Date: Wed, 10 May 1995 10:07:10 +0800
From: rgeeland-AT-cc.curtin.edu.au (David Geelan)
Subject: HAB: Communication & Strategy - Thanx


Thanks everyone (Lenny Moss, Jim McFarland, Norma Romm) for your thoughtful
responses to my questions: I feel as though my understanding has been
deepened (does this imply that your action was communicative?). I look
forward to further discussion of these and other issues.

Just a few responses (in order of my original questions):

0. Lenny:  I agree, "Hab" as an abbreviation is awkward - I used it only
because I'd seen it used and thought it was a convention. Either your
suggested "H", or "JH" probably would be OK: I'm actually in favour of
taking the extra micro-second to type the name out in full, and trying to
construct sentences in such a way that the name is not over-used.

1. My condensation of the comments from everyone is that while Habermas'
methodology changed from the Frankfurt School's psychoanalytic critique
approach toward a social theory/philosophical one, his concern with
humanity, human interests and communication have persisted throughout his
career. Perhaps communicative action is in some ways an outgrowth of the
practical interest? (As well as the emancipatory, as Norma suggests.)

2. Jim's response suggests that (I'm aware that I'm over-simplifying, but
it helps me understand) it might be possible to understand strategic action
as growing out of the technical interest, and communicative action out of
the practical interest. That is, strategic action is about means-end
approaches, manipulating to cause certain things to occur (such things
being favourable or advantageous to the manipulator), while communicative
action is sincerely aimed at increasing the level of mutual understanding.
This introduces an interesting moral dimension to the old question about
why not lie: lying occurs in what is taken by one actor to be a
communicative situation, but in fact is an instrumental (strategic)
situation. (I'm aware that strategic action includes more than direct
lying, but I include any intention to mislead here.)

I'm finding this discussion fascinating, and wouldn't want it to end here.
Further reponses and ideas on lying would be most welcome.  A diagram in
"Communication and the Evolution of Society" subdivides strategic action
into openly and latently strategic action, then further subdivides latent
into manipulation and systematically distorted action. This suggests that
some strategic action is NOT intentional on the part ofeither actor, but
constructed by the relative social roles of the actors - systematic
distortion.

Thanks again, David


PS Lenny, would you just define 'illocutionary' and 'perlocutionary' please
(I think I've got it, but want to be sure).