> >The idealization of reason-giving with freedom, equality, autonomy,
> >fairness, etc. is not inherent in communicative processes everywhere at
> >all times.
kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca:
> Check the archives. If there isn't an anticipation of understanding, then
> we're not talking about communication. See, I just enacted an idealization.
> I anticipate that you'll understand what I just wrote, I can't help it -
> its structural, even if I'm lying.
Charles Brown:
> CB: There's a sense in which the proposition " communication is
> done with the purpose or anticipation of understanding" is quite
> trivial. Of course, communication is done trying to be understood.
> What is the more subtle or profound significance of this ? How is
> it not a truism ?
>I believe it is incorrect. Communication is often intended to decrease or eliminate understanding. Unless by accident or divinely given, communication must have arisen as a method of affecting the behavior of others, which will often be unrelated to the other's understanding. Even rather primitive organisms can be observed practicing deception.
KM: Insofar as deception does not involve understanding, in the sense of shared meaning and grammar, it is not communication (let's not extend the meaning of communication to include everything, eh?). Yes, communication can be used for instrumental means, but only insofar as communicative relations are prior to the instrumental of use language. Communicative action is primordial, in this sense.
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 18:04:01 -0700 (PDT) From: Alec Ramsdell <aramsdell at yahoo.com> Subject: communication and lyric poetry (was Re: Gramsci & Machiavelli)
Gordon Fitch wrote:
> Communication is often
> intended
> to decrease or eliminate understanding. Unless by
> accident
> or divinely given, communication must have arisen as
> a
> method of affecting the behavior of others, which
> will often
> be unrelated to the other's understanding. Even
> rather
> primitive organisms can be observed practicing
> deception.
>It can work both ways, when the question of self-deception comes in. Take the example of a type of modern lyric poem, drawing from the romantic lyric, which seems to problematize Habermas' model as I'm gleaning it from these posts (haven't read Habermas).
KM: It doesn't problematize Habremas's model at all. The romantic lyric or modern lyric poem still requires a prior understanding of the basic elements of grammar and meaning, put it is creatively expressed, thus creating new grammatical and semantic forms. It is parasitic on communicative relations. Lyrics are affective only if someone understands...
> How does this fit the ISS model?
See Kelley's excellent response to this inquiry.
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 16:14:16 -0400 From: Gordon Fitch <gcf at panix.com> Subject: Re: communication and lyric poetry (was Re: Gramsci & Machiavelli) Gordon Fitch wrote:
> > If something cognitive is communicated or understood by reading
> > "There's a certain slant of light/ winter afternoons/ that
> > oppresses like the weight/ of cathedral tunes" I think it's
> > well beyond the reach of materialist thought....
Carrol Cox:
> Whatever the "poetic effect" of this it is totally dependent on a prior
> cognitive grasp. Would this work if you didn't know the difference
> between a slant line and a vertical line, had never heard of "slanting
> the truth," didn't know the difference between winter and summer,
> thought afternoon was the darkest period of the 24 hour day, didn't know
> that "weight" didn't apply to "tunes" except slantingly? There is an
> enormous cognitive component in all understanding of poetry, simple or
> complex. Just as there is an enormous emotional component to making
> sense of 2 + 2 = 4. You have to _feel_ the nature of pure number (as
> opposed to 2 piles of sand plus two piles of sand (which of course
> equals one pile of sand) before you can make any sense of the equation.
> And feeling occurs only in response to a bodily condition (emotion).
>
> Oppresses like the weight of cathedral tunes. There is probably some
> synaesthesia operating there, but you also have to have an almost
> immediate tacit (cognitive) grasp of the history of religion in the west
> for that "weight" to have its effect.
> You're right about one having to have an understanding of the materials that went into the quoted verse, but I'm talking about the particular language act constituting the particular poem, not all the prior language acts of which it happens to make use. As such, it does not communicate fact and it does not lead to understanding of either the material it purports to cover or of its author, in the sense I think the notion of _understanding_ is being used by Habermas fans. It's a magic formula designed to induce altered consciousness regardless of these things. It may have been intended for private use.
It doesn't need to communicative fact, this is only one sense of validity. What you are referring to here all under Habermas's notion of expression or expressiveness, which is the 'substance' of art criticism. So what you are describing here is one of the three pillars of Habermas's theory of meaning and validity.
ken