Meaning,ThruthandEthicalValue

Meaning,ThruthandEthicalValue

byPeterMurphy

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Source: PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:1/1987,pages:3556,onwww.ceeol.com.

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PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATES: AUSTIN VS. HABERMAS

MEANING, TRUTH AND ETHICAL VALUE*

Peter Murphy A truth-conditional theory of meaning is a contradiction in terms. Wittgenstein, for one, recognised that the question of the failure of reference, the relationship between referring expressions and reality, and so forth, raised questions of validity, not of meaning. And he argued strongly that if we are to confuse the meaning of a name with the relation between the name and the thing named, we get ourselves into deep water. He introduced the example: Excalibur has a sharp blade.1 Excalibur is the name of an object. If we adopt a correspondence theory of meaning then it must follow that if the object to which the name Excalibur refers is broken into pieces, then the name would have no meaning, as no object would then correspond to the name. But argues Wittgenstein (against himself in the Tractatus) the correspondence theory confuses the meaning of a name with the existence of the bearer of the name. Even if there is nothing in the world which corresponds to the referring expression, i.e. there is no bearer of the name, this does not imply that the name has no meaning.2 Quite the contrary. A might say to B Jeans car has been washed, but if Jean does not own a car then the speaker has misreferred: there is no bearer of the name that can be identified. Yet even so this does not preclude or interfere with an auditor B understanding As utterance. Moreover, a speaker may use a nonsense word (i.e. a lexically aberrant sign) to refer to an object that exists in the world in this case the word has a referent, but makes no sense to an auditor. Yet to be consistent the correspondence theory of meaning must accept that the lexically aberrant sign is meaningful on the grounds that the object referred to with the sign exists. A consistent, perhaps, but implausible proposition. Austins equation of the meaning of referring expressions with both the sense and reference of such expressions leads ultimately to the conflating of questions of meaning and truth. Habermas, as Ive indicated, also commits this mistake.3 For him, the pragmatic meaning of (the propositional component of ) an utterance can only be analysed if we take into account the relationship between words and reality. The linguistic analysis of sentence meaning abstracts from certain relations to reality into which a sentence is put as soon as it is uttered and from the validity claims under which it is thereby placed. On the other hand, a consistent analysis of meaning is not possible without reference to some situations of possible use.4 This contains a half-truth: in addition to the linguistic meaning of sentences we must attend also to meanings which arise through the use of sentences on particular occasions. We have to take account of occasion meaning or utterers meaning. Let us take as an example that much analysed sentence The
* The first part of this article appeared in Praxis International, 5:3 (October 1985), 225-247.

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King of France is wise. According to the circumstances of its use, a speaker might mean that the King is a prudent administrator, a fair arbiter of disputes, a learned and scholarly individual, a discrete and judicious diplomat, a foresighted helmsman of the ship of state, etc. There are many possible significations (= usages) of the word wise. Meaning is dependent on how the words are employed on the particular occasions of their being uttered. On one occasion, a speaker may use wise to signify the prudence of the royal administrator; on another to signify the fairness of the royal judge, and so on. Correct usage of the predicate expression wise entails, of course, the speaker remaining within the rules of the language games acceptable to contemporary players, that is, not employing the polyseme in a purely idiosyncratic and private manner. But nonetheless it remains that the speakers pragmatic meaning is not a function of the relationship of the utterance to the so-called external world. The equation of meaning and use is a shorthand way of saying that identical sentences can, on different occasions of their use, carry different meanings. To say I am going to the bank can on one occasion mean that the speaker is signalling his or her intention of going to a financial institution; on another occasion, the speaker signals an intention of going to the side of a river. In both the examples bank and wise are capable of carrying more than one signification and hence we cannot understand the meanings of the sentences in which they occur without referring to particular situations of use. However (and this complicates matters) the idea of the use of a sentence has significance not only for the analysis of problems of meaning. For the same sentence can be employed not only to convey different meanings (use1), but also to perform different acts of reference and attribution (use2). In the latter instance the relation of the utterance to the external world is implicated but the character of this relationship (viz. whether it is impaired or not) does not affect the meaning of the utterance. Thus a speaker may not only use1 the same sentence (The King is wise) on different occasions to communicate diverse meanings, but may also use2 the same sentence to refer to different persons and to attribute to them (different or the same depending on use1) characteristics. To speak of correct usage in the case of use2 is different from the case of use1. In respect of use2, correctness is a matter of whether the speaker has successfully referred to something in the world that exists and has attributed properties to that object actually possessed by the object. A person in 1986 who says The King of France is wise incorrectly uses the sentence in the sense that s/he refers to a non-existent entity. And if we take for granted that the sale of public offices is not an indice of good administration, then we are probably entitled to say that a person in the reign of Louis XIV who claimed the King of France is wise [meaning (= use1) that the King is a prudent administrator] also used the sentence incorrectly. But in either instance, is to say then that usage of the sentence is incorrect to say that interlocutors will have difficulty understanding the utterance? The answer clearly is no. We could only assent to this notion if we were to confuse use1 and use2. But this is precisely what Habermas does do. Habermas introduces the example I am telling you, fathers new car is yellow.5 According to his theory of the double

