critical notices | 367

and argue that there are no value properties, that value words serve to express liking
and disliking, or some such.
The idea that scientific explanations will expose non-naturalistic ones as illusions
is an important philosophical position. To rule non-natural accounts of meaning
out of the discussion merely because they are not natural science would be
to refuse to engage in genuinely philosophical dialogue. No one could have less
reason to avoid such dialogue than Fodor. He is thoroughly at home in a dialectical setting, a paradigm of a bold and sporting contributor. His book will
undoubtedly be valuable to the science of the mental. It should also challenge general
philosophers.
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA
jc7y@virginia.edu

Inhabiting the Space of Reasoning

JEREMY WANDERER

1
Recent accounts of differing contemporary approaches to mind and language portray
them as engaged in a kind of Homeric struggle between two warring camps,
neo-Cartesian and neo-Pragmatist.1 One central battlefront concerns the potential
autonomy of semantics from pragmatics. To say that semantics is potentially autonomous from pragmatics is to allow that there can be a semantic theory that makes
no potential contribution to pragmatic theory. Neo-Cartesians affirm, whilst
neo-Pragmatists deny, the potential autonomy of semantics from pragmatics.
A Homeric struggle calls for heroes; heroes in the neo-Pragmatist camp are said to
include Dummett, Brandom, Rorty, McDowell, Davidson and (possibly) Sellars,
whilst heroes in the neo-Cartesian camp are said to include Dretske, Fodor and
Lepore. Here we have a basic divide in contemporary philosophy of language, one
that John Macfarlane has dubbed as perhaps the most significant divide of all.2
The distinction between pragmatics and semantics used here is the distinction
between theorizing about language use and acts of thinking on the one hand, and
theorizing about the meaning or content of that which is used and thought on the
other. In rejecting the potential autonomy of semantics from pragmatics, the neoPragmatist need not reduce semantic norms to, nor identify them with, some subsection of pragmatic ones, nor claim that it must be possible to derive determinate
semantic content from a suitably rich description of the proprieties of linguistic
1

Quoted phrases in this paragraph echo Strawson (2004: 132), in his influential depiction
of another basic divide in the philosophy of language.

Macfarlane (forthcoming). This divide is further discussed in Wanderer (2008), from

which this paragraph is drawn.

Analysis Reviews Vol 70 | Number 2 | April 2010 | pp. 367378 doi:10.1093/analys/anp147

The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust.
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368 | critical notices

practice. Rather, the neo-Pragmatist makes a supposition about the goal of semantic
theory, to the effect that it must sustain some explanatory link with an account of
language use as captured in pragmatic theory. As a result, the neo-Pragmatist denies
that there can be any point to arbitrating between disputes regarding the appropriate
characterization of determinate semantic content in a manner that makes no difference whatsoever to pragmatics.
For the neo-Pragmatist, the correct characterization of language use is critical for
achieving an adequate conception of mindedness. One important distinction in this
regard is between normative and descriptive versions of neo-Pragmatism. Loosely, the
difference is between thinking of the kinds of acts that comprise language use in terms
of the function that instances of such kinds ought to perform, and thinking of such
kinds in terms of the functional role they do play in the context of some relevant larger
system. Although the descriptive neo-Pragmatists may use normative terminology in
their pragmatic theory, it is ultimately to be eliminated from or reduced to or identified with some suitable group of non-normative terms. For the normative neoPragmatist, in contrast, it is norms all the way down, at least in the sense that any
pragmatic theory can and must make use of irreducibly normative terminology.
Another issue for the neo-Pragmatist concerns the kinds of acts deemed essential to
language use. Many neo-Pragmatists seem content to treat linguistic practice as essentially involving just one kind of performance the speech act of asserting. Brandom,
for example, is explicit about this, endorsing this privileging of the speech act of
asserting over and above all other speech acts under the heading of linguistic rationalism.3 Given the close relationship between semantics and pragmatics for the neoPragmatist, it is not surprising that privileging asserting in this manner has an impact
on semantic theory too. Specifically, this rationalist conception of pragmatics results
in a semantic theory that places a primacy on declaratival content, that is, on the kind
of things that are asserted in an act of asserting. As a result, Wilfrid Sellarss gripping
image of a space of reasons is construed as a space whose topography is that of
inferential relations between propositions.
In Yo and Lo, Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lance (K&L) place themselves firmly on
the side of the normative neo-Pragmatists, and much of the book is best read as an
internecine conflict amongst comrades-in-arms.4 The nub of this localized feud concerns the privileging of the declaratival speech act in the manner just noted, and the
concomitant characterization of the space of reasons in propositional terms. For
K&L, such normative neo-Pragmatists are guilty of what they term the declaratival
fallacy. The book provides rich and detailed outlines of other non-declaratival
types of speech acts; applies these types to dispel long-standing difficulties in
areas such as meta-ethics and epistemology; argues for the necessary inclusion of
some of these types in any conception of linguistic practice; and aspires to reconceive
the image of a space of reasons that is shorn of commitment to the primacy of the
declarative.

