Queloz, 'Practical Origins of Ideas', chs. 1 & 2

We began with questions:
-       1. Is Queloz right to distinguish pragmatic genealogy from Foucauldian
genealogy in the way that he does?
-       2. Is this conception of genealogy abstracting from history/facts too
much? State of nature not located in space or time
-       3. What is his theory of needs?
-       4. How do we distinguish genuine from false needs? Biological needs?
Social needs? Wants?
-       5. How central is needs to Queloz’ pragmatic genealogy? Pp. 6, 14
-       6. 2: What is his conception of tradition?
-       7. Pragmatic genealogy as primarily affirmative but also subversion?
Pp. 12, 40
-       8. How do you distinguish conceptual practice from mere practice? Pg.
24

Notes on discussion:
-       Counterfactual: concept X serves need N. Need N is presupposed, so the
origin of concept X can be secured
-       Counterfactual as a starting point juxtaposed with the present and the
past
-       Would Marx’s genealogy in capital be closer to pragmatic genealogy or
Foucaultian genealogy?
-       Foucauldians would say that truth has a history. But it doesn’t for
Williams
-       Queloz follows Fricker in prioritizing explanation in genealogy over
history
-       Car example. One genealogy could say how a car is produced. Another
would say these things have to be mobile. How do we distinguish social
needs from social wants and false needs?
-       The design of a car imposes technological limits that truth and
justice don’t.
-       Queloz seems to want needs to be somewhat timeless
-       Justification is relevance to a need and a concept is a response to a
nexus of needs
-       All genealogies are subversive and vindicatory. Always a negative and
positive moment. (Unless abnormative, or normatively unambitious.)
-       What would be the metaphilosophical context in which one would
undertake a vindication or subversion in the first place, rather than do
something else philosophically with a genealogy?
-       The argument of a PG assumes agreement about what our needs are, but if
there is fundamental disagreement about what our needs are, the argument
requires a presumed agreement around purposes.  Perhaps pragmatic
genealogy would be more helpful for epistemological inquiry than
political inquiry… how could it handle justice?  (There will be a challenge facing
PG in any context in which it is occasioned by disagreement as the problem
to which it is responding, because ultimately it seems it will need to presume
agreement around what needs are.  But the problem is now obvious: a PG
is a philosophical response to a disagreement, say a political one, but it claims to
solve that which occasions it by way of presuming agreement on something else.
PG is thus not sufficiently pluralistic for the purposes of political theory.)

Fricker, "What is the Point of Blame? A Paradigm Based Explanation" (10/6)

We began with the following questions

1) In what sense does Fricker mean communicative blame is explanatory?

2) Is it blame that helps explain reasons for moral transformation or is it some other kind of norm?

3) She describes blame as "messy." Does this preclude a paradigm case? Is being blamed or is blaming primary in her account?

4) What does she mean when she says blame is what makes us human? Is she essentializing the human?

5) How does guilt fit into her argument? (see. p.171)

6) How does section 5 fit with or follow from sections 1-4? What is the logical connection between them all?

7) What is conceptual analysis? What is paradigm based analysis? What is genealogical analysis? Isn’t section 1 a conceptual analysis?

8) Communicative blame does not have to be verbal (p.171 and p.179). What would nonverbal CB look like?

9) At the end she blames contingency (p.181). What does she mean by this? How does contingency fit with her conclusions about the uses of blame by the "right" or "wrong" people?

10) Is section 5 more troubling for her work than she understands it to be? She sees it as a caution and not an actual threat to her larger argument. What do we think?


Discussion

- The blame she is talking about is almost too general to say anything useful.

- When we blame people we are exerting a form of control over them. This is a phenomenon people have not paid attention to. She says the above is a worry, but it seems to really challenge everything that comes before in the paper.  

- Could she not include the worry of section 5 in the pathologies of blame section?

- Why do we need to vindicate blame? Why does it have to take on a negative intonation? There seems to be a literature suggesting the latter.

- Forgiveness and guilt could enrich her account of blame.

