Robert Brandom
University of Pittsburgh, Philosophy, Faculty Member
- Philosophy Of Language, Pragmatism, German Idealism, Inferentialism, Wilfrid Sellars and post-Sellarsian philosophy, Analytic Philosophy, and 13 moreAmerican Philosophy, Philosophy of Logic, History of Analytic Philosophy, Robert Brandom, Wilfrid Sellars, Hegel, Immanuel Kant, Logic, Normativity, Gottlob Frege, Modal Logic, Modality, and Philosophical Logicedit
- See www.pitt.edu/~rbrandom [ends (tilde)rbrandom] for video, interviews, and more papers. See also my Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbRgL2k8iQ8Sj_sG7wUg7Sgedit
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A study in non-standard possible-world semantics and ontology.
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During the last decade of his life, Rorty emphasized the anti-authoritarian credentials of his pragmatism. He came to see pragmatism as the fighting faith of a second phase of the Enlightenment. The first stage, as Rorty construed it,... more
During the last decade of his life, Rorty emphasized the anti-authoritarian credentials of his pragmatism. He came to see pragmatism as the fighting faith of a second phase of the Enlightenment. The first stage, as Rorty construed it, concerns our emancipation from nonhuman authority in practical matters: issues of what we ought to do and how things ought to be. The envisaged second stage addresses rather our emancipation from nonhuman authority in theoretical matters. Pragmatism moves beyond the traditional model of reality as authoritative over our cognitive representations of it in language and thought to a new conception of how discursive practices help us cope with the vicissitudes of life. Hegel anticipates the challenge to the very idea of objective reality as providing norms for thought that Rorty thought required us to enact a second phase of the Enlightenment. Unlike Rorty, Hegel presents a detailed, constructive, anti-authoritarian, nonfetishistic, social pragmatist account of the representational dimension of conceptual content. At its heart is an account of the social dimension of discursive normativity in terms of reciprocal recognition, and an account of the historical dimension of discursive normativity in terms of a distinctive new conception of reason: the recollective rationality that turns a past into a tradition. His idealism thereby offers a concrete pragmatist alternative to Rorty’s global semantic and epistemological anti-representationalism.
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Classical American pragmatism can be viewed as a minor, parochial philosophical movement that was theoretically derivative and practically and politically inconsequential. From this point of view—roughly that of Bertrand Russell and... more
Classical American pragmatism can be viewed as a minor, parochial philosophical movement that was theoretically derivative and practically and politically inconsequential. From this point of view—roughly that of Bertrand Russell and Martin Heidegger (Mandarins speaking for two quite different philosophical cultures)—it is an American echo, in the last part of the nineteenth century, of the British utilitarianism of the first part. What is echoed is a crass shopkeeper’s sensibility that sees everything through the reductive lenses of comparative profit and loss. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill had sought a secular basis for moral, political, and social theory in the bluff bourgeois bookkeeping habits of the competitive egoist, for whom the form of a reason for action is an answer to the question ‘‘What’s in it for me?’’ William James and John Dewey then show up as adopting this conception of practical reason and extending it to the theoretical sphere of epistemology, semantics, and the philosophy of mind. Rationality in general appears as in-
Research Interests: History, Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Pragmatism, Enlightenment, and 6 moreLiterary studies, Boundary, Icon, Irony, Citation, and ICON
- - they are caught up in the dimension of endorsement and authority, commitment and entitlement, and so subject to assessments of various kinds of correctness just in virtue of their conceptual contents. Second, those norms are conceived... more
- - they are caught up in the dimension of endorsement and authority, commitment and entitlement, and so subject to assessments of various kinds of correctness just in virtue of their conceptual contents. Second, those norms are conceived as implicit in social practices, ...
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In this Interview, Professor Robert B. Brandom answered ten detailed questions about his philosophy of Rational Pragmatism and Semantic Expressivism, grouped into four topics. 1. Metaphysics and Anthropology, 2. Pragmatics and Semantics,... more
In this Interview, Professor Robert B. Brandom answered ten detailed questions about his philosophy of Rational Pragmatism and Semantic Expressivism, grouped into four topics. 1. Metaphysics and Anthropology, 2. Pragmatics and Semantics, 3. Epistemic Expressivism and 4. Philosophy of Logic. With his careful answers Professor Brandom offers many additional insights into his rigorously constructed account of the relationship "between what we say and think, and what we are saying and thinking about" around the human practice of asking for and giving reasons. A final, additional question pointed at a principal motivation for putting together the present issue: how to reconcile Wittgenstein's assertion that philosophy must not proffer any theories with the very explicit system of explanations Brandom has constructed. This same issue is addressed to some extent already in Professor Brandom's new article contained in this issue, but his answer, asserting that he does not ...
