Malabou, Morphing Intelligence, first selection

The notes below pertain to our group discussion of Catherine Malabou's, Morphing Intelligence, specifically the introduction and chapter one.  Additional notes to follow on later chapters in later weeks.  

We began, as is our custom in CGC, with questions:

• What is the central argument of the text?
• What is intelligence as "method"? (pp. 11-12)
• What is intelligence if it is situated between transcendental and empirical? (p. 11)
  
• What are the broader stakes of the book?  What are the stakes in the movement from Bergson to Dewey & Piaget?  What does this set up with respect to the third metamorphosis? 
• What is the critical tack of the piece?
• Why can't critique be "reactive"?  (p. 9)
• What critical space is made available by an acceptance of the possibility of a connection (or even possibly symmetry) between artificial intelligence and human intellect?
• What are the possible new "logics of resistance" that CM has in view here? (p. 16)
  

We then moved, as remains our custom, to discussion (only portions of which are reproduced below):

The book presents its argument vis-a-vis a hundred-year critical perspective first occupied by Bergson (pp. 4-8).  Bergson's argument, as presented by CM, is:

• Bergson expresses a mistrust towards intelligence, or at least Binet's conception of intelligence:
• Intelligence unable to account for its own origin (p. 5).
• Importance of intuition for "grant[ing] intelligence the spirit--that is, the being--it lacks" (p. 6).
• Bergson sets up a border between intelligence and intellect (the latter informed by or inflected by intuition), and this is the "protective shield" (p. 8)

The argument against Bergson is not so much that he's wrong, but that the view is "obsolete" (p. 9) and outdated" (p. 40).

The book then posits or offers a new position, taken up through Dewey and Piaget (p. 10). To begin to understand this new position we have to understand where it comes from:

• It comes from the critique of the Bergsonian protective shield as outdated.
  
• The three metaphorses are, then, crucial for shifting from Bergson to Malabou/Dewey (pp. 14-16): intelligence as measurable, intelligence as epigenetic, intelligence as "automatic"
• The second metamorphosis (epigenetics) leads to the third metamorphosis, which is to come, (artificial intelligence).
• The challenge of the argument is this: how can we endorse the second shift without embracing the third?
• Throughout all this there is, it seems, an important distinction between distinction and dichotomy. CM is hoping to maintain a distinction without collapsing it, yet without also propping it up as a dichotomy.
  
• The automaticity of intelligence is going to be crucial to the argument (in Chap. 3)
  

The intelligence that CM looks toward:

• Inteliigence as method
• Intelligence as middle ground
• Intelligence between means and ends
• Intelligence between transcendental and empirical
  

The question that is crucial for this argument concerns how to maintain critical space (regarding, say, AI) without the "protective shield" or "testudo".

The history of the metamorphosis recounted in Chapter One (pp. 17-39) focuses on the measurability of intelligence. Characterizing the historiographical method here, we would say (tentatively):

• The historiographical objects of study here are ideas (e.g., measurable intelligence, genetic drivers of intelligence as a phenotype), as well as state institutions and power (p. 25)
  
• The actors are the 'great scientists' (Binet, Terman, Spearman)
• The style can be described as epistemological paradigms
  

The history culminates in the "outdated" testudo of Bergson and those who reiterate his critique of that whose history is here recounted:

• Anti-measure in Bergson (40-42)
• Anti-psychology in Canguilhem (42-46)
• Anti-police in Foucault & Agamben (46-49)
• Anti-cybernetics in Heidegger (49-51)
• Anti-stupidity in Derrida (51-54)
   

 

The Color of Mind Discussion (Chapter Nine)

 CGC Notes: February 20th, 2023

Introductory Questions: 

1. Can we discuss status equality? Who is being referenced in relation to this term?

2. [pg. 147] Why is ‘color of mind’ ideology necessary for Derrick Darby’s argument? Why not rely on other notions like ‘institutional racism’? 

3. [pg. 153] Do the authors underestimate white backlash?

4. [pg. 148] Does their separation of sorting from the history of white supremacy weaken the normative weight of their argument?  

5. Tracking vs. merit based argument. Is this a question of self-respect? Is self-respect missing from the conversation of egalitarianism? 

