Abstract
The above experiences were indeed experienced by me while writing this piece. Yet, none of them is idiosyncratic to Marcelo Dascal. Anyone who has engaged in writing has certainly experienced them, albeit perhaps without acknowledging and naming them as I suggested above. Nor are these phenomena typical of this particular kind of intellectual activity.
We all struggle against each other. And there is always something in us which struggles against something else in us [Quoted in P. Dews, “The nouvelle philosophie and Foucault”. Economy and Society 8: 164–165 (1979)].
Michel Foucault.
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Notes
- 1.
I wish to thank Varda Dascal, Yaron Senderowicz, Ilana Arbel, Adelino Cardoso, and Mark Glouberman for their suggestions and especially for being the ‘others’ in a debate that helped me in conducting the self-debate that this essay reflects.
- 2.
Nicole (1999: 310, 311).
- 3.
Paragraph 82 of the Brunschvicg edition, as published in Pascal (1960).
- 4.
Recall, for example, his experiments on the vacuum and his essay De l'esprit géometrique. Pascal (1985) contains, along with this essay, the draft of a Preface for a planned Traité du vide, as well as other posthumously published texts, notably the Ecrits sur la Grâce—a judicious juxtaposition of writings, which highlights the dual role Pascal assigns to the imagination.
- 5.
Quoted in Piro (1999: 168).
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
For the distinction between socio- and psycho-pragmatics, see Dascal (1983: 42–52). Viewing ‘psycho-pragmatics’ as a branch of pragmatics or the theory of language use is justified in the present case insofar as one takes into account that language is actually ‘used’ in mental processes not only by way of employing in them words or a 'mental lexicon' (Aitchinson 1994), but also through the presence in such processes of underlying structures that are originally or typically linguistic. One such structure is the dialectic structure of inter-personal debate (cf. Dascal 2002).
- 9.
Proust (1954: 562).
- 10.
John Horne Tooke, Diversions of Purley (1786), II, 51b (quoted in Aarsleff 1967: 13).
- 11.
- 12.
Hampshire, who elaborates the Aristotelian notion of deliberation as the cornerstone of his moral theory, puts to use the external-internal debate analogy in this vivid passage: "The picture of the mind that gives substance to the notion of practical reason is a picture of a council chamber, in which the agent's contrary interests are represented around the table, each speaking for itself. The chairman, who represents the will, weighs the arguments and the intensity of the feeling conveyed by the arguments, and then issues an order to be acted on. The order is a decision and an intention, to be followed by its execution. This policy is the outcome of the debate in the council chamber" (Hampshire 1991: 51).
- 13.
Aristotle considered the notion of deliberation sufficiently important on its own to write a special treatise devoted to it (Peri Symboulías, which is listed in Diogenes Laertius’ catalogue). On possible traces of this treatise in the Rhetoric, see the Spanish translation and commentary by Q. Racionero, pp. 99, 214, 222.
- 14.
In this paragraph, I refer to, paraphrase and extrapolate statements that can be found in Rhet. 1357a–b, 1358b, 1359a; Nic. Eth. 1112a–1113a, 1139a–b, 1141a, 1142b.
- 15.
For details, see Dascal (2005).
- 16.
“Rationes non esse numerandas sed ponderandas” (reasons are not to be counted but weighed), stresses Leibniz on several occasions (this quote, e.g., is from his letter to Gabriel Wagner, 27.2.1697; in Leibniz 1875, vol. 7: 521).
- 17.
Again, a phrase often employed by Leibniz. The locus classicus is the Discours de Metaphysique [1686], par. 13 (in Leibniz 1999: 1546).
- 18.
It should be noted that, being based upon non-conclusive inferences, soft rationality provides only a weak warrant for its recommendations, if compared with the strong warrant provided by hard rationality. Nevertheless, this does not mean that it is chronically guilty of a cognitive error analogous to weakness of will, which Davidson calls ‘weakness of the warrant’ and defines as follows: “a person has evidence both for and against a hypothesis; the person judges that relative to all the evidence available to him, the hypothesis is more probable than not; yet he does not accept the hypothesis” (Davidson 1986: 81). A person using soft rationality may, of course, incur in this error, but only if he fails to take into account the reasons he considers relevant, to assign them proper weights, to compare them properly, and to admit that the result may be overridden by the eventual presentation of ‘heavier’ reasons.
- 19.
Although certainly relevant for the soft vs. hard rationality distinction, Hampshire's (1991: 52) emphasis on the argument-dependence of a deliberative decision (as opposed to the argument-independence of the rightness or wrongness of an arithmetical calculation) focuses on the fact that a moral or political decision is a decision to act for certain reasons, and not on the soft character of the inference, which is what I am stressing here.
- 20.
In the same vein, Leibniz writes: “The nature of the will requires freedom, which consists in that a voluntary action is spontaneous and deliberate, i.e., that it excludes necessity, which suppresses deliberation” (Causa Dei [1710], in Leibniz 1875–1890, vol. 6: 441).
- 21.
“[A]s a result of deliberation we form an intention. But when the moment comes there is an indefinite range of choices open to us and several of those choices are attractive or motivated on other grounds. For many of the actions we do for a reason, there are conflicting reasons for doing not that action but something else. Sometimes we act on those reasons and not on our original intention. The solution to the problem of akrasia is as simple as that” (Searle 2005: 76–77).
- 22.
This might explain Hampshire's notion of argument-dependence of a deliberative decision (see note 20), while at the same time not restricting it to the case in which the decision is that of acting for certain reasons.
- 23.
From the choice for the jacket of Rationality in Action of Vermeer’s masterpiece Woman Holding a Balance, which depicts a situation of extremely delicate weighing of jewels, to the explicit use of the balance model—the emblem of soft rationality—there would be but a small step, were it not for the gap.
- 24.
Letter from Burnett to Leibniz, 3 May 1697 (in Leibniz 1875, vol. 3: 198).
- 25.
“This is how the Areopagytes would in effect absolve this man whose case was too difficult to be decided; they would postpone it for a long time and grant themselves one hundred years to reflect about it” (Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain [1705], 2.21.23; in Leibniz 1875, vol. 5: 167).
- 26.
- 27.
The quotes in this paragraph are from Nic. Eth. 1151b4-15.
- 28.
On the distinction between ‘reasons’ and ‘causes’, see Davidson (1963).
- 29.
Furthermore, the across boundary possibility of causal interaction may be all that is required for the intervention, in a self-dispute, of an ‘external’ factor not directly involved in it, which can however, be causally effective in ‘dissolving’ it or reducing its level of conflict. Consider some sort of self-regulating mechanism analogous to an analyst who interprets the fighting parties’ aims and moves in the hope of dissolving or reducing the unrest or the dysfunctions caused by the conflict, or the inner analogue of Kant’s ‘umpire’ or ‘legislator’ (similar to Smith’s ‘impartial observer in the breast’), who does not take sides in the metaphysical disputes between ‘dogmatic sects’ but only draws from their combats lessons about the limits of pure reason (Kant 1971: Aviii, A423, B452; Dascal 2000, for further details). These speculations suggests that the quarreling parts of the ‘self’ share, after all, a common interest in preserving a functioning condition, a well being that regulates the wildness of self-disputes.
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Dascal, M. (2013). Debating with Myself: Towards the Psycho-Pragmatics and Onto-Pragmatics of the Dialectical Self. In: Capone, A., Lo Piparo, F., Carapezza, M. (eds) Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01011-3_26
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