| dc.description.abstract | This project offers an articulation of rationality in terms of normativity—that
what it means to be acting rationally, in thought or in deed, can be understood via a
notion of being bound or obliged to certain behaviors given a prior structure that delimits
what is rational to assert in a discourse or perform in a society. In the explicit
articulation of the role of norms in limning rationality, this project also emphasizes the
opportunity and obligation to self-critically assess the value of the metalinguistic and
metapractical standards that license rational assertions and behaviors.
After an introduction, section 2 examines the role of rational constraint in Kant’s
account of representation, concluding that the transcendental story his philosophy leaves
us with impels us to look for an immanent socio-linguistic account of the normativity
that obliges us to think and behave in certain ways, rather than lodging the force of
normativity in transcendentality. Section 3 then examines Robert Brandom’s inferential
semantics by addressing prominent responses to Brandom’s program, making explicit
two ways in which normativity operates in inferentialism—one at the level of objectlanguage
in the articulation of the propositional commitments and entitlements that specify propositional content, the other at the level of the metalinguistic appraisal of the
standards that drive object-language inferentialism.
Section 4 turns to the theoretical status of normativity and its role in practical
behavior, where it is argued that a notion of normativity can underpin a theory of
intentional states. Examining positions on naturalism, the author proposes that a causal
account of intentionality, made explicit by the prescriptive nature of the theory
advanced, provides a naturalist view of normativity for which norms are in explanations
of social states as laws are in explanations of physical states. Hence the obligation to
self-critically reflect on and revise the norms that delimit ethical behavior in social
systems is understood as commensurate with the obligation to self-critically reflect on
and revise the norms that delimit warranted assertions in epistemic discourse.
The conclusion offers some remarks on the prospects for rational revision in both
a discipline’s discourse and a society’s standards of behavior. | en |
