when you also claim veracity for the premises, you’ve moved from rational argument to reasonable claim, to making a plausible case that could be countered by an equally plausible alternative.

So in your view ‘reasonable claim’ inherently involves a claim that can be countered. Is this really characteristic of it being reasonable, or only of it being a claim? If it were characteristic of reasonableness, then why does it necessitate multiple valid viewpoints? If that were the case, reason would be reference to pure subjectivity and thus not reason at all, no?

The role of psychology is yet a different matter.

Different from what?

Is this really characteristic of it being reasonable, or only of it being a claim? — kudos

Again, I may be at fault here for not explaining precisely what the problem situation is. No one – not me, not Habermas, not Rehg – believes that any and all claims are automatically reasonable, that just because it’s possible to counter a claim in some fashion, this creates a plausible or reasonable position. Rather, the issue raised is meant to address a very familiar problem situation in philosophy, where excellent philosophers find themselves differing about very basic questions in metaphysics, morals, etc. H and R, if I’m reading them correctly, are asking into how this comes about – how it could come about, if all concerned are intelligent and rational and have been exposed to the same pro-and-con arguments on the question.

The idea is that, if the form of the argument is agreed to be valid (and of course there may be disagreement about that as well), then the problem must lie in disagreement about the premises which have not been argued for. Clearly, some premises have no initial plausibility (“We know there’s a hell because God needs to punish us deservedly”) and most philosophers wouldn’t waste time on them. So perhaps we should say that a reasonable claim might be one with a long, intricate history of back-and-forth among great philosophers, always being countered by other, equally reasonable claims. As I said, I think that is a very common thing to find in the history of Western phil.

But this emphasis on arguing for the premises seems merely to push the question back, or up, one level. For any argument in favor of the premises must itself start from premises, and so on. . . there’s the problem. H and R want to know if there is a way out of the potentially infinite regress, and if so, whether it is rational in the sense that it can argued and justified to others who dispute the original claim. And as we’ve seen in this discussion, it may well be that an approach emphasizing rhetoric, persuasion on ethical grounds, or some form of hermeneutic analysis is required – in other words, a new understanding of “rationality” would have to be brought into play.

The role of psychology is yet a different matter.

Different from what? — kudos

I meant “different from the question of whether there’s a rational move that can be made in this situation.” We can give as much weight to psychology as we care to – we can imagine all our interlocutors are burdened by heavy baggage of personal biases -- but the question doesn’t go away: Could they do something about it, in terms of argumentation, other than assert their idiosyncratic (Kant would say “heteronomous”) points of view? And would whatever they did be rationally convincing?

How do you mean it has been demolished, by what/whom? — kudos

What I meant was that while religion used to provide the ‘summum bonum’, a universally-agreed ‘highest good’, this history of sectarian religious conflict has undermined that consensus. (Well, among other factors.)

One of the perennial problems in philosophy is why a general consensus or rational agreement is so hard to come by on virtually all the interesting topics. This is also a problem about philosophy, since the lack of agreement certainly has to give philosophers pause, and make them wonder about the value of what they’re doing. — J

The image that comes to mind while reading your post is that of the Blind Men and the Elephant. A plethora of perspectives will not yield unity of knowledge. So the ideal of Objectivity gradually emerged, to provide the god-like perspective that we now expect of Modern Science.

One postulated solution to that "perennial" conflict of opinions has been to politically agree on a single authority, whose opinion will overrule any lesser authority. So, primitive people bowed to the strongest man among them to decide controversial issues. But when strong-men resorted to violence, instead of reason, to reach consensus, the moderates looked for some higher authority. When Kings were found to work only on a tribal level, they postulated a singular Super-Human to rule them all. Yet unanimity of opinion continued to elude them.

20 centuries ago, the early Roman Church was internally divided due to various opinions on which "scriptures" were to be accepted as the "word of God". The result of their international Council of Nicea was the anthology we know today as "The Bible" : produced, after much wrangling and anathematizing. Since some concepts in that Authorized Version --- Trinity ; Body/Bread --- were contrary to common sense, Theologians began to approach The Discord Problem philosophically. But even applying Reason to matters of Faith did not result in unity of opinion. So, they agreed to accept the pagan Aristotle as a neutral authority on the nature of Nature. And the rest is history . . . . of excommunication & execution due to differences of opinion.