- Discussion of family resemblances (p.166). She wants this unique combination of something more robust than willy-nilly, pell-mell Wittgensteinianism. She wants something attuned to that but also still attuned to the contingencies of the uses of power.

- Perhaps emotion could be part of the bridge to a more practice based account. Perhaps it could complicate whether or not you could even do conceptual analysis.

- Fricker says: surely we can say something philosophically interesting about blame. This is in place of just saying everything is pell-mell; there are many kinds of blame etc.

- "Constellation" might be a sibling or alternative term to paradigm here. Constellation as a non-hierarchical assemblage that isn’t random but is ordered around something more essential. It takes a certain shape. 

- Is making someone feel sorry for what they’ve done more important than working to have that thing not happen again? She seems to suggest the former. There doesn’t seem to be any future oriented goal at stake i.e. having them not do it again.

- The proleptic blame bit from Williams is really interesting. The idea is to treat people as though they hold moral reasons even though they in fact do not. Because we don’t like other people’s disapprobation . . . somehow this is the hinge which leads us to adopt reasons or values which others assume we should have via proleptic blame.

- She mentioned the aim of “interpersonal calibration,” but it does not seem obviously true that calibrating our moral understandings is a good thing. This seems more like an assertion rather than something that is argued. 

- Methodologically, what does a paradigm explanation do when we come up with a counter example? What would she say to an example of something that looks, smells, sounds like blame but does not do the kind of thing she is talking about? Maybe she would say that’s a parasitic instance; I am analyzing a paradigm so I can throw out that one example.

Srinivasan, "Genealogy, Epistemology and Worldmaking"

The CGC reconvened on 9/29/21 in Susan Campbell Hall -- we were very happy to be back in person after a long hiatus living a virtual existence as a collaboratory.

 

We began as usual with questions:

• What is the connection between (genealogical) luck and (genealogical) contingency?  How are contingency and luck connected?  Does a genealogical specification of one or the other alter this/these connections?
• What is the relationship between the prophets and the  critical theorists discussed toward the end of the piece (see p. 150)?
• Why is the  focus throughout on "representations"?  Is this concept meant in a philosophically significant way?
  
• In what sense is genealogical  investigation a causal explanation?  The latter is often reductive,  so how is it here understood such that the relationship between genealogy and causal explanation does not make the former reductive (i.e., turn genealogy into mechanical historical explanation).
• Let's discuss the various examples she has of 'genealogy'.  Does this help us parse the possible difference between reason-centered and cause-centered genealogies?  Put as a worry, is there sometimes a conflation of reasons and causes here?  What makes the various examples hang together?  In other words, what is a genealogy for Srinivasan?
  
• How do we understand her framing of  feminism?  Why is she positioning the 'worldmaking' work of feminism as  something yet to achieve, rather  than something that has been underway and is ongoing?  (See, for example, p.  149.)
  

We then turned to discussion:

The piece  begins with an account of genealogy as epistemic,  such that  resisting a genealogy's epistemic critique requires seeing oneself as a beneficiary or historical luck.

AS then turns (in section  V) to an alternative discussion of non-epistemic (political) genealogy, to a genealogy concerned not with the "truth" of "representations" but with the function of "representations".

AS operates with a distinction (that remains implicit) between tinkerers/reformists and worldmakers/revolutionaries.

Why the return to truth and and the "genealogical luck" of epistemic genealogy  at the end? (p. 150). This  seems inconsistent with the move from  epistemic to functional genealogy.

List of genealogists: what is genealogy such that MacKinnon is doing genaelogy (but not everybody critical is doing  genealogy)?

Is there too much of a presumption of individualism? Or  given that she does  not want this presumption, what would the paper look like if Pt VI and VII if the focus were not an individual theorist but a social movement?

Why does genealogy lead to worldmaking rather than to something else?  Why not see the two as separate tasks?  Clearly genealogy can be useful for worldmaking, but AS asserts a more internal (or at least close) connection between the two.

