Week Three Questions:
With regard to Wittgenstein‘s challenges of the regulist account about norms as explicit rules in
the regress-of-rules argument it is maintained in chapter one, on several occasions (cf. for
instance MiE, pp. 45 & 65), that we have to draw on implicit norms in order to be able to
account for the normativity involved in our linguistic and intentional practices –– that we should
follow Wittgenstein‘s pragmatism in that „grasping a rule without interpreting it is grasping it in
practice“ (MiE, p. 65). A related claim of this pragmatist approach seems to be that the norms
implicit in our practices „precede and are presupposed by their explicit formulations“ (MiE, p.
21). Now, what I am wondering about in this context is twofold: first, in what sense do implicit
norms precede their explicit formulations, in what sense are they presupposed by the
latter? Since we can make these norms that are implicit in our practices explicit, implicit norms
seem to be capable of being conceptually articulated; but are implicit norms, then, not on a par
with norms as explicit rules? Wouldn't it make more sense to say, instead of thinking of the
relation between them in terms of precedence and in terms of an one-sided presupposition, that
they are presupposing each other?
This leads to my second question: how should we understand implicit norms in relation to our
mastery of a language and our ability to use concepts? Are norms implicit in practices, i.e. as
long as they are not yet made explicit, something extra-conceptual, something nonlinguistic? –– Or in a related sense: Is grasping a rule in practice an activity not presupposing
linguistic competence, an activity not presupposing concept-use?
Florian Rieger
Brandom speaks at times of his so-called ‘explanatory’ strategy or
enterprise. One aspect of this enterprise seems to be to explain
intentional phenomena in normative terms. However, following Rodl, it is
clear that the normative terms Brandom appeals to – taking to be correct,
ascriptions and undertakings of commitments etc. – cannot simply be a
(perhaps slight) regimentation of the normative terms we already
understand, since the usage of such normative terminology already requires
an understanding of propositional contents and intentional phenomena, and
so cannot be used to explain them. Perhaps, then, Brandom may merely be
explicating intentional phenomena in normative terms we already understand.
The skeleton of the explication would consist in *saying* what it is we
have to *do* in order to *say* anything at all. But, assuming that the
only reason for appealing to normative terms was to provide an explanation
of intentional phenomena in terms of a more basic vocabulary, we now find
ourselves free to take up Brandom’s skeleton, and give it flesh by
appealing to the features that practitioners of a language use in
describing their own discursive practice, i.e., the terminology of
intentional states and propositional contents. We can make a start with:
Mary understands what Tom said because Mary is able to speak English, and
Mary heard what it is that Tom said. That counts as *saying* what one must
*do* in order to *say* anything at all. A ‘theory’ marked by such modest
beginnings would, I suspect, be much too modest for Brandom, but I would
like to know why it is too modest. Why should we appeal to normative
vocabulary if it is not being used to give a full-blooded explanation?
Best regards,
Shivam Patel
In Making it Explicit you say that “the distinction between facts and norms is
itself not a factual but a normative difference”. I see two possible ways of
interpreting this claim: (1) that which distinguishes a fact from a norm is the
difference in the norms by which they are governed or (2) the very process of
distinguishing between what counts as a fact versus a norm is itself normative.
In the first case, only a norm will involve adopting a practical attitude. Here the
distinction between a fact and a norm is the distinction between following a rule
and following a conception of a rule. For example, within the realm of nature,
entities are governed by the laws of nature which hold irrespective of our
acknowledging them as laws. We could not take claims derived from the laws of nature
(such as acceleration is equal to the net force divided by mass) to be normative in
the sense that they require our acknowledging them as binding. This distinction
(between the type of rule) points to a factual distinction, albeit a factual
distinction whose content deals with norms.
In the second case, both fact and norm will involve adopting a practical attitude or
taking up a particular stance. It seems to follow, under this interpretation, that
the distinction between x being a fact and y being a norm is a deontic distinction
rather than an alethic distinction as (1) may suggest. Dennett seems to hold (2)
since “for Dennett the difference between physical systems and intentional systems
is itself a normative difference, a matter of the propriety of adopting different
explanatory-predictive stances”. Kant at times seems to agree with (2) as well,
depending on how we think of his phenomenal/noumenal distinction.
