10.480, Review: Habermas: Pragmatics... (Review #2)

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-10-480. Wed Mar 31 1999. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 10.480, Review: Habermas: Pragmatices (Review #2)

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1)
Date:  Wed, 31 Mar 1999 11:24:35 +0200
From:  Bert Bultinck <bultinck at uia.ua.ac.be>
Subject:  RE: Habermas Review

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Wed, 31 Mar 1999 11:24:35 +0200
From:  Bert Bultinck <bultinck at uia.ua.ac.be>
Subject:  RE: Habermas Review


Jurgen Habermas, (1998), On the Pragmatics of Communication, edited by
Maeve Cooke, trans. Bohmann, Cooke et al.,  MIT Press, Cambridge,
Massachussetts.  454p, 35 USD.

This anthology collects ten essays by the German
 philosopher Jurgen Habermas (translated in English by
various translators), outlining his project of "universal
pragmatics" or "formal pragmatics".  This project
attempts a reconstructive understanding of the way in
which competent language users employ sentences in
various types of speech acts in order to relate to three
domains of reality.  The pragmatic function of
representation enables the speaker to relate to an external
state of affairs ("external nature"), the expressive
function allows the speaker to focus on her "internal
nature" and the third ("appellative" - the term, just as the
blueprint of this schema, is Karl Buhler's) function
allows her to establish interpersonal relations
("society").  This analysis is reconstructive because it
tries to reconstruct the rules (in a Chomskyan sense) that
constitute the adult speaker's competence/intuitions to
use sentences in utterances. It examines the necessary
presuppositions that enable successful speech, as
opposed to an empirical study of concrete situations of
language use, as in, e.g., sociolinguistics.
Habermas' preoccupation with social theory and the
analysis of communicative action provides the larger
framework for his interest in pragmatics. In his view of
communication, he takes the type of action aimed at
reaching understanding to be fundamental and treats
insincere, persuasive or manipulative communication as
derivative.  Throughout the evolution of his thinking on
universal pragmatics (this volume spans his efforts from
1976-1996), he will maintain a strict distinction between
communicative action with the purpose of reaching
understanding on the one hand, and what he calls
"strategic" communication on the other.  This emphasis
on the process of understanding (Verstandigung) leads to
a rather strong idealisation of the communicative
situation: a basis of mutually recognised validity claims
together with the vindication of these claims is
presupposed.  More specifically, these validity claims
mirror the aforementioned functions of communicative
actions: (a) external nature: the speaker must make a true
statement, or make correct existential presuppositions
(the latter for non-representatives) (b) internal nature:
she must be truthful in expressing her beliefs, intentions,
feelings etc. and (c) society: she must perform a speech
act that is "right" with respect to a given normative
context.  Habermas then defines "understanding a speech
act" as knowing what makes it acceptable: besides the
fact that a speech act obviously has to be
comprehensible, the speaker and the hearer also assume
that the speaker can provide grounds (truth claim) and
justification (rightness) for her speech act, and that she
can prove her trustworthiness (truthfulness).  It is
important to stress that Habermas believes that every
speech act at the same time raises these three validity
claims.  I will reproduce one of his examples: the speech
act Please bring me a glass of water can be contested on
all three levels.  First,  concerning the normative
rightness  of the utterance (No.  You can't treat me like
one of your employees.); second, concerning the
truthfulness of the utterance (No.  You really only want
to put me in a bad light in front of the others.) or
concerning the existential presuppositions of the speech
act (No.  The nearest water tap is too far away).
Nevertheless, there usually is one claim that is far more
foregrounded than the other two, depending on the
illocutionary role of the speech act (compare: a
statement, a promise, an expression of grief).
After this general introduction, I will now deal with
some of the finer points of each of the chapters
separately.  The first paper, "What is Universal
Pragmatics" (1976), presents the views described above,
but also provides the methodological justification for the
proposed project.  It elaborates on the procedure of
rational reconstruction, on the reasons why this
programme should not be called "transcendental" and on
a categorical distinction between linguistic expressions
that appear in sentences with a representational function
and those that appear in sentences with interpersonal or
expressive functions.  It also explicitly positions
Habermas' ideas with regard to Austin's and Searle's
proposals regarding speech act theory.
The second article sets out to correct Weber's theory of
action by replacing the latter's emphasis on purposive
rationality by an emphasis on communicative practices
aimed at reaching understanding, as the mechanism for
coordinating action.  Habermas claims that Weber
cannot explain the whole scala of societal
rationalisations: there is, for instance, no place for an
ethics of responsibility, as the result of interpersonal
conflicts of interaction, because Weber starts from
monological action.  This also involves a finetuning of
Habermas' distinction between action oriented toward
success (consisting of instrumental and strategic action)
and action oriented reaching understanding
(communicative action).  A view of communication as
fundamentally aimed toward reaching understanding can
be extended so that it can also explain strategic uses
("perlocutionary effects"), but when teleological action
is taken as a starting-point, the successful
accomplishment of processes of reaching understanding
cannot be adequately explained: "If the hearer failed to
understand what the speaker was saying, a teleologically
acting, success-oriented speaker would not be able to
bring the hearer, by means of communicative acts, to
behave in the desired way" (p.126).