For example, Brandom (2000: 145).

Yo! and Lo!: The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons by Rebecca Kukla
and Mark Lance (Harvard University Press, 2009, xiv 240, pp. 36.95).

critical notices | 369

2
Following K&L, think of a speech act as an act performed by agents in a discursive
community that strives to change the normative status of others in that community,
such as the various obligations and permissions to perform associated with agents in
the community. A token utterance is an instance of particular kind of speech act in
virtue of its striving to play the pragmatic function associated with that speech act.
This is a claim about the structural function of the act as it operates within such a
community, and not reducible to what the actor intends the act to achieve, nor what
any instance of so acting will actually or conventionally achieve (13). Token utterances may have various pragmatic functions and thus instantiate more than one type
of speech act.
Thought of as functions, such speech acts will have inputs namely, the norms
governing the conditions of appropriate performance, and outputs namely, the
changes in normative status that the act strives to produce. According to K&L,
declaratives are an example of speech acts that have what they term agent-neutral
input and outputs. Take the newscasters claim that Bernie has been found guilty.5
The input of such a declarative is agent-neutral since it is a speech act that finds
grounding in the world in a way that is not specific to who is asserting. The output of
a declarative is agent-neutral since it seeks to impute the entitlement to assert this
claim to the discursive community in general, and demands that others allow it to
constrain their inferences and beliefs regardless of their personal normative positions
(1819).
Vocatives, in contrast, are an example of speech acts that have agent-relative inputs
and outputs. A friend yells out: Hey. This hail serves to express her recognition of my
presence, a recognition to be achieved by requesting my recognition of the appropriateness of her hail through an act directed back to her. Thus, my subsequent nod of
the head accompanied by a howzit is the recognitive response that the vocative
strives to bring about. My response is an act of acknowledgement in return that
recognizes the call as having being made appropriately, as having reached its target
and as appropriately requesting the act of acknowledgment in return. The input to a
vocative is agent-relative: not everyone has the authority to appropriately hail me, to
engage me in this relationship of mutual recognition. The output of a vocative is
agent-relative: the act does not strive to alter the normative status associated with
everyone in a community but strives to give those hailed the obligation to recognize
my hail. Indeed, both input and output of the vocative are agent-relative in the particularly strong sense that the vocative is individuating and second-personal (143).
A vocative is individuating in that even if many people are hailed by a single utterance
(Hello Wisconsin) or even by many such simultaneous utterances, the vocative is
5

Though useful for illustrative purposes, this example is misleading, since it suggests that
there is an association between the surface form of an utterance and the type of speech act
it instantiates. Since we have already claimed that one token utterance may instantiate
multiple speech acts, this cannot be the case. However, it is often the case in practice that
utterances with certain kinds of surface grammar will typically be associated with one kind
of speech over the others it may instantiate. For example, the surface grammar of the
assertion: Bernie has been found guilty brings the declaratival function to the fore, but
does not preclude that same utterance instantiating other speech acts as well. The use of
examples (here and below) should be treated in this light. (Cf. 212).

