output and agent-relative versus agent-neutral,

open up the possibility of there being mixed acts, that is acts having agent-neutral

inputs and agent-relative outputs or vice-versa. Consider, for example, what K&L call

observatives, such as my saying Lo, a rabbit! in the visual presence of a rabbit. In

addition to possibly playing the ostensive function of calling to others to pay attention

to what I perceive, the act also gives first-personal expression to my own recognition

of the presence of the rabbit. Crucially, this observative function is not the same as

declarative description (an observation report) of the contents of my perceptual

experience. The output of such a declarative may be similar to that of an observative

both declarative and observative have agent-neutral outputs in that both, for exam-

ple, allow all others to be entitled to assert that there is a rabbit present. Their inputs

differ however. Unlike a declarative, the entitlement to an observative is my own,

since the function of the speech act is to give recognition to my detection of the rabbit

something that no one else is entitled to do.Much of the book involves setting a typology of speech acts based on these dis-

tinctions and identifying different (and philosophically significant, though often unno-

ticed) speech acts that fall within these four types. It is thus tempting to read the book

as an attempt to offer precise and novel characterizations of various kinds of speech

acts, an Austinesque duet sung in a neo-Pragmatic key, and there is much to be gained

from their rich and insightful analysis when conceived in these terms. But, as already

indicated, K&Ls ambitions here move beyond this: to undermine the beholdeness of

normative neo-Pragmatism to the primacy of the declaratival and to expose the harms

of this rationalist obsession. In the following, I consider some aspects of K&Ls char-

acterization of declaratives, observatives and vocatives in turn, and then raise a ques-

tion regarding the picture of the space of reasons that emerges.

3

First, declaratives. There is an intuitive sense in which the output of a declarative is

agent-neutral. Let us contrast two different ways of capturing this intuition. The first

appeals to entitlements alone: a declarative defeasibly licenses anyone (even over-

hearers) to reassert it on the speakers say-so. The second additionally invokes

some kind of positive duty on all inquirers, such as a duty on any inquirer to know

what is known loosely thought of as the stock of common knowledge in a commu-

nity of inquirers. By declaring that p following a scientific discovery for example, one

thereby alters all the duties associated with each community member, since every

community member now has the duty, albeit minimal and exculpable, to know that

p. The output of a declarative is agent-neutral on the first route since it would license

anyone who comes across it to reassert it; the output of a declarative is agent-neutral

on the second route since it potentially changes the duties associated with each and

every member of a discursive community.


The first route is sparer than the second in three senses. First, it only invokes

alterations in entitlements and not duties. Second, the alteration in normative status

following a declarative is limited to those who come into contact with the speech act.

Third, it requires no special story to be told about repeat declaratives that reassert

what is already known. On the second, thicker route, in contrast, both duties and

entitlements are invoked; a first-time declarative transforms the normative status of

every community member into that of epistemic deficiency that requires rectification;

and repeat declaratives are unlike first-time declaratives in that they do not alter the

normative statuses associated with community members, but serve to call on those

who do not already accept the claim to do so.

As I read it, K&L proffer a version of the thicker route in capturing the agent-

neutrality of the output of a declaratival speech act, albeit one that rejects the specific

duty to know what is known. Imagine someone obsessed (a term used deliberately)

with finding out the number of grains of sand in a clearly delineated segment of

Kommetjie beach, euphorically declaring 31,76,654 grains on completion of the

inquiry.6 To say that his performance gives me one who has not met the person,

not heard the claim nor been to that beach an epistemic duty to know this fact is

bizarre. Some truths are simply trivial, and the taking up of such a supposed duty to

know trivial truths simply because someone else does would only serve to divert

precious, finite intellectual resources away from other, non-trivial inquiries. There is

thus good reason to follow K&L in rejecting the specific duty to know what is known,

although it seems that this would extend to any suggestion that this persons speechact alters my epistemic duties whatsoever.

For K&L, the effect of this persons declaration is to place me in a position of

discursive deficiency susceptibility to legitimate correction by others that is con-

cretely different from a mere failure of omniscience (28), and to provide me with a

positive prohibition against my denying it (37). Following his speech act, I now know

less than is known and there is a sense in which . . . insofar as a fact is something

that. . . we know, to that extent we are all answerable to it, and we each fail to meet

our individual epistemic responsibilities, however minimally or exculpably, if we dont

know it (36). However, alternate epistemic duties are available to underpin these

phenomena (such as a duty not to assert that which is false to explain propriety of

social censure in cases of perceived falsity) that are more plausible in their not being

created by the possibly trivial declarations of others with whom I have had no contact.

