Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2003 16:07:21 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [HAB:] success vs. aim; meaning vs. rationality; act vs. scene


re: Antti, "Re: Commissive vs. perlocutionary speech"

Antti,

Yes, I believe I know what you mean.  

A> ...[perlocutionary act is] not a term in mainstream
speech act theory as known by non-Habermasians.

> Take illocutionary success, one bone of contention
between Habermas and Searle.  Suppose I say to you "The New
Jersey Devils won 5-1 last night" in order to inform you of
this fact. For Searle, illocutionary success would be a
matter of convention and context; if they are in order, I
have  managed to inform you, in other words, performed an
act with the intended illocutionary force. The question is
simply: what kind of act did I perform in/by saying these
words? 

G: a constative speech act?

A> But for Habermas, illocutionary success consists in
intersubjective recognition of validity claims (because
that is what the "illocutionary aim" of a speech act is,
according to  him). 

G: I disagree, though I believe I appreciate your point
that there may be evidence that Searle has a credible
accusation against JH (though, I would argue, not a valid
one). I believe that JH has a different view from what you
represent. In any case, I disagree that illocutionary
success "consists in" etc. 

It seems to me that such-and-such, which I'll indicate in a
moment. Because I presume that JH has more insight into
these matters than I, I infer that, if I'm correct in my
such-and-such disagreement, JH would agree. This attitude
has served me well in the past, as I've discovered that I
do indeed think in a Habermasian manner (not to be
self-serving, but I don't have textual documentation for my
following disagreement). 

We should take to heart the difference between
communicative action and specific speech acts that scenes
of communicative interaction contain. A speech act is
usually *nested* in communicative action, not only serially
(multiple speech acts make a sum total of a scene or period
of interaction) but as means toward actualizing guiding
intents or points (speech acts are subordinate to other
acts, in the rhetoric, if not logic, of making a point).
Illocutionary aim can be ideal-typically located in
particular speech acts, but this is ordinarily derivative
of communicative aim (scenic aim) which belongs to the
communicative action which component acts serve.
Illocutionary success, on the other hand, pertains more to
specific speech acts than to the scene. 

So, I believe that JH would agree to a distinction between
illocutionary success and aim, though a speech act can be
analytically construed apart from scenes, as if
communicative action is a single speech act.
Ideal-typically, communicative action is *like* its
model-theoretic exemplar: the speech act. 

I would also distinguish--and believe that JH does,
too--illocutionary aim from the rationality of the aim.
When we do things with words, we seek to convey something
for understanding or appreciation. We are not normally in
the mode of *justifying* what we convey, and logically
can't do so simultaneously with the conveyance of
understanding. 

Speech acts imply a validity basis, but we don't normally
talk in order to be seen as justified (We comfortably may
presume this between each other, except in scenes intended
to address the questionability of this). To do otherwise is
normally considered defensive or expressive of some
communicative problem. Unproblematic communication is not
always in the mode of insecurity or risk of baselessness. 

So, the real difference between specific acts and the scene
of activity is indicated in a distinction between success
and aim. The real difference between non-problematic and
problematic communication is indicated in a distinction
between action and the implied rationality of that action. 

A> Intuitively, I can inform you of something even if you
do not accept what I say as true. 

G: Can you? Ken MacKendrick a couple of days ago asserted a
citation as backing for a point he made, but the citation
didn't exist. Was I informed of anything by his assertion
until I questioned it? Or was I just not informed of
anything at all? (Presumably, Ken believed that what he
asserted was true.) It's more than plausible that:

A>...  It is, of course, still plausible that I have
*successfully* informed you only if you come to believe
what I said, and this is the intuition that Habermas seems
to be following.

G: Indeed, you can use information in a false assertion and
unwittingly, genuinely intend that I consider myself
informed via that assertion, but succeeding with an
informational speech act can serve several larger contexts
of communicative action, including I be informed, but also
perhaps that I recognize that you believe that
such-and-such (rather than something else), or even that
you are self-deceptively manipulating me (if not
maliciously doing so, i.e., with conscious intent. But
*I*'m not paranoid---as this story goes---rather I just
don't believe what you say, and have no idea whether you
believe it, too). 