370 | critical notices

essentially from, and attaches to, one and only one individual it calls for your
recognition that I have been recognized by you. It is second-personal in that it not
only strives to make me aware of your recognition of me but that it makes a demand
on me to acknowledge my recognition through responding to you in a way that
expresses my recognition that you are holding me to so respond.
These two distinctions, input versus output and agent-relative versus agent-neutral,
open up the possibility of there being mixed acts, that is acts having agent-neutral
inputs and agent-relative outputs or vice-versa. Consider, for example, what K&L call
observatives, such as my saying Lo, a rabbit! in the visual presence of a rabbit. In
addition to possibly playing the ostensive function of calling to others to pay attention
to what I perceive, the act also gives first-personal expression to my own recognition
of the presence of the rabbit. Crucially, this observative function is not the same as
declarative description (an observation report) of the contents of my perceptual
experience. The output of such a declarative may be similar to that of an observative
both declarative and observative have agent-neutral outputs in that both, for example, allow all others to be entitled to assert that there is a rabbit present. Their inputs
differ however. Unlike a declarative, the entitlement to an observative is my own,
since the function of the speech act is to give recognition to my detection of the rabbit
something that no one else is entitled to do.
Much of the book involves setting a typology of speech acts based on these distinctions and identifying different (and philosophically significant, though often unnoticed) speech acts that fall within these four types. It is thus tempting to read the book
as an attempt to offer precise and novel characterizations of various kinds of speech
acts, an Austinesque duet sung in a neo-Pragmatic key, and there is much to be gained
from their rich and insightful analysis when conceived in these terms. But, as already
indicated, K&Ls ambitions here move beyond this: to undermine the beholdeness of
normative neo-Pragmatism to the primacy of the declaratival and to expose the harms
of this rationalist obsession. In the following, I consider some aspects of K&Ls characterization of declaratives, observatives and vocatives in turn, and then raise a question regarding the picture of the space of reasons that emerges.

3
First, declaratives. There is an intuitive sense in which the output of a declarative is
agent-neutral. Let us contrast two different ways of capturing this intuition. The first
appeals to entitlements alone: a declarative defeasibly licenses anyone (even overhearers) to reassert it on the speakers say-so. The second additionally invokes
some kind of positive duty on all inquirers, such as a duty on any inquirer to know
what is known loosely thought of as the stock of common knowledge in a community of inquirers. By declaring that p following a scientific discovery for example, one
thereby alters all the duties associated with each community member, since every
community member now has the duty, albeit minimal and exculpable, to know that
p. The output of a declarative is agent-neutral on the first route since it would license
anyone who comes across it to reassert it; the output of a declarative is agent-neutral
on the second route since it potentially changes the duties associated with each and
every member of a discursive community.

critical notices | 371

The first route is sparer than the second in three senses. First, it only invokes
alterations in entitlements and not duties. Second, the alteration in normative status
following a declarative is limited to those who come into contact with the speech act.
Third, it requires no special story to be told about repeat declaratives that reassert
what is already known. On the second, thicker route, in contrast, both duties and
entitlements are invoked; a first-time declarative transforms the normative status of
every community member into that of epistemic deficiency that requires rectification;
and repeat declaratives are unlike first-time declaratives in that they do not alter the
normative statuses associated with community members, but serve to call on those
who do not already accept the claim to do so.
As I read it, K&L proffer a version of the thicker route in capturing the agentneutrality of the output of a declaratival speech act, albeit one that rejects the specific
duty to know what is known. Imagine someone obsessed (a term used deliberately)
with finding out the number of grains of sand in a clearly delineated segment of
Kommetjie beach, euphorically declaring 31,76,654 grains on completion of the
inquiry.6 To say that his performance gives me one who has not met the person,
not heard the claim nor been to that beach an epistemic duty to know this fact is
bizarre. Some truths are simply trivial, and the taking up of such a supposed duty to
know trivial truths simply because someone else does would only serve to divert
precious, finite intellectual resources away from other, non-trivial inquiries. There is
thus good reason to follow K&L in rejecting the specific duty to know what is known,
although it seems that this would extend to any suggestion that this persons speech
act alters my epistemic duties whatsoever.
For K&L, the effect of this persons declaration is to place me in a position of
discursive deficiency susceptibility to legitimate correction by others that is concretely different from a mere failure of omniscience (28), and to provide me with a
positive prohibition against my denying it (37). Following his speech act, I now know
less than is known and there is a sense in which . . . insofar as a fact is something
that. . . we know, to that extent we are all answerable to it, and we each fail to meet
our individual epistemic responsibilities, however minimally or exculpably, if we dont
know it (36). However, alternate epistemic duties are available to underpin these
phenomena (such as a duty not to assert that which is false to explain propriety of
social censure in cases of perceived falsity) that are more plausible in their not being
created by the possibly trivial declarations of others with whom I have had no contact.
Why, then, do K&L take a thicker route to conceiving agent-neutrality, rather than
remain content with the sparer one? A possible suggestion lies in their tendency to
always think in terms of linguistic community (I-We terms), even in situations where
thinking in terms of the normative structure of dialogic interactions between interlocutors would suffice (I-Thou terms).7 Consider their suggestion that
the proper performance of a declarative, at least the first time it is uttered, turns
failure to be entitled to that declarative into a defect. . . Otherwise, there would
be no reason for us to claim that such an entitlement is part of the agent-neutral
output of a declarative speech act, given that not everyone will be in a position
to take up the entitlement. (28)
6

