Agnes Callard vs Magnus Mallard or why Aspiration is Mimetic not Meta-Metaphoric

A metaphor is a figure of speech. It is not a fact. It suggests a connection between 2 different things which may be meaningful and illuminating, or else, it may simply fill a communicative gap. In other words when we speak figuratively, we may be doing something useful for our auditor or else we may simply be showing that we put some little effort in that direction.

Metaphors are not mischievous in themselves. However, to treat a metaphor as a blunt brute fact about the world and to erect a second metaphor, itself to be taken as a fact, upon those delusive grounds ; to engage in meta-metaphoricity;  is to speak either as a poet who has gone beyond the effable or else to babble earnest nonsense.

This is what Agnes Callard does in her book 'Aspiration; the Agency of Becoming' which sounds like an interesting sort of book for an ordinary person seeking to 'better herself' to pick up but is nothing of the sort because Callard treats tendentious metaphors as facts and then indulges in some purely scholastic meta-metaphoricity of a question begging type.

Consider the abstract of her book-

Becoming someone is a learning process;

Is this true? No. Becoming someone can be like a learning process. But it isn't necessarily anything of the sort. It was said of the Bourbons that they forgot nothing and they learnt nothing. There are many people who have become 'someone' without ever learning anything along the way. Let us hope, whatever it is we be become, that we learn something along the way- because those you snub on your way up are those who will snub you on your downward path.

and what we learn are the new values around which, if we succeed, our lives will come to turn.

Values may have an epistemic component- there may be some element of learning attached to them- but again they may not be learnt at all but simply intuited.  Arguably, the values you ascribe to your education are mere hypocrisy- virtue signalling as we now say- whereas the values that arise by direct inspiration or intuition are genuine. It is certainly the case that 'Paideia'- a posh word for Higher Instruction in the Humanities- did not seem to inculcate humanistic values in the German 'blidungsburgertum'- i.e. the class which had lifted itself up through 'Education as Enlightenment'- and Europe paid dearly for this failure over the course of two calamitous World Wars. More generally, the humane Confucian paideia, or that of Hinduism or Buddhism or Islam or both Catholic and Protestant Christianity, all these paideias have flourished side by side with abysmal treatment of slaves and serfs and 'untouchables' and 'barbarians'.

In the case of the type of Moral Philosophy Callard practices, we have the seminal figure of Immanuel Kant who managed to convince himself that there was a 'fact of reason'. In other words, sitting in an armchair, one could find out something true about the World. But since everything is connected to everything by the web of predication, to know one thing with certainty means you have an Archimedian point from which to leverage more and more true knowledge without ever getting out of your armchair. The problem here is that people who sit in armchairs may in their finest philosophic flights be going quietly potty. This is the true fact of reason. At the very moment when you intuit the felicity of having mastered the Agency of Becoming, other people are retreating from you holding their nose because you've done potty in the Chair the Academy has provided you.

The truth is there is no 'fact of reason', nor is reason normative. Experience alone tells us what is or isn't utile- what is chocolate cake and what is feces.

The way in which we can and do 'transform' ourselves is by letting experience guide us as to what to aspire for and how to fulfil that aspiration. This is something we 'crowd source'. We don't sit in an armchair working out how the world must be. We quit the armchair to travel around finding out what the world is actually like and whom we should emulate to make the best of things. That last involves our putting a value on certain types of conduct or certain types of outcomes

Callard takes a different view. According to her we first wander around learning Values. But who is teaching Values? No doubt, some individuals and organizations claim to teach Values and they may ration this valuable teaching either through the market or some other discriminatory device. However there are also people who claim they will 'love you long time' and others who promise you that for the low low price of 99 dollars, they will establish your claim to an English Dukedom or a Central European Principality.

The truth is we might take a punt on one or two vendors of Values. But what is transforming us is the 'fitness landscape'- i.e. the real world contingencies we need to successfully negotiate in order to survive to tell the tale.

Callard sees things differently. It is not the world that causes us to change and adapt, rather we engage suo moto in a process of self-transformation based on some values we have learned or values we aspire to.

Agents transform themselves in the process of, e.g., becoming parents, embarking on careers, or acquiring a passion for music or politics. How can such activity be rational if the reason for engaging in the relevant pursuit is available only to the person one will become? How is it psychologically possible to feel the attraction of a form of concern that is not yet one’s own? How can the work done to arrive at the finish line be ascribed to one who doesn’t (really) know what she is doing or why she is doing it? These questions belong to the theory of aspiration. Aspirants are motivated by proleptic reasons, reasons they acknowledge to be defective versions of the reasons they expect to eventually grasp.

