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 non-linguistic? –– 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 orenterprise. One aspect of this enterprise seems to be to explainintentional phenomena in normative terms. However, following Rodl, it isclear 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 alreadyunderstand, since the usage of such normative terminology already requiresan understanding of propositional contents and intentional phenomena, andso cannot be used to explain them. Perhaps, then, Brandom may merely beexplicating intentional phenomena in normative terms we already understand.The skeleton of the explication would consist in *saying* what it is wehave to *do* in order to *say* anything at all. But, assuming that theonly reason for appealing to normative terms was to provide an explanationof intentional phenomena in terms of a more basic vocabulary, we now findourselves free to take up Brandom’s skeleton, and give it flesh byappealing to the features that practitioners of a language use indescribing their own discursive practice, i.e., the terminology ofintentional states and propositional contents. We can make a start with:Mary understands what Tom said because Mary is able to speak English, andMary 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 modestbeginnings 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 normativevocabulary 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 isitself not a factual but a normative difference”. I see two possible ways ofinterpreting this claim: (1) that which distinguishes a fact from a norm is thedifference in the norms by which they are governed or (2) the very process ofdistinguishing 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 thedistinction between a fact and a norm is the distinction between following a ruleand 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 ouracknowledging 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 inthe sense that they require our acknowledging them as binding. This distinction(between the type of rule) points to a factual distinction, albeit a factualdistinction whose content deals with norms.

In the second case, both fact and norm will involve adopting a practical attitude ortaking up a particular stance. It seems to follow, under this interpretation, thatthe distinction between x being a fact and y being a norm is a deontic distinctionrather than an alethic distinction as (1) may suggest. Dennett seems to hold (2)since “for Dennett the difference between physical systems and intentional systemsis itself a normative difference, a matter of the propriety of adopting differentexplanatory-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 outnaturalism about norms all together? Or is the point that a naturalisttheory of norms would have to be significantly more sophisticated than asimple regularist theory (even regularist theories with the help ofreinforcement, sanctions, community, etc.), in particular, sophisticatedenough to get around the gerrymandering problem? Do you think that thereare prospects for naturalism about norms; and does the answer to thatquestion 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 norm-governed 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 page23.

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 aresurprised that one can know something and not be able to say it, you areperhaps thinking of a case like the first. Certainly not like the third."

And, related to that you bring up a distinction between knowing-how andknowing-that: Explicit knowing-that corresponding to implicit know-how isa 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 myknowing could only extend so far as a hollow fact I've heard; and even ifI have climbed it, and known-how every foot /felt/, I'd have to takeanother's word for how many feet high it was. Further, I'd certainly notknow how to /say/ that. So say I had climbed it and measured it. Insofaras I cannot formulate a rule for why this is so, besides "measure it as Ihave", then I cannot say anything. But knowing-that means what? Gettinga final number at the end of this exercise? Which equates to what elsebesides my experience of measuring? If someone else climbs it andmeasures differently (in the plainest terms as where he plants'measuring-stakes' for example), what do we know that is the same? Evenif 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 itplayed correctly. But as a sound itself I don't have the know-how torelativize it in words -- I cannot be any bit clearer in my knowing withphrases such as "like other woodwinds"; my knowing-how is isolated. Insaying how it sounds, all I can say is that the notes of some scale comeout 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 surewhat the special distinction between regularities and implicit norms issuch that regularities fall prey to this objection while implicit norms donot. Aren’t the norms I happen to take up, and perhaps formulate intoexplicit deontic rules, just some of the many possible norms I could havetaken to be implicit in our practices? I take it that the distinction isthat it will only be *one* of those possible norms that *is* the one theone embodied in the practices, that there is some fact of the matter aboutthe situation, and a regularity thesis cannot explain that. I wonder,however, if a regularity theorist has an advantage here, because it is opento him to say that regularities can be made explicit in the form ofcounterfactuals, employing the tools of alethic modality, rather thandeontic modality, and thereby “cut out” just the regularities he wants.Billy Eck

In your pursuit of the pragmatist explanationof 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 aperformance is instituted by our normative attitudes toward it(i.e, assessing it as correct), which is in turn understood, avoiding theregress problem, in terms of our practice of sanctioning. On the otherhand, however, you also claim that (2) the normative attitudes do notsimply determine the normative status. This second claim is requiredfor the gap essential for the concept of norm to be secured, namely, thegap between being correct and merely seeming to be correct. Then, how canthese 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 iscorrect, I have two interrelated questions about your position:

(1) According to your position, in order to institute thefull-fledged norm equipped with the essential gap between being correctand seeming to be correct, it is required that thenorm-instituting-assessment by itself can also be correct or wrong, andtherefore a target of meta-assessment. This in turn requires thatthe assessors have a concept of assessment at least in some form.But it seems possible for some lower animals to just take part in anassessment practice (in the minimal, Haugeland's sense) without having anyconcept of assessment. If that is possible, can those animals be countedas instituting a genuine norm, or a merely quasi norm?

(2) At

least apparently, we can imagine a primitive, non-linguisticconception of assessment -- for example, a primitive RDRD with respect toassessing behaviors of one's fellows. But if so, it seems to entail thatsome type of full-fledged norm can be instituted without resort toany linguistic ability. Is that really possible?

Shuehei Shimamura