The Inferentialism Reading group is running over the first three seminars of this semester of M&L.
On April 15th, Viviane Fairbank will be leading a discussion on Julien Murzi & Florian Steinberger’s ““.
On April 22nd, Harry Vincent will be leading a discussion Ladislav Koreň’s ““.
On April 29th, Greg Restall will be leading a discussion Hans-Johann Glock’s ““.
These sessions will be run as ‘pre-read’ discussions, and participants will be expected to have read the paper ahead of the seminar.
Inferentialism
By Murzi, J. and Steinberger, F. (2017). Inferentialism. In A Companion to the Philosophy of Language (eds B. Hale, C. Wright and A. Miller). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118972090.ch9
This chapter introduces inferential role semantics (IRS) and some of the challenges it faces. It also introduces inferentialism and places it into the wider context of contemporary philosophy of language. The chapter focuses on what is standardly considered both the most important test case for and the most natural application of IRS: logical inferentialism, the view that the meanings of the logical expressions are fully determined by the basic rules for their correct use, and that to understand a logical expression is to use it in accordance with the appropriate rules. It discusses some of the benefits of logical inferentialism, chiefly with regard to the epistemology of logic, and considers a number of objections. The chapter critically examines Robert Brandom’s inferentialism about linguistic and conceptual content in general. Finally, it considers a number of general objections to IRS and possible responses on the inferentialist’s behalf.
