A posição filosófica chamada de externismo semântico caracteriza-se pela tese segundo a qual a individuação do conteúdo de estados mentais deve recorrer a fatores que não podem ser localizados na região geralmente circunscrita pela noção mesma de mente. Tal tese implica, em todo caso, que a suposta interioridade da vida psicológica não se basta para tornar inteligível as condições de possibilidade que o pensamento conceitual requer. Assim, se fatores externos aos indivíduos são vistos como desempenhando uma contribuição decisiva na própria determinação de seu conteúdo mental, isto é algo que torna necessário compreender em que sentido mente e mundo podem ser tomados como intrinsecamente relacionados. A aposta teórica do presente trabalho é a de que apenas uma concepção da individuação liberada dos grilhões substancialistas permite fornecer um solo ontológico fértil para uma teoria externista do conceito. Daí que a noção de triangulação, que Donald Davidson forjou para dar conta de alguns fatores cruciais na gênese da conceitualidade, seja lida a partir de filosofias que ressaltam o caráter decisivo da vida como referencialidade fundamental do conceito. Logo, é na ordem vital que se busca dissolver os impasses ligados à origem da normatividade e à dualidade entre interno e externo, oposição a partir da qual a subjetividade desde muito tempo tem sido pensada. / The philosophical position called semantic externalism is characterized by the thesis according to which the individuation of the content of mental states must make reference to traits that cannot be placed inside the sphere usually circumscribed by the very notion of mind. Such a thesis implies, anyway, that the supposed interiority of the psychological life is not enough to make intelligible the conditions that conceptual thought requires. If factors external to individuals are seen as entertaining a decisive contribution in the very determination of their mental content, that is makes it necessary to understand in what sense mind and world can be taken as intrinsically related. The theoretical bet of the present thesis is that only a conception of individuation free from the substantialist commitments can provide a fertile ontological ground to an externalist theory of the concept. In this sense, the notion of triangulation, that Donald Davidson has forged to explain some crucial elements in the genesis of conceptuality, is read from the standpoint of philosophies that highlight the decisive character of life as fundamental referentiality of the concept itself. So, it is in the vital order that some deadlocks concerning the origins of normativity and the inner outer duality structural opposition under which from a long time subjectivity is thought upon, are dissolved.

In The Sources of Normativity, Christine Korsgaard argues that in order to avoid the threat of moral skepticism, our moral theories must show how the claims they make about the nature of our actions obligate us to act morally. A theory that can justify the normativity of morality in this way answers what Korsgaard calls “the normative question.” Although Korsgaard claims that only Kantian theories of morality, such as her own, can answer the normative question, I argue that Adam Smith’s sentimentalist moral theory, as presented in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, can answer the normative question as well. As a result, it is possible to respond to the moral skeptic in the way Korsgaard outlines without accepting some of the theoretical drawbacks of Korsgaard’s own moral theory.

The pure theory of law is a positivist legal theory put forward by Hans Kelsen. Recently there have been two attempts to understand democracy as a source for the normativity that the pure theory assigns to law. Lars Vinx seeks to understand the pure theory as a theory of political legitimacy, in which the normativity that the pure theory assigns to the laws of a state depends on the state’s adoption of certain legitimacy enhancing features, including being democratic. Uta Bindreiter argues that, in the case of European Community law, an additional criterion of democracy must be added to the criteria that the pure theory normally requires of legal systems before the pure theory can presuppose the normativity of European Community law. This thesis will argue that neither of these two accounts succeeds in demonstrating that the normativity of the pure theory can be understood to depend on democracy.

This project offers an articulation of rationality in terms of normativity—that what it means to be acting rationally, in thought or in deed, can be understood via a notion of being bound or obliged to certain behaviors given a prior structure that delimits what is rational to assert in a discourse or perform in a society. In the explicit articulation of the role of norms in limning rationality, this project also emphasizes the opportunity and obligation to self-critically assess the value of the metalinguistic and metapractical standards that license rational assertions and behaviors. After an introduction, section 2 examines the role of rational constraint in Kant’s account of representation, concluding that the transcendental story his philosophy leaves us with impels us to look for an immanent socio-linguistic account of the normativity that obliges us to think and behave in certain ways, rather than lodging the force of normativity in transcendentality. Section 3 then examines Robert Brandom’s inferential semantics by addressing prominent responses to Brandom’s program, making explicit two ways in which normativity operates in inferentialism—one at the level of objectlanguage in the articulation of the propositional commitments and entitlements that specify propositional content, the other at the level of the metalinguistic appraisal of the standards that drive object-language inferentialism. Section 4 turns to the theoretical status of normativity and its role in practical behavior, where it is argued that a notion of normativity can underpin a theory of intentional states. Examining positions on naturalism, the author proposes that a causal account of intentionality, made explicit by the prescriptive nature of the theory advanced, provides a naturalist view of normativity for which norms are in explanations of social states as laws are in explanations of physical states. Hence the obligation to self-critically reflect on and revise the norms that delimit ethical behavior in social systems is understood as commensurate with the obligation to self-critically reflect on and revise the norms that delimit warranted assertions in epistemic discourse. The conclusion offers some remarks on the prospects for rational revision in both a discipline’s discourse and a society’s standards of behavior.

