Conceptual Realism and Historicity: Brandom versus Hegel: (403 Cognitive Science)

A persistent challenge in philosophy is constructing an explicit link between mind and external reality. In this regard, this book introduces and examines two opposing philosophies. It scrutinizes Brandom's inferentialist solution, encompassinging his influential work Making It Explicit (1994) and his controversial interpretation of Hegel as a conceptual realist in A Spirit of Trust (2019). Constrastingly, it introduces Hegel’s relativist historicism, arguing that a robust epistemological framework does not necessitate an explicit link to mind-independent reality. By confining knowledge to its historical context, it prevents adherence to false beliefs, maintaining openness for truth to emerge one day.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgment 1 Introduction—The Divide and Brandom’s Interpretation of Hegel 2 Brandom’s Conceptual Realism and Two Interpretations of Hegel  1 From Hegel to Analytic Philosophy to Pragmatic Contextualism  1.1 The Creation Myth of Analytic Philosophy—The Rejection of Hegel  1.2 The Problem of the External World in Analytic Philosophy  1.3 The Neo-Pragmatic Turn and Sellars’ Linguistic Rationalism  1.4 Rorty’s Skepticism and Brandom  1.5 Conclusions on the Birth of Analytic Philosophy from the Spirit of Hegel  2 Brandom’s Pragmatic Semantics and Its Relation to Realism  2.1 Mind-External Realism and Inferentialism  2.2 Procedural Realism and Assertion  2.3 Proof of Objectivity—Towards Mind-External Reality  3 Brandom and History  4 Brandom’s A Spirit of Trust and Conceptual Realism  4.1 Brandom’s Conceptual Realism Applied to Hegel  4.1.1 Conceptual Realism  4.1.2 Brandom’s Hylomorphism and ‘Implausible’ Idealism  4.1.3 Brandom’s Standard of Philosophy—Experiencing Error and Experiencing Reality  4.2 The Normative Side  4.3 The Historical Progression—The Advent of a Better Society 3 Transition: Habermas’ Contextualism, Brandom’s Realism and Hegel’s Historicity  1 Differences between Habermas’ and Brandom’s Account  1.1 Pragmatics and Semantics—Two Incompatible Approaches in Brandom?  1.2 Anaphora as an Anchor in Reality  1.3 Brandom’s Leveling of Facts and Norms  2 Habermas and Hegel  2.1 Hegel’s Denial of Mentalism  2.2 Habermas’ Critique of Hegel’s Concept of Self-consciousness 4 Hegel’s Historical Relativism  1 Logic and History  1.1 The Historicity of the Science of Logic  1.2 Hegel and the Concept of History  2 Hegel’s Phenomenology  2.1 Ordinary Phenomenologies in Relation to Essentialism and Foundationalism  2.2 Kant’s Foundationalism and the Hegelian Rejection  2.3 Hegel’s Account of Self-consciousness and His Epistemology  3 Absolute Knowing in Relation to History and Time  3.1 Hegel as a Thinker of World History and Absolute Knowing  3.2 The Formal Absolute  4 The Achievement of Absolute Knowing  4.1 The Exposition of the Problem of Spirit  4.2 The Unification of Consciousness with Self-consciousness  4.3 The Unification of Consciousness with Self-consciousness through the Concept  4.4 Absolute Knowing and Human History  4.5 The Contradiction of Time and a Science of Experience  4.6 Externalizations of Spirit—Time and History  4.6.1 Definition of Time  4.6.2 Definition of Nature and History  4.6.3 Hegel’s Solution of Absolute Knowing 5 Conclusion on Brandom’s Conceptual Realism and Hegel’s Historicity Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Norman Schultz, Ph.D. (2018), Duquesne University (Pittsburgh), is Assistant Professor at the School of Philosophy and Social Development of Shandong University.