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structure of speech acts, such an utterance can be analysed according to its illocutionary and prepositional components. Thus F R I am telling you (fathers new car) p P (is yellow)

We will come to the question of the illocutionary component shortly, but first what of the pragmatic meaning of the propositional component? Now, as weve seen the correspondence theory of meaning argued that a referring expression is meaning-impaired where there is no object in the world corresponding to the name. Habermas in a similar vein argues that if speakers and headers are to understand each other (that is, if there is to be an identity of meaning between them) then both speakers and hearers must fulfil certain conditions6 viz. that the speaker: (i) Uses a referring expression to pick out an object that actually exists. (ii) The referring expression used is sufficient to identify the object referred to. (iii) The predicated expression is actually an attribute of the object that the hearer: (i) Can confirm that the object exists. (ii) Can identify the object referred to. (iii) Can attribute the same predicate to the object. denoted.

But in fact if any of these conditions are not fulfilled, we do not have the impairment of meaning, but rather a failure of reference and/or description. If, for example, it turns out that (a) father does not possess a new car or (b) that if he does, that the car is brown, not yellow, what will have eventuated is not a failure of understanding between speakers, but rather that in the case of (a) the speaker has misreferred and in the case of (b) the speaker has wrongly attributed a colour property to the vehicle in question. The hearer can in turn indicate the speakers failure by refusing to acknowledge the objects existence or by denying the predicate yellow fits the object in question. When an interlocutor indicates to the speaker that s/he (i) cannot concur that the object referred to exists (I cant find what youre talking about); or (ii) lacks sufficient information to identify the object (I dont know exactly what youre referring to be more specific) or (iii) cannot agree with the speakers predicating a certain characteristic of the object (It is not the way you described it), the interlocutor is not objecting that the speakers utterance was meaning-impaired but that the speakers efforts to refer and describe were at fault. In other words, the hearer understands the utterers intended meaning even though the utterers assertion may not be true. If misunderstanding or lack of understanding is to occur between speaker and hearer, it will not be because the speakers utterance fails to fulfil certain conditions of truth.7 The