Why, then, do K&L take a thicker route to conceiving agent-neutrality, rather than

remain content with the sparer one? A possible suggestion lies in their tendency to

always think in terms of linguistic community (I-We terms), even in situations where

thinking in terms of the normative structure of dialogic interactions between inter-

locutors would suffice (I-Thou terms).7 Consider their suggestion that

the proper performance of a declarative, at least the first time it is uttered, turnsfailure to be entitled to that declarative into a defect. . . Otherwise, there wouldbe no reason for us to claim that such an entitlement is part of the agent-neutral

output of a declarative speech act, given that not everyone will be in a positionto take up the entitlement. (28)

6 The example, and my interest in it, are due to Lucy Shapiro.

7 Cf. Brandom (1994: 659).


It would indeed be absurd to suggest that everyone in a community is now defeasibly

entitled to reassert a claim following my declarative, since most people will not haveheard it. What is not absurd is to suggest that the normative structure of the claim issuch that anyone (Thou) coming across the claim is entitled by me (I) to reassert it.

Pace K&L, by focussing on the normative structure of the interaction between poten-tial interlocutors, rather than an attempt to move from my claim (I) to changes incommunal status (We) via implausible epistemic duties, the sparer route is a more

promising way of capturing the agent-neutrality of the output of declaratives.

4

Second, observatives. K&L do not just isolate observatives, but suggest that a fullerrecognition of such a speech act can contribute to a richer understanding of our

epistemic entitlement to empirical knowledge claims. A thumbnail sketch of theirposition can be had by considering the following diagrammatic representation ofthe process by which we are led to empirical beliefs:

(1) Physical objects !a!(2) Sensings of Sense Contents!b!(3) Non-inferentialbeliefs !c!(4) Inferential Beliefs.8

Common ground amongst most normative neo-Pragmatists, including K&L, wouldinclude the following: the arrow labelled a depicts a causal relation between parti-

culars (1, 2) describable in a non-normative vocabulary; the arrow labelled c depictsa rational relation between conceptually structured states (3, 4) describable in a nor-mative vocabulary; to avoid what Sellars called the myth of the given one has to treat

the arrow labelled b as depicting a causal relation.The main debate regards the identity of (3). For some, we should treat these as

belief states, the mental analogue of declaratives, since nothing can be a reason for a

belief except another belief.9 For K&L, we should replace (3) with observations, themental analogues of observatives, so the sketch should be altered as follows:

(1) Physical objects !a!(2) Sensings of Sense Contents !b!(30)Observations!c!(4) Inferential Beliefs.

Observations stand in rational relations to beliefs, but differ from beliefs in two ways.First, they wear their passivity on their sleeves as it were, since like their linguistic

counterpart they do not declare something but serve to give first-personal recogni-tion of what it is that is observed. Second, although they are conceptually structured,they need not have declaratival content. So, whilst some propositional observations

may be given recognition in observatives (e.g. in the observative: Willard is on themat!), so too may non-propositional observations (e.g. in the observative: Lo, arabbit!), and the temptation to treat the latter as elliptically propositional stems

from tacit adherence to the declarative fallacy, and should be rejected.Their discussion of the second difference is unsatisfying. K&L concede that the two

differences can come apart, so that one could treat observatives as pragmatically

distinct from declaratives, whilst treating all observatives as having propositional

8 Modified from Brandom 1997: 126.

9 Davidson (1986: 310).


content (57). Two reasons are offered for rejecting this compromise. First, the com-

promise requires us to treat the content of an observative such as Lo, a rabbit! as

elliptical, but there is no principled way to fill in the ellipsis from amongst a range of

possible suitable propositions, and the fact that there seems to be no good reasons for

choosing one of these declarative translations over the other strongly suggests that

none of them in fact . . . nails down the import of the original (56). Second, and more

importantly, the elliptical observative is idiomatic as is, and the only reason to treat it

as elliptical is for one to be in the grip of the declarative fallacy. The first reason is

suggestive at best, and the second depends on their being no principled reason for

ascribing propositional content to observatives. Here is one any account of obser-

vatives should be able to explain just which declaratives are licensed and prohibited

by observations. Treating all observatives as having propositional content allows us to

draw on the familiarities of propositional logic in formulating a response; in contrast,

nothing K&L say about the conceptual-yet-not-propositional character of some

observatives as conceived by them allows one to even begin to answer this explana-

tory challenge. (They actually tell us surprisingly little about the conceptual content of

observatives, besides noting that it must involve a concept. Indeed, all their examples

involve distinctive kinds of concepts substance sortals, yet nothing is made of their

role, nor to explain why this is). This is not an argument against K&Ls view but a

request for further clarification, in the absence of which the compromise position is far

more promising.Much time is spent contrasting their position with that of John McDowell in his

