Speaker: Toby Tricks (MPhil)

Title: Modelling the Mind: A Fictionalist Reading of Nietzsche’s Drive Psychology

 Abstract:

Nietzche’s account of the drives is increasingly being recognised as central to his philosophical psychology; it is a problem, then, that it appears confused. A particularly prominent issue concerns Nietzsche’s characterisation of how the drives interact with one another: he often uses agential language which many take to commit him to the homunculus fallacy. I argue that this view is mistaken, because Nietzsche’s agential characterisations of the drives are fictions: as they aren’t meant to be true, he is able to sidestep fallacious homuncularism. We might worry that if many of the claims in Nietzsche’s drive psychology are fictional, then it can’t teach us much. That need not be the case, however: drawing on Catherine Elgin’s work in the epistemology of science, I argue that despite being fictional, Nietzsche’s account of the drives can still provide epistemic value and facilitate genuine cognitive achievement, in just the same way that scientific models do despite being idealised and distorted representations of reality. Acknowledging the fictional nature of much of Nietzsche’s drive talk I’ll further argue has an added bonus: it allows us to more fully appreciate the subtlety and power of his account of human psychology.