Date: Sun, 08 Mar 1998 18:53:39 -0800
Subject: HAB: Understanding communicative action


Thank you, Matthew, for your comments in <HAB: Understanding>, March 5.
This was a welcome amplification of your earlier posting, which was a
response (Feb 26) to Ken’s response (<Re: HAB: Imagining
deconstruction>, Feb 26 ) to me, Feb 26.

However, I disagree with your interpretation of the passage from
Habermas which you use to warrant your suspicion of Habermas’ sense of
speech acts. This difference of interpretation bears substantially, I
believe, on other matters of recent postings by others, in particular
the difference between communicative and strategic action which is so
troublesome for Ken.

It’s clear why you say that Habermas mucks up Austin, though I believe
you are misreading Habermas, and I will get to this in a moment. But the
larger issue is: Does Habermas misconceive communicative action? It
could be that Austin was not clear about his own distinction between
illocutionary and perlocutionary aspects. Indeed, John Searle has made a
career of taking speech act theory beyond Austin, you know (I presume).
And, you know, it is *Searle’s* speech act theory which is the basic
anchor for Habermas’ formal pragmatics, which moves beyond Searle in
_Communication & the Evolution of Society_(CES). It would be a great
project to compare, contrast, and integrate the accounts of speech act
theory in CES and TCA, but it seems safe to say that Habermas has not
reverted to Austinian speech act theory in TCA.

I have never much liked the terms ‘illocutionary’ and ‘perlocutionary,’
and I doubt anyone is especially fond of this Austinian coinage. The
better we can convey the distinction in others terms, the better for
interdisciplinary communication. It’s the distinction that matters. But
this distinction, immanent to speech acts, is part of distinctions
within communicative action between levels of action, such that a speech
act may (and usually does) play in a larger scene of communicative
action whose intent prevails over the intention of a given speech act.
Accordingly, there can be, in a scene, differences between the
perlocutionary effect that a speech act *has* and the perlocutionary
effect that a speaker may have sought, just as acts have consequences,
regardless of the consequences anticipated or sought by the actor.
Whether or not an actor is acting strategically cannot be surmised at
the level of individual speech acts, of course. Perlocutionary effects
are likely in all events. One hopes that the other’s stance toward
understanding is genuine, not deceptive. One hopes that actual
consequences of one’s own action are satisfactorily similar enough to
overtly anticipated consequences; but, then, one also hopes that overt
anticipations or expectations genuinely express tacit anticipations or
expectations (that one is not self deceived).

So, it’s easy to confuse a difference between genuine and strategical
communication with a difference that pertains to both, namely,
illocutionary and perlocutionary aspects of “The” speech act.

You write (quoting Habermas): “...it doesn't make any sense to imagine
that someone could enter into a conversation with no intention ‘to
produce perlocutionary effects on his opposite number.’" This view is
due, I surmise, to (a) not distinguishing actions oriented to success
from actions oriented to reaching understanding; and (b) not
distinguishing the speech act (which always *has* a perlocutionary
component, which may or may not have ascribed content in a particular
speech act) and the larger scene of action within which a communication
takes place--a scene of action which may or may not be prevalently
communicative, may or may not be prevalently genuine when it is
communicative, and may or may not have a given degree of consciously
anticipated or expected effects, consequences or outcomes.

Your quotation of Habermas above is taken from the longer quotation in
your previous paragraph. Habermas “begins”: “"I count as communicative
action those linguistically mediated interactions....” Habermas doesn’t
say: I count as *communication* those....; rather, communication is one
kind of action--the kind of action that concerns Habermas--within
interactions that may be mediated in various ways--may even be
communicative in various ways. But “I count as communicative action
those linguistically mediated interactions....” Habermas, of course,
strives to see a maximization of the organization of interaction by
linguistic means, in the sense of linguistic language (not all of
semiotics!) that his theory of communicative action elaborates
profoundly. And he strives to see
action-oriented-to-reaching-understanding prevail over action oriented
to success.

