Williams TT - Chapter 3

01/25/19

Chapter 3 – The State of Nature: A Rough Guide

Questions:

1.    How do all the things fit together in the chapter?

2.    Relationship between trust and language acquisition and family as an institution? P.49

3.    P.61 Why does the concept of truth have no history? “Truth as such” What would Foucault say to that?

4.    What makes this state of nature? Criteria?

5.    What is the basis or justification for the fictional account? P.52

6.    Plot/graph/chart where he stands vis-à-vis Nietzsche and Foucault

7.    Is he arguing that space and time are primitive concepts?

8.    What do we/Williams consider to be a technology in this case? P.49-50

9.    Is there power in the state of nature? Or does it come in with the real genealogy? 

10.  P. 57 – What is the concern of both local and objective past?

Discussion

State of nature as fictional model of society and then we kick over into real societies. 

The function of the fiction is to form a model that is then shown to map onto actual society?

Could this be a parallel or inversion of Peirce’s idea of truth – very end of inquiry 

Williams appealing to something in the opposite direction – what would we have to attribute to humans holding beliefs and opinions about things prior – hypothetical beginning of inquiry? 

Truth assertion and belief – concept of truth such that truth itself is unchanging – minimalist about truth – empty of content – function of truth is not changing -- 

Special thing about truth – tied to language, knowledge, assertion and belief – truth as a timeless notion 

p. 61 – why truth is the thing that emerges out of all that as the eternal? Why is it that truth is an unchanging thing that qualifies our capacity of language as opposed to other things?

Truth as ground for many other things...couldn’t meaning serve this role?

Truth as in analytical relation to many other things – assertion, belief, knowledge...

Genealogy of truth because it is denied. Whereas a genealogy of belief wouldn’t make sense because no one denies belief. 

Local conception of past – no history because there’s no period/interval – space and time you actually live – restriction – local conception of time and space

Objective conception of past – about contingency – why this history rather than another 

Commonality – they involve tenses 

Difference between local conception of the past and objective conception of the past – difference between time (before and after) and history (past and future) – 

Space – observational technology

Shared language, dry goods – environmental objects, animals – time, space, and indeterminacy, primitive trust, accuracy, sincerity, 

Where is the evolutionary biology in all of this if this is a naturalism? What relationship does evolutionary biology have to this account? Nature before culture? The state of nature part of the story is explicitly fictional – it can be fact defective so long as it’s not law defective. No evidence that it happened – p.31 

Truth only possible with a certain kind of entity (the human) – what would this account need to look like if he were accounting for other entities/animals 

Primitive – historically vs. logically – 

There must be culture in the state of nature, and that’s human – p.43

Why is this state of nature the best mythology for his genealogy?

What is put into the story that reveals things about our society – what we take for granted 

Harmfulness of his method of providing a fictional story or mythology? 

Easier to hook up an imaginary genealogy with a real history – not pretending to provide explanatory details as evolutionary developmental stories. 

Williams is frankly anthropocentric – 

What could we take Foucault to say about that such that they would agree? – about the timelessness of the concept of truth – truth as a stability against which things would vary – 

Foucault – tracking the history of the will to truth – why did truth become so important to these people? Why did the will to truth become so important? 

Existence of truth – Williams – internal conceptual relationships between truth, assertion, and belief

Explanatory value of the story

Foucauldians making peace with the transcendental Kantians