Since the ideal speech situation serves as the intrument for emancipatory critique, the question of the nature and adequacy of Habermas's proposal will concern this and the following chapters. This chapter will limit itself to considering the adequacy of the formal conditions of the ideal speech situation as these refer to a logic of theoretical discourse. Such a discussion is crucial for deepening the distinctions that mark the realm of material objects from the human/ social realm of communicating subjects. The question of the adequacy of the ideal speech situation as it refers to a logic of prac­tical dis­course will then be the focus of the following chapter. The present aims will be pursued (A) by presenting a reconstruction of consensual speech, (B) by articulating his discourse theory of truth, and (C) by consid­ering how Habermas's notion of truth functions within the con­text of a pragmatic logic of theoretical discourse in function of the conditions of the ideal speech situation.

RECONSTRUCTION OF CONSENSUAL SPEECH

          Universal pragmatics, as a reconstructive science, investigates the “universal and unavoidable presuppositions” that are operative in the successful employment of speech acts oriented to achieving mutual un­derstanding. Theoretical linguistics abstracts from the pragmatic context of language so as to limit its sphere of con­sideration to sen­tential analysis and the generative ability of the speaker. Universal pragmatics, in contrast, is concerned pre­cisely with the structures and pro­cesses from which linguis­tics abstracts. The move from a consider­ation of langue to that of parole,[iv] as carried out in the work of Haber­­mas, purports to lay bare the foundations of speech oriented to reach­ing understand­ing. In this sense that universal pragmatics:

          . . . thematizes the elementary units of speech (utteranc­es) in an attitude similar to that in which linguistics does the units of language (sentences). The goal of reconstruc­tive language analysis is an explicit description of the rules that a competent speaker must master in order to form grammat­ical sentences and to utter them in an ac­ceptable way . . . . It is . . . assumed that communicative competence has just a universal core as linguistic compe­tence. A general theory of speech actions would thus describe exactly that funda­mental system of rules that adult subjects master to the extent that they can fulfill the conditions for a happy em­ployment of sentences in utteranc­es, no matter to which individual languages the sentences may belong and in which accidental contexts the utterances may be embedded.[v]

          Universal pragmatics then involves explicating what accounts for the ability of a speaker to bring about an interpersonal engagement with a hearer, such that “the hearer can rely on him.”[vi]  The crucial point for Habermas is that the theory of speech acts, whose material object is a concern of universal pragmatics, cannot be viewed as a purely linguis­tic enter­prise in abstraction from the pragmatic dimen­sion present in every speech performance oriented to understanding. Indeed, the plausibility of Habermas's reconstructive effort is directed toward an explicitation of all that is involved in the deceptively sim­ple, double-struc­ture of the speech act. The ensuing section will brief­ly articulate the master lines of his analysis, includ­ing: (1) the dia­logical versus monologi­cal paradigm constitu­tive of speech; (2) the double-structure of the speech act; (3) the performative component, including the relation between a typology of speech acts based on performative verbs and the various “realms of reality” to which they refer; (4) the validity claims and the ground of successful engagement; and (5) the distinction between levels of communica­tive interaction.[vii]

          An obvious feature of speech-act theory is that the first notice­able characteristic of universal pragmatics is its shift from the mono­logical paradigm present in Knowledge and Human Interests to a dialogical one. The root presup­position in such a theory is that lan­guage is not an autono­mous being in and of itself, but, rather, a high-order faculty specific to homo sapiens. Accordingly, this reconstruc­tive science[viii] does not initiate its investigations within the chambers of an utterly isolated cogito that ultimately doubts, strictly speaking, not only the veracity of its private, inner impressions,[ix] but also the fact of its very existence as an integrat­ed knowing and acting self. Universal pragmatics repudi­ates this view of knowledge and explicitly recognizes the existence of selves other than one's own. This point needs to be emphasized, for it represents one critical feature in which universal pragmatics differs from such other recon­struc­tive sciences as theoretical linguistics that conduct their investi­gation in abstraction from the dialogical context in which speech transpires; their concen­tration is upon the generative ability of a speaker understood within the closed-context of a monologi­cal frame­work.[x] The essential no­tion operative in universal pragmatics, in contrast, is that there are no speech acts without dialogical participants; that is, speech is not pos­sible without, at the very least, a speaker and a hearer engaged in the process of communication. Once the emphasis on dialogical partici­pants as the source of speech act employment and deployment, it becomes necessary to examine the speech act itself and show its re­lationship to the issue of truth.

          The typical speech act reveals a charac­teris­tic double-structure: a performative component followed by a propositional one.[xi] The surface structure of explicit speech acts in the standard form can be analyzed according to the following paradigm:

          [Performative Component]/[Propositional Component]

The form of any speech act could thus be specified as follows:

          “[I (hereby) performative verb to you]/[that S is P.]”

The expressed form of the performative component is as follows: “I (hereby) performative verb to you.”  The personal pronouns, “I” and “you,” serve to indicate the level of intersubjectivity in which speech acts are exchanged; the adverb “hereby” in paren­thesis serves to indi­cate that the speech act originates from a speaker, and that it indeed consists in a certain proposal that is expressed to a hearer; lastly, the performative verb serves to indicate the illocu­tionary force, i.e., the specific interpersonal relation in which the speaker wishes to engage another dialogue participant. The form, in turn, of the propositional component is as follows: “that S is P.”  The noun clause functions here as the direct object of the performative verb and, as such, refers to the level of predication, which mediates the experiences and states of affairs about which the speaker/hearer want to come to an under­standing.[xii] The double-structure then serves to indicate the point that dialogue participants communicate at two levels:

          (1) the level of intersubjectivity on which speaker and hearer, through illocutionary acts, establish the relations that permit them to come to an understanding with one another, and

          (2) the level of propositional content which is communi­cated.[xiii]

          For Habermas communicative speech acts, in contradis­tinction to strategic speech acts,[xiv] are oriented to reaching understanding[xv] wherein the relation intended by a speaker and signalled by a perform­ative verb is established. An inven­tory of all possible performative verbs indicates, moreover, that these may be clas­sified into four broad categories: (a) the communicatives, (b) the constatives, (c) the regula­tives, and (d) the avowals.[xvi] Communicatives (say, ask, etc.), refer­ring to the first type of speech act, are language-immanent insofar as they are directed to the very process of communication, i.e., concern themselves with the intelligibility of an ut­terance. The other three categories refer to extralinguistic “domains of reality”: constative speech acts are about “the” world of external nature (asserting, de­scribing, narrating, etc.); regulative speech acts are about “our” world of society (commands, requests, and warnings, etc.); and avowal speech acts are about one's “own” world of internal nature (to reveal, expose, pretend, etc.).[xvii] Thus, in addition to the speaker/hearer pre­sup­posed in speech, the successful employ­ment and deployment of speech acts involves having mastered three distinct yet related extralinguistic, coordinate systems, viz.: that of “the” world, “our” shared lifeworld, and one's “own” world. In the case of speech acts involving the pri­vate inner-world of someone other than oneself, the ability to ex­change such speech acts derives from the empathetic familiarity be­tween members of a species.  This enables one to attain an empathetic understanding with others given the common experien­ces and circum­stances to which members of the same species are subject.

