Subject: HAB: Don't Ask, Don't Beg
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 02:00:51 +0200 (EET)



> >The Performative Contradiction Debate continues...

But, perhaps surprisingly, less heated than before.

> (Snipped) - On Begging the Question

> At SOME point the 
> conclusion, God exists, MUST be used as a premise in order 
> to say God produces real effects.

I don't know if we can get any further with this. The argument
establishes with the help of a premise (if an entity 
produces real effects, it exists) that if you are willing
to accept that the entity known as "God" produces real effects,
you are logically compelled to accept that it exists. In set-
theoretical terms it says that if x is a member of the set A
(entities which produce real effects), it exists, and that 
this God-thing is a member of the set A.

> (K's R) So if I say "God (the Personhood - not the human idea - 
> the actual Deity) produces real effects" I don't need to have 
> the premise "God exists."  So God could resurrect the dead 
> without having existed....

Do I sense some missing premises? Anyway, yes, you can say that,
like you can say unicorns - not as figures of imagination, but
as real animals - produce real effects without the premise that
they exist, presumably with a view to concluding precisely that
they do. Your premise will simply be false, not a logical fallacy.

However, to clarify the logical point at the risk of confusing
the content further, let's take another criterion for existence,
being perceived. This
may be necessary to show you why you don't logically have to
premise producing real effects with existing. Here goes:

An entity exists if and only if it is perceived.
God produces real effects.
=========================!God exists.

The deduction is not valid, obviously. You have to have an 
additional premise "God is perceived" to make it such. Or
you would have to qualify the criteria for existence to include
producing effects. This should put to rest the claim that it
is unimaginable to conceive of God producing real effects without
existing. It is unimaginable only because of the tacit assumption
that anything producing real effects must exist.

Again, this is just a logical point. Practically, I think having
causal effects is a good candidate for a criterion of existence
in the strictest sense - a better one than being perceived, at
any rate.
 
> (K's R) EXACTLY!!!!  This is the EXACT problem with 
> Habermas's performative contradiction.  There is a parallel 
> between hermeneutics and argumentation.  Let me rephrase
> what you have said: "An argument (was hermeneutics) does 
> not necessarily even have rules.  If it does, then sure, we 
> can't question them at the same time as we use them."  

We have to be very, very precise here. That we can't question
them means while we're using them means that assuming their
validity at least provisionally is necessary for their
utilization. However, this does not mean we could not *investigate*
or *identify* them, find out what they are.

> Habermas uses a depth hermeneutic argument (it cannot be 
> characterized coherently any other way) to sketch out
> the presuppositions of an argument.

True.

> He is using an argument 
> to prove that arguments have rules 

True.

> (he is using p to conclude 
> p).  

...doesn't quite follow. 

> What he is doing here is using the rules of an argument to 
> show that arguments have rules.  

I think we're getting closer to the crux of this debate.
He is not using the premise "arguments have rules" to conclude
that arguments have rules. First of all, that's not even ultimate
conclusion; he pretty much assumes it as established by Wittgenstein
et al. and goes on to find out what these rules are. But it is
still a conclusion functioning as a premise for another chain of
reasoning and the charge of contradiction is therefore a legitimate 
one to make. (No wishful thinking, Ken, read that carefully. ;))
 
So, secondly, what are the premises for the claim that argumentation
has (some, not yet identified at this stage) rules? Well, as I mentioned
before, many ways of using language can be seen to be analogous to
games, games played with the help of language, and games are constituted
by their rules. (Further premises for these can be brought in if 
necessary.) From empirical clues, such as the fact that people
frequently refer to what amount to such rules when arguing, we can
infer that argumentation is possibly such a language game, and
if we can with the help of this assumption identify some plausible
ones, we are quite justified in believing that argumentation is
a language game constituted as a distinct genre by having a set
of rules.

In the above, the premise "argumentation has rules" wasn't used
once. Yet all the time I made use of these rules. But since it
did not figure in the deduction of the conclusion, it is logically
irrelevant. It entirely drops out of the picture. If the
conclusion follows from the premises, the only way to deny the
conclusion is questioning the premises; there can be no logical
fallacy any more. Compare it to the fact that without my existence,
the argument wouldn't exist either. That, like utilizing the rules
of argumentation, is in some sense presupposed in my making the
argument, and quite bloody important to me, thank you. However,
from the point of view of logical validity, it has no bearing.

And so we get to the irony of the debate. If Habermas was arguing
that argumentation does not have rules and would still use them,
he would probably not be guilty of a logical fallacy either (that
would depend entirely on what premises he would present for this
conclusion). But, and of course we all know this by now, he
would be guilty of... do I have to say its name... performative
contradiction.

> Now yes, Habermas thinks 
> this is possible - and he understands it as "self-clarification."  

Yes, isn't that peculiar? Language can be used to clarify language
and arguments to clarify arguments. At some point in the evolution
of the species we developed a tool that can apply to itself. At
moments like this I feel almost proud of being a human.

> would logically be begging the question.  In order to prove that 
> an argument has rules Habermas *must* do this OUTSIDE of 
> an argument - the implications of which I probably don't need 
> to spell out.  

You can't prove anything outside of an argument (even if that
argument is non-verbal, like kicking a stone). Thereby he doesn't
risk a logical fallacy, but at most a performative one.

> Can anyone help me out here?  What exactly am 
> I missing?

Logic.

I'm sorry, I try to spare my one-liners to the next Schwarzenegger
movie but I've put enough serious effort in this debate already,
haven't I?
 
> (K's R) No.  If you cannot distinguish between an apple and an 
> orange ahead of time then you
> can't use an apple or an orange to prove anything.

And if you examine different shades of grey and find regularities
in the way they vary, you can extrapolate black and white as the
two ideal extremes.

