On Brandom’s Inferentialism

The subject of my dissertation is Brandom’s inferentialism. The inferentialism is the core of his theoretical system. Therefore, reexamining Brandom’s main thoughts of philosophy on basis of the inferentialism, and extracting the inferentialism integrated in Brandom’s philosophy, such studies, on one hand, can start a new approach for deepening his related topics, and on the other hand, can provide abundant theoretical support to the studies about the inferentialism.The inferentialism is aimed at probing on the usage and content of concepts. With a thorough inquiry into Brandom’s works, the writer discovers that though not all of his philosophical topics explicitly arguing for the inferentialism, the discussions are almost all closely related to it. Firstly, with the support of philosophical topics, the inferentialism is constructed. However, the deep understanding of independent philosophic topics and its relation among them should be situated in the inferentialism. Secondly, the inferentialism is generally embedded into his philosophical system, forming an inner complex meticulous system in accord with his semantic theory, pragmatic theory, holism, epistemology and ontology. In detail:The basic framework of the inferentialism is an integration of an inferential semantics and a normative pragmatics. The inferential semantics mainly explains semantic content of concepts from a perspective of materially appropriate inferences rather than the traditional reference, truth, etc. It claims that the conceptual content should be understood in terms of their inferential articulation. The normative pragmatics discusses in detail normativity and practical characteristic of human conceptual activity. It argues that interpreting concepts as the contentful is understood as attributing to their occurrence an ineliminably normative pragmatic significance. Ultimately, semantics must answer to pragmatics.The inferentialism is further enriched and expanded by its holism, epistemology and ontology. The inferentialism is also a kind of semantic holism. Frege’s Principle of Substitution can serve and justify the possibility of admitting the holism, and can solve some problems it faces. The empistemology of the inferentialism follows out the application of inferentialist semantic ideas to observation. Its aims are, on one hand, to explore perception and the role of assessments of reliability, on the other hand, to review reliabilism and construct a middle way of the justification of knowledge. The ontology of the inferentialism focuses on representatial dimension of concepts. Its main settlements are necessity and possibility of explanation of representatial dimension of concepts, de re ascriptions of propositional attitudes and the nature of conceptual objectivity, etc. By all of the presents above, we may see that these topics and questions are not only independent, but also integral parts of the inferentialism. They together with the inferential semantics and the normative pragmatics exhibit a new picture of the relationship among man, his language and his world.Brandom’s views differ greatly from many of the large theoretical, explanatory, and strategic commitments that have shaped and motivated Anglo-American philosophy in the twentieth century. His inferentialism makes outstanding contributions to integrating the two major philosophical trends:analytical philosophy and pragmatism, transcending traditional semantic theory and constructing a middle way of the justification of knowledge. However, there are still some shortcomings in Brandom’s theory. Through careful investigations upon essential arguments that the inferentialism relies on, the writer tries to argue that the various problems of the inferentialism lie in its hidden commitment, and this maybe tell us that there is much work to be fulfilled in semantic studies.