Over at Deontologistics Pete has written a massive post outlining his position on normative theory and deontological moral theory and responding to some of what he takes to be my position on these issues. Given the length of the post and the fact that I am currently drowning in grading, it is unlikely that I will be able to address it for some time. In our last discussion Pete criticized me for not addressing all of his posts. With posts this lengthy, however, it is difficult to respond completely in a reasonable fashion. Perhaps it would be better to divide such posts into series so specific points can be more readily responded to. This aside, I will make a couple of points.
First, in glancing over Pete’s posts and reflecting on other comments Pete’s made, I get these sense that we’re using the term “deontology” differently. Pete seems to use the term generically to refer to any discourse having to do with norms. I get the sense that this is what allows Pete to characterize my rejections of deontological norm based systems as a rejection of norms tout court. I, however, use the term “deontology” in a highly specific fashion. In my view– and hopefully I’ll be forgiven for putting it crudely as I’m currently on the fly –a deontological ethical system is any ethical system that 1) carefully distinguishes between hypothetical and categorical imperatives, 2) holds that norms must be a priori and universally binding for all times and places, and 3) holds that we must ignore any considerations pertaining to the pathological or being when engaging in normative deliberation. By the “pathological”, I am not referring to mental illness, but to the Greek sense of “pathos“, or anything pertaining to bodily passions, inclinations, preferences, or affects. For example, from a deontological perspective I take it that considerations of whether or not someone is your brother are irrelevant to questions of whether or not this person should be reported to the police for committing a crime. Any affection or family bonds (pathological considerations) I might have towards my brother are, from a deontological perspective, irrelevant to the course of action that ought to be taken in this situation. Nor am I necessarily in disagreement here. I only give this example to illustrate the idea of pathological motivations.
read on!
Now, given this crude three-fold characterization of deontological normative systems, I cannot but find myself perplexed when Pete makes remarks like the following:
Brandom would say that Truth is something that is not available wholesale, but can only be gotten retail, one bit at a time. I would add that the same is the case with the Good (what we should do, both in the sense of the goal of action and the means of achieving it). Ethics and politics aren’t wholesale matters.
While I enthusiastically agree with Pete’s thesis that the Good and the True are not available “wholesale”, I simply cannot see how someone who adopts a deontological normative approach can endorse the thesis that the Good is not available wholesale. In short, the whole point in holding that truth and the good can only be had “retail” (a very unfortunate analogy), is that truth and the good must be built and instituted, such that they don’t come for free. Yet this work is precisely what deontological approaches ignore. This has been a major point of contention I’ve had with deontological norm based forms of thought. My main issue with these approaches is not, as Pete characterizes it, of
…concern with transcendental normativity precludes the possibility of first analysing the real social conditions (and their causes) that underlie undesirable political states of affairs, and then acting upon these analyses in strategic ways to undermine these and potentially produce new and better social configurations.
First, I have nowhere made the claim that norms ought to be reduced to strategies. The claim that somehow object-oriented approaches reduce norms to strategies is the manner in which the deontologically driven thinkers (in this case Pete and Grundledung) have characterized these positions.
Second, while there is nothing that logically precludes both adopting a deontological approach and carefully examining real social conditions, the problem is that nonetheless discourses that heavily emphasize normativity have a strong tendency to ignore real social conditions. And this is so for a very simple reason. Because these positions emphasize the absolute status of norms, the manner in which they are completely independent of what is, and the manner in which they are binding independent of anything “pathological”, there is no reason to investigate how situations are actually structured. The “is” and the “ought”, as the deontologists never tire of reminding us, are allegedly entirely independent. This distinction, in my view, is a theological holdover in philosophy that strives to preserve some field “out of being” upon which to erect a folk-normativity. Just as certain actually existing theological forms obfuscated real social conditions by grounding the ethical order in God, deontological thought continues this tradition by other means, appealing to a realm beyond the world, beyond anything that could be assailed by appeals to the world, so as to render the core at the heart of neo-liberal ideology immune to criticism.
