Promising

Chapter Four: Outlines of a Theory of Practice

CHAPTER FOUR Outlines of a Theory of Practice As in the other cases we must set out the appearances, and first of all go through the puzzles. In this way we must prove the common beliefs about these ways of being affected-ideally, all the common beliefs, but if not all, then most of them, and the most important. For if the objections are solved, and the common beliefs are left, it will be an adequate proof. ARISTOTLE, Nicomachean Ethics What has to be accepted, the given, is-so one could sayforms of life. LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, Philosophical Investigations T he institutional approach to promise uses constitutive rules to create and define actions within institutions. There is no checkmate without the rules of chess, no touchdown without the rules of football, and no promissory obligation without the rules of promise. I argued that although such a view may be able to capture certain aspects of games and public institutions, it cannot capture promise or a number of other meaningful activities. Making tea in Britain (or as the British do), for example, appears to be recognizable activity in which one participates without there being any constitutive rules to govern it. So too with dating, bluffing, joking, booing or performing the wave at ball games, curtain calls, walking on busy streets, driving, standing in elevators, ordering in restaurants, and standing in lines. To capture these activities, one must posit another sort of theoretical explanation , and I do so here. 144 Copyrighted Material Outlines of a Theory of Practice In this chapter I outline a theory of practice, relying, when appropriate, on examples drawn from the above list. In describing these practices and in outlining a theory of practice, I focus on how practices begin, how they cohere, how they are taught, how they undergo change, and their localization, as well as how evaluation and judgment take place within them.I I want to reiterate that this chapter is very much an outline in two respects. It is an outline, first, in terms of the detail and accuracy that any theory of a social practice can achieve. The very nature of the activity we are here describing eludes the kind of accuracy and detail to which modern moral philosophy has accustomed us. As Aristotle says, we can only be as accurate in our theoretical musings as the subject matter allows . But this chapter is also an outline in another sense. It is, as it were, a first run at a theory of practice. I layout the conceptual features of a theory of practice and suggest in a general way how these concepts can be filled in. I suggested in the previous chapter that none of the contemporary approaches to promise could support the load that a social practice account of promise would put on it. The theory of practice outlined below has potentially the structural capacity to support such a load, and I demonstrate this in Chapter Five, but it is not yet ready to be put to work. Chapters Four and Five are intended to serve as demonstration models of a philosophical method and to encourage further work in this area. Outline of the Theory A theory of practice defines a practice as any human activity that is recognized and described (though description is not a necessary condition for recognizability) as a specified conventional pattern of behavior undertaken by two or more persons in a homogeneous community. Practices are to be distin145 Copyrighted Material CHAPTER FOUR guished from habits. Habits are activities of isolated individuals , whereas practices constitute the cornmon actions of individuals within social groups. Similar habits of members of a community create a practice when they become identified as conventional forms of behavior (and when they fulfill the other conditions of a practice listed below). If, at home, I normally step out of the tub or shower stall before toweling offthereby dripping water onto the floor or mat-I am engaged in a habit. If, however, I and others with whom I live engage in this activity, and it becomes identified as conventional behavior for this group and is discussed at a floor meeting in the dorm where we live, then we are engaging in a practice (assuming that other conditions are met). In general, the creation of a practice requires that two or more people belonging to a homogeneous community be engaged in conventional behavior . Of course, once...