Habermas and rationality: Who's being "unreasonable"?

Jürgen Habermas has expounded two key ideas in his philosophy: “communicative action” and “performative contradiction.”

Communicative action is a complicated concept, not suited to a full description in an OP. To be as concise as possible: Communicative action is speech-action oriented to reaching an understanding among participants in a dialogue concerning practical or prudential ends. Steven K. White’s very helpful study, The Recent Work of Jurgen Habermas: Reason, Justice and Modernity, has this further description: “Within this model, actors are conceived of as seeking an understanding in regard to some practical situation confronting them, in order to coordinate their actions consensually. Reaching an understanding requires [what Habermas calls] ‛a cooperative process of interpretation aimed at attaining intersubjectively recognized definitions of situations.’ ”

This process involves commitments to traditional “strategic” or Weberian rationality, but Habermas does not view rationality as merely strategic or goal-oriented. The embrace of intersubjectivity (“communicative rationality”) is also part of what it means to be rational, on his view. So a person who claimed the right to complete self-centeredness and separation from the community would be, for Habermas, irrational in the quite strong sense of “slightly crazy” -- not merely illogical. There is much more to be said about this kind of irrationality, but it may be helpful to think of Habermas’s conception in the context of our common use of “unreasonable”: If I stubbornly refuse to see anyone else’s point of view, insist on the rightness of my course of action, and reject all attempts to engage me in discourse, you may well say, “You’re being unreasonable!” We expect people to be willing to engage with us, on serious topics, if they want to be taken seriously. This captures the Habermasian idea of communicative rationality quite well.

Performative contradiction occurs when the principles of communicative action are violated in a particular way. As White puts it, an actor commits a performative contradiction when “he denies he is accountable for the normative claims his action raises.” This is because, as Habermas writes, there is a “speech-act-immanent obligation to provide justification” for any claim raised within the context of communicative action. Moreover, this obligation is not something the actor can choose or not choose to accept; it is part of what Habermas calls “the Sittlichkeit [ethical life] of human relations.” Again, the idea is of a built-in expectation of normative conduct within inquiry, without which the inquiry itself would no longer make sense.

The correctness of this model is far from obvious, and White mentions two of the most immediate problems: Is the obligation to provide justification really a necessary one (does it have to follow from the idea of communicative action itself)?, and, What exactly does this obligation amount to, in practice (for instance, can it generate the universalization of ethical terms that the Kantian tradition requires)? To this we could add a third: There is presumably no contradiction in merely walking away from a discussion, so are there independent reasons for calling that a normative violation?

But I want to introduce a more tractable problem, and see what TPF philosophers might say about it. It begins with the rather odd question, “Is it possible to use rationality to justify not using rationality?” A slightly, but crucially, different version of the question would be: “Under what circumstances can I use a rational argument to justify my not behaving rationally?” There seems to be some sort of contradiction going on here, but it isn’t clear whether it is performative in Habermas’s sense.

Now Habermas asserts that, within rationality, (at least) two stances create performative contradictions. One is (borrowing from Rawls) the “first-person dictator” stance, in which I claim that trying to get my own way, as far as possible, is a perfectly rational position. The second is the familiar “free rider” stance, in which I claim that there is nothing contrary to reason in my letting everyone else do some necessary task that is difficult or tedious and requires near-total communal participation; my absence won’t be noticed, and I’ll get the benefit of the results.

Let’s be clear that the question is not about whether such stances produce violations of the ethical norms that most of us abide by. Rather, we’re asking, “Are such stances irrational, given the commitments to communicative action that Habermas advocates (which view rationality as more than strategic)? Would it be irrational to argue for them within Habermasian dialogue?”

If we decide that the answer to this question is “Yes, they are indeed irrational,” or “Yes, they do involve performative contradiction,” we could then go on to contrast this kind of irrationality with a version of ethics – broadly, Kantian – that demands rationality, understood as universalizability or objectivity, from its actors. But that is a subsequent step; the first step is to come to some conclusion about what kind of contradiction, if any, is implied in the first-person dictator and free-rider stances. Are they versions of “using rationality to defend being irrational”? Or, in fact, are they perfectly rational stances? -- in which case, the problem would lie in the Kantian project of identifying rationality with some version of universalizability that would preclude such self-interested special pleading. Or perhaps they are rational in the strategic/goal-directed sense, but not in Habermas’s sense of communicative rationality, since both the dictator and the free rider seem to deny or flout a commitment to intersubjectivity even as they argue their case in that very context.

In summary, the problem I’m raising is whether the idea of communicative rationality changes how we evaluate the rationality of self-focused stances such as the first-person dictator and the free rider. Is the Kantian tradition robust enough to deny that these stances are rational in any sense, or do we need to bring in Habermas to properly explain what, if anything, is irrational about them?

Astrophel

Now Habermas asserts that, within rationality, (at least) two stances create performative contradictions. One is (borrowing from Rawls) the “first-person dictator” stance, in which I claim that trying to get my own way, as far as possible, is a perfectly rational position. The second is the familiar “free rider” stance, in which I claim that there is nothing contrary to reason in my letting everyone else do some necessary task that is difficult or tedious and requires near-total communal participation; my absence won’t be noticed, and I’ll get the benefit of the results. — J

A few things, but starting here: A rationalist position like Habermas' has to discover first the universality of rational judgment, and regarding ethical affairs, this gets very messy, for such affairs are not logical constructions but refer to the world, and the world is not reducible to this, facts, that is. I am reminded of Wittgenstein's refusal to talk about ethics: it is not because of the dignity of logic put at risk, but that of value and ethics, for these are not to be found in the factual states of affairs (see that big book of all things in his Lecture on Ethics).

Kant's rationalism is egregiously mistaken in its failure to recognize the non rational nature of ethics as, the value at stake. Value is the essence of ethics, I mean, it is such that were it to be removed from an ethical issue, the issue itself would simply vanish.

But Habermas is like Rorty and his insistence on the "solidarity" of our existence, yet not really having this solidarity evidenced in his basic philosophy; just the opposite: truth is made not discovered, he writes in Irony, Contingency and Solidarity. From whence comes this allegiance to reason given that reason itself, as Hume said long ago, has no ethical content, no content at all. Reason as such would just as soon wipe out all humanity without flinching. No, it is not reason that compels one, for, putting it plainly, who cares what reason says, for it has always been in the service of value. So what, I commit a performative contradiction. Am I a piano key? asks Dostoyevsky.

Value is the essence of ethics, I mean, it is such that were it to be removed from an ethical issue, the issue itself would simply vanish. — Astrophel

Thanks for your reply, Astrophel. What you say about value and ethics is true when ethics is conceived as being about specific content, such as the virtues. But procedural ethics, as envisioned by Kant, Rawls, and Habermas, is different. The overriding idea here is we can only know what is ethical – what ought to be valued, what is worth valuing – by discovering whether certain procedural criteria can be fulfilled using the concept in question. For Kant, the criteria involved universalizability; for Rawls, they begin with fairness in an ideal “state of nature” situation (his Original Position). Habermas is in this tradition, and I’ve by no means mastered his theory of communicative action, which is complicated and has a lot of “rules of discourse.” But it is also procedural in that ethical values follow rationally from an understanding of what rationality itself is. And remember, for Habermas this understanding is not merely strategic or contextual.

I like to think of the two approaches as crude mirror images. Value- or virtue-based ethics starts with the goal (identified values) and asks what procedure we need to adopt to get there. Procedural ethics starts with determining a fair procedure, and claims that anything that can pass the fairness test will be a value, or at least not unethical. (Which is extremely dubious, but I’m trying to lay out the positions fairly.)