The example, and my interest in it, are due to Lucy Shapiro.

Cf. Brandom (1994: 659).

372 | critical notices

It would indeed be absurd to suggest that everyone in a community is now defeasibly

entitled to reassert a claim following my declarative, since most people will not have
heard it. What is not absurd is to suggest that the normative structure of the claim is
such that anyone (Thou) coming across the claim is entitled by me (I) to reassert it.
Pace K&L, by focussing on the normative structure of the interaction between potential interlocutors, rather than an attempt to move from my claim (I) to changes in
communal status (We) via implausible epistemic duties, the sparer route is a more
promising way of capturing the agent-neutrality of the output of declaratives.

4
Second, observatives. K&L do not just isolate observatives, but suggest that a fuller
recognition of such a speech act can contribute to a richer understanding of our
epistemic entitlement to empirical knowledge claims. A thumbnail sketch of their
position can be had by considering the following diagrammatic representation of
the process by which we are led to empirical beliefs:
(1) Physical objects !a!(2) Sensings of Sense Contents !b!(3) Non-inferential
beliefs !c!(4) Inferential Beliefs.8
Common ground amongst most normative neo-Pragmatists, including K&L, would
include the following: the arrow labelled a depicts a causal relation between particulars (1, 2) describable in a non-normative vocabulary; the arrow labelled c depicts
a rational relation between conceptually structured states (3, 4) describable in a normative vocabulary; to avoid what Sellars called the myth of the given one has to treat
the arrow labelled b as depicting a causal relation.
The main debate regards the identity of (3). For some, we should treat these as
belief states, the mental analogue of declaratives, since nothing can be a reason for a
belief except another belief.9 For K&L, we should replace (3) with observations, the
mental analogues of observatives, so the sketch should be altered as follows:
(1) Physical objects !a!(2) Sensings
Observations!c!(4) Inferential Beliefs.

of

Sense

Contents

!b!(30 )

Observations stand in rational relations to beliefs, but differ from beliefs in two ways.
First, they wear their passivity on their sleeves as it were, since like their linguistic
counterpart they do not declare something but serve to give first-personal recognition of what it is that is observed. Second, although they are conceptually structured,
they need not have declaratival content. So, whilst some propositional observations
may be given recognition in observatives (e.g. in the observative: Willard is on the
mat!), so too may non-propositional observations (e.g. in the observative: Lo, a
rabbit!), and the temptation to treat the latter as elliptically propositional stems
from tacit adherence to the declarative fallacy, and should be rejected.
Their discussion of the second difference is unsatisfying. K&L concede that the two
differences can come apart, so that one could treat observatives as pragmatically
distinct from declaratives, whilst treating all observatives as having propositional
8

Modified from Brandom 1997: 126.

Davidson (1986: 310).

