• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.251-272
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• 2012

Recently Professor Lee has suggested the analysis of the indicative conditional based on Sellars-Brandom's inferentialism. In this paper, I raise three questions. First, Professor Lee seems to misunderstand Sellars-Brandom in that he considers only the analytically valid arguments as materially valid inferences. Second, Professor Lee seems to misunderstand Sellars-Brandom in that whereas Sellars-Brandom talks about the common features of all kinds of conditionals including counterfactual conditionals, Professor Lee takes it as the analysis of the indicative conditional only. Third, either Professor Lee's analysis is incompatible with Sellars-Brandom inferentialism or his analysis is too general.

• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.347-375
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• 2012

In my article published in 2008, I offered an inferentialist account of indicative conditionals. In her recent paper, Professor Seawha Kim raises three objections. First, I misunderstand Sellars-Brandom in that I take only concept-constitutive inferences as materially valid inferences. Second, Sellars and Brandom talk about the common features of all kinds of conditionals including counterfactual conditionals, but I construe their view as the analysis of the indicative conditionals only. Third, either my analysis is incompatible with Sellars-Brandom inferentialism or my analysis is too general. In this paper I argue that Seawha Kim's objections are all based on insufficient understandings of Sellars's and Brandom's views. First, it is Sellars's view that materially valid inferences are restricted within concept-constitutive inferences. Second, neither Sellars nor Brandom proposes a specific theory about the indicative conditional. Instead, they argue for the expressive role of the conditional. What I accept from their views is this expressive role of the conditional. The detailed proposals about the indicative conditional in my aforementioned article are my own. Third, the differences among conditionals have no direct bearing on Sellars-Brandom inferentialism. In addition, the meaning and role of the conditional expression 'if-then' do not require more than what I have argued for it.

• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.217-241
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• 2015

Brandom upholds the anaphoric theory of reference. On this theory, reference is a relation of anaphoric dependence between linguistic items rather than a substantial relation between linguistic items and non-linguistic objects. In addition, 'refers' is a pronoun-forming operator, which is used to form anaphorically indirect descriptions such as 'the one referred to as "Leibniz"'. Recently, Arbid $B{\aa}ve$ raises three objections against this theory. First, the anaphoric theory distinguishes between ordinary descriptions and anaphorically indirect descriptions in terms of iterability. But this condition is not an adequate ground for asserting that anaphorically indirect descriptions form a distinctive semantic category. Second, sentences containing a pronoun such as 'he' and sentences containing an anaphorically indirect description such as 'the one referred to as "Leibniz"' have different modal statuses. Consequently, indirect descriptions are semantically different from paradigmatic anaphors. Third, on the anaphoric theory, expressions of the form 'a' and the corresponding indirect descriptions of the form 'the one referred to as "a"' are intersubstitutable. But we can make an equivalent claim by using the more general semantic concepts such as equivalence and intersubstitutability, instead of using notions such as 'anaphor' and 'antecedent'. So the anaphoric theory is explanatorily idle. In this paper I argue that these objections do not pose a serious problem for the anaphoric theory of reference. I argue thereby that the anaphoric theory of reference is a promising theory which provides us with the right understanding of the expression 'refers'.