Habermas is like Rorty and his insistence on the "solidarity" of our existence — Astrophel

I agree, but this is just about the only place they resemble each other! Habermas is the very opposite of an ironist, and wants to base his version of solidarity on rationalist criteria that are in no way deconstructible. (At one point he explicitly rejects “the conclusions that Rorty and Derrida draw” from the failure of more traditional rationalist projects.) And, as I tried to suggest in my OP, Habermas wants to expand our understanding of rationality precisely because he wants to give it a normative content. He would probably agree that what I called strategic rationality is indeed empty of content – in part, that’s why it’s been so amenable to misuse in the ways that Weber analyzed. But Habermas’s communicative rationality is – or wants to be – very different.

So what, I commit a performative contradiction. Am I a piano key? asks Dostoyevsky. — Astrophel

I know, there’s always the temptation to urge a kind of radical freedom, including freedom from the constraints of rationality. But Habermas is trying to make that position even less appealing. To commit a performative contradiction isn’t merely illogical, it also begins the process of cutting you off from community, and communication. I suppose the challenge from radical freedom can simply be repeated ad infinitum – So what if I go a little mad? So what if no one listens to me? So what if . . . -- but I think we enter somewhat fantastical territory at that point.

You mentioned Wittgenstein and ethics. Do you have the time to say more about his views? I haven’t read his Lecture on Ethics. Is the idea that values would not be found among the facts about the world?

Tom Storm

...his insistence on the "solidarity" of our existence, yet not really having this solidarity evidenced in his basic philosophy; just the opposite: truth is made not discovered, he writes in Irony, Contingency and Solidarity. From whence comes this allegiance to reason given that reason itself, as Hume said long ago, has no ethical content, no content at all. Reason as such would just as soon wipe out all humanity without flinching. — Astrophel

I don't have philosophical background but you've concisely summarized a reaction I had to Rorty which I assumed might have been my lack of philosophical sophistication. How do you imagine Rorty might respond to this frame of his ideas? Surely it was put to him as it seems an obvious critique.

I remember hearing a lecture by Rorty (early 2000's) He said something like - 'If life has a meaning it is to make things better for our descendants.' How would he provide justification? I tend to think that Rorty, despite the Irony and anti-metaphysics, was essentially a romantic figure.

When he knew was dying of inoperable cancer he wrote -

...I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends. Cultures with richer vocabularies are more fully human — farther removed from the beasts — than those with poorer ones; individual men and women are more fully human when their memories are amply stocked with verses.

I wonder if his solidarity is a vestigial trace of Romanticism.

Astrophel

The overriding idea here is we can only know what is ethical – what ought to be valued, what is worth valuing – by discovering whether certain procedural criteria can be fulfilled using the concept in question. For Kant, the criteria involved universalizability; for Rawls, they begin with fairness in an ideal “state of nature” situation (his Original Position). Habermas is in this tradition, and I’ve by no means mastered his theory of communicative action, which is complicated and has a lot of “rules of discourse.” But it is also procedural in that ethical values follow rationally from an understanding of what rationality itself is. And remember, for Habermas this understanding is not merely strategic or contextual. — J

But what is missing from these procedural criteria is the one that does not sit apart from the existential engagement. Kant wrote that judgment that is motivated by desire cannot be moral. I argue that desire is the one true authentic motivation, desire, that is, that arises from the "pure pathos" or "pure affectivity" of ethical decision making ("pure" stands in need of elucidation. The thinking here comes from Michel Henry's phenomenology). Outside of this is pragmatics. Procedural ethics spelled out in terms of utility or duty are inherently amoral, turning the tables on the likes of Kant and Mill. Rawls made a good case, I thought, for a system that gives to the least advantaged based on self interest, but this is not what ethics IS. Kant was right about the "good will" but to determine such a thing as a rational rational agency is absurd. What makes a good will must issue from the ethical/aesthetic (Wittgenstein thought these to be the same. He was right) "good". Of course, if the notorious "good" and "bad" (thinking here along the lines of G E Moore's non natural property) were not so massively divergent in their affective prescriptions, rationalism in ethics would be entirely superfluous. But my point is that because people's sense of what is valuable do not align with one another in often radical ways, a rational procedural ethics, like Habermas' (I have a vague understanding. I read him once) tries to find what is not so ambiguous to do the work of settling things, reducing ethics to principles. But this, I think I mentioned above, makes the procedure of ethics pragmatic, a working out of how to explain and convince, but, and this is an important point, this only replaces what failed in the original ethical problematic, which is the response of care, the "originary" procedural ethical remedy to issues where value is in play.

“the conclusions that Rorty and Derrida draw” from the failure of more traditional rationalist projects.) — J

Just to mention, after reading Caputo's Tears of Jacque Derrida and Derrida's Violence and Metaphysics, I am convinced Derrida takes the matter considerably further than Rorty. Not sure I can explain this. Derrida deals in metaphysics, meaning he talks about it like Levinas does, and this really goes to the discussion of ethics I find important. Levinas "face" of the Other is the kind of nonrational ethical foundation talk I think is right. I don't think Rorty takes Levinas seriously.

I know, there’s always the temptation to urge a kind of radical freedom, including freedom from the constraints of rationality. But Habermas is trying to make that position even less appealing. To commit a performative contradiction isn’t merely illogical, it also begins the process of cutting you off from community, and communication. I suppose the challenge from radical freedom can simply be repeated ad infinitum – So what if I go a little mad? So what if no one listens to me? So what if . . . -- but I think we enter somewhat fantastical territory at that point. — J

I don't think crazy people are irrational. They just work in a world of nontypical challenging circumstances. Behavior cannot be irrational, I would argue. It may be deemed irrational, but this is according to a standard of general understanding that never witnesses the true problem solving matrix at work.
Fantastical territory? Assuming the norms that are the cultural features of a society, then yes, one can wildly violate those norms. I wonder, does LGBTQ count as this?

You mentioned Wittgenstein and ethics. Do you have the time to say more about his views? I haven’t read his Lecture on Ethics. Is the idea that values would not be found among the facts about the world? — J

See the Tractatus: ethics is transcendental. The world is mystical. Russell though he was a mystic and Wittgenstein said goodbye. Why did he think like this about ethics? Because ethics deals with value, and value is impossible to talk about AS value. What makes something good or bad in ethics? It is not like a good couch or a bad knife. These are contingent goods and bads, and one can talk about sharpness, balance, comfort, etc. But ethics, this is off the charts: put your finger under a lit match for a few seconds. NOW you understand the prohibition against doing this to others. Nothing rational about this. It is not an attitude or an opinion. This is, if you will, IN the presence of the world.

I am a moral realist, based on this reasoning.

From whence comes this allegiance to reason given that reason itself, as Hume said long ago, has no ethical content — Astrophel

How do you imagine Rorty might respond to this frame of his ideas? — Tom Storm

I hope Astrophel will answer, but my response would be: Rorty's allegiance was contingent and pragmatic. He thought that reason was a historical phenomenon that could be given different descriptions based on what society it emerged in. For "liberal ironists" like Rorty, our form of reason is useful in getting us where we want to go. That's all the allegiance it requires. (I think there are a lot of things wrong with this picture; I'm just trying to respond as I believe Rorty would.)

The quote from him is rather touching. Odd to hear him using phrases like "fully human" . . .

Because people's sense of what is valuable do not align with one another in often radical ways, a rational procedural ethics, like Habermas' . . . tries to find what is not so ambiguous to do the work of settling things, reducing ethics to principles. But this, I think I mentioned above, makes the procedure of ethics pragmatic, a working out of how to explain and convince, but, and this is an important point, this only replaces what failed in the original ethical problematic, which is the response of care, the "originary" procedural ethical remedy to issues where value is in play. — Astrophel

I'm not sure "trying to find what is not so ambiguous" really captures Habermasian communicative action. Habermas wants to generate additional or further norms out of normative discourse -- in other words, we can learn what is ethical by engaging in dialogue that observes its own ethical rules. This is procedural because, while we can know beforehand what normative discourse entails, we can't know what further ethics might be generated as we engage in communicative action on a particular topic. This is indeed pragmatic in a certain sense -- Habermas himself called the process "transcendental-pragmatic."

