Blind Rule-Following as Structural Heteronomy: Against Acceptance-Based Accounts of Social Reality

Tuomo Tiisala (University of Vienna)

ABSTRACT: I have recently argued that structural heteronomy is an ethical problem that concerns understanding. The problem emerges, when the ideal of autonomy is combined with the rule-following regress. On the one hand, the regress shows that the understanding of rules that constitutes conceptual competence is fundamentally dispositional and as such escapes rational control. On the other, the ideal of autonomy requires that we seek rational control over the patterns of this dispositional understanding by gaining knowledge of their normative structure. In this talk, I argue that the problem of structural heteronomy undermines acceptance-based accounts of social reality. Because the bedrock of social practices is made out of coordinated patterns of dispositional understanding, it cannot be captured by the widespread approach that frames social coordination in terms of reasons and acceptance.