> (K's R) pg. 151-152 of PM indicate the gist.  Wellmer is talking 
> about the validity of a moral 'ought.'  He argues that the 
> criteria for an 'ought' must be predetermined if (U) is then 
> actually going to have anything to say about the rightness of a 
> moral norm.  

In other words, how do we know that it is morality and not something
else that results from a Habermasian discourse? I promise to
try to return to that if I find Wellmer's book somewhere.

> Eg.  is consensus a requirement of truth?  Is that 
> all one needs for a statement to be true - consent?  No.  
> Consensus on the statement "the earth is flat" has no bearing 
> on whether or not the earth is actually flat.  

(This would take us deep into theories of truth and philosophy
of language. Let's just say that the above wouldn't hold a minute
as a criticism of Habermas, because he never takes actual consensus
as decisive for truth or rightness.)

> The same
> applies to rightness.  (U) is a legal principle - not a moral one. 

That doesn't yet show or even say anything about (U)'s status
being legal. I'm sure Wellmer has more arguments.

> can only test norms - it cannot generate them.  So the 
> experience of moral phenomenon is what
> determines moral norms - not legislation.

(Have you read Rawls's reply to Habermas in their Journal of
Philosophy debate a few years back? You should enjoy it.)
 
> (A) Well, which of its own presuppositions it would contradict?
> The burden of proof is on the side who accuses the other of
> performative contradiction.
> 
> (K's R) I've charged Habermas with committing a logical 
> fallacy.  If I didn't know better I would say that the charge of a 
> performative contradiction is performatively self-contradictory. 

I see that, but could you point out for us which of its own
existential presuppositions does Habermas's argument contradict?

> (A) She should care about following these rules exactly to the 
> extent that she cares about taking part in the practice they 
> enable.
> 
> (K's R) ie. She is (morally) commanded to obey these rules to 
> the extent that she cares about being rational.

No, not morally commanded in any sense. We're talking about
constitutive rules; they make the practice what it is. It
is "conceptually" necessary to do certain things or you're
simply not playing football, etc. Morality or rationality
don't enter the picture, except if to the extent that you're
taking part in those practices. It's true that in practice it's 
pretty hard not to because everybody else will expect you to do so
to some extent.

> Reason is a
> tool and it won't get anyone anywhere they want to go without 
> a sensuous human being using it.

I agree with that.
   
> >(K).  I don't see it - it is narrowly construed such that, its 
> >narrowness, in reality, empties the contents of ethical life (ie. 
> >All of those wonderful performative contradictions).
> 
> (A)
> particular problem. How does a non-coercive discourse
> about, say, the rights of refugees "empty the contents of 
> ethical life"?
> 
> (K's R) Bring it to the (Habermasian) moral level and I will try 
> to show you.

All right. Here's a country of four: two refugees (A and B) and
two citizens (C and D).

A. - I believe us refugees should have political rights in this
country.
B. - Hear, hear.
C. - Why should we grant them when you don't even pay taxes?
A. - Do you mean that there should be no represention without
taxation?
C. - Yes.
A. - Well, I don't know. We don't pay taxes back in the old country.
B. - Come on, the fellow is right. When in Rome and all.
A. - I suppose so. OK, we'll pay taxes and take part in military service
too.
C. - I can see now that you are decent, hardworking, God-fearing
men after all. All right, you can have the vote and whatever.
B. - Ahemm... actually, we don't believe in God. He hasn't produced any
real effects in centuries.
C. - What, you don't believe in God! Oh well, I guess as long as 
you don't mind us believing, we can pursue our conflicting ideals
of good life peacefully.
B. - And we'll talk like this if there are problems about that.
C. - Exactly. Now, what do you think, honey?
D. - Anything you say, darling.
C. - No no, what do you *really* think, honey? 
D. - These men have really convinced me. If nobody has anything
further to say, I'll go and make some cake for all. We can split
it four ways.

(Boy, I'm going to get hired as a screenwriter for Little
House in the Prairie when my philosophy career ends! (All
right, all right, I don't have a philosophy career and looks
like I never will...))

> So what is the ellipsis in "a contradictory man"? The most 
> natural reading would be "a man who has contradictory beliefs 
> (etc.)". But that's hardly what you mean.
> 
> (K's R) No, that is correct.  Human beings hold contradictory 
> beliefs, act in contradictory ways, and ground their identities 
> in contradictory things, images, expressions etc.  Capitalism 
> functions as a coercive force - which forces contradictions 
> upon people....

All right, I can handle that. I wouldn't posit being contradictory
as an ideal - as Hegel would quickly say, this is abstract, a
contradiction is always some particular contradiction and whether
or not resolving it is a good thing depends on the case. (You seem 
to imply that contradictions are bad things with the last sentence, 
though.) 

> >(K's R) EXACTLY.  MORAL ISSUES ARE LINKED TO OUR 
> >IDENTITY INEXPLICABLY.  This is why I think the moral 
> >domain in Habermas is a problem.
> 
> (A) ("Inextricably", I suppose.)
> 
> (K's R) Umm... yeah, sorry.

(Actually, come to think of it, "inexplicably" may also be
true. Perhaps we can't in the end explain why moral issues
are so central to our identity, but have to assume it as
a fact of reason.)

> (A)  I may be wrong, but it seems to me that you are 
> participating in argumentation right now - so whose clone do 
> you want to be? ;)
> 
> (K's R) Sure sure.  But if I agree with you it will have more to 
> do with other factors than just *pure reason.* 

I'll admit to that, but my point still remains that Habermas
is not trying to argue the case for pure reason. Communicative
rationality is situated rationality, and its results are 
contingent and always provisionary.

I'll try to get around to replying to some other interesting
poins made in this list next. Lot of life around lately.


Antti


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