Bryce Paulson

Presentation Draft
Baking an Objective Cake Out of Social Ingredients
In Robert Brandom on Social Practices and Representations 1, Richard Rorty
concisely summarizes four slightly different arguments put forth by
Brandom, Davidson, McDowell and Sellars. He groups them into two
opposing sides, Team Brandom and Davidson vs Team McDowell and Sellars.
Rorty claims the former is attempting to recuperate representation, while the
latter is attempting to recuperate perceptual experience.2 While Rorty does
lean towards putting his money on team Brandom and Davidson, he believes
that, Brandom especially, is trying too hard to find a compromise in an
uncompromisable dispute, and so fall between two stools. 3 He concludes that
even though Brandoms arguments are the best attempt thus far, he misses
the mark by wrongly obsessing about truth and

the objective world. This

mistake stems from Brandoms attempt to avoid and reply to claims that he
is advocating some type of relativism.4
Rortys solution is to drop the Brandomian notions of answering and
representing (though not those of of and about).5 He is sympathetic to
1 R. Rorty, Truth and Progress (Cambridge University press, 1998), pp. 122-137
2 Ibid, P. 130
3 Ibid, P. 134
4 Ibid
5 Ibid p.135

Brandom, but advocates that he tones down parts of his argument in order
to avoid criticism but also get things right (according to Rorty). I appreciate
Rortys careful, sympathetic treatment of the issues he has with Brandom,
but I am unconvinced that we must take heed and pragmatically tread more
lightly, in order to avoid evoking relativism and a perplexing belief
justifications.
In order to bring Rortys understanding of the issues to light, I will
highlight the most important points of Brandoms claims that he (Rorty)
takes issue with. I will avoid unnecessary (for my purposes) background
information and instead jump right into the heart of their disagreement. In
doing so, I hope to slowly sketch out the larger issue at hand and help those
of us having trouble gaining traction or direction in the debate. I will argue
that Rortys conclusion, (borrowing from McDowells veracious words), is to
abandon the discourse, the vocabulary, of objectivity and work instead
toward expanding human solidarity.6 Drawing from Brandoms reply on page
133, I will defend Brandoms claim that we can successfully bake an
objective cake out of subjective ingredients.7
Rortys attack starts with a simple claim that by talking about
representations, we place ourselves into the unwanted realm of relativism.
6 Objectivity, Towards Rehabilitating (2000). John McDowell, Rorty and His Critics. Blackwell Publishers
p. 110

7 The use of the term social ingredients is pragmatic in its nature and are Brandoms exact words.
Brandom, R. (1997). Replies Robert Brandom Philosophy and Phenomenological Research [PDF].
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 57(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2953789 P. 200

He cites a reply from Brandom that asserts his (Brandoms) argument is

anything but that, a central enterprise of [his] book is an anti-relativist one:
to offer an account of what it is to be committed to the correctness of our
claims answering to how things actually are, rather than to how anyone or
everyone takes them to be.8 Rorty hones in on Brandoms use of the
concept of answering. He draws issue with the role that Brandoms
answering serves because, as he sees it, this invokes something that our
beliefs are answerable to.

As long as our beliefs are answerable to

something then we (insatiable hard headed pragmatists) will demand to

know more about this answering works and what it might be answering to.
Rorty thinks that answering involves an appeal to nonpeople (how things
really are) and this will cause realists like Searle to ask him how he knows
that.9
In an act of kindness Rorty suggests that Davidson (who is on
Brandoms side according to Rorty) would clear things up, by replying that
what Brandom is really trying to say is, the correctness of our claims
depends on aboutness. Our beliefs and claims are about things, they do not
answer to things, and thus do not involve representations. Davidson and
Sellars agree that what shows us that life is not just a dream, that our beliefs
are in touch with reality, is the causal, non-intentional, non-representational,

8 Rorty, R.. PRACTICES AND REPRESENTATIONS P.133

9 Rorty, R.. PRACTICES AND REPRESENTATIONS P.135

links between us and the rest of the universe. 10 He attempts to strengthen

this shift on the grounds that Aboutness, like truth, is indefinable, and none
the worse for that.11 Rorty claims his move allows one to distance
themselves from the issues that come with answering and representations
by still preserving an image of the relation between people and nonpeople
that might be called authoritarian12
His second issue with Brandom follows from, and is similar to the first.
Rorty does not approve of Brandoms invented neologism of claimable in
order to legitimize his use of the word fact.13 He draws this criticism from
Brandoms paper, Vocabularies of Pragmatism. He quotes Brandom,
we should distinguish between two senses of claim; on the one hand
there is the act of claiming, and on the other there is what is claimed. I want
to say that facts are true claims in the sense of what is claimed (indeed, of
what is claimable), rather than in the sense of true claimings. With this
distinction on board, there is nothing wrong with saying that facts make
claims truefor they make claimings true. This sense of makes should not
be puzzling, it is inferential. Johns remark that p is true because it is a fact
that p just tells us that the first clause follows from the second.14
Rorty argues that Brandoms notion of claimable is useless, and
provides just as little clarity and explanation as his use of answering.