In this connection, Pete repeats the line of argument linking, through a rhetorical gesture whereby the properties of one thing are exchanged with that of another, object-oriented ontology with neo-liberalism:
I’ve upfront claimed that Levi doesn’t endorse neo-liberalism in any way, but that aspects of the Latourian position (that he seems o endorse) nonetheless commit him to something which is at the heart of neo-liberalism, which tends to undermine arguments against neo-liberalism (if not necessarily strategic political action against it).
I would argue that the situation is precisely the reverse. It is not non-deontological approaches that find themselves unable to respond to arguments at the heart of neo-liberalism, but rather deontological approaches. When we examine the social field, the rhetorics that actually populate this field, what do we find? Again and again we find that it is the deontological side of these debates that supports neo-liberalism. Remember that for deontological thought we are to ignore everything circumstantial, everything pathological, everything personal, and everything sociological. Why? Because the norms proposed by deontology are to be universally binding. Once we begin taking into account the circumstantial, sociological, conditional dimensions of existence, that universality is destroyed. Consequently, deontologically grounded ethics require a subject divorced from all circumstances, all reigning conditions, all considerations of the pathological. The subject of deontological norms is a purely abstract subject. But this just is the subject of neo-liberal ideology. If, for example, the neo-liberal ideologue can look at the person living in poverty and ignore the sociological dimension through which this poverty is produced, if the neo-liberal ideologue explains the poverty of this person based on moral vices (poor work ethic, laziness, etc), then this is because they begin with a deontological ethical system that requires them to ignore everything circumstantial, everything personal, everything “pathological”. In other words, it is those that adopt a deontological approach that have a hard time grounding why we should desire alternatives other than those of our reigning neo-liberal capitalist economies, not object-oriented approaches. Every and always we hear reactionary discourses appealing to abstract moral arguments that ignore all history and concrete social configurations. And again, why? Because what we have in deontological approaches are folk moral theories that ignore the manner in which norms are generated and linked to being.
Finally third, and most importantly, Pete contends that the object-oriented philosopher reduces everything to mere “strategies”. However, this is not the argument at all. For the object-oriented ontologist– at least this object-oriented ontologist –the point is that in order to account for norms in a non-folk-normative fashion we require a genetic account of normativity that shows how oughts arise from the is. Wherever an account appeals to a transcendental subjectivity independent of development and nature that account has fallen into occult or superstitious explanations, into folk-normativity, wanting its money for nothing, by appealing to something that simply is not possible according to the laws of nature. What is required here is an account of how norms come into being where before norms did not exist at all. Unless one is going to make the claim that somehow human beings differ fundamentally from all other species and are independent of the requirement of coming-to-be, then it is necessary to give a developmental account of norms.
Yet deontological ethics completely abandon this requirement, instead positing an a priori principle (the categorical imperative) or domain of norms to account for norms. The point here isn’t that “everything is strategies”– rhetorical point scoring if ever there were, which is fine given that I do my own fair share of rhetorical point scoring while also advancing arguments –but rather that we can’t appeal to skyhooks to ground our morality. Following Dennett, by “skyhooks” I mean hooks that hover about in the sky with no support of their own, engineering marvelous things without any work. Skyhooks swoop in to save the day, for example, when a movie plot goes awry, introducing something completely improbable and that violates the laws of the fictional universe. Thus, for example, in Matrix Reloaded, when Neo is able to use his powers outside the Matrix to defeat the Sentinals at the end of the movie, we encounter a skyhook. Had Neo not suddenly acquired this remarkable ability the story would be over as the robots would have certainly prevailed. An appeal to the supernatural was the only way to solve the plot.
Appeals to the categorical imperative and other a priori norms are, I take it, skyhooks. They want to ground normativity in an absolute fashion without doing the requisite engineering work to explain the existence or genesis of these norms. This is also why I have suggested that deontological normative approaches are effectively sophisticated ways of begging the question, as they begin with assumptions about what norms ought to be and then simply project them into the realm of the transcendental in much the same way that prior to Darwin we explained species by reference to Platonic forms or ideas in God’s mind. What is missing is the engineering work it takes to produce these things. And just as a good engineering account of the formation of species led to many surprising revisions in our understanding of life (for example that individual differences in organisms precede species differences), it is likely that a good engineering account of normativity will lead to a number of surprising results with respect to our folk-normative conceptions of norms.
