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Vital Distinction

Methodology from Metaphysics  

Cain Pinto

2013 

The world of football can be used to illustrate the difference between "methodology"

and "metaphysics". Consider the difference between "victory" as a part of the rules of 

the game; why does victory entitle the team to a satisfaction in it, "happiness". Can such

"happiness" be explicated as an obligatory commitment of the "victor", and if so how?

Such an answer requires the distinction between the methodologically consistent and the

metaphysically implicit components of such consistency. The object that is a game-won,

empirically reduced to items like individual free players, use of formal rules specifying

optimal positions for individual players, competitive free-play, and victory for a greater

rather than lesser number of goals.

But, this empirical information does not add up to what cogently and explicitly specifies

what the appeal of victory consists in. The idea that the empirical victory, and its

antecedent conditions as described in the empirical vocabulary used, is a sufficient reason

for the satisfaction resulting from a victory for one's own, or one's chosen 'team' does

not follow from the supposed coincidence between one's belief that victory must be

good, and that it is preferable to defeat.

Such a description would not rise to the level of propositionally explicable content in

empirical vocabularies because they take for granted that happiness is a consequent of 

victories in an a priori way. Strongest objection: The a priori happiness of victories is

self-evident. Rebuttal: the discursive vocabulary which is responsible for the tokens

"happiness" "satisfaction", and "victory" is a pragmatically mediated relation of 

meaning and use that contain non-discursive components that are P.V. sufficient. P.V.

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sufficiency means that the non-discursive component possesses transferability that

cannot be explained in the terms of a language game [at least not a language game one

could play if one played no other, as Brandom describes (Making it 'Explicit' 1994)].

Yet, such a non-discursive practice allows for the necessary and sufficient development

of vocabularies that can adequately determine consequent logical commitments entailed

by an act of assertion. The coherence of such "facts" is a matter of the reciprocal

determination of the reasons for or against an assertion of fact by "deontic

scorekeepers" (Brandom, 1994).

Each individual assertion appeals to the coherence given to it by the assumed normativeideas which determine its contentfulness. Judgements of any assertion must come from

other equally free, rational and self-determining agents in the matter of giving and asking

for reasons about a thing external to both the individual and themselves. This is why the

individual player's opinion about a certain tactical manoeuvre is not judgable as

"contentful" other than the observational import of an assumed neutral [deontic]

"goalkeeper".

Victory contains such elements as can be described by repeated experience of celebratory

rituals, bodily excitations and social normative contents which mark it as propositionally

distinct from loss, and its experience in normative and discursive terms. Thus, "victory"

is a concept with significant a priori and PV sufficient experiences of anyone playing the

game of football, i.e. adhering to the rules of the game which is “football", and playing

which entitles him to express happiness for his "victory".

The terms happiness, satisfaction, team spirit, and competitive reciprocity as expression

of certain qualities that are, more desirable than those which belong to loss all point to

the use of normative vocabulary. Such vocabulary can specify its obligatory, or deontic,

and normative or epistemic conditions as internal to itself, and is judged by individual

rational players and their goalkeepers keeping score of entitlements to either conditions

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mitigating or abetting victory or loss, or victory and loss themselves as correct in

themselves, as conceptual contents specified by the vocabulary of "football".

Thus, the methodological or epistemic, or empirical vocabulary's descriptions of 

"victory" are derivative and non-exhaustive of the alethic, or non-discursive components

which furnish its satisfaction-value as a desirable end. The metaphysical description

however is more robust for describing "victory", and its persuasive force, as it only

requires to rely on the PV sufficiency of the ends entailed in satisfactions derived in

general, in sports and the freely determined rules which condition their deontic

commitments. This sufficiency is anterior to all other explicative vocabularies: it is"reason" itself as a critical faculty distinguished from understanding, or methodological

infrastructure which is consequent upon the former.