Fair enough – but I have been engaging in a critique of your paper, not Brandom per se. For the most part, I’ve been looking at what I believed to be a misreading of Habermas’ critique of the scorekeeper, conceptual realism and in particular the discussion re. learning processes, which I sought to correct from a Habermasian perspective. That’s not to say Habermas hasn’t misunderstood Brandom – but it shouldn’t stop us from trying to understand Habermas!

Obviously I don’t know Brandom as well as I know Habermas – if I say Brandom doesn’t do this or doesn’t do that, then if I’m wrong I hope somebody will correct me! So I have been approaching this discussion as a debate, where I do the work for one side and you (or whoever) does the work for the other. I don’t think this is an unreasonable way to proceed when engaging in this kind of research. It has its risks, but I believe it is also necessary in one shape or another. And it can be quite fruitful, if people are prepared to approach it in the right way.

A more cooperative approach requires us to be literally on the same page – and that requires a lot of work. Unfortunately I have a deadline to meet which means that I can only take what I need from Brandom (since my work is ultimately on Habermas) and I simply cannot attempt a comprehensive, sympathetic reading right at this moment. That’s what it boils down to really. But I’ll keep in mind what you expect from these kinds of discussions, and will contribute to any future postings on this issue where I can.

I’m unclear – and I say this agnostically and open-endedly – how much Brandom you’ve read – you seem only to be citing the Habermas critique in this exchange, which makes the discussion a bit awkward, as it’s the accuracy of Habermas’ understanding of Brandom that is the subject of contention. One reason that I’ve suggested that you try to make your points – for example, when you claim that Brandom does or does not do something – with reference to Brandom’s text, is that this will provide me with a bit of background on how you hear what Brandom is saying: this contextualises the discussion of Brandom’s work, and gives us something we can speak about in a more concrete way.

No one has to engage with Brandom, of course – there are many theorists I don’t engage with either. I just then tend to be very cautious about making strong claims about what those theorists do, don’t do, can do, can’t do, etc. This may just be a matter of style of engagement – my personal preferences don’t need to be yours. You also very well may have an extensive background in Brandom, which you haven’t chosen to share here, because your main focus lies with Habermas. It would be helpful to know this sort of thing, as then we can perhaps attempt to build a bit of a bridge between our respective understandings of Brandom’s system.

People rarely have identical readings of theorists, and are very often trying to use theoretical works to achieve quite different ends – such differences, unrecognised and unremarked, can derail discussions with the best of will on all sides. This is why, for productive discussions to take place, shared vocabularies need to be built. But this requires a level of standing alongside one another, engaged in a conversation with a common goal – and a commonly-held curiosity about taking a new theoretical system for a test drive, exploring it more sympathetically as a prior step before debating the merits of the theoretical approach.

Where the interaction isn’t of this character, I then need to step back and approach the discussion in a different mode – among other things, I need to be much more systematic, and build from the ground level the vocabulary and concepts required to make the point in a more “external” way. This is fair enough, but it takes a lot of time. I can’t devote that kind of time to this debate now, but will be happy to pick up in the future, when I can offer the sort of synoptic overview that might be useful as a reference point in a more external sort of exchange.

It may not be clear from the exchange, because I tend to be a bit of a pedant about getting theorists’ arguments “right”, even where I don’t have a personal commitment to those theorists’ work myself, but there is a strong sense in which I don’t have a dog in this fight. I am neither a Habermasian nor a Brandomian, and I have at least provisional critical impulses toward both theorists. In other discussions, I often defend Habermas from critiques in much the same way I have been defending Brandom here – and for much the same reason: I think critical discussions unfold more productively, if there is a strong commitment to trying to grasp theoretical systems from “within” as much as possible, approaching them empathetically to see what could be unfolded from within them (recognising that time is precious, and none of us ever read more than a fraction of what we might wish to read, let alone in the detail it deserves, etc., etc.). I don’t, however, think you can get very far “in” to Brandom, when pre-committing so strongly to the specific terms of Habermas’ critique of Brandom’s work (I would be particularly cautious about doing things like cross-applying Habermas’ critique of Rorty to Brandom, as though Brandom and Rorty are interchangeable – Brandom could be read, in some respects, as responding to some of the aspects of Rorty that concern Habermas).

