Inferentialism is as Compositional as it Needs to be

Normative inferentialism is a semantic theory according to which the meaning of an expression is, or is determined by, its proper inferential role. Critics of inferentialism often argue that it violates the principle of compositionality, and that it is therefore unable to explain some important linguistic data. I have two tasks in this paper: the first is to demonstrate that inferentialism, appearances perhaps to the contrary, does not violate the principle of compositionality, and the second is to explain why this demonstration is unlikely to mollify critics of inferentialism. The dispute between inferentialists and their critics, I shall argue, is not about compositionality, it is a more fundamental dispute about the nature of representations.

Alternative Conventions, Alternative Logics

Logical conventionalism leads to logical pluralism. The chapter discusses various arguments for pluralism, based on more and less demanding principles of translation. The crucial problem case of a tonk language is discussed in detail and related to various philosophical points and distinctions from the previous chapters. The chapter also provides a general account of logical and conceptual pluralism in terms of structural inferential role or semantic counterparts. This machinery is then applied to give a conventionalist-friendly account of equivalence between logics. The chapter closes by distinguishing between different types of disagreements in the philosophy of logic – descriptive disputes, normative disputes, and metaphysical disputes. Together chapters 3, 4, and 5 constitute a full development of an inferentialist-conventionalist theory of logic.

Inferentialism and the Epistemology of Logic

This essay attempts to clarify the project of explaining the possibility of ‘blind reasoning’—namely, of basic logical inferences to which we are entitled without our having an explicit justification for them. The role played by inferentialism in this project is examined and objections made to inferentialism by Paolo Casalegno and Timothy Williamson are answered. Casalegno proposes a recipe for formulating a counterexample to any proposed constitutive inferential role by imaging a subject who understands the logical constant in question but fails to have the capacity to make the inference in question; Williamson’s recipe turns on imagining an expert who continues to understand the constant in question while having developed sophisticated considerations for refusing to make it. It’s argued that neither recipe succeeds.

The Meaning of Modal Discourse

The goal of this chapter is to make it clear how the modal normativist account can avoid the notorious “Frege-Geach” or “embedding” problem that has long threatened non-descriptive views of all kinds. While Chapter 2 identifies an alternative function for modal discourse, we cannot take this to be a matter of identifying the meaning of modal terms. For modal claims may be embedded in conditionals, negations, etc., in which case they are not serving their characteristic function, and yet must be thought to have the same meaning. To meet this problem, this chapter gives the meaning of modal terms in terms of their inferential role—which is constant even in embedded contexts—and shows how this meaning is related to the function of modal terms. The chapter also aims to show how the modal normativist account can avoid the classic objections to modal conventionalism.

Introduction

This chapter offers a breezy introduction to the content question, the question of what determines the content of a mental representation. Existing approaches are outlined: informational semantics, inferential role semantics, correspondence theories, ascriptionism and the intentional stance, and teleosemantics. This discussion highlights the major issues that the book’s positive account must address if it is to succeed.

Authority and Gender: Flipping the F-Switch

The very rules of our language games contain mechanisms of disregard. Philosophy of language tends to treat speakers as peers with equal discursive authority, but this is rare in real, lived speech situations. This paper explores the mechanisms of discursive inclusion and exclusion governing our speech practices, with a special focus on the role of gender attribution in undermining women’s authority as speakers. Taking seriously the metaphor of language games, we must ask who gets in the game and whose moves can score. To do this, I develop an eclectic analysis of language games using basic inferential role theory and the concept of a semantic index, and develop the distinction between positional authority and expertise authority, which often conflict for members of oppressed groups. Introducing the concepts of master switches and sub-switches that attach to the index and change scorekeeping practices, I argue that women’s gender status conflicts with our status as authoritative speakers because sex marking in semantics functions as a master switch—“the F-switch”—on the semantic index, which, once thrown, changes the very game. An advantage of using inferentialism for understanding disregard of women’s discursive authority is that it locates the problem in the sanctioned moves, in the deontic structure of norms and practices of scorekeeping, and not primarily in the individual intentions of particular people.

Holism: mental and semantic

Mental (or semantic) holism is the doctrine that the identity of a belief content (or the meaning of a sentence that expresses it) is determined by its place in the web of beliefs or sentences comprising a whole theory or group of theories. It can be contrasted with two other views: atomism and molecularism. Molecularism characterizes meaning and content in terms of relatively small parts of the web in a way that allows many different theories to share those parts. For example, the meaning of ‘chase’ might be said by a molecularist to be ‘try to catch’. Atomism characterizes meaning and content in terms of none of the web; it says that sentences and beliefs have meaning or content independently of their relations to other sentences or beliefs. One major motivation for holism has come from reflections on the natures of confirmation and learning. As Quine observed, claims about the world are confirmed not individually but only in conjunction with theories of which they are a part. And, typically, one cannot come to understand scientific claims without understanding a significant chunk of the theory of which they are a part. For example, in learning the Newtonian concepts of ‘force’, ‘mass’, ‘kinetic energy’ and ‘momentum’, one does not learn any definitions of these terms in terms that are understood beforehand, for there are no such definitions. Rather, these theoretical terms are all learned together in conjunction with procedures for solving problems. The major problem with holism is that it threatens to make generalization in psychology virtually impossible. If the content of any state depends on all others, it would be extremely unlikely that any two believers would ever share a state with the same content. Moreover, holism would appear to conflict with our ordinary conception of reasoning. What sentences one accepts influences what one infers. If I accept a sentence and then later reject it, I thereby change the inferential role of that sentence, so the meaning of what I accept would not be the same as the meaning of what I later reject. But then it would be difficult to understand on this view how one could rationally – or even irrationally! – change one’s mind. And agreement and translation are also problematic for much the same reason. Holists have responded (1) by proposing that we should think not in terms of ‘same/different’ meaning but in terms of a gradient of similarity of meaning, (2) by proposing ‘two-factor’ theories, or (3) by simply accepting the consequence that there is no real difference between changing meanings and changing beliefs.

Negation as Cancellation, Connexive Logic, and qLPm

In this paper, we shall consider the so-called cancellation view of negation and the inferential role of contradictions. We will discuss some of the problematic aspects of negation as cancellation, such as its original presentation by Richard and Valery Routley and its role in motivating connexive logic. Furthermore, we will show that the idea of inferential ineffectiveness of contradictions can be conceptually separated from the cancellation model of negation by developing a system we call qLPm, a combination of Graham Priest’s minimally inconsistent Logic of Paradox with q-entailment (quasi-entailment) as introduced by Grzegorz Malinowski.