Over at Perverse Egalitarianism there has been a heated, and I think important, debate over the nature of normativity. At one point the debate turned a bit sour and I temporarily walked away. I apologize to Mikhail for my ire and heated words, and hope the discussion can resume without any distracting ugliness. Like anyone else, my blood pressure rises on occasion and I lose my cool. Resuming the discussion from my end, I thought I’d take a few moments to outline how I understand the debate.
It is clear that for Mikhail normativity is a deeply important issue, if not the most important issue, for he seems to measure all other branches of philosophy and the world against this question. The discussion first began a few weeks ago in response to one of my posts (I don’t recall which) on realism. Mikhail asked me something along the lines of where normativity or the “ought” is in my realist metaphysics. Perplexed by the question, I responded hastily by observing that I didn’t think it was anywhere. Now, if I responded in this way, then this is because, where metaphysics is concerned, I don’t see what the atomic constitution of salt has to do with questions of ethics. That is, if we begin from the premise that metaphysics raises questions about what the real is, what existence is, it seems to me that these questions are independent of questions about ethics and justice. My remark, which should have been more well thought out, was simply pointing to different domains of questions. Metaphysics asks one set of questions, ethics asks another set of questions.
I take it that Mikhail took my response as excluding questions of ethics altogether, which simply isn’t the case at all. My point was simply that when I have my metaphysics hat on and am endeavoring to determine what the real might be, I do not have my ethics hat on. The question of the “ought” is elsewhere. In good Spinozist fashion, I begin from the premise that terms like “good”, “evil”, “just”, “unjust”, “beautiful”, “ugly”, etc., are not first-order predicates belonging to entities themselves, but rather relational predicates pertaining to the relationship between humans and the world around them. In order to see the difference between, say, an apple considered metaphysically and an apple considered normatively, consider the apple first in its independence from the body and second in relation to the body. I choose the example of apples because they are far less affectively charged as a matter of discussion than, say, questions of murder.
Considered metaphysically, the apple is value neutral. It just is what it is, much like Yahweh in the Bible. Metaphysically, if the apple is ripe this doesn’t make it “good”. Likewise, considered metaphysically, if the apple is rotten this doesn’t make it bad. The ripeness or rottenness of the apple is purely an outcome of physical cellular processes that are, in and of themselves, value-neutral. When we wish to understand or know the apple, these processes are what we are after. Nature, then, is in and of itself a kingdom without ends or purposes.
read on!
The value of the apple only emerges in relation to bodies. If I say the apple is bad, I am not making a claim about a property of the apple as such, but a claim about how a property of the apple relates to me. The apple is bad because these properties produce a highly unpleasant set of sensations in my body when I eat it. In this respect, the “badness” of the apple is a secondary property of the apple. Were no one to exist, the apple simply wouldn’t have this property. This property is instead an emergent property of a particular sort of relationship between myself and the apple. In this connection, it would be quite right to say that I am a correlationist where values are concerned. Before I proceed, it should be noted that I am not suggesting that ethical value statements are identical to judgments of taste as in the case of the apple. I am committed to the thesis that both only exist in and through some sort of correlation, but they are distinct kinds or structures of correlation.
Now, I take it that everyone involved in this debate recognizes that we experience the world in terms of oughts. Quid facti, I experience the papers sitting there on my desk as something I ought to grade. I think Bush and the last administration ought to have done things differently. I think that they ought to be held responsible for their crimes. I think our society, in terms of its economic structures and distribution of wealth, ought to be different. There is thus, in my view, any debate as to whether we experience ourselves, our relations to others, and the world about us in terms of “oughts”.
Granting this, the philosophical question thus lies elsewhere. First, we can ask, are these oughts on the same level as the value relations pertaining to the apple? Presumably there is someone in this world, at some point in history, who just adored rotten apples. If no such person does or has ever existed, we can at least observe that bees seem to love apples rotting on the ground. Oughts, by contrast, seem to be structured differently. Where we readily recognize that, while we might find it peculiar, there’s no real disputing another person’s tastes, trying to turn another person into a zombie sex-slave as Dahmer did is not simply a matter of taste. So one question is that of what defines the scope of an ought claim. Second, we can ask what grounds ought claims. What are they founded upon? My liking or disliking of apples is grounded purely in the pleasure or displeasure they give me. Clearly this won’t work in the case of Dahmer as he certainly gets– we imagine –lots of pleasure from his zombie experiments, but we nonetheless say he ought not do this. So the ground in these correlational structures must lie elsewhere.
Rather than proceeding directly to the question of what grounds oughts, it seems better for a moment to pause and ask when ethical oughts arise. Just as Kant’s methodology moves from a metaphysical exposition to a transcendental deduction, where, for example, when discussing space he first outlines the properties of space and then determines their transcendental condition, similarly, such a move should be taken with respect to the ought or ethical judgments. This is merited because, once again, value judgments are correlationist and therefore susceptible to transcendental analysis. However, here the methodology should be phenomenological. That is, we should seek after a phenomenology of our value judgments or a descriptive analysis of these value judgments before seeking the grounds of these judgments.
Perhaps one helpful way of approaching such a phenomenology is in terms of a thought-experiment. Suppose, like Tom Hanks, we were stranded all alone on a desert island. Under these circumstances, in what way would I experience the ought? It is likely that I would experience the ought in terms of a number of practical matters. “I ought not eat only fruits and coconuts.” “I ought to set about reinforcing my shelter before the Spring monsoons come.” “I ought to make a hat to protect myself from the burning sun.” “I ought to gather food”, etc. On the other hand, it’s likely that other oughts would disappear entirely. I suspect that I wouldn’t worry over whether or not I should lie. I wouldn’t worry over whether or not it is wrong to steal. I wouldn’t worry over whether or not I should break a contract.
It this appears that we have two different oughts here. The first class of oughts pertains to the health and vitality of my body as it relates to my survival and well being. If I ought not eat only fruits and coconuts, then this is because such a diet will give you diarrhea, which, in turn will dehydrate you and possibly cause death. By contrast, the other oughts seem to disappear because they pertain specifically to social relations. That is, the reason that I might worry over whether or not to lie arises only on those occasions where it is a question of relating to other people.
This little thought experiment and its accompanying “thumbnail” phenomenology (a much more extensive phenomenological analysis), teaches us something very important, I think, about the ethical ought (as distinguished from judgments of taste and practical judgments). The ethical ought, it seems, only unfolds in the social dimension. Put otherwise, the ethical ought pertains to questions of how persons ought to relate to one another. Now I take it, that this question is two-fold. On the one hand, the ethical ought obviously asks the question “what should we do” or “how should we relate to one another”?
But perhaps more importantly, questions of ethics emerge most fundamentally in terms of problems pertaining to persuasion among communities or groups of people. That is, when we raise the question of ethics we are not just asking for some rule or ground for our action, but rather we are looking for means of persuasion with respect to others so as to form the collective actions we desire. This is one reason Kant, for example, is enamored with the idea of a principle of reason (the categorical imperative) as an ethical ground. Kantian “universality” should be taken in a two-fold sense. On the one hand, the categorical imperative purports to be universal for all times and places. The philosophical question thus becomes what must be the case for a moral principle to meet these criteria. Clearly the possibility of such a principle demands strict and rigorous separation from anything contextual, subjective, or pathological as these things do not hold for all times and places. On the other hand, universality signifies available to all people. That is, if the categorical imperative is an imperative or rule we all ought to obey, then it must be something available to all of us. To see this, we need only ask ourselves the question of whether a child raised by Neo-Nazis that only ever encountered Neo-Nazis would, according to Kant, be bound by the categorical imperative? Likewise, would the Aztec, about to sacrifice someone, be bound by the categorical imperative. Kant’s answer is a resounding Yes!. But if this is the case, then the categorical imperative cannot be the result of learning but must be a priori. For how else could such a child be bound by such a law (both in terms of being judgeable by this moral principle and being obligated to follow this moral principle) if they were not able to formulate it for themselves?
Kant’s categorical imperative seems to admirably solve the problem of universality in the second sense as “available to everyone”, however, with respect to our pragmatic ethical concerns where we worry over persuading others to adopt certain forms of action like, say, not keeping their airconditioning on year round due to global warming or not incarcerating other people without legal recourse in places like Gitmo or secret European prisons, it doesn’t seem to do a very good job. That is, presumably the reason we are interested in questions of ethics and justice at all is because we desire a better world. Yet how are we to account for a moral theory that posits a principle that is “available to everyone”, yet seems to have nil persuasive power and therefore no power to produce that world we desire?
If we look at our actual deliberations it seems that, by and large, there are broad things we can agree on. For the most part, we can agree that we desire harmony and peace among one another, an adequate standard of living, the ability to pursue our aims, to not have to live in fear, etc., etc., etc. Where we differ is on how to produce these things. From my point of view, consequentialist approaches seem far more productive in actually bringing about these things than Kantian deontological approaches. That is, if we can show that a certain proposed way of producing these things we collectively desire increases the likelihood of conflict rather than peace, decreases our standard of living (without other compensations such as greater happiness, more opportunity, a more sustainable environment, etc), or that we would end up living in greater fear, this line of argument is far more persuasive and conducive to what we are actually pursuing. Kant’s categorical imperative, in my view, seems to detach ethical deliberation from these real world results. Thus, for example, the categorical imperative will clearly prohibit abortion because were we to will abortion as a universal law which everyone should follow, we would fall into contradiction as the law would eventually become impossible to follow. So we get rid of abortion based on Kant’s deliberation. But doesn’t getting rid of abortion end up producing all sorts of negative collective consequences that undermine the peace and stability of our society by virtue of producing all sorts of unsupported children?
Perhaps I already employ the categorical imperative in my own ethical reasoning without thinking about it, but when I reflect on certain courses of action, I can’t discern a single consequentialist account that leads to consequences that would be abhorrent. One might say– citing the tired diatribes against “the means justify the ends” –that I might, after the fashion of the Stalinist Soviet Union, be led to advocate the total elimination of all political opponents. But how does this follow? Isn’t it evident that this course of action caused massive human suffering, a perpetual state of fear, and a massive drain on the Soviet Union as a result of “disappearing” the brains and skills of that country? I simply cannot see how Kant’s universal law adds anything from this sort of reasoning or promotes the creation of a more just society.
April 16, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Levi, normativity is not the same as ethics, nor can normativity be reduced to ethics. So most of what you’ve written is tangential to Mikhail’s question. His ‘ought’ is a stand in for all forms of counterfactual situations, natural laws, forms of reasoning, etc. It captures the difference between actuality and potentiality.
To the extent that this is true, you’re constructing a strawman.
April 16, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Alexei,
That might be. I guess, then, I just have no use for normativity then as I can’t seem to understand what it is. I can very well understand the concept of potentiality and that humans project goals before themselves. I think that we can give a psychological account of how these goals are generated over the course of our lives. Thus, for example, it is unlikely that I have much in the way of goals as a young infant. I am just a bundle of fleeting states. However, while I am a bundle of fleeting states, some of these states are painful, others are pleasurable. For example, the pain in my stomach is painful whereas the feeling in my stomach is pleasurable. Now, when we add that our experience unfolds on the horizon of memory, we can see how something like potentialities begin to emerge. The memory trace left by the two sensations allows for a comparison to take place between these sensations. I am now capable of projecting before me fullness and eating as a state superior to that of my actual state. I don’t see why an account such as this, applying similar relations to social interactions and phenomena over the course of development, is inadequate to account for oughts. More to the point, such an account is able to account for how the domain of oughts shifts not only over the course of an individual’s life, but also from historical setting to historical setting where new possibilities become available to us.
April 16, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Not understanding something doesn’t mean it’s useless — it just means you don’t understand it.
Now your psychological explanation isn’t realy an explanation of anything; it’s just a bunch of black boxes coupled together to look like an explanation. For all of the third man arguments since Plato, it should be clear that ‘comparison’ requires more than the terms being compared in order to produce a result. Call the third man an Idea, a Concept, the Space of Reasons, whatever. It still functions as a norm. Fodor’s early work on the LOT hypothesis fleshes this out for philosophy of mind concerns (i.e. there exists an innate set of concepts) — and it’s as close to a knock down argument as I know. Whether there’s then some physicalist account of how we have innate concepts is an issue that can onlybe addressed once we have something to, eg, naturalize.
I’m not sure why, but I have the feeling that you’re actually refusing to engage this issue in a serious way. I mean, really, if the issue of normativity includes issues concerning justification and truth, concerning the hows and the whys of argument, how can any philosophy whatsoever simply assert that it has no use for the notion. How can you say that — especialy when you’ve repeatedly claimed that you want to show certain forms of fundamentalism to be false? What gives here?
April 16, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Let’s put it this way. Suppose Kant or Fodor are right on this issue. What would we expect from an ethnographic point of view? First, we would expect to see far more homogeneity among various world cultures on these oughts. Compare, for example, other truths of reason like those in mathematics with these oughts. We find mathematics existing cross-culturally and developed independently of one another, even if only at the rudimentary level like arithmetic and geometry. Yet we don’t find this is the case of anything like Kant’s categorical imperative. Note, I am not here pointing to Kant’s formulation of the categorical imperative (indeed, we don’t find formalizations of geometry cross-culturally as in the case of Euclid, but nonetheless find basic geometrical knowledge). Rather, when it comes to oughts viewed through the lens of ethnography, you name it people somewhere do it and call it right.
Second, Kant, at the beginning of the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant directly tells us that he isn’t teaching us or telling us anything that isn’t already universally acknowledged. Yet if this were the case, then we wouldn’t expect so much perplexity on the part of so many when confronted with the CI and its understanding of morality. Compare this again with mathematics. When people learn mathematics, they might indeed have difficulty learning it, but as they gain facility they see its truth and disagreement disappears. And again, my friend Jerry might correct me here, but this grasping of the truth is cross-cultural. Were the CI genuinely a truth of reason we would expect disagreement to abate once it is understood, but it doesn’t! Moreover, were the CI truly a truth of reason, we would expect everyone who has come to know it or become aware of it to come to the same conclusions in applying it. Yet as we’ve seen in these various discussions, you, Mikhail, Kvond, and I all come to very different conclusions when applying the principle. I suspect we’d all come to exactly the same conclusions in doing simple arithmetic or algebra.
These observations taken together, I think, really strain the credibility of these claims about oughts. It is not at all that I’m refusing to engage the issue in a serious way at all. I genuinely either a) don’t understand the arguments you cite (such as Fodor’s arguments or even Plato’s arguments for the need for a concept of “identity itself” to recognize two things as identical in the Phaedo), or b) I just fundamentally think these arguments are mistaken. I hope it’s the latter, but you guys seem to think that whenever someone disagrees it boils down to them just not understanding. I don’t think that’s the case.
But also look at Kant’s own arguments. In the Groundwork, again, Kant gives an argument from design. He tells us that clearly the function of reason cannot be happiness because certainly nature would have devised far more effective means for achieving such ends, therefore reason must have a higher vocation. Does a post-Darwinist context undermine this argument? And when we note the survival advantages that the capacity to learn or rewire our own thought grant us, is it not possible that “reason” is the result of a genesis that has evolved to be out of step with its environment (non-innate) giving the advantage of inventive plasticity, rather than this higher vocation of reason? (Somewhat weak argument, I know).
Compare these observations with the psychological account. Does the psychological account encounter similar problems? In fact, we don’t. The thumbnail sketch of a psychological account I provided in my previous post predicts exactly the things I outlined above. If oughts emerge developmentally through a combination of affects, memory, and experiences, we would expect there to be tremendous diversity among both individuals and cultures due to difference in their constitution (different bodies experience things in different ways), differences in experience (and therefore different memory traces that come to be compared), and differences in developmental milieus (both cultural and environmental). As a result, across cultures we will get different systems of values and duties as a result of different individual and cultural ontogenesis. We can think of these different cultural systems of value and duty as being not unlike speciation through geographical isolation. Just as two groups of finches originally coming from the same population develop into distinct species when geographically isolated by one another by, say, tectonic drift separating islands, different cultures develop different systems of values and duties through a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism where the existing group functions as a milieu of development for the newborn child and the child, reaching adulthood serves a similar function with respect to their children. Variations or shifts in values and duties– for example, women in our own society going to work, relaxation of taboos surrounding pre-marital sex and different sexual practices, and a rise in the marital age such that amorous relations between adults and teenagers become taboo –can be accounted for, in part, based on environmental shifts in the developmental milieu. For example, part of the reason we get a shift in attitudes towards adults marrying teenagers has to do with the shift from our culture being largely agrarian to being an “expert” culture that requires a good deal of education before one can gainfully support themselves through their labor. Likewise, part of the reason women no longer have such fixed gender roles has to do with the development of birth control, but also the emergence of money and wage based economies where, unlike in a barter economy, it becomes possible to treat things that differ qualitatively as equivalent such that labor time is labor time regardless of sex, gender, color, etc. In other words, our values and duties come to shift as a result of these shifts in milieu. And again, this is exactly what we would expect under the psychological account.
Now, cross-culturally we don’t simply find differences in duties and values, but also similarities. As my friend Jerry likes to put it “anthropology studies both the unity and the diversity of the species”. How do we account for these similarities? Do we need to appeal to a principle of reason? Again, I don’t think so. Although we have different experiences, different constitutions, and different developmental milieus, we also face similar problems regardless of the culture, environment, and milieu in which we develop. Just as we find similar tools cross-culturally (such as knives and axes), and just as these tools often have [remarkably] very similar design (similar heft, shape, handle size, etc), we find certain similar values cross-culturally as well. The reason knives tend to have similar design cross-culturally is because of the physics and geometry of our body coupled with the somewhat universal problem of needing to cut things. Likewise with respect to, for example, certain attitudes towards protecting children.
It would be nice if there were moral universals like there are universals in mathematics, but when I consider all of these sorts of things I just can’t see it. I’m not trying to avoid the issue or engage it in a non-serious way. I’m just as passionate about these sorts of issues as you and Mikhail are (which we’d probably all do well to remember). I just happen to believe, based on my studies of history, ethnography, human psychology, etc., that my particular approach better squares with what is the case and explains a lot more. As a result of these conclusions, I infer that principles of reason as construed deontologically just aren’t going to be very effective in accomplishing what I think all of us would like to accomplish. Instead, we have to set about doing the hard work of determining what forms of life produce peace, harmony, satisfaction, and justice, or, at least, the best opportunity for these things. This becomes a question of both education (milieus of development) and the formation of institutions that protect us from those that don’t see the reason in limiting some of our desires. As for the fundamentalist, I don’t see the problem. Based on my theory I can generate an ought simply by comparing my historical knowledge of those social relations dominated by fundamentalism and those that aren’t. I can observe that the latter has often led to a great deal of conflict and human suffering and endeavor to convince others of this as well. I can even point out to the fundamentalist that both of us wish to have safe and stable social environments, to not live in fear, etc., and that when we attempt to force people into a particular form of life usually we produce just the opposite. Therefore I can argue that we ought not organize society in terms of a fundamentalist dogma and that these things should remain private.
April 16, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Ok Levi, I appreciate your belief that your position squares better with anthropology, and psychology, etc. I just happen to think (1) your last response is garbling issues again and (2)that your view of what your position is capable of accounting for is flat out false.
About (1): I’ve already told you that normativity doesn’t reduce to ethics or morality. So all of the ethnological ‘data’ you supply is simply a red herring. All of your remarks about Kant’s ethics are marginal to Mikhail’s (and my) point. So forget Kant, and Forget Fodor. They’re examples, and they’ve ceased to be productive because you keep mistaking them for the topic at hand.
The main point, the one you need to address, concerns the framework in which you and I can trade arguments, justifications, and reasons. That is, the normative space in which philosophy is possible. That such a framework has a genealogy, a physical substrate, or whatever is fine. But this physical/causal explanation doesn’t absolve you of the hard work you need to do first. As I’ve pointed out to you several times now, a naturalized account only makes sense after you’ve already figured out what, exactly, needs to be naturalized. You agree with me on this, and then you seem to slide back into a really unproductive mode of discussion almost immediately. I find that weird.
About (2): you’re entire response oscillates between a radical form of ethical relativism and an equally radical form of scientific realism. Neither form, however, really takes norms seriously, nor are they coherent positions. The fact remains, You’ve discounted normativity before you’ve even addressed it, and then proceed to try and offer a rationally compelling — normative — account for that. Moreover, the two poles mutually exclude one another. Simply put, you’re simply not being consistent.
Now, to close this off, no one ever said, for instance, that one can’t be wrong, or that whole cultures can’t be wrong. Slavery was and is wrong. And no amount of relativizing or contextualizing it will change that. Moreover, no amount of science is going to make slavery more or less right. At best, it provides the raw material for an argument about its wrongness or rightness. For some reason, you seem to be totally and utterly unwilling to see that science itself doesn’t explain anything normative. Nor should it.
What’s worse, for science to get the job done, you need norms in place. So your scientific explanations presuppose norms, rather than explaining them. Again, I’ve made this point to you before, and you’ve agreed. But you seem to forget immediately thereafter.
Finally, You were the one that said you didn’t understand. It’s not that Mikhail and I are imputing a misunderstanding to you. In any event, you’re still insisting on treating normativity as if it meant morality. It doesn’t, so everything you’ve written about Kant’s morality is really beside the point here.
April 17, 2009 at 12:46 am
Levi,
The above comment, a thorough and worthy questioning of the CI and Kantian answers in general. In particular the citing of a mathematics in comparision, and the appeal to ethnology seems quite satisfying.
April 17, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Alexei,
In a nutshell I think the sort of transcendental model of normativity you and Mikhail are proposing confuses causes with effects. You begin with the norms as an a priori condition and then proceed from there. By contrast, I see any norms we have as the result of a transcendental genesis, not something that is already there. The question then becomes one of how these norms are generated or produced. I do not disagree that slavery was wrong, but rather ask what are the genetic conditions under which it was possible to generate norms that would allow this judgment to be made. You are beginning from the premise of pre-existent categories, principles, concepts, etc., (what I am referring to here as “effects”), whereas I am asking how these very things come to be generated or produced from states where they have no prior existence. Again, I think my observations in the prior post clearly outline why you approach is so insufficient. Were you right about the status of this normativity we would expect to witness a whole host of consequences with respect to human practice. Yet we don’t see this. This seriously calls into question the claims you are making about the status of these principles. The point isn’t to affirm a radical relativism where the Aztecs are “right” to sacrifice people, but rather to give an account of how it becomes possible to make the judgment that they aren’t.
April 17, 2009 at 2:02 pm
To make the point somewhat differently, you are trapped within the logic of the first and second Critiques, whereas I am working in a framework that only became possible with the third Critique, where the question becomes one not of rules, but of the genesis of rules and principles.
April 17, 2009 at 6:13 pm
[…] The value of the apple only emerges in relation to bodies. If I say the apple is bad, I am not making a claim about a property of the apple as such, but a claim about how a property of the apple relates to me. The apple is bad because these properties produce a highly unpleasant set of sensations in my body when I eat it. In this respect, the “badness” of the apple is a secondary property of the apple. Were no one to exist, the apple simply wouldn’t have this property. (the rest) […]
April 18, 2009 at 2:47 am
As I’ve said many times already Levi, you can’t inquire into the history of something until you have a firm grip on the thing already. So there’s no confusion of cause and effect on my part. There is, however, a realization that the quasi-medieval thesis that a thing is known through its causes is only partially true – and in any event only coherent insofar as we have a thing already squarely in view. If anything, I think you’re not very clear on what causes and effects are yourself. Unless you’re willing to collapse the concept of ’cause’ into the concept of ‘entailment,’ you can’t claim that a thing is know in virtue of its causes. Causality isn’t an explanatory category in the way that you keep insisting it is. I mean, we’ve known since Socrates that efficient causes are at best only part of an explanation — and in our particular situation they’re not even primary.
This is not to opt for final causes as the sole explanation, though. It’s just to say that genealogy or genetic accounts won’t take you as far as you need to go on most issues. And in point of fact, even these modes of investigation and analysis presuppose a certain series of normative conditions in order to be intelligible as explanations. Simply put, one can’t initiate a genetic account unless one has some idea of what is to be investigated. But that doesn’t mean I’m being more aprioristic than you are. Really. That strikes meas a rather naive kind of criticism.
Your emphasis on genetic analysis and causal explanation strikes me as obscuring these basic points. IN fact, when you say,
I don’t really know what to say. Of course we see all kinds of consequences of normatively governed behaiour. What counts as a good argument is one such consequence, so do various forms of civil disobedience, etc, as are various forms/theories of human equality, etc. Now, I agree that part of the question concerning normativity is how certain kinds of change in thinking and acting arise, how it’s justified, and how it becomes accepted, but that doesn’t exhaust the topic. Moreover, in order to investigate these changes you already need to have a normative framework in hand. So an analysis of this framework is logically prior to the genealogical analysis you’re proposing. There’s no other way to proceed. How is that unclear?
As for this comment,
That may sound profound, but it doesn’t really mean anything. I’m not a Kantian. I’m certainly not ‘trapped’ in the first two critiques. And in any event, you can’t make sense of the third critique without the other two. So really, past sounding cool, this kind of claiming isn’t helpful.
April 18, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Perhaps this is the problem:
Alexei seems to feel, in something that sounds rather Cartesian, that you have to “get a firm griip” on something by getting it “squarely in view”:
“As I’ve said many times already Levi, you can’t inquire into the history of something until you have a firm grip on the thing already. So there’s no confusion of cause and effect on my part. There is, however, a realization that the quasi-medieval thesis that a thing is known through its causes is only partially true – and in any event only coherent insofar as we have a thing already squarely in view.”
This seems the odd philosophical assumption that understanding something is something like a focusing of a lens, that in the theatre of the mind the FIRST thing that one does is cut the object off from all other relations, loft it up floatingly, “get a grip on it” ocularly, and then after that procede to “understanding” it (making all kinds of judgments). As Spinoza argued, and as neuroscience seems to be bearing out, this is not how the mind works. Judgments, the bearings of beliefs, are already being expressed at the moment of “getting a grip”. That is, understanding is already being employed when some feature of the world is isolated from others. And this understanding, this selection of features, is both holistically rational in terms of our beliefs, and is fundamentally causal.
April 18, 2009 at 4:10 pm
I used ‘getting a firm grip’ and ‘bringing something into view’ as coextensive expressions, Kevin; they’re not sequential processes. I opted for these catachreses in order to leave things as open as possible (switching between a tactility/motility and ocularity/horizonality as a way of covering as many bases as possible). So your criticism is aimed at an imagined interlocutor. I’m not advocating a Cartesian Theatre/phenomenological epoche any more than I’m advocating the Mos Geometricos. My point was much more general (i.e. the latter notions would be particular responses to the problem i’m trying to call attention to)
In any event, it seems like a rather large leap to say that delineating a problem space in order to thematize certain objects is tantamount to separating an object off from its relational existence. I don’t see how that follows at all.
April 18, 2009 at 4:26 pm
The reference to Kant’s third Critique was not simply a desire to sound “cool and profound”, though the fact that you interpret it this way indicates a lot about what’s going on behind the scenes in your thought, not unlike the fact that James Dobson was convinced the Tele Tubbies were gay says more about him than the Tele Tubbies. If the third Critique is of crucial significance, then this is because it explodes the prior critical project. With the discover of reflective judgments, we suddenly get the possibility of a genesis of concepts, rather than a “just so” a priorism as in the case of the first two critiques. Had Kant lived, the first two critiques would have had to been entirely rewritten in light of this transformation.
You write:
This remark gets to the heart of the issue and reveals the central problem. First, you are conflating history itself with inquiry into history or the object studied with the study of that object. The fact that history, ethnography, etc., reveal these wide variations is not undermined by “having to have a concept of these objects to inquire into them”. The point is that the person presenting a normative theory such as the one you’re presenting is an incredibly bold claim and it can be measured against what we discern in the world around us. Were the normative structures universal and a priori in the way you suggest, then we would expect to see them exist in a far more widespread way. The point isn’t that “people often violate these norms” (obviously!), but that we don’t see the universality of these norms in the way you suggest.
Ultimately, however, I think claims like the above reveal the functioning of a certain sort of logic in your thought. You say “we must have a firm concept of x to inquire into x.” In practice this logic on your part allows you to ignore all findings from discipline x a priori as they couldn’t possibly falsify your claim. This is what I’ve called “knowing before we know” or “having the truth before we have the truth”. We saw this logic before in our debate about the first Critique where you kept pounding the table insisting that findings in science couldn’t possibly violate Kant’s claims because Kant’s claims ground science. As a result, you believed yourself warranted in completely ignoring all of science. Later you dodged and said “no I didn’t say that, I said that if we had an adequate transcendental account, then…” But that is not at all what you said, and your thought process continues to follow this sort of logic where you believe yourself justified in ignoring everything outside of your transcendental accounts because, in your view, all of these things are dependent on these transcendental grounds. You “philosophy” thus becomes a sanctuary of ignorance, a fortification of doxa, because, since you do not investigate the transcendental conditions of your own ability to make these claims you simply enshrine all your prejudices based on your class position, your place in history, your ethnicity, and your phenomenological lived experience of your body and thought. You do not discern the way in which you’re simply treating these prejudices as a measure, rather than genuinely grounding things.
Finally, this mode of argument that seems to impress you so much arises because you have no concept of bootstrapping or genesis by which concepts are produced rather than simply there a priori. This is because you think of disciplines as things rather than evolving processes that generate their own concepts through a painful and lengthy process. You look at “knowledge” as a body and then double it with a set of transcendental conditions.
The confusion of cause and effect in your thought process arises at the level of the transcendental. Your “a priori concepts” are, from a genetic standpoint, effects, not conditions. The transcendentalist that argues in the way you argue confuses epiphenomena and results (the so-called conditions) with grounds. As a result, it gets everything backwards and never reaches the true conditions.
April 18, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Levi, you have a fantastic reading of the 3rd Critique. I’m not going to argue with you about Kant any more. It’s simply unproductive. If you’re convinced in your argument, then what can I say, really? The fact that the 3rd critique is an explicit attempt to unify the other critiques into a system by showing that (1) because the faculties can work in harmony with one another, they can also be ordered (2) that the supersensible can be thought, and (3) that subjective validity is nonetheless normatively binding all tells against your claim that the the third critique explodes the critical project. It changes the character of Vorstellung and Darstellung. That’s true. It pushes the previous limits of them much further than Kant may have previously thought. Also true. But that’s not tantamount to undermining the first 2 Critiques. And in any event Reflective judgment is already at play in the Idea of Transcendental reflection of the first Critique. The major innovation is to say that there is mere reflective judgment — i.e. one that doesn’t culminate in a determinative judgment, but rather remains in an intellectual quickening.
But all this serves simply to say that alternate readings are possible, which are at least as plausible as the one you’ve gestured towards above. Let’s simply leave Kant out, OK? It really gets us nowhere.
It’s also pretty clear to me that I’m not confusing the history with inquiry into history, etc. That would be dumb. And I have no idea where you get that idea. Phrased as simply as I know how to: you need a universe of discourse before you can start any kind of investigation/argument. Otherwise, there’s no way to figure out what one is talking about. It’s a simple point, really. I don’t even know why we need to argue about it — save that you keep resisting it.
Now, this line of criticism strikes me as particularly wrong headed:
I’ve never claimed that, and I’ve never said anything approaching that kind of statement. You’re attacking a position I don’t hold. As I’ve said many time already, I’m not a transcendental thinker. I’m not an a priorisist. I do think that empirical research can falsify philosophical theories. I just happen to think that such a falsification is more difficult than producing a factoid and triumphantly claiming, “See that makes all those people that think X wrong!” Falsification is a hard business levi. It takes discipline and charity. Tougher still is that it’s nnot particularly interesting by itself. It’s only interesting when it promotes modification, transformation and progress. Sometimes I think that you’re so busy trying to be right, Levi, that you forget why being right is important. We’re not engaged in a game of one-up-manship. So relax a little.
And please leave the ad hominem attacks on the scratch pad. You don’t know what my socio-economic background is, what hardships I’ve lived through based on political programs etc. And to top it all off, you do a really bad PoCo imitation. knock it off, already, and stick to the issues at hand. Telling me that I must think ‘philosophy’ equals something like self-righteous ignorance (because I disagree with you!), comes across badly. Worst, it’s simply unproductive.
As for the bootstrapping/genesis thing. Yes I have a notion of it. but that pertains to a different level of explanation. I don’t know why this is so complicated, or how we keep missing each other on this point. My point is that bootstrapping is only plausible in virtue of a series of antecedent scientific/philosophical/argumentative commitments, which remain by and large implicit in a given endeavor; since you and I are discussing philosophical issues, these implicit commitments require consideration, prior to the evaluation of some theory of genesis (for how else would you evaluate a theory of genesis?). So I agree with you: there’s no truth before truth, no knowing before knowing. All I’m committed to is the staunchly anti-apriorist claim, a simple and modest recognition, that philosophy begins at dusk.
April 18, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Alexei: “My point was much more general (i.e. the latter notions would be particular responses to the problem i’m trying to call attention to)”
Kvond: I’ll say it was general. So general as to be quite substanceless (once you strip away your Cartesian “catachreses”).
Come on now, “There is, however, a realization that the quasi-medieval thesis that a thing is known through its causes is only partially</b.true”
The quasi thesis is only partially true? How about the pseudo answer to the half-question while we are at it. Because there is no “thesis” in your objection, but only catachreses, one really doesn’t know what to do with what seems to be one huge prevarication.
Levi: “Your “a priori concepts” are, from a genetic standpoint, effects, not conditions. The transcendentalist that argues in the way you argue confuses epiphenomena and results (the so-called conditions) with grounds.”
Kvond: Yes, the difference between discovering something and inventing it, so to speak. Kant did not invent his a priori’s, he found them, as a miner finds silver. I wonder though, as someone who describes himself as a rationalist, do you ever feel that philosophy is in the business of “finding” truths, and not simply generating them (or if you want to be Badiouian, which I don’t want to be), talking them.
April 19, 2009 at 1:08 am
Alexei,
There were no ad hominems in my comment whatsoever. I merely pointed out that you make these blanket claims about normativity, conditions, etc., without engaging in an analysis of your own position of enunciation.
First, you did explicitly make a number of claims to this effect in our discussion of Kant’s first Critique a while back. Second, what you explicitly say in describing your position has little relevance here. It is what you do, how you proceed philosophically, that is important. You continuously make claims about the nature of knowledge, normativity, the nature of being, etc., without making any reference to the human sciences and the physical sciences. You proceed on the premise that somehow these things can be entirely ignored. It is for this reason that I see the sort of philosophical positions you have defended as basically an elaborate defense of doxa or a sanctuary of ignorance. In this respect, your modus operandi is not much different than that of the theology of, say, someone like Aquinas. We get an elaborate theoretical account of this belief system, but at the end of the day it’s simply a cloak for the same old superstition. In this connection, it is intriguing as you took my remarks in the previous post as an ad hominem directed at you. Certainly issues of class, gender, place in history, etc., are a “transcendental condition” for enunciations of a particular sort and forms of thought of a particular sort. Bourdieu taught us this, as did Marx and Nietzsche in their own way before him. But of course, this must be irrelevant to you because the sorts of transcendental conditions you’re describing are “at a different level of analysis”.
Clearly you haven’t read my most recent post, which is fine. But if you had you would understand why I do not believe that questions of genesis are at a “different level of analysis” and can be ignored in favor of discussing these “implicit commitments” that get you all hot and bothered.
April 19, 2009 at 1:11 am
Kvond,
I’m not sure what you’re asking me or when I might have described myself as a rationalist
April 19, 2009 at 1:14 am
Levi: “I’m not sure what you’re asking me or when I might have described myself as a rationalist”
Kvond: Hmmm. It was some time ago, and it isn’t important. Perhaps I remember wrong.
April 19, 2009 at 2:19 am
it seems to me that Alexei is taking a “aristotlean” line in response to the learning paradox: in order for something to count as knowledge, we have to have a framework in place to recognize it as relevant, and this framework is provided by something like culture, habit, convention, or whatever. we don’t “know before we know” but are rather enculturated into certain discourses which delimit what counts as knowledge. this is a strong argument, so long as we are thinking of knowledge as a content (e.g. a set of true propositions).
what Levi is doing, though, if I understand him, is rejecting the learning paradox itself (and not any particular solution to it) by moving away from a content-model of knowledge and towards a sort of process of learning. the problem is then bypassed because we never “know that p,” as much as we may have a grasp on how things work such that p seems highly probable. or, something like that.
in other words, I take it that Alexei wants to say that a knowledge claim about p is always relative to some (normatively defined) discourse which potentially justifies or refutes it. Levi, on the other hand, I think, wants to move away from the notion that knowledge is about making claims and instead attempt to figure out what processes might give rise to these discourses themselves.
I apologize to both of you for any extent to which I have misrepresented your positions.
April 19, 2009 at 5:46 am
I’m glad to see that comrade Alexei was fulfilling his correlationist duty while Shahar and I were hanging out with Zizek in Syracuse. The Correlationist Central Committee will not forget your service!
April 19, 2009 at 5:49 am
Seriously though, I was out of town and wasn’t able to see this exchange, I’ll try to catch up as soon as all the children in my household are properly hugged and fed (and bathed), i.e. tomorrow or the day after…
April 19, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Caemeron,
I think this is a fair characterization of my position. Plato’s learning paradox, in a crude, thumbnail sketch, is premised on the thesis that we are already searching for what we wish to know and that therefore we must already know what it is that we’re searching for. I begin from the premise that the earliest stages of learning are not governed by this sort of goal directed searching, but rather goal directed learning is a subsequent phase of learning once categories, concepts, goals, etc., have already been acquired. On the one hand, Kant’s Critique of Judgment provides a promising philosophical route out of Plato’s paradox insofar as reflective judgments are generative of concepts without relying on the existence of an extant or prior set of rules. On the other hand, neurology gives an account of the development of cognition where categories, concepts, rules, etc., are not a priori and already operative, but rather where they are built as a result of certain developmental processes. With the emergence of these categories, concepts, etc., goal directed, teleological activity becomes possible, but this teleology is not there at the outset of the process. To take an example far afield of these more robust discussions about knowledge and normativity, but nonetheless revealing, the newborn infant doesn’t cry to provide a signal to care-givers that it is hungry. Rather, the newborn infant cries because it has a pain in a non-specified region of its body (non-specified because it hasn’t yet formed a coherent phenomenological body for itself). In other words, crying, initially, is not an agency based on “being-hungry” for the teleological end of “getting fed”. Crying must become teleological. Or, crying must become a sign for both the infant and the caregivers. When crying at the earliest stages, the infant does not have an intentional structure of consciousness that seeks to convey a message. Rather, crying is a reflex mechanism. It is only later that this activity becomes a sign and teleological.
Interestingly, as an aside, there is a good deal of openness as to what can function as a sign in this way. When my nephew was growing up, every time he would fall down and get hurt, they would laugh hysterically. Their boy came to associate laughter with pain signs and signs for assistance, rather than crying. This caused problems for him in pre-school as some girls in his class tooking to biting him and picking on him because he was so darned cute. The teachers had no idea what was going on because he didn’t display the ordinary signs in relation to these sorts of things.
Alexei writes:
Here I think there’s some cross-communication. I have no problem with the analysis of implicit commitments and believe this serves a philosophically valuable service in relation to knowledge structures and normativity. What I do object to is the reification of these commitments into eternal and a priori structures that ignores the manner in which these commitments are temporary plateaus in an ongoing process of genesis. Here I think the language of the “prior” is especially problematic as it suggests that these things are before these knowledge engagements rather than results or products of a genesis. However, especially important, I think, is the recognition that the categorical and conceptual products of genesis are, to a great degree, aleatory. They could easily have been otherwise because genesis allows for a much more open set of possible outcomes. The true transcendental conditions neither resemble what they condition, and are always much broader than what they condition. By bracketing these genetic conditions, a certain type of transcendental philosophy ends up reifying these products, legislating contingent results over the entire panopoly of human experience and therefore ends up institutionalizing doxa.
April 19, 2009 at 9:14 pm
I suppose you must have missed it the last time I asked about it, but where exactly does Kant say that “at the beginning of the Groundwork”? I don’t seem to remember anything of that sort…
I think it is better to refer to this passage to understand what Kant’s Groundwork is all about:
“Since my aim here is directed properly to moral philosophy, I limit the question proposed only to this: is it not thought to be of the utmost necessity to work out for once a pure moral philosophy, completely cleansed of everything that may be only empirical and that belongs to anthropology?”