Foucault_Crisis of Medicine/Antimedicine_May 27, 2021

 

Foucault, “History of Sexuality: Volume 2 – Part II on Dietetics”

 

We began with questions:

Restrictive sexual economy – not b/c of evil but b/c of integrity of ethical subject – not good or bad but more or less (136).  Also rel. to temporality.

In the intro he offers a sketch of the arch. (form) and glgcl. (transforming practices) modes or aspects of problematization.  Development of new form of subject and conduct.

How does the individual fit in here and rational mode of behavior (108).

Focus on experience (4) of sexuality; recalling a term he used in BoC.  How these readings bear this notion of experience out vis-à-vis the subject.

Contrast between ancient medical/sexual ethics and modern medical/sexual ethics.  What type of differences are central for Foucault’s argument?  What is the crux of the contrast between ancient ethics and normal/pathological orders of medicine (97)?  What is at stake in this contrast?

What are mastery, strength, and life such that they are not expressed through a moral code but also not through health (or at least medicalized illness)? (125)  Yet Foucault also describes this in terms of taking care of health (108)?

What is a technique of existence as a specifically ethical category? (138)

 

 

We then moved to discussion:

One thing we noted at the outset that Foucault was critical of an excess of self-care and the use of pleasure (104); so he’s not falling int neoliberal hyper-individualism.

Introduction - methodology

Foucault’s intro sketches archlgy and gnlgy as two dimensions of problematization.  Archaeology analyzes “forms” and genealogy analyzes their “formation” (and transformation) out of practices composing/constituting them.

Also in the intro he lays out an analytics of ethics (Foucault’s “ethical fourfold”).  He uses this fourfold to explicate aspects of dietetics in Part II, Ch. 1.

If we read Part II through this methodological apparatus – what do we get?

We get an analysis of the form of problematization of regimen (inclusive of sexuality).  We get a story of the shape and form of the problematization – what it was concerned with.  We also get an analysis of their form on the basis of practices in part because the texts Foucault analyzes are something like “practical manuals”.

Practice is a challenging concept here.  What are practices?  Not ideas, not behaviors, not societies.  There is a contextualism in Foucault’s analysis, too, and this connotes an analytics of practice.

                              These practices are not oriented by an ethical goal (telos) of normalization.

The concern is one that problematizes sexuality with “relation to the body” (102).  The body becomes an explicit part of the ethical substance.

The genealogical dimensions are more to be found across HSv2 and HSv3.

What are the implications of Foucault’s arguments?

How does Foucault position Western modernity vis-à-vis the Greeks?  Contrast between Greeks and Christianity (HSv3, 135).

Canguilhem, "The death of man, or exhaustion of the cogito?"

 Qs:

Places where GC discusses/mentions objections to MF (81, 85, 87) – let’s discuss these objections.

• ·        Geology v archaeology (77)
• 
  
• ·        Objection to ruptures (81)
• 
  
• ·        Alternative grids? (85)
• 
  
• ·        How to talk about knowledge without a norm (87)

Norms (78-79) in MF – GC describes MF as more normative as more forward-looking – At the same time Foucault is positioned as not normative (94).

GC’s reading of MF offers too narrow of a perspective – narrowly in not taking up the later work.  Is soc/pol philosophy possible on this picture of Foucault? If so, how could soc/pol theory get into the picture here?

GC also offers a connection to Kant and Hume in the final paragraph (93).  What elements of Kant might be missing?

 

 

D:

Geology connotes the earth/planet/naturalism, or naturalization of culture.  By contrast, archaeology connotes culture.  “Man inhabits a culture, not a planet” (77), says Canguilhem.  But the criticism is that archaeology (read as geology) “naturalizes culture” and does it “by withdrawing [culture] from history” (77).  The critics are representatives of “humanism” and “existentialism” and they accuse Foucault as “positivism” and naturalism.

Canguilhem shares the criticisms but not its reasons – in other words, we shouldn’t naturalize culture but not in order to preserve “humanism” (or the essence of the human), but rather in order to…. [maintain a focus on history?].

