Queloz, "The Normative Significance of Pragmatic Genealogies" (Chapter 9)

 We began with questions

1. How convincing do we find his response to the continuity problem? (p. 230)

2. Let's look at the four objections to pragmatic genealogy listed on the first page. Where if at all do each of us jump off? Which objection do each of us if at all find the most compelling?

3. What does he mean by “more objective” (p. 224)? Is disinterested what he means by objective here? Is a disinterested genealogy even possible

4. How does he understand history (p. 214), and how does it fit into pragmatic genealogy?

5. Is pragmatic genealogy a middle way between historical genealogy and model based genealogy?

6. Can the need-satisfaction account secure normativity without teleology?

7. How is need meant to achieve objectivity? It seems he wants to assert some kind of causal necessity (as opposed to a hypothetical objectivity). 

8. Shall we discuss his conception of the agent (p.238)? One of us has a hunch there is something valuable in the argument here, and it hinges on what he concludes about the agent. Maybe if we unpack this argument we might even have a route to understanding why Foucault himself came to return to a notion of subjectivation. Queloz and Foucault might be drawn to a similar conception of reasoning even if they have different meta conceptions of agent and subject.

 

Discussion

- The chapter is from a paper called “How pragmatic genealogies affect the space of reasons.”

- It is important that he addresses a conception of the subject (p.238) as opposed to "the subject."

- Pragmatic genealogy does not speculate on what has been. It is also not concerned with dynamic models (p. 213).

- The formation process bit is important (p. 218). So many practices depend on their own formation process for their justification!

- The point about needs being more objective seems to be a pretty innocuous one. 

- It is strange how he uses very Lamarkian language (i.e. language of purpose) but ultimately holds to more Darwinian presuppositions regarding development  (i.e. an account of needs in terms of functions).

- Pragmatic genealogies do not assume continuity in the practical demands we face precisely because they attempt to identify bases of continuity in those very demands. They are not arguments depending on continuity but arguments for it (p. 230). 

- You can establish continuity without positing universal needs (p. 233). We are less inclined to miss continuity because we start with a model where needs are more readily attributable to local contexts.

- It was surprising to see him evoke the state of nature to describe the local (p. 233). Does this local state of nature introduce the risk of relativism?

- What criteria do you need in order to have actual models, and how close do these models have to be to actual history in order to formulate them? 

- But to localize a model you need to go historical otherwise it does not have any force e.g. Rawls’ model only has force if there are historical examples where people have plural political disagreement. 

- What Fricker and Williams are doing is not local. What Queloz does is recognizes the contingency of the "we."

- The history of the present; the history of the present. It matters where you place the emphasis.

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.