Silviya Lechner

Two conceptions of international practice: Aristotelian praxis or Wittgensteinian language-games ?

Scholars from the recent ‘practice turn’ in International Relations have urged us to rethink the international realm in terms of practices. The principal exponents of the turn, Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot, have refurbished Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice to produce their own account of international practices. In a review of the practice turn, Chris Brown has argued that Bourdieu’s notion of practice shares basic affinities with Aristotle’s concept of praxis. While practice turn scholars may not adhere to a rigid canon of thought, they seem to share an Aristotelian conception of praxis. This reading of the turn to practice, though plausible, captures one part of the story. The central thesis of the present article is that instead of one there are two, distinctive conceptions of practice – Aristotelian and Wittgensteinian – and therefore two distinctive ways in which the character of international practices might be understood. More concretely, the aim is to show that the conception of international practices, rooted in Wittgenstein’s view of practices as language-games, can be particularly illuminating to all those who seek to understand international relations.

Understanding international practices from the internal point of view

The article is written in response to a recent flurry of studies on international practices. In investigating this theme, International Relations scholars have drawn on diverse traditions in sociology, philosophy and organisational theory such as Bourdieu’s theory of practice, Dewey’s and James’ pragmatism, communities of practice approach and actor-network theory. One preliminary question presupposed by these investigations however is, what standpoint (if any) enables us to make sense of international practices? Our central thesis is that the proper understanding of practices – including international ones – requires the internal point of view (practice internalism). To make our case, we develop an analytic distinction between two basic standpoints: practice externalism, represented by Adler and Pouliot’s approach to international practices, and practice internalism, represented by Wittgensteinian philosopher Peter Winch. Following Winch, we argue that the practice of social science is externalist, and point to the limitations of an analysis of international practices predicated on externalist, social scientific premises.

Why Moral Bioenhancement Is a Bad Idea and Why Egalitarianism Would Make It Worse

In a recent article, Robert Sparrow (2014) offers a critical response to proposals for moral bioenhancement advanced by Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu (2008; 2012; 2013) and Allen Buchanan (2011). Typically, the use of pharmacological methods or genetic engineering for the enhancement of an individual’s cognitive capacities is referred to as cognitive enhancement, and their use for the enhancement of an individual’s moral capacities, as moral enhancement. Advocates of moral bioenhancement hypothesize a connection between the biology of the human organism and the morality of the person, and celebrate the prospect of successful modification of our moral capacities via biomedical science. One of Sparrow’s key concerns is that, if adopted, such projects may implicate the state in ethically controversial public policies. The state here stands for a Western-style, liberal democracy, and public policy, for a coercive policy applied to the population as a whole. The worry is that a public policy of moral bioenhancement would turn the liberal state into a perfectionist, illiberal state. Before addressing this worry, I wish to draw attention to a more basic problem. Specifically, my aim is to question the analytical coherence of the currently dominant conception of moral bioenhancement outlined by Persson and Savulescu in Unfit for the Future (2012). On this conception, moral bioenhancement consists of the pharmacological enhancement of moral motivation. The imminent threat of nuclear annihilation and destruction of the environment, they write, is “so serious that it is imperative that scientific research explore every possibility of developing effective means of moral bioenhancement, as a complement to traditional means [such as education]” (2012, 2). But “education or instruction about what is morally good is not sufficient for moral enhancement because to be morally good involves not just knowing what is good, but also being so strongly motivated to do it that this overpowers selfish, nepotistic, xenophobic, etc. biases and impulses” (2012, 117; emphasis added). The idea is that education is not a sufficient condition for (moral) enhancement—education imparts knowledge, but in addition to knowledge, (moral) action requires also the impetus of motivation. That is correct: A gap exists between knowing something and being motivated to do it. Because our moral failings reflect a motivational rather than a cognitive deficit, the argument continues, the noncognitive motivational capacities of the individual must be enhanced pharmacologically to prevent a nuclear Armaged-

Why anarchy still matters for International Relations: On theories and things

The category of anarchy is conventionally associated with the emergence of an autonomous discipline of International Relations (IR). Recently, Donnelly has argued that anarchy has never been central to IR (hierarchy is more weighty). His criticism targets not just concepts of anarchy but theories of anarchy and thereby expresses an anti-theory ethos tacitly accepted in the discipline. As a form of conceptual atomism, this ethos is hostile to structuralist and normative theories. This article aims to reinstate theoretical holism against conceptual atomism and to defend the enduring relevance of theories of international anarchy for IR. This is done by revisiting two classic, structuralist accounts of international anarchy articulated in Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (scientific structuralism) and Hedley Bull’s Anarchical Society (normative structuralism). It will be shown that both represent coherent theoretical ‘wholes’ which reveal a more complex relationship between anarchy and hierarchy than supposed by critics and which recognise the important connection between the structure of international anarchy (whose key players are states) and the value of freedom. The conclusion examines the prospects of normative theories of international anarchy and ‘anarchical’ freedom in a globalising world where state agency is being challenged.

Neuroscience: On Practices, Truth, and Rationality

Chris Kaposy (2010) argues that neuroscience has generated a body of evidence that casts doubt on the proposition that entities and capacities such as free will, selfhood, and personhood exist. The compelling power of scientific truth threatens to corrode our rational belief in agency, yet retaining such a belief is required—without it we cannot sustain our everyday intuitions of self and other, nor the notion of rationality and truth presupposed by science. The paradox, the author concludes, can be tamed by bifurcating the world into two distinct realms—a practice of neuroscience with its regulative ideal of scientific truth, and a practice of everyday ethics with its regulative ideal of personhood. I agree with this conclusion of what may be termed practice pluralism but take issue with the author’s derivation and core premises of rationality, truth, and practices. My goal is to offer an alternative rendition of these premises that better supports practice pluralism. What is a practice? Kaposy takes it to be a rational norm that structures expectations and beliefs. Thus, the practice of neuroscience can transform beliefs about the practice of ethics. Once scientific evidence has shown free will and personhood to be untenable entities, we—as rational agents— are rationally expected to jettison previously held assumptions about ourselves as persons: unified thinking and choosing selves familiar from deontological (Kantian) moral theory (Kant 1997, par. 450). But the trouble with this, as Kaposy insightfully notes, is that the unified self (Kant’s “unity of apperception”; Kant 1996, B131–132) is a precondition for rational thinking, defined for the purposes of his analysis in prudential terms as means–ends thinking. This is a powerful thesis revealing how much will be lost, including the prospect of science as rational inquiry, if we discard the concepts of personhood and free will. While the thesis relies on the building blocks of rationality and truth, I wish to argue that practices form its proper foundation. My central argument is that a practice is not to be understood as a norm-setting structure about beliefs. Rather, it is a congruent set of rules about action. Practices present games, conventions, or institutions. Each practice intimates internal criteria—constitutive “rules of the game”—instructing its agents what it is appropriate to do and not simply what it is rational to believe (Hare 1967). Criteria of appropriateness are internal to a given practice, whereas rationality and truth could be external to it. Criteria are considered external whenever they are employed in evaluating the coherence of a variety of different practices. Internal or constitutive