Pragmatism and Inferentialism∗

Although Brandom does not go so far as to say that a pragmatist attitude to the relation between semantics and pragmatics requires an inferentialist semantics, his motivating arguments strongly suggest that a pragmatist ought to be an inferentialist. In what follows, I discuss the connections between Brandom’s pragmatism and his inferentialism. I’ll argue that pragmatism, as Brandom initially describes it—the view that “semantics must answer to pragmatics”—does not favor an inferentialist approach to semantics over a truth-conditional one. I’ll then consider whether inferentialism might be ∗I am grateful to members of my Spring 2006 seminar onMaking It Explicit for helping me work through this material. A deeper debt is owed to Bob Brandom, who taught me both how and why to do philosophy. †Department of Philosophy, 314 Moses Hall #2390, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2390. E-mail: [email protected]. 1Throughout this paper, I’ll cite Brandom 1994 as “MIE” and Brandom 2000 as “AR.”