Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments(1995)
Notes & Questions #9: "To Follow a Rule"

1. Wittgenstein says, "To use a word without justification does not mean to use it without right," 168. What is the difference?

This rejects Plato's hierarchy in which theory (justifying an act as a step in a theory) supersedes practice (in which the act "feels" right).

2. "Monological consciousness" (169) refers to the Hume/Locke/Hobbes/Newton model which assembles bits/bytes of date/sensation. The logic/syntax for assembling the parts into a whole is a will-to-power (Nietzsche); it is "mono," one. Taylor/Pragmatists say that this leaves something out. What?

"What this kind of [theory of] consciousness leaves out is: the body [i.e. performance or embodied knowledge] & the other" (169), i.e. social realities (which we identified in essay #7).

3. T. says Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, & Wittgenstein "tried to get out of the cul-de-sac of monological consciousness" (169). How?

By seeing "the agent not primarily as the locus of representations [the blank screen/canvas on which representations/language is written/painted], but as engaged in practices [social values], as a being who acts in & on a [performative] world" (169-70), Dasein.

4. Read the middle of 170 carefully. "But much of our intelligent action in the world, sensitive as it usually is to our situation & goals, is carried on unformulated." How can an act be intelligent if it is unformulated?

For Plato & Newton, it cannot. To be intelligent means that the act is capable of being translated into a Platonic/Cartesian theory. Pragmatism redefines "reason" & intelligence to reject the monological model & replace it with a social model so that "the representations we do make" are not arbitrary, nor exclusively personal (Nietzsche), but "are only comprehensible against the background provided by this inarticulate understanding" of having a goal & consequently being involved in a specific situation. "It provides the context within which alone they make the sense they do," 170. "Sense" is a matter of relationship; it cannot be atomic. No atomic event is inherently or absolutely sensible/meaningful.

5. Looking at the last 2 paragraphs on 170 contrast sense/reason between Plato/Newton & Pragmatism.

For Plato sense resides in theory. An event makes sense only when we know where it fits in an objectively viewed abstract theory or law. Pragmatists object that ultimately this is "a view from nowhere," which fails to acknowledge the human context in which this view makes sense. "Seeing that our understanding resides first of all in our practices involves attributing an inescapable role to the background. * * * Our understanding itself is embodied. That is, [it is first] our bodily know-how" which subsequently is abstracted into theory.

Note: "When I stand respectfully & defer to you, I may not have the word 'deference' in my vocabulary," 171. Remember that there are no atomic meanings. Knowing the word "deference" implies a theory in which deference is meaningful. One can act deferentially because one is committed to Confucian social order or a European aristocratic order or a Catholic religious social order or even an Utilitarian order (following J.S. Mill: the uncultivated are not competent to make judgments on issues they are ignorant of). Plato would insist that the theory must be in place before the act can have meaning. Pragmatists claim the reverse. That we know what "deference" is in a general way, no doubt traceable to infants who intently watch (are deferential to) their mothers. This Dasein "knowledge" is then refined/abstracted into a bit/byte which has a place in systems like those mentioned (Confucian, Utilitarian, etc.).

6. Sawing (with a two-person saw), dancing (Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers) & conversation/language. Can these activities be performed monologically?

Only secondarily & as a kind of pantomime because we have internalized the defining dialogical act. Thus, one can "talk to herself" by imaginatively switching to alternatively focus on each of two parts/roles. "These actions are constituted as such [i.e., they are meaningful because of] by a shared understanding among those who make up the common [whole] agent" (agency), 172. The importance of this point echoes the thesis of #7: "a great deal of human action only happens [& is meaningful] insofar as the agent understands & constitutes himself as integrally part of a 'we.'" * * * "This means that our identity is never simply defined in terms of our individual properties. It also places us in some social space," 173. This is heresy to Util. & Romanticism, which each (for different reasons) insist on hyper-individualism. Count on T. to close the circle & explicate the political ramification. You should be able to see at this point why he would reject the Adam Smith part of Republican rugged individualism -- because individuals cannot truly exist in the way the ideology tries to construe. "It takes a village to raise a child," Hillary says. T. says: "We define ourselves partly in terms of what we come to accept as our appropriate place [roles assigned] within dialogical [social] actions."

7. Closely read the 2 paragraphs at the top of 175. Platonism, Newtonianism, & Humeanism pull the rabbit out of the hat by a process of substitution. An objective term/number substitutes for & thereby replaces an event in which we are/were involved (Dasein). "We are defining a rule [a recurrent pattern of life] through a representation of" the event. Obviously the term is not the event, nor does it evoke the event even in memory. It covers over the subjective experience; it substitutes for it. As in Cartesian physics, the lived event is translated or mapped unto a strange medium or space, which is not lived (subjective). "But then intellectualism [language] enters the picture, & we slide easily into seeing the rule-as-represented [the syntax/order in language] as somehow causally operative," or predictive of life events. Isn't this magic? Paleolithic hunters painted the corpses they buried with red ochre to substitute for blood & vivify the dead in an alternative/magical world. Priests bless the laity & perform sacraments. Physicists translate life events by mapping/conjuring them with numbers. "We see the rule-as-represented as defining an underlying 'structure.' We conceive this as what is really causally operative," 175. Is this fundamentally different than what the Paleolithic hunters or priest/magician did? Isn't the meaning in the ritual? And the magic in the word/number - the transformational spell?

This isn't cast as a question to concisely answer but as Rod Serling use to say (Twilight Zone), as material "submitted for your consideration," with the hope that you will continue the analytic process. Notice that the dialogical process appears more & more Chinese (perhaps just Kantian): life (yin) takes form in language (yang); conversely, words (yang) have meaning only because they refer to life (yin). "A way [tao] is essentially something you go through in time [cf. Hindu asrama-dharma; Erikson]. The map [Platonic theory], on the other hand [two hands, very yin/yang] lays out everything simultaneously," i.e., spatially disregarding temporal development, 176. Dialogical thought rejects reductionism. Time (meaning subjectively experienced human life events: learning how to walk, falling in love, nurturing children, achieving professional goals, etc.) cannot be rendered or substituted for in a spatial theory or map. "This reification [substitution] crucially distorts." * * * "A map or diagram of the process [temporal dynamics] imposes [a foreign & substitutional] symmetry," 176. The point is not to cease doing magic/science. We cannot stop the recourse to language/magic. But we should recognize what we are doing; that magic is happening; that global backgrounds are being switched like stage play scenery. "Determining what a norm amounts to [i.e., what is meaningful, appropriate] in any given situation can take a high degree of insightful understanding [involvement]. Just being able to formulate rules will not be enough," 177. The yang element is only half of the transformational magic. From the PreSocratics through Newton & Hobbes, it conjured Westerners as those who followed rules. We marched while Asians danced.

On to #10: "The Liberal--Communitarian Debate"
Oct. 96