Inasmuch as *linguistically* mediated interaction is the kind at hand (a
“natural kind,” I might add), it would be aims of action pertaining to
the components of speech acts that would prevail in the aims of
interaction *mediated* linguistically. Though all speech acts have a
perlocutionary *aspect* (as well as illocutionary and locutionary
aspects), linguistic *aims* of ACTION may or may not be oriented to
reaching understanding (“illocutionary aim”) or success (“perlocutionary
aim”).

My earlier characterization of the difference between illocutionary and
perlocutionary, to which you are responding, <U> 3/5, indicated a
difference between (a) relationship and (b) orientation to
understanding, which is not directly relevant to your exactly apt point
relative to Ken’s reaction to you, your point being that the
appropriate  “logic” of discursive flow comes from the binding/bonding
force of communicative action.

While such boundedness, if you will, is represented by solidarity,
solidarity is not the primary kind of belonging to which communicative
action most pertains; primarily, it is kindredness, intimacy and
friendship from which solidarity derives and is possible (I would argue,
in Habermasian terms of the lifeworld). Someone with a weak (or
problematic) sense of friendship will have special difficulty
understanding solidarity. Someone with a weak sense of kindredness will
have special difficulty understanding friendship. And a problematic
sense of intimacy causes special difficulty in friendship.

Action oriented to reaching understanding provides for openness in this
continuum, in accord with the genuine telos of relationships which are
always contextual (“context-dependent,” as you aptly indicated to Ken
[<Understanding>, 3/2]), while the telos of understanding itself is
primordially Open.

So, your fine comments to Ken were an invitation to focus on the nature
of communicative relations themselves, which is a dear concern of mine,
and in the pursuit of which (such diction!) I will always be, along with
all others, a student.

In your comments to Ken, though, your attention was guided by a sense of
action oriented to success. Not surprisingly, then, the prospect that
understanding might be the telos of language wouldn’t become evident.
This is not directly relevant to your point to Ken, since there you are
trying to avoid metaphysical overtones by emphasizing the
context-dependency that “telos” (better to talk about intentions) may
have. Therefore, “this doesn’t show that understanding is the telos of
language” (<U>, 3/2). Rather it indicates that understanding can figure
into action oriented to success. A perlocutionary aim may involve the
state of affairs of a given understanding that is to be conveyed.

But the content of understanding in action *oriented to reaching*
understanding is an emergent character of the interaction, not a content
framed in advance by an aim to make shared a preceding  content
understood by one party (as pertains to instruction). But the difference
between understanding brought to interaction and understanding resulting
from interaction is always a difficult differentiation--one that only
the participants can pursue, inasmuch as it matters what was “mine” vs.
what is “ours” (No good teacher reduces teaching to lecturing, and no
good course remains unaffected in its outcomes by the genuine engagement
of its better students).

Thus, though understanding can be a means to an end, the character of
communicative action is obscured by indicating that “illocutionary
effects are...a means to achieving perlocutionary effects” (3/2).
Illocutionary *aims* of action--attending to the linguistic relationship
of interaction--may achieve the perlocutionary effect of mutual
attendance to the linguistic relationship of interaction; but
perlocutionary effects (for the hearer) pertain to any speech act, as do
illocutionary effects (quality of relationship). The illocutionary
effect of speaking to you is usually that you freely give me your
attention; i.e., a genuine relationship is invoked or educed. The
perlocutionary effect of that *may* be that you feel imposed upon (It’s
a bad day). One might *aim* to impose on you by speaking to you, in
which case the imposer’s illocutionary aim of educing a relationship
with you serves a prevailing hidden perlocutionary aim of upsetting you
(By the way, you are mistaken in asserting, <U>, 3/5, that  “bringing
about a relationship between speakers is also a perlocutionary effect of
a speech act....” If this is Austin, not Habermas, then the worse for
Austin). But you might not be upset; the perlocutionary effect of the
other’s illocutionary aim of speaking to you might be heard as a genuine
attempt on the other’s part to have a conversation with you. From the
perspective of a hidden agenda, the other’s illocutionary aim is
normatively objectionable (he is an imposer); from the perspective of
your hearing a genuine attempt to communicate, his speaking to you seems
quite acceptable. Not feeling imposed upon, but not having time to talk,
you courteously say you have ‘no time to talk now, yet how about...’.
But, if you heard the other as he intended (to impose), you might curtly
say you have no time to talk now, and leave it at that. But all this
guessing about How One Is Likely To Act easily becomes specious outside
of actual scenes of interaction (or reports of actual scenes).

