Is Brandom's account of history satisfactory to justify itself against doubts?

Question

Brandom's idealism is multi-faceted and complicated. A rough summary of it might be as follows:

Rationality is a conceptual normality, a typical way we do things. Specifically, it is a practical status denoting a subject that seeks reasons. A 'reason' is also a normality. All such normalities are determined in our application of them, in our using them. In this way, rationality is absolute, and does not stand in need of explanation.

A paradox arises however. If what counts as a 'reason' is determined by the application of said reason by a subject, then what makes the subject really bound to the reason?

Here Brandom, borrowing from Hegel, clarifies that the individual's application of the concept is not a sufficient condition for determining the content of the concept. Rather, what is required is a reciprocity relationship with other people.

Brandom gives the example of chess. You might identify certain groups of people as being 'good' chess players, but you yourself won't actually be a part of that group unless they identify you as being a good chess player as well. In the same way, the 'correct' use of a concept depends upon the socio-linguistic relations of use between you and the community.

Yet another question arises though. In Brandom's own words, "How does what we actually do with the terms, the judgement we have actually made, settle what we ought to do with it in novel cases?"

In answer to this question, Brandom, maintaining his expressivism, contends that we must look to the past rather than to some fact. What justifies how one ought to apply any given concept is a matter of how that concept has been applied in the past, by the socio-linguistic communities that have used the concept.

Given this brief rundown of Brandom's idealism, we can return to the OG question.

If what justifies how one ought to apply concepts is a matter of how the concept has socio-historically been used, then this leaves no room for justified change. But this leads to the paradox that even if Brandom is right about the use of the concept 'history', 'reason', etc., it would be wrong for someone who disagreed with him to change their minds and agree. On the greater extreme, any sort of change in concept-use would be wrong.

Another way of putting the problem is to say that Brandom can adequately account for how a concept-use binds an individual in a given tradition, but not how an individual is justified in becoming a member of a new tradition.

Is this a real problem? How would/does Brandom answer it?

Answer 1

If what justifies how one ought to apply concepts is a matter of how the concept has socio-historically been used, then this leaves no room for justified change.

That seems to depend on the specific tradition in question. If the said tradition has internalized (or is willing to internalize) norms of conceptual change, then conceptual change is possible, to that extent. Nothing in Brandom's system prevents it. There is also always the possibility of starting or maintaining a new tradition-branch. Brandom's view requires a social structure, but it does not require a unified consensus.

Notice also that there is a kind of (intended) circularity about this idea that you look at previous uses of a concept, in order to judge its correct use in a novel case. Because what does it mean that the new case is novel, except that there are no precedents for it? That is, until one "re-interprets" past cases as precedents. By re-interpreting past cases as relevant precedents, one is not merely continuing the tradition. One is then actively participating in making the tradition.

It is insofar as one takes the tradition to be rational . . . that one makes the tradition be, and have been, rational.

Judgments that show up first as adventitious products of accidental circumstances . . . are exhibited as correct application of a conceptual norm, retrospectively discerned as already implicit in previous judgments. (emph. mine)

(Brandom, Tales of the Mighty Dead, Introduction p.14)

But this leads to the paradox that even if Brandom is right about the use of the concept 'history', 'reason', etc., it would be wrong for someone who disagreed with him to change their minds and agree.

Brandom is not concerned with changes of mind. This is not a level that concerns Brandom.

Another way of putting the problem is to say that Brandom can adequately account for how a concept-use binds an individual in a given tradition, but not how an individual is justified in becoming a member of a new tradition.

Why should anyone wish to be a part of Brandom's tradition to begin with?

These questions are outside the scope of Brandom's system. He leaves open the (meta) questions related to choosing among traditions. He concerns himself only with how things work inside any tradition (that is, any tradition which has a specified "inferential" structure).