Many of us take for granted that rationality requires that we have our attitudes combined only in certain ways. For example, we are required not to hold inconsistent beliefs or intentions and we are required to intend any means we see as crucial to our ends. But attempts to justify claims like these face two problems. First, it is unclear what unifies the rational domain and determines what is (and is not) rationally required of us. This is the content problem. Second, as philosophers have been unable to find any general reason for us to have our attitudes combined only in certain ways, it is unclear why, or in what sense, we are required to comply with these putative requirements in the first place. This is the normativity problem. My dissertation offers an account of rationality which solves these problems. I argue that the entire domain of rational requirements can be derived from a single ultimate requirement demanding that we not have sets of intentions and beliefs which cause their own failure. This General Requirement of Structural Rationality explains the unity of the rational domain and directly solves the content problem. But it also solves the normativity problem. I argue that whenever we violate the General Requirement we are engaged in a form of criticizable self-undermining. I propose that this is enough to ground the claim that we ought to comply with the General Requirement's demands. This conclusion can be secured as long as we accept the thesis of normative pluralism, according to which there is more than one fundamentally distinct form of normative 'ought.' / Philosophy

Die These, sprachliche Bedeutung sei normativ, wird erklärt und verteidigt. Im ersten Kapitel wird die Fragestellung vorgestellt und von anderen verwandten Fragestellungen abgegrenzt sowie ein Überblick über die Geschichte des Themas gegeben. Im zweiten Kapitel wird das der Arbeit zugrundeliegende Verständnis von Normativität vorgestellt. Im dritten Kapitel wird das sog. Korrektheitsargument für die Normativitätsthese vorgestellt und zurückgewiesen. Im vierten bis sechsten Kapitel wird die Normativitätsthese anhand von Überlegungen zum Regelfolgenproblem, zum Begriff der konstitutiven Regel und zur Unterscheidung einer erklärenden und einer verstehenden Perspektive auf sprachliche Bedeutung verteidigt. Im siebten Kapitel wird diese Konzeption semantischer Normativität auf Sprachwissen und im achten Kapitel auf Referenz angewendet.

The following is an attempt to ground personal duty – duty which is both believed and felt by all agents. To do this, I look at two contrasting attempts. The first is a rationalist attempt, which tries to ground it in conceptual necessity, the second an empiricist one, which uses empirical fact as its basis. In particular, it uses contingent facts about the things which are agents (people, for example), and what makes them feel a sense of duty. I argue that, ultimately, it is this type of grounding of duty which can be successful. Throughout, I emphasize two crucial points. The first is the freedom of the individual; the second is that duty is not a "want" or "desire;" rather, it is quite often what one does against one's own wants or desires. I argue that a paradigmatic example of establishing duty is Harry Frankfurt's theory of autonomous love.

In the Theaetetus, Socrates proposes that knowledge is true belief that is accounted for or justified. The question that intuitively follows is what the proper structure of a justifying account of true belief is. Answers to this question are available throughout the history of philosophy and are generally vulnerable to the Agrippan trilemma of justification that originates with Pyrrhonian skepticism. I trace the influence of Pyrrhonism on the search for the proper structure of justification as it plays out in the current debate between coherentists and “contemporary” foundationalists. I expose their principal concerns—normative and naturalist, respectively—as descendants of ancient skeptical challenges. Illuminating this lineage shows that currently competing forms of justification are locked into a dilemma that is circumscribed by the Agrippan trilemma. Immanuel Kant and Ludwig Wittgenstein grapple with precursors to the current debate, which sets an interesting precedent for John McDowell’s attempt to resolve it with what I think is a conceptualist interpretation of contemporary foundationalism. I argue that a genetic story heuristically reinforces McDowell’s interpretation in a way that frustrates normative and naturalist concerns and leaves open the threat of skepticism. I in turn portray Kant and Wittgenstein as capable of domesticating these threats with a unique structure of justification that I argue is non-epistemically foundationalist. Such a structure meets the Socratic challenge that justifying true belief itself requires true belief as to the soundness of this justification. My central aim is to show how non-epistemic foundationalism is a matter of grounding, which depicts an asymmetrical relationship between empirical belief and pre-cognitive or transcendental awareness. I conclude that a grounding model satisfies normative and naturalist concerns and thereby offers a way out of the contemporary dilemma and an escape from the Agrippan trilemma. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-28 11:57:18.196

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The pure theory of law is a positivist legal theory put forward by Hans Kelsen. Recently there have been two attempts to understand democracy as a source for the normativity that the pure theory assigns to law. Lars Vinx seeks to understand the pure theory as a theory of political legitimacy, in which the normativity that the pure theory assigns to the laws of a state depends on the state’s adoption of certain legitimacy enhancing features, including being democratic. Uta Bindreiter argues that, in the case of European Community law, an additional criterion of democracy must be added to the criteria that the pure theory normally requires of legal systems before the pure theory can presuppose the normativity of European Community law. This thesis will argue that neither of these two accounts succeeds in demonstrating that the normativity of the pure theory can be understood to depend on democracy.