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For semantic inferentialists, the basic semantic concept is validity. An inferentialist theory of meaning should offer an account of the meaning of “valid.” If one tries to add a validity predicate to one’s object language, however, one... more
For semantic inferentialists, the basic semantic concept is validity. An inferentialist theory of meaning should offer an account of the meaning of “valid.” If one tries to add a validity predicate to one’s object language, however, one runs into problems like the v-Curry paradox. In previous work, I presented a validity predicate for a non-transitive logic that can adequately capture its own meta-inferences. Unfortunately, in that system, one cannot show of any inference that it is invalid. Here I extend the system so that it can capture invalidities.
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Original file location on Richard Rorty's disk: MS-C017-FD026/Brandom's Holism and Pragmatism.doc
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The paper explores the unity of Richard Rorty's philosophy. It interprets his ,eliminative materialism' as stemming from the insight that the language games we use in talking about ourselves and each other are the result of our... more
The paper explores the unity of Richard Rorty's philosophy. It interprets his ,eliminative materialism' as stemming from the insight that the language games we use in talking about ourselves and each other are the result of our own (social) choice, they are not forced on us from the ,outside'. It interprets Rorty's later development as an application of this thought to the field of the objective: Can ,brute facts' prescribe how we speak about them? The paper argues that in this field there are also choices we have to make concerning our social activity of speaking, but that this does not necessarily deprive the word ,objectivity' of its meaning, as the author has worked out in Making it Explicit.
Im ersten Abschnitt von Sein und Zeit legt Heidegger eine neuartige Kategorisierung des Seienden sowie eine eigenständige Darstellung des ontologischen Projekts und folglich auch der Natur und Genesis der ontologischen Kategorien vor. Er... more
Im ersten Abschnitt von Sein und Zeit legt Heidegger eine neuartige Kategorisierung des Seienden sowie eine eigenständige Darstellung des ontologischen Projekts und folglich auch der Natur und Genesis der ontologischen Kategorien vor. Er nimmt ausdrücklich zwei Seinskategorien an: Zuhandensein und Vorhandensein. Vorhandene Dinge sind in etwa die objektiven, subjektunabhängigen, kausal zusammenwirkenden Gegenstände der naturwissenschaftlichen Forschung. Zuhandene Dinge sind jene, die ein Neo-Kantianer als mit menschlichen Werten und Bedeutungen imprägniert beschreiben würde. Zusätzlich zu diesen Kategorien gibt es ein menschliches Wesen oder Dasein, in dessen Struktur der Ursprung der beiden dinglichen Kategorien zu suchen ist. Der vorliegende Aufsatz befaßt sich mit drei von Heideggers begrifflichen Innovationen: seiner Auffassung von Ontotogie in Begriffen eigengesetzlicher anthropologischer Kategorien, wie sie in der Bestimmung „Fundamentalontologie ist die regionale Ontotogie des Daseins" zum Ausdruck kommt; mit seiner entsprechend traditionskritischen Inanspruchnahme einer ontologischen Priorität des Zuhandenseins vor dem Vorhandensein, welches letztere für ihn in der fundamentaleren (Heidegger sagt „ursprünglichen") Welt menschlicher Bedeutungen wurzelt oder aus ihr abgeleitet ist; und schließlich die nicht-cartesianische Darstellung von Bewußtsein und klassifizierendem Denken als sozial und praktisch bestimmt. Abschnitt 1 enthält eine Interpretation von Heideggers Begriff der Fundamentalontologie und ihrer Beziehung zur „vulgären" Ontotogie früherer Philosophen. In Abschnitt 2 wird das Zuhandensein eingeführt: die Welt des Zeugs, in der jedes Element als praktisch konstituiert oder bedeutsam erfahren wird. Abschnitt 3 enthält eine Interpretation des Mitdaseins, des sozialen Modus des Seins, in dem die Welt des Zeugs gründet. Abschnitt 4 schließlich befaßt sich mit dem Übergang von der Zeugwelt, über die es keine Daten bezüglich der Art und Weise gibt, in der das beteiligte Dasein das Sein der Dinge nimmt, zur Welt der Dinge mit Eigenschaften, die sich nicht in ihren praktischen Gebrauchsmöglichkeiten für das Dasein erschöpfen.
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Sentience
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Pragmatism
... well as inferential uses. Such a language game would be devoid of theoretical terms. 268 Robert Brandom Page 7. “Looks” Talk and Sellars' Diagnosis of the Cartesian Hypostatization of Appearances One of the central arguments ...
