Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 21:50:39 -0800
Subject: HAB: Ideally discursive learning




Antti’s postings of recent have been instructive, not only because they
have been rewarding to read, but because they have been *instructive*
rather than defensive.

Habermas writes in TCA-1 (18): “The concept of *grounding* is interwoven
with that of *learning*. Argumentation plays an important role in
learning processes as well. Thus, we call a person rational who, in the
cognitive-instrumental sphere, expresses reasonable opinions and acts
efficiently....”

Ken has gone to great length to defend this sense of rationality. It
corresponds especially to the logical-semantic level of the
presuppositions of argumentation (MCCA 87).

“...[But],” Habermas continues (TCA-1), “this rationality remains
accidental if it is not coupled with the ability to learn from mistakes,
from the refutation of hypotheses and from the failure of
interventions.” This seems to correspond especially to the second level
of the presuppositions of argumentation, the “procedural level” (MCCA,
87-88). “At this level,” writes Habermas (MCCA, 87), “are located the
pragmatic presuppositions of a special form of interaction, namely
everything necessary for a search for truth organized in the form of a
competition. Examples include recognition of the accountability and
truthfulness of all participants in the search.” One is performatively
contradicting oneself at this level when one appears to be committed to
a search for truth, while being strategically motivated by concern for
one’s “Image”--concealing, perhaps, a competitive search for truth in
one’s competition to see who’s still standing at the end of a marathon,
which can even become an obsession to avoid immanent nonconcealment.

Part of the importance of Habermas’ repeated focus on learning levels in
cognitive development, learning levels in scenes of interaction, and
learning levels in organizational features of society is that
communicative interaction--axially through discourse normally labeled
“academic”--may be the medium for fostering mature autonomy in
communicative action, universalistic discourse in interactive inquiry,
and democratic openness in social organization.

Yet, only the third level of the presuppositions of argumentation
express the feature of discourse that is peculiarly oriented toward
fostering the growth of understanding: the “process” level that has been
called the ideal speaking situation. Anyone who thinks they can back
away from reason with their self-image intact would have to accept being
seen to back away from valuing the competence to speak and act, to
question, to imagine possible contributions to communicative
interaction, and the innate value of the opportunity to express oneself.
Thus, one would have to accept being seen to back away from or dismiss
situations where (MCCA, 89) “[e]very subject with the competence to
speak and act is allowed to take part in a discourse[, ...e]veryone is
allowed to question any assertion whatever[,...] introduce any assertion
whatever[, and] express [one’s] attitudes, desires, and needs.”

But nearing the ideal speech situation--the Nearing of discourse, so to
speak--also presumes the sheltering of the being of discourse: “No
speaker may be prevented, by internal or external coercion, from
exercising [her/his] rights as laid down in” the above conditions. The
degree to which this protective condition holds is always contingent,
and usually to a disappointing degree.

Such sheltering, though, is a kind of external condition for idealized
speech; whether by internal or external coercion, such protection is a
protection from inhibition. Correlate with this, and equally contingent,
is the internal protection of the integrity of discourse which arises
from the reflective application of the second level of presuppositions
to the third: not all permitted interventions, questions, assertions and
expressiveness will continue to be acceptable by others. For example,
those who persistently exploit their freedom in the face of others will
be faced with the norms of responsibility and accountability that belong
with *mature* autonomy. The strictest test of this second level is
brought by the reflective application of the first level of unavoidable
presuppositions: evaluability of one’s semantical and logical
competence.

I don’t have a problem with persons who wish to exit from the land of
science, law, and art, i.e., the EarthMind of modernity, so to speak,
for life will remain interesting enough without them.

Anyway, Habermas has never left behind his valuation of idealized
speech. He just abandoned the attempt to specify it that was indicated
in the essay “Wahrheitstheorien” (1973). Clearly, in his formulation of
discourse ethics, idealized speech remains a vital feature of discourse.

But he has never been insensitive to the realities of the lifeworld.
This can be proven from work by Habermas prior to TCA. But it’s
especially evident in “Remarks on Discourse Ethics” (which, by the way,
includes a detailed response to Wellmer, which Ken is too busy to
consult before playing fast and loose with his rhetoric). Even in the
1983 essay, Habermas notes (MCCA, 92) “Discourses...are subject to the
limitations of time and space. Their participants are not Kant’s
intelligible characters but real human beings driven by other motives in
addition to the one permitted motive of the search for truth,” which
deconstruction (of various genres) discloses through “diagnoses” of
self-underminings of narrative (narratable or narrated) performances.

In order to shelter and foster the potential of discourse, “topics and
contributions have to be organized....[I]nstitutional measures are
needed to sufficiently neutralize empirical limitations and avoidable
internal and external interference so that the idealized conditions
already always  presupposed by participants in argumentation can at
least be adequately approximated” (MCCA, 92).

Whether the real conditions adequately enough approximate the idealized
conditions or not is a matter of deliberation. “Admittedly,” writes
Habermas, BFN, 322, this difference between idealized and real
conditions “could mislead one into thinking the ‘ideal communication
community’ has the status of an *ideal* rooted in the universal
presuppositions of argumentation and able to be approximately realized.
Even the equivalent concept of the ‘ideal speech situation,” though less
open to misunderstanding, tempts one to improperly hypostatize the
system of validity claims on which speech is based. The counterfactual
presuppositions assumed by participants in argumentation indeed open up
a perspective allowing them to go beyond local practices of
justification and to transcend the provinciality of their spatiotemporal
contexts that are inescapable in action and experience. This perspective
thus enables them to do justice to the meaning of *context-transcending*
validity claims. But with context-transcending validity claims, they are
not themselves transported into the beyond of an ideal realm of noumenal
beings....On the other hand, it is legitimate to use such a projection
for a thought experiment.  The essentialist misunderstanding is replaced
by a methodological fiction in order to obtain a foil against which the
substratum of *unavoidable* societal complexity becomes visible. In this
harmless sense, the ideal communication community presents itself as a
model of ‘pure’ communicative sociation....[But such a projection] does
not detach discursive processes of reaching understanding from the bases
of communicative action but reckons on their being situated in lifeworld
contexts...” (BFN 323).

The event of appropriation that bridges lifeworld and discourse,
application and justification, is elaborated by Habermas in terms of his
ownmost discursive neighbors as the essay “Remarks on Discourse Ethics.”
I believe it would be appropriate to consider that essay to be
near-to-mind when Habermas writes (continuing with the above passage
from BFN, 324): “Settled but intersubjectively recognized norms, so long
as they at least *can* be problematized, do not make themselves felt in
the manner of external compulsions. The same holds for the symbolism of
the language and culture, as well as for the grammar of the forms of
life, in which socially related individuals find themselves. All of
these operate as enabling conditions. Lifeworld contexts certainly
constrain actors’ latitude for action and interpretation, but only in
the sense that they open up a horizon for *possible* interactions and
interpretations.”





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