In the third article Habermas counters Charles Taylor's
criticism on the project of formal pragmatics, by
pointing out Taylor's preoccupation with self-
consciousness.  This bias leads to a view of the self as
one among many and as one against all, and this leaves
no room for linguistically structured society.  Taylor's
claim that on the basis of the project of formal
pragmatics only some kind of procedural ethics is
possible, is taken to be basically correct, but one cannot
attempt a universal morality on the basis of an analysis
of the universal potential of speech along Humboldtian
lines.  Also the world-disclosing function of language
should not be allowed to overshadow the fact that this
language-disclosing function has to prove its worth
within the world.  The universal, the particular and the
individual are released from their relation to a totality
and are conceived as reference points that are equally
primordial.
The importance of the fourth chapter lies first and
foremost in the clarification of the Husserlian concept of
"lifeworld".  It starts off with yet another comparison
between action ("running") and speech ("statement"),
stressing the latter's reflexive characteristic self-
interpretation (it makes itself known as the action that is
planned to be).  Further differences lie in the goal's
independence/dependence of the means of intervention,
the causal/cooperative way in which the action is
brought about and the objective/interpersonal world in
which the results of the action/speech are to be located.
The lifeworld, then, is that conception of society that
explores the terrain of the preflectively familiar and the
unquestionably certain and allows a vision of the
sociocultural context of life from within.  It consists of a
linguistically mediated intermeshing of culture
(knowledge), society (legitimate orders) and personality
structures (identity).
The next two chapters are rather short and repetitive: the
fifth chapter specifically discusses Searle's intentionalist
theory of meaning, which is deemed to be one-sided in
its emphasis on the expressive function of language.
Habermas contends that the representational and the
interpersonal functions are equally important and show
that a classification of speech acts by means of Searle's
concept of "direction of fit" is not adequate.  The sixth
article deals explicitly with the three theories of meaning
that Habermas regards as fundamental (intentionalist
(Searle), truth-conditional (Frege) and use theories of
meaning (Wittgenstein, Austin)); his own adoption of
Buhler's schema incorporates these three approaches to
meaning.
The recent seventh article (1996) presents an answer to
Schnadelbach's criticism that Habermas is fixated on
one type of rationality, namely the discursive type.
Habermas does not follow Schnadelbach in his reduction
of rationality to "a disposition of rational persons"
(because that ignores the interpersonal aspect), but
accepts epistemic rationality and teleological rationality
as complementary forms of rationality, alongside
discursive rationality.  Nevertheless, these three types of
rationality all relate to the criticisability of and hence the
accountability for one's speech acts (communicative),
beliefs (epistemic) and actions (teleogical).  Admittedly,
discursive rationality does not have a foundational role
for the other types of rationality, but "it owes its special
position [?] to its integrative role" (p.309).  This
motivates Habermas to introduce a distinction between
weak and strong communicative action: the first
concerns reaching understanding relative to facts and
one-sided actor-related intentions (truth and
truthfulness), the second also includes reaching
understanding on "normative reasons for the selection of
the goals themselves" (p.326) (rightness).
The next two chapters explicitly deal with two other
thinkers.  In the eighth article Habermas reflects on
Richard Rorty's Pragmatic Turn.  The Pragmatic Turn
includes a conception of truth as public agreement
achieved in the communication community.  In Rorty's
view, our desire for objective truth is not an urge for
transcending the speech community, but a desire for "as
much intersubjective agreement as possible" (p.353).
According to radical contextualists, we can only check
our beliefs by comparing them with other beliefs; truth is
nothing but coherence.  Habermas responds that we
always already find ourselves in a linguistically
disclosed lifeworld (i.e., intersubjective convictions that
prove their worth in practice) and hence, that there is no
point in trying to resolve a false dualism between inner
and outer: "What is at stake is not the correct
representation of reality but everyday practices that must
not fall apart" (p.359).  The discursively founded truth of
a claim allows a return to prereflective modes of dealing
with the world.  It is this intertwining of truth in rational
discourses (argumentation) and truth in action-contexts
(behaviour) that favours the context-independent truth of
the belief in question.
The ninth article centres around the debate between
Jacques Derrida and John Searle.  Habermas criticizes
the former because he unjustifiedly blurs the distinction
between poetic language and everyday communication.
Ordinary language is under constraints that are different
from those of poetic or fictional language, because of its
power to coordinate actions, due the illocutionary
binding and bonding force of speech acts in everyday
language.  The chapter also includes Habermas' views
on art and art criticism.
The volume closes with an article in which Habermas
responds to a diversity of questions and critiques.  Once
again, he responds to Richard Rorty who tries to
demonstrate the pointlessness of any attempt to
determine a foundation for knowledge.  Habermas
argues that philosophy rightly clings to the role of
"guardian of reason", because the question which beliefs
are justified is still held to be different from the question
which beliefs are socially accepted.  Other critiques that
are responded to in this chapter deal with doubts whether
Habermas' procedural rationality can be treated
theoretically, with his thoughts concerning an aesthetic-
practical rationality , with Weber's theory of culture and
with the idea of truth in materialist traditions.