I think you're also saying that, without a basic commitment to the value of "care," none of this can result in anything more than a pragmatic remedy. You may even be saying that we need more than a commitment to care as a value -- a person must actually feel or experience care in order to act ethically. Could you say more about all this? Have I got it right?

I don't think crazy people are irrational. They just work in a world of nontypical challenging circumstances — Astrophel

If rationality is understood in the non-Habermasian sense of "strategic or goal-directed reason," then you're absolutely right. (Isaiah Berlin has the example of a man whose delight in life is to push pins into various objects. He pursues this goal with perfect strategic rationality.) Habermas is arguing for an expanded sense of what it means to be rational -- see my example of how we might say "You're being unreasonable!" to the person who refuses to talk about an issue of group concern. I'm not a big fan or ordinary-language philosophy, but I think we can learn a lot sometimes from how language is used in everyday situations. Consider another phrase: "She's lost her reason," describing someone who is going mad. Or "There's no reasoning with him!", said of someone who refuses to change directions no matter what is said to him.

You raise a good point about whether, and how, to connect norms of rationality with other cultural norms. We may deplore the unreasonable person for refusing to converse; may we also deplore the gay person for refusing to be heteronormative? Clearly we shouldn't, so we need to understand the difference here.

Number2018

↪J

Now Habermas asserts that, within rationality, (at least) two stances create performative contradictions. One is (borrowing from Rawls) the “first-person dictator” stance, in which I claim that trying to get my own way, as far as possible, is a perfectly rational position. The second is the familiar “free rider” stance, in which I claim that there is nothing contrary to reason in my letting everyone else do some necessary task that is difficult or tedious and requires near-total communal participation; my absence won’t be noticed, and I’ll get the benefit of the results.

Let’s be clear that the question is not about whether such stances produce violations of the ethical norms that most of us abide by. Rather, we’re asking, “Are such stances irrational, given the commitments to communicative action that Habermas advocates (which view rationality as more than strategic)? Would it be irrational to argue for them within Habermasian dialogue?” — J

It is possible to argue that both stances do not allow for rendering them irrational within Habermas’s theory of communicative action. A commitment to intersubjectivity implies that “speakers and hearers straightforwardly achieve a mutual understanding about something in the world, they move within the horizon of their common lifeworld; this remains in the background of the participants – as an intuitively known, unproblematic, unanalyzable, holistic background” (Habermas ‘The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity,’ p 298). Behind the theoretical Habermasian verification procedure lies the presupposition that an individual taking a stance and her audience aspire to achieve a mutual understanding. However, what makes the ‘first person-dictator and free-rider stances’ understandable and articulable positions? Perhaps it is not the result of a shared communal life’s horizon but an effect of an embedded practice of separating normal from abnormal, further manifesting a presence of normalizing judgment. In any case, we cannot rely today on the assumption of ‘an intuitively known, unproblematic, unanalyzable, holistic background’ of the participants in socially relevant communication.

↪Number2018

Yes, this gets to the heart of it. One place where I am unclear concerning Habermas is the distinction he makes between communicative action as such, and what he calls "the modern concept of argumentation," which Stephen K. White claims is where the "rules of discourse" properly enter the picture. This would be an "ideal speech situation" aimed entirely at reaching a consensus for action. On your understanding, is this the context in which the "intuitively known, unproblematic, unanalyzable, holistic background” needs to be assumed?

Where I'm going with this is: Can we turn away from this modern problematic, which certainly raises all the doubts you cite, and find something in the more basic concept of communicative action that would be transcendental in Habermas's sense that it would remain in any background of any "common lifeworld"? In other words, perhaps we can find a way of showing that a commitment to intersubjectivity transcends the (temporary, contingent) modern, and is built in to the structure of communicative action itself.

Concerning the dictator and the free rider: I'm not sure what you mean. You ask what makes these stances "understandable and articulable." Do you mean by us, as samples of ethical stances that may or may not be rational? Or do you mean within Habermasian communicative action, as samples of stances that cannot be argued because they are performative contradictions? If you could say more about that, I could better understand your further point about embedded practices that separate normal from abnormal.

Astrophel

I don't have philosophical background but you've concisely summarized a reaction I had to Rorty which I assumed might have been my lack of philosophical sophistication. How do you imagine Rorty might respond to this frame of his ideas? Surely it was put to him as it seems an obvious critique. — Tom Storm

Rorty, and I don't want to just throw names at you, so I won't, mostly, is postmodern, and this follows the critique of "modern" thinking that says it is not just the replacement of an old idea with a new, more reasonable one that will accomplish our philosophical search for a foundational theory. Rather, it is a flat out rejection of "the place" where these foundational ideas have their existence: metaphysics (in case you are interested, a great look at this comes from Heidegger's The Word of Nietzsche; God Is Dead, where he calls N a metaphysician because "will to power", he claims, is just a continuation of the "place" of metaphysics). To see the post modern move, think of metaphysics as a completely empty concept! As meaningless as 'ummgablgdt'. Just nothing at all. It is not only God and Christian platonism that goes down the drain, but the possibility itself of making sense of the context in which these occur. A really strong position, beyond Hume's atheism (or his ambiguity on the matter). Rorty said truth is propositional, and didn't believe in any metaphysics AT ALL. But consider how his thinking goes, and if you take the time to look at its simplicity, it is, well, a little more than just curious. Keep in mind that his favorite philosophers are Dewey, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, and that makes him....complicated. So truth belongs to propositions, but does this commit him to the rational structure of thought, like Kant, as the bottom line for understanding things at the basic level? No. For Rorty there IS no bottom line. Not turtles all the way down, for there is no sense at all in "down".

He once presented the epistemological question, how does anything out there get in here? The more you think about something like this, the more you go a bit mad philosophically. We are all "scientists" and physicalists in our default orientation in the world, because of public education. Rorty was simply making clear that this model demonstrates nothing of the way knowledge claims, the foundational presupposition of everything! I may know there is a fence post over there, but one thing I do not know is how this knowledge is possible. An odd insight, to say the least, given how busy we are circulating through knowledge assumptions in our everydayness of affairs. Causality has NOTHING about it that is epistemic.

So you get an idea of Rorty's epistemology. He doesn't have a meta-epistemology, you might say. He is not a meta-physicalist or a meta-anything. What about values, or "value"? He agrees that "cruelty is the worse one can do." But there are no metaphysical basics for this. Just ideas, that "are made, not discovered." Hume was not aware of the post modern philosophy that rose out of the 20th century's analytic and phenomenological lines of thinking. So he couldn't really understand what Rorty is on about. Hume never read Heidegger. How could he?

Astrophel

I remember hearing a lecture by Rorty (early 2000's) He said something like - 'If life has a meaning it is to make things better for our descendants.' How would he provide justification? I tend to think that Rorty, despite the Irony and anti-metaphysics, was essentially a romantic figure. — Tom Storm

Never a romantic in, say, the transcendentalist (Emerson, et al) or Wordsworthian (Ode to Intimation of Immortality) way, for these are, in their own way, metaphysicians, not simply dwelling on the joy an rapture of the world, but elevating this to a higher order of existence, the suprasensory world. But he did move to teaching literature, later on, and yes, he was certainly no cold impassionate detached intellect (not like he wasn't trying, though). My thoughts on the matter are tough to say. Rorty and the pragmatists are right, I think, the "forward looking" view of our existence. But I have rather radical views on ethics: value is "given" (shown to us, as Wittgenstein put it) but its nature is transcendental. I am Rorty's opposite, really: loosely speaking, he says nothing is metaphysical. I say everything is metaphysical!

Number2018

Where I'm going with this is: Can we turn away from this modern problematic, which certainly raises all the doubts you cite, and find something in the more basic concept of communicative action that would be transcendental in Habermas's sense that it would remain in any background of any "common lifeworld"? In other words, perhaps we can find a way of showing that a commitment to intersubjectivity transcends the (temporary, contingent) modern, and is built in to the structure of communicative action itself. — J

Of course, we can. Indubitably, the notion of communicative action expresses a reality of double enactment inherent to any speech act. One is acted upon by one’s social situation and simultaneously effectuates its complexity. Habermas tries to overcome the contingency and temporality of our social interactions. So, he erects an impressive transcendental scheme supposedly embedded within any articulable communication. Yet, we should not take ‘a commitment to intersubjectivity’, ‘achieving a mutual understanding,’ and ‘sharing a common lifeworld’s horizon’ as a set of ultimate transcendental conditions. What should be explained should not be granted the status of ultimate presuppositions. What exactly makes us understand each other? Is there an innate social faculty? Our sociality does not necessarily express itself in conformity, consensus, or coordination.

Concerning the dictator and the free rider: I'm not sure what you mean. You ask what makes these stances "understandable and articulable." Do you mean by us, as samples of ethical stances that may or may not be rational? Or do you mean within Habermasian communicative action, as samples of stances that cannot be argued because they are performative contradictions? If you could say more about that, I could better understand your further point about embedded practices that separate normal from abnormal. — J

I will clarify what I meant. Both stances are applied here in a double sense: as theoretical constructions and as examples of our daily pragmatical encounters. Therefore, both domains inform each other and create a shortcut; they are overloaded with our habitual experience. This situation makes the stances completely understandable but raises questions about the grounds of our social expositions. Further exploration may reveal conditions utterly incompatible with the universalist perspective on lifeworld. Thus, one’s articulated stance or understanding may be driven by the motivation to avoid some intervention of putting back on the ‘right track.’ There are so many hidden practices for preventing dissensus. Their ‘rationality’ eludes Habermas’s definitions of rational and irrational.

Leontiskos

Interesting thread,

↪J

. I am not overly familiar with Habermas, although I understand some of this broad themes.

This is because, as Habermas writes, there is a “speech-act-immanent obligation to provide justification” for any claim raised within the context of communicative action. — J

I am wondering what reason we have to think that the first-person dictator and the free rider are engaged in what Habermas calls "communicative action."* It seems to me that such persons are explicitly intending to not participate in "communicative action." They wish to be uncooperative, not cooperative. Therefore they don't seem to have the obligation you speak of. They would say, "I am not raising a claim within the context of communicative action, and therefore I have no such obligation."

Coming at this from a different angle, I am curious to see an argument you would give in favor of the Habermasian position, and I am specifically interested to see how (if at all) it deviates from Kantianism. For example, Kant's justification for the impermissibility of lies seems to be nothing more than an appeal to "communicative action."

* You define communicative action as, "speech-action oriented to reaching an understanding among participants in a dialogue concerning practical or prudential ends."

I am Rorty's opposite, really: loosely speaking, he says nothing is metaphysical. I say everything is metaphysical! — Astrophel

:grin:

Yet, we should not take ‘a commitment to intersubjectivity’, ‘achieving a mutual understanding,’ and ‘sharing a common lifeworld’s horizon’ as a set of ultimate transcendental conditions. — Number2018

OK, that fits my reading of Habermas here. The quoted phrases are what require explanation or understanding, based on the principles of communicative rationality. They aren't the conditions from which explanation proceeds. We still need to ask the transcendental question, How are they possible?

Both stances are applied here in a double sense: as theoretical constructions and as examples of our daily pragmatical encounters. Therefore, both domains inform each other and create a shortcut; they are overloaded with our habitual experience. This situation makes the stances completely understandable but raises questions about the grounds of our social expositions — Number2018

Hmm, I might be getting closer. Let me try to paraphrase you:

We encounter the dictator and the free-rider in actual life, not merely as philosophical possibilities. We've gotten so used to hearing both these stances expressed (with varying degrees of subtlety, presumably) that we "understand them completely," but we need to ask whether this is really the case. Are we simply assuming their rationality -- a kind of "familiarity breeds plausibility" situation?

You can tell me if this is indeed close to your meaning. I admit I'm a little thrown by "grounds of our social expositions" -- exposures? expositions as in "laying out a case"?

I am wondering what reason we have to think that the first-person dictator and the free rider are engaged in what Habermas calls "communicative action."* It seems to me that such persons are explicitly intending to not participate in "communicative action." They wish to be uncooperative, not cooperative. Therefore they don't seem to have the obligation you speak of. They would say, "I am not raising a claim within the context of communicative action, and therefore I have no such obligation." — Leontiskos

Yes, this is similar to the first point that White raises when he pushes back on Habermas's communicative action schema: "Is the obligation to provide justification really a necessary one (does it have to follow from the idea of communicative action itself)?" I think you're pointing to an ambiguity in Habermas (or Habermas as I've been presenting him; I may be the one who doesn't read him clearly). It's this: Are we being asked to imagine the dictator, say, simply stating their position and then refusing further discussion? Or are we supposed to imagine this person arguing for the position? This would seem to make a big difference along the lines you're wondering about. At what point does the schema begin? If I say, "I am not making a claim within the context of communicative action," have I already performatively contradicted myself, according to Habermas?

I'm not sure, but I'll spend some more time with it and see if I get any illumination.

I am curious to see an argument you would give in favor of the Habermasian position, and I am specifically interested to see how (if at all) it deviates from Kantianism. — Leontiskos

Fair enough, though a tall order. The deviation from Kantianism can at least be sketched in this way: Kant's practical rationality simply isn't Habermas's. For Kant, practical reason remains a one-player game; it can all be worked out by oneself; for Habermas, not so. Much more to be said, of course.

I agree that the "contradiction" that rules out lying, for Kant, might be a cousin of "performative contradiction," but not really the same thing.

To be continued . . .

Tom Storm

↪Astrophel

Thanks for the nuanced response.

Astrophel

Habermas himself called the process "transcendental-pragmatic." — J

Doing a bit of reading. Ill get back to you.

Leontiskos

Yes, this is similar to the first point that White raises when he pushes back on Habermas's communicative action schema: "Is the obligation to provide justification really a necessary one (does it have to follow from the idea of communicative action itself)?" I think you're pointing to an ambiguity in Habermas (or Habermas as I've been presenting him; I may be the one who doesn't read him clearly). It's this: Are we being asked to imagine the dictator, say, simply stating their position and then refusing further discussion? Or are we supposed to imagine this person arguing for the position? This would seem to make a big difference along the lines you're wondering about. At what point does the schema begin? If I say, "I am not making a claim within the context of communicative action," have I already performatively contradicted myself, according to Habermas? — J

I am thinking of something even more basic:

Communicative action is "speech-action oriented to reaching an understanding among participants in a dialogue..."
The dictator is not engaged in any speech-action oriented to reaching an understanding among participants...
Therefore, the dictator is not engaged in communicative action, and does not bear the obligations that communicative action incurs.

To advert to Plato, the tyrant or the sophist does not "play by the same rules" as the others. The very word, "dictator," belies something foreign to Habermas' presuppositions. To dictate is not to dialogue or argue, and so if communicative action has to do with dialogue then it seems that the dictator is not interested. In virtue of what does Habermas' obligation apply to the dictator? Does Habermas believe that the dictator's use of language to command or threaten, rather than to dialogue, is a legitimate use of language?

(What's curious to me in the phrasing of the OP is not so much that Habermas' ethical principle seems to lack teeth, but rather that it doesn't even seem to self-consistently apply to the dictator. In order to apply to the dictator it would need to apply to speech-acts which are not self-consciously communicative/dialogical acts, and this is precisely what it cannot do. Kant's ethical principle against lying is relevant precisely because it manages to logically apply to the dictator, and this is because the genus to which Kant applies his principle is 'statements', which in no way depend on the speaker intending a "communicative action." Crucially, Kant is willing to appeal to a higher order than intersubjectivity, and he is willing to invoke a higher moral theory than intentionalism. Because the dictator is only required to state or assert, and a lie is a statement, therefore it follows (on Kant's logic) that the dictator's lies are impermissible regardless of intention. Habermas seems to be coming up short against the paradox in ethics whereby prohibitions would seem to be unethical insofar as they tend to go beyond their own seemingly-absolute rules. Namely, to enforce or even assert the obligation that Habermas wishes to assert is, in some sense, to already have gone beyond communicative action (and intersubjectivity/intentionalism). I would suggest that this is a significant problem, and one which leads to an undue "softness." Note that this also represents a practical problem on TPF insofar as moderators must decide what is beyond the pale, and who should be banned.)

↪Leontiskos

I more or less agree with this, though as I say, I don't know if I'm agreeing on Habermas's behalf or not. He might mean that even the dictator, by simply opening his mouth and addressing us, has put in place some of the terms of communicative action. But only some, unless we take a very cynical view of "reaching an understanding." I'm more inclined to think that, unless the dictator stays engaged and tries to defend his position, he does indeed remove himself from communicative action.

Also, the term "first-person dictator" can be a little misleading. The dictator is not imagined as doing what real-life dictators mostly do, which is, as you say, commanding and threatening. The first-person dictator position is an ethical stance, which claims that it's perfectly rational for me to try to get other people to do what I want, as far as possible. This desire needn't be fulfilled only by standard dictatorial tactics. In part this is why I think it's plausible that Habermas might be picturing the first-person dictator as being willing to stay engaged in communicative action.

Staying with Plato, Thrasymachus could be said to espouse the first-person dictator position. It's often been asked, Why does Thrasymachus, given his views, bother talking in the agora at all? (Pride in his rhetorical skills, perhaps.). For Habermas, I think Thrasymachus is an example of a first-person dictator who wants to convince others that his views are correct, but is in performative contradiction by doing so.

Leontiskos

I more or less agree with this, though as I say, I don't know if I'm agreeing on Habermas's behalf or not. — J

Right, and I have more familiarity with your own thinking than Habermas, although I recognize that it was formed by Habermas.

But only some, unless we take a very cynical view of "reaching an understanding." — J

Right.

Also, the term "first-person dictator" can be a little misleading. The dictator is not imagined as doing what real-life dictators mostly do, which is, as you say, commanding and threatening. The first-person dictator position is an ethical stance, which claims that it's perfectly rational for me to try to get other people to do what I want, as far as possible. This desire needn't be fulfilled only by standard dictatorial tactics. In part this is why I think it's plausible that Habermas might be picturing the first-person dictator as being willing to stay engaged in communicative action. — J

Good. Yes, I understand this, and I think my points apply to this more specific kind of dictator, but I wanted you to enunciate the more specific kind. I take it that this more specific kind of dictator is a sophist or propagandist, engaged in duplicity or dissimulation, which are often included as a form of lying.

Staying with Plato, Thrasymachus could be said to espouse the first-person dictator position. It's often been asked, Why does Thrasymachus, given his views, bother talking in the agora at all? (Pride in his rhetorical skills, perhaps.). For Habermas, I think Thrasymachus is an example of a first-person dictator who wants to convince others that his views are correct, but is in performative contradiction by doing so. — J

Yes, but I think the motive you gave is more substantial: "To get other people to do what I want." Of course in Plato's time the two came together: the sophist got what they wanted (money) by way of teaching "philosophy" (rhetoric).

The difficulty with the sophist is that they are slippery, namely because they wish to appear to be engaging in "communicative action," when in fact they are not, and thus their modus operandi is dissimulation. Their very words are a kind of Trojan Horse capable of undermining ethical discourse.

On my view the democratic man holds intersubjectivity as the democratic virtue par excellence, and Habermas is a democratic man (and there are important ways that Kant is not a democratic man). The democratic man is thus concerned with fair, cooperative play. But what the democratic man has difficulty accessing is The Judge, and this relates to "the paradox in ethics" I gestured towards above. Now, if ethical discourse is a game of basketball, then while the democratic man will be zealous that everyone should follow the rules, his worldview gives him no power to enforce the rules. Enforcement requires a judge who is above the intersubjective system (a referee) and whose judgments are not accountable to the canons of intersubjectivity.*

Without a judge the sophist can play to the crowd, generate an intersubjective "understanding" (in the cynical sense), and have The Philosopher executed. Obviously Aristotle, and especially Plato, are good at pointing to the shortcomings of democracy. Note too that the judge need not be externalized. The participants can self-police, but it remains true that the act of policing or judgment is categorically different from an act of communicative action. In effect, communicative action depends for its existence on the non-communicative action of judging (in both the sense of policing and in the broader sense of judging truth-claims; judging intent and judging assertions). The integrity of the intersubjective project will paradoxically depend on the ability of participants to make definitive—and to that extent non-communicative—judgments. This is basically Kierkegaard's distinction between the crowd and the church in his Attack upon Christendom.

* Adverting to our private conversation, the judge's assertion is the assertion of an individual apart from an intersubjective consensus, and thus requires an internalist epistemology. The intersubjective participants are accountable to The Judge, and the judge is accountable to internal criteria of truth, such as justification. This is also the case whenever an individual engages in everyday judgments, even though they use a common language to form those judgments.

Joshs

↪Astrophel

It is a flat out rejection of "the place" where these foundational ideas have their existence: metaphysics (in case you are interested, a great look at this comes from Heidegger's The Word of Nietzsche; God Is Dead, where he calls N a metaphysician because "will to power", he claims, is just a continuation of the "place" of metaphysics). To see the post modern move, think of metaphysics as a completely empty concept! As meaningless as 'ummgablgdt'. Just nothing at all. It is not only God and Christian platonism that goes down the drain, but the possibility itself of making sense of the context in which these occur. I am Rorty's opposite, really: loosely speaking, he says nothing is metaphysical. I say everything is metaphysical! — Astrophel

For Heidegger, overcoming metaphysics doesn't mean leaving it behind. Like Derrida, he recognizes that it is a matter of revealing what is left unsaid by metaphysics. Metaphysics is ontotheology, the twin features of the ontic, in the form of beings, and the theological, in the guise of the Being of beings, the manner of disclosure of beings as a whole. What metaphysics conceals is the establishment (and re-establishment) of the grounding of Beings as a whole in the uncanniness of the displacing transit of temporality. As long as there are beings there will
be metaphysics.

I take it that this more specific kind of [first-person] dictator is a sophist or propagandist, engaged in duplicity or dissimulation, which are often included as a form of lying. — Leontiskos

For the sake of argument: Why couldn’t the dictator genuinely believe that it’s rational to advocate dominance over others? In that case, he’d be offering what he perceives to be genuine arguments in his favor. The other case is the one you’re imagining: The dictator tries to get the better of others by using rhetoric, specious arguments, etc.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think Habermas wants us to imagine the first, “genuine” type of dictator. Remember, the key point is the rationality of the position. Anyone can try to dominate others by false rhetorical tactics, and those tactics needn’t be rational in the least. What we want to know is, if the dictator is willing to argue for his actual ethical stance, and claim that his use of shabby, irrational pseudo-arguments is a completely rational means to his ends, could he do it without contradiction?

The difficulty with the sophist is that they are slippery, namely because they wish to appear to be engaging in "communicative action," when in fact they are not. — Leontiskos

This would be the dissimulating type, above. But consider Thrasymachus again – is he dissimulating? (He’s not a sophist, of course.) I read his arguments as entirely sincere. Indeed, if he’d thought about them more carefully, and taken a better measure of Socrates, he’d have either kept silent or come up with another plan to get his own way (or show off his rhetorical chops!); being sincere didn't work. I’m not too comfortable saying that Socrates reveals a performative contradiction in Thrasymachus’ position, but he certainly reveals that position as undefendable, at least by Thrasymachus, and even causes him to blush with shame.

The integrity of the intersubjective project will paradoxically depend on the ability of participants to make definitive—and to that extent non-communicative—judgments. — Leontiskos

Very interesting. For me, this raises a characteristically modern ethical problem: To what extent is this kind of judgment possible? The analogy with a basketball game places the referee above the intersubjective system (the game), but is this really the case? In one sense, he’s the judge, and his call on a particular play is authoritative; he doesn’t require everyone to agree with him. But in another sense, the referee is completely at the mercy of the rules, to the extent that he’s an accurate and fair judge. And those rules we have to imagine being generated intersubjectively; here the game analogy breaks down, but that’s OK. Habermas wants the rules of his “game” to arise from “transcendental/pragmatic” intersubjective agreement. The transcendental part is important. This isn’t just a matter of consensus. We’re supposed to understand communicative rationality as invoking certain background conditions that are necessary (though perhaps not sufficient) for rationality to exist. It then becomes pragmatic, because we agree on ways to apply such rationality in our time, in our circumstances.

Leontiskos

For the sake of argument: Why couldn’t the dictator genuinely believe that it’s rational to advocate dominance over others? In that case, he’d be offering what he perceives to be genuine arguments in his favor. The other case is the one you’re imagining: The dictator tries to get the better of others by using rhetoric, specious arguments, etc.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think Habermas wants us to imagine the first, “genuine” type of dictator. Remember, the key point is the rationality of the position. Anyone can try to dominate others by false rhetorical tactics, and those tactics needn’t be rational in the least. What we want to know is, if the dictator is willing to argue for his actual ethical stance, and claim that his use of shabby, irrational pseudo-arguments is a completely rational means to his ends, could he do it without contradiction? — J

You place on the one hand the dictator who "tries to get the better of others by using rhetoric, specious arguments," and on the other hand the dictator who uses, "shabby, irrational pseudo-arguments [as] a completely rational means to his ends." They seem like the same thing, not two different things.

More precisely, I would say that the one who is willing to argue for his position in good faith is not a dictator or a sophist. But then there is Thrasymachus:

This would be the dissimulating type, above. But consider Thrasymachus again – is he dissimulating? (He’s not a sophist, of course.) I read his arguments as entirely sincere. Indeed, if he’d thought about them more carefully, and taken a better measure of Socrates, he’d have either kept silent or come up with another plan to get his own way (or show off his rhetorical chops!); being sincere didn't work. I’m not too comfortable saying that Socrates reveals a performative contradiction in Thrasymachus’ position, but he certainly reveals that position as undefendable, at least by Thrasymachus, and even causes him to blush with shame. — J

Thrasymachus begins by dissimulating, but he gets called out. He is the sophist who proves unsuccessful in the face of Socrates' strength, and what occurs is a partial reformation (with the blushing and whatnot). Also, at 344d the group self-polices Thrasymachus' sophistry, and this is one of the things that injures the sophistic tactics. By pushing Thrasymachus into the defense of sophistry (a kind of meta-sophistry) Socrates ends up achieving a small victory. But sophists don't usually meet such skillful or generous interlocutors.

The end of self-flattery and the end of manipulation are both injurious to the end of the love of wisdom, and are therefore contrary to ethical discourse. For Thrasymachus the manipulation gets opposed and cut short, but I think it is clear that it would normally be in play.

Very interesting. For me, this raises a characteristically modern ethical problem: To what extent is this kind of judgment possible? The analogy with a basketball game places the referee above the intersubjective system (the game), but is this really the case? In one sense, he’s the judge, and his call on a particular play is authoritative; he doesn’t require everyone to agree with him. But in another sense, the referee is completely at the mercy of the rules, to the extent that he’s an accurate and fair judge. — J

Well that's just it: the sophist is not an accurate or fair judge. He permits himself to do what is impermissible, and unless others are able to shift into the role of the referee the game will dissolve. When sophistry reigns unchecked entire nations can be swallowed up in corruption and strife. The rules need to be enforced, else they may as well not exist.

Habermas wants the rules of his “game” to arise from “transcendental/pragmatic” intersubjective agreement. The transcendental part is important. This isn’t just a matter of consensus. We’re supposed to understand communicative rationality as invoking certain background conditions that are necessary (though perhaps not sufficient) for rationality to exist. It then becomes pragmatic, because we agree on ways to apply such rationality in our time, in our circumstances. — J

I would welcome the idea that Habermas is open to transcending intersubjectivity and/or consensus, but it remains true that if Habermas is not able to definitively judge someone like the first-person dictator then I don't see how the transcendental part will help him. The transcendental part must be brought to bear, and Kant does bring it to bear in his prohibition on lying. Kant gives a valid argument for why the sophist cannot lie (whether or not it is sound). That sort of thing is what is required. And so the question recurs, "In virtue of what does Habermas' obligation apply to the dictator?"

Number2018

We encounter the dictator and the free-rider in actual life, not merely as philosophical possibilities. We've gotten so used to hearing both these stances expressed (with varying degrees of subtlety, presumably) that we "understand them completely," but we need to ask whether this is really the case. Are we simply assuming their rationality -- a kind of "familiarity breeds plausibility" situation? — J

I appreciate your patience and trying to understand my posts. Again, I would like to clarify the relation between the two given stances and Habermas's theory of communicative action. Supposedly, there is a performative contradiction between the content
of each stance and the communicated statement made by the acting individual. Accordingly, if the contents are accurate, the participants were not fully committed to the rationality of communicative action. Reciprocally, if individuals involved are truly committed, they should not be referred to their situations. This situation constitutes a false dilemma. Because for Habermas, the claim for rationality is non-separatable from the binding force of reciprocal recognition of validity claims: "With their illocutionary acts, speaker and hearer raise validity claims and demand they be recognized. But this recognition need not follow irrationally, since the validity claims have a cognitive character and can be checked" (Habermas, 'Communication and the Evolution of Society,' p 63). Both stances do not satisfy this description of communicative action. One cannot demand recognition of the validity of her egoistic, self-selfish intentions. Yet, on the other hand, both cases could point out the essential flaw of Habermas's theory itself. It can be traced back to one Derrida vs. Searle debate aspect. For Searle, any language usage is precluded by the communication of intended meanings. On the contrary, for Derrida, communication is carried along not by clear subjective intentions but by impersonal performative forces. Let's say that your first 'dictator' stance is proclaimed by an actor playing her role. Or was it stated during a political debate, or was it just a joke? The stance may be incorporated within endless performative recontextualizations so that Habermas's requirement of the clear cognitive commitment to communication cannot be univocally verified. Further, the performative nature of the participants' illocutionary force remains opaque and undetermined not just in the discussed examples but in most non-normative social situations.

You place on the one hand the dictator who "tries to get the better of others by using rhetoric, specious arguments," and on the other hand the dictator who uses, "shabby, irrational pseudo-arguments [as] a completely rational means to his ends." They seem like the same thing, not two different things. — Leontiskos

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear about the difference between the two. Dictator 1 makes a genuine argument for his ethical stance -- he tries to show why it's rational to get others to do what he wants -- and in the course of making that argument, he mentions (not uses) the shabby pseudo-arguments that are part of his tactics, and perhaps explains why there's nothing wrong with using such rhetoric in service of his rational ends. Dictator 2 merely deploys the bad arguments. Does that help? I'm trying to highlight the difference between making a rational case for using irrational arguments, and actually using them. One could be quite sincere in the first case, but never in the second.

I would welcome the idea that Habermas is open to transcending intersubjectivity and/or consensus, but it remains true that if Habermas is not able to definitively judge someone like the first-person dictator then I don't see how the transcendental part will help him. — Leontiskos

The rules need to be enforced, else they may as well not exist. — Leontiskos

I think I see where you're coming from with the judging idea, but enforcement is separate. Concerning judging, "definitively" may be key here. To return to the basketball game, the referee/judge makes absolute and authoritative decisions. Let's call those "definitive." We know that the referee, if he's a good one, must make those decisions. The rules allow for no others. Turning to communicative action, you ask whether Habermas can assume the role of a referee/judge and declare the first-person dictator "out of bounds," as it were.

Two answers suggest themselves. The first is, Yes, of course he can. That is exactly what a performative contradiction is -- a violation of the rules.

The second answer is less certain but more interesting, and perhaps closer to what you're asking about. In what sense will Ref Habermas's call be "definitive"? Can we ask, in fairness, "Definitive according to what or whom?" With a basketball game, there's a ready reply: The rules were laid down by a group charged with laying them down, and that's that. Rational discourse is different. Habermasian communicative rationality begins from the intersubjective origins or constraints of rationality itself. So Ref Habermas, in appealing to rules like "no performative contradiction," isn't appealing to something that transcends intersubjectivity itself. Nor is it something he could have discovered by himself, in solitary transcendental reflection (that would be missing the pragmatic turn). But nor is he saying, "Well, you guys decide and we'll go with the majority opinion." If "definitive" can describe this, then I think a Habermasian judgment can be definitive.

But what happens next? That's the "enforcement" part, I suppose. What you say about the dangers of not enforcing rules is no doubt true, but it's a bit outside the scope of what Habermas is arguing for. To carry that thought further, I think we would need to get more precise about what sort of group is engaged in this communicative action. I'm not sure there can be an abstract explanation of how to enforce a rule; not even Kant tried to do that (perhaps by suggesting that the liar should be shunned at universities? :wink: )

And so the question recurs, "In virtue of what does Habermas' obligation apply to the dictator?" — Leontiskos

In virtue of the dictator's desire, if they have one, to be rational. This sounds weak, but we have to remember that Habermas doesn't think you can just remove yourself from dialogue. That too is, for him, unreasonable. Stephen K. White puts it well: "A refusal by the first-person dictator or the free rider to justify himself requires a systematic renunciation of communicative action which throws his rationality radically into question."

Beyond this, we arrive at questions about what, if anything, could constitute an obligation in ethical theory, and that would take us far afield.

I appreciate your patience in trying to understand my posts. — Number2018

And I appreciate yours, in sharing your understanding of Habermas, which may well be more extensive than mine. (I only discovered him a few years ago.)

for Habermas, the claim for rationality is non-separatable from the binding force of reciprocal recognition of validity claims: "With their illocutionary acts, speaker and hearer raise validity claims and demand they be recognized. But this recognition need not follow irrationally, since the validity claims have a cognitive character and can be checked" — Number2018

Right. The contradiction is indeed between content and illocutionary act.

Both stances do not satisfy this description of communicative action. One cannot demand recognition of the validity of her egoistic, self-selfish intentions. — Number2018

OK, though maybe better to say "argue for" rather than "demand"? The contradiction as such would come with the attempt at argumentation, would it not?

For Searle, any language usage is precluded by the communication of intended meanings. On the contrary, for Derrida, communication is carried along not by clear subjective intentions but by impersonal performative forces. — Number2018

(Just confirming, you probably mean "any language usage is defined by" or "limited to," rather than "precluded by"? Searle argues for intentions, Derrida for . . . well, whatever performative forces are.)

The stance may be incorporated within endless performative recontextualizations so that Habermas's requirement of the clear cognitive commitment to communication cannot be univocally verified. — Number2018

Excellent point. Does it damage Habermas's theory? It may well, if we insist on understanding "clear cognitive commitment" as being the same as having an intention, and bring to bear some of the standard puzzles about intention.

the performative nature of the participants' illocutionary force remains opaque and undetermined not just in the discussed examples but in most non-normative social situations. — Number2018

Why do you say this? Again, I may not be understanding clearly, but I would have said that "opaque" is much too strong, "undetermined" usually not the case, and that in general we "read" each other's illocutionary stances very well. The question I see being raised is more along the lines of, "But doesn't Habermas assume intention as trumping performance?" How we then go on to determine intention is a separate and, I'm saying, generally easier question. Could you say more?

Leontiskos

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear about the difference between the two. Dictator 1 makes a genuine argument for his ethical stance -- he tries to show why it's rational to get others to do what he wants -- and in the course of making that argument, he mentions (not uses) the shabby pseudo-arguments that are part of his tactics, and perhaps explains why there's nothing wrong with using such rhetoric in service of his rational ends. Dictator 2 merely deploys the bad arguments. Does that help? I'm trying to highlight the difference between making a rational case for using irrational arguments, and actually using them. One could be quite sincere in the first case, but never in the second. — J

Okay, thanks for clarifying that. I suppose they flow together insofar as, if the rational case for using irrational arguments turns out to be successful, then the arguments cannot be said to be irrational. Similarly, it is perhaps more truly said to be, "the difference between making an irrational case for using irrational arguments, and [using irrational arguments]," but in both cases irrational arguments are being used. Would we say that Thrasymachus begins by giving irrational arguments, and then after being called out he moves into the meta-space where he tries to defend his use of those arguments? Even if this is not what we think happens in the case of Thrasymachus, it would be a natural progression.

But what happens next? That's the "enforcement" part, I suppose. What you say about the dangers of not enforcing rules is no doubt true, but it's a bit outside the scope of what Habermas is arguing for. To carry that thought further, I think we would need to get more precise about what sort of group is engaged in this communicative action. — J

I don't see a great deal of difference between invoking a rule and enforcing a rule, as invocation seems to be a form of enforcement. But you are right that more aggressive things would also be forms of enforcement. My point is that Habermas does not even seem capable of invoking the rule:

Two answers suggest themselves. The first is, Yes, of course he can. That is exactly what a performative contradiction is -- a violation of the rules. — J

But didn't we agree that it is not at all clear that the first-person dictator is engaged in communicative action? (See:

↪Leontiskos

and your response). In that case he couldn't be engaged in performative contradiction.

I suppose this brings us back to the same question of what the "first-person dictator" even is, and it feels like we are going in circles. I think the problem is that we have no definition of what 'rational' and 'irrational' are supposed to mean, or else that there are two different kinds of irrationality at play.

Let me explain why I don't think the first-person dictator is involved in communicative action. Communicative action seems to involve egalitarian cooperation. Whatever the first-person dictator is doing, he is not interested in egalitarian cooperation. He is unwilling to put himself on equal footing with the other participants, and in fact he thinks that they should bend to his will in one way or another. So when Habermas says that the dictator has obligations if he is involved in communicative action, I would say that he isn't involved in communicative action (and therefore does not necessarily have obligations).

Now you keep raising the possibility that the dictator rationally justify his actions. The problem is that if his actions are rationally justified then he isn't a dictator, he's just a smart guy who we should listen to (perhaps a philosopher king). But your implicit premise is that rationality is itself bound up with communicative action, such that they cannot be separated. If this premise is correct then the dictator could never be rationally justified (in his claims which prescind from egalitarian cooperation or communicative action).

Habermasian communicative rationality begins from the intersubjective origins or constraints of rationality itself. — J

(Rationality is itself bound up with communicative action, or vice versa.)

Habermasian communicative rationality begins from the intersubjective origins or constraints of rationality itself. So Ref Habermas, in appealing to rules like "no performative contradiction," isn't appealing to something that transcends intersubjectivity itself. Nor is it something he could have discovered by himself, in solitary transcendental reflection (that would be missing the pragmatic turn). But nor is he saying, "Well, you guys decide and we'll go with the majority opinion." If "definitive" can describe this, then I think a Habermasian judgment can be definitive. — J

I think what you are saying is that Habermasian judgment is bound up with transcendental reason itself. Your account actually looks a lot like negative (apophatic) theology, where we list all the things that God is not and the implication is that God is therefore some inaccessible transcending of all of these things that he is not. The implication here would be that the first-person dictator is fundamentally irrational, and that therefore his use of reason is really a faux-use of reason; a performative contradiction.

Personally I think Habermas is more or less correct in this, but the Kantian approach seems more straightforward, and I am still unclear about how Habermas is supposed to have improved on Kant.* Still, there is no way to pragmatically test whether a "Habermasian definitive judgment" is true. This doesn't bother me, but I suspect it might bother you, given that the truth which the judgment discerns will presumably be 'incorrigible'.

In virtue of the dictator's desire, if they have one, to be rational. This sounds weak, but we have to remember that Habermas doesn't think you can just remove yourself from dialogue. That too is, for him, unreasonable. Stephen K. White puts it well: "A refusal by the first-person dictator or the free rider to justify himself requires a systematic renunciation of communicative action which throws his rationality radically into question." — J

In this case we would have an ethical principle derived from reason alone, and then the secondary question would arise of whether one is obliged to "desire to be rational." At least in principle I am on board with such derivations and obligations.

* More precisely, I think Habermas is right that a tyrant is corrupt (and irrational), but I don't think "communicative action" maps to rationality itself, because I don't think that rationality is equally distributed in the egalitarian sense. As an Aristotelian I am not as democratic as Habermas. I think the philosopher king and the tyrant will both balk at "communicative action," but I only think one of them is irrational. Democratic (or egalitarian) rationality is rational in a certain sense, but it is inferior to the practical reason of the higher forms of government or association.

Astrophel

l

For Heidegger, overcoming metaphysics doesn't mean leaving it behind. Like Derrida, he recognizes that it is a matter of revealing what is left unsaid by metaphysics. Metaphysics is ontotheology, the twin features of the ontic, in the form of beings, and the theological, in the guise of the Being of beings, the manner of disclosure of beings as a whole. What metaphysics conceals is the establishment (and re-establishment) of the grounding of Beings as a whole in the uncanniness of the displacing transit of temporality. As long as there are beings there will
be metaphysics. — Joshs

I understand this, mostly, having just read The Onto-Theological Constitution of Metaphysics and Iain Thompson's essay on this to help me out. But no, I was thinking the way Heidegger described this "place" of the "suprasensory" as the object of Nietzsche's intended target of his God Is Dead episode in The Gay Science. Not what is called "Heidegger's Nietzsche" that claims Nietzsche to be a metaphysician despite his insistence to the contrary.

Number2018

The stance may be incorporated within endless performative recontextualizations so that Habermas's requirement of the clear cognitive commitment to communication cannot be univocally verified.
— Number2018

Excellent point. Does it damage Habermas's theory? It may well, if we insist on understanding "clear cognitive commitment" as being the same as having an intention, and bring to bear some of the standard puzzles about intention. — J

No, it is not about having an obvious intention. ‘Clear cognitive commitment’ means that the speaker and her hearer, involved in the speech act, can offer a socially justified account of their communicative action. The intention should have the possibility of making it public, transparent,
and defendable: “the illocutionary force with which the speaker carries out his speech act and influences the hearer can be understood only on the basis of a reciprocal recognition of validity claims.”

the performative nature of the participants' illocutionary force remains opaque and undetermined not just in the discussed examples but in most non-normative social situations.
— Number2018

Why do you say this? Again, I may not be understanding clearly, but I would have said that "opaque" is much too strong, "undetermined" usually not the case, and that in general we "read" each other's illocutionary stances very well. The question I see being raised is more along the lines of, "But doesn't Habermas assume intention as trumping performance?" How we then go on to determine intention is a separate and, I'm saying, generally easier question. Could you say more? — J

The point I defend here is that even if "in general, we "read" each other's illocutionary stances very well," in most cases, we cannot accurately account for our performative situations. When asked about our or other intentions, we usually quickly resort to standard explanatory schemes. Habermas himself admits the necessity of covering the gap. "In order to make necessary statements, we need to change our perspective…We need a theoretically constituted perspective." Yet, the rationality of verifying procedure remains at the level of the logical-positivist constative utterance. In fact, Habermas's commitment to communication verification requirements means resorting to the dogmatic question of reference or constative truth.

I suppose this brings us back to the same question of what the "first-person dictator" even is, and it feels like we are going in circles. I think the problem is that we have no definition of what 'rational' and 'irrational' are supposed to mean. — Leontiskos

I agree that there is a kind of circle happening here, or perhaps better, there are two possible paths toward understanding what the dictator is doing, and we keep going down first one, then the other. Down the first path, Dictator 1 remains in communication with others, and tries to justify himself. He attempts (with what sincerity we can't say) to stay within communicative rationality. According to Habermas, this is a performative contradiction because the dictator can't rationally do this. Like it or not, whether he acknowledges it or not, his performative contradiction takes him outside communicative action.

Down the other path, Dictator 2 makes no attempt to justify himself -- or perhaps, his justifications make no use of rational argument. Here we want to say that this person has never even entered the arena of communicative action. He might just as well refuse to respond at all (another type of Habermasian irrationality, as we know).

I think we do have definitions, or at least descriptions, of what "rational" and "irrational" mean. We just have to constantly bear in mind that for Habermas, communicative rationality is not the same thing as standard strategic or goal-oriented rationality -- but nor does it replace it. It's an expansion of what it means to be rational.

Now you keep raising the possibility that the dictator rationally justify his actions. — Leontiskos

Not quite. The possibility I raise is that the dictator may attempt this (again, with what sincerity we can't say; see the discussion with @Number2018 above). If Habermas is right, the attempt must fail, as you point out. But I see a difference between trying to make a case for first-person dictatorship, and simply trying to be one. What I don't know is what kind of difference -- that is, whether the distinction is trivial or irrelevant to the overall conception.

I think what you are saying is that Habermasian judgment is bound up with transcendental reason itself. . . . The implication here would be that the first-person dictator is fundamentally irrational, and that therefore his use of reason is really a faux-use of reason; a performative contradiction.

Personally I think Habermas is more or less correct in this. — Leontiskos

Yes, me too, and I think you've got Habermas right.

Still, there is no way to pragmatically test whether a "Habermasian definitive judgment" is true. — Leontiskos

Can you say more? I'm not quite following.

I am still unclear about how Habermas is supposed to have improved on Kant. — Leontiskos

I alluded above to their different conceptions of how practical reason operates. Habermas opposes what he calls "monological" reasoning toward universality. He claims that Kant (and Rawls) do this. Instead, he favors actual dialogue, not thought experiments, an "actually carried out discourse." He wants, for instance, a genuine attempt to learn what exchanging roles would mean when we discuss fairness or justice, not merely the Rawlsian imagining of an Original Position. I would call this an improvement because it truly opens the discussion to the unexpected, and thus emphasizes the equality (not egalitarianism) of communicative action.

There's more to be said about Kant and Habermas's conceptions of reason overall (not just practical reason), but I'll pause here.

Habermas and rationality: Who's being "unreasonable"?

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