6. [pg. 145] What might it mean to say that the Color of Mind embodies, causes, and is caused by social inequality? 

On the topic of status equality (question one): Dignitary inequality is a status inequality, meaning that it is not distributive, political, or opportunity inequality. Is it self-transparent what that means? Status may be a participatory notion, or an issue of recognition. This seems like a weak definition of status inequality. It has something to do with aspiring to achieve as well. 

One way that we could approach this concept is by tracking the embodies, causes, and is caused by tripartite definition of status equality by analyzing whether the Color of Mind really does appeal to these three criteria. 

Where does the choice come from for students of color to separate themselves in terms of classes? It is something caused by or perhaps something which embodies unjust social relations? But what is a practice which embodies social inequality? There is an example on page 145. It seems like what it means to embody something has much to do with persistent instantiation — or episodic instantiation. 

Example of caused by: x chooses a non high-performing track because of past experience of exclusion. Example of cause: the same case, because some time in the future x is not recognized by their peers as a high-performing student. Example of embodies: white and black students in an AP class have difficulty recognizing one another as peers. There is a breakdown of recognition. 

What about an example where, in a classroom, students self-segregate? This could be a good example of embodying inequality as well. 

Status inequality is more fundamental, it is a different question, than distributive inequality. We would not have distributive inequality without status inequality, and this may be a reason why Darby is focusing on the question of status. It is normatively prior. But don’t we understand status equality only retroactively through the realization of distributive inequality? Well, let’s look at Cornell West’s example of the racist cabbie. That an affluent black man might struggle to find a cab in New York City is an example of inequality which cannot be understood through distributive injustice, but of status. 

Going to a different question (number 2): why is the ‘Color of Mind’ concept necessary for this argument? Is it because perceptions are being mediated through conceptual content, and that means that to describe racist perceptions means understanding racist conceptual content, e.g. the color of mind? Racism is something other than practice. It may be because they want to focus only on the school. 

What does true integration mean within the school context? It may mean integrating materially, through something like statistical equality through equal enrollment in higher level classes — but it would also mean undoing ideologies and myths. Systemic practices does not only refer to material realities, but also the ideologies that cause these material realities. But aren’t there structural status inequalities that don’t require the possession of racist beliefs? 

Historiographically, where does one locate evidence for the existence of ignorance — and particularly if it is not overt in the practice? It may be discoverable through a limitation on imagination. For instance, the fact that school leaders cannot imagine a school in which black students are just as likely to sign up for AP classes as white students. This limitation to imagination might be where ideologies like ignorance or the Color of Mind are discoverable. Of course, this would be a difficult position to adopt about ideology, because it falls into the problem of the ideology critic knowing something which the actors themselves could not know — its a self-fulfilling idea.

The Color of Mind - Ch. 7 (Darby & Rury)

 Qs:

1. Historiographic method: ch. 2-4 (history of ideas/intellectual history); ch. 7 – how do we characterize the historiography in chapter 7?

-        Ch 4 – Realist or constructivist view of normative commitments?

-        P. 114 Curricular tracks based on test scores to ?

-        Move from testing to what?

-        What is the role of technology?

2. They speak of the particular intensity of discipling of Black students and it affects drop-out rates (p. 121). Can/should we separate this rate within the context of the prison industrial complex? What is the relation between school drop-out rates/levels vis a vis levels of incarceration?

3. Relation between tracking and vocational vs. academic distinction? (p. 115)

4. Color of mind – descriptive and prescriptive – sorting practices of students as immaterial. Is the genealogy separate from an archeological account? Measuring practices and dignitary (in)justice – What about Color of Mind p/d thesis?

 

We started with the fourth question:

-        The authors start with the CoM thesis and call it an ideology – ideas are big in their project

-        These passages on 112 + 127, if they want to give ideas an explanatory role, then it does not fit to state that the rationale behind the sorting does not fit.

-        Authors move to implicit bias on p. 117.

-        What do they think white supremacy is? A kind of white superiority and bias but they lose the structural element

-        On one hand it seems like there’s an analysis of the sorting process and how they violate the conception of dignity

o   If you have a normative claim why do you have an explanatory component? Is it useful to have this explanation of how it happens?

o   A parasitic relationship / explanation of how it has unfolded but there would still be something underly; the practices are contingent not constitutive

-        The value of the analysis in terms of this ideology can be a functional-historical explanation of how these normative wrongs have been perpetuated. How good of an analysis is this?