The moral of these stories may be to accept that human knowledge is incomplete, and subject to personal bias. But somehow we manage to move-on from these intersections of opinion. For example, in constitutional convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin made a last desperate attempt to pull unity out of the fires of passion. He cautioned his fellow delegates that it is human nature to consider themselves to be "in possession of all truth." Then he pleaded " that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument".

Perhaps, the few remaining schools of Philosophy, should include Philosophical Humility in their curriculum. With that fire extinguisher at hand, maybe we can keep chipping away at the walls of intellectual pride & prejudice that divide us. :nerd:



The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

The rest of the story :
In some versions, the blind men then discover their disagreements, suspect the others to be not telling the truth and come to blows. The stories also differ primarily in how the elephant's body parts are described, how violent the conflict becomes and how (or if) the conflict among the men and their perspectives is resolved. In some versions, they stop talking, start listening and collaborate to "see" the full elephant. In another, a sighted man enters the parable and describes the entire elephant from various perspectives, the blind men then learn that they were all partially correct and partially wrong. While one's subjective experience is true, it may not be the totality of truth.

Philosophical Humility :
Aristotle understood humility as a moral virtue, sandwiched between the vices of arrogance and moral weakness. Like Socrates, he believed that humility must include accurate self-knowledge and a generous acknowledgment of the qualities of others that avoids distortion and extremes.
https://positivepsychology.com/humility/

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like the question you are asking is something close to, 'Does the idea of a philosophical system detract from the argumentative weight of a premise?' My answer to that would be 'yes,' because the premise in that case becomes the idea of the premise in itself. It now has been given the character of a content that is devoid of form.

Fantastic post. I have had countless discussions and debates with people over the years and can throw my two cents into the ring.

1. People are not innately rational beings. We're innately rationalizing beings.

What does this mean? It means that most of us have a conclusion that we want, and look for reasoning that leads to that conclusion. It takes less effort and makes us feel happy and smart. No one likes to be wrong. Everyone likes to be right. Therefore the path of least resistance for our own emotional well being is to justify what we already want.

2. Being rational is not innate to most people and can be emotionally unsatisfying. It takes training, discipline, and ethics.

Being rational often does not feel good. Being rational will expose you more often to how wrong you are than how right you are. It does not let you feel superior to others. It does not make you feel smart. All of that is status and ego, and a rational person understands those are irrelevant to an argument. It can cut out a lot of entertaining thoughts as you need to look at data or take rigorous steps. Its so EASY not to be rational. Instead of admitting to being wrong in an argument, you can use techniques to skirt around someone's rationality and defend your rationale. A lot of people rationalize that they are rational, but are doing so because it gives them a sense of feeling good about themselves. Thus, when an actual rational argument is presented that breaks their rationale on something, they become hostile. Its because they don't care about rationality, they care about their ego and sense of self as a "smart" person being threatened.

3. It is easy to rationalize and be convincing to others as good rationalizing persuades emotionally, which is more powerful than unemotional rationality.

Basically because we're all rationalizing creatures by default, its easy to get away with not being rational. You'll always find some people who agree with your points if you're entertaining or connect emotionally with another person in your argument. You can get a feeling of intellectual superiority, though it is undeserved. Its so much easier to fake being rational and convince people than actually be rational and convince people.

So to sum, we're not special rational beings, we're rationalizing animals that with work and effort, have the capacity to be rational. This capacity is incredibly difficult, as it must overcome ego, desire for status, and plenty of other emotions that we want for our own self-benefit. Being rational will not win you friends or applause. It will often times be met with silence, anger, or dismissal. Its so much easier and fun to be great at rationalizing while basking in the illusions of our own superiority.

Now, lets couple this with philosophy. Philosophy is loaded with words, phrases, and theories that are havens for rationalizers. We sort broad definitions that allow subjective interpretation between different groups of people. We even allow much philosophy to be "untestable" which basically means its a logic game of imagination. Unlike science which requires data and repeatability, many aspects of philosophy are subjective, and therefore fall into the, "I'm right because I believe this" trope.