          However, the distinctive contribution of universal pragmatics as a reconstructive science rests in examining the nature of the ground, i.e., the sufficient conditions that account for the achievement of the interpersonal engagement intended by the speaker. The crucial busi­ness of universal pragmatics—in contradistinction to other fields of inquiry concerned with language—consists in accounting for this third component that is im­plicitly or explicitly present in non­strategic speech acts oriented to understanding. Indeed, the speaker by means of his utterance is making a proposal to a hearer, who can either accept, reject or question that which the expressed statement signifies. Wheth­er the utterance be an assertion (constative speech act), a command (regulative speech act), or a personal intention or state of being (avowal speech act), in each case the speaker—by presenting his utter­ance to the hearer, by the very act of vocalizing his proposal, i.e., his utterance—is telling the hearer: (1) that he has grounds or reasons for holding and hence for stating his utterance, and (2) that what he is express­ing is indeed what he sincerely considers to be the case. The hearer, in turn, is not a mere mechanical recorder of sounds but is in a position to agree fully, partially, or not at all with the speaker's proposal.[xviii] If he does agree, the inter­personal engagement sought by the speaker is established; if he does not, the relationship does not come to pass.

          For Habermas the hearer's confidence in or reliance on the seriousness of the speaker's proposal as signalled by the achieve­ment of the engagement intended by the speaker need not be construed in function of the speaker's ability to influence the hearer by the mere power of suggestion. Neither does it have to be the result of mindless whim on the part of the hearer.[xix] Indeed, the dialogical engagement which may or may not result once a proposal is made public derives its binding force from the supposed satisfaction on the part of the speaker of certain, rational validity claims that, according to Haber­mas, are raised with every utterance aimed at reaching interpersonal under­standing. Habermas puts it in these terms:

          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. I would like, therefore, to defend the following thesis: In the final analysis, the speaker can illocutionarily influ­ence the hearer and vice versa, because the speech-act-typical commitments are connected with cognitively test­able validity claims—that is, because the reciprocal bonds have a rational basis. The engaged speaker normally connects the specific sense in which he would like to take up an interpersonal relation with a thematically stressed validity claim and thereby chooses a specific mode of communication.[xx]

The importance of Habermas's emphasis on “cognitively testable va­lidity claims,” insofar as his philosophy of emancipation is concerned, cannot be stressed enough. If he is correct, then hypostatizations in the form of acts, products, utterances, texts, practices and institutions may be made the object of emancipatory critique.

          The validity claims raised in speech remain largely implicit and unthematized from the point of view of those engaged in ordinary, everyday, pragmatic exchanges. But Habermas claims that an analysis of utterances employed with a view toward reaching understanding indicate that four universal claims are simultaneously raised each and every time an utterance is made. Of the four claims, three—the claim to truth, rightness, and sincerity—deal direct­ly with the aforementioned extralinguistic “worlds” and the fourth—the claim to comprehensibili­ty—concerns itself with language itself.[xxi]

          The speaker must choose a comprehensible expression so that speaker and hearer can understand one another. The speaker must have the intention of communicating a true proposition content (or a propositional content, the exis­tential presuppositions of which are satisfied) so that the hearer can share the knowledge of the speaker. The speaker must want to express his intentions truthfully so that the hearer can believe the utterance of the speaker (can trust him). Finally, the speaker must choose an ut­terance that is right so that the hearer can accept the utterance and speaker and hearer can agree with one another in the utterance with respect to a recognized normative background.[xxii]

          Hence, comprehensibility is concerned with the intel­ligibility of speech insofar as a speaker can only pretend to enter into a dialogical relationship with another if he is in fact communicating sequences of signs that satisfy the minimal phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and prag­matic requirements so as to render what he says significative. If this does not occur obviously no dialogue can be sus­tained, for no hearer can entertain holding a dialogue with one who merely babbles incomprehensible non-sense. If it is the case, however, that a speaker is simply not expressing himself with sufficient clarity, it is incumbent upon the hearer, before he can seriously enter­tain the speaker's proposal, to ask for greater elucidation on behalf of the motion. If the speaker cannot provide a sufficient level of transparen­cy, the intended engagement is left in a state of suspension. This validity claim demands, in short, that speech concern itself first and foremost with transmitting sense.[xxiii]

          The claim to truth, in turn, situates the utterance in relation to external reality, i.e., “the” world of objects and events about which one can make true or false statements. The claim to rightness, howev­er, situates the utterance in relation to the normative reality of society, i.e., “our” social lifeworld of shared values and norms, roles and rules that an act can “fit” or “misfit” and that may be regarded as either right—legiti­mate and justifiable—or wrong. Finally, the claim to truth­fulness or sincerity situates the utterance in relation to inner reality, i.e., one's “own” world of intentional experiences that can be expressed sincerely or insincerely. Each of these claims admits of an “either/or” such that: the truth claim is either true or false; the norma­tive claim is either right or wrong; and the truthfulness claim is either sincere or insin­cere.[xxiv]

          A speech act, then, involving all four validity claims, can be offered only as a “proposal” in hopes of fostering the desired engage­ment. If a hearer is in principle satisfied that all four validity claims have been met or can be met, then he considers that the utterance is comprehensible, true, right, and a reflection of what the speaker sin­cerely takes to be the case. If, on the other hand, the hearer feels that one of these critical claims has not been satisfied, that, for example, the speaker is not saying the truth, or that what he is saying violates established norms, or that he is insincere about what he is saying, the possibility exists that the hearer will demand reas­surances from the speaker. If the speaker cannot provide these the hearer will not attend to his words. Thus communication oriented to understanding involves claims which the hearer can call into question and which can be vali­dated only by further evidences or assurances on the part of the speaker. If he succeeds in meeting the objections of the hearer, he will do so only because the hearer purportedly considers these to be rationally compelling. The supposition is that those engaged in dia­logue know what they are doing and why they are doing it, that they intentionally maintain the beliefs and pursue the ends that they do, and that they are capable of backing them with reasons. Although, McCarthy indicates, this “supposition of responsibility . . . . is coun­terfactual, it is of fundamental sig­nificance for the structure of human relations that we proceed as if it were the case: `on this unavoida­ble fiction rests the humanity of intercourse among men who are still men'.”[xxv]

          Validity claims, moreover, can now be viewed as repre­senting the four dimensions in which communication can undergo disturbances or fail to achieve an intented illocutionary relation. According to Habermas there are three possible levels of communicative exchange into which a speak­er/hearer can enter in function of the relative suc­cess achieved in the intended engagement of the speaker is concerned, viz.: (a) consensus- interaction and (b) discourse. The first of these refers to that level of communication where there has already been achieved a common, uncritical definition of the norms, social practic­es, and belief systems of everyday life. There is, in this sense, a back­ground consensus derived from the reciprocal raising and mutual rec­ognition of the four validity claims. While speech proceeds without violating this shared and unproblematic framework, the engagement intended by the speaker is achieved.

