>>Not a priori, structural-pragmatic. We cannot avoid making these
>>presuppositions when we commit ourselves to a speech act. If we
>>remain >silent, we don't make these presuppositions. They only apply
>>in >instances >of performative communication.
>
>Maybe I'm stupid, but I don't get the distinction, or understand the
>difference that it is supposed to make that you are limiting the
>presuppositions to conditions of communication. That's a priori in my
>book. We prags don't believe in the a priori,a nd we think that the idea
>of a necessary transcendental condition is just a failure of imagination.
"Proposals for reconstruction are hypotheses that stand open to the testing and revision usual for rational reconstructions. To this extend I do not share the Kantian a priorism. The intuitive, non-reconstructed knowledge has no theoretical certainty, even for the communication actors themselves... but rather that kind of everyday certainty that is characteristic of background knowledge in the lifeworld, and even more so of the background knowledge that is constitutive of this world." A Reply to My Critics, page. 234 in Held and Thompson, Habermas: Critical Debates (1982). These assumptions are the backdrop of everyday life and times. These are assumed and taken for granted by anyone who wishes to speak. Those who don't make these assumptions engage, Habermas proposes, in completely self-destructive behaviour. Try communicating with someone while *consciously* rejecting the assumption that what you are saying will mean something, anything, to the person(s) you are saying it to. It kind of takes fun out of it, eh?
>I said:
>
>First, as Quine has
>>>argued, >>there are no things called "meanings" that we share that can
>>>be >>"identical."
>>
>>Wittgenstein argued otherwise. To follow a rule means to know what the rule
>>is, and what constitutes its exception.
>
>Now I am mystified. I might well have cited Wittgenstein for the same
>proposition. W beliefs that meaning is use, not some sort of special
>entity. I don't buy into W's theory entirely, as you see, because I go
>with Davidson and Quine that meanings are truth conditions.
And truth conditions are related to the conditions required for the justification of truth... The problem with the semantic or representationalistic concept of truth (and I'm not sure if Quine or Davidson qualify, but you seem to be pointing them in that direction) is that it ignores the requisite assumption of a normative agreement that must exist between subjective investigators prior to empirical or theoretical research...
>>But it also entails meaning, in the play sense of validity and the
>>conditions of validity. If I say, the ball is red - I suspect that
>>you >grasp the meaning of this statement, that the ball is not blue.
>
>No, that's not "the meaning" of the statement. That's an implication of
>the statement. The meaning of "The ball is red" is just the ball's being red.
But we can only know this if we are in agreement, which requires specific social conditions, ie. the fact that you aren't beating me over the head. If you beat me into agreeing that the ball is red, this violates the condition of reciprocity required for the claim itself. Ie. if there is only a single person living on the planet, then the ball can be anything the investigator wants it to be. But if there are others, then the statement can hold valid only the in the context of agreement. Agreement rests on understanding, and the bridge between the two is argumentation.
>. Meaning simply expresses, comprehensively, the idea of
>>validity. When we grasp the three moments of a speech act: its claim to
>>truth, rightness, and truthfulness (which is a performative) then we grasp
>>the meaning of statement. If we lack one, then there is a meaning gap,
>>which is why we ask, "What do you mean?"
>
>I still don't get it. Even if this is so, and I am sure I do not
>understand its truth conditions, what it would be for it to be so, why is
>there some special entity called meaning?
Meaning isn't a special entity.Its a property of language use. Meaning has two levels: semantics and grammar. Something is meaningful when the semantics and grammar can be understood by another person. If you say, "Og ickt nach impt?" - the meaning is unclear because I haven't mastered that particular formulation. If you explain it to me, then we are proceed using this particular semantic / grammatical form - what do the words mean, what is the performance - is it descriptive, is it regulative, is it expression. "Og ickt nach impt?" - to me, at this moment, is only expressive. If you go on to clarify: Og means Is. Ickt means your. Nach means fly. Impt means open.
"Is your fly open?" - that means something to me. The statement takes on an objecivating moment, as a proposition. I can look down and figure out if this is the case or not. Since I'm in my PJs, I know that this particular formulation is false, and so I respond, "Nag og mapt ogs!" (No it is not!). Again, crucial to this hermeneutic process is the idea that meaning is immanent to language use, and that understanding is the telos of language use as well. Through this we can reconstruct, formally, the potential conditions required for reaching an agreement. It takes on ethical propotions precisely because when the conditions are not met, we get pissed off.
for instance, if I invite you to Toronto and offer to pay your way, and you arrive at the airport and call me and I say, "got lost." You'll be pissed (if you took my offer seriously). Why is this so? Because, along with the propositional content of my invitation are normative behavioural expectations, implicit to the structure of communication, that come to be violated through my actions (which, in this case, have been dishonest). There are several means of pursuit here: you avenge my deceit, you can call back and ask for an explanation, you can check to see if you dialed the right number, check to see if you had the times right and so on.. but the moral content here is located precisely between the utterances performed, which has pragmatic implications, and the expectations immanent to understanding the meaning of the invitation.
>>And every single time they do this, they contradict themselves. There is a
>>difference between 'facts' and 'norms.' It is built-into language.
>
>Sez you. I think your claim here is contradicted by the very argument you
>give, that science, for example presupposes norms of theory choice,
>explantory validity, and so forth. I don't deny that "phlogiston is a bad
>theory" operates a bit different from "It's wrong to kill people for no
>reason" and both operate differently from "The ball is red," that also
>operates differently from "Genes are made of DNA." These statements cannot
>be sorted nicely into facts on ones ide and values on the other, each with
>a unique logic. In my book, moreover, "It's wrong to kill people for no
>reason" is a fact as well as a norm.
I'm drawing out a potential, immanent to speaking, for the rational coordination of action. We can go the strategic route or go the communicative route. However, at some point, we *must* engage in communicative action for our own well-being, in as fragmented a form as we might see fit. We don't have a choice in this, cognition is linked to language, and this has normative implications.
>>The ball >is red has a qualitatively different meaning that the ball
>>ought to >be red. >But we can, procedurally, figure out what the
>>difference is here: >one >expresses an existing state of affairs, the
>>other refers to a state >of >affairs that is socially regulated.
>
>Lots of scientific statements don't refer to existing states of affairs.
>"If we keep polluting, the seas will rise because of the greenhouse
>effect." And I think "Freedom is better than slavery" refers to an
>existing state of affairs.
That you think freedom is better than slavery is an existing state of affairs. That's one level of it. The other level is moving toward a reality where slavery is abolished - that implicates us, at a motivational level, to take action.
ken