Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 13:17:00 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: HAB: (U) and (D)


Hi--It's good to see some activity here, but, since it's getting repeated,
I (Vic) did NOT say that the "legitimating force" of agreements depends on
the fortuitous existence of certain competences, values, and attitudes.
What I said and later reiterated was that actually reaching agreements in
discourse and implementing their results in practice both depend for their
success on these competences, values, and attitudes.  The legitimating
force of these agreements comes, I think, from the sufficiently ideal
conditions of discourse under which these agreements may be reached, even 
if actual success in reaching the agreements (and realizing them) does
depend on many contingent factors, not least on participants sufficiently 
possessing these qualities.

I included "attitudes" for precisely the reason Matt mentions: discourse
participants must take a communicative, not a strategic, attitude if their
agreement is to be a genuine consensus.  In the previous paragraph I
committed myself to the view that the justificatory force of agreements
derives entirely from discursive conditions, but here I wonder whether the
communicative attitude of discourse participants is also a basis, not
merely of achieving agreements, but of the justificatory force of the
agreements achieved.  I need to think more about this--help is welcome.
A start is to ask 1) whether an agreement reached noncoercively and under
all the other conditions of discourse EXCEPT that the participants take a
strategic attitude would still count as a rational justification.  2) Is
it enough to comply with the rules of discourse but not in keeping with
their spirit, so to speak?  3) Does taking a communicative attitude imply
compliance with the rules of discourse, but not vice-versa?  My sense is
to say yes to #3 and no to #2, but #1 troubles me: To be consistent with
what I said in the first paragraph, I would have to say, yes, an
agreement reached under discursive conditions but among strategically
acting parties (who, technically, would not then be called "participants"
by Habermas) WOULD count as a rational justification.  I would then say
that, as with other characteristics (e.g., competences, values, etc.) if
parties to discourse take a communicative attitute toward each other they
are more likely to succeed (see below) but, just as this does not
guarantee success, neither does it preclude success.  And the agreement
successfully so reached would have justificatory force, despite the
strategic attitudes of the participants.  This is my view, but I am a bit
hesitant about it.  This way of thinking about is does have the benefit of
being a more readily realizable ideal, since the demands of discourse are
less exacting when some or all participants can behave strategically
within the rules.  But if we go back to first principles, which in my view
is that the rules of discourse are the conditions of argumentation under
which agreements provide warrants for the rational acceptability of
validity claims and as such are implied by the meaning of the act of
raising a claim (or objection) in argumentative praxis, then (sort of
simply put) the meaning of a claim to validity is those affected would
agree if only they took a communicative attitude and genuinely entered
into the give-and-take of reason.  Even if the claim turns out to be
wrong (or at any rate fails to reach agreement), this is its performative
meaning for the utterer.  This is consistent with taking the communicative
attitude of discourse participants as a sort of shorthand for arguing
within the rules of discourse, in which case even strategic argumentation
within the rules would suffice.  But my hesitancy stems from the fact that
taking a communicative attitude is more than strategically arguing within
the rules of discourse, and since the former is tied to the touchstone
meaning of raising validity claims, the latter would seem to be an
inadequate substitute.  Now that I have clarified the contours of my
confusion, someone set me strait! 

Against Fred, I would say that the success of participants in
discourses and the success of discourses in practice does depend on the
happenstance of values being shared at least to some, perhaps minimal,
extent.  I have already argued for why these values are not thereby
privileged by the discourse procedure to whose success they are
nonetheless vital.  And in a previous post I have suggested a partial list
of what values are needed to achieve and implement discursive
agreements.  (By the way, since then I have noticed that Bill Rehg's essay
in _Habermas: Critical Debates_ [and also in the _Cardozo Law Review_
issue on BFN] discusses these issues as well--not to say he agrees with
me or even puts things in the same terms, of course.) I want to insist
that the need for these shared values does not betray an elitism, using 
manners to exclude lower classes from discourse.  If it did, this of
course would run counter to the egalitarianism of
discursive justification (i.e., the ability of all affected to participate
and take a yes or no position on contested validity claims).  Before I was
convinced by the force of the stronger argument (as I refer to my
"conversion" to Habermas), I had similar concerns about the seeming
elitism of communicative competences (in fact, Habermas's stuff on
Kohlberg still rubs me the wrong way a bit).  The crucial thing to realize
here, I think, is that to say certain competences, values, "virtues"
and the like are necessary IF PARTICIPANTS ARE GOING TO SUCCEED IN
REACHING AGREEMENT IN DISCOURSE (and if such agreements are going to be
implemented successfully) is NOT to require people to possess these
characteristics in order to enter into discourse.  The latter would be
arbitrarily exclusionary, but the former is merely a PREDICTION that
discursive success is not likely to be achieved without these
characteristics, although even then it's still possible.  A practical
problem is how to foster these characteristics often needed for actual
discursive success without privileging them--my answer (again) is that
these values would have to hold their own in discursive testing (and I
don't think the circularity here is vicious, since we have to start from
where we are and with what we've got).  I say that some (minimal) shared
values are needed, but I do not presume they are always available.
Insofar as they are not extant, we're in serious trouble.

On a further but related point Fred makes, I do think that some degree of
shared values in necessary for actual discursive success and that simply
sharing interests is not sufficient.  I think Habermas's criticism of
Hobbesian contractualists' attempts to solve the problem of social order
bears out this view.  Too simply put, agreements are always parasitic on
some (perhaps clandestine) antecedent solidarity (trust) among contracting
parties, who could never reach agreement simply on the premises of
self-interest and instrumental rationality.  [I may be over my head with
this rational choice stuff--Joe, if you're there and have time, maybe you
can comment on this for us.]

Finally, I did not say that Habermas maintains that justification
"undermines" motivation.  The word is "underdetermines," and while this is
simply a careless error which I let pass the first time, I'm mentioning it
now because it's being repeated and attributed to me.  I haven't seen
Habermas use the term "underdetermines" in this context, but I used it to
refer to what he calls the "weak motivating force of good reasons" in his
discussions of "weakness of will."  Habermas is a Kantian internalist on
motivation, since reasons are motives for action, but he is realistic
about the efficacy of reasons which in practice do not always determine
the will but are often outweighed (though not in any justificatory sense)
by other motives.

With a weak will but a communicative attitude,
Vic Peterson



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