          But as soon as one or more of the validity claims are ques­tioned, the speaker is challenged by the hearer, still within the context of consensus-interaction, to vindicate a validity claim which he con­siders not to have been sufficiently supported. Thus, if the hearer questions the comprehen­sibility of what the speaker is saying, the speaker is expected to provide the needed clarity by means of “expli­ca­tion, elucidation, para­phrase, translation, semantic stipula­tion.”[xxvi]  If the hearer ques­tions the speaker's intentions or his sincerity by accusing the speaker of “lying, deceiving, misleading, pretending,” the in­tended engagement can only be reestablished if the speaker is able to present the hearer with the requisite assuran­ces, as would be indi­cated by the speaker's “consistency of ac­tion, readiness to draw, ac­cept, and act on consequences, willingness to assume implied respon­sibilities and obligations” that follow from the speaker's proposed utter­ance. If, however, the hearer challenges the truth of the propo­sitional contents of one's expression, it is incumbent on the speaker to satisfy the hearer's objections by “pointing to rele­vant experiences, supplying information, citing recognized authorities.”  In cases where the hearer challenges the speaker's right to perform speech acts, i.e., by questioning the speaker's competence, authority or status in a certain area, or by accusing the speaker of violating accepted norms, recognized values, or established relational patterns, the speaker can only meet these objections by appealing to “recognized norms, accept­ed values, established authorities.”

          For Habermas the claims of comprehensibility and truthfulness can be vindicated only within the second level of communication, viz., the interactive. In the case of comprehensibility, either the speaker can provide the needed clarity or not.[xxvii] In the case of the truthfulness associated with the speaker's intentions in uttering the speech acts, either he can provide the needed reassurances as can be tested by consistent subsequent action or he cannot.[xxviii] Insofar as these two validity claims are concerned, either the speaker can meet the hearer's challenges at the interactive level of communication or the speaker fails to achieve the intended engagement with the hearer.

          If, however, the claims to truth and rightness cannot be satisfac­torily vindicated at the level of consensus-interaction, i.e., if the hear­er challenges the truth or rightness claim in so fundamental a way, then the only recourse available to dialogical participants is to enter the second level of communicative interaction, viz., the discursive one, with a view toward determining whether the problematic truth or rightness claim can or cannot be vindi­cated.[xxix] Discourse then themati­zes the naively assumed background consensus by critically evaluating the rationality or irrationality underpinning the questioned norms, values, ideologies, and belief systems. The goal of discourse consists in the achievement of agreement via rational consensus, which is conceived by Habermas as possible insofar as he proposes formal criteria of rationality for distinguishing between a true and false con­sensus. It is at this level—discourse­—that the question of what consti­tutes truth for Habermas becomes crucial, given the normative claim for theory (the truth claim) and action (the rightness claim) that Hab­ermas proposes.

          It should be clear that universal pragmatics does not consist in a mere consideration of the grammaticality of utterances as may con­stitute the subject matter of theoretical linguistics, nor is it a purely empirical investigation into concrete utterances as conducted in psy­cholin­guistics or sociolinguistics. For Habermas it is a reconstructive science that endeavors to articulate the “universal and unavoidable presuppositions” that make possible speech acts oriented to under­stand­ing. These presuppositions, in turn, should not be understood as the product of an apriori, monological contempla­tion of what is in­volved in dialogue but, rather, as the result obtained from a consider­ation of what transpires in actual speech engagements between and among dialogical participants.

          By way of summary, an inventory of these conditions follows:

(a)      that speech involves an analysis of language as parole that explicitly incorporates a dialogical—versus monological—para­digm, involving more than one competent speaker;

(b)      that the capacity to embed sentences in appropriate speech acts indicates mastery of the four types of speech acts;

(c)      that the capacity to employ these speech acts indicates that the dialogical participants are in relation to three dis­tinct yet coor­dinate worlds: “the” world, the “shared” world, and one's “own” inner world;

(d)      that the bringing about of an interpersonal engagement involves reciprocally raising and mutually recognizing four validity claims: comprehensibility, truth, rightness, and sin­cerity;

(e)      that a challenge to any of the four validity claims jeopardizes the achievement of the intended engagement and forces the speaker to provide the requisite evidence which differs in accor­dance to the type of claim needing vindication.

          Indeed, from the foregoing analysis of consensual speech, Hab­ermas's endeavors to provide a significant instru­ment for probing speech-act proposals. If language can be the locus for interest-oriented distortions, Habermas's aim consists in providing a framework in which the proposals inherent in speech acts may be subject to critical review. Yet to speak of analyzing or examining communicative pro­posals with a view toward critically assessing their validity implies that a criterion of truth is available to the examiners by means of which they can distinguish between those proposals meriting assent from those that do not. Toward a considera­tion of Habermas's dis­course theory of truth this study now turns.

THE DISCOURSE THEORY OF TRUTH

          Whereas at the level of consensual speech, the exchange of speech acts transpires within a naively-assumed background, the par­ticipants in discourse are concerned rather with proposing arguments for the justification of the truth or rightness claim, that implicit in their assertion, has been challenged. Hence once an objec­tion is ad­vanced that so fundamentally challenges the truth or rightness claim of a pragmatic assertion, the assertion then becomes a hypothetical object of discourse, i.e., an assertion that fails to produce the intended illo­cutionary relation. Dis­course pertains to the framework in which and the process under which the participants conduct their examination of the problematicized claim with the sole aim of determining—on the basis of argumen­tation alone—whether the claim merits vindication, modification or rejection. Yet the issue that becomes particularly important in such a discursive process refers to the question of truth.[xxx] This section will specifically (1) endeavor to clarify what the Habermasian discourse theory of truth[xxxi] means within the context of a pragmatics of assertions in light of the Habermasian argument for the inseparability of the criteria of truth from the criteria for the war­ranted assertion of truth claims; (2) review Habermas's constitution theory of objects and his rationale for dismissing both (a) perceptual theories and (b) correspondence theories as criteria of truth; and (3) critically consider three objections which are typically made against Habermas's discourse theory of truth.[xxxii]

          Habermas's characterization of his notion of truth is provi­ded in the following passage:

          I may ascribe a predicate to an object if and only if every other person who could enter into a dialogue with me would ascribe the same predicate to the same object. In order to distinguish true from false statements, I make reference to the judgment of others—in fact to the judg­ment of all others with whom I could ever hold a dia­logue (among whom I counterfac­tually include all the dialogue partners I could find if my life history were coextensive with the history of mankind). The condition of the truth of statements is the potential agreement of all others.[xxxiii]

The statement, “The condition of truth is the potential agreement of all others,” indicates the critical insight for a proper under­standing of the Habermasian notion of truth. A succinct summary of what is in­volved here can be enumerated in four points:

(a)      The predication “true” and “false” may be said of state­ments and not of sentences or speech episodes (i.e. utterances).

