From: Antti M Kauppinen <amkauppi-AT-cc.helsinki.fi> Subject: HAB: Rocks and Gravel Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 16:14:58 +0200 (EET) Once again failing in my resolve not to step into discussions I can't adequately commit myself to, here's a few non-committal words on Martin's post, with which I otherwise largely agree. > But this being said, I would agree that a floating point in Habermas' > thought makes interpretation difficult. He refuses Apel's transcendantal > justification in respect of normative standpoints for reason. Meanwhile, he > makes a similar move when he says that agreement is the telos of language. > This, he adds, is only an ideal pragmatic presupposition since we can fairly > suppose that our meanings always differ from time to time, and from one > individual to another. But aren't those last statements as infaillible as > Apel's transcendantal grounding? By saying that such statements are only > quasi-transcendantal, Habermas leaves this question unanswered, and lets a > very grave suspicion come in by the backdoor: could it be that a particular > form of life is getting a transcendantal ticket, and therefore that a > particular contingent and historical development is suspiciously slippering > in a so-called universal moral development? There are several questions here. First, what exactly is a transcendental argument and what quasi-? And second, what is the view that Habermas actually is committed to? My own, probably simplistic, view is that the form of a strictly transcendental argument is as follows: -P-q (=Nq) N(-p=>-q) ------- Hence, Np (Using 'N' for necessity and 'P' for possibility; I believe we need modal terms to discuss transcendental issues) There are two ways to weaken this, and I believe that Habermas's argument goes through both ways. First, one could drop the impossibility of nonexistence of the first premise; in other words, and this Habermas does explicitly, argue that it is not necessary for human beings to argue or use language communicatively or whatever. Rather, it is a contingent fact that we do so. What is necessary is on this first weaker reading that *if* we use language communicatively, *then* we are committed to certain presuppositions with normative content. Correspondingly, if we were not to use language in such a manner, our social world would be a different place, and most likely unhospitable for us. On the second weak reading, the necessity in the implication of the second premise drops out. We're left with an ordinary modus tollens. Thus, it becomes a contingent, ordinary empirical fact that we make certain presuppositions when we use language communicatively; we could genuinely communicate even if we did not aim at agreement. What would still be claimed by Habermas is that we *in fact* do so, that in fact such presuppositions are constitutive of communication. Here it is essential to remember Thomas McCarthy's wisdom, mentioned here before but all too often forgotten: *universality is not the same as necessity*. It is a contingent but at the moment universal fact that every living human being has both a mother and a father. One day not too far away that could change - I recently heard that it might soon be possible for women to procreate without men. Similarly, the Habermasian claim is (on this weak transcendental reading) that at the moment the use of all natural languages is governed by the rules specified in formal pragmatics. To use Martin's expression, there is a particular form of life getting a 'transcendental' ticket -- but that form of life is one we all (and this must be extended historically) happen to share. Just to be sure, I am not saying that Habermas takes the second path here. I think the reading best supported by his texts on ethics, at least, is that given a contingent fact or form of life, certain presuppositions are (logically, as it were) necessary. (To say that they are possible would be to say nothing; the weakest sensible reading is to say that they are actual.) > By making a hard distinction betweeen moral and ethics, I think Habermas is > only aggravating his case. Speaking of this, the latest (4/2000) _Deutzsche Zeitschrift fuer Philosophie_ contains a new article by Habermas called 'Werte und Norme' (if I remember correctly). I haven't had the occasion to read it yet. Antti --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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