Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 23:58:11 -0700 (PDT)
From: Gary E Davis <gedavis1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: HAB: the motivation problem (Tom M)



[T] Here are some quotes from the example I raised (followed by my
glosses):

[G] Thanks for taking time to reproduce the passages from Heller and
Habermas. After quoting Heller, you indicate that...

[T] I take this passage to indicate that Heller has identified the
motivation to
engage in communicative rationality as a point left unaddressed by
Habermas.

[G] I don't think this is what the passage is about. It's not about
the difference between constitutive and practical interests,
specifically quasi-transcendental conditions and emancipatory
interest. 

Heller: "The organisation of enlightenment presupposes the
emancipatory interest inside the target-group, which means two
things: the tutelage is self-imposed and the outcome from it is
intended. 

[G] Your Heller quote doesn't allow for an important distinction
between the presuppositions of organization and the presuppositions
of enlightenment. It's not the case that "the tutelage is
self-imposed," because emancipation is not a matter of tutelage; it's
a matter of *collaborative* processes of understanding and
reflection. What one might better say is that processes of
emancipation are appealing or that one is open to the appeal to
understanding and self-reflection. *Therefore*, the outcome (which
can't be known in advance, thus not intended in a deliberate sense)
is one's own (reflecting what one welcomed and accomplished on one's
own).

[Heller]  ....Readiness for emancipation is explained by the
transcendental theorem: we are rational beings, consequently we do
not *choose* rationality as a value. 

[G] This is incorrect. Readiness for emancipation is explained by the
background that creates the *desire* to overcome unhappiness and
conflict, in the spirit of, first, the therapeutic process and,
generally, developmental-educational endeavors. Heller is evidently
confusing the formal conditions for the *possibility* of
understanding and the existential conditions for the *interest* in
understanding at given times . 

[Heller] In his efforts to eliminate decisionism, he identifies a
conditional assertion with
a statement. 

[G] What is indisputable is that *there is* an identification. Is it
Heller's or is it Habermas's? The identification is between them (as
invoked by Heller) in the reading. 

[Heller] The conditional assertion is this: if we choose at all, we
cannot choose anything but rationality. 

[G] Inasmuch as one is faced with a choice between rationality and
something else, one cannot choose anything but rationality. But when
and how *is* one faced with such a choice? Name a practical situation
in which one is faced with whether or not to *be* a rational entity.
Note that this is a different issue from the one you posed: whether
or not to *interact with another* "rationally" or reasonably. Being
rational is not the same issue as acting rationally in a given case.
One may choose to not interact with the other or to interact
manipulatively. But what is it to be in a position of deciding
whether one is to be a rational entity or not?

[Heller] The statement is this: we do not choose rationality, because
we *are* rational beings. Habermas only establishes the first
(conditional) assertion, not the second one,...

[G] Really? It would seem that he *at least* establishes "the
statement", and that the consequent *condition* of decision follows
from the condition of *being*.

[Heller] ....but in fact he substitutes the second for the first. 

[G] This is not the case. Yet, I suppose that Heller has made
arguments for why she believes that this is the case, so the quote is
not enough. Anyway, it is the case that Habermas does not substitute
arguments of action for arguments of being. 

[Heller] I think, however, that these two are theoretically and
practically different statements and that the first does not prove
the second. 

[G] The first *wouldn't* prove the second, because, if anything (one
statement proving another?), it's the second that proves the first! 
Anyway, it's indeed the case that:

[Heller] We can choose the priority of instrumental or strategic
rationality over communicative rationality, and we may not choose at
all but simply follow drives, emotions or habits.  Acceptance of this
possibility would not mean relapsing into the trap of decisionism,
because it does not assert that there is a choice between rationality
and
irrationality. What it does state is that communicative rationality
is a choice, a *value-choice*. 

[G] Heller is talking about moments of action. Then:

[Heller] Our rationality, as Habermas shows, is a rationality
in-itself....

[G] This is loaded formulation that is invalid. For Habermas, our
rational being follows from the "quasi-transcendental" nature of our
cognitive form of life, as world relations that are expressed in the
linguisticality of life--as explicated in "What Is [Formal]
Pragmatics?" What's "in-itself" is our form of life that unavoidably
"stands" in 3-fold world relations, standing subjectively, standing
normatively, and standing dennotatively. 

[Heller]...but to transform it into a rationality for-itself we have
to choose communicative rationality as a value. 