(b)      Truth is a validity claim signifying that the assertion of the statement is justified.

(c)      The assertion of a statement is justified if and only if that state­ment would command a rational consensus among all who could enter into a discussion with the speaker.

(d)      A rational consensus is an agreement among all poten­tial partic­ipants argumentively derived under the conditions of the ideal speech situation.

An examination of the first three statements follows.[xxxiv]

          Habermas agrees with Austin and Strawson in their repudia­tion of semantic theories of truth for predicating truth and falsity to sen­tences versus statements or asser­tions. However, Habermas disagrees with Austin's view that truth and falsity should be predicated of utter­ances, i.e., concrete “historic events” or “speech episodes.”  On this point Habermas sides with Strawson's contention that such predication belongs properly to statements understood as that which is asserted in constative speech acts.[xxxv] However, Habermas goes further in noting that the propositional component of an assertion derives its force from the very act of being asserted, i.e., by means of the expressed or unex­pressed performative component operative in constative speech acts. Truth viewed pragmatically then refers not only to the proposi­tion but also to the act whereby it is proposed as true in the first place. By “declaring” a proposition “to be true,” for Habermas, one is engaged in the act of raising a validity claim for the alleged truth of a statement, which, as such, is susceptible to challenge. But “the meaning of truth as implied in the pragmatics of assertions”[xxxvi] is still in need of further elucidation.

          This can be derived from a consideration of Habermas's consti­tution theory of objects, wherein he delineates his position insofar as the relationship between language and the world of objects is con­cerned. His constitu­tion theory develops both as a correction to the positions characteristic of naive realists, on the one hand, and those characteristic of dogmatic conceptualists/ nominalists, on the other. Indeed, as a result of various impediments affecting both the process of experiencing and the act of reporting descriptions of what is experi­enced, that which is experienced, conceptualized, and expressed in language never represents an incorrigible articulation of precisely that which is in some extramental/linguistic sense. As a result of various impediments influencing both the process of experiencing and the act of uttering descriptions, what is experienced is affected by (a) limita­tions from the point of view of the object known, including such external fac­tors as the perspective and distance from which and the medium through which an object is perceived; (b) limitations from the point of view of the knowing subject, including such internal factors as the soundness of the sense organs undergoing an experience, psy­chological integrity and linguistic capability in reporting an experi­ence; and (c) limitations resulting from the ade­quacy of the language used as a medium for reporting an experience. What is experienced, conceptualized, and expressed in language never represents an incorri­gible articulation of precisely that which is in some extramental/lin­guistic sense. For Habermas, then, concepts and words are not the pure conceptual or lexical counterparts (i.e., corresponding represen­tations) of the universe of objects to which they refer. How­ever, nei­ther are concepts and words purely a function of trans­cendental cate­gories or of subjective impressions that stand in relation to the uni­verse of objects to which they refer. Haber­mas rejects the notion that the subject of experience is a transcendental ego equipped, as it were, with a certain prism—the categories of understanding and the forms of intuition—from which to view and understand reality. Instead, he ar­gues that the con­stitution of a world of objects of possible experience is the product of a “systematic interplay of sense reception, action and linguistic representation.”

          Object domains represent systems of fun­damental con­cepts in which possible experiences must be capable of being organized and formulated as opinions. In the case of the organization of experiences with objects, we can view the fundamental concepts as cogni­tive schemata; in the case of the formulation of opini­ons about objects of experience, we can view them as semantic categories. The connection between these two levels of experience and of language is apparently established through action, that is through instrumen­tal or through communicative action.[xxxvii]

          Accordingly, Habermas's rejection of either a realist or tran­scendentalist frame for understanding concepts is grounded in a so­phisticated view of language. If concepts are purely and simply ab­stracted from the world of objects, then humanity, as properly consist­ing of members of a common species, should be able to generate a host of common concepts for viewing and describing the world regard­less of space, time, culture or age. Since this is not the case, Haber­mas rejects the error of arguing for a simplis­tic correspondence be­tween experience and concepts. But what is equally interesting is that he does not feel that this view subjects him to linguistic relativism. Very much to the contrary, Habermas wants to argue that the languag­es that mediate one or another view of that which is experienced may be tested—and hence rejected or accepted—in terms of their capacity to vindicate argumentatively their constative speech-act proposals, in accordance with the canons of Western rationality. Indeed, for Haber­mas, the testing of the truth claims raised in argumentation provides a ground for predicat­ing “true,” “objective,” “valid” to that which man­ages to weather the rigors of discursive analysis.

          Further, his concentration on language itself, as the locus for a precritical, defective, or inadequate rendition of reality, allows him to avoid the counter-intuitive view that the progress made in the theoreti­cal languages consists in the “production of new experience” versus a “reinterpret­ation of the same ex­perience.”  In a telling passage worth citing again, Habermas indicates,

          . . . the objectivity of experience could only be a suffi­cient condition of truth . . . if we did not have to under­stand theoretical progress as a critical develop­ment of theory languages which interpret the prescientific object domain more and more `adequate­ly'. The `ad­equacy' of a theory language is a function of the truth of those theo­rems (theoretical statements) that can be formulated in that language. If we did not redeem these truth claims through argumentative reasoning, relying instead on veri­fica­tion through experience alone, then theoretical prog­ress would have to be conceived as the production of new experience, and could not be conceived as reinterpretation of the same experience. It is therefore more plausible to assume that the objec­tivity of experience guarantees not the truth of a correspond­ing statement, but the identity of ex­perience in the various statements interpreting that experience.[xxxviii]

          Hence, by understanding truth as a validity claim which one raises by asserting the propositional content of a constative speech act, Habermas is in position to argue for the inseparability between the conditions under which state­ments are true and the conditions under which one is justified in claiming state­ments to be true. Haber­mas wants to hold that indeed there is no legitimate separation of the criteria for truth from the criteria for the discursive redemption of truth claims. He wants to argue that while these criteria may initially appear to be different, they are within the frame­work of pragmatic assertions intimately connected and do not permit of separation. If one counters that one may know that “p is true” without being able to provide grounds for the assertion that “p is justified,” Habermas would respond by pointing out that it is precisely the business of those en­gaged in discourse to provide warrants, grounds, and justification in favor of the argumentative vindication of their truth claims. If at the level of discursive interaction, one is unable to provide the requisite warrants, then one's assertion is without rational force; that is, it does not merit the recogni­tion of the other participants in the dialogue.[xxxix]

          Notwithstanding, there are two positions which Habermas must contend with if his own view on the inseparability between the criteria for truth and for warranted assertability is to emerge as representing more than just another jus­tificatory proposal, viz.: the position that argues for experiences of certainty, and the one that argues for some form of the correspondence theory of truth.