-        It does not seem as if the history serves as a genetic argument or diagnosis of the normative wrong (it does not seem as if they are trying to do this)

-        Methodologically it makes sense to focus on school and education in terms of racial disparity but if you have a structural understanding of racism, you must also see this problem in a broader context as well

o   If you consider Jim Crow and the iteration of it today – it also makes sense as a post-Jim Crow set of practices set against systematic goals/practices

o   They want to make a claim that there is something specific about education and how this kind of inequality gets cashed out; their analysis has a specificity to it – what perpetuates this kind of injustice

-        Genealogy/archeology:

o   2-4 or 5 contains necessary components for archeology; part of expectation by time reached ch. 7 is that elements of ch. 5 would play some sort of co-constitutive role or even if not that, that it not be utterly disavowed

o   Color of mind ideology/beliefs & ideas

o   The worry of the authors just doing suggestions instead of seeking implementation from a strong normative argument

§  A loosening of normativity

o   A methodological explanation of why they end up where they are in ch. 7; if practices are not constitutive in a strong way, but you want to right a wrong (but it does not hinge on the practices), the wrong could be seen as in a different plane

-        Of what value of the book being nearly half history of ideas for a project that ends up just pointing out wrongs? What is the goal and what does it seek to meliorate?

-        2-5 (explication of ideology of CoM)

-        7-8 (analysis of injustice and practices of school sorting/discipline)

-        9 (suggestions)

o   What is the relationship between ch. 7 and 9?

§  Explanatory of a historical mechanism?

§  Part of a normative assessment?

§  Is it evaluative?

§  What is the domain/scope? How do they maintain domain-specificity?

o   CoM is a set of ideas/ideology so if that’s meant to be evaluative (2-7) then it could make sense why they need to tell the story of CoM as the reason why these practices are unjust (genetic argument – this is not what the book does not do)

o   So, it is explanatory: historiographically how do ideas explain practices? Are transformations of ideas sufficient for the transformation of practices? What would the ideology look like without these practices? Can you give an account independent of practices?  

o   They can claim both that the practices are necessary for the ideas and the ideas are sufficient for practices

§  Taking archeology to be a study of rationalities or ideologies/ideas

-        Seems like they want archeology to be sufficient to the genealogy

o   But then you wouldn’t need genealogy (?)

-        Explanation of how ideology is maintained (not the ideology itself)

-        The ideology stops at a certain point – there is no more mutation and it is just practices perpetuating and sustaining ossified ideology

-        Methodological problem of how they conceive of history/historical narration rather than saying that their genealogy or archeology is wrong?

-        What work is 2-5 doing? If they’re merely pointing out wrongs and offering suggestions, then it seems that at a minimal level, they would only need to be concerned with outcomes?

o   Ch. 7 normative assessment

o   Ch. 9 normative prescription

-        Pragmatic feasibility constraint at their normative prescription – want a shot at this doing something in the context of historical/functional explanation of how this situation that is thus normatively assessed came about

-        What are the possible objects of historical/archeological analysis that could play a role here that would enable this whole picture to hang together?

o   Ideology

o   Structures

o   Institutions

o   Dispostif

o   Political economy

o   Structure of the psyche

o   Racial contract (naturalized account)

§  These are the explanans they have to lie up with the explanada (things explained must be lined up by the explainer)

o   There is a shift somewhere in the preceding chapters (start with ideology and now its practices, but rationale doesn’t matter)

-        Can these be more satisfactorily explained by appealing to different categories (i.e., not ideology)?

-        Ideas do a good job at explaining other ideas (?)

-        Ideologies as explaining beliefs (and mechanisms (?))

-        What kind of methodological account can we give for methods that are implicitly in play?

-        Tracking of the hyper-disciplinization of Black students 

Thoughts on Genealogy, Normativity, and Nonideal theory

The following notes concern the relationship between certain forms of nonideal (and/or realist) theory and genealogical theory in light of questions concerning the place of normativity in philosophical critique.  