Mind and World.10 Transposing K&Ls account of this contrast into the schema used

here, McDowell is worried that (3) in our initial diagram fails to provide sufficient

worldly constraint on beliefs to make these about empirical reality, and thus replaces

(3) with: (300) experiential states. K&L argue that their (30) provides just the kind ofpassivity that McDowell needs, without either the notorious obscurity of his charac-

terization of (30 0) nor the tacit adherence to the declarative fallacy that leads him totreat all experiential states as having propositional content. In recent years, McDowell

has recanted some aspects of his position in Mind and World, including the claim

that experience must have propositionally articulated conceptual content.11 This

would seem to give succor to K&Ls critique here and bring McDowells revised

position close to that advocated by K&L. Comparing the two reveals an important

difference between them that is worth highlighting.In his revised position, McDowell contends that the content of an experiential state

is not like the content of a judgement in that the latter is propositional and the former

is intuitional. Both intuitional and propositional content have a kind of unity, though

the unity differs. Propositional content has a unity that results from the activity of

putting significances together in a judgement, in a manner akin to forming a mean-

ingful utterance. In contrast, intuitional content has a unity which is given, in the sense

of not featuring in the state by being actively put together from separate significances.

Nonetheless, the same capacity whose exercise accounts for the unity in one accounts

for the unity in the other, so that one could not have intuitions if one could not make

judgements and vice versa. In this sense, though experiential content is not

10 McDowell (1994).

11 McDowell (2009).


propositional, it is conceptual, in that both judgements and experiences draw on

rational capacities. Further, the content of an intuition is in a form in which one

could make that content figure in a judgement, so that experiencing entitles us to

certain judgements with related content, such as judgements that actively exploit the

content of an intuition.A central difference between judging and experiencing, for McDowell, is that jud-

ging, but not experiencing, is discursive, and thus the propositional content of a

judgement, and not the intuitional content of an experience, is articulated. One can

use ones discursive abilities to carve out propositional content from the unarticulated

intuitional content, but there can be intuitional content that is not brought to discur-

sive activity, and there may be intuitional content for which one currently lacks the

ability to make it discursively explicit. Treating intuitional content as discursive con-

tent is to over-intellectualize our epistemic lives by ignoring the fact that in much of it

we unreflectively go with the flow.12

Here, then, we have arrived at a basic difference between McDowells revised

account and that of K&L, since even if an observation has conceptual but not pro-

positional content, there is a basic and deliberate sense in which K&L treat the con-

tent as discursive. This is why, for example, they can move freely between talk of a

mental event (an observation) and its spoken correlate (an observative). In contrast,

although experiential event and spoken correlate may be related for McDowell, it

would be overintellectualizing the mental to treat them as interchangeable.Whilst K&L do not pinpoint the source of the declarative fallacy, it is tempting to

trace it to a tendency towards an overintellectualization of the mental: the prominence

accorded the speech act of asserting stems from a conception of our intellectual life as

exhausted by rational activity thought of along the lines of discursive reasoning. For

K&L, the corrective is to provide a much richer account of rational activity that is not

limited to the acts of inferring and asserting. The comparison with McDowells

revised position suggests that, by limiting rational activity to the discursive, this cor-

rective may not be enough to escape the charge of overintellectualization.

5

Third, vocatives. K&L tell us that every vocative plays both an alethic and constative

function. It plays an alethic function since it calls on others to uphold norms that

already bind them prior to the vocatival call. It plays a constative function since it

places a new normative obligation to respond appropriately that was not there prior

to the vocatival call. Consider Yo the minimal hail. This plays an alethic function:

it calls on you to recognize yourself as a potential hailee bound by the norms delineat-

ing appropriate response, and to recognize me as an appropriate hailer on this occa-

sion. This plays a constative function: it creates a new obligation on you to respond to

me. Together, they give you, the one hailed, a new norm to recognize your prior

normative status prior to the addition of this new norm. Yo is a speech act that

isolates the function of mutual recognition; other speech acts can have a vocative

function (alethic plus constative) in addition to other functions they have. Indeed,

