Date: Thu, 05 Mar 1998 17:05:16 +0200
Subject: Re: HAB: The Question-Begging of Performative Contradictions



A long and critical reply to a long and critical post.

>Eg. The criminal's action is existentially self-defeating since
>the strategic attempt to suppress the other in fact ruins (in the
>form of suffering) the life of the criminal; the trespasser
>intended to do away with another's life but instead destroys
>his own (J Bernstein, Recovering Ethical Life, 181).

This originates from Hegel's Philosophy of Right, and does not
fit with Habermas's definition above (the criminal's action is
not a constative speech act).

>My charge against this is that the argumentative strategy that
>Habermas employs begs the question.  In other words the
>case for developing the idea of a performative contradiction
>uses one of its conclusions as a premise.  It is the logical
>equivalent of saying that God exists because God produces
>real effects (William James).  Logically this reads God
>produces real effects therefore God exists.

No, logically that reads:

Whatever produces real effects exists.
God produces real effects.
Therefore, God exists.

>The conclusion
>that God exists is used as a premise for the statement God
>produces real effects.  It is a logical circle and completely
>incoherent.

Well, see above. Given the truth of the premises, the conclusion
follows. You may dispute either of them, but if you don't, you're
behaving illogically if you don't accept the conclusion. (I would
personally qualify both of the premises, as James probably does himself.
Of course God exists in a sense, like Santa does.)

>This is the formulation of my critique:
>
>Habermas must assume that rules of argumentation are true
>and unavoidable (as a premise of his case) in order to
>conclude that rules of argumentation are true and
>unavoidable.

I'm not sure if 'true' makes any sense here. I'll try to reconstruct
one way of arguing for unavoidability.

At least some language games have constitutive rules, without
which they would not be the games they are. These rules can be
extracted from them through hermeneutic reflection and expressed
in propositional form. This is what e.g. Searle has done with
promising; one of them is that in promising you express your intention to
do in the future something which is known both by you and the hearer to be
good for the hearer, you have reason to believe you're able to do it etc.
At some point, you switch into another language game; if you express your
intention to do in the future something which is known both by you and the
hearer to be bad for the hearer, you're not promising but threatening etc.
In this way, there are certain
presuppositions which are unavoidable if you are to describe yourself
to be "promising".

Now, does argumentation have unavoidable rules - is there a point
at which we are no longer arguing? What is the difference between
argumentation and non-argumentation? Habermas approaches it from
the difference between convincing (=FCberzeugen) and talking into (=FCberreden).
He appeals to our "intuitive preunderstanding" (MCCA, 89) that you can't,
for example, "convince an opponent of something by resorting to lies;
at most [you] can talk him into believing something to be true" (90-91).
He aims to find the points after which an exchange can no longer be
regarded as argumentation, and formulate rules which make explicit our
implicit preunderstanding of the difference. There are different
domains of argumentation, such as legal, moral and scientific ones,
each of which have their own specific rules which constitute them
as independent domains - what counts as a moral argument does not
count as a scientific argument. Habermas's work has recently dealt
with such more specific rules of argumentation for the moral and the legal
domains. (This is the status of (U), for example.)

Once we have identified such presuppositions of argumentation (by semantic
investigation and generalizing from cases to rules), we
can use them to look for performative contradictions. Two kinds of
them, to be exact: cases in which somebody claims to be arguing
but is not (such as those in which "agreement" is reached by
threatening) and cases in which somebody (a skeptic) claims not to be arguing
but turns out to be, such as those in which somebody tries to
convince us by reasons that people cannot be convinced by reasons.

I will return to your critique:

>Habermas must assume that rules of argumentation are true
>and unavoidable (as a premise of his case) in order to
>conclude that rules of argumentation are true and
>unavoidable.

This misrepresents Habermas's argument. It goes rather on these lines:

1) Certain language games have rules the following of which is unavoidable
if one
is to describe herself taking part in them.
2) Argumentation is such a language game.
3) These unavoidable rules can be identified through hermeneutic reflection.
NB: This identification is fallibilistic; the unavoidable rules are not
unavoidably the ones that Habermas presents.
4) After the rules are identified they can be used to criticize those
who understand themselves to be engaging in argumentation, but whose
speech acts contradict the rules this engagement presupposes; this
is performative contradiction.
5) The unavoidability of rules of argumentation should not be confused with
the unavoidability of argumentation itself, which Habermas also argues for.
(Following the rules of chess is necessary for playing chess, but playing
chess is not necessary.) This is not a metaphysical necessity, but an
empirical one. There could be a human society where there would be no
argumentation, but this society would be very different from ours, and the
odds are none of us would want to live there (not because of the lack of
argumentation but because
of what it would entail).

>Interesting enough Habermas tacitly acknowledges the
>problem in passing - "This 'fact of reason' cannot be
>deductively grounded, but it can be clarified if we take the
>further steop of conceiving argumentative speech as a special
>case - in fact, a privileged derivative - or action oriented
>toward reaching undestanding" (MCCA, 130).  In other words
>Habermas *knows* he is begging the question

This is an unwarranted conclusion. What Habermas is saying in the
above is that 'fact of reason' that there is argumentation cannot be
deduced from anything. A fortiori, the language game of argumentation
cannot be
deduced from action theory. It is nonetheless "a continuation of
communicative action by other means", a reflective form of it (MCCA, 130).
That is why its role can be understood better ("clarified") by
looking at how it is connected to action oriented towards Verst=E4ndingung.

