Concept

Inferential role semantics

Overview

Inferential role semantics (also conceptual role semantics, functional role semantics, procedural semantics, semantic inferentialism) is an approach to the theory of meaning that identifies the meaning of an expression with its relationship to other expressions (typically its inferential relations with other expressions), in contradistinction to denotationalism, according to which denotations are the primary sort of meaning.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Philosophers who discussed Inferential role semantics

• Jürgen Habermas
• Wilfrid Sellars
• Jerry Fodor
• Robert Brandom

Related ideas

• Ned Block
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Gilbert Harman
• Denotation
• Michael Dummett
• Inference
• Wilfrid Sellars
• Jerry Fodor
• Science of Logic
• Robert Brandom
• Paul Horwich
• Luca Incurvati

Place in the tradition

Part of Anti-realism.

Explore Inferential role semantics in the interactive graph →