[G] But under what conditions is one in the moment of such
transformation? We are alive in a 3-fold worldness that is already
always intersubjective, in part. We may choose to give priority to
objective stands or subjective stands over intersubjective stands;.
But what's going on when we supposedly may choose to deny our
intersubjectivity? What makes you think this is meaningful, let alone
something people are commonly faced with? Choosing to not talk to you
is far less that choosing to give up the capacity to talk. How would
one have the latter option, other than by mental self-mutilation
(brain-damaging drugs)? Heller evidently confuses the choice to
interact communicatively and the "choice" to be communicative.  

[Heller] The decisive question is not, as Habermas presumes, ....

[G] "...presumes..."? Where *is* the presumptiveness here?

[Heller] ...whether the target-group accepts (or transforms)
reflexive theory in and through arguments;...

[G] Whoa! She thinks that those who desire emancipation are asking
for theory?

[Heller] ... rather, the decisive question is whether it is ready for
argumentation." 

[G] No, for emancipation, decisive questions are not the appeal;
emancipatory opportunities--getting out of dependence and
despair--are the appeal. Developing toward relative autonomy to
articulate one's desires, map one's actualization of purposes, and
have equal opportunity to participate in what we accomplish, etc.
Heller is confusing emancipatory practice and metatheory. 

[Tom] I take this passage to indicate that Heller has identified the
motivation to engage in communicative rationality as a point left
unaddressed by Habermas.

[G] I don't.  The desire to communicate is born and grown from our
self-formation (which is covered extensively by Habermas, first in
terms of lifeworld practices--the Diltheyan and Freudian sections of
_KHI--then in developmental terms. In the self-formative interest of
ontogeny and identity formation--in healthy formative processes--we
naturally love to be with others. What emancipation achieves is a
*restoration* of a healthy self-formation; its "motivation" is the
natural desire to learn, to identify, and to stand in good esteem. 

Indeed,...

[Tom] ... one must still decide to engage with others morally rather
than strategically etc. ...our decision to engage or not with others
is oftentimes predicated upon questions of identity or if you will
deep commitments. 

[G] But it's a pseudo-issue to insist that....

[Tom] ...very few seek to engage in communicative conversation with
another that
they consider for whatever reason to be 'irrational' - to do so would
be a waste of time.

[G] This is a pseudo-issue because the desire or loss of desire to
communicate "speaks" to oneself usually in more specific terms of
interest, value, or promise (efficaciousness), not the special case
of being affronted by apparent irrationality or abstract decisions
about rationality altogether.  Any day on an urban street, you
witness dissociative passings of people who might greet each other
(like small-town America) but don't. In organizations, people
suppress their frustrations *and* their creative ideas, because it's
the way things go. This is not a matter of being confronted with
decisions about rationality and irrationality. 

You say, Tom, that, in Habermas's response, "[i]n this instance it
seems as if Habermas has really missed Heller's point - he confuses
the existential question with the question of a mode of life (as
noted by Gary below). 

But what *I* noted was that "You're not distinguishing the *activity*
of communication from our form of life. We can't choose to leave our
form of life, but this is an ontological kind of matter, not an
existential matter." Habermas does make this distinction, in terms of
the quasi-transcendental conditions of linguistic cognition and the
practical conditions of communicative rationality. It is *Heller*,
according to Habermas, who misreads him to be confusing [JH]
"...transcendental-pragmatic grounding of the rationality-claims
always involved in processes of consensus formation [and...] the
moment of existential decision which is, in the final analysis [for
Heller], ungrounded."

[JH]  As opposed to this, my thesis is comparatively conventional....

[G] But your long Habermas quotes are not concerned with issues of
emancipatory interest or motivation that were central to your quote
from Heller and the focus of your commentary. I'm not going to
reproduce the long JH quotes and discuss them, but I will claim that
Habermas has not made the performative contradictions that you find
in both his response to Heller and your brief quote from "Discourse
Ethics". You hold Habermas accountable, evidently, for not addressing
your issues in the quotes you choose (and your central critical
claim, toward the end, is unfortunately unconstruable). You claim
that Habermas dropped his stance about the unavoidability of stances
toward reaching understanding, but this is not credible. 

I don't think that real issues of motivation have been addressed by
your posting, but I know that issues of motivation--or desire,
interest, and need--are very important, so I'm glad you started the
thread. 

Best regards,

Gary




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