Subject: Re: [HAB:] There is no naturalism or systemism in Habermas's work
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 15:23:17 -0500


Hi Gary,

I did not read the whole discussion between you and Matt, but I wonder, why 
no one mentioned (or did I miss something?), that Habermas _himself_ says, 
that he defends a so called "schwachen Naturalismus" (weak naturalism). In 
his introduction to Truth and Justification he explains en detail what he 
means with "schwachem Naturalismus". So, the question is not, does Habermas 
use naturalistic arguments, since he says that himself. The question is 
rather: what does that mean and what consequences does it have f.e. for his 
moral pilosophy.
In my dissertation I asked the question, if there are metaphysical 
implications in the discourse ethics of Habermas and I came to a point, 
where it comes down to the question: what is the meaning of Habermas' 
schwachem Naturalismus and what kind of consequences does this have.

Daniel

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gary E. Davis" <coherings-AT-yahoo.com>
To: <habermas-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2004 10:51 PM
Subject: [HAB:] There is no naturalism or systemism in Habermas's work


> Matt,
>
> In wondering about your sense of Habermas's sense of
> system (or system modeling or "systemworld"), I went
> to the section of your thesis discussion of this, pp.
> 276ff. This caused me to seek out other contexts and
> led to some interesting discoveries, including your
> noting of Habermas's introduction of "Karl Buhler's
> organon model of communication...[which] leads away
> from the cybernetic model of the process of linguistic
> communication" (215), yet another reason-along with
> JH's critique of Niklas Luhmann-for why you might have
> suspected that there's nothing cybernetic about JH's
> sense of systemic modeling. The formal pragmatic basis
> of his communicative-action-theoretic prioritization
> of processes of reaching understanding over processes
> of success-which is so pivotal for you (rightly so) in
> your story of  JH's critique of social pathologies-has
> nothing cybernetic about it, not even at its
> linguistic-theoretical roots.
>
> I also discovered that-I regret to say-you've quite
> misconstrued what JH means by "pretheoretical"
> competences. This is not a biologistic matter for JH.
> You write:
>
> M> Habermas's allegiance to naturalism is evident when
> he makes it clear that his inquiry is directed towards
> uncovering the biologically deep-seated bases of human
> communication. This is what Habermas means when he
> writes of the "pretheoretical knowledge of competent
> speakers."
> (1995: 1.286) [227]
>
> G: But competence results from development; it's not
> in any way suggestive of something innate. What is
> deep-seated is our cognitivity, which JH addresses in
> "What Is Universal Pragmatics?" Pretheoretical
> knowledge is knowledge which has resulted from an
> individuation and is not relativized to theoretical
> frames (while methodological inquiry is so
> relativized), such as ordinary knowledge in the
> lifeworld. A "competent speaker" results from
> developmental learning processes. So, whatever might
> be said about the biological correlates of our
> cognitivity, that's a separate matter from the
> ontogenic status of a competence (or capability).
>
> On the previous page of your thesis, p. 226, you state
> that "Habermas claims his communicative reason is a
> 'natural' form of reason," based (via footnote) on a
> passage from David Ingram. But Ingram-among the few
> good readers of Habermas, in my view (while Dieter
> Henrich is *not*)-is talking about something very
> non-biologistic-non-naturalistic; Ingram is talking
> about something *historical*. At the page that you
> cite (Ingram, in Hahn, ed. _Perspectives on Habermas_,
> 293), Ingram writes:
>
> I> ...practical reasoning [for JH is] providing a very
> general orientation....[which is] grounded
> in...communicative competences that have evolved over
> time. Indeed, it is normative precisely in the sense
> that the mutual recognition of free and equal
> interlocutors...implies something like the liberal
> idea of universal human rights...[S]uch an orientation
> has a status very similar to classical natural law: it
> [i.e., JH's competence-based orientation of practical
> reasoning] shows that the bare idea of individual
> rights necessarily follows from the "natural" (or
> unavoidable) conditions of modern-freely negotiated
> rather than traditionally habituated-association.
>
> G: What's unavoidable about freely negotiated
> association-we know from "What Is Universal
> Pragmatics?"-is its embeddedness in communicative
> competences, which express unavoidable presuppositions
> of speech: cognitive relations between dimensions of
> speech acts and world relations, which gives speech an
> unavoidable implicature of validity claims (or tacit
> claiming of a validity basis). So, Ingram's passing
> explication of JH's sense of practical reason is not
> Habermas's reference to any naturalism.
