Inferentialism with an attitude: An expressivist theory of objectivity (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Robert Brandon)

I defend a social inferentialist approach to content against the objection that it cannot provide an adequate account of objectivity. To understand objectivity, I argue, we must examine what it is we are doing when we engage in objectivity-talk, talk that makes explicit the idea that it is possible to get things right or wrong by the world. The deflationary theory I propose is that objectivity-talk is an explicit expression of two correlate attitudes: the objectivity attitude, directed toward our claims about the world, and the realist attitude, directed toward the world itself. These attitudes are understood first as implicit in a practice and hence not supported by their explicit expression in objectivity-talk. In adopting these attitudes, we treat the world as existing and having the properties it does independently of what we think or say about it, and it is only by doing so that we can engage in rational enquiry or the pursuit of knowledge. Moreover, we cannot engage in any kind of rational discourse, such as expressing personal tastes, haggling over a price, or negotiating a treaty, without implicitly adopting these attitudes.; In Chapter 1, I motivate a deflationary approach to metaphysical problems and a non-representational approach to content. In Chapter 2, which deals with Wittgenstein's rule-following problem, I argue that the challenge for solutions focused on the individual is to explain the normativity of linguistic rules, whereas the challenge for solutions that appeal to social norms is to explain how those norms could be answerable to anything beyond social practice. In Chapter 3, I argue that Peacocke's inferentialism fails precisely because it focuses on the linguistic practices of the individual in isolation. Chapter 4 examines Brandom's social inferentialism, specifically his accounts of the institution of norms in practice and of deontic scorekeeping. Brandom claims that objectivity emerges from the social-perspectival structure of rational discourse and in Chapter 5 I argue that this claim can be clarified and defended given an expressivist understanding of objectivity. Finally, I argue that this approach to objectivity is not available to theories that focus on the individual in isolation.