Inferentialism
Luca Incurvati, Julian J. Schlöder · 2023
Abstract This chapter introduces inferentialism, focusing on its application to the logical domain. It highlights the main attraction of inferentialism, namely that it grounds meaning in our inferential practices and distinguishes between semantic and meta-semantic theses associated with inferentialism. The chapter goes on to present three problems inferentialism faces: the Problem of Defective Concepts, the Problem of Constitutive Rules, and the Problem of Limited Applicability. It is argued that while inferentialists already have in house the resources to address the first two problems, they must join forces with expressivists in order to address the third problem. Moreover, joining forces with expressivists enables inferentialists to solve the first problem whilst allowing them to hold on to a classical notion of inference.