 

 

First, recall the distinction between normativity in the broad sense of that which is guided by a rule or subject to a rule.  This is normativity in the sense of determinateness.  That which is determinate is subsumed under some rule in virtue of which it is possible to be correct or incorrect about the matter in question (this correctness can be either ethical or epistemic in form).

Second, contrast nonideal theory and genealogical theory.

Some forms of nonideal theory are characterized as taking injustices as the starting point of theory, in a way that is obviously concerned with normative phenomena (namely phenomena of injustice).  The concern here is with normative phenomena in the sub-sense of prescriptively normative and concerned with what we ought to do (canonical normative notions here include injustices, wrongs, harms, oppressions, etc.).

Genealogical theory/critique, by contrast, is focused primarily on the problematic, at least in its Foucauldian modes (at least on the interpretation of Foucault pursued by some, including Koopman [2013]).  The problematic (or Foucault's "problematizations") are not determinate.  They are indeterminate.  They are a site of confusion and doubt and exhibit a lack of ruleishness or correctness.  An indeterminate situation is one where we do not know if some action or institution is just or unjust.  On this view, genealogy is not itself normatively ambitious.  But it may still be normatively concerned, or relevant to normative questions.

Third, consider now some of the centermost challenges facing these various forms of theory.

The challenge facing nonideal theory, in those of its forms specified above, is clarifying how we can know that some phenomena (or action or institution) is to be determined as an instance of injustice, rather than a false claim to injustice (consider as one paradigm those who claim to be 'victims' of 'reverse discrimination').  These forms of nonideal theory often seem to implicit assume that we can reliable assess a situation for a determinate (broad sense) normative prescription (narrow sense), and that this is not really the core subject at issue.  To the perspective of the anti-foundationalist political theorist, these forms of nonideal theory just appear to be smuggling in the answer to the question where all the work needs to be focused.

In response to these foundationalist challenge threatening some forms of nonideal theory, other forms of nonideal theory (and realist theory) offer a different picture of how we should think about normative phenomena.  This alternative form of nonideal theory does not begin with injustice but begins with claims to it (or a "sense" of it, in the words of Judith Shklar).  Often it is straightaway clarified that these claims to injustice come into conflict with one another (here a good source is Isaiah Berlin, whose conception of politics was influential for Bernard Williams).  Here the theorist need not claim to be in possession of some normative foundation.  But the weight of the challenge accordingly shifts.  Now the challenge for nonideal theory in this form is to specify how an analysis or description of conflicting claims can ever move over into normative theory, or if it cannot so move, at least how it can position itself as relevant to the normative questions it is clearly concerned with.

The challenge facing genealogical theory is how to make its diagnosis of problematic or indeterminate situations relevant to normative critique.  There are a few strategies for this in the literature.  One is to argue that genealogy should rigorously avoid the normative.  A related strategy is to say that genealogy need not, but surely can be allowed to, rigorously avoid the normative.  On these views, it suffices to diagnosis.  On my own view, this is deeply misguided, because it begs the question (which is a pragmatic question I would confess) of what political theory is supposed to be fair -- if political theory cannot offer us any good thought about the question of 'what to do' then it has abandoned a job that some cynic is going to happily fill (the world we actually live in is too often one populated by such cynics).  So another view in genealogy is to hold that genealogical diagnosis supplies conceptual material that is salient for downstream prognostic, and possibly even prescriptive, work that would offer ideas toward the normative determination of what the genealogy initially shows to be a problematically indeterminate situation.

The challenge facing genealogical theory seems rather close in form to the challenge facing some forms of ideal theory, namely those that put conflicts over injustice claims front and center.  Both forms have a challenge of how to move forward from there and offer something in the way of a normative component that philosophy seemingly ought to apply.  Here the issue seems to me to be one of hooking up, or stitching together, normativity in the broader sense of a clarification or settling of an indeterminate situation and normativity in the narrower sense of offering an ethical/political prescription of what justice (for example) requires.  I do not have a clear solution to this, but it is my view (with which of course there can be reasonable disagreement) that political philosophy ought not to just shirk this question indefinitely.