Criticism

Habermas' views on communication and his comments
on speech acts, meaning theories and the concept of truth
are at the very least enlightening.  They include very
systematic surveys of the theorisations at hand and shed
new light on often ill-defined areas of linguistics, the
philosophy of language and sociology.  It is also one of
Habermas' strong points that he convincingly shows
how interconnections between these disciplines can be
clarifying rather than confusing.  As far as speech act
theory is concerned, for instance, the need to bring
society into the picture (and, hence, the need for an
adequate conceptualisation of what society is) can hardly
be contested.  Also his systematisation of theories of
meaning offers a highly intelligible, if somewhat
oversimplified, introduction to some of the more
prominent views on semantics available.
Nevertheless, Habermas' emphasis on systematisation
and organisation at times forces linguistic phenomena
into pre-established categories, which leaves little room
for nuances and details.
I will elaborate on just one example.  In his comments on
Austin's and Searle's classifications of speech acts, he
tries to systematise such a classification on the basis of
the tripartite structure of the external world, the internal
world and the interpersonal world.  He claims that every
utterance can be contested on the basis of its relation to
these three structures, via the concepts of truth,
truthfulness and rightness.  Many critics have argued that
this is not always the case: especially what Habermas
calls expressives seem to lack a truth-claim (or: the
truth-claim is the same as the truthfulness-claim) and
constatives can hardly be contested on the basis of
normative rightness.  Habermas' reaction refers to the
existential presuppositions that are necessarily implied in
non-constatives: "if need be, these presuppositions can
be rendered explicit in the form of assertoric sentences.
To this extent, nonconstative speech acts, too, have a
relation to truth" (p.146).  This does not appear to be a
very large extent, however.  Habermas' idea that even a
simple greeting like hello has as one of its existential
presuppositions the well-being of the adressee, is
contrived, to say the least.  Of course, it could also be
argued that it is an existential presupposition of such a
greeting that there is an addressee.  But surely no one
would be willing to say that a greeting, uttered in utter
isolation, amounts to an untrue statement.  It would be
inappropriate or odd, but not false.  Likewise, an
imperative statement that cannot be executed due to
circumstantial situations (Turn that iron fork into a
golden one) is not false, but foolish or unfair.
Also Habermas' reaction to the objection that for first-
person expressive statements, the truth claim and the
truthfulness claim coalesce, is not at all convincing.  He
admits that, unlike for other utterances, the employment
of  an expressive statement is also always a guarantee of
truth. Nevertheless, he also claims that I've been in pain
for days and  He's been in pain for days (I and He
referring to the same person) can be contested on
different grounds (the first utterance: truthfulness; the
second: truth) and that therefore truth and truthfulness
claims must be distinguished even for expressives.  The
second utterance, however, quite obviously is not an
expressive speech act, but a constative (as Habermas will
admit) - it is therefore somewhat surprising that
Habermas supposes that the different validity claims to
which both are related is supposed to provide ground for
a distinction between truth and truthfulness for
expressives.  His statement that "the truth claim relates
to the existence of the state of affairs 'p,' whereas the
truthfulness claim has to do only with the manifestation
of the opinion of the belief 'that p' " (p.148) suggests an
ontological status of experiences that is independent of
the subject's experiencing it, which seems to be absurd.
If A says I love him, and B reacts: That's not true, this
always also means that B assumes that A is being
untruthful.  Conversely, if B responds You're not being
honest, then this also always means that she thinks A's
statement is false.
The example I just gave concerns of course a rather
small detail, seen in the larger frame of Habermas'
theories, even if the doctrine of the triple validity claim
remains an essential part of his Formal Pragmatics-
programme from 1976 up to 1996.  But there are more
general and perhaps also more pernicious consequences
of Habermas' exaggerated emphasis on schematisation.
I do not have room for a detailed analysis of these larger
problems, but I will just mention some of them here.  His
assessment of the history of semantics, for instance,
reduces the multitude of very diverse accounts of
meaning to three essential views: the formal semantic