12 McDowell (2009: 271).


K&L defend the striking claim that all speech acts have a vocative function, in addi-

tion to their other functions.The idea of holding someone to uphold a norm can sound strange. For K&L, this

differs from informing/reminding them of the norm or giving them a new norm. It

involves making the norm that is already binding inescapable (186), although not in

a sense that is incompatible with the person refusing to perform, which would erad-

icate the gap between what we do and we ought to do that ensures the appropriate-

ness of normative talk to start with. One of their attempts to spell out the relevant

sense of inescapability is this:

When I challenge a hail by denying its appropriateness altogether or by deny-

ing the specificities of what it demands from me I still acknowledge its attempt

to make a claim on me. I treat it as a second-personal speech act that calls for

some acknowledgment out of a range of possible responses from me; given the

nature of norms, contestation and refusal always count as part of this range.

Thus by recognizing the hail as having targeted me, rightly or wrongly, I already

give it an acknowledgment that in an important sense falls within the range of

responses that affirms the correctness of the original recognition. (186)

Suppose someone hails me by saying Yo. The call has not achieved its purpose

simply by getting me to recognize that a call has been made, but for me to express

my first-personal uptake of that recognition. But one way in which I can express my

uptake is to reject or challenge the call. So, rejecting the call, or even actively ignoring

it, is an expression of uptake of that recognition. Once you have recognized the call as

the call it is, it becomes inescapable in the sense that it can only be actively rejected

and not passively ignored.One may suspect that this kind of inescapability is a kind of trick (like a poster

emblazoned with the words dont read this), or at least limited to the relatively

minimal normative demands of the hail and not sufficient to hold anyone to reason

in some more demanding sense. Consider K&Ls contrast between an alethic

imperative (Please get off my foot) and a prescriptive (You ought to get off

my foot). In the former, I use my position as the one trampled to hold you to a

norm you have anyway, whilst in the latter I direct your attention to that same

norm but allow the norm itself do the work (109). It is the vocatival dimension of

the speech act in the former case that is central to achieving this holding function.

I call on you not merely to comply or just to acknowledge the call, but also to

acknowledge its propriety to acknowledge that the call appropriately picks

you out as the one standing on my foot; that I am entitled to make such a call in

virtue of being the one whose foot you are standing on; and that an appropriate

response to such a call is to remove your foot. Here, however, it is far less clear

that the fuller acknowledgment called for is inescapable in the same way that

acknowledgement of the narrower vocatival call is. That is, the very recognition of

the vocatival call involves a degree of recognition of the vocative in a way in which

the very recognition of the imperatival call does not, even if the imperative also

functions as a vocative.

Here is another way of making the point. The gloss given above to the notion of

holding someone to a norm is that of being able to draw another into active intellec-

tual engagement with a target norm, so that whatever response is given is an active


response (even if its a rejection of the norm itself). This strikes me as a genuine and

intriguing sense in which we can, and do, hold others to norms. If this is what K&L

intend by the idea of holding, however, then the mere fact that any speech act can also

play a vocatival function in addition to whatever other function it can play is insuf-

ficient to allow the act to achieve the holding function. The reason is that the holding

relation thus conceived requires the removal of any possible gap between recognition

of the vocatival call and intellectually engaging with the requisite norm; K&Ls

account appears to leave open the possibility of such a gap.

6

Talk of the space of reasons is highly suggestive. On one simple reading, it aims to saysomething about the structure of semantic norms; perhaps that such norms are best

thought of in terms of inferential relations between propositions. Talk of individuals

inhabiting and negotiating the space of reasons is little more than a further, and not

too precise, extension of the metaphor from the core realm of semantics to the realm

of pragmatics. To say that someone is inside the space is, on this understanding,

perhaps to say that their performances are subject to a kind of explanation that

essentially makes reference to semantic norms broadly conceived, but nothing more

than that.For K&L, in contrast, the metaphor has its primary application in the pragmatic

realm. Persons inhabit the space of reasons: they occupy unique positions in the space

from which they are able to pragmatically negotiate it make and assess claims,

challenge and hold others to reasons, and so on. To say they occupy a position in

this manner is to say that the person has a first personal grasp of their normative

status as theirs, as well as able to mark the directedness of speech by addressing others

and capable of being addressed by them. To do this requires speech acts such as

observatives and vocatives. The essential role played by first and second-personal

addressed acts in constituting the space thus goes missing on a conception of prag-

matic space based solely on the agent-neutral declaratives.Let us mark this distinction between the spatial metaphor when primarily applied

to semantics and when primarily applied to pragmatics by distinguishing talk of the

space of reasons from talk of the space of reasoning. In this sense, K&L have provided

a far richer topography of the space of reasoning than is typical amongst neo-

Pragmatists. What does this imply about the topography of the space of reasons?

