Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

ejection of the transmission-picture has to do with the fact
that his account of the process of communication also
serves the theoretical purpose of accounting for a
referential dimension of our discursive practices. (See MIE
485: “[C]oncern with what is talked about [i.e. reference]
arises in the process of mapping the repertoire of
commitments of an interpreted interlocutor onto the
repertoire of commitments of an interpreting interlocutor”.)
And while it is not wrong to conceive of communication as
the more or less faulty transmission of content, this picture
leaves it mysterious why communication should be
essential for the constitution of content.
Let us therefore consider Brandom’s account of
reference. The first step is to shift our attention away from
whole sentences to subsentential parts and, in particular,
to singular terms, because singular terms are what in the
first instance refers to objects. We now have to consider
how communication works with regard to singular terms. In
order to do that, the notion of an inferential relation has to
be broadened in such a way that also singular terms can
stand in inferential relations to one another. Primarily, this
notion applies only to whole sentences because only they
can be used as premises and conclusions. However, this
notion can be broadened because language is
compositional. Subsentential parts, i.e., singular terms and
predicates, make a systematic contribution to the
inferential significance of the whole sentence. For this
reason, they can be assigned an inferential significance as
well (cf. MIE 399f).
The inferential significance of a singular term
consists in the fact that it is intersubstitutable with a
number of other singular terms. For example, the singular
term a might be governed by the inferential relation that a
can in any sentence be substituted by b and vice versa.
Thus, a whole set of materially good inferential relations of
the form ‘from Fa infer Fb’ (for any predicate F) is captured
by a single inferential significance concerning a. The
inferential significances characterizing singular terms are
symmetric, i.e., when replacing a by b always yields a
materially good inference, then the converse substitution
does as well (cf. MIE 400). This intersubstitutability reflects
the fact that one and the same object can be referred to by
different proper names and definite descriptions.
Just as Brandom holds that the contents of whole
sentences are determined by the inferential relations they
stand in, it can be said that the contents of singular terms
which, combined with the contents of predicates, yield
sentential contents, are determined by the class of singular
terms they are intersubstitutable with.
We are now in a position to reformulate the above
problem for singular terms. For a given singular term a,
each interlocutor acknowledges a number of symmetric
substitution commitments, i.e., each interlocutor takes a to
be intersubstitutable with a number of other singular terms,
and this set singular terms differs from speaker to speaker.
Again, this fact raises problems concerning the possibility
of communication because this means that the singular
terms have different meanings in the mouths of different
interlocutors. Again, corresponding to the case of whole
sentences, the inferential significances that different
interlocutors accept for a singular term are very similar.
Interlocutors who speak the same language will normally
be able to solve the ‘matching problem’ for singular terms.
There is a uniquely determined singular term in the
hearer’s ideolect that is much more similar to the singular
term in the speaker’s ideolect than anything else in the
hearer’s ideolect. (The passage quoted above actually
reads: “mapping their different repertoires of substitutional
Brandom on Holism, Communication, and Reference - Bernd Prien
commitments onto one another” (MIE 475, my emphasis),
which refers to the intersubstitutabilities different
interlocutors accept for singular terms.)
4. Communication and Reference
So far, I have discussed the question of how
communication is possible even though interlocutors
attach different inferential significances and thus different
meanings to their utterances. Now, I want to consider the
question of how the process of communication, as I have
just described it, can account for the referential dimension
of our discursive practices. (This is the second role the
notion of communication plays in Brandom’s theory of
content.) To see how communication can account for
reference, we have to note that communication is implicitly
governed by the following social norm: If the inferential
significance a singular term a has for the speaker matches
the inferential significance of a singular in my mouth (i.e.,
is very similar, but not identical to it), then I can take it that
the singular term in the mouth of the speaker and the
singular term in my mouth refer to one and the same
object. This in turn means that if the hearer maps a
singular term in the speaker’s mouth onto a singular term
in her own mouth, the differences between the inferential
significances have to be sorted out. Suppose we agree on
most of the substitution-inferences concerning the singular
term ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein’ and hence map our uses of this
term onto each other in communication, but we disagree
about whether he can also be referred to as ‘the greatest
philosopher of his time’. In this case we are committed to
find an agreement about whether this substitutioninference
is good or not. If we fail to acknowledge this
commitment, this means that we are using different
singular terms after all (despite the fact that we use the
same word).
The fact that there is such a norm implicit in our
discursive practices shows that the singular terms we use
refer to something in an objective world, a world that we
intersubjectively share in the sense that it is one and the
same world for all of us. The presence of such a norm can
only be made sense of by assuming that our singular
terms refer to objects in this shared world.
5. Concluding Remarks
I have now described the double role that the notion of
communication plays in Brandom’s theory of assertional
content. Let me now discuss Brandom’s claim that
communication should not be understood in terms of
transmission of content, but rather in terms of cooperation.
We have seen that in a strongly holistic framework the
transmission of content never works perfectly. However,
that would not yet be a reason to reject the understanding
of communication as transmission. The reason why
Brandom thinks that we should rather conceive of
communication in terms of cooperation is that it plays this
other theoretical role in his theory. Communication is,
according to Brandom, an essential ingredient in the
constitution of content. And if we wanted to understand
communication as transmission of content, we would have
to presuppose content as already given.
As a final remark, I would like to raise the question
whether communication and thus a social dimension in our
discursive practices are really necessary in order to
account for the reference of singular terms in the way
Brandom does. Even if Brandom’s way of explaining
reference is accepted, the question arises whether
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