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conditions that a person must satisfy to communicate or construe an intended meaning successfully are altogether of a different order.8 So far in discussing this question of the proper demarcation of the concepts of truth and meaning, I have focused attention on the propositional component or what Austin called the rhetic act. But what of the illocutionary act? Austin identifies a specific judgement of validity (viz. that of procedural legitimacy) with the illocutionary act or performative component of the speakers utterance. The illocutionary acts (of commanding, wishing, stating, etc.) a speaker performs are liable to be assessed by interlocutors for their fidelity to norms of communicative interaction. But, in contrast to his analysis of the rhetic act, Austin does not infer that such assessments have any implications for the meaning of the performative component. That is to say, the sense of the component does not rest on the validity of the component. As for what Austin does say about meaning in this context, most important is his insistence that certain problems of (pragmatic) meaning arise specifically in relation to illocutionary acts and questions of pragmatic meaning at this level need to be treated separately from those connected with the rhetic component of the speakers utterance. Austin coined the word force to connote pragmatic meaning at the level of the illocutionary act (in contradistinction to the term meaning connoting pragmatic meaning at the level of the rhetic act).9 Austin was very critical of the undifferentiated use theory or pragmatic theory of meaning associated with Wittgenstein precisely for failing to make this sort of distinction.10 Equally, however, Wittgenstein might have criticised the narrowness of Austins treatment of the rhetic act, in particular Austins discussion of meaning only in connection with naming words, ignoring syncategorematical words, predicative phrases, etc. On the other hand, Habermas suggestion that Austin equated force, with pragmatic meaning in general (that is, at all levels) is quite wrong.11 It is also somewhat ironic that Habermas should subsequently suggest a way to retain Austins distinction between force and meaning by using the terms to designate different aspects of the pragmatic dimension. (Force then stands for the meaning of expressions that are originally used in connection with illocutionary acts, and meaning for the meaning of expressions originally used in connection with propositions.)12 Habermas effort to rescue Austin ends up by (more or less) re-inventing what Austin held to be the case all along. For Austin, whenever an utterance is produced, a speaker performs an illocutionary act. This act may be one of advising, wishing, suggesting, warning, entreating, hoping, demanding, urging, informing, pointing out, indicating, etc. Problems of understanding arise, argues Austin, when the performative sense of an utterance, or its illocutionary force as he prefers to call it, is in some way ambiguous or equivocal for the auditor.13 We see here a parallel with the earlier discussion of the understanding of naming words.* Here once again equivocity or ambiguity interfere with the possibility of establishing a common understanding between speaker(s) and listener(s). When a speaker utters a sentence, an auditor (amongst various interpreting
* Cf. my Meaning, Truth and Ethical Value, Part I, op. cit.

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tasks) must interpret what speech act was intended by the speaker when s/he spoke. Problems of understanding arise because the same sentence may be used by speakers on different occasions with different performative connotations. Thus what is used as a question on one occasion may be intended as a request on another occasion; what is used to advise on one occasion, may be used to instruct on another occasion, and so on. To illustrate the problem of ambiguous meaning at the level of the performative component, take the following as an example. A says to B if you dont complete the assignment, I will inform the examiner. Such a sentence may possibly be construed as a promise or a warning. It is equivocal or ambiguous there is more than one possible reading of the sentence. Austin addresses the question of how communication partners may establish the precise or unambiguous force (performative meaning) of such utterances, so that misunderstanding between communication partners can be minimized or a surfeit of understanding can be resolved. He proceeds by outlining certain devices available to the speaker to reduce the equivocalness of the performative component and help clarify the illocutionary force intended by the speaker. The speaker may preface or include in the utterance a phrase explicitly indicating the force of the utterance. For instance, I promise you that if you dont complete the assignment, I will inform the examiner; If you dont complete the assignment, I warn you, I will inform the examiner. The presence of such phrases signifies the sense in which the utterance may be taken by the communicatee. In the absence of a phrase in the utterance itself (or in some subsequent explanatory utterance) indicating explicitly the illocutionary force intended by the speaker, the performative sense of the utterance may be established in other ways by the tone of the speakers voice (the tone may be questioning, demanding, exclamatory, etc.), the cadence of the voice, the emphasis the speaker lays on certain words, bodily gestures (e.g. hand movements) or facial expressions (raised eyebrows, frowns, etc.).14 In these cases the speaker explains himself or herself using interpretants (Eco) from sign systems other than symbolized language. The speaker uses the sign systems of bodily or vocal gesture to signify the meaning of the (not explicitly stated) performative clause. The illocutionary force of the utterance may also be made explicit by the mood of the utterance15 or by the inclusion of an appropriate modal verb (e.g. must). As Austin also indicates a hearer in the normal course of decoding an utterance can also rely on background information concerning the speakers utterance to interpret the performative component of the utterance.16 For example, knowledge of a speakers character or social position may aid understanding. Thus we may say coming from him, I took it as an order, not as a request ...17 But in the case where the hearer cannot successfully interpret the utterance where the performative component has more than one possible signification and the auditor cannot choose definitely between the alternatives then the speaker can use a sign system to explicate the meaning for the auditor.

