From: "Howard Engleskirchen,WSU/FAC" <howarde-AT-wsulaw.edu> Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 17:32:33 -0800PST Subject: Re: BHA: In defense of Habermasian Angelism Sorry for the multiple posts just sent! My mail system was asserting that the mail was being returned as undeliverable. But everytime (Colin chuckles), it lied! Doug, Colin and all you truth seekers -- Doug writes: > Suppose we think of assertions as a language game, defined, like promising, > questioning, etc. by certain constitutive rules. In these terms, to assert > something is to propose the truth of what is asserted. > I don't think the "promising game" tradition has made enough sense of promising to offer it is a beachhead for understanding anything else. The puzzle of promising is to figure out what accounts for the obligation that attaches to a promise once made. On analogy to eg touchdown in American football ("why does a touchdown score 6 points?"), a fashionable response is to argue "well that is just the way the game of promising is played." But the analogy to a game fails because obligation then is presupposed and we haven't explained anything. If we say promising is defined by certain constitutive rules, then we have to explain what accounts for those rules and we are back to the beginning: what accounts for the obligation of promise? Appealing to the rules of the game is another way I think of attending only to the network and not what the network describes. Colin writes: > Try this one: I promise (illucutionary) that i think Fukuyama's original article >on the end of history is masterful. and then continues >since I understood you to be claiming (and Louis defending) that according to >Habermas asserters will always be committed to their assertions. Whether or >not Jurgen actually does mean this is a moot point, but it is clearly not the >case. We make many assertion to which we are not committed, I mean it >seems to me social life would be impossible if this were the case. We use language in a confusing way to say that we are "committed" to an assertion or "promise" it. You can't commit to an assertion. To promise or commit to something is to set yourself to make it happen; it is to identify yourself as a causal agent. "I am committed to the relationship" means I set myself to make it work. I'm committed to the proposition that it is raining doesn't make sense unless you seed clouds for fun and profit. "I promise I think Fukuyama is masterful" is simply to make an assertion with an explanation point. While we don't need the game game to say so, it is true that when I make a promise it is a fact independent of the promise whether I intend the performance promised or not. Similarly when I make an assertion it is a fact independent of the assertion whether I believe it or not. I don't understand Louis to be saying anything different. Assertion means I present such and such as so about the world. Because it has this meaning, and because my beliefs are independent of what is asserted, lying is possible. Or I can subvert my meaning unwittingly, as in the wonderful example of the narrator in The Remains of the Day. Howard Howard Engelskirchen Western State University --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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