On an aspirational account of self-creation, the creator does not determine, choose or shape the created self; rather, she looks up to, imitates and seeks to become the created self. The source of normativity lies at the end of the process, rather than at the beginning.(p.13)....
skeptics may worry that an account such as mine succumbs to the basic error Nietzsche is describing: in positing the normatively prior self as temporally posterior, I am presenting a teleological account of (a species of) self-directed agency. Is such teleology naturalistically suspect—does it rest on some notion of backwards causation, or causeless effects? I argue that these suspicions are themselves predicated on a conceptual error: a confusion between two kinds of grounding relation...
The primary task...is that of giving an account of how one set of norms—the norms governing S1—is related to another set of norms—the norms governing S2. ... If we want to know whether those very desires and representations succeed or fail, we must assess them with reference to the as-yet nonexistent S2.
In aspiration, it is the created self who, through the creator’s imperfect but gradually improving understanding of her, makes intelligible the path the person’s life takes. Aspiration is that form of agency in which one acts upon oneself to create a self with substantively new values. One does this by allowing oneself to be guided by the very self one is bringing into being.--Agnes Callard Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming, (p. 182-3)
I read Callard's Aspiration with a reading group at Chapman. The members of it (let me know if you want to be named) are to be blamed for my mistakes.:)* On my interpretation, aspiring in Callard's sense is a species of acting under Knightian uncertainty (which goes unmentioned in the book) closely analogous to L.A. Paul's transformative experience (which is discussed carefully; recall here and here). I agree with Callard that aspiring is a real phenomenon, and that it invites further reflection. In a series of posts, I want to diagnose at least three conceptual issues (and make aspirational, baby steps toward resolving them).
First, the distinctive proleptic normativity of an aspirational action cannot be grounded in the prior intentions of the agent. For, some (of a Kantian bent) this is just bat-shit crazy. But I think normativity can be ungrounded in such intentions. As Callard notes the agent that grounds the normativity is a future self. That is to say, to explain the problem of aspirational normativity one must solve (a) the teleological way such a (b) posited future self can ground the normativity of proleptic actions toward it. Once (a) and (b) are solved, one can make progress on the problem of aspirational normativity. I take these in turn, in reverse order.
Second, accounting for the normatively grounding, posited aspirational self is more difficult than it may seem at first. For, on Callard's account -- and I endorse this feature -- genuine aspiring can fail and some purported aspiring can turn out to be wrongheaded. In the first case (of failed aspiration) the posited aspirational self (who is supposed to ground the normativity of one's proleptic reasons toward it) never materializes. Whatever the identity of this imagined self, there is a sense in which it is merely an ideal version of a possible you. In the second sense (the wrongheaded aspiration) the posited self could never be you. So, how can counterfactual selves -- one tangentially related to your identity, the other unrelated to you -- ground the normativity of your activity?
In fact, the problem also is generated in circumstances where the aspiration was warranted and turned out a success (by whatever criteria internal to aspirational tasks). For, even if we leave aside questions of teleology, wne may well wonder how successful aspiration can ground one's present action when the future (post aspirational completed) self is in-non-trivial ways a different identity from the present, aspiring self. It still looks as if a counterfactual identity distinct from one's identity is grounding the normativity of your agency. So, to put the problem starkly, aspirational created selves are, in non-trivial ways, counterfactual selves with which one shares (prospectively) only partial identity. (As Callard notes repeatedly, one cannot claim identity with this future self because prospectively one has little ground for such identity claiming.) While teleology is part of the problem, the real problem is how counterfactual or created selves can proleptically generate normativity to agents that are, in non-trivial ways, (partial) strangers. Let's call this the problem of counterfactual strangers.
Third, I do not mean to suggest that teleology is no problem at all. As Callard puts it, "it is the end that provides the normative standards for assessing what comes before it" (209); and the end is unknown, unknowable to the agent until the end is reached. In fact, working through Callard's book in the company of decision theorists, it is notable how much of the standard machinery of rational choice agency presupposes a kind of billiard ball model of agency in which efficient causes of push and pull (beliefs, credences, intentions, expectations, etc.) do all the work. The question is how can one insert proleptic reasons, which are distinctly teleological into a standard decision-theoretic picture that plays by naturalistic rules. Let's call this the problem of teleology. Luckily, I know how to make progress on the problem of teleology because (recall here and here) I just read the ms of David Haig's brilliant book, From Darwin to Derrida: Selfish Genes, Social Selves, and the Meanings of Life which vindicates a naturalistic version of echt-teleology.
I don't think any of the problems I have identified are truly articulated in Aspiration. But I think Callard has identified, or (to do justice of her treatment of Plato) recovered, a genuine feature of our existence. And that she has offered us enough of a mountain to climb, to make it worth it to reach higher vistas.
Stay tuned.
*I do hope to write a paper with Keith Hankins on the themes discussed here. :)
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