INTRODUCTION

In 1994, Harvard University Press published the first full-length books of two professors of philosophy based at the University of Pittsburgh, John McDowell’s Mind and World and Robert Brandom’s Making It Explicit. Both books explore the relationship between what we say and think and what we are talking and thinking about; outline conceptions of this relationship that are deeply indebted to intellectual engagement with the writings of Kant, Frege and Wittgenstein among others; and engage in debate with contemporaries including Davidson, Sellars, Dummett and Rorty. Both books were long anticipated and served to cement the reputation of their respective authors as philosophers of the first rank.