>
> Your misuse of Ingram's point was overtly for you an
> "in other words" for your directly previous assertion
> that "for Habermas,...communicative reason is...'by
> its very nature incarnated' (_Philosophical Discourse
> of Modernity_: 322) into the material processes of
> lifeworld" [thesis, 227]. What does JH mean by
> "incarnated" at that point in _PDM_? He means that
> "the plans of action of different actors are
> interconnected in historical time and across social
> space through the use of speech...." Quite explicitly
> (PDM: 321-322) "material" for JH refers to "actions"
> and "plans" and "interactions" and "processes of
> mutual understanding."
>
> Oddly, for you, "Habermas's lack of attention to the
> naturalization of the philosophy of language" (226) is
> supposedly evidence for naturalism, but your error is
> Henrich's error (as you rely on Henrich for your point
> [227]-among so many instances where you rely on
> someone else's reading for your scholarly point,
> rather than dwelling with Habermas in any
> close-reading fashion-excuse my bluntness). Henrich's
> error is to just make a "basic deficiency [of]
> philosophy of language in Germany" toward *semantic*
> features of language into a "naïve self-confidence
> [that] is highly characteristic of Habermas's theory
> of communicative action," which, we know, is based in
> the *pragmatic* level of action (which distinguishes
> the semantic level of empirical linguistics from the
> reconstructive level of formal pragmatics-an extended
> feature of JH's "What is Universal Pragmatics?"). So,
> you should lament your "strong agreement with Henrich"
> (227); you have shown no "professed naturalism at the
> basis of the communication theoretic" (ibid.) because
> there IS none.
>
> You say:
>
> M> As I have already indicated Habermas wavers between
> a regress to the "very beginnings of hominization"
> (TCA: 1.366), in the manner of Horkheimer and Adorno's
> fatalistic analysis, and the cultural level of
> symbolic language. [ibid.]
>
> G: But there is no concern for hominization at the
> point you reference in _TCA_. There, JH is in the
> opening paragraphs of his discussion of "The Critique
> of Instrumental Reason," not even showing any wavering
> toward H&A; rather, he outlines the upcoming 5
> sections of his case that will show how "Horkheimer
> and Adorno get ensnared in their own difficulties"
> (TCA1:366). The "cultural level of symbolic language"
> is, of course, our communicative form of life, so your
> "split level" is just your own:
>
> M> This split level [allegedly between hominization
> and cultural level] in Habermas's basic theory
> construction suggests to this interpreter and Dieter
> Henrich at least, a submerged and unattractive
> neo-Platonism.
>
> G: As distinguished from an attractive neo-Platonism?
> At this point, we're back to your claim about
> "biologically deep-seated bases" (as I've gone back a
> page in your thesis from where I started this
> discussion of your-I now call it-projected
> naturalism). Then you go on:
>
> M> Elsewhere, for example, Habermas makes clear that
> his inquiry prioritizes Charles Darwin's theory of
> natural selection over Kant's transcendental
> philosophy (_Habermas & Modernity_: 213).
>
> G: But there, JH is responding to Whitebook's
> psychoanalytic interests. He makes the point that,
> with "linguistic structures" employed for
> understanding "inner nature," "one does give up
> biological or physicalistic third-person descriptions
> of the organic substratum....Whitebook is led
> astray....Naturally, I am enough of a materialist to
> take as my starting point that Kant is right only to
> the extent that his statements are compatible with
> Darwin.... Nevertheless, it is better not to try to
> resolve all problems with the same theory, or even
> with theories of the same type" (H&M: 213).
>
> So, there is no such thing as "Habermas's naturalism"
> (227), let alone "The tension between Habermas's
> naturalism and in particular the philosophical
> tradition of pragmatism to which he also lays claim"
> (ibid), if only because his theory of communicative
> action does not basically rely on philosophical
> tradition, but makes an original contribution to it.
> That is, the theory of communicative action is, for
> Habermas, the basis on which he would
> *reconstructively* read the philosophical tradition,
> which is amply demonstrated by his reading of Peirce,
> Austin, Chomsky, Bohler, and others, in "What Is
> Universal Pragmatics?" and in TCA. Thus, it's not the
> case that:
>
> M> Habermas, in TCA, raises [a] criticism against
> himself [when he asks]: "Is not such a theory of
> rationality [as his] open to the same objections that
> pragmatism and hermeneutics have brought against every
> kind of foundationalism?" (TCA: 2.398). [227, ftn.