>I think that Habermas does this by reifying the actual
>experiences of those who he charges (or could charge) with a
>performative contradiction under a universalist interpretation
>of language and language use - stemming from his Kantian
>conception of 'man.'

What do you mean with the "Kantian conception of 'man'" and where
and how does Habermas subscribe to it?

>  That is to say that Habermas must empty
>the contents of the way real human beings use language in
>order to make his case.  He can only do this through an
>abstraction.  It is this abstraction away from concrete
>experiences than allows Habermas to 'see' the transcendental
>pragmatic at all (this is why the transcendental pragmatic
>argument is phenomenological).

The method is not one of abstraction, but rather, since you speak
of phenomenology, one of (quasi-)eidetic variation.

>This understanding of moral and ethical life
>requires a "wider lens" than a narrowly construed discourse
>ethic (REL, 183).  Furthermore it is probably not desirable, or
>consistent, to empty ethical life of its contradictions for the
>sake of a "moral" argument. 

Don't you contradict yourself here? First you say discourse ethics
is too narrowly construed and then that its wider application would
"empty ethical life". Discourse ethics is limited in its scope precisely
because Habermas recognizes that such a discourse is not suitable
for solving all ethical problems, only those of a particular kind.

>It is precisely our contradictory
>identity that we want to hold onto - because these
>contradictions make us who we are.  In this sense Kantian
>noncontradictory 'man' becomes the antithesis of an actual
>(moral) individual identity. 

As you surely know, Habermasian moral discourse is not meant to
deal with identity issues.

>And thirdly - all that a performative
>contradiction can do is identify out fundamental beliefs - the
>very things that we live and breath and wrap our lives and
>identities around (REL, 184).

And that is a *problem*?? If indeed it can do that, it is a very
powerful and important tool, don't you think?

>Back to why Habermas's performative contradiction takes the
>strange shape that it does:
>
>As Bernstein argues (and this is pretty much quoted word for
>word), Hegel used the idea of performative self-contradictions
>in three ways: i) as a philosophical procedure that must be
>used phenomenologically, that is, only a form of
>consciousness testing itself could yield compelling
>performative contradictions since only by permitting each form
>of consciousness to stipulate its own criterion for ultimate
>grounding prevents the demonstration from being question
>begging (NB.  this already demonstrates my point).

NB: it doesn't. Bernstein refers to the Hegelian principle of
immanent critique, and apparently to the function it plays
in Ph=E4nomenologie des Geistes. This is exactly the point of
performative contradiction: it aims to show that by virtue of
entering the language game of argumentation, you yourself
make the presuppositions that may contradict your aseertions. (Notions
of ultimate grounding and the necessary sequence of forms of
consciousness have no place in Habermas anyway.)

>ii) But this
>is equivalent to saying that there cannot be direct
>transcendental arguments for fundamental beliefs since the
>philosopher is always dependent on natural consciousness's
>stipulation of basical elements of the conceptual scheme. 
>Hence it is only a whole series of performative contradictions
>that can show that there are no alternatives to the
>philosopher's favoured belief set. 

The above says that there cannot be transcendental arguments
understood in the Kantian sense.
There cannot be transcendental arguments in the Hegelian sense
either, because the point of view from which the philosopher
could perceive the "whole series" is unattainable for situated
beings; it always remains open. Hence there is no way to show
that there are no alternative belief sets. No wonder Habermas's
argument is quasi-transcendental and contingent. The "fundamental"
beliefs are always fundamental-for-us, at best.

>iii)  Performative
>self-contradictions therefore are idle against the philosophical
>skeptic since he or she has already refused to posit any
>criterion of what is to count as a fundamental ground of
>experience and therefore is immune to the force of what a
>performative contradicitonbrings about in any particular
>context. 

This criticism may be valid against Hegel. As to Habermas, well,
naturally, if you don't make any presuppositions you can't be
contradicting them (and Habermas isn't interested in fundamental
grounds of experience anyway). His claim is that the skeptic
will in actuality end up making such presuppositions or else
will have to withdraw from social life altogether to avoid
making them. (It is surprising that Bernstein confuses
Hegelian internal contradiction with performative contradiction,
if he indeed does so. There are obvious structural similarities,
but the differences are no less obvious.)

>In conclusion - the employments of performative
>contradictions can ONLY trace a series of fundamental ethical
>experiences (REL, 184-185). 

Again, "only"? It is true that performative contradiction does not
enable us to make transcendental arguments in the strong, Kantian
sense. And not very surprising that Habermas himself is critical
of Apel for trying to do just that.

>What Habermas does is reverse
>Hegel's use of the performative contradiction.  Instead of
>making it concrete and contextual - it makes it abstract.

A performative contradiction can only occur on the basis of some
presuppositions. This are always concrete and contextual. Some
presuppositions are made in a wide variety of contexts, and
indeed contribute to making the contexts what they are. For
example, on the basis of *our* intuitive preunderstanding
it is possible to identify what sort of presuppositions make
a concrete context one of argumentation.

>He
>does so in order to defend his understanding of the moral
>domain in contrast to the ethical.  Habermas does this
>because he cannot have it any other way.  Habermas is forced
>to generate the normative content of modernity out of itself, in
>a contradictory way, in order to defend his universalist
>postmetaphysical project and all of its contents.

Modernity is forced to create its normative content out of itself
because it does not find any authority outside itself. Habermas
tries for his part to articulate the elements of this normative
content. This articulation is not itself normatively neutral,
to be sure, but it aims to proceed as rationally as possible
to leave room for as many visions of ethical life as possible.

I better stop now and send this or it will never happen. Correct
me if I'm wrong,

Antti





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