<html><div style='background-color:'><DIV></DIV> <P>Well, I'm glad I'm not teeing Kenneth off. A few short responses:</P> <P>I said:</P>>>In part I was addressing the idea that the structure of <DIV></DIV>>>communication has <DIV></DIV>>>a certain rationalist character that looks like an analytical <DIV></DIV>>>philosophy >>paper. <P>You said:</P> <DIV></DIV>>It is closer to being cognitive than rationalist. When Habermas >talks about >communicaitve rationality on one page, he says communication has a >cognitive structure on the next. <P>What does that mean? Cognitive as opposed to what? It's a pragmatist truism that experience, feeling, emotion, perception, and thought all interpenetrate, that all seeing is "seeing as," under a description. This is an important point, but by cognitive structure, you seem to mean something else altogether. The view I think you espouse seems not to be a point about the structure of experience, that it is always under a description, but about the a priori necessity for a certain sort of highly articulated justification. As I'd express it, you seem to think that all thought, to count as thought at all, presupposes a reflective equilibrium in which the theoretical basis from which it can be derived are made explicit. That is what I meant by rationalism.</P> <P> <DIV>I said:</DIV></P> You >>are >>showing the necessary conditions of communication that obtain <DIV></DIV>>>regardless >>of what people think or want, and, moreover, one that is not based <DIV></DIV>>>on >>actual (very defective) practice, but on an idealized model of free >>and>>equal communicators. That's as a priori as anyone could wish. <P>You responded:</P> <DIV></DIV>> <DIV></DIV>>It is a projection that is manifest in the very act of speaking. <DIV></DIV>>We're >talking, and we're simultaneously presupposing that understanding is <DIV></DIV>>possible. If we presuppose that understanding is possible, then we <DIV></DIV>>can >theoretical reconstruct the logic about why this presupposition >happens. > <P>That sounds like a transcendental argument that certain conditions of cvommunitication are synthetic a priori.</P> <P>You said:</P> <P>> I'm arguing >>that a >>>philosophical justification can be given for the normative >>>dimensions of >>>reaching an agreement. </P> <DIV></DIV> <P>I said, Wha? You explained:</P> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>> <DIV></DIV>>Understanding has a twofold character: sharing an identical meaning <DIV></DIV>>of >something with someone, and knowing the conditions under which said <DIV></DIV>>something can be considered valid. >If I say that "the ball is red," I'm making a propositional truth >claim. >For understanding to take place, we must agree on the meaning of the <DIV></DIV>>proposition, but this also means that we must know under what <DIV></DIV>>conditions >the ball is red (lighting, the ball in its current state, before we <DIV></DIV>>toss it >into the fire and watch it explode etc). These are only the <DIV></DIV>>presuppositions >of understanding. Reaching agreement is what happens after we <DIV></DIV>>understand >what we've said to one another. I say the ball is red, and give <DIV></DIV>>reasons, >you say the ball is red, and give reasons, then we agree, we have <DIV></DIV>>reached >an agreement through mutual understanding. This is normative in the <DIV></DIV>>sense >that an agreement can only be reached - through the process of >understanding -  . . . .. It is >normative in the sense that certain conditions must be in place - >egalitarian reciprocity and universal moral respect - for agreement >to be >achieved and considered an agreement. <P>This strikes me as wrong for several reasons. First, as Quine has argues, there are no things called "meanings" that we share that can be "identical." Our beliefs may have content, and the the same content, e.g., "the ball is red," but that's a matter of our exprwessing or thinking a proposition with certain truth conditions. If our propositions have different truth conditions, we aren't thinking the same thought. But there isn't something called a "meaning" that the proposition relates to taht we have to "grasp" to understand it. Understanding propositional content is just knowing the truth conditions of the proposition, that's all. There are other sorts of understanding--the sort you seek from your lover or spouse, the verstehen involved in seeing why someone acted as they did, etc. But those don't involve special entities called meanings either.</P> <P>Second, as you have stated the conditions for understanding, no one understands anything except under ideal conditions of freedom and equality. Since these have never existed, no one has ever understood anything, including "the ball is red." That is a reductio. A slave with the master;s foot on his neck can understand the proposition in question, same as the master, by grasping its truth conditions.> </P> <DIV></DIV> <P>I said: </P> <P>Yeah, >>it>>matters if our narratives are true, our values correct, our >>experiences >>"authentic," whatever that means.  Is>>the account you are giving just a classification of those obvious >>facts? </P> <DIV></DIV>You responded: > <DIV></DIV>> <DIV></DIV>>Because there is a different logic of inquiry for each. One has to <DIV></DIV>>do with >science, another with law and politics and the other with, whatever <DIV></DIV>>- you >know, the 'good life.' Habermas demonstrates that science can only <DIV></DIV>>take >place with a normative basis - that reaching agreement is normative. <DIV></DIV>>In >short: science can't exist as science without communicative action. <P>Pragmatists put this tlast hought by saying that there is no fact value distinction that is very robust. However, the conclusion we draw from this is that there are no distinct logics of inquiry, precisely because science is imbued with value.</P> <P>I said:</P> <DIV></DIV>>. Here I guess your idea is that somehow the <DIV></DIV>>>idealized noncoercive consensus situation, the HAbermasian original <DIV></DIV>>>position, has something to offer. I doubt it, but I have mainly <DIV></DIV>>>analysed >>the Rawlsian version of this story. <DIV></DIV>> <DIV></DIV> <P>>Habermas argues for impartiality, not an original position.</P> <P>Sure, but it's a different way to get at the same idea. Rawls wants the OP to get away from all partial interests, to express only the interests that everyone has.</P> <P> I stated, somewhat cryptically, my objection to the invocation of  this sort ruthless abstraction from real world situations. I here try again. Ought implies can, so we have no duty ot do what we can't. But with real people in the real world, who are not in an ideal speech situation or an OP or a just world where all conflicts of significance have been overcome, the privileged sociologically cannot do what would be demanded of them from the ideal situation. This is an axiom of historical materialism. So they ought not. Therefore, Rawls and Habermas cannot provide a basis for critiquing existing arrangements. I spell this out in great detail (with my own non-ideal solution) in "Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, and Justice," Legal Studies 17 (1997). </P> <P>The following remarks do not seem to me to reply adequately:</P> <DIV></DIV>>Right, in situations that are not 'perfect' - we have to take up <DIV></DIV>>strategic <DIV></DIV>>actions. But we do so on the basis of communicative action (using it <DIV></DIV>>to <DIV></DIV>>ground criticism), not simply for the sake of taking up strategic <DIV></DIV>>actions. <DIV></DIV>>We struggle for freedom, and what is freedom? It is difficult to <DIV></DIV>>define, <DIV></DIV>>but we could define it under these xyz conditions.... <DIV></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>--jks</DIV></div><br clear=all><hr>Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at <a href='http://go.msn.com/bql/hmtag_itl_EN.asp'>http://explorer.msn.com</a><br></html>