The next paragraph GC offers a reason as to how MF left behind naturalism, in the sense of essentialism about nature (e.g., not “liberal naturalism” or “subject naturalism”).

Does GC rely on a divide between culture/planet or culture/nature?  Does the role of history who mediate this better?

“Geology of Morals” (1T Plateaus) on geology in non-evolutionist fashion; observing geological metaphors.

Is Soc/Pol archaeology (in GC’s sense of MF) possible?

If we take normativity to be internal to soc/pol philosophy, then how can we do it given a kind of abnormativ-ism in Foucault.  When soc/pol needs to go beyond mere descriptivism and move into normativism, what can we get out of archaeology?

Does GC offer a ‘futural’ framing of Foucault (as “an explorer”)?  Is that sufficient for normativity?  If we see Foucauldian explorations of the future in terms of problematization does that give us a space of normativity?  What, then, is the relationship between problems and normativity?

[CK: Problematization is necessary for any viable account of normativity, but is not itself sufficient.]

               GC asks whether nknoweldge can be elaborated without reference to some norm?

 

 

 

Plan for next time?

A= 1984 text? / 1974 essay / 1963 BoC chapter

B= 1974 three essays on medicine

We chose A

Canguilhem, “From the Social the Vital” (from 2nd edition of The Normal and the Pathological)

 

 

The abnormal as logically second but historically first (243).  Is the logical point a more a priori point or is it meant to be born out by the historical examples that follow on the next few pages?

 

Canguilhem broaches the differences between normalization and standardization, norms and standards, (e.g., 246), but we could interrogate this.

 

The normative has “its beginning… in its infraction” (242).  What is the relationship between the infraction and the norm?  And what is the relationship that then follows between the norm and the process of regulation that serves to reinforce the norm?

 

The brief historical epistemology that GC offers on 244-245.  Where do we see GC anticipating Foucault and where do we see Foucault doing something particularly different than what is anticpated?

 

Why is normalization for GC expressed in terms of “the polar opposition of a positive and a negative” (240) and logical negation (243)?

To what extent does GC disarticulate this conception of opposition and negation escape the idea of contradiction?

 

How do different forms of regulation and norms interact for GC?  How is the social normalization related to technological and to biological?  (See 255 for example.)  What kinds of things are “social” and “technological” and “juridical”?

 

How are organic and social norms differentiated by GC?  He offers an idea of reflexivity or normative autonomy (256), in contrast to the unity of an organic whole.  Does this sufficiently establish the distinction he wants?

 

If the normal gets naturalized through institutions (237), then how does this, how do these institutions, relate to the “unity” of “organization” that GC discusses later in the piece (250)?

 

To what extent can normalization be regarded as specific to modern forms of rationality?  What is GC’s conception of how this comes about?  Is it more about social modernity?  Or evolution?

 

 

 

We then began with discussion:

Dialectic in the CGC.  Is he thinking a notion of opposition without contradiction?  That is a notion of opposition, or dialectical relationship, by way of a non-contradictory negativity.

Canguilhem’s “two teams”: contradiction and externality (A), versus inversion, polarity, opposition (240), negation (243), infraction (242)?

 

Four metaphilosohpical options briefly sketched:

               Contradiction (GWFH): the norm exists and then gets contradicted; contradiction is the motor.

               Negation (GWFH): negativity/difference is contained within every rule/rationality

Negation (GC): difference/negativity comes first, and then later comes the rule/norm, and then from that comes the abnormal.

               Difference (GD): difference comes first, and out of that comes the rule/norm.

 

Are the rules for GC more like Kantian rules in that they are conditions or procedures for unity of judgment?  Or are they more like rules of practice?

 

At this point many more interesting things were said, but we didn't get them down in notes.

 

One interesting thing concerned the relationship between the first half of the piece (metaphilosophy, metaphysics, philosophy) and the second half of the piece (a historical epistemology).  What is their relation?  Does part 2 follow form part 1?  Is part 2 what you h ave to do given the argument that GC lands on in part 1?