>I criticized Kenneth for reducing persuasive communication to a graduate
>seminar model of discursive argument.He demusr, but what he says here
>seems to me to support the charge.
So Mr. jks believes (which is unsubstantial, of course).
>>Immanent to speaking, and
>>attempting to reach an understanding with others, is a communicative ethic,
>>one which can (and need be) supported with theoretical evidence and cogent
>>demonstration.
>I disagree. Most people get along without this.
I agree, most people get along without this.
> They use narratives, ideals, exemplary models. Has it occured to you to
> reflect on the meaning of the fact that history is controversial?
Hey, all I'm saying is that we wouldn't converse with people unless we wanted them to understand.If this is the 'stuff' of communication, then reaching agreement comes before bossing people around (after all, you can't boss someone around until you have some social network that lets you know that they know what your words mean). In effect, we presuppose, when we talk, the validity (in terms of meaning) of what we are saying to someone, and vice versa. That's all I'm saying. Implicit in this is an ethics of communication: which makes reaching understanding normative - normative to being human and living with other people that you have to get along with, to greater and lesser degrees. That's all I'm saying.
> Why does anyone care about the Smithsonian exhibit on Hiroshima? That
> mattters to most people a lot more than any abstract argument you could
> present about the ethics of international relations. Yeah, sure, it's
> nice to bea ble to present philosophical arguments on the just use of
> force and the like. But people actually think about these questions
> through stories like "We dropped the bomb to save lives"; ideals, like
> "America is the land of the free"; exemplars of virtue: King, Lincoln.
Like, you know, if really doesn't matter what people think about this. That fact that a majority of the US population think that Satan is alive and well doesn't change the structure of communication, nor does it change the fact that reaching understanding is normative.
>Most of Habermas's work is for show, it is analysis
>>that
>>supports his claim, which is rather simple: when we speak, we make
>>assumptions - that are inherent to the structure of speech regardless of
>>individual assumptions. This structure can be elaborated and systematized
>>and, in the end, it provides a 'idealizing' model through which we can
>>ground criticism.
>Well, as a pragmatist I say hooey. I don't go in for transcendental
>argument. I think the claim that there are necessary a priori conditions
>for anything just shows a lack of imagination: we haven't thunk of the
>alternatives yet that enable us to do without 'em.
It isn't a transcendental argument. It isn't a priori - it is pragmatic. We've having this conversation know - whether you know it or not - you are making assumptions while speaking. This is called know-how. You know-how to communicate. All this crap that I'm spewing out is a translation of this know-how into know-that. Know that when you speech, you are making assumptions - pragmatic assumptions about the nature of communication. Trust me, if you didn't assume that people could, under some circumstances, understand what you are saying, you wouldn't talk.
>Without an this kind of model, criticism lacks a
>>normative standpoint and is guilty of being arbitrary.
>I can't be accused of indifference to the relativist threat: I have my own
>materialist theory, totally anti-Habermasian (though my publshed target is
>the structurally similar views of Rawls) in nature. But if this is what is
>pushing you around, I think you fail to grasp the critical possibilities
>inherent in the alternative modes of thinking and feeling I have
>suggested. The Hiroshima exhibit debate displays how competing narratives
>with different meanings of AMerican ideals are played out in real life.
>Rather than talking about philosophy, people expressed their differences
>in hsitorical terms. Likewise, it is possible to reject a vision of the
>good life nonarbitrarily but nonphilosophically, or to debate the merits
>of different exemplars: Martin vs. Malcolm, John Brown vs. Lincoln, Lenin
>vs. Luxemburg.
This applies to symbolic systems as well as natural language, verbal and nonverbal. Can we at least agree that "understanding" is an inevitable part of cognitive development? If you disagree, then you've got a heavy burden on yours shoulders - I don't see how any argument that understanding isn't essential to human survival, development and so on is essential. If you do agree, then we're half way to a consensus. If you don't like Habermas, how about Gadamer, Ricoeur, Charles Taylor or Georgia Warnke? Even stuffy JD, who is no Habemas sympathizer, has observed that language is oriented by truth - and it would be difficult to find two more opposed readings of Searle and Austin that JH and JD!
>It is, in a
>>very
>>simple sense, a materialist and a communicative ethics. This threat is
>>about the ethical foundations of the left, right? I've proposed a model for
>>such a grounding. Habermas calls it formal-pragmatics. I like to think of
>>it as the capacity to criticize that avoids the accusation of just being
>>whiny.
>
>But the kind of criticism you offer runs the risk of being boring and
>irrelevant. I mean, I like philosophy, but far from being an a priori
>condition of humanity, it's a decidedly minority taste. Personally, I
>think jazz is far more important. Wish I could do it,
That's true. It is boring and only relevant if one is asked to give reasons for the position that one has. Now, if no one asks why you hold that position, then you'll never need to run into my stockhouse and pick these reasons out.
We can live in a perfectly irrational world and destroy everything, but why bother, when it is so much easier to think instead?
ken