At any rate, if I find myself surprised when Pete talks about norms not coming wholesale, but only retail, I find myself surprised as this strikes me as the exact opposite of deontological thinking. That is, where deontology wants its norms all there at once, universally binding and a priori– how else could everyone be held responsible for these norms? –Pete’s unfortunate neo-liberal analogy to the retail nature of norms suggests a way of understanding norms that is not deontological but rather that points to how norms are constructed or built out of the non-normative, piece by piece. In other words, here Pete would actually be close to what Latour is trying to get at. Perhaps he should therefore drop the language of “deontology” altogether. After all, the axiological and the deontological are not synonyms. Deontology is one theory of the axiological, and a particularly disastrous one at that. Nonetheless, as I said I have not been able to read the entire post yet so I might be significantly mischaracterizing Pete’s position. I still fail to see how one can simultaneously hold that the ought is completely independent of the is and hold that the ought requires us to carefully analyze situations. Pete says he’s not a Kantian. Fine. But this strikes me as something completely at odds with deontological approaches to ethics. Moreover, the deontologist can claim that they’re simply examining norms of rationality. Here the deontologist will find no disagreement from me that norms of rationality are important and wonderful things. However, accounts that appeal to a realm of transcendental norms to ground these norms of rationality are, in my view, superficial. They simply beg the question of the genesis of these norms, positing a ready-made answer that is no real answer at all but only an illusion of rigor and argument. Moreover, all too often this transcendental realm is simply a prejudice masquerading as a universal.
Larval Subjects . 
October 26, 2009 at 6:15 pm
I appologise for the sheer length of the post, but it kind of grew out of control, precisely because I tried to demonstrate what you’re concerned with here, namely, that one can have a loosely deontological perspective without thereby falling into a Kantian perspective. I understand if you don’t have time to read it, but it at least is a fairly systematic statement of my position. Its still not as clear or complete as I’d like it to be, but at least I’ve gotten it off of my chest.
I won’t say too much more, as most of what I could say would just refer back to the post, but it is important to make one thing clear.
The name of my blog tends to cause some confusion as most people are only familiar with deontology as an ethical position, and specifically as a vaguely Kantian position at that. My philosophical approach is grounded in what I have called fundamental deontology, but this is not to say that it is grounded in anything like an ethics.
Fundamental deontology attempts to uncover those norms that we are governed by insofar as we are rational, or the fundamental norms of rationality.These norms are transcendental, universal and ahistorical (the practices that they are manifest in are historical and emerge within the world, but this is another matter). However, not all norms are transcendental, and the transcendental norms that there are don’t necessarily have ethical implications. There might be some potential ethical or political content that can be derived from these norms (such as the desirability of loosely democratic systems of government), but regardless of whether there are such implications, and whatever they are, they do not determine all ethical and political matters.
It is thus very important to distinguish between transcendental norms and what we might call the ordinary norms of which there are ethical and political varieties. I won’t say anything further about this here though.
One final point though, although I’m not a Kantian deontologist, I think identifying the Kantian ehtical subject with the subject of neo-liberalism is a bit strange. The subject of neo-liberalism is an abstract rational subject, but its rationality purely consists in maximizing its preferences. There is no consideration of rational ‘maxims’ here, whereas the practical rationality of the Kantian subject is essentially bound up with these. It isn’t the abstract character of the subject which in and of itself underlies neo-liberalism, but a very specific conception of what this abstract rationality consists in.
October 26, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Hi Pete,
I hope to get through your post some time this week. I have a hundred student essays to grade as well as logic exams to get through. For me the key issue is whether or not a normative theory builds in a historical genesis of norms or whether it treats norms as eternal and unchanging absolutes that hold for all times and places. If the latter, I believe that the normative theory remains within the orbit of a theological conception of norms, normative subjects, etc., that has become untenable in our current historical milieu. I suppose– though I don’t like to put it quite this way –the issue is whether or not one’s normative theory is consistent with naturalism broadly construed. Insofar as you claim these norms are ahistorical your thesis doesn’t cut mustard with my ontological commitments. Suggesting that they manifest themselves in practices doesn’t not get to the key point of how norms are actually invented, built, or constructed throughout history. All it points to is that norms are instantiated in the world. For me what is required is a real transition from the is to the ought. From within my framework, then, the emergence of norms is not a mere instantiation but the appearance of something genuinely new in the world. Note, that when I argue that norms are built, constructed, or invented, this does not restrict me from holding that norms, once they come into existence, are also universal. However, we can’t get this universality for nothing. It requires work in the social world to establish it and constant maintenance.
I see your point with deontological ethics and neo-liberalism as being strange bedfellows, but I think you’re only picking up on half the story. One part of the story is, as you suggest, that of an abstract subject defined by the pursuit of its self-interest or maximizing preferences. The other half of the story consists in how neo-liberalism thinks this abstract subject at the moral and legal level as a subject defined by debt, duties, and obligations in assigning responsibility and guilt. This subject is conceived in thoroughly abstract terms as defined by contractual responsibilities and obligations that are completely independent of any concrete circumstances or social condition. It is no mistake that deontological ethics comes into existence largely at the end of the 18th century when capitalism is really coming into its own in the West. When Deleuze, echoing Marx, describes Kant as a “state philosopher” this, I think, is one of the points he has in mind. Rather than providing a genetic account of values, the state philosopher is one who provides a crypto-defense of the reigning values of the image of thought, turning them into essential and invariant structures, rather than examining their real genesis. This, I believe, is what deontological approaches do and why I claim they beg the question. From a Marxist perspective– and, of course, no one is obligated to be a Marxist –the suggestion that a genetic approach to normativity is a defense of neo-liberal capitalism cannot but appear perplexing as generally deontologically driven normative approaches have been the ideological hand-maiden of this way of understanding the world, not the reverse.
October 26, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Taking the last point first, I suppose I’d say that even if it is true that deontological ethics has played some role within the dominant political framework of the past few hundred years, leading up to the current globalised neo-liberal form of capitalism dominant in the West (and I’m not entirely convinced of this, but I’ll let it pass), then this does nothing to deny the potential that more complex forms of deontology have to work against this framework. It does provide us with a stark warning in our attempts to formulate such an approach however.
Returning to the first point then, I’m entirely down with naturalism. In fact, I believe that I’ve been arguing for a proper naturalisation of culture that the Latourian approach (and I assume your own) is resistant to. The fault line here seems to be whether we can think of the cultural as continuous with the genuinely causal processes which constitute what we ordinarily understand of nature, or whether we view it as involving something non-causal which breaks with nature. This is what I was trying to get at in my earlier posts, insofar as you seem to want some notion of force broader than causal force, the best examples of which seem to be symbolic interactions in the cultural domain.
With regard to situating norms within nature, for me it is important to separate out norms thought of as reasons for action, from norms thought as regularities in our behaviour, or as practices. The latter can be totally situated within nature, and they account for all the effective force in the production of real social phenomena that you want immanent norms to have. The former don’t strictly speaking exist, and we only talk about them as existing in the loose sense that they play a role within our reasoning (much as ‘facts’ do, as facts aren’t some additional thing on top of what they are facts about), or in the confused sense that they are mixed up with practices.
However, these are intimately related in two ways. Firstly, our practical reasoning is grounded in our practices, in virtue of the fact that we deploy facts about our practices in explicating and interpreting the norms we take ourselves to be governed by. Secondly, our acts of explication, interpretation, arguing, reasoning and the actions they motivate, can be viewed from a causal perspective as having an effect on our practices. We thus have a way in which practices feed into reasoning as reasons, and reasoning feeds into practices as a cause.
The only odd case are transcendental norms, which we can’t revise in the way that we can revise other norms (even if the practices within which they are manifest are not invariant). This is simply because of the fact that the process through which the institution, interpretation, and revision of other norms takes place (and any other properly rational activity for that matter), can’t themselves be instituted or revised through this process (though they may be interpreted, in a somewhat special way). Nonetheless, for all that transcendental norms are an odd case, they do not add anything to my ontology. They have no effect within the world, even if the rational practices that they are manifest within do.
October 27, 2009 at 12:26 am
Pete,
I simply don’t see how one can advocate a naturalism and hold the positions that you hold. Naturalism comes at a price, to whit, no longer being able to appeal to transcendent and unchanging grounds to ground claims. Within a naturalistic perspective, everything has to come to be or, put otherwise, you can’t get something for nothing in a naturalistic universe. This entails that you have to give a genetic account of how norms emerge within the order of being. When I refer to “genetic accounts”, I am not, of course, referring to DNA, but rather to how norms come to be produced, built, or constructed within the world. This is precisely one of the things Latour attempts to do in his own investigations. Rather than appealing to occult entities like transcendental norms floating about for all eternity, he attempts to give an account of how such things are built and become entities within a collective. When you claim that norms can’t be instituted, I take it that this is simply a failure of imagination on par with those that claim that we can’t explain how species arise from the accumulation of individual differences over time through processes of natural selection and heredity. The claim that transcendental norms can’t be instituted and therefore must be ahistorical and eternal is, in my view, simply a way of begging the question. The argument has the following form: “we can’t render our current practices intelligible without an appeal to these norms, therefore these norms must be transcendental and outside the order of being.” In other words, it simply posits what it sets out to establish. Claiming that these norms, strictly speaking, do not exist and that we only talk about them existing in a loose sense is, I think, simply a sophistical rear guard action that attempts to preserve transcendental norms within a naturalistic framework without really being able to do so. Additionally, I would not say that deontological approaches to ethics have played some role in the dominant political framework of the last two hundred years, but rather that deontological approaches are the formalization of what lies at the very heart of this framework. It is deontological forms of thought that give rise to the understanding of actors as abstract subjects divorced from all social conditions acting in a vacuum and deontological forms of thought that form the foundation of the legal system of debt, obligation, and guilt required by this form of political and economic organization. Just take something as simple as Rawls’ infamous “veil of ignorance”. What is it’s first move? The subtraction of all concrete circumstances and social organization from the field of discussion where ethical and political matters are concerned.
October 27, 2009 at 12:37 am
I’ll also add that I hope my evocations of neo-liberal taint at the heart of deontological thought underline just why this is a ridiculous line of argument in these discussions that should be forthwith abandoned. While I do indeed think that it is the case that deontological approaches lack the resources to respond to contemporary social and political forms of organization by virtue of the manner in which they exclude the thinking of concrete conditions, anything to do with the “pathological”, or real differences among social actors, and while I do think it is, in fact, the case that deontological views of the world lie at the heart of neo-liberal ideologies, this is nonetheless an unfair line of argument to advance that proceeds through guilt by association rather than getting at the real issues. I also find it rather amusing to hear deontologically driven thinkers suggesting that Latour, of all people, is without the resources for analyzing these structures. To properly analyze these structures you have to advocate a “networked”– or what Marx referred to as “dialectical”, i.e., relational –way of understanding the world. These networks become entirely invisible in deontological approaches that posit abstract subjects independent of all concrete situations (quite literally subjects of the law and a law designed to benefit primarily a select few) and a conception of norms entirely divorced from concrete social, historical, and economic circumstances in which they arise. The real discussion should be about relational conceptions of agents and norms, genesis, and non-relational accounts. Not this sort of guilt by association which, I think, is just lazy philosophizing.
October 27, 2009 at 1:35 am
“The argument has the following form: “we can’t render our current practices intelligible without an appeal to these norms, therefore these norms must be transcendental and outside the order of being.” In other words, it simply posits what it sets out to establish. Claiming that these norms, strictly speaking, do not exist and that we only talk about them existing in a loose sense is, I think, simply a sophistical rear guard action that attempts to preserve transcendental norms within a naturalistic framework without really being able to do so.”
I’m obviously not Pete but this doesn’t seem to resemble his argument or broader philosophical motivations at all. He’s not saying that we can’t “render our current practices intelligible” without spooky transcendent norms, but rather claiming that a complete account of our current practices, i.e. a complete account of the [i]being[/i] of our current practices, would be a causal account without reference to rational norms [i]as[/i] rational norms. (Of course we can give genetic descriptions of norms but they aren’t therefore the norms “deontologically operative” in any attempt at rational explanation by virtue of it being an attempt at rational explanation and not causal explanation.) Consequently, norms, in Pete’s materialist-causalist view, do not exist in themselves as normative. Norms are materially instantiated in rational behavior, so norms certainly “exist”, but they cannot be distinguished from other brute material causes as normative on that level. The norms which are being appealed to are then those which we must treat as fully-blown normative reasons, and not material causes – though obviously they are identical to the materially causes through which they are constituted – in order to treat a rational agent as a rational agent and not as a causal system.
I apologize if I’ve completely butchered your thoughts here, Pete.
October 27, 2009 at 2:33 am
Jack,
I think you’re off mark here in your analysis of Pete. The last refuge of a Continental scoundrel, I believe, is the charge that one has “misinterpreted” another’s position, rather than having a genuine philosophical disagreement with the premises of that position. I believe that’s what you’re doing here. Pete claims that norms are ahistorical and are not instantiated, and therefore cannot be accounted for through a genetic account of how norms are produced within being. When confronted with the argument from the immanence of being or that there cannot be anything outside of being, Pete’s strategy is to say that norms are not beings, but are nonetheless some mysterious non-existent entity outside of being that function as “reasons”. At this precise point Pete abandons, in my view, any claim to either naturalism, materialism, or realism. You simply can’t speak of a realm outside of being and be a naturalist, realist, or materialist. It’s a nice rhetorical or semantic move, but opposed nonetheless to any of these positions.
Now when we ask why we should believe in these occult non-existent entities that nonetheless regulate, Pete’s argument– as is the case with all deontological arguments (see my previous posts on transcendental arguments –is that we cannot render our practices intelligible without appealing to these occult entities. And generally, as in all these cases, these arguments are advanced without any reference to history, sociology, or ethnography (after all these things are irrelevant as these occult entities are absolute). This comes out with special clarity when Pete claims that critique of these norms is itself off-limits because allegedly “rational dialogue” presupposes the existence of these norms to take place. There is nothing I’ve said here that misrepresents the deontologist’s arguments, though perhaps the deontologist does not like the critique I offer of his position. This is how transcendental arguments, including Pete’s, work. What takes place in Pete’s arguments, I think, is the desire to simultaneously be a good modern acknowledging the truth of naturalism against obscurantist and reactionary theistic perspectives while simultaneously bowing before theistic assumptions about the necessity of norms being eternal and unchanging and outside the order of being. This is what leads Pete to the [perverse] last ditch effort of claiming that “strictly speaking” norms “don’t exist”, while still trying to cling to some naturalistic ontology. But, evoking Pete’s own hallowed principle of non-contradiction, you can’t have it both ways. If you’re a naturalist you adopt a genetic approach and rearrange your normative furniture accordingly. You don’t evoke occult entities like non-existent norms that somehow regulate normativity while being outside of being, nature, history, etc. Pete is not a materialist-causalist by virtue of his claims about normativity. Now this tension might generate interesting philosophical postures, but a naturalism it is not, which is fine. He should just be upfront about it.
October 27, 2009 at 8:21 am
Jack: Thanks for giving it a go. I think you almost to me there, although I think you stumbled into the problems with trying to use the same word, ‘norm’, to talk about two different things: reasons on the one hand and causes on the other. This is why I talk about a empirico-normative hybrid concept of norm that needs to be pulled apart into the concepts of norms proper and practices, respectively.
Levi: I think Jack was right that you are somewhat misunderstanding me. Although this might be the last resort of the continental scoundrel, it doesn’t mean that all claims to misunderstanding are thereby unfounded. Anyway, if we can agree to put aside guilt by association for now, that’s a good thing.
The problem with your appeal to naturalism is this point:-
“Naturalism comes at a price, to whit, no longer being able to appeal to transcendent and unchanging grounds to ground claims.”
