Tiisala, PFSR, Chapter 2

 “Tiisala Chapter 2 Replacing the Sovereign Subject with savoir”

 

Questions:

1.    How is the notion of savoir (as explained by Tiisala) related to dispositif, another concept concerned with the limits of intelligibility, but perhaps more robust? Especially if dispositif encompasses and expands savoir and archeology? What about these new concepts that challenge the primacy of “savoir” as a guiding thread?

2.    2.2 Sentence on p. 39: “In a sense, the connection is plain to see: since concepts on Foucault’s account are constituted by rules of savoir, individuals must become concept-users by learning these rules.” Is this really plain to see? What is the connection?

3.    How do we get from the division between the true and the false to the claim about autonomy in 2.5? What are the steps that get us from the first to the second?

4.    P. 41, About discursive practices: What is the distinction between discursive and non-discursive social practices with respect to savoir for Tiisala?

5.    What does savoir mean?

6.    Why does Tiisala emphasize the Anglo-American influence on Foucault’s conception of language as opposed to another “preconceptual” treatment of language, like French phenomenology’s?

7.    Is the account of non-discursive action neutral in Brandom?

 

2. “Replacing the Sovereign Subject with savoir”

·  Connaissance (surface knowledge), while savoir would be depth knowledge (unstated presuppositions), the things needed for science or scientific fields to stabilize their inquiry and truth claims.

·   

 

2.1 Foucault’s rejection of the Sovereign Subject

·  Some confusion about the claim that the practice of critique doesn’t require an account of linguistic training. Here, it seems that Tiisala is endorsing his own view about dispositional understanding.

·  It is unclear, for one reader, where Tiisala is making a hermeneutical claim about Foucault’s view or account, and Tiisala’s own, which could be why the above is ambiguous.

·  Tiisala is writing on Foucault at a time when Foucault’s reception in North America is laden in a history that has tended to neglect Foucault’s engagement with Anglo-American philosophers like Austen and pragmatists. Aside from Arnold Davidson’s small nuggets of this influence or engagement, Foucault’s reception in the U.S., in an academic geography invested in a continental/analytic divide, has tended to position Foucault’s philosophy beside someone like Derrida. Yet, there is another, more complex lineage one could draw, at least sociologically, by tracing Foucault’s readings of Wittgenstein, Straussen, etc.

·  In reference to the final sentence of this section, to what extent does conceptual competence have to be transcendental of the content of discursive practices?

·  Perhaps, Foucault acknowledges that the problem of a transcendental operator, a “conceptual competence of conceptual competence” is a real philosophical limit that he doesn’t give a universal account of, since any account of conceptual competence as such is going to lead to the regress problem. 

 

2.2 Foucault’s inferentialism

·  Page 31, first paragraph. How do connect the following: concepts, concept-users, rules of savoir.

·  Individuals become concept-users (iff) they learn rules of savoir because concepts are constituted by rules of savoir.

·  Maybe Tiisala just wants to say that concept use is behavior that follows the rules of savoir.

 

/There are a couple of issues to flag when it comes to the discursive and non-discursive question. One set of worries is that there is a reductivism to focusing on discursive practices. Another worry is that we can’t trace the transformations in discursive without an account of the non-discursive. This is also a question about archaeology as a method, which does not seem to adequately track discursive transformations.

 

/Trying to sum up what we are understanding so far: What the critiques have been missing is a pragmatist conception of rules, which Foucault already has, and archaeology can be vindicated.

 

2.4 Archaeology and genealogy of savoir

·  Tiisala seems to want to suggest that we can study techniques of power in terms conceptual operations of power (savoir), which is different from a reading that suggests that genealogy studies the non-conceptual techniques of power, like assemblages, strategies, etc., i.e. thinks linked to the non-discursive. This is the question of why savoir, and dispositif.

 

Tiisala, PFSR, Chapter 1

Winter CGC Meetings - Week 1 - Tiisala, Chapter 1

We began, as per usual, with questions:

1) Relation between regress of rules and structural necessity (p. 20).  Endorsing or describing?

2) What is the normative attitude exhibited in (expressed by?) dispositional understanding (p. 20), i.e. that which corresponds to the normative attitude of endorsemenent exhibited in representational understanding.

3) The account of semantic self-consciousness (SSC) on pages 20-25. How should we understand this to work such that we can give a philosophically robust account of it?

• 3a) SSC enables concept-users to assess and revise concepts (p. 20).  How can we understand the revision of concepts without situating it within the revision of practices?  Do we revise practices in the course of revising practices?
• 3b) When a concept is defective (p. 25), how does an account of SSC explicate or consider the occurence of attachment to defective concepts?  Is the idea that SSC is a sufficient condition for rectification?  Or is it merely necessary?
• 3c) What are conditions of possibility of SSC? Does TT acknowledgment feasibility constraints? Does TT acknowledge constraints in terms of kinds of persons?
• 3d) Re: (3c): How can we model SSC such that it does not violate any important feasibility or kinds-of-persons constraints?
  

4) Sociality -- Tiisala's Brandomian social ontology.

• 4a) Sociality in the form of I-thou versus in the form of I-we (p. 15).
• 4b) Sociality in the form of you-we sociality (p. 17).
  

Discussion ensued:

Section 1.1: Problem of structural heteronomy.

• Understanding (SSC) comes first, then assessment second, then the possibility of rational control (or the possibility of changing concepts in the world).
  

 Section 1.2: Regress of rules argument

• "Understanding, in its basic form, conforms to standards of correctness neither intentionally nor accidentally" (11).
• Understanding is non-intentional (implicit, or "behind our backs") but also non-accidental.  This is dispositional understanding.
  
• We can then make the understanding something we are intentional about (explicit).
  

Section 1.3: I-thou, I-we, you-we

• You-we sociality is fundamental.  I.e., training is fundamental for understanding.

Section 1.4: from Training to Pattern-Governed Behavior

• "One can also conform to a rule because of the rule, thus non-accidentally, without knowing the rule" (18).
  
• "The goal of linguistic training is to produce pattern-governed linguistic behavior" (18).
• This is necessarily social (19), because of §1.3.

Section 1.5: SSC and conceptual control (CC)

• TT on SSC and CC:
• "Rational control over concepts" (20).
  
• Concepts can become objects of thinking as representations (20).
• "Enables concept-users to assess and revise the concepts they use" (20).
• SSC as sufficient as CC: how would this work?
  
• Assertions are speech acts.
• Understanding is essentially assertional.
• SSC means we know how our concepts are connected to each other.
  
• So the account must be that SSC is necessary (but not sufficient) for CC.
• So how does it fare as an account of SSC as necessary for CC?
• What do we have to assume about CC for the 'necessity interpretation of SSC (for CC)' to make sense?
• Is CC something that I can do by myself (wrt my own concepts) or is it something that must be essentially social?
  

 

Further Discussion Points:

Re: (2): Is it acknowledgment?

Re: (3b): Attachment to concepts needs explication.  Subjectivation.

Re: (4): TT's arg. is that you-we is fundamental for I-we and I-thou social relations.