In chapter 2, I discuss the special practical reasons peculiar to aspirants, which I call “proleptic reasons.” If someone takes a music class in order to come to appreciate music, her behavior does not serve a current end of hers in the same way it would if she got a cheeseburger because she was hungry. In the second case, she already has a desire for food; in the first, she is trying to have a desire for music. The reasons of aspirants are not, to use Bernard Williams’ ...term, ‘internal reasons’ to which an agent can expect complete access if she deliberates correctly from her current motivational condition....If we want to understand how substantive value-change is possible, we will have to introduce a new kind of reason, one directed not at satisfying wants, but rather at generating them. Agnes Callard's Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming, 10.
Proleptic reasons are provisional in a way that reflects the provisionality of the agent’s own knowledge and development: her inchoate, anticipatory and indirect grasp of some good she is trying to know better. Proleptic reasons allow you to be rational even when you know that your reasons aren’t exactly the right ones. Agnes Callard Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming, 72.
I noted before (recall here; and here) that within Callard's Aspiration, there are distinct philosophical puzzles. Many of these puzzles are rooted in the relationship of proleptic reasons to other features of our moral psychology and decision theory. However, these puzzles can't be treated wholly in isolation because the solutions to each must cohere with each other so as to give a well-rounded account of aspiration. (Ideally they also can be made to cohere with other bits of our conceptions of agency.) So, for example, in a previous post I offered the same solution to what I dubbed the problem of aspirational normativity -- this is the problem of how the distinctive proleptic normativity of an aspirational action cannot be grounded in the prior intentions of the aspiring agent -- and the problem of counterfactual strangers, that is, how counterfactual or created selves can proleptically generate normativity to agents that are, in non-trivial ways, (partial) strangers.
That solution was focused on some special properties of Smithian impartial spectator theories; these are especially useful in tackling these two puzzles in an integrated fashion because impartial spectator theories posit a counterfactual agent with which one shares partial identity through which one can endorse the exemplary standards of an aspiring-worthy-activity. This counterfactual agent with which one shares partial identity will be the source of normativity for one's proleptic reasons to aspire to become like, in certain crucial ways, the exemplar that is guiding one's aspiring activity .
Even a sympathetic reader may fear that I have made life easy for myself by avoiding the hardest puzzle, namely the problem of teleology, lurking behind the other puzzles. In the book Callard addresses the problem by distinguishing between the causal or natural ground and the normative ground of an action. And, indeed, it is tempting to simply embrace her approach by suggesting that the normative grounding of the proleptic reason as supplied by an agent's posited impartial spectator. As it happens, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smithian impartial spectator theories are developed to account for the endorsement of exemplary standards of aspiring-worthy-activities. So, so far so good.
But one may suspect that Callard's position fails to explain how the pull of the normative ground of an action can help be, as it were, a magnet for the causal or natural ground of an action. For, there must be some 'fit' between the psychological or causal grounds of an action and the normative ground for the former to be proleptic reasons at all. After all, it's the normative ground of action that helps generate the wants that shape the aspirant's (proper) aspiring and her inchoate grasp of the aspiring-worthy-activity (see the two passages quoted above). I used 'magnet' to gesture at teleology.
If the previous paragraph is correct, we need a richer account of the teleological elements of aspiring. Now, before I get to that, I want to mention one important feature of aspiring-worthy-activities, that is, that they can't be wholly new.* Or to be precise, aspiring toward some P -- and by definition early in the process the reasons to aspire to P are largely unavailable from to the aspirant -- always fits a pre-existing template in some fashion. That is, one cannot aspire to be wholly new or to create something indeterminate ex nihilo. One can aspire, at least in some cultures, to become or instantiate some F, and to do so in distinctly original or idiosyncratic fashion. (Not all cultures of aspiration are so change-friendly, so I do not mean to suggest that the previous sentence is generally true. But for my purposes that's fine.)
Okay, now accept the token-type distinction. The move I want to make is that aspiration-worth-activities are very much like types, whereas proleptic reasons are very much like tokens. Inspired by David Haig's account of teleology (recall here and here), we can allow that aspiration-worthy-activity X can be both cause and effect of proleptic reason Y because tokens of X can occur both before and after tokens of Y. Early on in the aspiring process of the aspirant the tokens of X will be (to adopt early modern terminology) vague and confused and will barely resemble the aspirant-worthy-activity of (type) X.+ Something similar is true of the proleptic reason Y, which will itself be a confused and vague version of the reason (let's call it, Y*) that is endorsed by the impartial spectator at the completion of the aspiring process.
That some aspiration-worthy-activity type X is worthy is given by (social) history, that is, our culture. If one does not like Darwinian explanations one can ignore the next two sentences. Aspiration-worthy-activity types X can be the product cultural evolution. In particular, to echo a recent point by Daniel Dennett, the type of aspiration-worthy-activity X just is a "free-floating rationale" or "a reason without a reasoner." (Only the tokens are represented!) A flee-floating rationale is a teleological cause.
Be that (Darwinian) as it may, because aspiration-worthy-activity types X are in the culture they can be transmitted, via mentors, role-models, and other cultural and symbolic representations (that is tokens) to the aspirant. Obviously, when they are conveyed in this manner the tokens (in the culture) of X cannot act as complete or even partial (normative) internal reasons to the aspirant when the aspirant is early in the aspiring process. But they can act as the initial causal grounds of the aspirant. And because the aspirant can develop the aspiration-worthy-activity in idiosyncratic ways (in our culture) there is no requirement that the tokens of X and the proleptic reasons Y ever match up in an unique way. Over time the proleptic reasons Y will become more determinate and more determinately focused on, and aiding the grasp of, an increasingly clear token of an aspiration-worthy-activity that the the aspirant helped generate, even becomes.
This is quite abstract. Let me stop here.
*Callard does not claim this. But I think all of her examples presuppose it.
+Feel free to insert your own terminology (e.g., morphic, etc.)
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