File spoon-archives/habermas.archive/habermas_2000/habermas.0011, message 79


Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 12:34:19 -0600
From: Bill Hord <hord_b-AT-hccs.cc.tx.us>
Subject: Re: HAB: Re: What are institutions?


Gary, 

First, you say that intentionality is included in Habermas's account of
speech acts.  When I perform a speech act, I "tacitly claim to genuinely
intend" something--according to Habermas, on your account.  Yet, in the
essay on Searle, Habermas distinguishes two views of speech acts,
calling Searle's 'intentionalist' and his own 'intersubjectivist.'  The
intentionality involved in Searle's account is this: when I promise
successfully, I must succeed in getting the promisee to recognize my
intent to make a promise.  If, for example, I promise in English when
the promisee only understands German, I have not made a felicitous
promise, even if I fully intend and am able to do what I meant to
promise--even if I later do it, I have not 'kept my promise.'  Or, if I
say the words, and she understands them, etc., but I didn't mean to
follow through, I have successfully used the promising institution to
deceive her, but I have not made a felicitous promise.

Habermas denies the significance of intentionality in this sense.  As
far as I can understand it, he believes that the meaning of my promise
emerges later, when it achieves felicitous uptake by my promisee.  Your
argument only shows, if I am correct, that Habermas's position so far
stated is incoherent.  If I am wrong, I'm happy to be confused.  But
there is no denying that H wants to distinguish his position from one he
calls 'intentionalist.'

Second, you claim that Habermas's position is more clearly stated. 
Habermas writes that, in adopting the intersubjectivist position, "the
intentionalist description is replaced not only by a more complex (and
vaguer) one, but by a different conceptualization" (p. 17 of 17-29 in
Lepore & Van Gulick, 1991; I would cite Habermas 1998 but I don't have
it on hand).  Farther down the same page: "the intentionalist can
provide a more elegant explanation on the basis of fewer assumptions
because he grounds the phenomenon of communication in the general
conditions for the successful performance of intentional actions." 
(Compare this, also, with your point about the intentionality of
actions: Habermas is here distinguishing his own position from the one
you attribute to him.)  Habermas clearly says that his account is more
complex, vaguer, and less elegant than Searle's, but (he implies) it's
worth the trouble because it's better in other respects.

Third, you characterize Searle's theory as 'egoistic.'  I suppose this
could be an attack on Searle himself.  I am not interested in defending
the man.  If it is intended to characterize his theory, I think it's
mistaken, inasmuch as Searle has shown considerable interest in
accounting for individual actions in terms of social facts (such as
language, institutions, collective intentions, etc.).

Finally, I think difficulties can be mysterious in several real
(literal) senses--we can be initiated into the secrets of the mystery;
but also in the sense of being unexplained.  I do think that
clarifications should, by their nature, dispel mystery in this
sense--they should do away with the unexplained.

Bill

Gary Davis wrote:
> 
> >From: Bill Hord <hord_b-AT-hccs.cc.tx.us>
> ....
> >
> 
> >Habermas's view does not include intentionality.
> 
> GD: This is false. Speech acts are actions. All actions are intentional. The
> always at-least-tacit validity claim to genuineness expresses one of the
> three basic validity dimensions of every speech act--the dimension of
> subjectivity and intentionality--that Habermas has indicated in every
> account of the validity basis of speech that he has offered over the past
> quarter century. In a typical speech act, I tacitly claim to genuinely
> intend what my speech act lexically indicates (illocutionary force is that
> of the speaker's intent; s/he is not posturing or performing a role in a
> script). In speaking, one is using language, not merely mentioning it.
> 
> BH: Certainly Searle's account of speech acts is the most clearly stated (H
> acknowledges this as well).
> 
> GD: Certainly not. Habermas' [inter]subjective theory of communicative
> action is incomparable to Searle's egoistic theory.
> 
> ....
> 
> BH: How does Habermas account for the fact that by making certain sounds he
> makes a promise, creating a real obligation for himself?  .... To say that
> his claim to be promising is valid if he is in a position (is authorized by
> a norm) to promise doesn't get us very far.
> 
> GD: I may make a promise because one recognizes what promise-making is.
> Whether I really made the promise rather than postured depends on whether I
> am performing the speech act genuinely, i.e., that I really intend to
> promise. I am in a position to make a promise not by normative
> authorization, but by self-possession or maturity: Am I able to follow
> through on my own commitment to the other? Are my commitments credible, as a
> matter of my own life management? And so on, pertaining to my reliability.
> The institutionality of promise-keeping is useful for a very
> non-institutional understanding about commitment to some state of affairs to
> be actualized later that is in my control to actualize.
> 
> BH: Habermas admits that his theory is more complex and vague than Searle's.
>   Mysterious would be another good description.
> 
> GD: There is nothing vague about Habermas' sense of communicative action.
> Complex, yes, because communicative action is complex.
> 
> BH: On the most pragmatic level, until H can take a lot of the mystery out
> of his account, it can do very little real work.  One area that could be
> much clearer is the relationship of speech acts to human institutions(and
> social practices more generally).
> 
> GD: I heartily vote 'YES' for doing real work with Habermas' account. As for
> mystery, this is just metaphorical for the *difficulty* of highly worked up
> clarifications of our communicative form of life, e.g., in "What is
> Universal Pragmatics?", "Introduction" to _Theory of Communicative Action_,
> vol. 1, or the sense of institutionality in _Between Facts & Norms_.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Gary
> 
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