Tom Swann Rosen On Brandom

Rosen - Brandom on Modality, Normativity and Intentionality 2001

##1 Brandom wants to get intentionality out of the nonintentional. contra Mc Dowell. foil is the reductive naturalist. modern naturalists e.g. Millikan use modal terms. arguing for the ecumenical thesis. P611 “if this sort of modal naturalism is legitimate, then so is a moderate form of anti-naturalism which allows certain irreducibly normative notions in the explanatory / reductive basis.” >>>why anti-naturalism?<<<

##2

we demand of explanatory primitives: intelligible without definition, and prior to the idiom we seek to explain by it. critic can argue: normative primitives not clear enough or that to say what it takes to possess these is to presuppose semantic or psychological terms.

Br doesn’t take up the first. Rosen objects in Who Makes the Rules Around Here? 1997. Br mostly arguing that the terms are clear enough. if the modals are, then so are the normatives. Br seeks to legitimate the rehabilitation of modals by means of a general principle, and then secure unreduced normativity by the same means.

##3

Accepts Br’s conclusion. doubts the argument Br doubts that modal skepticism is coherent. that ascription of properties is ascription of dispositions. no way of posing the skeptical question without using modal notions

##4

interesting, but not why modals were rehabilitated. skeptic not refuted just ignored. due to the collapse of the only case against it. positivism as criterion of intelligibility. when this collapsed, modality could be legit again. NOT because of a positive transcendental argument.

##5

intelligibility now days is from use. meaningful if governed by norms about when we’re entitled to use it. absent defeaters, this is enough for philosophical accounts of meaning. all it takes is to point out that we know how to use it well enough. e.g. Kripke in N&N on non analytic, non a priori necessary identities.

method of embarrassing cases. e.g. distinction between free and unfree action. even if settled uses in some context, not clear for use in all contexts.

sufficient to explain and to justify the rehabilitation of modals

##6

Br holds that psychological and semantic claims are implicitly normative. but they are not obviously so.

does Brandom say this?<<<

prior question: what does it mean that something is implicitly normative?

term of art without standard definition. if we had a clear conception of it, we could answer questions like: 1) predicate of things or representations? claims and concepts or facts and properties? 2) if N is normative, M is not, what of NvM? ~N? 3) how are claims of implicit normativity established? Brandom seems to think that belief attributions must be normative, in the sense that this is a constraint on any theory of belief. how can the argument go? 4) grant that belief attributions are normative. from the act (the attitude) or the content (the proposition)? from neither individually but both together?

Rosen thinks our normativity talk doesn’t give clear answers to all of the above. so stipulation.

##7

arrange a list of paradigmatically normative predicates: good, right, reasonable etc. corresponding claims ‘X is F’ for the Fs on taht list. implicit normativity iff the truth of the claim is P617 “constituted in part by the truth of” some ‘X is F’.”

not just entailment to some X is F. can be entailment even where no constitution.

wtf? <<<

distinguished from the uncontroversial claim that belief is governed by norms. inferential relations dictating what one should believe etc. compatible with: “the doxastic facts are constituted entirely from non-normative materials. But once in place, they engage with an independent body of cognitive norms.”

This is a good point.<<<

##8

What is the status of the normativity thesis? Brandom writes as if it is obvious. >>>where?<<< everyone agrees that speech and thought is governed by norms. no consensus as to whether intentional facts are normative

Brandom writes that intentional attributions must underwrite normative assessments as to whether things are as they ought to be according to that state. talk of beliefs being essentially XYZ. So the constitution talk is right

is Brandom right?

is implausible to say that things are as they ought to be according to some belief. more plausible to talk of correctness. but correctness is implicitly constitutively normative?

more needs saying. philosophers can accept connection between belief and correctness, but think that correctness is truth and so non-normative. >>>Brandom is expressivist about truth claims, and so will think it is normative.<<< Rosen thinks this is wrong. many things can be correct even if not truth-apt. correct-making feature: the property needed to count as a correct performance. but it is not obviously the case that anything with correctness conditions is normative. it would be a mistake to identify correctness with any case of correctness for some performance, so obviously it is not truth either.

##9 is ‘correct’ paradigmatically normative? thinks the notion is just not clear enough to tell. internal connection with reasons for action? correct clearly doesn’t. atypical case where one has reasons to play it incorrectly >>>this seems pretty bogus. no longer playing the same game. one is correctly doing something else<<<

this is how it is with practical judgments. P621 “By themselves they possess no distinctive practical valence… This intrinsic practical neutrality is a general feature of judgements of correctness.” >>>but we can conditionalise on the search for truth? intentional states have to able to feature in …<<<

##10

in another sense, correct does belong with good. provides a standard.

thinks correct notion of normativity is matter of stipulation rather than discovery.

##11

all performances have correctness conditions, but not all normative. >>>could doubt this? performances under descriptions…<<< must be shown that it lies in the nature of belief that it is incorrect if false.

finds it plausible. no idea how to argue for it.

reductive functionalist: belief defined by causal role, as the state that plays it. normative notions play no role. all this talk is a matter of norms governing belief. not in the nature of the belief.

need functionalism be devoid of normative concepts? presumably normative concepts will enter into the content of the states whose causal roles are being determined?<<<

does not know how to pick between them. thinks naturalist would deny that the norms feature in the nature of the thing.