Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 21:46:26 -0400
Subject: HAB: OT: Brandom


(Sorry about being off-topic. But Antti Kaupinen mentioned Robert 
Brandom in his last post, and I couldn't resist...)

For those interested in Brandom, a few weeks ago came out his last 
one, "Articulating Reasons : An Introduction to Inferentialism" 
(Harvard U. Press). When he came to our University a few months ago, 
he lectured the 6th chapter and said that this book would be to 
"Making It Explicit" what Kant's "Prolegomena" was to his 1st 
Critique.

Anyways, let's be modest, this is an excellent introduction to the 
(quite!) larger and hard to read MIE. I look forward to work with it, 
sometimes this summer.

Although his strand about objectivity is hard to understand, he is 
perfectly clear about the kind of process that inference-making 
engages us in. As "inferential scorekeeping beings", we owe to each 
other reasons why we said such and such. And those reasons will then 
play a role in future inferences. So, just as he says, 
inference-making means dealing with norms "all the way down". But 
here I'm starting to speak in Brandomite without explaining nothing. 
Guess I'll have to read a lot next summer...

Martin Blanchard
Universite de Montreal


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