Abstract: Abstract At the heart of Jürgen Habermas's explication of communicative rationality is the contention that all speech acts oriented to understanding raise three different kinds of validity claims simultaneously: claims to truth, truthfulness, and normative rightness. This paper argues that Habermas presents exactly three distinct, logically independent arguments for his simultaneity thesis: an argument from structure; an argument from criticizability/rejectability; and an argument from understanding/reaching understanding. It is further maintained that the simultaneity thesis receives cogent support only from the Argument from understanding/reaching understanding, and only if the notion of 'understanding' is expanded to that of 'agreement'. Keywords: Habermasunderstandingvalidityagreementrationalitynormativity Notes Habermas makes a distinction between strategic action and communicative action, and I shall only discuss the latter in this paper. The alleged dependence of strategic action on communicative action is a separate matter and, while important, does not fall within the purview of the paper. Maeve Cooke, Language and Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), pp. 52–3. I believe that Habermas has also to defend the priority of communicative use of language over the instrumental use, but an analysis of this argument is beyond the scope of this paper. For Habermas's argument for communicative priority, see Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1985), pp. 293ff. All of the related claims are lucidly articulated by Maeve Cooke in Language and Reason, pp. 52ff. Ibid., p. 52. My claim here is that while there are many fine scholarly works either on the foundational aspects of Habermas's theory or purely on the practical consequences of those foundations, more work needs to be done on the interconnections of the foundations and the practical connections. For the latter see, e.g., James Bohman, 'The Globalization of the Public Sphere: Cosmopolitan Publicity and the Problem of Cultural Pluralism', Thomas McCarthy, 'Practical Discourse: On the Relation of Morality to Politics', Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, 'From a Literary to a Political Public Sphere: Jürgen Habermas', all in David Rasmussen and James Swindal (eds) Jürgen Habermas, Vol. 2 (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2002), pp. 337–69, 389–407. Also, with similar concerns, see Simone Chambers, Reasonable Democracy: Jürgen Habermas and the Politics of Discourse (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1996). For works on the foundations, consult the rest of the footnotes in this paper. I have argued elsewhere that Habermas's thesis not only implies that intersubjective understanding is impossible unless the simultaneity thesis is true, but also that self‐understanding depends, to a considerable degree, on dialogical argumentation. See Jari Niemi, 'The Foundations of Jürgen Habermas's Theory of Communicative Rationality: A Defense' (Dissertation, Purdue University, Indiana, 2004), pp. 78ff. Some critics have argued that this implication of Habermas's thesis commits him to a distinction between 'real' and 'spurious' preferences, with obvious illiberal consequences. For a brief discussion of this and an opposing view, see Chambers, Reasonable Democracy, pp.155ff. Cooke, Language and Reason, Ch. 3. Naturally, one could also attempt to deny the existence of a truth claim in constative speech acts, the presence of truthfulness in expressive speech acts, or the normative rightness claim in regulative speech acts by perhaps insisting that speech acts do not make any claims whatsoever, but if such attempts exist, I am unaware of them. The denial of the presence of truth claims in non‐constative speech acts and the rejection of the claim to truthfulness in constative speech acts show up in Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, pp. 311–15. Habermas identifies A. Leist and Ernst Tugenhadt, respectively, as criticizing him on such grounds and attempts to rebut the criticism on the pages cited. Ibid., pp. 307–8. Habermas refers to the idea of three formal worlds in several places, but his most recent mention of this concept, as far as I can tell, is in 'Toward a Critique of the Theory of Meaning', in Jürgen Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Communication, ed. Maeve Cooke (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), p. 295. A useful, albeit incomplete, account of Habermas's critique of various theories of meaning can be found in Cooke, Language and Reason, pp. 95–130. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, p. 308. Cooke, Language and Reason, p. 61. Habermas, 'Toward a Critique of the Theory of Meaning', p. 295. Habermas makes this point in numerous places. For example, see 'Actions, Speech Acts, Linguistically Mediated Interactions, and the Lifeworld', in On the Pragmatics of Communication, pp. 230, 231; 'Toward a Critique of the Theory of Meaning', in On the Pragmatics of Communication, p. 296; 'Some Further Clarification on the Concept of Communicative Rationality', in On the Pragmatics of Communication, p. 317. Naturally, the same point is also made in his magnum opus, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, pp. 306–18. In addition to this, Habermas appears also, at least on one occasion, to claim that the rejectability thesis receives support from the three‐world thesis: We can examine every utterance to see whether it is true or untrue, justified, or unjustified, and truthful or untruthful because in speech, no matter what the emphasis, grammatical sentences are embedded in relations to reality in such a way that in an acceptable speech act segments of external nature, society, and internal nature always appear simultaneously. ('What is Universal Pragmatics', in On the Pragmatics of Communication, p. 91. My italics.) Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, p. 306. Ibid., p. 307. Andreas Dorschel, 'Is There Any Normative Claim Internal to Stating Facts?', in Rasmussen and Swindal, Jürgen Habermas, Vol. 4, p. 204. Dorschel actually takes Habermas to claim that a speaker uttering a communicative speech act raises four and only four claims. This is, of course, strictly speaking true, since every speaker, in addition to the three claims mentioned, also asserts the intelligibility of her utterance. I have omitted the discussion regarding the intelligibility claim raised because it is clearly not central, or sufficient, to Habermas's much more ambitious project. For a fuller discussion of the intelligibility claim, see Dorschel, 'Is There Any Normative Claim Internal to Stating Facts?'. Ibid., p. 204. The only criterion for criticizability seems to be that of intelligibility. Thus, speech acts are not criticizable from any perspective one can think of, hence the qualification 'almost'. For example, it hardly makes sense to criticize an utterance by saying that it wasn't green enough. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, p. 297. Ibid., p. 298. Habermas only explicitly names the first condition (ibid., p. 299). For the second, I have chosen to adopt Maeve Cooke's usage (Language and Reason, p. 101). Habermas, 'Toward a Critique of the Theory of Meaning', p. 297. Habermas implies that understanding can be partial as well as full by explicitly talking about full understanding. Perhaps 'full understanding' should be understood as 'reaching understanding', which Habermas distinguishes from mere 'understanding'. For the talk regarding 'full understanding', see Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, p. 300. For Habermas's distinction between 'understanding' and 'reaching understanding', see 'Comments on John Searle's "Meaning, Communication, and Representation" ', in On the Pragmatics of Communication, pp. 269ff. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, p. 301. What follows immediately should be regarded as my interpretation of Habermas's thesis. While I stand by it, I am not aware of this kind of presentation of the issue anywhere in Habermas's work. Again, this is not how Habermas classifies the claims. There is not, in his system, anything called an 'epistemic claim'. However, this is not to say that Habermas does not recognize the necessity of such a claim in order to account for mutual understanding. This is not quite how Andreas Dorschel puts it, for he has no category of 'epistemic intelligibility' and he lists four conditions necessary for understanding: (1) that the assertion is intelligible; (2) that one is able to give backing for the assertion (this is what I have called 'the epistemic claim' or the epistemic intelligibility); (3) that one believes in the assertion; and (4) that the assertion is true (this is not to say that one must only assert true statements, only that one must claim that the assertion is true. So, while I am not giving an entirely accurate account of Dorschel's description of necessary conditions for understanding, I am nevertheless accurately portraying his position on the matter: no condition of 'normative rightness' is necessary for understanding. See Dorschel in 'Is There Any Normative Claim Internal to Stating Facts?'. Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, p. 298. This is an example used by Dorschel. He naturally draws different conclusions from it from mine. See Dorschel, 'Is There Any Normative Claim Internal to Stating Facts?', p. 209. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, pp. 311–12. Cooke, Language and Reason, p. 87. For a similar account, see ibid., pp. 87ff.
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
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