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Habermas presentation of the idea of illocutionary force is significantly different from that of Austin. Force, for Habermas, is a category of meaning that arises in regard to the general pragmatic function of the establishment of interpersonal relations.18 But we must be wary of accepting too readily Habermas own characterization of his theory. Habermas, undeniably, is concerned with the use of sentences in the generation of interpersonal relations, but this is not a pragmatic analysis in the same sense that Austins is. Austins concerns arise from the fact that a speaker may employ an identical sentence, on different occasions, with different performative connotations. Habermas, although concerned with sentence use, steers away from this sort of problem (the problem of meaning). What fundamentally interests him is the use of sentences by speakers to carry out certain acts (rhetic/propositional; illocutionary/performative) which can be assessed by listeners for the adequacy of their relationship to (external, internal, social) reality i.e. for their validity. The connection between this and the use theory of meaning strikes me as a purely verbal connection. Rhetic acts (acts of reference and predication) pertain to the prepositional component of utterances. In referring and describing the speaker communicates a propositional content. But, as Habermas stresses, speech acts contain an illocutionary as well as a prepositional component. Speakers, he argues, communicate simultaneously on the level of objects or states of affairs about which they seek to reach an understanding and on the level of intersubjectivity. On this second level, speakers (utilizing illocutionary phrases) and hearers (comprehending qua accepting the illocutionary phrases) establish relations that permit them to reach this understanding with one another. That is to say, in order for a speaker to communicate a certain content (e.g. Joannes closing the door) and have a hearer understand the content (i.e. share the knowledge of the speaker), the prepositional component must be embedded in an illocutionary phrase enabling a relationship of commanding, wishing, reporting, etc. the content to be established between the speech partners. In accepting the validity claims underlying the speakers illocutionary offer, hearers comprehend the illocutionary force of the utterance.19 In Habermas theory, there is nothing to distinguish between the intelligibility and validity of the illocutionary component, whereas for Austin, hearers could only comprehend the illocutionary force, and the question of validity was treated separately and for good reason. For otherwise meaning is denied a treatment in its own terms and the special problem of meaning that arises in connection with the illocutionary component is entirely obscured.

Some Unanswered Questions: The Limits of the Theory of Speech Acts

Given that it is the topic of validity, not meaning which ultimately animates Habermas discussion, it is appropriate then to ask how well Habermas succeeds in answering the specific question of whether or not (and in what way) the illocutionary component is susceptible to validation. Or, in Austinian terms, if the rhetic acts of referring to objects in the world (or describing those objects) can go wrong, can this also happen with elements of the illocutionary

