Power and Freedom in the Space of Reasons – Ch. 3 Keeping it Implicit

Questions

1. What does Tiisala mean by “discursive”? (p. 66) What is the Kantian aspect of the discursive, especially in relation to Dreyfus vs. McDowell? (p. 66)

2. Are there subjects in Foucault’s archeology? (see p. 62)

3. Why does Tiisala’s account rely on normative forces being operative in a normative statement? What do we lose in claiming that discursive practices can only be understood as descriptions of the regularities? Is there a difference between the normatively ambitious and the descriptively normative? (p. 62) 

4. How are nondiscursive concepts compatible with inferentialism? (Can Brandom and McDowell be brought together?) (p. 66)

5. Why is the “ethical function” tied to autonomy as a Kantian notion? (p. 69)

6. Does Tiisala’s vindication of Foucault actually capture Foucault, the man? Can we unify Foucault’s intellectual development in this way?

7. Can we go more into the Dreyfus-Rabinow critique? (pp. 61-62)

        Discussion 

• Ethical reading of Kant in archeology in Foucault – working on oneself, finding oneself in history, and gaining autonomy through the recognition of the historical conditions of the making of the self 

    o Disagreement with Dreyfus and Rabinow involves this

    o Tiisala is developing a pragmatic ethical register 

• [Q7] D&R – There regularities which regulate themselves (p. 57)

    o “Causal power of the discursive” (p. 58)

    o The charge of structuralism 

    o Foucault claims the regularities are both efficacious and implicit – pragmatism helps this 

    o D&R Critique: Foucault wants both normative and descriptive – he’s a structuralist where they are           heavily divided 

         Efficacious = rules as representations which provide normative checks

         BUT Implicit = they are not represented/accessible within the mind 

    o D&R Critique: Foucault cannot provide efficacious account of rules since Chomsky and Levi-Strauss     have rendered it ahistorical 

    o Response by Foucault/Tiisala – practice and language already entangled in pragmatism 

         Brandom – neither intellectualist regulism nor nonnormative regularism 

    o Issue is now why does Foucault turn to genealogy?

    o Causal efficacy = normative force (prescriptive operative forces) rather than regularist description (see         D-R p. 81)

    o Idealist regulism vs. descriptive regularism – D-R say Foucault falls into descriptivist regularism and         then needs genealogy to accomodate

    o Dreyfus and Rabinow overlook pragmatist conception of rules 

    o Tiisala agrees with D-R but doesn’t think it’s a problem in Foucault 

    o Implicit + Efficacious Rules = Solution

• [Q1] 

    o Broad sense of discursive – conceptual vs. nonconceptual; 

    o Narrow sense of discursive – theoretical vs. practical

    o Conceptual vs. Nonconceptual 

         In Conceptual – linguistic vs. nonlinguistic conceptual action

         Ex. of nonlinguistic conceptual – foxtrot steps, pitcher strike, left-handed writing punished (?)

         Job of archeology is to make explicit nonlinguistic conceptual action