Szymon Sapalski
Jagiellonian University
In my talk I examine recent proposals for naturalizing inferentialism. My central claim is that despite the fact that some strategies seem more promising than others, none of them are entirely satisfactory.
One of the challenges facing inferentialism is its claim that language is strongly rule-governed, which may be problematic from a naturalistic perspective. To reconcile this tension, inferentialists must explain how to align their naturalist intuitions with inferentialism. I will distinguish four strategies for naturalizing inferentialism which I will call: 1) genealogical; 2) biological; 3) minimal normativism; and 4) weak naturalism.
The genealogical strategy explains the emergence of linguistic norms in the natural world (Peregrin 2022, Weiss 2022). The biological approach aims to show that the norms required by inferentialism already exist in the natural world and can be found in biology (Hlobil 2022). The minimal normativism strategy weakens the understanding of what norms are and shows that in this weaker form they are easily naturalized (Glock 2022, Posłajko and Grabarczyk 2018). Finally, the weak naturalism strategy is a straightforward proposal which poses less restriction on what naturalism is (e.g. Macarthur 2019, Hutto and Satne 2015).
I will argue that the genealogical and biological strategies are problematic. The genealogical approach conflates two distinct questions: about the causal origins of norms and about the metaphysical constitution of norms. The biological strategy seems to commit the fallacy of begging the question and, additionally, is vulnerable to objections that have been raised against Millikan’s account, on which it is built. This leaves us with the last two strategies, which are better but not without issues. One potential objection is that changing our understanding of norms (or naturalism) may shift the subject of inquiry, and thus may not adequately capture how normativity (or naturalism) is viewed in inferentialist theories.
Chair: Sven Eichholtz
Time: September 7th, 10:40-11:10
Location: SR 1.006
SOPhiA 2026 