So, many of my interventions into this discussion are coming from this – essentially pedantic – direction. As you seem to be, I am also far more familiar with Habermas’ notion of what’s required to tackle these sorts of problems, than I am with Brandom’s – yet I am also familiar enough with Brandom to get the sense that Habermas is not entirely on the mark in his representation of Brandom’s work. So, to get to the bottom of the question at hand, we can’t simply mediate the discussion via what Habermas believes Brandom is doing – we need to move a bit into Brandom’s own work, and see what’s happening there.

As well, there seems to be a level in the discussion in which certain moves in Habermas’ theory are being positioned as fixed standards for other theoretical approaches to meet. This can actually get in the way of an analysis of important questions you have placed on the table about issues like how practical attitudes can institute norms treated in practice as binding, how, absent an “upstream” distinction between action-contexts and rational discourses, a notion of context-independent truth can be established, etc. It’s well worthwhile interrogating Brandom’s system to see what sorts of tools he provides for addressing these challenges. However, if from the outset it’s predecided that his answer must take the same form Habermas’ answer does – if we rule out in advance the possibility of addressing these questions in different ways than Habermas offers – then we probably aren’t opening a very interesting discussion: like Benjamin’s automaton, Habermas will always win this game, but that’s because the rules define all victorious theorists as Habermas.

To be clear: I don’t think this is what you are doing, but it can be an implication of engaging so strongly with Habermas’ critique of Brandom, placing so much faith in Habermas’ specific allegations about Brandom’s system, without trying to parallel this with an investigation of what Brandom is attempting to do, at least a bit on his own terms. Again, I say this without any personal commitment to Brandom – this is just how I work myself into any new theoretical system – at least trying to work into the ability to grasp the generative principles of a system from the inside, to have a better grasp of the unusual directions from which a system might approach a problem I’m used to seeing addressed in other ways.

At the same time, we also might need to get a bit more to the bottom of why Habermas makes certain specific theoretical moves, as some of those moves are “overdetermined” by the weight of his own theoretical inheritance from the first generation Frankfurt School, and therefore can’t be understood to be intrinsically coupled to the problems he was confronting, as the only conceivable solutions: they were the solutions readiest to hand within a specific tradition, with its own theoretical allergies and affinities. Weighing all this up, from both sides, begins to make possible a more productive confrontation between these two approaches.

In terms of some of the substantive points you raise above: the “structural” notion of objectivity, although we’ve focussed on the point at many moments in this discussion, is not the only step in Brandom’s argument for how it becomes possible for binding norms to arise through social practice.

Here I may need to be frustrating, and say that LM and I will try to find the time soon to outline the argument in greater detail, but it’s not something I feel I can do adequately, off the cuff at this point. You’re right that the structural notion of objectivity provides only a very abstract condition of possibility for the emergence of critical distance. Personally, I’m inclined to be sympathetic with your impulse that more than this needs to be grounded, and, moreover, if I were approaching Brandom’s work in a more critical vein, would suggest that Brandom’s various historical gestures could perhaps be used to suggest that the account he unfolds of even this abstract form of critical standard, may be underdetermined in ways that could react back on his approach (although the sort of critique I would make doesn’t line up with Habermas’, and I’m generally more open to shoving things “downstream” than Habermas is). But these are personal points – LM might not share them, and I prefer to bracket these sorts of reactions until I have a better grasp of a theorist’s entire system.

It’s important to recognise, though, that the structural notion of objectivity isn’t the only “point” of Brandom’s analysis. His response to Habermas in relation to learning systems, feedback loops, and the like would require coupling this argument about “objectivity” with other arguments he makes – for example, in relation to reference (which is an argument that does a lot of different jobs in his account, including potentially the job of enabling cumulative learnings from practical experience), to experience and material inference (which might provide a means to talk to some of Habermas’ distinctions about different action-contexts), to many specific gestures at how he would manage a range of downstream “retail” questions about norms, and to a considerably less “retail” argument about making explicit the implicit potentials of social and, paradigmatically, communicative practice – a process that is conceptualised as reconstructively “progressive”, in much the same way that Habermas presents a reconstructive narrative to ground an argument about modernity as an “advance” in its release of rational potentials. And this list still doesn’t really capture the sense of everything Brandom tosses into play. I say this, not in the assumption that it will be a satisfying answer – I understand that I am not showing you how Brandom would address your questions – but simply to suggest that Brandom has a complex system that takes some effort to nail down and, like the work of any major theorist, is sufficiently thoughtful, comprehensive and systematic that its critique is not a trivial matter.