Within a success-oriented frame of mind, the “force of the better
argument is ultimately still *force*” (you,<U>, 3/2). But for action
oriented to understanding, the better argument has the *effect* of being
persuasive. In a strategized setting of debate, the better argument has
force *because* it better affects the views of open-minded persons; the
argument better *effects* a view or change in view. This, of course,
opens up an entirely different dimension of what open-mindedness *is*.
Issues of linguistic competence, freedom from distortions of “reading,”
fidelity to truthfulness, etc., can come into play with a claim that the
actually better argument has not been appreciated. The unconvinced may
insist upon the freedom to ignore good sense (not to mention standards
of evidence, norms implied by one’s performances, assumptions of
good-faith intent), which brings the unconvincing other (with the
allegedly better argument) to possibly have to adjust  interaction to
account for the unconvinced’s confusion or even immaturity (if
not--alas-- symptomatic behavior).

I agree with you, then, that, in a sense, “all that is important to
Habermas is that the effects of force are achieved through argumentative
rather than overtly strategic means,” (<U>, 3/2), granting that
“effects” are not reduced to “force” in a basically behavioral sense.
Being convinced cannot be forced. It can only be effected or educed, as
Socrates exemplified (notwithstanding the classical need for a “therapy
of desire” [Martha Nussbaum] that Hellenistic ethics performed).

As postings by Ken have shown, a focus on the primacy of solidarity
causes difficulties for a self formative sensibility. In accord with
comments above here, I think it’s important to disagree with you that
“Habermas's project, I think, is ultimately just to account for and
prescribe a remedy to the failure of solidarity in modern societies...”
(<U>, 3/2). His project is at *least* this, to be sure, which is enough
for your point contra Ken. But the primacy of developmental concerns in
Habermas’ work doesn’t imply the communicative primacy of the political
notion of solidarity. If anything is ultimate for Habermas, it is the
evolutionarity of our form of life, which is presently an ongoing
Project of Modernity, in which he is most concerned to contribute not
remedially, but originally. Accordingly, a focus on solidarity (usually
counterpoised to the existentially abstract notion of justice in the
theory of democracy) plays into Ken’s basic misconception of Habermas’
philosophical project.

We--all students of the human sciences and humanities--should understand
communication in accord with the whole lifeworld context of
understanding itself, of course, which involves a continuum of civility,
solidarity, friendship, kindredness, and intimacy. As a Habermasian in
the fullest sense (I hope), I don’t look to Habermas to do all the work
for me (as Ken evidently expects of Habermas). *Because* I am a
Habermasian in the fullest sense (ideally, anyway), I  look to work with
him, not (like Ken) to have Habermas work for me. To me, your sense of
solidarity conveyed to Ken arises from a deeper sense of relationship
than mere solidarity, for there is more to fellowship than solidarity,
and you more than once show a fine sense of fellowship (though your
paragraph, <U> 3/5, about what “Habermas should have said” is quite
ingenuous, you must agree, and is best forgotten).

You write: “Still, I take the really important point in his whole
discussion of Austin to be this:  "What Austin calls *perlocutionary
effects* arise from the fact that illocutionary acts are embedded in
contexts of interaction" (TCA I 289).  What he means, I think, is that
you can't do anything else by speaking unless your speech is first
understood.” I agree that this is a really important point, but I
disagree with your interpretation of it (which relates to a larger issue
of the difference between communicative and instrumental action, which
you address with Ken in a later posting). The point here is that given
illocutionary acts are embedded in contexts of action, which may or may
not be prevalently illocutionary. What Austin calls perlocutionary
effects--pertaining to perlocutionary aims (in a notion of
perlocutionary acts that is confused) arise from the actuality of levels
of intentionality.

