Robert Boyce Brandom (/ˈbrændəm/;[4] born March 13, 1950)[5] is an American philosopher who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.

His work has presented "arguably the first fully systematic and technically rigorous attempt to explain the meaning of linguistic items in terms of their socially norm-governed use ("meaning as use", to cite the Wittgensteinian slogan), thereby also giving a non-representationalist account of the intentionality of thought and the rationality of action as well.

[5] Brandom's work is heavily influenced by that of Wilfrid Sellars, Richard Rorty, Michael Dummett and his Pittsburgh colleague John McDowell.

He also draws heavily on the works of Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, Gottlob Frege, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

He advocates the view that the meaning of an expression is fixed by how it is used in inferences (see inferential role semantics).