Sebastian Schmoranzer, Ansgar Seide
“Making It Explicit” is a book on semantics. Nonetheless, Robert Brandom spends a significant part of it discussing our practice of knowledge ascription and the nature of epistemic entitlement – the kind of entitlement that is necessary for knowledge. Therefore, we are interested in finding out what concept of empirical knowledge Brandom is implicitly or explicitly defending.
We think that Brandom’s remarks commit him to the thesis that knowledge is justified true belief and that the only kind of empirical justification there is externalist.
In order to show this we will proceed in two steps: Firstly, we will argue that Brandom is holding a traditional view on knowledge as justified true belief. Secondly, we shall try to show that there is no room for internal justification in Brandom’s conception of epistemic entitlement.
Having defended our claim we will finally come to the conclusion that
Brandom has no answer to second-order scepticism and that there is no difference between default entitlement and all things considered entitlement.
I
On reading Brandom’s epistemological remarks in “Making it Explicit”, one quickly realizes that he is not so much talking about knowledge as about our practices of knowledge ascription. His main interest consists in answering the question what we are doing whenever we attribute knowledge to someone.
Trying to replace the usual semantic vocabulary, Brandom describes the case

2 Sebastian Schmoranzer, Ansgar Seide of knowledge ascriptions as follows: If I say that Jim knows that vultures are scavengers I first of all treat Jim as committing himself to that claim and thereby make him responsible for it. Secondly, I treat Jim as being entitled to it. This means that I accord his claim a certain authority. And finally, I agree with Jim’s judgement and undertake a correspondent commitment myself, which means that I believe that vultures are scavengers myself.
So far, this way of telling the story seems to be compatible with the traditional conception of knowledge. Brandom’s observations could be interpreted as follows: Jim knows that vultures are scavengers if and only if my ascription was correct in the following sense: Jim actually commits himself to that claim, he is in fact entitled to it and my own commitment is correct as well, i.e. vultures are in fact scavengers. Retranslating this into the usual vocabulary we have a traditional definition of knowledge as justified true belief.
Nonetheless, one might wonder whether Brandom is telling an old story in new words or whether he has something different in mind. Maybe Brandom isn’t only translating the old definition into his vocabulary but tries to change it by first talking about ascriptions of knowledge in pragmatical terms and then defining knowledge in terms of knowledge ascriptions.
However, this would lead to an implausible position. For in that case
Brandom would have to defend something like the following definition: A person S knows something if and only if someone attributes knowledge to her. But attributions of knowledge are neither sufficient nor necessary for knowledge.
Knowledge is factive. Jim cannot know that polar bears are brown if they aren’t. Therefore, even if someone attributes knowledge to Jim, shares his view on polar bears and thinks that Jim is right committing himself to that claim Jim still does not know that polar bears are brown.
Modifying the definition by saying that Jim knows that p if all or all rele-
vant members of the speech community treat him as knowing that p is implausible as well. As Brandom readily agrees, we could all think that polar bears are brown and still be wrong.
1 Therefore, even if all of us accord knowledge to Jim he still doesn’t know that polar bears are brown.
1 Brandom (1994), chapt. 8.

Brandom on Knowledge and Entitlement 3
Maybe it is at least necessary that someone attribute knowledge to the epistemic subject for her to have knowledge. At least sometimes Brandom seems to defend this view:
Just as the truth condition on knowledge requires that the attributor of knowledge undertake, as well as attribute, commitment to the content of the knowledge claim, so satisfying the entitlement condition by mere reliability requires that the attributor of knowledge undertake (but not necessarily attribute) commitment to the propriety of the reliability inference.
2 (Our emphasis)
Taken literally that cannot be quite right. Poor Jim is lost in the desert and sees vultures flying around. He believes that there are vultures and is justified in doing so because he sees them and his judgement is in fact reliable. But Jim himself is not quite sure whether his judgement is to be trusted given the unfavourable conditions. In this case no one – not even Jim himself – attributes knowledge to him. Still, Jim knows that there are vultures. He would be completely justified in directing his actions on the basis of the corresponding belief.
Now, that knowledge does not presuppose knowledge attributions can be obscured by the view that knowledge presupposes reliability and that reliability in turn is a context-sensitive concept.
In Goldman’s famous barn façade example 3 someone –call him Peter– is in barn-façade-county. There are 99 barn façades and one real barn. Looking at the real barn Peter comes to believe that there is a barn. Is his belief the result of a reliable belief-forming mechanism? Asked this way the question cannot be answered because there is no reliability simpliciter.
If we define reliability along the success rate Peter’s belief-forming method would have in the whole country with 10.000 real barns and 99 trompes l’œil it is reliable. If we define it along the success rate Peter’s method would have in barn-façade-county, instead, it is not reliable. Reliability is always relative to a given reference class. But it would be a mistake to think
2 Brandom (1994), 221.
3 Goldman (1976).