critical notices | 373

content (57). Two reasons are offered for rejecting this compromise. First, the compromise requires us to treat the content of an observative such as Lo, a rabbit! as
elliptical, but there is no principled way to fill in the ellipsis from amongst a range of
possible suitable propositions, and the fact that there seems to be no good reasons for
choosing one of these declarative translations over the other strongly suggests that
none of them in fact . . . nails down the import of the original (56). Second, and more
importantly, the elliptical observative is idiomatic as is, and the only reason to treat it
as elliptical is for one to be in the grip of the declarative fallacy. The first reason is
suggestive at best, and the second depends on their being no principled reason for
ascribing propositional content to observatives. Here is one any account of observatives should be able to explain just which declaratives are licensed and prohibited
by observations. Treating all observatives as having propositional content allows us to
draw on the familiarities of propositional logic in formulating a response; in contrast,
nothing K&L say about the conceptual-yet-not-propositional character of some
observatives as conceived by them allows one to even begin to answer this explanatory challenge. (They actually tell us surprisingly little about the conceptual content of
observatives, besides noting that it must involve a concept. Indeed, all their examples
involve distinctive kinds of concepts substance sortals, yet nothing is made of their
role, nor to explain why this is). This is not an argument against K&Ls view but a
request for further clarification, in the absence of which the compromise position is far
more promising.
Much time is spent contrasting their position with that of John McDowell in his
Mind and World.10 Transposing K&Ls account of this contrast into the schema used
here, McDowell is worried that (3) in our initial diagram fails to provide sufficient
worldly constraint on beliefs to make these about empirical reality, and thus replaces
(3) with: (300 ) experiential states. K&L argue that their (30 ) provides just the kind of
passivity that McDowell needs, without either the notorious obscurity of his characterization of (300 ) nor the tacit adherence to the declarative fallacy that leads him to
treat all experiential states as having propositional content. In recent years, McDowell
has recanted some aspects of his position in Mind and World, including the claim
that experience must have propositionally articulated conceptual content.11 This
would seem to give succor to K&Ls critique here and bring McDowells revised
position close to that advocated by K&L. Comparing the two reveals an important
difference between them that is worth highlighting.
In his revised position, McDowell contends that the content of an experiential state
is not like the content of a judgement in that the latter is propositional and the former
is intuitional. Both intuitional and propositional content have a kind of unity, though
the unity differs. Propositional content has a unity that results from the activity of
putting significances together in a judgement, in a manner akin to forming a meaningful utterance. In contrast, intuitional content has a unity which is given, in the sense
of not featuring in the state by being actively put together from separate significances.
Nonetheless, the same capacity whose exercise accounts for the unity in one accounts
for the unity in the other, so that one could not have intuitions if one could not make
judgements and vice versa. In this sense, though experiential content is not
10 McDowell (1994).
11 McDowell (2009).

374 | critical notices

propositional, it is conceptual, in that both judgements and experiences draw on

rational capacities. Further, the content of an intuition is in a form in which one
could make that content figure in a judgement, so that experiencing entitles us to
certain judgements with related content, such as judgements that actively exploit the
content of an intuition.
A central difference between judging and experiencing, for McDowell, is that judging, but not experiencing, is discursive, and thus the propositional content of a
judgement, and not the intuitional content of an experience, is articulated. One can
use ones discursive abilities to carve out propositional content from the unarticulated
intuitional content, but there can be intuitional content that is not brought to discursive activity, and there may be intuitional content for which one currently lacks the
ability to make it discursively explicit. Treating intuitional content as discursive content is to over-intellectualize our epistemic lives by ignoring the fact that in much of it
we unreflectively go with the flow.12
Here, then, we have arrived at a basic difference between McDowells revised
account and that of K&L, since even if an observation has conceptual but not propositional content, there is a basic and deliberate sense in which K&L treat the content as discursive. This is why, for example, they can move freely between talk of a
mental event (an observation) and its spoken correlate (an observative). In contrast,
although experiential event and spoken correlate may be related for McDowell, it
would be overintellectualizing the mental to treat them as interchangeable.
Whilst K&L do not pinpoint the source of the declarative fallacy, it is tempting to
trace it to a tendency towards an overintellectualization of the mental: the prominence
accorded the speech act of asserting stems from a conception of our intellectual life as
exhausted by rational activity thought of along the lines of discursive reasoning. For
K&L, the corrective is to provide a much richer account of rational activity that is not
limited to the acts of inferring and asserting. The comparison with McDowells
revised position suggests that, by limiting rational activity to the discursive, this corrective may not be enough to escape the charge of overintellectualization.

5
Third, vocatives. K&L tell us that every vocative plays both an alethic and constative
function. It plays an alethic function since it calls on others to uphold norms that
already bind them prior to the vocatival call. It plays a constative function since it
places a new normative obligation to respond appropriately that was not there prior
to the vocatival call. Consider Yo the minimal hail. This plays an alethic function:
it calls on you to recognize yourself as a potential hailee bound by the norms delineating appropriate response, and to recognize me as an appropriate hailer on this occasion. This plays a constative function: it creates a new obligation on you to respond to
me. Together, they give you, the one hailed, a new norm to recognize your prior
normative status prior to the addition of this new norm. Yo is a speech act that
isolates the function of mutual recognition; other speech acts can have a vocative
function (alethic plus constative) in addition to other functions they have. Indeed,
12 McDowell (2009: 271).