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act? Habermas argues, of course, that this can happen and identifies two dimensions in which the illocutionary component may be fallible. (A) The first dimension involves the system of reference between speakers and hearers.20 In order to enter into a relation of intersubjectivity, speakers must refer to themselves and to (prospective) hearer(s) they are addressing that is, they identify who is speaking and spoken to.21 The reference to speakers and hearers may not always be explicit. Speakers may delete such references where such knowledge is already shared between communication partners. But in cases of doubt the speaker must always be able to identify the speech partners. Habermas argues that this identification is achieved by the use of 1st and 2nd person singular or plural pronouns (I, You, We). This is true insofar as it goes, although the identification of speakers may also be achieved by the use of definite descriptions (the Cabinet, the Central Committee, The Board of Directors), while identification of addressees may be achieved by the use of proper names (Jean), definite descriptions (the Board of Governors, the Secretary of Defence) and quantified noun-phrases (all men, anyone leaving the boat). Unlike referring expressions involved in a rhetic act, referring expressions used in this context are not employed to identify some object in the world about which something is said, but to identify partners in communication. (Aa) Following through Habermas analysis of personal pronouns we find: A person in establishing a communication relation with another employs (explicitly or implicitly) an illocutionary phrase for this purpose (such as I order you, I am telling you, I promise you, and so on). In such phrases the speaker refers to himself or herself as I and refers to the second person as You. (Where communication partners are multiple, plural [We/You] rather than singular pronouns are used.) Yet the second person, who is referred to as You, (in normal cases) also uses the identifying expression I to refer to himself or herself and this I will be recognized by the first person as a reference not to the first person, but to the second person (that is, to another first person). This involves, as Habermas points out, a paradoxical relationship. The first person who uses I asserts his absolute non-identity in relation to another person (who the first person refers to as You). The I identifies the first person as a non-replaceable individual, as someone different from and unique in relation to the second person. Yet everyone is alike, in that each refers to himself or herself as I and the other(s) acknowledge this.2 The system of personal pronouns enables every participant to assume incompatible roles simultaneously, namely that of I and that of You. Every being who says I to himself asserts himself towards the Other as absolutely different. And yet at the same time he recognizes himself in the latter as another I and is conscious of the reciprocity of this relationship; every being is potentially his own other.23 Habermas, so far as I know, does not take up anywhere a discussion of how speakers may actually misrefer, that is, misuse the system of personal pronouns in identifying communication partners. So, then, in what ways can this be done? I would propose the following possible types of misreference: (i) The speaker may use You to refer to himself or herself instead of I.

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This is apparent in the case of autistic children who frequently reverse I and You.24 Addressed by other speakers as You, in these cases, the child adopts this referring expression as a term of self-identification. This indicates a failure to simultaneously perceive the incompatible dialogue roles made available by the system of personal pronouns. (ii) The speaker may employ a plural pronoun where a singular pronoun is suitable, and vice versa. The common irritation of individual speakers (who are not speaking on behalf of a group) referring to themselves as We in conversation exemplifies this. (iii) A speaker may address a thing (animate or inanimate), rather than a person, as You, suggesting a communicative reciprocity which is not at all possible. (iv) A speaker may replace You by a third person pronoun (He, She, They). In this case, the third person is not actually being talked about, but is actually co-present with the speaker and addressed by the speaker. Such misreference may be used deliberately for purposes of irony or rudeness (when communication partners are not speaking), but, again in the case of the autistic child, this incorrect usage may be evidence of a fundamental speech disorder.25 (v) A more complex case involves the following: A speaker can obfuscate the reference to the self of the speaker as the source of a communicated content by suggesting that They say rather than I (or We) say. Heidegger points to this phenomenon in his discussion of das Man26 das Man, or in its only approximate English translation They, is invoked by the speaker as the real source of the message. The speaker appears as a mere carrier of the message, whose author is much more allusive and impersonal, somebody and nobody. The speaker appears simply as the spokesperson for others; while the first person singular or plural may be implicit in the conversation, it is rarely explicitly invoked. (I am telling you) They say . . . The speaker employs a reference to other speakers and thereby de-emphasises his/her personal (or group) responsibility for the message. The immediate speaker moves into the background, identifying primary authors (They), indeterminate third persons, anonymous and unaccountable.27 The speakers in these sorts of cases cannot be considered to be merely performing a reporting function, passing on what others have said. Where the object of reference of the third person pronoun is indistinct and cannot be concretely identified, then to say the immediate speaker is merely reporting the words of They is implausible. The invocation of a third person speaker rather serves in this sort of case to defocalise the immediate speaker, to withdraw attention from this speaker displacing it elsewhere, thereby making it impossible for potential interlocutors to engage in subsequent dialogue with the author of the message. (Ab) Of course, speakers may not only use third person pronouns in this way, but may displace responsibility for utterance from themselves by the employment of definite descriptions (e.g. God, the people, the universal proletariat) identifying particular authors that do not exist. In the cases where proper names or noun-headed noun phrases are used instead of pronouns as expressions to identify speakers and addressees, misreference may also occur when:

