File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2003/bhaskar.0312, message 223


From: "Howard Engelskirchen" <howarde-AT-twcny.rr.com>
Subject: BHA: Re: Realism after the Linguistic Turn (Habermas)
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 11:51:12 -0500


There is a new collection of essays out by Habermas in English dealing with
realism, metaphysics and epistemology that list members will find
interesting.  The title is Truth and Justification and the collection is
edited and translated by Barbara Fultner who provides a helpful
introduction.  Habermas's first essay is called "Realism after the
Linguistic Turn."  I'll copy out some of the points from the translator's
introduction in this post and then from habermas's first essay in a
subsequent post.

I have the following questions about the material summarized below:

(1) what of the distinction between objective validity and normative
validity?  Habermas argues that truth as warranted assertability works for
normative validity because moral and ethical norms are up to us; it doesn't
work for the mind independent objective world that is the site of our
practice because what is the case is not up to us.

As I understand the Bhaskar of PON and also Marx, we are confronted with all
kinds of social structures that are "not up to us."  We can change them, but
we do so the same way we change the world of nature -- by understanding what
the structures are and the ways they tend to behave and then intervening as
causal beings accordingly.  Semio-causal beings in the case of social
structures and socialized material structures.  Isn't the idea of "ought
implying facts" right in the sense that the norms are generated by the
reproduction of social structures?   "Don't steal," can be said to be a norm
that is true, not just normatively valid, about any social formation
grounded  in private property because without some such moral norm private
property cannot be reproduced.

(2) does the idea that truth is not an epistemic notion challenge Ruth's
arguments in our recent discussion?  "[O]bjective validity is a matter of
what is, in fact, true, not of what we take to be true . . ."  If we say
that truth is a property of our propositions, and epistemological, have we
lost its connection with what is in fact true?

(3)  Habermas argues that truth is not the only validity claim -- in
addition there are the claims of sincerity and normative rightness.  But
don't these all reduce to truth in the sense that sincerity just is a form
of truth and normative rightness is, if my argument above is right,
derivative of an objective process of social reproduction?


The summary -- 

Habermas here endorses realist views about truth and maintains that there is
a mind-and language-independent objective world (xix); he embraces
epistemological realism (xviii).  He takes it, for example, that the
presupposition that there is a single objective world that is the same for
everyone is a pragmatic presupposition governing our epistemic practices:
"This presupposition lies at the core of our ability to refer to objects in
the world at all and, as such, underlies the representational function of
language." (xiii)  But he is critical of analytical philosophy's
overemphasis on representation which he considers leads to "a reductive
objectivism that fails to do justice to the participant perspective of
agents in interaction." (ix).   But on the other hand he is also critical of
the competing exaggeration of the linguistic turn that leads to linguistic
determinism and cultural and epistemological relativism:  "Language does not
(fully) determine what we can know of the world or what the world is for us.
Rather, we learn from experience, and this empirical knowledge can lead us
to revise the meanings of the terms we use." (xiii).

The revision comes from our "coping with the world" insofar as it offers
resistance to us and is a source of frustration -- 'the way the world is' is
simply not "up to us." (xiv):   "Not only does  language make possible our
access to reality, but our coping with the world in turn has the power to
lead us to revise our linguistic practices." (xiii).  So the key to
knowledge acquisition is problem solving. (xiv).

Habermas abandons the idea of truth as "ideal warranted assertability" -- at
least for the mind independent objective world -- rejects the correspondence
theory of truth (which he seems to understand only in a version which
assumes unmediated access to reality) and coherence theory of truth and uses
instead a pragmatic conception of truth:  "the unconditionality of truth is
most evident in practical contexts of ordinary coping.  There, we presuppose
certain truths, practical certainties, as unconditionally valid.  As
Habermas succinctly puts it, "we do not walk onto any bridge whose stability
we doubt" (p. 39).  This unconditional acceptance is the pragmatic corollary
of a realist conception of truth." (xviii).

Habermas considers truth only one of three validity claims, however:  truth,
normative rightness and sincerity are equiprimordal.   Thus he draws a sharp
distinction between claims of objective and normative validity, and
criticizes Putnam's assertion that there are "ought-implying facts."  "Norms
must not be assimilated to facts, for the facts are not 'up to us' in the
way that moral or ethical norms are." (xix-xx).

Thus, "the validity of the [moral judgments and norms] is exhausted by ideal
warranted assertability: A moral claim is normatively right if and only if
all those affected would agree to it under approximately ideal conditions of
discourse.  There are no facts independent of the (ideal) community of those
affected to which normative rightness claims purport to refer.  But talk of
truth, in contrast to that of normative rightness, has certain specific
ontological connotations: It prsupposes reference to a single objective
world that exists independently of our descriptions and is the same for all
of us."

That is, the discursive or consensus theory of truth is abandoned with
respect to claims of objective validity because "the discursive or consensus
theory of truth misleadingly suggests that we take a proposition to be true
because it is or can be agreed to by all those concerned, whereas in fact,
we ought to agree to a proposition because it is true, not the other way
around."  (xvi).

But this in turn leads him to deny that truth, in contrast to normative
rightness,  is an epistemic notion: "objective validity is a matter of what
is, in fact, true, not of what we take to be true." (xv).



     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005