critical notices | 375

K&L defend the striking claim that all speech acts have a vocative function, in addition to their other functions.
The idea of holding someone to uphold a norm can sound strange. For K&L, this
differs from informing/reminding them of the norm or giving them a new norm. It
involves making the norm that is already binding inescapable (186), although not in
a sense that is incompatible with the person refusing to perform, which would eradicate the gap between what we do and we ought to do that ensures the appropriateness of normative talk to start with. One of their attempts to spell out the relevant
sense of inescapability is this:
When I challenge a hail by denying its appropriateness altogether or by denying the specificities of what it demands from me I still acknowledge its attempt
to make a claim on me. I treat it as a second-personal speech act that calls for
some acknowledgment out of a range of possible responses from me; given the
nature of norms, contestation and refusal always count as part of this range.
Thus by recognizing the hail as having targeted me, rightly or wrongly, I already
give it an acknowledgment that in an important sense falls within the range of
responses that affirms the correctness of the original recognition. (186)
Suppose someone hails me by saying Yo. The call has not achieved its purpose
simply by getting me to recognize that a call has been made, but for me to express
my first-personal uptake of that recognition. But one way in which I can express my
uptake is to reject or challenge the call. So, rejecting the call, or even actively ignoring
it, is an expression of uptake of that recognition. Once you have recognized the call as
the call it is, it becomes inescapable in the sense that it can only be actively rejected
and not passively ignored.
One may suspect that this kind of inescapability is a kind of trick (like a poster
emblazoned with the words dont read this), or at least limited to the relatively
minimal normative demands of the hail and not sufficient to hold anyone to reason
in some more demanding sense. Consider K&Ls contrast between an alethic
imperative (Please get off my foot) and a prescriptive (You ought to get off
my foot). In the former, I use my position as the one trampled to hold you to a
norm you have anyway, whilst in the latter I direct your attention to that same
norm but allow the norm itself do the work (109). It is the vocatival dimension of
the speech act in the former case that is central to achieving this holding function.
I call on you not merely to comply or just to acknowledge the call, but also to
acknowledge its propriety to acknowledge that the call appropriately picks
you out as the one standing on my foot; that I am entitled to make such a call in
virtue of being the one whose foot you are standing on; and that an appropriate
response to such a call is to remove your foot. Here, however, it is far less clear
that the fuller acknowledgment called for is inescapable in the same way that
acknowledgement of the narrower vocatival call is. That is, the very recognition of
the vocatival call involves a degree of recognition of the vocative in a way in which
the very recognition of the imperatival call does not, even if the imperative also
functions as a vocative.
Here is another way of making the point. The gloss given above to the notion of
holding someone to a norm is that of being able to draw another into active intellectual engagement with a target norm, so that whatever response is given is an active

376 | critical notices

response (even if its a rejection of the norm itself). This strikes me as a genuine and
intriguing sense in which we can, and do, hold others to norms. If this is what K&L
intend by the idea of holding, however, then the mere fact that any speech act can also
play a vocatival function in addition to whatever other function it can play is insufficient to allow the act to achieve the holding function. The reason is that the holding
relation thus conceived requires the removal of any possible gap between recognition
of the vocatival call and intellectually engaging with the requisite norm; K&Ls
account appears to leave open the possibility of such a gap.

6
Talk of the space of reasons is highly suggestive. On one simple reading, it aims to say
something about the structure of semantic norms; perhaps that such norms are best
thought of in terms of inferential relations between propositions. Talk of individuals
inhabiting and negotiating the space of reasons is little more than a further, and not
too precise, extension of the metaphor from the core realm of semantics to the realm
of pragmatics. To say that someone is inside the space is, on this understanding,
perhaps to say that their performances are subject to a kind of explanation that
essentially makes reference to semantic norms broadly conceived, but nothing more
than that.
For K&L, in contrast, the metaphor has its primary application in the pragmatic
realm. Persons inhabit the space of reasons: they occupy unique positions in the space
from which they are able to pragmatically negotiate it make and assess claims,
challenge and hold others to reasons, and so on. To say they occupy a position in
this manner is to say that the person has a first personal grasp of their normative
status as theirs, as well as able to mark the directedness of speech by addressing others
and capable of being addressed by them. To do this requires speech acts such as
observatives and vocatives. The essential role played by first and second-personal
addressed acts in constituting the space thus goes missing on a conception of pragmatic space based solely on the agent-neutral declaratives.
Let us mark this distinction between the spatial metaphor when primarily applied
to semantics and when primarily applied to pragmatics by distinguishing talk of the
space of reasons from talk of the space of reasoning. In this sense, K&L have provided
a far richer topography of the space of reasoning than is typical amongst neoPragmatists. What does this imply about the topography of the space of reasons?
Three options present themselves:
(i)