Three options present themselves:

(i) Enriching the topography of the space of reasoning beyond the declarative has

minimal impact on the topography of the space of reasons.

(ii) Enriching the topography of the space of reasoning beyond the declarative

substantively alters the topography of the space of reasons.

(iii) We should reject this bifurcation of spaces, and proffer a unified sense of the

notion of the space of reasons shorn of adherence to the declaratival fallacy.

It is surprising that Yo and Lo provides, as far as I can see, no clear response to thisquestion. This may seem unfair, given an Appendix to the book that provides a

preliminary development of a scorekeeping semantics with the broader field of

vision that is opened up when we eschew the declarative fallacy. . . (217). Given


their claim that the formal pragmatic back-story provided in the Appendix is com-

patible with a variety of semantic theories, including that proffered by those accused

throughout the book of committing the declaratival fallacy, it would seem that K&L

endorse (i). This would be too quick, however, since the Appendix operates from the

perspective of a theorist describing a linguistic practice from an impersonal, outsiders

stance (218). This is a deliberate move away from offering a view of semantics from

the irreducibly first-personal and voiced position of one inhabiting the space of rea-

soning, and it thus unsurprising that the semantics that the Appendix aims to make

contact with is one that shares the same topography of the space of reasons as those

accused of the declaratival fallacy.The neo-Pragmatist can allow for a certain degree of autonomy of semantics from

pragmatics, although it would be surprising if the abandonment of the primacy of the

declarative at the pragmatic level left semantics untouched. K&L imply that this is not

the case at various junctures in the book, such as by noting the interrelatedness

between the declaratival fallacy and the presumption that something analogous to

propositional logic is the only inferential game in town (58). If so, option (i) is

unlikely. Little, however, is said to help us understand options (ii) and (iii), let

alone adjudicate between them.K&L accord explanatory primacy to pragmatics over semantics; complain that the

philosophical preference for issues of semantics over pragmatics is reflective of a

declarativist bias; and declare their desire to remain agnostic on the precise relation-

ship between the two. Fair enough. None of this means that the normative neo-

Pragmatist should ignore the latter once an appropriate pragmatic space is sketched,

nor that this is desirable for the theorist aspiring to take talk of the space of reasons

seriously.

7

One ive that does not feature in the book comes to mind in characterizing it: Yo andLo is provocative in all the best senses of that term. It is highly original, and written inan engaging and suggestive style that cannot but produce a rich array of further

thoughts, questions, insights and feelings of delight in the reader, and probably a

good measure of disagreement, bewilderment and sheer frustration on occasion

too. To use the term seminal about a just published work as one of the editorial

reviews on the books cover does is a prediction about likely future use of the work,

one that may well prove to be correct. This novel framework for thinking

about normative pragmatics promises to yield important philosophical results in all

sorts of unforeseen areas, such that a project of refining, modifying and further

developing and applying these ideas suggests itself as a worthwhile and exciting

undertaking.13

University of Cape TownRondebosch 7701, Cape Town

South [email protected]

13 Thanks to Rebecca Kukla, Mark Lance, Jack Ritchie, Leo Townsend and Bernhard Weissfor discussion of an earlier draft.


References

Brandom, R. 1994. Making It Explicit. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Brandom, R. 1997. Study Guide to Empiricism and Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.

Brandom, R. 2000. Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.

Davidson, D. 1986. A coherence theory of truth and knowledge. In: Truth andInterpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, ed. E. LePore.Oxford: Blackwell.

MacFarlane, J. Forthcoming. Pragmatism and inferentialism. In Reading Brandom: OnMaking It Explicit, eds J. Wanderer and B. Weiss. London: Routledge.

McDowell, J. 1994. Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

McDowell, J. 2009. Avoiding the myth of the given. In: Having the World In View.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Strawson, P. F. 2004. Logico-linguistic Papers (new edn.). Aldershot: Ashgate.

Wanderer, J. 2008. Robert Brandom. Chesham: Acumen.


inhabiting the space of reasons

Documents