What I should also say, though, is that I suspect that LM and I share many of your concerns about what Brandom’s project might be able to do – our goal at this point isn’t to take a strong “Brandomian” stance, but instead to try to avoid foreclosing the debate too soon, before we have nailed down the strongest read we can provide of Brandom’s work. Our sense is that, in some important respects, Habermas’ critique doesn’t hit its intended target. This isn’t, though, an argument that Brandom pays out on all the various promissory notes he issues in his work – whether on his own terms, or Habermas’. It’s simply an expression that sticking solely to the terms of the debate between these two authors is not by itself sufficient to resolve these sorts of questions.

At best Brandom’s “structural account” of objectivity explains how the difference between belief and knowledge can be introduced into language. But as Habermas points out, “the question… of how linguistic and empirical knowledge interact seems to call for an investigative perspective broader than a language-immanet one.” At this point we are still “upstream”, that is, we are not yet dealing with “the messy ‘retail’ content of particular norms” – rather, the issue here concerns the learning processes by which we can revise our concepts in the light of experience. It really doesn’t make much sense to talk about a pragmatist theory of objectivity in the absence of such an account. And I think Habermas is right to question whether Brandom can provide it. Habermas’ discussion of this issue in his critique of Brandom is in fact a compressed version of what is given a more detailed treatment elsewhere in his work. For example, in his essay “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn”. There Habermas draws out the significance of distinguishing between the role played by the certainty found in action-contexts versus the “truth” arrived at in discourse: “Only the entwining of the two different pragmatic roles played by the Janus-faced concept of truth in action-contexts and in rational discourses respectively can explain why a justification successful in a local context points in favor of the context-independent truth of the justified belief.” The certainties which actors carry with them into action-contexts are grounded in the lifeworld, and this must be distinguished from the level of discursive argumentation which relies on reasons. Brandom does not make this distinction, at this level of abstraction, which Habermas claims is necessary to overcoming contextualist doubts regarding the notion of objectivity.

So the question of what would be lost needs somehow to confront the issue of why Habermas places these distinctions in a particular sort of role, relative to other distinctions. I suspect it’s a fairly difficult question to answer – I raise it, not as a challenge for you to do this, as I think it might actually be quite difficult to do briefly, but to suggest that the issue isn’t going to involve a simple either-or – go with Brandom, lose distinctions between types of norms – but rather a much more complex argument relating to why Habermas finds a stake – not in making these distinctions – but rather in locating these distinctions “upstream” of where Brandom’s approach would place them.

I’ll try to find some time this evening to respond in more depth, but in response to Nicole’s suggestion that we “ask what would be lost, let’s say to Habermas’ social theory, if we adopted a Brandomian approach…”, I think Habermas gives us his answer in his critique: illocutionary force, “semantically relevant learning processes” with which to revise our beliefs, and the fundamental distinction between norms of action and norms of rationality. These are all bound up together of course. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but it’s useful to keep in mind what Habermas believes to be at stake.

I agree with Nicole when she writes that “Brandom’s structural notion of “objectivity” cuts across Habermas’ three formal world concepts…” – Tom’s discussion was also very helpful in this regard – and I’ll try to make that my starting point when I next respond. Have to dash!

Incidentally, I’m not sure that Brandom would deny some “objectifying” move might take place in the perculation up of perception to reasons. It is just that, again, this cannot be prior in the order of explanation to inferential web in which such objectifications take place. This is why Brandom is also happy (indeed must) provide a thorough-going account of representation – he doesn’t see representation as ruled out by inferentialism, just subsequent to it. This is what for me, simply put, Habermas misses – Brandom is not denying, so much as subjugating, common features of perception, action, feedback, representation,etc, to an inferentialist account.

