When I taught philosophy I recall a student whose sole reason for holding that there ought to be capital punishment was his belief that it was a deterrent. When his reading convinced him that it did not deter, he changed his mind. Obviously a dispute about the morality of capital punishment with this person could be solved by reference to "science" in a very broad sense. Of course this does not mean that everyone would be convinced by such facts. A Kantian would not be convinced that capital punishment ought to be abolished by "science" of this sort. However it seems beyond doubt that some moral disputes can be settled by science or at least empirical facts. I suppose someone such as Bentham would claim that in principle all such disputes could be settled by science. It would need more than stipulative definitions of spheres to show otherwise. I suppose that for Habermas much of ordinary moral disputation just involves clearing the underbrush. That does not seem helpful in understanding moral disputes. If we clear the underbrush the moral dispute often dissolves.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
Kelley wrote:
> >However, on what grounds does Habermas argue that it is possible to separate
> >out these three spheres. Ultimately, he appeals to an ontological
> argument -
> >modernity *necessarily* splits reality up into three self-contained
> sections.
> >Make no mistake, there is no overlap between science, art and law. These
> >spheres are related, in the lifeworld, but become separated based on three
> >different kinds of logic - logic regarding truth (an objective state of
> >affairs), rightness (regarding a shared intersubjective world) and
> truthfulness
> >(regarding personal subjective experiences).
>
> ken the problem with this is that you are confusing his use of weber's
> methodology--ideal typifications--with claims about how the world actually
> is. and before you get your latex shorts in a knot, please read frank
> hearn's _the dialectical uses of ideal types_.
>
> to speak theoretically necessarily means that we must clarify the muck,
> even if we know that it's much more confused and mixed up than that. we
> have no fucking choice here and you do it all the time yourself by
> insisting that certain terms mean what they mean and nothing else.
> similarly, you insist on using a film to teach Locke even though the film
> is polysemic could easily be used to illustrate a number of competing
> theoretical frameworks.
>
> as rob says, no one escapes. habermas's hubris is our own.
>
> >But this is crucial, absolutely crucial. How does Habermas defend the
> validity
> >of these three spheres?
> >
> >He uses science - the reconstructive sciences. In other words, he assumes
> the
> >validity (of science) to prove the validity (of the three spheres). His
> >argument begs the question. The only way he can get around this is by
> >emphasizing that language raises these three claims in such a way that
> they can
> >be separated.
>
> no, not as the court of last resort. not at all. habermas repeatedly says
> that science *cannot* be an arbiter of moral disputes. science can clear
> some of the underbrush, perhaps. science might be able to tell us that we
> can control human behavior--say the propensity to rape--among men by
> administering a certain medication and plan of coercive brutalizing mind
> control. but science can't tell us whether we should do that. evaluation
> research on whether life imprisonment or the death penalty is a less costly
> strategy but it can't tell us which one we *should* opt for. that's why
> scientific claims must be brought to the public sphere in order to have
> such conversations. they are had among scientists, to be sure. but
> rationalizing democratic society would require an expanasion of that process.
>
> >The irony of all this: Habermas argues that to back out of this, is a step
> >toward psychosis, schizophrenia, suicide, or monadic isolation. My
> >counterpoint is this: it is only *if* you completely alienate yourself from
> >your lifeword that you risk psychosis!
>
> the problem here is that you assume habermas has a unified notion of the
> lifeworld as necessarily "bad" for us. he doesn't ask that we pull
> ourselves up out of it and leave it entirely behind. we can't. but we
> move out of it dialectically and we don't do so once and for all but move
> back and forth-- they are mutually constitutive. i beg of you to some day
> read alan wolfe on this in _Whose Keeper_. habermas analyzes these spheres
> separately but he doesn't want them to ever become absolutely separate from
> one another. they are mutually constitutive in his theory. but you can
> and it does no harm to isolate them for ideal typical analysis.
>
> >And I liked this: "momentarily successful communication." What does this
> mean:
> >it means that a consensus has been reached. In other words, successful
> >communication, for Habermas, *terminates* the conversation.
>
> no it doesn't. we go back to it. eternally and that's what it means to be
> human and to be free. haven't you read his earlier work on this?
>
> kelley