ABSTRACT
In Making It Explicit1 (henceforth MIE) Brandom inquires into the nature of assertion, belief, perception and action, that is, into the nature of mental life, the nature of the mind. The book is shaped, first, by Brandom’s methodological conception of his project, by his conception of what he does in saying something about the nature of the mental, and, second, by his conception of his subject matter, by what he says about the nature of the mental. Call the former the force of MIE, the latter its content. I shall argue that the force and the content of MIE are in conflict: Brandom’s conception of what it is to comprehend the nature of the mind is incompatible with how he describes the nature of the mind. The content of MIE can be put thus: mental life is normative practice. Its force can be put thus: MIE explains a mysterious phenomenon. It is incoherent to conjoin a conception of philosophy of mind as explaining a mysterious phenomenon with a conception of the mind as essentially normative.