Brandom’s structural notion of “objectivity” cuts across Habermas’ three formal world concepts – it provides the engine or condition of possibility for critical stances to arise with reference to these, or other, frameworks. This move is not a conflation, but a deliberate theoretical stance: Brandom is fairly clear that he takes Habermas’ distinctions to be inappropriately foreclosing potentials Brandom wants to open up. This move also doesn’t make Brandom’s concept of giving and asking for reasons “instrumental” – nor does it (on Brandom’s terms) prevent what Brandom means by the notion of structural “objectivity” from being a relevant counter-factual ideal for social actors across what Habermas treats as distinctive regions of social practice.

I think there is a serious disagreement here between the two authors – if only at the highest level of abstraction for each – about which sorts of critical concepts are analytically (and, perhaps, practically) prior. This disagreement makes it actually quite problematic, simply to map Brandom’s “objectivity” into one of the various categories Habermas unfolds at an equivalent level of abstraction in his own theoretical system – to do this, without first trying to resolve the argument over the analytical priority of their respective critical categories, would necessarily press Brandom’s “objectivity” into a one-sided form – which then inevitably looks less sophisticated and easier to “pick off” than the argument he actually unfolds.

Brandom can probably claim to “embed” Habermas’ approach – if only very abstractly, by pointing the distinctions Habermas wants to draw, to practices in which social actors engage “downstream” of Brandom’s analysis of why a structural ideal of “objectivity” arises. Habermas, in turn, would probably view Brandom as a form of “de-differentiation” – as a step back behind distinctions Habermas holds analytically central and regards as definitive of the rational potentials of modernity. The question is how to take their duelling critiques, and work out how one might choose between them, short of some sort of Weberian decisionism.

One possibility would be seeing what each approach enables us to grasp – or, to come at the same question from a different direction, to ask what would be lost, let’s say to Habermas’ social theory, if we adopted a Brandomian approach: if the counterfactual, structural ideal of “objectivity” were all that were grounded at the most abstract analytical level, thus establishing a very basic precondition for social actors to adopt a critical, hypothetical, questioning attitude toward any sort of (tacit or explicit) assertion – but permitting more differentiated ideals or critical standards further “downstream” – including the instrumental/world-view-revising distinction you mention above – then what could Habermas currently do, that he would not be able to do within a Brandomian framework?

[As a side note, on the bit you italicised: I don't actually think there's much of a disagreement between Brandom and Habermas in this regard - LM's statement may have uintentionally implied more of an internal, private, critical monologue than is involved in Brandom's analysis: Brandom is quite clear that, to the extent that such monologues take place, they presuppose the "I-thou". Brandom's discussion of implicit background and Habermas' discussion of the taken-for-granted lifeworld are fairly similar. Both authors are trying to theorise how what is implicit or taken for granted can come to be problematised. Where they begin to differ, again, is over the level of abstraction or the point in the order of explanation at which particular kinds of critical ideals can be introduced.]

My focus in the last post was on the whole “feedback” question. Brandom’s account of the learning process is framed in instrumentalist terms – or at least, he does not distinguish between the feedback loop of action and experience that we rely on in everyday life, and the learning process that is involved in revising our beliefs about the world. (At least I don’t know of anywhere he makes this distinction.) The latter process involves giving / asking for reasons, so it is not the same as refining one’s actions to maximize efficiency, something that can be carried out from a purely instrumentalist perspective. This is all I meant by: “the “game of giving and asking for reasons” is not just a stage in an instrumental learning process…” It’s not that I think Brandom in general reduces communication to “a sort of instrumentally flattened process.”

Liam’s description illustrates pretty well, I think, the conflation that’s at work in Brandom’s account:

“Thus, seeing the traffic blocked ahead as a perceptual act just means noticing the presence of cars, roads, lights etc. Insofar as I take them to be blocking me from some objective, I am already framing reasons for being blocked, which when pressed I can offer to an interlocutor.” (My italics.)

I disagree with the bit in italics – that’s why Habermas talks about the need for ““objectifying the situation that was originally ‘ready-to-hand’” in order to formulate reasons which can then be argued about.

There’s a lot more to this discussion but for the moment let me know if I’m getting my point across (de dicto if not de re).