ABSTRACT
Michael Dummett’s pioneering work from the 1960s onwards on the metaphysics and epistemology of meaning has bequeathed an outstanding challenge to contemporary philosophy of language: to show how a broadly use-based, or assertibilist conception of linguistic competence can underwrite a satisfying account of language mastery and of the full range of norms and contents that it embraces, or to show – once and for all – that it cannot, and that in order to do so, more traditionally Realist materials are needed. Robert Brandom’s landmark researches1 fashion a more thoroughgoing answer to this challenge than can be found in the writings of any other living philosopher. Here, however, we review one aspect of his answer – better, his answer to one aspect of the challenge – which seems to us continuingly problematical, and attempt to explain why, as it seems to us, a more orthodox ‘assertibilist’ approach than Brandom’s may yet better serve the purpose.