This corrective--presuming I’m acting constructively here--all the more
bolsters your shift of attention to the notion of performative
contradiction. Though, I don’t know what you’re referring to by
indicating “his ‘performative contradiction’ line of argument,” I quite
agree that “pursuing strategic goals to the detriment of pursuing
understanding only undercuts your ability, in the long run, to achieve
your strategic goals.” However, there is a difference between
performative contradiction (pertaining to interactive, public
undermining of one’s *evident* stance) and self-defeating activity
(pertaining usually to what’s not interactively evident), which your
comment seems to basically represent. I note this--knowing I may be
wrong--because the notion of performative contradiction doesn’t seem to
be clear in other postings this past week by several persons.

Performative contradiction pertains to an incommensurability between the
assumptions of one dimension of communicative action and the assumptions
of another. If I assert my affection for you angrily, we have an evident
performative contradiction. If I ask for your view of an issue only to
get a instrumental advantage over you (knowing how you intend to vote,
so that I can determine whether I need to organize your constituency
against you), we have a *non-evident* performative contradiction, an
exploitation of my cooperativeness for your tactical advantage.

Performative contradiction at the level of argument has been attributed
to Ken very frequently, so it’s charming now that he’s so liable to find
it in “Habermas’s” own arguments. [Let me say in passing that Ken this
past week is making claims about Habermas that he made several months
ago in interchanges with me, and at that time he admitted that his basic
assumptions about Habermas were unfounded. Now, he’s back with many of
the same claims (more or less), so I’m not optimistic about Antti’s
yeoman efforts to counter Ken’s views. I surmise that Ken’s got himself
committed to a dissertation strategy that he doesn’t want to
fundamentally revise, in which case his performances here are just
cut-and-pastes, more or less, from his strident notes. I regret to say I
believe he is not genuinely open to other’s views (and has an ingenuine
interest in Habermas’ work, not because he misreads--don’t we all!--but
because he responds dissociatively to others’ careful attention to him,
Antti’s posting of 3/5, re: question-begging, being my case in point).]

Anyway, I agree with you that “you..can't maintain your communicative
relationship unless you understand others and make yourself understood
in turn (or at least give your partners enough of an indication that
you're trying),” just as: “you can’t make yourself understood unless you
create a communicative relationship” (me, 3/2). “It works both ways”
(you, 3/5).

Though, again, I disagree with you that “Habermas’ fundamental problem
is...’Why is social solidarity breaking down?...,’” I quite agree with
your picture of why social solidarity has broken down and the importance
Habermas gives to communication for this important problem. Just as
important, though, is the problem of innovating viable solutions to
traditional social problems, solidarity or no. One could argue--as many
in the New Left did--that a failure of leadership led to the
disintegration of progressive movements in the face of social
complexity, such that one say that the fundamental problem was the self
understanding of leading voices in these movements (fraught with dreams
of public power, military images of logistics, and nineteenth century
notions of class).  Not to open a can of worms, but the fundamental
problem might be onto-theological as well.

You write (<U> 3/5)--as if you were Ken?-- “Why should I care about
understanding?” My answer is more than: In fact you *do* (MyGod, you’ve
read this far!). In keeping with my contention that solidarity is one
degree of relationship in a continuum from civility to intimacy, “I”
care about understanding because it is in my nature to learn (I assert
this precious view with research from clinical infant studies in mind;
Daniel Stern, _The Interpersonal World of the Infant_, Basic Books,
1985). A disinterest in understanding is always a symptom of deeper
problems with learning, calling for clinical interpretation.

Inasmuch as your “grasp on Habermas is shakey,” may I and everyone on
this list revel in a fellowship of shakiness.

You write (<U> 3/5): “I'm not sure, though, that my difficulties with
Habermas as you have identified them (assuming that they are
difficulties:) are hermeneutical so much as exegetical.”

I’m interested in focusing further on this distinction. Inasmuch as
hermeneutics is a translational issue (in the broadest sense) and
exegesis is representational, what makes hermeneutical perspectives
especially relevant to the human sciences is the degree to which
representation is always a translational matter. Such a theme has been
basic to the growth of so-called “cultural studies” curricula in the
past decade, I think.

Let culturalists take to heart your closing point, 3/5: “...the
important thing as far as Habermas is concerned is not that we actually
get to a state of full and complete understanding....The important thing
is that we *try*:  that we show each other that we respect each other
enough to try to understand and make ourselves understood to each
other.”

Thank you again for you comments, which have motivated this long
posting.

Gary





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