Abstract

Where does the conceptual content of our ideas come from? By pointing out the impotence of the representationalist approach in distinguishing human’s judgment and action from natural creatures’ responses to external stimuli, Brandom proposes an inferentialist approach by maintaining that the ideas manifested in our thinking, saying, and doing obtain their conceptual content by enrolling themselves to play roles in the inferential game of making claims and giving and asking for reasons. By doing so, Brandom shifts the locus of the conceptual content of our ideas from the material world — i.e., the locus where the representationalists maintain the origin of conceptual content of human’s ideas — to the human’s discursive practice and commitment (understood in linguistic form). Rouse maintains, however, that Brandom’s language-centered account of discursive practice has no bearing on the world because it does not properly treat the functional role of human perception and action in our thinking, saying, and doing. Rouse’s idea is that it is not discursive practice but instead our bodily activities, such as perceiving and acting, that are channels of our bodies to access to the world. Those “practical skills” of managing our sensual capacities to respond reliably to the world — i.e., those perceptual/practical intra-actions — should be regarded as the locus of the origin of the meaning of our ideas. This paper concludes by further maintaining that if we regard our discursive practice — including our thinking, saying, and doing — as different forms of using our concepts to conduct material inferences, then the criticism that Brandom’s account has no bearing on the world may be regarded as baseless.