2 addenda: Looks talk: The hidden distinction here is ascription and endorsement. When there looks to be a spider in a web, you won’t find merely within the sensation the concepts of spider and web, therefore experience in a proper sense is propositional because to ascribe things and make claims requires propositional form. Looks talk can’t form a regress stopper because aside from ascription there is also endorsement, saying that there “looks” to be a spider in a web over there is manipulating the scope of endorsement, it can’t be wrong not because it’s immediate but because you’ve had a propositional ascriptive experience and withheld endorsement as to whether it’s really there, so theoretical is talk comes first. Second on language: The claim isn’t that all thought is language, he says in mental events that something like an “animal representation system” is first in the order of being, so whilst thought is first in the order of being, language is first in the order of knowing. I won’t go through the whole argument but the point is that just having thoughts isn’t enough to also know about thoughts. Animals do things for reasons without knowing what the reasons are.
2 addenda:
Looks talk:
The hidden distinction here is ascription and endorsement. When there looks to be a spider in a web, you won’t find merely within the sensation the concepts of spider and web, therefore experience in a proper sense is propositional because to ascribe things and make claims requires propositional form. Looks talk can’t form a regress stopper because aside from ascription there is also endorsement, saying that there “looks” to be a spider in a web over there is manipulating the scope of endorsement, it can’t be wrong not because it’s immediate but because you’ve had a propositional ascriptive experience and withheld endorsement as to whether it’s really there, so theoretical is talk comes first.
Second on language:
The claim isn’t that all thought is language, he says in mental events that something like an “animal representation system” is first in the order of being, so whilst thought is first in the order of being, language is first in the order of knowing. I won’t go through the whole argument but the point is that just having thoughts isn’t enough to also know about thoughts. Animals do things for reasons without knowing what the reasons are.
Bob Brandom posted 2 lectures about this essay on his RUclips. Highly recommend his whole sellars seminar