How to Ask a Question in the Space of Reasons Público

Abstract

Robert Brandom's normative-pragmatic theory is intended to represent the

minimal set of practical abilities whose exhibition qualifies creatures as speaking

a language. His model of a minimally discursive practice (MDP) is one in which

participants, devoid of logical vocabulary, are only capable of making assertions

and drawing inferences. This dissertation argues that Brandom's purely assertional

practices are not MDPs and that speech acts of asking questions (queries)

must be included in any practice that counts as an MDP. I propose several novel

alternations to Brandom's deontic scorekeeping model of discourse, which I then

utilize to generate a normative-pragmatic analysis of inquisitive practices. This

analysis supports the claim that agents who can assert need to be able to ask

questions and vice versa. The upshot is that intentionality belongs to those who

can ask and answer questions.

Table of Contents

1 Meaning, Use, and Questions 1 1.1 Representation v.s. Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1.1 Two Models of Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1.2 Cashing Out Metaphors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.2 The Space of Reasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.2.1 Wilfrid Sellars' Normative Pragmatism . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.2.2 Robert Brandom: Pragmatism's Thermidor . . . . . . . . . 12 1.2.3 Primitive Language Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 1.3 The Fate of Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 1.3.1 An Ancient Prejudice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 1.3.2 Forgetting the Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 1.3.3 The Rise of Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 1.4 Toward a Normative Pragmatics of Questions and Answers . . . . . 34 2 Stalemate in the Space of Reasons 41 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 2.2 The Game of Giving and Asking for Reasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 2.2.1 Three Kinds of Pragmatism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 2.2.2 Normative Pragmatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 2.2.3 Deontic Scorekeeping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 2.3 Are Assertions Enough to Play the Game? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 2.3.1 The Problem of Justificatory Stalemate . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 2.3.2 Responses to the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 2.4 Assertional Fundamentalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 3 Questions, Queries, and the Force-Content Distinction 83 3.1 Queries and their Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 3.1.1 Auxiliary Speech Acts in Minimally Discursive Practices . . 83 3.1.2 The Traditional Force-Content Distinction . . . . . . . . . . 90 3.2 Searle's Theory of Speech Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 3.2.1 The Bipartitional Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 3.2.2 Searle's Classificatory Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 3.3 Queries in Searle's Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 3.3.1 The Failure of the Bipartitional Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . 104 3.3.2 Queries v.s. Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 3.4 What is the Content of Queries? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 4 Queries in the Expanded Space of Reasons 126 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 4.2 The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons . . . . . . . . . 129 4.2.1 Normative Functions and the Classification of Speech Acts . 129 4.2.2 The Epistemic Responsibility of Asserting . . . . . . . . . . 134 4.2.3 Pragmatic Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 4.2.4 The Pragmatics of Defiance and the Typology of Second- Personal Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 4.3 The Normative Function of Queries and their Typology . . . . . . . 147 4.3.1 The Telos of Queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 4.3.2 The Space of Possible Responses to Queries . . . . . . . . . 151 4.3.3 When a Request is not a Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 4.3.4 Queries, Commands, and Epistemic Responsibility . . . . . . 160 4.3.5 The Normative Scope of Queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 5 Asking for Reasons 171 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 5.2 Assertion, Commitment, and Epistemic Responsibility . . . . . . . 174 5.2.1 Duty to Justify and Duty to Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 5.2.2 Commitment to Assert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 5.2.3 Assertion, Repeated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 5.2.4 Targeting and Addressing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 5.3 Minimally Inquisitive Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 5.3.1 Back to the (Small) Space of Reasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 5.3.2 Addressing: The Third Deontic Attitude . . . . . . . . . . . 194 5.3.3 Erotetic and Apokritic Commitments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 5.3.4 The Complex Act of Querying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 5.3.5 Erotetic and Apokritic Entitlement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 5.3.6 Erotetic and Apokritic Attitude-Ascriptions . . . . . . . . . 209 5.4 The Assertional-Inquisitive Nexus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 5.4.1 Making an Assertion in an Inquisitive Practice . . . . . . . . 214 5.4.2 The Normative Structure of Reason-Seeking Queries . . . . . 217 5.4.3 Reason-Seeking Queries as Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 5.4.4 Reason-Seeking Queries in Ordinary Discourse . . . . . . . . 223 5.5 Justificatory Stalemate Averted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 6 A Formal Theory of Queries and the Prospects for Interrogative Inferentialism 233 6.1 The Inquisitive Shape of MDPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 6.2 Inferentialism for Interrogatives? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 6.3 A Formal Pragmatics of Minimally Inquisitive Practices . . . . . . . 239 6.4 From the Formal Pragmatics of Queries to the Semantics of Interrogatives. . . . 250 References 253

About this Dissertation

Rights statement

• Permission granted by the author to include this thesis or dissertation in this repository. All rights reserved by the author. Please contact the author for information regarding the reproduction and use of this thesis or dissertation.

School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Philosophy
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Philosophy
Palavra-chave	Interrogatives Brandom Philosophy of Language Pragmatics Normative Practice Speech Act Inferentialism Questions
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Risjord, Mark, Emory University
Committee Members	Fotion, Nicholas, Emory University Kareem, Khalifa, Middlebury College Sullivan, Michael, Emory University Brandom, Robert, University of Pittsburgh

Última modificação

Primary PDF

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Actions
	How to Ask a Question in the Space of Reasons ()	2018-08-28 11:57:48 -0400	Press to Select an action Download

Supplemental Files

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Actions