The specific issues is the word ‘ground’ here. This is because it runs together different kinds of reasoning. Particularly, it runs together practical justification of one’s actions with explanation of phenomena.
Naturalism as its ordinarily understood appeals to the latter. The point is that we cannot appeal to anything outside of nature in our explanation of phenomena within nature. My position is entirely consistent with this. I take it that norms as reasons can play no explanatory role in any account of social phenomena. On the other hand, the practices in which they are implicit, and the activities in which they are explicitly invoked, can play such roles, but conversely need to be understood not to play any direct role in the justification of action.
Our disposition to deny any kind of authority to those who commit themselves to contradictions emerge through socio-biological evolution within the natural world. However, from inside the process of argument this fact is entirely irrelevant, we simply must enact this denial of authority. If we were to be asked what caused our denial, we could appeal to this genetic story, if we were to be asked what justified it, we can only appeal to a transcendental norm, a norm without which there would be no explanation or justification at all.
If you want to charge me with violating naturalism, you need to do a better job of defining what you take naturalism to be.
October 27, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Pete,
When you make remarks such as this it sounds like you’re very close to my own position:
Here it sounds like you’re open to an emergence or genetic account of how norms come to be, while nonetheless underlining that in the use or employment of these norms, their enactment, this needs to be set aside. It is worthwhile choosing examples of normativity that are less contentious than rationality or ethics. Take the rule of English that states “i before e, except after c”. This is not, of course, what you would refer to as a “transcendental norm”, but nonetheless sheds light, I think, on normativity in general. I suspect that all of us agree that this rule is the result of a genesis, that it didn’t always exist, and that it emerged under specific circumstances in linguistic history. Nonetheless, this rule is binding within the English language once it exists. When evaluating spelling we would be amiss were we to make the issue one of the genesis or history of this rule rather than whether or not the rule has been followed. Where normativity is concerned, I take it that I haven’t said anything different than this. I’ve only emphasized the caveat that these rules must have a genesis or a production to enter the world. The difficulty arises when we begin raising questions about just how we have access to these norms. For example, I do not think that we can any longer appeal to a transcendental faculty of reason in the way Kant did because of what we have learned in biology and neurology. Kant himself had to appeal to theological design arguments in both the Groundwork and the Critique of Judgment to advance the argument that reason has a moral vocation. Within a post-Darwinian biological framework these arguments no longer, I believe, hold up. Rather than reason giving itself a law as Kant would have it, I think we need an account of how certain norms, principles, or rules spread throughout a social sphere not unlike the epidemiology of a virus. That is, these norms have to be replicated or copied from person to person to person. This requires an entire infrastructure or system of transmission for the replication of these norms.
October 27, 2009 at 1:20 pm
When you get round to the rest of my post, you should see that I am concerned with the genetic factors underlying the production, maintenance, and development of what you’re talking about in terms of ‘norms’. I simply think that we have to separate out this external perspective on our behaviour (theoretical reasoning about what we are and do) from our internal perspective (practical reasoning on what we should do and how to do it). This means splitting this hybrid concept of norm into two different concepts, one that deals with the causal dimension of our behaviour and the other which deals with the normative or reason governed dimension of our behaviour.
Once we separate these out, we find that we can give a much better account of the genesis of ‘practices’ within the world, and there effects within social systems than we can when we get the two confused. Moving beyond this confusion, I think we could have some very interesting and productive discussions about how to understand the mechanisms of replication that underlie our practices, although the sticking point will still be our disagreement over to what extent the social sphere is causal.
October 27, 2009 at 1:26 pm
An additional point would be that although I’m quite sympathetic to the whole notion of ‘memes’, I dislike a lot of the discussions of them I come across precisely because they focus on viroid models of reproduction.
It seems to me that these models are fine for certain cases, e.g., serial killing, high-school shootings, etc., but are bad at describing more complex systems of thought, particularly religions, which a lot of memeticists take as a primary phenomenon to be explained by memetics. However, if we extend the model beyond viroid reproduction and take some analogies from sexed reproduction (in which we have populations which maintain the relative stability of the common genetic information while nonetheless allowing development and adaptation), we could develop some really interesting accounts of the social sphere.