CHAPTER
III
THE
THEORY OF UNIVERSAL PRAGMATICS:
THE
METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK
In the last chapter the primacy of the
emancipatory interest emerged within Habermas's theory of
cognitive interests as indicative of a human tendency toward the attainment
of a mode of
freedom conceived as independence from hypostatized
disequilibria and union with a form of life in function of
justice. Given that Habermas's theory of
cognitive interests failed to furnish an adequate
method or procedure by which such distortions can be therapeutically
examined, the present chapter will present his theory of language or universal
pragmatics as representing, within his theory of
communicative action, the methodological framework aimed at effecting the
dissolution of
constraints rooted in language. Such an analysis will serve to elucidate the
distinctive communicative dimension of the human person/community made
accessible by Habermas's proposal.
Habermas's theory of language consists in an ambitious
program
to provide normative foundations for the human sciences
within the framework of
reconstructive methodology
. In this respect, universal
pragmatics purports to articulate the universal infrastructure which accounts
for speech and action and thereby provide the human sciences with a unifying
framework for a critical apprehension of
symbolically structured reality. Such a goal entails resolving the
“is/ought,”
“fact/value” dichotomy rooted in
Kantian
transcendentalism;[i]
as
Held puts it, “Habermas seeks to defend the claim that
truth and
virtue,
facts and
values, theory and
practice are inseparable.”[ii]
Whereas universal pragmatics is concerned with elucidating the formal
conditions of rational discourse, critical theory is concerned with
appropriating this scheme in a theory of
society explicitly dedicated to a form of human life free from all forms of
prejudice, self-deception and error. For these are unconsciously appropriated
in the
self-formative process of an individual or a group and significantly thwart
the emancipatory potential of the persons and groups so affected. By means of
a “rational reconstruction of universal competencies,” Habermas develops
a critical instrument, the ideal speech situation, for detecting the manner
in which
language can serve as a source and perpetrator of unconscious
constraints. For Habermas, the human subject must approximate this form of
rationality and
justice indicated by the ideal speech situation as a condition for the
actualization of emancipatory interests. “The truth of
statements is linked in the last analysis to the intention of the
good and
true
life.”[iii]
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 accep