So, if you assert something for the sake of informing me,
and I do not accept what you say as true, your
illocutionary success (I understand what you're saying) is
not accomplishing your illocutionary aim!

A> If you don't believe me and get into trouble, I can
later say "You have nothing to complain about, you were
informed".

G: Someone acting in an official capacity would say that.
But that presumes that what you say is reliable *because*
you are participating in a duly authorized scene of fair
warning or some such. *Normally*, if I get into trouble
because I didn't believe you, I can indeed complain that I
had good reason for not regarding your statement as true,
if not complaining that there was good reason to not regard
you as reliable, and that you're culpable for that (though,
before being harmed, I would just let your unreliability go
uncontested). 

In short, speech acts normally participate in scenes of
communicative action. Success serves an aim; the two are
not the same. 

A> In that case it is not constitutive of performing an
illocutionary act that it achieves intersubjective
recognition..... 

G: I'd say (claiming to speak for JH) that intersubjective
recognition belongs to the understanding of meaning, rather
to the implicature of validity bases. Though indeed, to
know the meaning of a speech act includes knowing what its
implied validity basis is, the tacitity of the latter (in
fluid interaction) is distinct from the explicitity of the
former. Knowing the validity basis of your assertion
doesn't mean that I'm constantly questioning everything you
say (or if it does, *you're* the one in trouble). 

So, it IS "constitutive of performing an illocutionary act
that it achieves intersubjective recognition," but *not*
constitutive that the act is received as questionable. 

A> [For] Habermas .... It is not enough that you come to
believe what I  said,....

G: There's a difference between understanding what you say
and believing it. Meaning is not the same as
truth-functionality. "I know what you mean, but I haven't
decided whether or not I believe it. After all, I DO know
I've never been abducted by extraterrestrials, but I love
your story!"

However, if I come to believe it, this will be because
I....

A> ... recognize the validity claims inherent in my
utterance.
 
G: So, let me use *your* words now, to say (with my own
meaning of 'this') that: 

A> In something like this manner, communicative rationality
 is immanent in illocutionary aims. 

So, for different reasons, I fully agree with you that:

A> ...[I]n going beyond the modest constitutive analysis
offered by traditional speech act theory, Habermas also
goes beyond mere conceptual analysis and adds substantive
normative content into the concepts.

A> [I have] sketched three possible senses of
"illocutionary success": performing a speech act with the
intended illocutionary force, ...

G: Note that illocutionary force is an analytical notion.
When I talk, I'm not per se performing a speech act; I'm
telling you something. Analytically, my speaking can be
classified as a speech act with at least two illocutionary
components: a performative intent that has a specifiable
force. But it's not unfair to your first sense to just say
that there are speech acts. We don't intend illocutionary
force apart from the performance. 

A> ...[2] inducing the corresponding perlocutionary effect
in the hearer, 

G: If this is a second possibility, then it's more than
just any speech act, since all speech acts have a
perlocutionary component. "Inducing" an effect requires
that you regard your given speech act as serving a
communicative intent to get a specific effect. Here the
speech act is a means within a tactical communicative
action. 

A> ...and [3] getting the hearer accept the validity claims
raised. 

G: To do that, you must have a second speech at as the
propositional content of your current one. So here, the
given speech act serves a communicative scene of
justification. 

Your three possibilities here are: ordinary communicative
action (oriented toward understanding), instrumental
action, and justification. 

A> Habermas needs the third of these to show that
communicative rationality is part and parcel of language
use, but what can he say to an opponent who insist on the
first or second alternative? 

G: He would say, more or less, that a tacit claim to
justifiability is implied by ordinary conveyance, and
knowing what you mean implies that I have an available
sense of what the validity basis of your meaning is. My
acceptance of what you say (in your unreflective flow of
conversation) may be unrelated to your sense of
justifiability, but that usually doesn't matter. I'm a
therapist (let's say), and you're a UFO group member, and
we can talk about this just fine without worrying right now
about our background views on the matter. Believe me, I
*understand* (I think---or if I'm wrong, we're both in
trouble. Or else: Beam me up!).  