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The text that opens this collection was also the very last essay presented at the Revisiting Richard Rorty Conference. In “Rorty on vocabularies,” Robert Brandom writes a chapter with several connections to his essay in Rorty and his... more
The text that opens this collection was also the very last essay presented at the Revisiting Richard Rorty Conference. In “Rorty on vocabularies,” Robert Brandom writes a chapter with several connections to his essay in Rorty and his Critics, “Vocabularies of Pragmatism.” He explores Rorty’s vocabulary of instrumental pragmatism, its resulting “vocabulary vocabulary,” and Rorty’s public/private distinction. Brandom also appears at the very end of this collection, with an interview given at the conference in Braga: “Remembering Richard Rorty: an interview with Robert Brandom.”
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This is a collection of previously published essays written for more general audiences than I usually address: for interested academics from all fields, for nonphilosophers, and for philosophers who might not share my somewhat specialized... more
This is a collection of previously published essays written for more general audiences than I usually address: for interested academics from all fields, for nonphilosophers, and for philosophers who might not share my somewhat specialized interests. The aim in each case is to introduce serious, substantive, controversial philosophical ideas without presupposing a lot of background or compromising either the integrity of those ideas or the precision of expression they deserve and require. Taken together, these essays present a more or less unified perspective on some of the largest issues concerning us essentially rational, discursive, normative beings as essentially rational, discursive, normative beings.
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Was unterscheidet uns Menschen von anderen Lebewesen? Laut dem großen amerikanischen Philosophen Robert Brandom vor allem die Tatsache, dass wir in unserem Handeln und Urteilen Verpflichtungen eingehen und Verantwortung für das... more
Was unterscheidet uns Menschen von anderen Lebewesen? Laut dem großen amerikanischen Philosophen Robert Brandom vor allem die Tatsache, dass wir in unserem Handeln und Urteilen Verpflichtungen eingehen und Verantwortung für das übernehmen, was wir tun und sagen. Wir leben in einem »Raum von Gründen«, insofern wir unser Tun stets rechtfertigen müssen und solche Rechtfertigungen auch von anderen verlangen. Menschliches Leben ist somit durch und durch normativ. In Wiedererinnerter Idealismus zeigt Brandom, dass der Ursprung dieser Einsichten bereits in der Philosophie Kants und Hegels zu finden ist. Seine fesselnden Studien beweisen die Aktualität und Bedeutung ihres Denkens für das Verständnis unserer Lebensform.
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To Wilfrid Sellars and Richard Rorty without whom most of it would not even be implicit Copyright © 1994 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Page xxiv constitutes an... more
To Wilfrid Sellars and Richard Rorty without whom most of it would not even be implicit Copyright © 1994 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Page xxiv constitutes an extension of the copyright page. First Harvard ...
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Este artigo analisa importantes elementos na recepção da filosofia de Hegel na atualidade. Com a finalidade de alcançar tal meta discute-se como a filosofia analítica acolhe a filosofia de Hegel. Para tanto se reconstrói a recepção da... more
Este artigo analisa importantes elementos na recepção da filosofia de Hegel na atualidade. Com a finalidade de alcançar tal meta discute-se como a filosofia analítica acolhe a filosofia de Hegel. Para tanto se reconstrói a recepção da filosofia analítica em face de Hegel, notadamente a partir daqueles autores que foram centrais neste movimento de recepção e distanciamento de sua filosofia, a saber, Bertrand Russell, Frege e Wittgenstein. Outro ponto central do presente texto é a análise do livro de Paul Redding, Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought, em cotejo com a recepção de Hegel, desenvolvida aqui pela filosofia analítica. Ao final, mostra-se como é possível um diálogo produtivo destas correntes aparentemente contrapostas.
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Here is an interview with professor and philosopher Robert Brandom, which took place in Pittsburgh on June 1, 2023. We discuss hermeneutical questions relating to his systematic works: the relationship between Making It Explicit and A... more
Here is an interview with professor and philosopher Robert Brandom, which took place in Pittsburgh on June 1, 2023. We discuss hermeneutical questions relating to his systematic works: the relationship between Making It Explicit and A Spirit of Trust, the place of Making It Explicit within the history of philosophy, coherence or divergences between his books. Objections and contentious interpretations of his thought are also addressed. Finally, more general questions about the mind, consciousness, naturalism, artificial intelligence and logic are elucidated.
