Matthieu Queloz, "Revealing Social Functions through Pragmatic Genealogies"

Questions: 

1. How is pragmatic genealogy related to ideal theory? (p. 202)
2. How is pragmatic genealogy related to metaphysics? – Is it an anti-realist or realist project about the concepts under analysis? 
3. Deidealization of needs – how do we do this? (p. 202)
4. Pragmatic genealogies as the fulfillment of needs or self-preservation – Is this fulfilment adequately understood as problem solving? Is survival a problem to be solved? (p. 208)
5. Are pragmatic genealogies a fictional genealogy? 
6. What is pragmatic genealogy for? (p. 210) What is the point? To appreciate the function vis-à-vis self-effacing functionality? What’s the role of self-effacing functionality?
7. Is this the best use of genealogy? What do we gain? 
8. What conception of normativity is operating here? 
9. Worries about the eclecticism 
10. Needs as a route to packing necessity into genealogy (?)
11. What’s the concept of a function? 

Discussion: 

• Functionalist philosophy of social science – “functional approaches in the social sciences” (p. 206) [Q11]
• A function satisfies a problem: “creatures in the state of nature would need to solve a certain problem” (p. 207) [Q4]
• “[pragmatic genealogy] shows how this array of needs issues in the need to solve a particular practical problem” (p. 201)
•   Problems in pragmatism (logical – indeterminacy, semantic – vagueness) 
• Is problem the right way to articulate basic survival or fulfilment of needs? [Q4]
• Highly-inflated conception of need
• What about the non-fulfilment of needs? – suicide, dying for a cause, etc. 
• Rationality assumed in needs/function
• “It presents a particular bundle of dispositions, concepts, institutions, or conventions as a solution to this practical problem, thus indicating that given their needs, it would be rational for these creatures to move into a state in which this particular bundle was operative.” (p. 201)
• Instrumental rationality – means-ends (?)
• Do practical needs necessarily involve instrumental rationality?
• What is “particular sociohistorical configurations of society” (p. 201) 
• Inferring de-idealized needs that follow from initial starting assumption 
• De-idealization (p. 202) 
• “The model is then de-idealized towards our actual situation by successively factoring in further needs: needs entailed by the initial needs the model started out with, but also, as in Williams’s case, needs factored into the model based on what we know about the actual history, sociology, and psychology of human beings.” (p. 202)
• Williams' de-idealization involves taking-up historical cases (p. 204) 
• Unlike Foucault, Queloz is generating a transcendental ontology with certain essentialist components 
• Basic needs – move up to localities
• Why is the movement from an idealized model to deidealized rather than generalizing deidealized to find the model?
• Formulation of ideal a priori (?) 
• Why is pragmatic genealogy the better methodology for articulating needs?
• At least for concepts – such as Truthfulness, Accuracy, Sincerity
• Metaphysics – [Q3]
•   Transcendental function – a priori needs
• Have we used a modal metaphysics to generate the essential needs? – Yes
• Where can we fault this on pragmatic terms?
• Internal criticism of Queloz – does it do everything we would want? 
• Normative limits 
• This is an example of vindicatory genealogy (?) – how does pragmatic genealogy subvert?

What’s outside of Pragmatic Genealogy? 

• Non-needs (contingencies)

• Non-functional explanations

• Contingent psychological features of persons

• Subjective purposes

• Methodologically – how do we

Can he address the “further needs” and the contingencies within a pragmatic genealogy?