4 Sebastian Schmoranzer, Ansgar Seide that there is only one legitimate reference class relative to which reliability is to be defined. Which reference class is to be taken into account seems to depend on the interests and purposes of those who evaluate Peter’s judgement.
For this reason reliability and thereby knowledge seems to be attributorrelative.
We have to be careful here, however. The foregoing considerations do not imply that someone actually has to attribute knowledge to the epistemic subject for the subject to have knowledge. In our example Jim knows that there are vultures relative to ordinary standards of reliability even if no one in
fact attributes knowledge to him.
We can therefore conclude that Brandom is best interpreted as holding a traditional view on knowledge.
II
The question now is what kind of epistemic entitlement respectively what kind of epistemic justification is available to us. One has to distinguish two kinds of epistemic justification: external justification and internal justification.
A belief is epistemically justified if and only if someone is justified to accept the belief relative to the maxim of increasing the number of true beliefs and keeping the number of wrong beliefs as low as possible.
A belief that p is internally justified for someone if and only if there are accessible epistemic reasons for the subject that justify the subject’s belief.
A belief that p is externally justified if and only if the circumstances of belief-acquisition are favourable to forming true beliefs of that kind; regardless of whether the subject is aware of it.
We think that Brandom is committed to pure externalism in the sense that if a belief is epistemically justified it is so non-internally - solely externally that is. Why is Brandom committed to this view? Here is our argument:
According to Brandom all entitlement of empirical claims is based on beliefs that qualify as entitled by default.

Brandom on Knowledge and Entitlement 5
Beliefs that are epistemically entitled by default are only externally justified.
If all entitlement is based on solely externally justified beliefs all beliefs are only externally justified.
________________________________________________________
All our epistemically justified empirical beliefs are externally justified.
(1) According to Brandom, there are three ways in which one can be entitled to a knowledge claim: one can be entitled inferentially, deferentially or by default.
One can justify the claim by giving reasons for it. Secondly, one can appeal
to the authority of another asserter: By referring to someone else’s testimony, I
“pick up the justificatory check” 4 of the original asserter. In those cases, however, a regress threatens: Giving reasons for a claim consists in making other claims that stand in need of justification as well. Appealing to the authority of another asserter merely puts off the question, because the authority of the original asserter can be called into question in turn.
To face this well-known regress problem, Brandom presents a model he calls the default and challenge structure of entitlement.
5 The underlying idea is that the regress problem arises from the questionable premise that entitlement can only be attributed if it has been demonstrated. When we realize that entitlement is a status we can have by default, i.e. that we can be entitled to certain claims without having demonstrated our entitlement, the regress problem dissolves. Such default entitlements are not immune to criticism and can be brought into question, but challenges have no privileged status: Challenges are themselves treated as assertions, namely as assertions that are incompatible with the challenged claim, so “their entitlement is on the table along with that of what they challenge.” 6
All entitlement, therefore, eventually goes back to default entitlement.
No commitment either inferentially or deferentially justified is justified unless it is based on a default entitlement.
4 Brandom (1994), 175.
5 Brandom (1994), 177.
6 Brandom (1994), 178.