(truth-conditional) one, the intentionalist approach and
the use theories of meaning.  There are two problems
with this: first, Habermas ignores some very
fundamental problems with, and unresolved puzzles
concerning all of these approaches (especially with the
truth-conditional one).  In the development of formal
semantics, for instance, Habermas readily detects an
evolution towards more contextualization.  Dummett
reformulates the truth-conditional dictum
("understanding the meaning of a sentence is knowing
under what conditions the sentence is true") as follows:
understanding an assertion is knowing what reasons a
speaker can give for the truth of the utterance (Dummett
1976).  This indeed solves problems with deixis and
other elements that have to be inferred pragmatically.
But this does not yet give us insight into the question of
how meanings of single words can be managed (What
does the word philantropist mean? - can one explicate
the meaning of a word by giving the reasons for uttering
it?) or how the meaning of an utterance can be richer
than or different from the reasons a speaker can give for
uttering it.  Take for instance speaker A's utterance C
seems to be really fond of my wife.  The hearer B knows
that A is rather jealous and that C is always very
friendly, and hence, B, in the light of this contextual
information takes A's utterance to mean: 'C is not really
very fond of A's wife, he's just being friendly.  And A is
jealous again'.  Whether A will confirm this assumption
or not, is not necessarily going to influence B's assigning
this meaning to A's statement.  Note that the example we
are considering here is an assertion - and for assertions
the truth validity claim is deemed to be utterly important
as far as their meaning is concerned.  Habermas' notion
of truth-conditional meaning (even after Dummett's
revision of it) is not always very adequate.
The second problem with Habermas' well-nigh
historiographical account of meaning theories is the fact
that he omits some very influential theories of meaning,
as for instance the conceptual view of meaning (the
meaning of a word is a structured concept in the mind,
cf. networking, prototypes, metaphors, etc.), or the
structuralist concept of meaning (less prominent in
linguistics but still highly influential in postmodernist
philosophies).  His decision to select three out of all
available theories is not presented as a strategic decision,
but rather as a natural, logical result of the history of
semantics.  Because Habermas silently ignores some
important paradigms in semantic theories, he also
disposes of some of the latter's questions and puzzles
somewhat too easily.  Moreover, the three theories he
does adopt are piled onto each other with a less than
healthy inattentiveness to mutual inconsistencies.  For
example, I am not sure whether the intentionalist dogmas
can be reconciled to Wittgensteinian use theories of
meaning as easily as Habermas suggests.  And he
unfortunately does not really dig into the interplay
between truth-conditional meaning, intentionality and
communicative norms.  He only states that there is such
an interplay, but does not develop a model of how these
various aspects should be integrated.
Also his conception of truth is, however thought-
provoking, not really convincing either.  His first ideas
on truth, making use of the concept of the ideal speech
situation, have been criticised astutely by Barbara
Fultner (Fultner 1996).  She also points to a confusion
between truth as a concept and truth as a criterion.  But
Habermas' later shift in perspective (in his answer to
Richard Rorty) seems to be off the mark.  His claim that
the somewhat ideal character of the notion of truth
derives from the fact that what is regarded as true also
proves its worth in everyday interactions with reality
seems to hide the fact that this ideal character is
progressively less present in truth talk.  People seem to
use words like "truth" more and more hesitantly.  In so
far as there still linger ideal aspects in the semantics of
the word truth, Habermas' explanation may be adequate,
but it seems to me these connotations have faded away.
He states: "[?B]ecause in the linguistic paradigm truths
are accessible only in the form of rational acceptability,
the question now arises of how in that case the truth of a
proposition can still be isolated from the context in
which it is justified" (p.356).  I am not sure whether this
question indeed arises.

References

Dummett, Michael (1976).  "What is a Theory of
Meaning?", in G. Evans and J. McDowell, eds., Truth
and Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Fultner, Barbara (1996).  "The redemption of Truth:
Idealization, Acceptability and Fallibilism in Habermas'
Theory of Meaning", in International Journal of
Philosophical Studies, 4 (2), 233-251.


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