The Color of Mind - Introduction (Darby & Rury)

 Questions:

1. “Color of Mind” – Intellect, character, conduct – why these three?  (p. 2, 13)

2. What kind of normativity is involved in the argument/what kind of argument is it? (pp. 15-16)

3. What is the scope of the argument? (p.5)

            a. K-12 schools; AJC – University 

4. P. 4 – track how the concept of dignity is figuring into their argument on diagnostic and prescriptive side 

        a. Does it take white dignity as the standard to meet? “perfect social equality” (p. 5)

5. Methodology? “Ideology historically functions as a ‘foundation for black/white education and achievement gaps’” (p. 2)

        a. What are they bringing into focus vs. what are they not?

6. Outcome/opportunity focused – measurement focus (pp. 11-12)? 

Discussion:

- “Color of Mind” to describe racial ideology (p. 2)

    o Works in tandem with practices but is not itself a practice – it is an ideology concerned with intelligence, character, and conduct

    o As idea(s) that can be expressed in practices or that cannot be reduced to practice

    o Practices sustain it; ideologies and practices mutually reinforce each other

    o Ideology rationalizes the practices which in turns sustains them 

- They are concerned with practices but not focused on them exclusively

    o Are beliefs a part of the notion of colour of mind? 

- Focus on overcoming ideology not necessarily practices 

- Practices follow from ideology? Or Ideology having some kind of normative authority? 

- Action guiding component to Color of Mind 

- Normativity in the sense of the moral “ought” (rule/binding, action guiding) – prescriptive and a broader sense of normativity that can be characterized as any possible form of correctness – epistemic or ethical 

    o P. 12 ideology as both descriptive and prescriptive (concerned with the moral “ought”) 

- Work at the level of ideas and solve problems

    o Intelligence, character, and conduct existing as ideas (p. 2); tracking the idea that the belief that one is more superior to each other 

        - Linked to end of chapter with mere suggestion (remedies as optional); OR, their prescriptions are     mere suggestions because they are actually more pragmatist in what they are concerned about – they     realize that you cannot just defeat these issues by arguing against it

        - Normative diagnosis: this is wrong; solution requires on-the-ground work that would have to be               achieved outside the book

- If they are focused on ideology as main thing, then that would require being idealist about practices and then they would need to offer a robust prescription – expressive of ideological material

- Offers specific actions that are vital to achieving this but are not advocating or endorsing them being picked up as educational practice/policy 

- P. 13 issue of asserting ideology – as prescriptive component 

- Relationship of the book’s argument to current problems (Ron DeSantis and education)

    o Book makes an appeal to school admins and teachers who make social justice a priority – social           justice as currently being called into question 

- Dignitary Injustice: 

    o Prescriptive core of their argument (normative in the narrow sense) 

    o Dignitary vs. distributive paradigms 

         - Allows to track relational component, moral status, that distributive paradigms can’t capture in               the same way 

        - Linked to ethical ideal 

      - “equal partners” and “shared status”

- Thinking of dignity as an ideal; term of dignitary injustice, so they’re starting with injustice first before the ideal 

     o To have an understanding of a dignitary injustice, one must have an ideal understanding of                     indignity (such that one knows when it is lost)

          - Or what is realized as lost in the injury 

- Ideal as shared dignitary status; the injustice is the violation of dignity 

     - Possible political understanding of dignity 

      - Authors as doing ideal theory

          - But also have appeals to dignitary injustice 

• A kind of methodological distinction 

- To what extent are they including (implicitly or not) a kind of distributive justice?

    o The dignity is logically prior to distribution; distribution is secondary to dignity and relational                equality – dignitary equality as fundamental 

- Grounding their theory in Kant, is the intent to expand dignity to all human beings (and therefore, taking for granted or extending “white dignity” to others?) 

    o How does this relate to their call to dismantle white superiority? Isn’t dignity a part of white                   superiority? Can this be untangled from the history of this?
        - Who is the onus on?
        - P.41-43 (discussion of Frederick Douglass)

o Demand of reason (independent of historical reality) – in grounding it in Kant

- Calls into question who their audience is – they assert the idea of equal dignity (p. 3)

    o Why is the term dignity important if they’re speaking to a person who already believes in this                 formal equality? 

    o From dignity comes this intrinsic equality – a way to not be focused on distributive justice 

- They take dignity to be foundational for spelling out relational equality

    o Links between dignity, equality, and justice 

        - Dignity is what relational equality is (the plane of it)

         - About worth and recognition