Because philosophy can also be confusing and unclear in its definitions, it can make people feel intelligent by stringing a group of words together that sound smart. After you take the careful effort to dissect the word play, you can find nothing was said at all. As most people are untrained to be rational in philosophy, the default is for people to rationalize in philosophy, especially on these boards.

This causes people to create identities such as, "I'm a Hegelian Idealist," or other general nonsense that gives them a feeling of being smart and "rational". One can start to get a sense of having special knowledge over regular people. "After all, those materialists are the general masses who have never thought of this at all!" But its all a trap of ego.

Its not that rationality can't win after a long and protracted battle. Of course, if a rational argument does win in philosophy, its no longer philosophy. Its now something provable and testable, and often becomes a science. Philosophies goal is to destroy itself ironically, and there are a lot of people who don't want to see that. So much of philosophy that is floating around is the unprovable mistakes of the past that have made no progress to solving real problems of today, but can be fun to think about. That's my take on it anyway.

'Does the idea of a philosophical system detract from the argumentative weight of a premise?' — kudos

I think I understand this, but hope you'll say more. Tell me if this is close: One possible premise for a philosophical argument is "Philosophical arguments need to have premises that can be rationally argued for." So, in trying to evaluate that premise, we're immediately thrust into a self-reflexive loop that is also highly abstract. (I would have said "form without content," though you characterize it the opposite way.) I'm not sure whether, or why, this detracts from the argumentative weight of any one particular premise, or whether the "system" aspect is important here. I do see that it highlights a foundational problem about argumentation, and if that's mainly what you mean, it's a good point. But I may be missing something . . . please go on!

@Gnomon I agree with most all of this, especially the humility part. I would only clarify that "being in possession of all truth," as Franklin put it, isn’t really the goal here. Philosophers like Habermas and Rehg (and me) who worry about this question are worried about why even the most basic issues in philosophy don’t seem to have agreed-upon stopping places or plateaus of consensus.

, thanks for the interesting and ambitious thread.

One of the perennial problems in philosophy is why a general consensus or rational agreement is so hard to come by on virtually all the interesting topics. — J

I think we would want to gain precision regarding this sort of claim. For example, presumably the constituents of this consensus are philosophers, no? And then what sort of bounds are we placing on our sample, specifically historically and culturally? My guess is that there is much more consensus than folks believe, and that the really significant exceptions come from historical or cultural deviations.

For example, one might look at the English tradition of moral philosophy and, seeing so many different views, conclude that there is a significant lack of consensus. But from the perspective of Elizabeth Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy,” there is a conspicuous consensus around the issue of consequentialism, and considered in this way, everyone in this historical-cultural epoch is narrowly aligned in a way that past generations would have seen as bizarre.

I’d be interested to hear how other philosophers on the forum have thought about it. — J

I don’t find the lack of consensus odd.* I would want to highlight a few points: 1) The feebleness of the intellect in knowing difficult matters; 2) The falsity of individualism and the significant role that culture plays in reason; 3) The complexity and subtlety of the human mind, which is underappreciated; 4) That humans are not especially interested in truth; 5) The Fall.

I think the first point is self-explanatory, but I will try to give some minor elucidation of the others.

(2) In dialogue with Habermas, Joseph Ratzinger pointed to the cultural fracturing and the increasing disintegration of consensus, and gestured to the thing that he believed provided for Western consensus in the first place: Christian culture, with its twin roots of Judaism and Hellenism. If he was right then it is religio-cultural realities that generate consensus, not rationality per se. The idea that the individual achieves truth or rationality on their own, and that individuals are the proper constituent of consensus, is thus thrown into question.

(3) The power of the human mind and its ability to consider and reconsider things ad infinitum seems to be underappreciated. Also related are questions about the very nature of argument. The idea that "everyone has heard the same arguments pro and con" seems questionable to me, not only because exposure to arguments differs, but also because comprehension of arguments differs. I think Plato's Theaetetus is good in highlighting the way that an argument does not necessarily transfer understanding from one mind to another, and that such transfer is rather complex.

(4) There are lots of things that humans tend to find more interesting than truth and philosophy, such as food, drink, sex, power, glory, etc. I don't think philosophers are immune.

(5) This is the Christian claim that something is amiss about the human intellect and will. They don't work as they ought, and this is not limited to philosophy.

I wonder if the consensus about the idea that there ought to be a consensus is perhaps our own historical peculiarity, and is driven by the West’s secularism and its belief in “The End of History.”


* Aristotle looks at this phenomenon of divergence in Metaphysics IV-5

:cheer:

thanks for the interesting and ambitious thread. — Leontiskos

Glad you like the thread. “Ambitious” is being kind!

Your perspective here is a timely corrective. We don’t talk past each other and disagree about absolutely everything, that’s true. (And yes, I meant to raise this as a problem among philosophers, not the general public.) Perhaps there’s more consensus than I realize. Perhaps, as you point out, the sense of “grotesque wild pluralism” (as Richard J. Bernstein put it) is local to our era.

But here is why I’m skeptical. First, irreconcilable or incommensurable positions seem to have been around since 5th century BCE Athens, if Plato is to be trusted. I’m one of those who reads (most of) the Platonic dialogues as illustrations of the conflict between a certain kind of rationality, philosophia, and those who distrust it, as played out in an actual polis where political consequences are very real. And even after bad actors like Thrasymachus leave the Republic, we still never really reach a definition of justice that could persuade those who are hostile to philosophia. And your point about the Theaetetus is also telling. So . . . disagreement over argumentation and its value are nothing new, I would say.

Second, what I’m calling the “Habermas gap” really is like playing Whack-A-Mole. Consider Anscombe on consequentialism. You rightly use terms like “from this perspective” and “considered in this way.” But doesn’t this merely reinforce the point that there are many equally talented philosophers out there who don’t share her perspective and don’t consider the matter in this way? Are we narrowly aligned around a consensus re consequentialism? Maybe. Darn it, there’s not even a consensus around whether there’s a consensus! . . . or so it seems to me.

I wonder if the consensus about the idea that there ought to be a consensus is perhaps our own historical peculiarity, and is driven by the West’s secularism and its belief in “The End of History.” — Leontiskos

One last point, very speculative. I think the question about rational justification as a consensus-building technique may be internal to philosophy and not a historical phenomenon at all. I suggest that it’s part of the essential self-reflective character of philosophical thought – which may also account for its apparent intractability. I find this speculation of yours about the West enticing, but I don’t think that historicizing the problem can really answer it. For (and I know this is repetitive by now) the position that “There’s a consensus around the idea that there ought to be consensus,” aka “We now know that consensus is a good thing,” can be and has been disputed, by thoughtful philosophers.

So, in trying to evaluate that premise, we're immediately thrust into a self-reflexive loop that is also highly abstract. (I would have said "form without content," though you characterize it the opposite way.)

Yes, exactly. In evaluating the premise – based on the idea that it is part of one functional philosophical system among many equally valid and having this constitute its grounding – lends it to an abstract domain of objectivity.

I'm not sure whether, or why, this detracts from the argumentative weight of any one particular premise, or whether the "system" aspect is important here. I do see that it highlights a foundational problem about argumentation, and if that's mainly what you mean, it's a good point.

A philosophical system of any real value can't be self-objectifying in this way without falling into a lull of blind subjectivity of no serious use. I consider it a mistake to take the work of Kant, Hume, etc. as complete philosophical systems that are equally true and valid, while we play the neutral subject observing their writing as an interplay of conflicting logic.

Gnomon I agree with most all of this, especially the humility part. I would only clarify that "being in possession of all truth," as Franklin put it, isn’t really the goal here. Philosophers like Habermas and Rehg (and me) who worry about this question are worried about why even the most basic issues in philosophy don’t seem to have agreed-upon stopping places or plateaus of consensus. — J

Unlike the reductive-physical-measurable MATTER of Science, Philosophy is dealing with holistic-metaphysical-unbounded IDEAS. Using a physical/material metaphor, Plato advised philosophers to "carve nature at its joints". Unfortunately, the problems this thread refers to are Cultural, not Natural.