6 Sebastian Schmoranzer, Ansgar Seide
(2) According to Brandom, there are two sorts of entitlements that qualify as default entitlements. The first sort are certain sentence types that are treated as “free moves” by the members of a speech community, for example “Red is a color” or “There have been black dogs”. These sentence types qualify as prima
facie justified first premises just because they are nearly trivial commonplaces.
The second sort are observational or noninferential reports. A noninferential report is treated by an attributor as a claim the reporter is entitled to just in case the attributor takes the reporter to be a reliable observer under the observing conditions.
7
An important question arises concerning the nature of default entitlement. Default entitlements can be understood in two ways: They can be thought of as social statuses, i.e. as statuses attributed by community members to other members of the community. The other possibilty is to understand them as an entitlement someone has because she in fact came to her belief in a way that confers a positive epistemic status on her belief, for example by a reliable belief forming mechanism. With this question in mind we can now take a look at the two sorts of default entitlement.
Brandom does not say much about “free moves”, but it seems that he takes them to be governed by the community. After listing a few examples,
Brandom tells us:
These are treated as “free moves” by the members of our speech community—they are available to just about anyone any time to use as premises, to assert unchallenged.
8
So it seems that “free moves” are justified because they are accepted in my speech community. The important point now is that there seems to be no reason to count this community-governed sort of entitlement as a form of ep-
istemic entitlement: The fact by itself that I can assert some sentences without being challenged by members of my community neither gives me a hint to the
truth of my claim nor does it follow that I formed my belief in a reliable way.
7 Brandom (1994), 222.
8 Brandom (1994), 222.

Brandom on Knowledge and Entitlement 7
At this point one might object: “If everyone agrees with me that p isn’t it very unlikely that they are all wrong? And if so, do I not thereby have a reason to accept that p?”
Two questions are worth distinguishing here: Firstly, is it a reliable beliefforming method to accept what all accept because they accept it? Secondly, do I have a reason to accept what all accept just because they accept it?
As to the first question, it is to be observed that there is no definite answer. In case we are all hooked off from reality it would be a rather unreliable way to form one’s beliefs.
As to the second question, one has to admit that I have no reason to follow the other persons’ opinions unless I have a reason to believe that we are not all wrong.
The question concerning the nature of the default entitlement of noninferential reports cannot be answered as easily. Does their status stem from the fact that they are treated as reliable or from the fact that they are reliable?
Brandom is not clear on this issue. On the one hand he writes:
Noninferential reports can function as unjustified justifiers: claimings that are treated as having a defeasible default status.
9
Brandom seems to suggest that we can base our justifications on beliefs that are accepted as unjustified justifiers by our speech community. But, on the other hand, only a few sentences later he adds:
Noninferential reports [...] have their default entitlement status as a result of the way in which the report tokening [...] is elicited through the exercise of a reliable differential responsive disposition.
10
This seems to suggest that justified noninferential reports are entitled by default because the reporter is in fact reliable.
Let us examine both possibilities in turn. If I am allowed to base my claims on noninferential beliefs because they are accepted as unjustified justifi-
9 Brandom (1994), 222.
10 Brandom (1994), 222.

8 Sebastian Schmoranzer, Ansgar Seide ers by the members of my speech community, again the question arises why this form of entitlement-conferring practice can be seen as constituting epis-
temic entitlement. That I am treated as a reliable reporter gives me no epistemic right to believe something.
If, on the other hand, a noninferential reporter is entitled to his claim by default because he is in fact a reliable reporter concerning the sort of matters reported, the default entitlement of my noninferential report is externalist.
Therefore, the only kind of epistemic default justification there is is external justification.
(3) What consequences does this have for the beliefs that are deferentially or inferentially justified?
These are cases in which entitlement can be inherited but not produced.
11 This can easily be explained when one considers the case of inferential justification.
A belief is inferentially justified if it is defended on the basis of other justified claims standing in an inferential relation to the belief in question. The justification for the premises is thereby conferred on the conclusion. But one can only confer what is already there, as it were. If one of the premises is externally justified so is the conclusion. The reason to hold the conclusion is not accessible to the epistemic subject if the reason for one of the premises is inaccessible.
Consider the following case: In his youth Jim was trained to identify vultures. Unfortunately, he forgot about that. He has no idea that he is a reliable reporter of vultures. He sees one and claims: “That is a scavenger”. Asked how he knows this he answers: “That is a vulture. Vultures are scavengers.
Therefore, that is a scavenger.” His belief is inferentially justified. The conclusion is correctly inferred from justified premises. But it is not internally justified since he has no idea why it should be true. And this is so because he neither has a reason to consider himself a reliable reporter of vultures nor can he refer to distinguishing marks.
This observation should give us a pause when we read that Brandom wants to defend a middle position between justificatory internalism and relia-
11 Brandom (1994), 176.

