EXPRO - Inferentialism naturalized: norms, meanings and reasons in the natural world

The research and development project, which is part of the EXPRO Grant Projects of Excellence in Basic Research programme, is implemented in the years 2020 - 2024 with state support of CZK 21 322 thousand. The project will be funded with a budget of CZK 22.21 million and will focus on Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology.

 

Abstract

The doctrine of inferentialism, based on the idea that meaningfulness is a matter of rules of inference, was first presented in Robert Brandom`s book "Making it explicit" in 1994. Since then, inferentialists (ourselves included) have further developed the logical and semantic dimensions of this view, making it into one of the most discussed philosophical doctrines of the twenty-first century. However, inferentialism is usually conceived of as a purely philosophical doctrine that provides a new perspective on uniquely human rational and expressive capacities, but which does not intersect with what science tells us about us as (hyper)social creatures with a natural, cultural and developmental history. We find this a missed opportunity and our project aims to bridge this crevasse by drawing on the current scientific research on cooperation, conventions, norms, language and reasoning to explain the ontogeny and phylogeny of the inferential rules that constitute meaning. This project will thereby build a naturalistic foundation for inferentialism.

Aims

The aim of the project is to produce a thoroughly naturalized version of inferentialism, which would result from a confrontation of the ideas tabled by the philosophy of inferentialism with the cutting-edge empirical research on cooperation, conventions, norms, language or reasoning.