Some aspirants may indeed say 'I didn't fully know what it was I wanted' but then again some others may say 'I knew full well what I was getting into.' However, no aspirant to common sense can ever say 'I am motivated by proleptic reasons.' as opposed to 'my proleptic reasons are motivated by such and such anticipated contingency'. What Callard is getting at is the common enough phenomenon of a guy being interviewed for a place in a prestigious School or a position in a highly rewarded profession who says 'I know I want to be the person I will become if I get this opportunity but I can't tell you now, proleptically, exactly why this is the case.' But what this person is offering is not a reason but an intuition. The interviewer may believe that this guy is 'intuitive'. He's on the right track. Give him a chance and chances are he'll do us proud. The fact that he doesn't offer 'good' reasons does not matter because, it may be, in this particular field 'intuition' beats reason seven times till Sunday.

Suppose a person says 'I want to have a baby with you. I can't tell you why, I just know it's going be the right thing for the both of us.' This may, taking other circumstances into account, be a far more convincing declaration than some scholastic verbiage featuring pseudo-scientific arguments and junk Statistical results.

One may say, 'In a manner of speaking, Agnes Callard is right. We have a dim idea of why we aspire to become the people we are destined to be. What is foreshadowed is, metaphorically speaking, a type of prolepsis. Thus, she isn't talking utter nonsense.'
The problem here is that in some manner of speaking the well known aquatic bird, Magnus Mallard would be equally right to say 'quack quack'. After all, talk of destiny being foreshadowed in an aspirant's proleptic reasons is mere quackery on stilts. Thus Callard's mode of argumentation is one equally fit for a obstreperous Duck as an Oxford Don. That's not a desirable quality in a philosophical ratiocination. After all, we might think well of a Mallard which has been properly roasted. By contrast, we are likely to abstain from a dish of fricasseed Callard.

If Philosophy must spurn both Magnus Mallard and Agnes Callard, is there some other lesser discipline where the latter might find a place? How about Psychology? People who go in for that tend to be thickos, right?

The psychology of such a transformation is marked by intrinsic conflict between aspirants’ old point of view on value and the one they are trying to acquire.

The problem here is the psychology of intrinsic conflict remains the same whether or not any transformation occurs. Equally, no 'cognitive dissonance' or other such psychological phenomenon may be associated with transformations of the most radical kind.

In other words, this is quackery worthy of a Magnus Mallard promoted, by a negligent Academy, to the status of Regius Professor of Moral Philosophy. Surely, we should expect something better of Agnes Callard? After all, at a pinch, we can eat Professor Mallard. Indeed, the dish would be 100 per cent vegan because most Regius Professors of worthless subjects are complete vegetables. But, of Agnes we expect better precisely because she has less 'use-value' as a high protein vegan option at High Table.

Suppose that Value is something one can have 'a point of view about'- I suppose this would be like saying 'this price is too high'- and suppose, as happens when you start a business, your 'old point of view' has to be displaced by something more utile- why dwell on the psychological aspect of the adjustment? Placing values, like evaluating prices, has to do with out 'inclusive fitness'. It is the uncertain fitness landscape upon which we undertake our projects which has the last word. Our psychological quirks won't grant us an immunity or exemption from an objective mechanism or process. As a species, it is not the case that we have erected a Court of adjudication with respect to 'acts of God' or 'force majeure'. But what is true at the macro level is even truer at the level of the individual. No doubt, one may respond to 'intrinsic conflict' by saying quack quack like Magnus Mallard. But how does this have superior survival value to saying, with Agnes Mallard- that agents

 cannot adjudicate this conflict by deliberating or choosing or deciding—rather, they resolve it by working to see the world in a new way.

Or, not working but seeing the world in a new way coz the thing is bleeding obvious, mate

This work has a teleological structure: by modeling herself on the person she is trying to be, the aspirant brings that person into being.

This is not a 'teleological structure' precisely because the final end is unknown. Rather this is a 'mimetic structure' which may be wholly mistaken in its Tardean object. As a culturally confused adolescent, unsure how to express my Indian identity and thus secure a g.f from my own ethnic background, I chose to mimic Felipe Rose- the Red Indian from the Village People. Alas, this did not secure me the affection of a suitably Marxist Vadadesi Vadama girl. Indeed, I retained my virginity till Chartered Accountancy supervened.

Because it is open to us to engage in an activity of self-creation, we are responsible for having become the kinds of people we are.

We are responsible for who we are, if only to ourselves, irrespective of whether or not it is open to us to say quack quack rather than some quackery involving proleptic auto-poiesis considered under the rubric of some dead in the water research program in decision theory.

That's why it makes sense for us to adopt a 'regret minimizing' strategy. This means, when you are young and have no hostages to fortune, do do some stupid shit just for shits & giggles. You'll regret it later if you didn't. By the same token, grow up already if your hair is thinning and your belly is sagging and the kids at the Arcade look at you like maybe you're a pedo though you only want to beat their high score on... shit, this isn't the machine you used to play on. Okay boomer, it's time you went home now.

For a species which evolved under natural selection, it may, speaking figuratively, make sense to, in some more or less poetic context, speak of 'self-creation'. But to take this figure of speech for a concrete about the world is bound to mislead. By taking this course Agnes Mallard has made herself equal to Magnus Mallard. Even if she gains a Chair on some Campus, all she would have done is gone potty in it.