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    Inferentialist pragmatism provides an alternative foundat... — Carmelics
    Home/Philosophy of Language
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    Inferentialist pragmatism provides an alternative foundation for semantics by grounding truth in inferential practice rather than grounding inference in a prior notion of truth.

    Philosophy of LanguageTruth & Knowledge
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Classical semantics assumes a prior grip on the notion of truth and uses truth to explain what good inference consists in.
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    • 2.Inferentialist pragmatism reverses this order of explanation by starting with a practical distinction between good and bad inferences.
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    • 3.In inferentialist pragmatism, talk about truth is understood as talk about what is preserved by good inferential moves.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Inferential norms themselves presuppose content: to assess whether an inference is 'good', we must already grasp what the premises and conclusion mean.
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    • 2.If meaning is constituted by inferential role, the normativity of inference cannot be explained without a prior account of representational content, as Fodor and Lepore argue against Brandom.
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    • 3.This circularity means inferentialism cannot provide a genuine foundation for semantics—it relocates, rather than eliminates, the dependence on a prior semantic notion.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Tarski's truth-conditional semantics demonstrates that a formally precise, philosophically tractable theory of meaning can be grounded in truth without appealing to inferential practice.
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    • 2.Davidson's extension of Tarskian semantics to natural language shows that compositional truth conditions explain the productivity and systematicity of language in ways that inferential-role accounts have not matched.
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    • 3.The inferentialist reversal of explanatory order sacrifices this formal rigor and compositionality without demonstrating that inferential practice can discharge the same explanatory obligations.
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    Philosophy of LanguageTruth & Knowledge

    Related

    Classical semantics assumes a prior grip on the notion of truth and uses truth t...Davidson's extension of Tarskian semantics to natural language shows that compos...If meaning is constituted by inferential role, the normativity of inference cann...In inferentialist pragmatism, talk about truth is understood as talk about what ...
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    Inferential norms themselves presuppose content: to assess whether an inference ...Inferentialist pragmatism reverses this order of explanation by starting with a ...Tarski's truth-conditional semantics demonstrates that a formally precise, philo...The inferentialist reversal of explanatory order sacrifices this formal rigor an...This circularity means inferentialism cannot provide a genuine foundation for se...

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    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: meaning
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    The standard way [of classical semantics] is to assume that one has a prior grip on the notion of truth, and use it to explain what good inference consists in. … [I]nferentialist pragmatism reverses this order of explanation … It starts with a practical distinction between good and bad inferences, understood as a distinction between appropriate and inappropriate doings, and goes on to understand talk about truth as talk about what is preserved by the good moves. (Brandom 2000: 12)
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit