The Enigma of Normative Attitudes

The paper focuses its attention on the opacities and ambiguities that concern the meaning of the term “normative attitude” as it is used in two versions of inferentialism – in Brandom’s foundational inferentialist system and in Peregrin’s naturalized version of inferentialism. It suggests that both authors oscillate between viewing normative attitudes as publically accessible affairs and as private states/events hidden from the sight of others. Given the pivotal role of the term and the fact that the relevant private and public sides are not always in harmony, this is quite problematic. The paper suggests that instead of focusing on normative attitudes inferentialists should consider focusing on corrective (re)actions and on the relationships between people that they establish. Such a move might yield a more robust concept of normativity suitable for the theoretical edifice of naturalized inferentialism.