Laura Davis
Are the considerations given between 1:III:5 and 1:IV:4 (especially,
middle of p. 28, bottom of p.36, and pp.41-42), meant to rule out
naturalism about norms all together? Or is the point that a naturalist
theory of norms would have to be significantly more sophisticated than a
simple regularist theory (even regularist theories with the help of
reinforcement, sanctions, community, etc.), in particular, sophisticated
enough to get around the gerrymandering problem? Do you think that there
are prospects for naturalism about norms; and does the answer to that
question bear on the Emergence Question of how became discursive creatures?
Chuck Goldhaber
1. On page 23 Brandom writes: “Knowing how to do something is a matter of practical
ability. To know how is just to be reliably able. Thus one knows how to ride a bicycle,
apply a concept, draw an inference, and so on just in can one can discriminate in one’s
practice, in the performances one produces and assesses, between correct and incorrect
ways of doing these things.”
But there seems to be a difference between the bicycle riding case and the others, for one
can know how to assess a case of bicycle riding without one being able to produce for
oneself a case of bicycle riding, but it doesn’t seem one can assess the application of a
concept or the drawing of an inference except insofar as one can also produce them as
well. Is this difference important? Does it say something about the character of the
know how involved in concept-use?
2. One of the central distinctions Brandom draws in this chapter is between the
causal/functional account of the norms that govern conceptual activity and the
normative/functional account. This contrast is set up in Part II (pp.7-18) and reappears in
the discussion of regularity-based accounts of normative practices in III: 5 (pp.26-30) and
IV: 3-4 (pp.34-42). As Brandom sets up the contrast, causal/functional stories try to
reduce norm-governed practice to dispositional regularities (see especially the use of
‘consists in’ and ‘in terms of’ talk at pp.38-41). His central objection to this approach is
that it falls victim to accusations of gerrymandering—any regularity can be made out to
conform to an infinite number of norms, and so it does not underwrite the propriety of
assessments needed to make sense of the rule-governed behavior that Brandom takes as
his explanatory target. On p.17 Brandom writes “Talk of what is a reason for what has to
do in the first instance not with how people do or would act but with how they should act,
what they should acknowledge.” But need we think that the distinction between
nonmodal subjunctives and modal assessments are jointly exhaustive? Might there be a
way of marrying them?
And need all views that emphasize regularity be seen as attempts to reduce talk of normgoverned behavior to reliable dispositional responses? After all, it is plausible that the
regularities of a thing’s reliable differential responsive dispositions to various stimuli are
a condition on our being warranted in recognizing it as thinking, intending, etc.
Brandom seems to leave room for something like this when he notes on p.46 that
regularity in disposition is a necessary condition on rule-governed practice. But there
might be more that can be said in favor of incorporating regularity in one’s account of
conceptual activity. Peirce, for instance, came to think that the ‘ultimate logical
interpretant’ of a sign was the habit that sign evoked in an interpreter—paradigmatically,
in the nervous system dispositions to respond to various stimuli with corresponding
responses. One needn’t think that such habits give a reductive analysis of meaning—for
Peirce also wrote that the ultimate logical interpretant was a conditional sentence with a
hypothetical antecedent; that is, a subjunctive. Perhaps, then, meaning involves both
what can be expressed in the formal mode by normative subjunctives, talk of what
would be appropriate, and what can be expressed in the material mode by reference
to dispositions, talk of how a thing would behave simpliciter. Such an approach might
be motivating Sellars when he says that “the mode of existence of a rule is as a
generalization written in flesh and blood, or nerve and sinew, rather than in pen and ink,”
which in footnote 35 Brandom cautions is ‘dangerous’ for its flirtation with regularism.
Once we reject the suggestion that regularism is a reduction of the normative to regularity
in disposition, might we be free to emphasize the role that regularity in disposition plays
in our being warranted as recognizing a thing as engaging in conceptual activity, and in
so doing marry a subjunctive treatment of the regularity of dispositions with a normative
account of the role those dispositions play in our being warranted in recognizing
something as one of us?
Might there instead be a middle road between talk of regularity as a reduction and a
rejection of regularity-talk as reductive? Brandom
Preston Stovall
The question I have for you involves a quote of Wittgenstein's, on page
23.
