Download Abstract for ‘Consequentialism’ 1 Inferentialism vs referentialism David Ripley

Abstract for ‘Consequentialism’
David Ripley
University of Connecticut
[email protected]
September 10, 2015
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Inferentialism vs referentialism
It is sometimes useful to classify theories of meaning as inferentialist or referentialist. Inferentialists hold that meanings are determined by which inferences
are legitimate to make.1 For example, an inferentialist could specify the meaning of a conditional ⊃i as follows: ‘from A ⊃i B and A, one can infer B; and
one can infer A ⊃i B from a demonstration that one can infer B from A’. The
legitimacy of these inferences, according to the inferentialist, is what grounds
the meaning of the conditional, including any truth conditions it may or may
not have.
By contrast, referentialists hold that meanings are determined by what is
represented; as applied to logical constants, this is often taken to be a matter of
truth conditions. For example, a representationalist could specify the meaning
of a conditional ⊃r as follows: ‘A ⊃r B is false if A is true and B is false; it is
true otherwise’. It is these truth conditions, according to the referentialist, that
ground the meaning of the conditional; any inferences involving it are correct
or not for reasons to do with these truth conditions.
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Consequentialism
The main purpose of this talk is to distinguish a third option, to be contrasted
with both inferentialism and referentialism. I’ll call it consequentialism.2 Just as
inferentialism makes meaning out to be a matter of inference, and referentialism
makes meaning out to be a matter of reference, consequentialism makes meaning
out to be a matter of consequence: of which arguments are valid.
For example, a consequentialist could specify the meaning of a conditional
⊃c as follows: ‘whenever an argument from premises Γ and A to a conclusion B
is valid, then so is the argument from Γ to A ⊃c B; and whenever an argument
1 Meanings of what? This is largely a separate issue; inferentialism can be applied to natural
language, formal languages, languages of thought, and so on; I’ll fudge this here.
2 I know; sorry. As soon as I get a better name I’ll switch to it.
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from premises Γ to a conclusion A is valid, then so is the argument from Γ and
A ⊃c B to B’. It is the validity of these arguments, and the fact that certain
validities suffice for others, that grounds the meaning of the conditional, on such
a view; which inferences are legitimate, and what the truth conditions are, are
both downstream.
While the label is new, views of this sort are not. Consequentialism, in
this sense, is adopted by [Restall, 2009] and [Ripley, 2013]. Both of these papers claim that the views they put forward are inferentialist, but this is not in
fact the case, if inferentialism is understood as above; neither paper has much
at all to do with legitimate inference, except insofar as this legitimacy is connected to the validity of certain arguments. These are consequence-first views,
whatever their authors claim.3 [Rumfitt, 2015] seems to be another example of
consequentialism (Rumfitt does not claim inferentialism).
It is natural to wonder how much daylight there really is between consequentialism and inferentialism, since two of the three cited consequentialists claim
to be inferentialists. This question is at bottom about the relation between
consequence and inference. If it turns out, for example, that validity is to be
explained in terms of which inferences are correct, then consequentialism would
reduce to inferentialism. But this does not mean that consequentialism as it
stands is a species of inferentialism. Indeed, if it turns out that validity is to be
explained in terms of truth conditions, then consequentialism would reduce to
referentialism. It is no more one than it is the other, without filling in details
about validity.
Importantly, there are available stories of validity according to which consequentialism is something else entirely. The materials can be found in
[Restall, 2005], which offers an understanding of validity as a ban on certain
combinations of assertion and denial. On this understanding, an argument is
valid iff one cannot assert all its premises while denying all its conclusions. The
force of validity, then, is in that ‘cannot’. Myself, I favour an account of this
‘cannot’ that turns on social norms; the idea is that norms instituted and maintained by our conversational practices rule out certain combinations of speech
acts, giving rise to validity. This kind of account does not need to appeal to
either legitimate inference or to truth conditions to establish a workable notion
of validity for the consequentialist to make use of.
References
[Restall, 2005] Restall, G. (2005). Multiple conclusions. In Hajek, P., ValdesVillanueva, L., and Westerståhl, D., editors, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science: Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress, pages
189–205. Kings’ College Publications, London.
3 I’m thus retracting my claim to inferentialism in [Ripley, 2013]. But this is not recanting
inferentialism; it turns out, to my surprise, I never was an inferentialist!
2
[Restall, 2009] Restall, G. (2009). Truth values and proof theory. Studia Logica,
92(2):241–264.
[Ripley, 2013] Ripley, D. (2013). Paradoxes and failures of cut. Australasian
Journal of Philosophy, 91(1):139–164.
[Rumfitt, 2015] Rumfitt, I. (2015). The Boundary Stones of Thought. Oxford
University Press, Oxford.
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