> 387]
>
> G: That question is a rhetorical question among a
> series of such questions at the end of TCA, where he
> is about to  answer "No" to every one of them,
> relative to "the moment of unconditionality that, with
> criticizable validity claims, is built into the
> conditions of processes of consensus formation" (TCA:
> 399). There is no problem of foundationalism (but JH
> is in "dialogue" with his critical readers).
>
> So, at every turn, you're misusing scattered quotes
> from JH (and relying heavily on passing citation of
> others) to argue invalidly that there is an
> objectionable  "naturalism" in JH's thinking.
>
> What about his sense of systems? This is what I meant
> to pursue when I went to your thesis today (but got
> sidetracked by your "ontological" claim against his
> work).  At the beginning of your section on
> "Habermas's Introduction of a Systems Theory" (280),
> you write:
>
> M> Habermas introduces a social systems model to solve
> two problems which he admits to facing following the
> formulation of his concept of the lifeworld (TCA:
> 2.147).
>
> G: At that point in TCA, JH is closing up the aspect
> of his critique of interpretive sociology that is
> concerned (but fails) to "clarify the necessary
> conditions for the rationalization of the lifeworld"
> (119, where he is introducing what he will be doing in
> subsection D of his section on "the Hermeneutic
> Idealism of Interpretive Sociology")-a point you
> somewhat acknowledge later down the page (citing the
> same page of TCA again); but it's not "the
> 'hermeneutical idealism' (TCA: 2.147) entailed by
> *his* conception of the lifeworld" (ibid.) that's at
> issue; it's the idealism of *interpretive sociology*!
> At stake is not two problems that *he* is facing;
> rather numerous problems which Weber, Durkheim, and
> Mead face (he argues).
>
> Never mind?- as you now jump ahead 50 pages to
> document your point about the first of the two
> problem, relating to "Habermas's programme to
> reconstruct Marx's theory of value" (280). But what
> you quote pertains to JH's introductory remarks on why
> he's about to focus on Parsons, which, by the way (JH
> notes, in what you quote), no "neo-Marxism [should]
> bypass" (280). In fact, JH's *own* theory of modernity
> HAS *bypassed* Marx's theory of value (TCA2: 374, top
> of page), and he has critiqued Marx on the basis of
> his own theory; his is not a project of reconstructing
> or revitalizing Marx's theory of value.
>
> Nevertheless, it is the case-as you quote JH at this
> point in your discussion (though it's not what he
> means "here", i.e., at TCA 147 that you've just
> cited): "[C]ommunicative actors are always moving
> within the horizon of their lifeworld; they cannot
> step outside of it" (TCA: 2.126). But *that* point
> (from nearly 20 pages earlier in TCA-jumping from 147
> back to 16) is about the condition of *participants*,
> whereas JH's context circa TCA 147 is the conditions
> of *investigators* of participants or methodological
> *interpretors* of participants. In other words, there
> is a difference between the interpretive condition of
> participants and the conditions of methodological
> interpretation.
>
> There's nothing "hermetically sealed" (280) about
> being a participant, i.e., living one's life. "As
> interpreters, [actors] belong to the lifeworld,"
> writes JH directly following the statement you quote
> (TCA2: 126). His point is that the lifeworld *as such*
> can't become the content of interpretation. Actors
> "cannot refer to 'something in the lifeworld' in the
> same way as they can to facts, norms or experiences.
> The structures of the lifeworld lay down the forms of
> the intersubjectivity of possible understanding"
> (ibid). Yet this "laying down" is temporal, as a
> matter of the individuation of cognitive-linguistic
> competences which are only available to our
> understanding *as such* via methodological
> reconstruction. Thus, it's explicitly *not* the case
> that the condition of the participant...
>
> M> ...restricts the capacity of the critical social
> scientist to make complete sense of the dialectic of
> modernization (1995: 2.284).
>
> G: This is explicitly not the case because it's the
> purpose of methodological reconstruction, not
> participation, to make sense of large-scale social
> processes, and nothing about participation in the
> lifeworld restricts the capacity of an actor to become
> a critical social scientist! BUT an unduly
> *systems-theoretical* approach to methodological
> interpretation, such as Parsons, makes inquiry "unable
> to grasp the dialectic inherent in modernization
> processes" (TCA2: 284). That is, JH is making a point
> very different from what you quote him to be doing:
> He's not indicating limits of participant relativity
> for interpretation, but limits of Parsonian
> systemization for grasping "the burdens placed on the
> internal structures of the lifeworld by growing system
> complexity" (ibid.). So, it's explicitly for JH NOT
> that...