Scientific "facts" are Real & Objective, but Philosophical "truths" are Ideal & Subjective, hence Truth is irrevocably Moot. And, the "plateaus" may only be Logical or Categorical Boundaries, instead of Physical "joints". Hence, the perennial plaint remains unanswered : "what is truth". When two people can agree on what counts as true in a particular case, they may be in possession of enough truth to move on to the next question. :smile:

Glad you like the thread. “Ambitious” is being kind! — J

Ha! Well I think you also managed to keep it accessible and interesting.

Perhaps, as you point out, the sense of “grotesque wild pluralism” (as Richard J. Bernstein put it) is local to our era.

But here is why I’m skeptical. First, irreconcilable or incommensurable positions seem to have been around since 5th century BCE Athens, if Plato is to be trusted. I’m one of those who reads (most of) the Platonic dialogues as illustrations of the conflict between a certain kind of rationality, philosophia, and those who distrust it, as played out in an actual polis where political consequences are very real. And even after bad actors like Thrasymachus leave the Republic, we still never really reach a definition of justice that could persuade those who are hostile to philosophia. And your point about the Theaetetus is also telling. So . . . disagreement over argumentation and its value are nothing new, I would say. — J

Oh, I agree with that. I don't think it is local to our era, or new to us. I actually tend to think our own age possesses more consensus than past ages, perhaps because we value and emphasize mathematics and the hard sciences, where consensus is easier to come by. There have also been intentional moves towards consensus, such as the attempt to replace religion with rationality during the Enlightenment. And then there is the converging global culture, where multiculturalism yields to cultural pluralism, which in time will seem to yield to a large degree of cultural homogeneity (and this occurs not only with respect to culture, but also with respect to religion and morality).

In my last post I was rather trying to say that strong consensuses tend to hold within a single historical, cultural, and religious tapestry. The most striking lack-of-consensus seems to occur when we move outside of such an ideological framework.

Second, what I’m calling the “Habermas gap” really is like playing Whack-A-Mole. Consider Anscombe on consequentialism. You rightly use terms like “from this perspective” and “considered in this way.” But doesn’t this merely reinforce the point that there are many equally talented philosophers out there who don’t share her perspective and don’t consider the matter in this way? Are we narrowly aligned around a consensus re consequentialism? — J

I think at the time she wrote it was widely recognized that she was correct. But then her thesis led to a diversification in the field, where virtue ethics and deontology became more common in the English-speaking philosophical world. But yes, the question of how to specify consensus looms large. Anscombe was pointing to a meta-ethical consensus relative to prior history.

One last point, very speculative. I think the question about rational justification as a consensus-building technique may be internal to philosophy and not a historical phenomenon at all. I suggest that it’s part of the essential self-reflective character of philosophical thought – which may also account for its apparent intractability. — J

So would you say that the self-reflective character of philosophical thought intrinsically resists consensus? Or intrinsically resists rational agreement?

I find this speculation of yours about the West enticing, but I don’t think that historicizing the problem can really answer it. For (and I know this is repetitive by now) the position that “There’s a consensus around the idea that there ought to be consensus,” aka “We now know that consensus is a good thing,” can be and has been disputed, by thoughtful philosophers. — J

It seems to me that the OP is predicated on the idea that there ought to be a consensus, and that we are thus left to reckon with a conspicuous absence. When it comes down to brass tacks, this has a lot to recommend it. If truth exists and truth is knowable, then it should generate consensus. If there is no consensus, then it would seem that either truth does not exist or else it is not (generally) knowable. On Aristotle's account no one disagrees on first principles, such as the principle of non-contradiction, and this is how he tends to answer the strong anti-consensus view.