G>>I see no reason not to admit [perlocutionary] acts into
speech act theory and thus to give them a name perlocutions
or perlocutionary speech acts. 

A> It is possible, but also possibly very misleading, since
Austin (and others following him) use "perlocution" for the
act of persuading or convincing someone or getting someone
to do something by saying something.

G: But the "act" of persuading isn't done with single
speech acts. It takes a communicative scene. What's
misleading is *not* the inclusion of perlocutionary speech
into theory, but the confinement of communicative action
theory to the ideal-typical speech act---in short:
pragmatics without rhetoric. I told Habermas in 1980 that
rhetoric belongs to what he's doing, along with pragmatics
in his theory of language. Communicative action cannot be
fairly theorized within pragmatics. It requires a
rhetorical focus. He agreed. And you see in _Theory of
Communicative Action_ (not by my doing, surely) that a
theory of argument is distinguished from other features of
the theory. Austin would be the first to lament the decline
of rhetoric in the university, and I'm pleased to see the
re-ascendence of this discursive formation (which seems to
have plateaued in the U.S.).

---------------------------
You say that:

A> ...[I]n... 'Some Further Clarifications of the Concept
of Communicative Rationality'... he speaks of
"perlocutions" as [something that] cannot be rationally
disputed....

G: But you then contradict yourself, apparently:

A> His example is "You act like a pig!" - to be sure, you
can dispute it ("No, I don't!"), but that is beside the
point. 

G: To my blind date, this would not be beside the point,
not to mention to the point of my indignity. So, yes
indeed, the insult can be disputed or, as JH writes (via
English---he corrects translations before they're
published, by the way) "challenged" (331). The
communicative action which employs the insult can be
challenged re: "the lack of truthfulness of the declaration
of intention [presuming you didn't want to be insulting,
just rib me jealously, because my blind date is a babe] and
the lack of truth of the existential presupposition"
(ibid.), presuming I have no sense of humor or you're
mentally retarded and need to know what a pig is (JH is
actually addressing another perlocution at this quoted
point, but this applies to the "swine" statement, too). The
illocutionary components of the perlocution can be
"negated", as well as "the context presupposed by the
speaker."

I would add that normally, perlocutions don't occur without
contexts of action, such that the instrumentality of intent
implies a truth-functional claim that there is a
specifiable success intended, and one can dispute that such
a success is likely to occur (or even demonstrate that it
won't occur), which point JH makes, i.e., instrumental
actions necessary implicate themselves in contexts that
carry validity claims. There are normally no instrumental
actions that don't imply a background context that depends
on validity claims. "In such a case," JH writes (if I may
piggyback on his interest in swindle), " the
[perlocutionary] speech act is not strictly speaking
*contested*; rather it is simply explained why the intended
effect will not occur...."

Now we get to the statement that you provide as evidence
(in German) that:

A> "perlocutions" do not, according to [JH], raise validity
claims,....

JH> Only illocutionary acts that can be *valid* or
*invalid* can be contested" (ibid.).

G: Yet, the point he has been making up to this point is
that perlocutions have illocutionary components. Moreover,
his attention to context accords with my distinction
between the speech act and its scene of communicative
action (a point I made above before I looked up your
quote). So, there is validity implicature inside and
outside the perlocution. 

One can validly say that perlocutions are presumably
rational and can be disputed because they're parasitic on
communicative action. It is not the case that:

A> This sort of speech act in a way openly flouts the
demands of justifiability or appropriateness; they wear, as
it were, their invalidity on their sleeves.

G: On the contrary, perlocutionary action may be
justifiable and appropriate. Didactic, directive, and
instructional activity is often justifiable, because it
implies and is comprised by illocutionary activity and
aspects. Yet, you're clearly correct that 

A> They [i.e., illocutionary and perlocutionary acts]
simply have a different role in language.

G: Nonetheless:

G> > All speech acts participate in the validity basis of
speech. [...]




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