(Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)
ABSTRACT: Social externalism, as advocated by Burge (1979, 1986, 1988, 1989, 2003), is a very popular view in the philosophies of mind and language. It seems that the main lesson for philosophical theories of linguistic meaning that one can draw from Burge is that 1) linguistic meaning is determined by the linguistic community, and 2) the role that relevant experts play in determining meaning in many cases is crucial. This is to say that when a person says, for example, “I have arthritis”, the meaning of that expression is determined by the doctors, not laypeople. Inferentialism is a use theory of meaning, and as such it identifies linguistic meaning with some sort of communal use. If meaning is determined by communal use, the question arises how it is possible to make room for relevant experts to play a crucial role in determining meaning. This paper addresses issues at the intersection of two leading ideas in the philosophies of language and mind: inferentialism and externalism. The aim of this paper is to clearly demonstrate that these two frameworks are actually compatible and, moreover, how they are compatible. I argue the of rules for inferences need to resonate throughout the relevant society in order to be treated as meaning-constituting. For certain terms the relevant society is the society of experts and the route to that assumption naturally comes from the central point of inferentialism: the game of giving and asking for reasons.