          For those who argue for experiences of certainty, the claim is that although it may not be possible for one to provide grounds so as to secure intersubjective agreement for a truth claim, one may be justified in holding that an experience, say p, is nonetheless true, supposedly at least for the one having the experience. Habermas's strictures with respect to the intersubjec­tive testability of truth claims rules out this line of reason­ing. He states,

          Validity claims are distinguished from experiences of certainty by virtue of their intersubjectivity; one cannot meaningfully assert that a statement is true only for a certain individual. . . . By contrast, the certainty of per­ception, the paradigm for certainties generally, always holds only for the perceiving subject and for no one else. Of course several subjects can share the certainty that they have a certain percep­tion; but in that case they must say so, i.e. make the same assertion. I register a validity claim as someth­ing intersubjectively testable; a certainty I can utter as something subjective, even though it might give occasion to place dissonant validity claims in ques­tion. I make a validity claim; I have a certainty.[xl]

          One reason for Habermas's rejection of experiences of certainty as the locus for the predication of truth and falsity is that to the ex­tent that “ordinary,” everyday experiences of certainty always occur to a subject, they have an irreducible element of particularity that charac­terizes them. The external and internal variables that may affect the objective reception of the object(s) experienced—however slight—which affect the objectivity of experience are compounded by the fact that the language in which the experience is expressed or uttered may also prove completely, somewhat or just plain inadequate as a medium for articulating the ordinary experience which the subject wishes to com­muni­cate. However, for Habermas, although it is true that an experi­ence is a subjective occurrence, this is not to say that the subject undergoing the experience is circumscribed within an utterly solipsis­tic frame. Quite to the contrary, Habermas is quite prepared to recog­nize that:

          . . . in the case of elementary empirical propositions such as `this ball is red' a close affinity exists bet­ween the objectivity of experience and the truth of a proposition as expressed in a corresponding statement. Perhaps it is possible to say that the (discursively verifiable) fact that the ball is red can be `grounded' in corresponding expe­ri­ences in handling the red ball (where the experience can claim objectivity); or else we could say, conversely, that the objective experience I have had of the red ball `shows' the fact that the ball is red.[xli]

Thus Habermas, though not espousing a realist position, is certainly not espousing an empiricist or transcendentalist posi­tion either. He is rather admitting that with certain elementary empirical statements the relation between the uttered statement and the alleged experience corresponding to it may be such that one may proceed to vindicate the claim by pointing out that the ball indeed presents itself as red.[xlii] Yet he does fall short of saying that this should be under­stood as indicat­ing that there is no gap between sense certainty and warranted asserta­bility. Rather he states, “Experience supports the truth claim of asser­tions . . . . But a truth claim can be made good only through argu­mentation. A claim founded in experience is by no means a grounded claim.”[xliii]  Habermas insists, “By asserting a state of affairs, I pre­cise­ly do not assert an experience . . . I can only draw upon structur­ally analogous experiences as data in an attempt to legitimate the truth claim embodied in my statement.”[xliv]

          Moreover, the experiencing subject's ability to embed and com­municate his experiences in speech acts implies that he has the capaci­ty to move from a private realm to a public one, governed by public —and not private—standards and rules. For Habermas, even the terms used in uttering speech acts are of a general nature, such that their significations are not exhausted by their being employed in describing particular ex­periences.[xlv]

          A second reason for rejecting experiences of certainty is that hypothetical assertions proposed within the framework of a theoretical language with the intent of discursively testing the truth of its propo­sitional content may correspond to no ex­perience of certainty at all. Instead, they may have been derived from the sagacity of the theoreti­cian who proffers a conjectural proposition for serious consideration, i.e., for possible vin­dication. Hence, instead of predicating truth or falsity to claims of experiences of certainty, Habermas focuses on language itself and proposes that it undergo the rigorous process of argumenta­tive vindication with the end in view of determining the extent to which the truth claim raised merits or does not merit rational consent.

          Now, in addition to those who argue for experiences of certain­ty, proponents of correspondence theories of truth endeavor to uphold the separability of the criteria of truth from the criteria for warranted assertability. They argue that to say p is true is to say it “corres­ponds” to reality, regardless of whether or not one would be able to bring about the discursive redemption of the truth claim raised in the assertion p is true. Habermas counters that such positions “attempt to break out of the sphere of language.”[xlvi]  What they fail to see is that to say p is true, if it is indeed the case that (or a fact that) p, is to express a predication and a denotation that are both expressed in language. The thing or event about which an assertion con­cerns itself expresses properties, features and relations, all of which are expressed in language. Notwithstanding, to counter possible misunder­standing, Habermas is not advocating a language-immanent conception of reali­ty. Indeed, in successful speech acts the denotative component of the act refers to “things or happen­ings on the face of the globe,” i.e., to extralinguistic reality. When the governing conventions of the lan­guage employed in relaying the speech act are adhered to and the language is adequate or appropriate insofar as the object domain under con­sideration is concerned, then for Habermas both the predicative and denotative operations are rendered successful. But this is deter­mined in critical discussion, and this is Habermas's crucial point: insofar as some­thing is said about this or that state of affairs, this is done using language as its medium. Habermas is not questioning the empirical basis of science or of everyday assertions, but he does want to insist that the vindication of the truth claim raised in a speech act can be achieved only within the context of discourse, wherein obser­va­tion may be proposed in defense of the truth of a challenged claim.[xlvii] Outside of critical discussion, correspondence theories of truth can provide no criterion for distinguishing which statements correspond to reality from those that do not. Such theories have not been successful to date in co­herently elucidating the “reality-in-itself” to which true statements are purported to correspond, nor have they been able to provide an account of the relation of “correspondence” that is said to obtain.[xlviii]

          By arguing against both experiences of certainty and correspon­dence theories, Habermas wants to uphold his conten­tion that the criteria for truth cannot be divorced from the criteria for warranted assertability, i.e., for the argumenta­tive settle­ment of truth claims. “The question, Under what conditions is a statement true? is in the last analysis inseparable from the question, Under what conditions is the assertion of that state­ment justified?”[xlix]  From this follows Haber­mas's dictum: “The idea of truth can be unpacked only in relation to the discursive redemp­tion of validity claims.”[l]  Now, since truth for Habermas refers to the claim which can be satisfied only within the context of discourse, his view of truth is in fact properly concerned with a logic of theoretical discourse, i.e. “an examination of the (prag­matic) conditions for the possibility of achieving rational consensus through argumentation.”[li]

          Yet, before this study can turn to a consideration of such a logic, it will be necessary to consider three crucial objections which have been made against Habermas's notion of a discourse theory of truth. The first of these ac­cuses Habermas of committing a “category mistake,” i.e., of confusing the category of truth with the methods for arriving at true statements. Here Habermas must contend with the distinction between the meaning of “is true” when predi­cated of a statement and the meaning of “there is (or can be) a rational (i.e. ar­gumentatively grounded) consensus to the effect that the statement is true.”  Habermas could answer such a challenge by indicating that when he defines the meaning of the claim to truth with statements such as “the promise of attaining a rational consensus,”[lii] or that “it belongs to the nature of validity claims that they can be made good, and that through which they can be made good constitutes their mean­ing,”[liii] he understands truth within the framework of a logic of prag­matics, i.e., of speech acts, and not within the frame of a logic of propositions.