It seems to me that the OP is predicated on the idea that there ought to be a consensus, and that we are thus left to reckon with a conspicuous absence. When it comes down to brass tacks, this has a lot to recommend it. — Leontiskos

Yes, but. I tried to walk a fine line in the OP. I was trying to put the idea “There ought to be consensus based on rational argumentation” in brackets, so to speak, acknowledging its attractiveness but also holding it up for consideration and critique. What is the status of our concern for rational consensus, for “something to which we can appeal which will or ought to command universal assent” (Bernstein)? How should we view it? Is it the same thing as a desire for some unattainable, foundational objective truth? Or should we carefully examine other understandings of rationality? I guess I would summarize this as: Objective rational consensus may be the great unrealized dream of philosophy, or its nightmare, from which we struggle to awaken. I take the “Habermas gap” question to be a way of asking, “What would it take in order to be able to realize the consensus dream?"

So would you say that the self-reflective character of philosophical thought intrinsically resists consensus? Or intrinsically resists rational agreement? — Leontiskos

I’m not sure quite what I’m saying here. I’m trying to find a way to make the consensus question ahistorical, I think – not simply something that waxes and wanes depending on time and place – but this may not be the way to do it.

There’s no doubt that what you describe is accurate, and different eras do develop consensus relative to prior history, and then, perhaps, lose it. Could there be any progress to this dialectic? As to this possibility, Rorty puts the question well: “Even when we have justified true belief about everything we want to know, we may have no more than conformity to the norms of the day.”

I find myself wanting to say that it’s philosophy itself, understood as a particular way of thinking critically or self-reflectively, that ought to reveal why this kind of consensus is chimerical (if it is), not some historical analysis. The only reason I tried to call out self-reflection, previously, was because we’re all familiar with the queasy infinite-regress character of reflection, which seems analogous to the consensus-about-consensus question, or the how-to-reason-about-rationality question. Or, as another forum member pointed out, this may be the nature of dialectic, if dialectic indeed characterizes philosophy – no synthesis can resist becoming the next thesis, to be countered by its antithesis. But I don’t have a theory of this, or even a good insight.

I think it is because philosophy is the attempt to think clearly, not a guarantee to think clearly. When we do philosophy, most of us try to be sincerely try to be rational and objective, but we're only human and so we have plenty of biases, emotional motivations, and psychological hang-ups that account for our lack of consensus.

There's an old opinion piece in the NY Times that I often cite, concerning Habermas' dialogue with religion (as is well-known, he engaged in a number of dialogues with Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI). This was eventually published as the book An Awareness of What is Missing. Habermas is not endorsing any kind of wholesale return to religious faith, rather he says that while 'religion must accept the authority of secular reason as the fallible results of the sciences and the universalistic egalitarianism in law and morality, conversely, secular reason must not set itself up as the judge concerning truths of faith.' — Wayfarer

It goes deeper than that. Imagine the college-educated, yet mainly sports-watching, hard-drinking, workaday man whose very existence is subsumed by the debates and beliefs of the intellectual debates/pursuits/insights over the last 2,500 years or so, but does not care about any of it. That is to say, these insights are ignored by reflex or default. Something has failed. Philosophy is backing up to the most fundamental questions of "why do anything"? Pursuits of metaphysics may be pursuits of meaning. Humans are able to question the very framework of their existence. This puts us in an existential situation not faced by other biological beings.

Most people don't want to go there. Einstein grappled with interesting questions not because his patent office told him to, but because he was fascinated and curious.

We defined knowledge as perfectly true and then decided we could rationally doubt anything.

It goes deeper than that. Imagine the college-educated, yet mainly sports-watching, hard-drinking, workaday man whose very existence is subsumed by the debates and beliefs of the intellectual debates/pursuits/insights over the last 2,500 years or so, but does not care about any of it. That is to say, these insights are ignored by reflex or default. Something has failed. — schopenhauer1

I don't disagree entirely but why do you say failed? Is your assumption that the average person like this should be interested in these matters? Do you draw a direct line from being able to think about 2500 years of intellectual debate and being a 'better citizen' or some analogue of that?

I’m not sure quite what I’m saying here. I’m trying to find a way to make the consensus question ahistorical, I think – not simply something that waxes and wanes depending on time and place – but this may not be the way to do it.