>
> M> ...the lifeworld is stepped outside of and
> objectified as a boundary-maintaining system in a
> manner analogous to the way Parsons proceeds in the
> construction of his social systems model. [280]
>
> G: Habermas's point-as he here (TCA2: 284) *begins*
> his "Theory of Modernity" section-is to do something
> post-Parsonian. By the way, it's amazing that you so
> often cite McCarthy's 1985 commentary on JH's theory
> of rationalization(e.g., twice in one paragraph, p.
> 278, as well as many other times)-and do so without
> discussion of his article-and don't indicate JH's
> detailed response to McCarthy in that same anthology
> (_Habermas & Modernity_), which completely addresses
> McCarthy's concerns (one could argue), thus annuling
> its pertinence as critique.
>
> Weirdly, you think that something for "methodological
> purposes" (i.e., systems modeling) is a "heuristic
> device" (278), but the difference between a
> participant perspective and a methodological
> perspective is vital for any mode of inquiry,
> especially a social science. The methodological
> perspective pertains to doing inquiry, be it
> reconstructive or critical, hermeneutical or
> empirical. Thus, the employment of models within
> inquiry is not merely heuristic, but rather is the way
> that any inquiry proceeds: working fallibilistically
> with models. Within methodological inquiry, models may
> also be about systemic functions (as well as be
> hermeneutically about meanings).
>
> M> [Systems analysis] is introduced for methodological
> purposes, and then Habermas at times appears to be
> treating this heuristic device as a concrete entity
> (1995: 2.153; 2.374-75)...
>
> G: What are you referring to? There's no talk of
> concrete unities at TCA2:153. JH notes that "the
> objective conditions under which the
> systems-theoretical objectification of the lifeworld
> becomes necessary have themselves only arisen in the
> course of social evolution. And this calls for a type
> of explanation that does not already move within the
> system perspective," but rather via a "concept of
> society proposed here [that] is radically
> different...from the Parsonian concept" (ibid).
>
> At pp. 374-5, JH is recalling his use of "the system
> concept of society by way of a *methodological
> objectification* of the lifeworld...in
> action-theoretic terms," not at all connoting that his
> sense of systems is some "concrete entity."
>
> (By the way, your "1995:"-which I've been replacing
> with TCA-is about a book that was available in Engish
> in 1984/1987.  Thus, your listing of works by Habermas
> in your bibliography by date of publication results in
> TCA appearing in your "chronological" listing *after*
> you list many publications that were already available
> in English after TCA, but before you list TCA. Also,
> the citational convention of "author: year" in a text
> citation is meant (standardly in scholarship) to
> correlate with a bibliography that lists works with
> the year of publication indicated first, thereby
> making it easy, in a long list of sources by one
> author, for the reader to locate the author's frequent
> citation of something. Your practice of sequencing by
> year of publication, but putting the publication year
> at the end of the citation is not useful.)
>
> You say that:
>
> M> ...Habermas's concept of simultaneity, the dynamic
> of uncoupling and his thesis that systemworld
> institutions are "anchored" in the lifeworld also
> remain problematic. These are under explained by
> reference to concepts as undetermined as "internal
> logics" (1995: 2.155) and "irresistible inner
> dynamics" (1995: 2.331).
>
> G: You really like to jump all over the text with your
> snippets of citation that you have no interest in
> focusing on. You evidently find JH's overview, p. 155,
> of his upcoming analysis of uncoupling to be a matter
> of "internal logics," but that's not JH's concept
> there (though one can use this concept in any systems
> analysis-but JH's analysis is not a systems analysis!
> It *uses* the notion of social systems IN his
> analysis). Almost 200 pages later, p. 331, what's
> prospective (at that point-you love to cite beginning
> points and endpoints of JH's discussion, but stay away
> from the meat of his argument) about "irresistible
> inner dynamics" is quite clear: "...media-steered
> subsystems...*bring about* [sic] the [progressive]
> segmentation... of the lifeworld...from science,
> morality, and art." which is irresistible, at the same
> time that those subsystems bring about colonization.
> You could liken this to an infectious appeal, in the
> worst sense.
>
> You say that:
>
> M>...he fails to show why the uncoupling of the
> systemworld is not a "normal" or even developmental
> stage in processes of social evolution.
>
> G: Gee, Matt, what do you think his discussion of
> uncoupling is about? You might have focused on it,
> rather than just mis-citing without discussion a bunch
> of places in TCA where he's introducing or summing up
> what he's doing (while relying comfortably on others'
> undiscussed readings). I take back my presumption (in
> an earlier posting this week) that you are involved in
> a "comprehensive reading of TCA."
>
> Best personal regards,
>
> Gary
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