Despite a growing appreciation in recent decades for the significance of the social in many areas of philosophy, most philosophers today have not adequately examined their assumptions about how human beings are fundamentally social, in particular, how they are socially constituted. This dissertation argues that the human individual is socially constituted because her very capacity to be a self and agent must draw on a shared public understanding of the interwoven practices, norms, and roles that enables her to exercise this capacity in general.
In Part I of the dissertation, I explicate and adopt Philip Pettits suggestion about how to define the thesis of the social constitution of the individual and the general form that the argument for this thesis should take, even though I find Pettits own argument for this thesis to be wanting. I then consider how Martin Heideggers conception of human social existence in Being and Time when properly understood can significantly improve Pettits argument. I elaborate and defend the view that the human individual is socially constituted because she always initially and mostly shares a public understanding of the world, including of herself and her relations with others, that is (in the first instance) normalized.
In Part II of the dissertation, I make explicit and criticize the dominant understanding of human sociality in many strands of contemporary philosophy. This understanding assumes (roughly speaking) that the fundamental or primary way in which human beings are social consists in modes of interpersonal interactions (IPIA). I critically engage three varieties of IPIA in contemporary philosophy: (1) prominent theories of collective intentionality; (2) Donald Davidsons conception of social interaction in successful linguistic communication and of triangulation as a necessary condition of the objectivity of thought; and (3) accounts of normativity that stem from standard communalist readings of Ludwig Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations. I argue that these versions of IPIA are problematic not only in their own terms, but also inadequate precisely because they fail to take into account the social constitution of the individual.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-08192011-105521 |
| Date | 28 September 2011 |
| Creators | Koo, Jo-Jo |
| Contributors | John McDowell, Michael Thompson, Theodore Schatzki, Robert Brandom |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08192011-105521/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0093 seconds