Brandom on Knowledge and Entitlement 9 bilist externalism.
12 In “Insights and Blindspots of Reliabilism” 13 he holds the view that sometimes an epistemic subject can be justified without being able to give reasons for her belief as long as she is in fact a reliable reporter. This is what Brandom calls the “Founding Insight of Reliabilism”.
Against a radical form of reliabilism Brandom argues convincingly that this insight notwithstanding there are no noninferentially justified beliefs without there being inferentially justified beliefs. This is what he describes as the “Conceptual Blindspot of Reliabilism”. Brandom’s argument is elegantly brief: In order to hold a belief one has to understand the proposition believed. This in turn requires linguistic competence. One does not understand the term “polar bear” if one does not know that polar bears are white furry animals. Therefore, if one is noninferentially justified in believing that there is a polar bear on the hill one has to know in addition that polar bears are white furry animals. And both claims together – given that justification is closed under known entailment – inferentially justify the belief that there is a white furry animal.
14
We agree with Brandom on this point. But that does not show that he is holding a middle position between externalism and internalism. One would have to presuppose that inferentially justified beliefs are thereby internally justified. That this is wrong has been shown above. All Brandom has shown is that he holds an intermediate position between epistemic inferentialism and epistemic noninferentialism. This is compatible with our conclusion that all beliefs – if justified – are externally justified only.
III
What if we are right and the only plausible conception of epistemic entitlement to be found in Brandom is purely externalist?
One worry that immediately comes to mind is second order scepticism.
In a way pure externalists have an easy answer to the sceptical challenge. According to them knowledge only presupposes external justification. Now, nei-
12 Brandom (1994), 217.
13 Brandom (2000), chap. 3.
14 Brandom (2000), 97-110.

10 Sebastian Schmoranzer, Ansgar Seide ther the sceptic nor we can tell whether we are reliable reporters of truth.
Therefore the sceptical thesis that we don’t have knowledge because we are never externally justified cannot be defended. Unfortunately, the thesis that we do have knowledge cannot be defended either because we don’t have any internal reason to believe that we are reliable reporters of truth and therefore qualify as knowers. So scepticism triumphs at second order.
Another consequence would be that the concept of default entitlement is of no use in Brandom’s epistemology.
15 The idea is that a belief is justified by default if it is prima facie justified but that it can lose that status and not be all things considered justified. This means that, after reasonable doubts are on the table, the belief in question loses its positive justificatory status unless it can be defended by further arguments.
But if all justified beliefs are externally justified that can never happen.
Let us suppose that I hold the noninferentially justified belief that there is a vulture sitting on the tree. If it is justified it is so in virtue of the reliability of my belief-forming mechanism. But this would still be the case after a usually trustworthy person challenges my claim by saying that I am not to be trusted on that matter. If my belief was reliable before it will remain so thereafter.
And my reply “Well, I was raised with vultures” wouldn’t change anything either because the positive justificatory status of my original belief solely consists in its being reliable. The distinction between default entitlement and all things considered justification is an empty one once justification is a purely external matter.
IV
It is time to look back. We have tried to show that Brandom is best interpreted as holding a traditional view on knowledge that should be qualified as externalist because the only notion of epistemic entitlement plausibly maintained is that of external justification.
Unfortunately, a solely externalist conception of justification makes the dialectical tool of default entitlement epistemically useless and it leaves us with the problem of second order scepticism.
15 Although it might still be useful for his semantics.

Brandom on Knowledge and Entitlement 11
So Brandom ends up defending a well known epistemological position facing the same old and notorious problems.
However, his new perspective on the old stories provokes a fruitful rethinking of the relation between knowledge and knowledge ascription or between inferentialsm and noninferentialism on the one hand and internalism and externalism on the other. Furthermore, it is worth thinking about adapting his default and challenge structure of entitlement within an internalist framework.
Therefore, even if “Making It Explicit” is, first of all, a book on semantics, it is a valuable contribution to epistemology as well.
R EFERENCES
Brandom, Robert (1994): Making It Explicit, Cambridge.
Brandom, Robert (2000): Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism,
Cambridge.
Goldman, Alvin (1976): „Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge“, in:
Journal of Philosophy, 73, 771-791.