There’s no doubt that what you describe is accurate, and different eras do develop consensus relative to prior history, and then, perhaps, lose it. Could there be any progress to this dialectic? As to this possibility, Rorty puts the question well: “Even when we have justified true belief about everything we want to know, we may have no more than conformity to the norms of the day.” — J

That's fair. My original idea wasn't to promote a form of historicism, but rather to shift the constituents of consensus from individuals to cultures. I want to say that a culture's belief is in some way more stable and more reliable than an individual's belief. So for me personally the question about consensus-between-cultures is more interesting than the question about consensus-between-individuals, but maybe it is clearer to simply speak about individuals, as the OP does.

Yes, but. I tried to walk a fine line in the OP. I was trying to put the idea “There ought to be consensus based on rational argumentation” in brackets, so to speak, acknowledging its attractiveness but also holding it up for consideration and critique. What is the status of our concern for rational consensus, for “something to which we can appeal which will or ought to command universal assent” (Bernstein)? How should we view it? Is it the same thing as a desire for some unattainable, foundational objective truth? Or should we carefully examine other understandings of rationality? I guess I would summarize this as: Objective rational consensus may be the great unrealized dream of philosophy, or its nightmare, from which we struggle to awaken. — J

I keep thinking of the two sentences I wrote that followed the one you quoted:

If truth exists and truth is knowable, then it should generate consensus. If there is no consensus, then it would seem that either truth does not exist or else it is not (generally) knowable. — Leontiskos

Thus a very fundamental case for consensus is: <Individuals are able to know truth; truth is one; therefore individuals should agree in what they hold to be true>.

But there may also be reasons why we see consensus as attractive or concerning.

I take the “Habermas gap” question to be a way of asking, “What would it take in order to be able to realize the consensus dream?" — J

This is an interesting practical question, which comes at it from a different angle.

It may be worth pointing out explicitly that this is all about a meta-question, a kind of bird's-eye view of rationality. It seems to me that, with a few exceptions, everyone does accept that there should be consensus, and in their day to day lives they try to convince others of the things they hold to be true. Every time the average person enters into an argument they are working for the "consensus dream."

But the "Habermas gap" question has something like a God's-eye view in mind, and I think this is where the contradiction arises. It is a search for a programme that will ensure consensus, but no programme that ensures consensus is ultimately able to respect the autonomy of reason. That which is reached by a programme can only ever be a pseudo-consensus. The assumption that we could answer the question "What would it take?," seems to be an overreach in itself. We simply work towards consensus, and if it ever happens it will be the result of billions of individual arguments doing the hard work on the ground. I don't know that there is any special key. I don't know that there is any answer to the question posed at that level of abstraction. But perhaps I am misconstruing the question.

Else, my answer to the practical question would include things like, "Make philosophy part of the core curriculum in high schools and colleges," but I realize this is not at all what Habermas has in mind.

I don't disagree entirely but why do you say failed? Is your assumption that the average person like this should be interested in these matters? Do you draw a direct line from being able to think about 2500 years of intellectual debate and being a 'better citizen' or some analogue of that? — Tom Storm

It’s a matter of questioning what’s given. Bad faith and all that. Humans are the only animals with self-consciousness (replete with concepts and self-talk, a level with symbolic language and syntax let's say). The move away from questioning first principles on meaning, life, ethics, and metaphysics would represent a sort of bad faith for simply following a certain circumstance one is born into.

In a way, I guess I can link this to why I am averse to Wittgenstein-style philosophy. It is a move away from questioning first principles to drowning in technocracy (language games in later Wittgenstein, and language positivism in early Wittgenstein). This is why I mentioned the patent office and Einstein. Einstein's curiosity is of interest here, not the demands put on him by his patent office, which, if anything, was a distraction from pursuing his curiosity, though necessary to survive at that moment.

So it's the move to questioning everything, and being curious, and having no bounds that moves us away from the bad faith of simply following the given, to be simply a technocrat when one can be a free (in the truest sense) thinker, questioning first principles. The questions, and ones attempt to solve them are important, even if agreement can't be had, ultimately. In that aspect, philosophy (not the technocratic kind but in its free form) represents the most human of capacities.

Got ya. Thanks for the clarification. :up: