Value Inquiry Book Series / Cognitive Science Conceptual Realism and Historicity: Brandom versus Hegel

This book introduces and scrutinizes Brandom’s inferentialist solution for accessing mind-external reality and his controversial Hegel interpretation as a conceptual realist. It offers an alternative rooted in Hegel's relativist historicism, challenging the necessity of an explicit mind-reality link for epistemology. 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.