          The point is that Habermas is not concerned with the semantic meaning of a word—“truth”—but with the pragmatic meaning of an act—the truth claim—raised in favor of a proposition. Surely, Haber­mas does not conflate these distinct meanings. Insofar as the frame­work of discourse is concerned, the criterion of truth as under­stood in pragmatics is synonymous with rational consensus, i.e., the recognition that truth claims can be made good only by argumenta­tive reasoning. Indeed Habermas under­stands the signification of a claim precisely in terms of the manner in which it may be discursively vindicated, i.e., made good. This would not pose a problem if one wanted to maintain a distinction between a pragmatic meaning of truth as signifying a formal procedure for achieving rational consensus with respect to a proposed claim from the meaning of truth as signifying what is mate­ri­ally meant in claiming that a statement is true. Thus Habermas does not appear guilty of a category mistake since he does not identify the meaning of truth as understood in the science of speech acts with what is meant in materially claiming that a statement is true.

          Still another objection to Habermas's discourse theory of truth argues that in making rational consensus equivalent to pragmatic truth he fails to provide any criteria for distinguishing a truly rational con­sensus from a merely apparent rational agreement. Habermas's own theory of systematically dis­torted communication[liv] renders this ob­jec­tion particularly force­ful. If “truth” is understood as a normative claim, then not just any consensual agreement can count as binding, since the agreement may represent nothing more than the expression of the collective caprice of the participants. The question then be­comes: What criteria can be used to distinguish a “true” from a “false” consensus, i.e., upon what may one claim that “warranted assertabi­lity” has been reached?  A related problem is the issue of whether or not the criteria used for distinguishing a “grounded” from an illusory consensus is not itself in need of discursive justification such that one terminates in a circle; if not, the issue becomes the question of wheth­er one has not trans­cended the consensus frame­work in warranting the needed criteria.[lv] Habermas appears to dispel such a critique by view­ing a rational consensus as sig­nifying a “rationally motivated” agree­ment, i.e., one derived solely in terms of the “force of the better argu­ment.” This is based not on formal-logical properties but, rather, on formal properties of discourse as understood in pragmatics.

          Lastly, a third and particularly forceful objection related to the question of criteria deals with the “evidential dimension” of his notion of truth. Taking the role of the “sympathetic” critic, Anthony Giddens puts it this way:

          But you do not indicate—unless I have missed it—what criteria are to be used in assessing specific validity claims. How exactly would we show that the Zande are wrong to believe in poison oracles?

              This sort of problem relates to a feeling of disquiet that I have about your theory of truth. Truth for you concerns the way in which statements about the object-world can be warranted. But what counts as the “evi­dence” that can warrant assertions?  Since you say little about referential problems, we are left largely in the dark about this. There seems to be a definite need for further development of your ideas here.[lvi]

John B. Thompson's version of this problem manages to bring out the tension between Habermas's repudia­tion of a first philosophy notwith­standing his normative proposals. The following passages merit close consideration given the precision with which Thompson articulates this fundamental problem in Habermas.

          The thesis that truth is a discursively redeemable validi­ty-claim does not adequately elucidate what may be called the `evidential dimension' of the concept of truth. Habermas concurs with Strawson's view that a fact is what a true statement asserts; and both of these authors justly criticise Austin and others for conceiving of facts on the model of things. However, it seems implausible to maintain, as Habermas does, that an existing state of affairs is merely the content of a proposition which has survived discursive argumentation.[lvii]

Yet Thompson recognizes that

          There are moments when Habermas relaxes this uncom­fortable legislation, conceding that `in the case of ele­mentary empirical propositions such as “this ball is red” a close affinity exists between the objec­tivity of experi­ence and the truth of a proposition as ex­pressed in a corresponding statement'. Yet Habermas does not explain why this special condition should hold for `elementary empirical propositions' alone, nor does he clarify wherein this `close affinity' between ex­perience and `correspond­ing statements' consists. Similar obscurities arise in the characterization of the role of experimental data in the redemption of scientific claims to truth. Although Haber­mas contends that in stating a fact one is not asserting that some experience exists, he nevertheless allows that one can `draw upon struc­turally analogous experiences as data in an attempt to legitimate the truth claim embod­ied in [a] state­ment'. Once again, however, Habermas does not specify what kind of `structurally analo­gous experien­ces' would be relevant here, nor how they could be `drawn upon' to legitimate a truth claim.[lviii]

          In responding to Thompson's criticism Habermas em­phasizes his distinction between “the criteria of truth” and “the idea of redeeming validity claims”:

          The point of the discourse theory of truth is that it at­tempts to show why the question of what it means for the truth-conditions of `p' to be satisfied can only be an­swer­ed by explaining what it means to redeem or to ground with argu­ments the claim that the truth-condi­tions for `p' are satis­fied. . . . Thus dis­course—whose commu­nicative presupposi­tions have been eluci­dated—is not a sufficient­ly operationalised procedure, adherence to which could be checked like the applica­tion of a criterion. The criteria of truth lie at a different level then the idea of redeeming validity-claims which is expounded in terms of the theory of discourse. Criteria change with standards of rationality and are subject in their turn to the dic­tate of argumenta­tive justification. What can count in a given instance as a good reason is someth­ing that depends on standards about which it must be possible to argue.[lix]

          Habermas's response is twofold. On the one hand, he maintains, consistent with his constitution theory of objects, that he is not ques­tion­ing the empirical ground of science or of everyday assertions. Rather, his point is that the vindication of a truth claim can be achieved only within the framework of discourse, at which time obser­vation may be put forth in defense of a problematicized claim. On the other hand, he points out that “The discourse theory of truth does not start with basic sentences; it chooses as paradigmatic cases statements that call for grounding even at first sight: hypotheti­cally general and modal statements, counterfactual and negative statements, to which the human mind owes its progress.”[lx]  Accordingly discursive interaction typically aims at settling not elementary empirical claims but rather those claims involving hypothetical assertions.

LIMITS OF THEORETICAL DISCOURSE AND THE IDEAL SPEECH SITUA­TION

          Now that the notion of truth has been rendered more explicit and has been shown to signify “warranted asser­tability,” it is possible to consider the discursive framework in which problema­tic truth claims are argumentatively con­sidered for possible vindication. This framework, as a result of  the formal condi­tions which  must be met for securing a war­ranted conclusion, is synonymous for Habermas with a “logic of theoreti­cal discourse.”  It is precisely the logic of dis­course that specifi­cally considers procedures for validat­ing both the truth of statements and the rightness of norms with a view toward critically detecting uncon­scious con­straints rooted in language.

          This section will consider the process and the structure of this pragmatic logic, the parts of which are: (1) the ideal speech situa­tion, including (a) the participation thesis, (b) the symmetry thesis, and (c) the freedom of discussion thesis[lxi]; (2) the levels of discourse; (3) the structure of an argument; and (4) the adequacy of the dis­course theory of truth. This section will limit itself to a consideration of the adequa­cy of the formal conditions of the ideal speech situation as these refer to Habermas's discourse theory of truth within a logic of theoretical discourse. The adequacy of such conditions for practical discourse will be addressed in the next chapter.

          For the conclusion of a discourse to be viewed as expressing a rational consensus, i.e., as resulting solely on the basis of the better argument, Habermas argues that it must be constraint-free—a “dia­logue without coercion.” This means that it must fulfill the three formal condi­tions of the ideal speech situa­tion:

          [1] Each subject who is capable of speech and action is allowed to participate in discourses.

          [2] Each is allowed to call into question any proposal.

              Each is allowed to introduce any proposal into the dis­course. Each is allowed to express his attitudes, wishes, and needs.

          [3] No speaker ought to be hindered by compulsion— whether arising from inside the discourse or out­side of it—from making use of the rights se­cured under [1 and 2].[lxii]

The first condition, the participation thesis, opens up the discourse to any competent subject capable of speech and action, such that all potential voices may be heard and their viewpoints considered in discourse. The second condition, the symmetry thesis, proposes that all participants have an equal opportunity to apply speech acts, i.e., have the same chance to initiate and sustain dialogue through ques­tions and answers, claims and counterclaims. Thus participants consid­ering a problematicized truth claim will be equally able to put for­ward, to call into question, to ground/refute statements, explanations, etc., without re­stricting the discussion. The condition of symmetry involves mutual understanding between the participants and requires that each be recognized as an autonomous and equal partner.

          Since it is possible for the dialogue participants to have an equal oppor­tunity to employ speech acts without necessarily attaining genuine argumentative justification for a truth claim, the third condi­tion, the freedom of discussion thesis is concerned with freeing the discussion from external and internal constraints such that the conclu­sion can be viewed as proceed­ing from no motive other than a cooper­ative search for truth. External influences refer both to the use of direct force/domination to influence the participants to accept an un­grounded conclusion and to the use of indirect force by means of conscious, strate­gic manipulation. Internal influences refer to self-deception in the form of neurosis and/or ideo­logically-oriented per­spectives.[lxiii]

          The fulfillment then of the conditions constitutive of the ideal speech situation demands that dialogue par­tners have solely the inter­ests of truth in mind, i.e., that they proceed from no motive other than that of the better argument. To the extent that the ideal speech situa­tion demands that the participants treat each other as equals and sub­ject themselves to the force of the better argument, Habermas's ideal speech situation may be understood as connected with an ideal form of life: the truth of statements is linked in the last analysis to the intention of the good and true life.

          Now, once dialogical participants enter a discourse in order to consider a problematicized validity claim, whether that of truth or cor­rectness, the logic of discourse in conformity with the conditions of the ideal speech situation demands that the participants suspend all action constraints in order to “render inoperative all motives other than that of cooperative readiness to come to an understanding.”[lxiv]  Involved here is a progressive radicalization of the levels of argumen­ta­tion with the end in view of disengaging par­ticipants from the con­text of action and mov­ing them into the context of reflection, a con­text that provides maximum freedom: (a) for raising questions con­cerning doubtful claims, (b) for evaluating critically explanations and justifications proffered in support of a claim, (c) for modifying a given conceptual framework, and (d) for reflecting on the nature of knowledge itself. For discourse to be genuine the possibility of tra­versing the various levels of argument must go unchal­lenged.

          With respect then to a logic of theoretical discourse the various steps or levels of dis­course/argumentation involve:

          Step 1: Moving “from a problematicised assertion repre­senting an action to a statement in which a controversial validity claim is made about an object of discourse.”

          Step 2: Evaluating the “theoretical explanation of the problemat­icised assertion through the construction of an argument within a chosen linguistic system.”

          Step 3: Modifying a metatheoretical transformation of “the initially chosen [linguistic] system or its replacement by an alterna­tive.”

          Step 4: Reflecting on the “boundary between theoretical and practical discourse” so as to consider the question of what is to count as knowledge.[lxv]

          Accordingly, the structure of an argument within the context of a logic of pragmatics reflects the various elements which must obtain if one is to view the conclusion as genuine­ly the product of the better argument. Proceeding within such a logic, the argument varies in impor­tant respects from propositional or transcendental logics. The critical dif­ference is its rejection that argumentation consists in a coherent se­quence of proposi­tions that may be formally derived one from the other. A prag­matic logic consists, rather, in a series of speech acts in which, interestingly enough, the movement from one pragmatic unit to the next “can neither be grounded entirely logically . . . nor can it be grounded empirically.”[lxvi] The argument proceeds from the conclusion to a con­sid­eration of its backing.

          The logical structure of discourse arguments insofar as theoreti­cal discourse is concerned consists then in these elements: (a) the conclu­sion—[C]—referring to an assertion; (b) the controversial valid­ity claim, in this case, the truth claim; (c) an explanation, i.e., what is required from an opponent; (4) data—[d]—referring to causes, mo­tives; (e) the war­rant—[W]—referring to laws, etc.; and (f) the back­ing—[B]—referring to relevant observations. Note that the latter three elements are proposed in defense of the con­clusion.[lxvii]

          Habermas uses an example from Stephen Toulmin[lxviii] to explain the structure of pragmatic arguments in the following way:

          Conclusion: “Harry is a British  subject.”

                         This conclusion is explained by the identifica­tion   of a reason or a cause, viz:

          Data:            “Harry was born in Bermuda.”

Moreover, this explanation can be viewed as acceptable if it fulfills a key rule, e.g.:

    Warrant:    “A man born in Bermuda will generally be a Brit­ish subject.”

The key rule, in turn, is made plausible by being grounded by further considerations such as:

    Backing: “On account of the following statues and other legal pro­visions . . .”

The pragmatic logic of discourse, then, concerns itself with those argu­ments in which the backing is a sufficient motiva­tion to make the war­rant accep­table, even though the relation­ship between the backing and the warrant is not deductive.

          This said, Habermas's conception of a pragmatic logic of theo­reti­cal discourse in function of his ideal speech  situa­tion for the adjudica­tion of problematicized truth claims has not been without its critics. Richard Bernstein questions whether speech in fact aims to­ward consen­sus and whether it is practical to think that most persons have the necessary transparency to engage in dis­course: “. . . we want to know whether the present form of society indicates that such an ideal can be approxi­mated.”[lxix]  Alvin Gouldner contends that the con­ditions for meet­ing the ideal speech situation are unrealistically high favoring “more competent speakers” such that it “generates a new system of stratifica­tion” hindering rather than fostering discourse.[lxx] Raymond Guess consid­ers the achievement of “universal consensus under the ideal conditions” of the speech situation to represent “a recent invention held perhaps by a couple of professional philosophers in Germany and the United States.”[lxxi]  Still another critic, David Held, argues that

          . . . the ideal speech situation itself is not a sufficient con­dition for a fully open discourse, nor, by extension, for the critical assessment of barriers to this type of discourse in society. The conditions of the ideal speech situation fail to cover a range of phenomena, from the nature (content) of cultural traditions to the distribution of material resources, which are obviously important determinants of the possibili­ty of discourse—and, more generally, of a rational, free and just society.[lxxii]

To this, Rick Roderick, like Thompson in the preceding section, adds that “it is not clear what constitutes a `better argument' in terms of evidence and agreement with the facts.”[lxxiii]

          Although Habermas readily acknowledges that the ideal speech situation as an ideal is in the order of “anticipation”; he nonetheless argues for its importance as providing criteria for adjudicating discur­sive claims. He states,

          the ideal speech situation is neither an empirical phenom­enon nor simply a construct, but a reciprocal supposition unavoidable in discourse. This supposi­tion can, but need not be, counterfactual; but even when counterfactual it is a fiction which is opera­tively effective in communication. I would therefore prefer to speak of an anticipation of an ideal speech situation. . . . This alone is the warrant which permits us to join to an actually attained consensus the claim of a rational consensus. At the same time it is a critical standard against which every actually realized consensus can be called into question and tested.[lxxiv]

Insofar then as the applicability of the ideal speech situation is con­cerned within a logic of theoretical discourse, Habermas appears to be in safe ground given that scientific practice, for example, as it is pursued currently, views all material criteria in support of the eviden­tial dimension of argument with a tentativeness that prudently mili­tates against canonizing any paradigm of evidence as unsuscep­tible to further modification.

          In defense of Habermas, his perspicacity consists precisely in his notion of the meaning of truth as “warranted assertability” or, more to the point, as the “unforced force of the better argument.”  This notion of truth, in light of his critical understand­ing of language, cannot hold that what is asserted in statements is indeed a strict lin­guistic representation of what is extralinguistically so, given that there is no simplistic correspondence. Yet neither does this view commit him to the position that propositional statements as asserted in consta­tive speech acts may not be vindicated ration­ally by conforming to the formal conditions of the ideal speech situation; a view which does not, however, oblige him to specify a material criterion of truth before­hand.[lxxv]

          The growth of knowledge seems to side with Habermas. The question of the adequacy of the discursive validation insofar as scien­tific claims are concerned is a matter for the physical scien­tists to decide on the basis of the “unforced force of the better argu­ment” in function of the ideal speech situation. The process by which one or another view is considered need not be the result of whim but of argumentative justification.[lxxvi] It is as if Habermas were saying that one is typically able to recognize a better argument once it is articu­lated and to improve upon it once the horizons from which it was derived are augmented. Supposedly, such a broadening of horizons would be grounded in function of further evidence, a notion which Habermas is willing to recognize needs to be developed as regards his concept of truth.[lxxvii] The very movement of reason seems to confirm Habermas's refusal to settle for any material criterion of rationality as preclusively ultimate.

          Yet it is equally important to note that to the extent that the “better argument” within the context of a logic of theoretical discourse is not understood as, strictly speaking, an incorrigible representation of what is extralinguistically so, then to that extent the purely formal criteria of discourse should be understood as possibly—versus neces­sarily—indicating truth.  Moreover, to the extent that the purely for­mal criteria of the ideal speech situation are complemented by corre­spon­dence and consistency then to that extent rational consensus may be viewed as not proceeding solely from purely formal criteria. In saying this, there is a basis for proposing an important distinction:

          . . . rational consensus cannot be the only or the funda­mental criterion of truth, because in every judgment on the validity of a statement considerations of consistency and correspondence retain a decisive, yet unacknow­ledged, role. At most, consensus in the ideal speech situ­ation could be a sign of the truth of a statement.[lxxviii]

Given that a consensus may indeed only reflect the agreement between participants in discourse in light of the available evidential resources, its conclusion is always subject to revision, modification and possible rejection. Hence, it would indeed be more judicious to view Haber­mas's formalistic notion of truth as indicating a “sign” rather than the “fundamental criterion” of truth.[lxxix]

          Further, Habermas's notion of truth is also in need of a more developed sense of the concept of phronésis in regard to the problem of paradigm-choice.

          While Habermas has not yet addressed this issue in a satisfactory way, in The Structure of Scientific Revolu­tions, Kuhn has pointed out that the inter-theoretic deci­sions on validity (e.g. the choice of the Ptolemaic or Copernican view of astronomy) as opposed to intra-theo­retic ones (e.g. the decision between two formulae for planetary motion), cannot be accounted for in terms of correspondence but have to be seen as the outcome of a struggle of paradigms for recognition which is fought and won through the formation of consensus within the com­munity of scientists.[lxxx]

          In sum, the aim of this chapter has been to review Habermas's theory of universal pragmatics, including an examination of his dis­course theory of truth in function of the ideal speech situa­tion for discursively adjudicating claims within the context of theoretical dis­course. While this chapter maintains the adequacy of such formal criteria when it comes to adjudicating truth claims in terms of a no­tion of truth as “warranted assertability.” It is sympathetic with the view that Habermas's discourse theory of truth should be understood as a “sign” of rather than as the fundamental criterion of truth.

          It will be the object of the next chapter, within the context of Habermas's communicative or discourse ethics, to consider the ade­quacy of the same conditions in addressing claims in terms of a prag­matic logic of practical discourse. For Habermas, although the ideal speech situation is only approximated in speech, it represents a guide for the institutionalization of discourse with the aim of diagnosing and remedying systematically distorted communication. Habermas's philos­ophy of emancipa­tion is primarily directed toward the task of ground­ing “the presumption that the basic institutions of . . . society and . . . political decisions would meet with the unforced agreement of all those involved, if [those affected] could participate, as free and equal, in discursive will-forma­tion.”[lxxxi]  The context has thus been set for considering the issue raised in chapter two, viz., the question of the adequacy of Habermas's critical instrument for the adjudication of normative claims.