>
>
>>I'm talking about Kenneth's version of the story, not Habermas'.
>
>I'm defending an orthodox version of Habermas. I have references for every
>remark, and most of the metaphors, the I've used.
>
I wouldn't dispute it. I haven't studied Habermas since maybe 1994, and consider myself to have only the most causual acquaintance with the broad outlines of this views, so I can't say whether you represent them correctly. I like Legitimation Crisis, and I like some of the topical essays, but I find the Communicative ACtion stuff uninteresting.
>
>I don't see how you've refuted any of the points that I've made. You're
>saying that people don't give a shit, and I'm pointing out that it doesn't
>matter what peoples intentions are, the structure of communication is built
>into the reproduction of a social environment.
In part I was addressing the idea that the structure of communication has a certain rationalist character that looks like an analytical philosophy paper. It is true that people don't care about that, a fact that may have more significance than you give it. But they do care about a lot of other stuff that doesn't obviosuly fit into that model. Bear in mind, in case you think I sneer at analytical philosophy, taht I read and write it voluntarily, even though I don't have to.
>philosophical analysis isn't an a priori assumption, it is a
>*reconstruction* of the presuppositions of intersubjective communication;
>an action theoretic that outlines the normative dimensions of reaching an
>agreement.
Again, I'm addressing your views, not H's, which I can't speak to, but it seems to me that this is a distinction without a difference. You are showing the necessary conditions of communication that obtain regardless of what people think or want, and, moreover, one that is not based on actual (very defective) practice, but on an idealized model of free abd equal communicators. That's as a priori as anyone could wish.
> Take it or leave it.
>
OK, I'll leave it,
>
>
>I haven't at all limited the range of considerations. I've pointed out that
>the range can be thematized into different intentional structures:
>teleological, communicative, dramaturgical and so on. I'm arguing that a
>philosophical justification can be given for the normative dimensions of
>reaching an agreement.
>
>
I'm not sure what this means. That we can know under what conditions we would have an agreement? Or an agreement that has a certain normative force? Or what?
I said:
He seems to think it's not
>>communicative
>>action to try to change someone's mind by relling a different story or
>>exemplifying a different kind of life.
>
>It is, but if you are retelling a story there are different parts: the
>truth claim, the normative claim, and the expressive claim (third person,
>second person, first person). All three are open to discursive analysis:
>regarding the validity of the truth claim, the validity of the normative
>claim, and the authenticity of the expressive claim. Habermas argues that
>meaning and validity are two sides of a speech act.
OK, though I'm not sure what it gains us to put it this way. Yeah, it matters if our narratives are true, our values correct, our experiences "authentic," whatever that means. (What I meant was to invoke Mill's idea of experiments in living, where one shows by example that a certain way of living is better or as good as the ways people have lived heretofore.) Is the account you are living just a classification of those obvious facts?
That's uninformative because it doesn't suggest how we can know which beliefs are true, etc. Here I guess your idea is that somehow the idealized noncoercive consensus situation, the HAbermasian original position, has something to offer. I doubt it, but I have mainly analysed the Rawlsian version of this story. I think that fails for a number of reasons, not least because the fact that something would be agreed upon in ideal circumstances, even if we could know what would be agreed upon, seems to have no obvious normative force for us who are not in such circumstances. The dominators, who would lose by entering into an agreement in a concoercive situation, would respond to the claim that the content of such an agreement is X, with, What's that to us? What's Habermas' answer to this "ought impplies can" objection?
>
>>Habermas is some sort of historical materialist.
>
>He was. In 1976 he "reconstructed' historical materialism along the lines
>of cognitive development and social evolution. Since then he hasn't touched
>hismat and has focused on evolutionary processes.
>
A shame, but as you see, I have not kept up.
--jks
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