Enriching the topography of the space of reasoning beyond the declarative has
minimal impact on the topography of the space of reasons.
(ii) Enriching the topography of the space of reasoning beyond the declarative
substantively alters the topography of the space of reasons.
(iii) We should reject this bifurcation of spaces, and proffer a unified sense of the
notion of the space of reasons shorn of adherence to the declaratival fallacy.
It is surprising that Yo and Lo provides, as far as I can see, no clear response to this
question. This may seem unfair, given an Appendix to the book that provides a
preliminary development of a scorekeeping semantics with the broader field of
vision that is opened up when we eschew the declarative fallacy. . . (217). Given

critical notices | 377

their claim that the formal pragmatic back-story provided in the Appendix is compatible with a variety of semantic theories, including that proffered by those accused
throughout the book of committing the declaratival fallacy, it would seem that K&L
endorse (i). This would be too quick, however, since the Appendix operates from the
perspective of a theorist describing a linguistic practice from an impersonal, outsiders
stance (218). This is a deliberate move away from offering a view of semantics from
the irreducibly first-personal and voiced position of one inhabiting the space of reasoning, and it thus unsurprising that the semantics that the Appendix aims to make
contact with is one that shares the same topography of the space of reasons as those
accused of the declaratival fallacy.
The neo-Pragmatist can allow for a certain degree of autonomy of semantics from
pragmatics, although it would be surprising if the abandonment of the primacy of the
declarative at the pragmatic level left semantics untouched. K&L imply that this is not
the case at various junctures in the book, such as by noting the interrelatedness
between the declaratival fallacy and the presumption that something analogous to
propositional logic is the only inferential game in town (58). If so, option (i) is
unlikely. Little, however, is said to help us understand options (ii) and (iii), let
alone adjudicate between them.
K&L accord explanatory primacy to pragmatics over semantics; complain that the
philosophical preference for issues of semantics over pragmatics is reflective of a
declarativist bias; and declare their desire to remain agnostic on the precise relationship between the two. Fair enough. None of this means that the normative neoPragmatist should ignore the latter once an appropriate pragmatic space is sketched,
nor that this is desirable for the theorist aspiring to take talk of the space of reasons
seriously.

7
One ive that does not feature in the book comes to mind in characterizing it: Yo and
Lo is provocative in all the best senses of that term. It is highly original, and written in
an engaging and suggestive style that cannot but produce a rich array of further
thoughts, questions, insights and feelings of delight in the reader, and probably a
good measure of disagreement, bewilderment and sheer frustration on occasion
too. To use the term seminal about a just published work as one of the editorial
reviews on the books cover does is a prediction about likely future use of the work,
one that may well prove to be correct. This novel framework for thinking
about normative pragmatics promises to yield important philosophical results in all
sorts of unforeseen areas, such that a project of refining, modifying and further
developing and applying these ideas suggests itself as a worthwhile and exciting
undertaking.13
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch 7701, Cape Town
South Africa
jeremy.wanderer@uct.ac.za
13 Thanks to Rebecca Kukla, Mark Lance, Jack Ritchie, Leo Townsend and Bernhard Weiss
for discussion of an earlier draft.

378 | critical notices

References
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Brandom, R. 1997. Study Guide to Empiricism and Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Brandom, R. 2000. Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Davidson, D. 1986. A coherence theory of truth and knowledge. In: Truth and
Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, ed. E. LePore.
Oxford: Blackwell.
MacFarlane, J. Forthcoming. Pragmatism and inferentialism. In Reading Brandom: On
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McDowell, J. 1994. Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McDowell, J. 2009. Avoiding the myth of the given. In: Having the World In View.
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Wanderer, J. 2008. Robert Brandom. Chesham: Acumen.