He

once again generously offers his own solution to the problems that come
10 Rorty, R. Philosophical Studies (1988) 54: 215. doi:10.1007/BF00354514 (p. 225)
11 Ibid P.133
12 Ibid P.135
13 Ibid
14 Ibid

with using the notion of claimable in relation to fact, I am willing to say that
facts make beliefs true in a derivative sense of make namely, the
inferential sense.15 Much like his suggestion of aboutness, his use of make
apparently liberates him from further explanation and thus from criticism. He
states this liberation thusly, the force of saying that this sense is derivative
and metaphorical is to decline responsibility for giving further details about
how the making gets done.16
With Rortys worries about Brandom explained and his proposed
solutions to them put forth, it is now time for me to defend Brandom and
cook up a tasty relativism-free objective cake. First, in order to respond to
Rortys issues with Brandoms claim that we are committed to the
correctness of our claims answering to how things actually are, I will be
drawing from the same response that Rorty quoted from. I agree with and
will be drawing from Brandoms following summary,
The first question to ask is what structure norms must have to count as
objective conceptual norms. Talk of empirical claims as objective, as
answering for their correctness to how it is with the objects they are about,
rather than to anyone's or everyone's attitudes, is talk about their
representational character: their ofness or aboutness. This intentionality of
thought and talk, I claim, reflects the social dimension of the inferential
articulation of conceptual norms. Objectivity commitments are formal or
structural features of the socially perspectival character of inferentially
articulated (hence conceptually contentful) commitments. As always, we
understand these implicit commitments best by looking at the use of the
expressions whose function it is to make them explicit. So the meat of the
discussion takes the form of a consideration of the use of de re ascriptions of
15 Ibid p. 136
16 Ibid pp. 136-7

propositional attitude, which I take to make explicit the objectively

representational dimension of our commitments.17
He is using answering as a justificatory tool to explain the scope and
type of relationship that he believes is at work the intentionality of thought
and talk. Answering is simply a linguistic social function used to assess the
correctness of a claim. A claim is compared to or answers to a norm or
dimension of objective correctness. But this objectivity is not the exact type
that many people would initially like to think of. Rather it is a more personal
type that is not intelligible in complete abstraction from our activities. This
description however may lure the relativists towards us, believing that they
smell blood. To avoid this, much like Rortys own Davidsonian response
Brandom

refers

to

aboutness,

but

not

at

the

cost

of

dismissing

representations, Talk of empirical claims as objective, as answering for their

correctness to how it is with the objects they are about, rather than to
anyone's or everyone's attitudes, is talk about their representational
character: their ofness or aboutness. This intentionality of thought and talk, I
claim, reflects the social dimension of the inferential articulation of
conceptual norms.18 Unlike Rorty who wants to paint some type of
aboutness picture that is non-relational to beliefs, Brandom argues that we
can dig deeper into the social and objective mechanisms at work. The way
he does this is drawn from a careful holistic definition of objectivity. Brandom
explains that the objectivity he has in mind has a transcendental nature to it
17 Brandom, R. Replies Robert Brandom Philosophy and Phenomenological Research p. 198
18 Brandom, R. Replies Robert Brandom Philosophy and Phenomenological Research p. 198

in regards to individual or group attitudes. Objective norms have their roots

in social norms and thus can be seen as governing what we say. 19 These
objective norms however are not the products of some type of free-for-all
yelling competition between scorekeepers and simple players of the
language game. It is a progressive dialectic exchange of competing claims
that are fruitfully constrained by rationality. Put differently, thought and talk
give us a perspectival grip on a nonperspectival world 20 He is careful to note
that this grip on a nonperspectival world is not a, Archimedean point,
independent of all practices, from which to criticize any of them. The world
only comes into view through the deployment of some concepts or others.21
These issues are incredibly difficult to conceptualize at any level and
especially when one attempts to gather all of the working pieces together at
once, in order to demonstrate the role that each part plays and how it
supports the larger picture being discussed. As Rorty explains, much of the
disagreements between the two teams and him and Brandom hinge on small
rhetoric differences, yet rhetoric is not something that can be looked over in
this debate. The more I study and endlessly ruminate over this argument,
the more I am coming to realize that on a whole, at least in the case of Rorty
and Brandom, their points of disagreement are incredibly fine grained and
have my doubts about the possibility of a universally satisfying answer. With
19 Ibid p. 201
20 Rorty, R.. PRACTICES AND REPRESENTATIONS P.131
21 Brandom, R. Replies Robert Brandom Philosophy and Phenomenological Research p. 201

this being said, I have attempted to carefully recontract the apparent

disagreement between Rorty and Brandom and argue that Rortys objections
are not lethal to the Brandomian take on linguist claims and objective facts.