He says: "Compare knowing and saying: how many feet high Mont Blanc is
-- how the word 'game' is used -- how a clarinet sounds. If you are
surprised that one can know something and not be able to say it, you are
perhaps thinking of a case like the first. Certainly not like the third."
And, related to that you bring up a distinction between knowing-how and
knowing-that: Explicit knowing-that corresponding to implicit know-how is
a theoretical formulation ... of that practical ability ... that /says/
what's correct and what not.
In the first case, how high Mont Blanc is, if I haven't climbed it my
knowing could only extend so far as a hollow fact I've heard; and even if
I have climbed it, and known-how every foot /felt/, I'd have to take
another's word for how many feet high it was. Further, I'd certainly not
know how to /say/ that. So say I had climbed it and measured it. Insofar
as I cannot formulate a rule for why this is so, besides "measure it as I
have", then I cannot say anything. But knowing-that means what? Getting
a final number at the end of this exercise? Which equates to what else
besides my experience of measuring? If someone else climbs it and
measures differently (in the plainest terms as where he plants
'measuring-stakes' for example), what do we know that is the same? Even
if we were to end with the same relation as a result.
As for the clarinet, I know-how it should sound by my having heard it
played correctly. But as a sound itself I don't have the know-how to
relativize it in words -- I cannot be any bit clearer in my knowing with
phrases such as "like other woodwinds"; my knowing-how is isolated. In
saying how it sounds, all I can say is that the notes of some scale come
out when the instrument is blown in such-and-such a way. But my /saying/
that demands it /is/ played correctly -- properly blown through the reed,
et cetera.
Both cases seem to come down to this: apply this scale-relation to this
(correctly done, implied) action.
Could you explore the differences in these cases?
- Jacquet Kehm
My question concerns the gerrymandering argument in pp. 28-9. I’m not sure
what the special distinction between regularities and implicit norms is
such that regularities fall prey to this objection while implicit norms do
not. Aren’t the norms I happen to take up, and perhaps formulate into
explicit deontic rules, just some of the many possible norms I could have
taken to be implicit in our practices? I take it that the distinction is
that it will only be *one* of those possible norms that *is* the one the
one embodied in the practices, that there is some fact of the matter about
the situation, and a regularity thesis cannot explain that. I wonder,
however, if a regularity theorist has an advantage here, because it is open
to him to say that regularities can be made explicit in the form of
counterfactuals, employing the tools of alethic modality, rather than
deontic modality, and thereby “cut out” just the regularities he wants.
Billy Eck
In your pursuit of the pragmatist explanation
of norms, you seem to seek a way to simultaneously satisfy two desiderata,
which at first glance seems to be in a sort of tension with each other.
You claim that (1) the normative status (i.e., correctness) of a
performance is instituted by our normative attitudes toward it
(i.e, assessing it as correct), which is in turn understood, avoiding the
regress problem, in terms of our practice of sanctioning. On the other
hand, however, you also claim that (2) the normative attitudes do not
simply determine the normative status. This second claim is required
for the gap essential for the concept of norm to be secured, namely, the
gap between being correct and merely seeming to be correct. Then, how can
these two claims be put together? Your answer seems to go: The correct /
wrong performance is what the correct assessment positively /
negatively sanctions when one does it.
If my summary above is
correct, I have two interrelated questions about your position:
(1) According to your position, in order to institute the
full-fledged norm equipped with the essential gap between being correct
and seeming to be correct, it is required that the
norm-instituting-assessment by itself can also be correct or wrong, and
therefore a target of meta-assessment. This in turn requires that
the assessors have a concept of assessment at least in some form.
But it seems possible for some lower animals to just take part in an
assessment practice (in the minimal, Haugeland's sense) without having any
concept of assessment. If that is possible, can those animals be counted
as instituting a genuine norm, or a merely quasi norm?
(2) At
least apparently, we can imagine a primitive, non-linguistic
conception of assessment -- for example, a primitive RDRD with respect to
assessing behaviors of one's fellows. But if so, it seems to entail that
some type of full-fledged norm can be instituted without resort to
any linguistic ability. Is that really possible?
Shuehei Shimamura