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Dutilh Novaes's new book is both original and important. 1 The Dialogical Roots of Deduction investigates the relations between deduction and dialogue. Its approach is comprehensive, progressing along four interlocking,... more
Dutilh Novaes's new book is both original and important. 1 The Dialogical Roots of Deduction investigates the relations between deduction and dialogue. Its approach is comprehensive, progressing along four interlocking, mutually-supporting dimensions: historical, philosophical, psychological, and in connection with mathematical practice. By doing that it substantially illuminates a number of distinctive features of deductive logical relations that philosophers of logic have found problematic or puzzling. These include the necessary truth-preservingness of deductive consequence relations, the irrelevance of the issue of whether or not one believes the premises and conclusions of deductive consequence relations, the distinctive sort of perspicuousness afforded by the possibility of unpacking deductive arguments into step-by-step chains, each of whose individual links is immediately cogent, and the nature of the normative significance of logical relations. There are substantial contemporary literatures devoted to each of these topics. But they are typically treated in isolation from one another. Perhaps the most impressive feature of the book, marking it as a landmark achievement in the field, is the fact that Dutilh Novaes offers a systematic, unified account that traces all of these phenomena back to the same source and persuasively explains them all on the same basis: the relation between deductive logical relations and dialogic practices. I think it is particularly worthwhile to get clear about the nature of the central, weight-bearing relation between deduction and dialogue that Dutilh Novaes uncovers and elaborates by means of the metaphor of "roots." I want to begin by making a suggestion about how we might characterize one fundamental philosophical idea that animates this metaphor, in the hopes of clarifying its philosophical significance by connecting it to some other ideas. The idea I follow up on is that Dutilh Novaes shows us (among much else), how to understand relations of deductive consequence (what is expressed by the turnstile) in terms of dialogic practices. Then I want to consider one way of following out the clues suggested by that formulation, so as to generalize Dutilh Novaes ideas by applying them to areas beyond those in which she introduces them: from thinking about our peculiar and rarified deductive practices to thinking about reasoning in general.
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In this talk I consider three of Leibniz's master-ideas. Among his most innovative and important ideas, they are integral elements of the framework within which all of his philosophical thought proceeds and develops. They articulate his... more
In this talk I consider three of Leibniz's master-ideas. Among his most innovative and important ideas, they are integral elements of the framework within which all of his philosophical thought proceeds and develops. They articulate his central contributions to (what we would now call) semantics, logic, and metaphysics. Under the heading of " reason " , the first idea is his understanding the intentional contentfulness of ideas and perceptions, indeed, meaningfulness generally, most basically in terms of
Links to Brandom's 2020 University of Pittsburgh Ph.D. seminar on two forms of contemporary antirepresentationalism. Videos of 14 lectures, and links to all the readings, handouts, notes, and audio and video recordings.
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Townsend Lecture, University of California/Berkeley, 2013
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Ivan Ivaschenko interviews Robert Brandom--2019
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In this conversation, American philosopher Robert Brandom talks about the historical background of his inferentialism, reconstructing the influence of his teachers Wilfrid Sellars and Richard Rorty.
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This conference proposes to shed light on the work of the philosopher Richard Rorty. Rorty’s name is widely known within and beyond the departments of philosophy, but there have been few major conversations on his work in France, despite... more
This conference proposes to shed light on the work of the philosopher Richard Rorty. Rorty’s name is widely known within and beyond the departments of philosophy, but there have been few major conversations on his work in France, despite a strong editorial tradition and many workshops at several universities. If Rorty is known for his critical readings of the analytic tradition, the ethical and political aspects of his work still remain under-explored. We are thinking in particular of the continual relevance of his seminal 1983 text, ‘Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism’, given at a meeting on the social responsibility of intellectuals, which Rorty saw as an opportunity to explain certain tendencies in liberal thought that he considered naive. By focusing on the political aspect of Rorty’s work that engages his redefinition of liberalism, this conference aims to contribute to the study of the intellectual history, philosophical value and contemporary legacy of this aspect of his philosophy.
Three lines of enquiry characterise this conference’s approach: (1) we will examine whether Rorty’s emphasis on contingency, irony and post-modernity throughout his work remains relevant today; (2) we will illuminate Rorty’s approach to the arts, and their relationship with his liberalism ; (3) we will re-explore Rorty’s classic argument, which attempts to explain the functioning of language without recourse to the notion of representation.
Three lines of enquiry characterise this conference’s approach: (1) we will examine whether Rorty’s emphasis on contingency, irony and post-modernity throughout his work remains relevant today; (2) we will illuminate Rorty’s approach to the arts, and their relationship with his liberalism ; (3) we will re-explore Rorty’s classic argument, which attempts to explain the functioning of language without recourse to the notion of representation.