Abstract

In this paper, I develop an account of linguistic content basedon the active inference framework. While ecological andenactive theorists have rightly rejected the notion of contentas a basis for cognitive processes, they must recognize theimportant role that it plays in the social regulation of linguisticinteraction. According to an influential theory in philosophyof language, normative inferentialism, an utterance hasthe content that it has in virtue of its normative status, that is,in virtue of the set of commitments and entitlements that thespeaker undertakes by producing this utterance. This normativestatus is determined by the normative attitudes sharedby members of the utterer’s linguistic community. I proposehere an account of such normative attitudes based on theecological interpretation of the active inference framework. Iexplain how social normativity can be understood in thatframework as the way in which members of a group shapetheir social niche to make it more predictable. Finally, I applythis account of social normativity to basic communicativepractices, thereby explaining how social normative expectationscan emerge to regulate these communicative practices,eventually leading to the institution of the sort of normativestatuses constitutive of linguistic content.