>Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 09:10:23 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu>
>Subject: Re: lbo-talk-digest V1 #4739
>
>On Tue, 14 Aug 2001, Kenneth MacKendrick wrote:
>
> > Let me ask you this: in order for a propositional claim to be considered
> > valid (just, legitimate, true, or right) what are the necessary conditions
> > required for its validity? Really, this is what Habermas is addressing. He
> > arguing that a claim can be considered valid when, and only when, an actual
> > discourse has taken place, a discourse that takes place under formal
> > conditions - whereby the force of reason alone decides its merit. Such
> > reasons must be generated by the community of participants for the
> > community of participants (ie. this is what links validity to meaning and
> > motivation). He isn't saying that it happens this way, Habermas is just
> > pointing out: in modernity, only a procedure, which entails universal moral
> > respect and egalitarian reciprocity, can satisfy the conditions required
> > for a valid claim (about truth or rightness, science or morals). Only then
> > can we say that a judgement is impartial.
>
>This lays out some basic assumptions in modern societies. I just get
>twitchy when people go from "these are the values and assumptions of
>our society" to "This is the True Path".
Habermas provides evidence that cognitive development moves progressively in stages, he draws on Mead, Piaget, Selman and Kohlberg. If you want to dispute the 'true path' here you have to take on Kohlberg's theory of moral development as read through Selman's understanding of perspective taking. In a 2001 english translation of a work published in german in 1984 written in 1974 there is an essay on communicative pathology, which argues that we can distinguish between contextual and universal stages of development / social and individual pathology. So this is what you need to target, the claim, essentially, that someone who does what they are told because they believe in gods and demands is cognitively no different than someone who works well with others and posits for themselves, in interaction with others, their own moral guidelines. Habermas follows the stage hierarchy... preconventional, (stage 1 and 2), conventional (3 and 4) and postconventional (5 and 6).
> > You just argued that argumentation is ethnocentric, that not all societies
> > share an understanding of autonomy, solidarity and reasoning. This means
> > that you are using an argument to say that argumentation is a specific to
> > one historical form of life, a life you happen to share... which seems to
> > me to argue that arguments don't matter for certain people. Kell and I have
> > both pointed out that you can't make this judgement until you argue with
> > other people.
> >
>
>In this social context, yes, I argue! Why do you think it's a
>contradiction to argue in one social context that arguing doesn't
>always matter and is not a Universal Good? You and Kel seem to
>take this as a blatant "performative contradiction". But, c'mon,
>think it through:
>
>1. I argue that arguments never matter in human interactions.
>
>2. I argue in one specific social context that argumentation
>and reason are not inherent to other or all social contexts.
>
>Do you see that 1. is the performative contradiction? And that
>1. is not what I'm saying????
>
>Miles
Ok, good, fair enough and I'm sorry about misconstruing your position so badly. Habermas argues that argumentation is not inherent to all social contexts, but it is inherent to a postconventional understanding of cognition, which is 'built-into' the pragmatic structure of communication by merit of the unavoidable processes of socialization into a linguistic system. In effect, Habermas would agree with you about argumentation in 2. but not about reason.
ken