ABSTRACT
Allan Gibbard’s judicious paper focuses on the issues of the normativity and sociality of intentionality. He sees that there are a lot of things one could mean by both of these terms, and so that we must start by trying to get clear about exactly what is being claimed. On the topic of normativity, I take my starting point from Kant. One of his master ideas is that judging and acting (the fundamental cognitive and practical intentional acts) are things that we are in a distinctive sense responsible for. They express commitments. They are acts of endorsement. Generically, they are acts that change one’s normative status. Kant’s deontology is not specific to his practical philosophy. It penetrates to the core of his understanding of discursiveness in general, on the cognitive or theoretical side no less than the practical. We are to understand judging and believing in deontic terms, terms of what performing such an act or being in such a state obliges or permits one to do (or, as I would prefer to put the point, what it commits or entitles one to).