This should take quote of all of yours references to ethnology and other empirical sciences, Kant is discussing formal aspects of ethics. But this is not about Kant, of course, if you cannot see the issue of normativity outside of the questions of “ethics,” I am not sure you understand my position.
April 20, 2009 at 2:29 am
Mikhail,
You can find the quote in part I of the Groundwork:
I’ve been surprised throughout our discussions at how often you seem to gloss over key claims that Kant makes or to have a very poor understanding of his claims. For example, you criticized me for claiming that according to Kant we have a moral duty to pursue happiness. Take a look at page 54 in the Cambridge edition. Likewise, you claimed that according to Kant, we are to pay attention context and whatnot. Well look at Theorem III of the Critique of Practical Reason on pgs. 160 – 162 of the Cambridge edition. Perhaps we could stop playing this game of “show me the quotation”, which is truly time consuming and irritating. At any rate, Kant has made an incredibly strong ethnographic claim in the quoted passage above that is suspect to ethnographic analysis.
April 20, 2009 at 3:15 am
I will also add– and I’ll write more on this in days to come –that Kant’s position is “a priori” untenable in a post-Darwinian age. Perhaps Darwin’s central contribution to philosophical thought was to show that living natural kinds do not pre-exist individuals, and that individual difference precedes species difference. There’s no reason to suppose that these same genetic principles (in the sense of “genesis” not “DNA”) underpin cognition and reasoning as well.
April 20, 2009 at 3:57 am
You know what, Levi? I think it’s my turn to get mad here – first of all, if I may remind you, your claim on at least two occasions was that Kant claimed in the Groundwork that what he was doing – in the Groundwork – was nothing new. Now you are pathetic enough to have “uncovered” a proof text that not only does not say anything of the sort, but is also so crudely taken out of context that I am not sure if I am really interested in continuing any sort of a conversation with someone who is up for such outright distortion and intellectual dishonesty. Are you for real?
Let’s see:
First of all, this is almost the end of section I, i.e. it’s not a “very beginning” as you claim, but in the thick of the argument that has only begun. Second, I have no idea why you point out “always” here because it has nothing to do with your claim, it has to do with Kant’s assertion that we have arrived at a principle (not yet a final one, for that matter – Part I still, more to come, you know) that was always there, because that’s his point – you don’t invent a principle, you find it, because it’s already there (thus guaranteeing its universality because, at least according to Kant, everyone has a reason) – in reason, not in “people always knew this” as you mistakenly put it. Third, “common human reason” is what we begin with – if you had been able to read the text and not simply look for a proof text you would have seen that “it” refers to our reason which is the only source of any theory of morality, we don’t need any “philosophy or science” means that we don’t need your empirical evidence or your earnest knowledge of ethnology or neurology, it’s all there (therefore the metaphor of Socrates) – now compare it to your phrase:
April 20, 2009 at 3:58 am
sorry in my madness I fucked up the code – fix it, don’t fix it, I am seriously done with this conversation – good luck in your realist pursuits…
April 20, 2009 at 4:19 am
*Laughing*. C’mon Mikhail, what other possible conclusion could follow from Kant’s claim that these norms are universal and a priori? Of course he has to be committed to this thesis. You seem to have a profound disrespect for the letter of Kant’s text, such that he is whatever you want him to be. Kant functions as a “floating signifier” meaning whatever your common sense says he’s meaning rather than what he directly argues. This has been more than evident in your observations about context (despite what Kant claims about the liar’s riddle), and the fact that you continuously interpret your Kantian position in terms of the beneficial outcomes that such a moral philosophy would provide, despite the fact that we are to suspend all such considerations. These points are all “Kant 101”. You just happen to be a rather poor reader of Kant, that’s all.
April 20, 2009 at 5:06 am
I interpret my Kant the way most of Kant scholarship does, I’m not a genius with innovative ideas, I’m dull and boring – if you knew your Kant, you would see how regular and annoyingly mediocre my views are.
You either don’t get it, or your pretend to not get it – you don’t understand such simple matters as “form” vs. “matter” in Kant’s philosophy in general – are you serious? For such a great reader of Kant, you seem to be spewing nonsensical readings of him right and left, I mean you’ve become a joke around the pub with “Have you read this latest comment by Levi about Kant?” and I, whom you’ve continuously accused of all sorts of bullshit, have to defend you and say: “Well, I’m sure he’s just trying to be provocative and edgy, he can’t possibly mean it, it’s just plain wrong.”
My reading of Kant, I repeat, is very much traditional, read your Allison and Wood and Guyer and Foester and Henrich etc etc. You have constantly diverted the attention from the actual issues (in which you fail to produce even one noble idea that can withstand even a simplest critique) to Kant because it allowed you to propose all sorts of outrageous “interpretations” and get attention away from your naive realism. I can only imagine how horribly you misread other philosophers that I don’t know much about… I am done with you, Levi, I will not waste any more of my time, of which I have plenty to waste, on these exchanges – unlike you, I don’t need reassurances from strangers (well, maybe a bit, but only when they comment on how funny I am) – good luck with your philosophy!
April 20, 2009 at 2:45 pm
[…] In the comments section of Larval Subjects attempt to deal again with Kantian normativity, Mikhael repeats the authority of his reading of Kant, after the claim that someone simply is an embarassment: “You either don’t get it, or your pretend to not get it – you don’t understand such simple matters as “form” vs. “matter” in Kant’s philosophy in general – are you serious? For such a great reader of Kant, you seem to be spewing nonsensical readings of him right and left, I mean you’ve become a joke around the pub with “Have you read this latest comment by Levi about Kant?….I interpret my Kant the way most of Kant scholarship does, I’m not a genius with innovative ideas, I’m dull and boring – if you knew your Kant, you would see how regular and annoyingly mediocre my views are.” […]