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(i) A speaker in addressing a person uses an inexact expression. The bearer of the proper name Jean might be addressed as Joanne, the Assistant Director of Plant Operations might be addressed as the Director of Plant Operations, The Workers Revolutionary Party as The Workers Revolutionary League and so on. (ii) A speaker deliberately misrefers (e.g. giving a false name, a phoney official title) in identifying himself or herself, for purposes of deceit. (B) Habermas draws attention to a second dimension in which the illocutionary act may be fallible. He does this in making the suggestion that speech acts occur within a normative context. The speakers act may be judged by others as fallible, that is it may be unacceptable to others, either because the act fails to correspond to a mutually recognized normative background or because communication partners recognise different normative backgrounds as binding on the performance of speech acts.28 Habermas in this connection lays his finger on a very fundamental question. But, having said that, certain problems are also apparent with his analysis. The difficulties begin with his use of the expression speech acts. To briefly reiterate what has come before,* Habermas in the essay on universal pragmatics follows Searle in dividing the speech act into a prepositional and illocutionary component. His introduction of the notion of normative context serves to answer the question of how the illocutionary (as distinct from the prepositional) component can be validated. But why then does the employment of speech act as a synonym for illocutionary act in this connection pose a problem? Simply because speech acts and can refer to two different types of normative background. It is warranted to speak of the normative context of illocutionary acts, but only of (plural) contexts of speech acts. The normative context of the illocutionary act is composed of those norms of communicative behaviour which allocate speakers rights and obligations in the making of pleas, proposals, announcements, apologies, etc. Where speakers violate (shared or conflicting) norms, questions about the appropriateness or procedural legitimacy of the speakers utterance (in other words the validity of the illocutionary act) are in order. While all speech acts (inasmuch as they entail an illocutionary component) can be related to norms of communicative behaviour, many speech acts are also underpinned by a quite different kind of normative basis. Take, as an example, the army officer who orders a battalion of soldiers to slaughter all civilians they encounter in a zone of combat. Legitimacy is not the only consideration of validity that can be raised here. Such a command may be judged invalid not only on grounds that the speaker had no right to issue the order (perhaps because such an order was outside the province of the officers authority or because the officer did not have authority over the particular battalion to whom the order was given) but also because what was commanded (the massacring of civilians) was out of order or unacceptable because it violated military regulations, legal rules, political maxims or ethical norms intended to govern the proper conduct of war. In other words, the normative context that the issuance of the order can
* Meaning, Truth and Ethical Value, Part I.

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violate is of a different kind from that of the normative context the substance of the order can violate. Austin introduced the idea of felicity or procedural legitimacy to specify the particular way in which non-constative utterances could be assessed for their validity. Austin approached utterances as part of procedures. Certain ways of speaking represented flaws or hitches in proceedings. Performative (practical) utterances could be invalid where they represented the invoking of a procedure that was not socially recognized (such as challenging a person to a duel in a post-heroic, post-feudal society) or misapplying a procedure (such as a person without authority appointing another person to a public office) or misexecuting a procedure (such as attempting to enter into a contract without the consent of the other party). In a word Austin was, first and foremost, concerned with the procedural legitimacy of performatives. Legitimacy was conceived as the correlate of truth-judgements made in respect of constatives. Austin, of course, eventually conceded that constatives also could be legitimate or non-legitimate. The question that remained for Austin (which he was grappling with in the writings before his death) was whether this concession could be made in the reverse so to speak: that is, whether truth-judgements could be applied to non-constatives also. Austin tentatively suggested that truth-judgements were indeed relevant to non-constatives;29 in particular that an interlocutor could assess whether a speaker, in making a non-constative, not only had the right to warn or advise, but whether the speaker was right to warn or advise: whether on the facts and your knowledge of the facts and the purpose for which you were speaking, and so on, this was the proper thing to say.30 How plausible is this? Insofar as a speaker in advising or warning is making a prediction (e.g. the consulting engineer who advises on the stress factors in the construction of a bridge or who warns that if certain materials are used in the bridge building, the construction will collapse), of course the advice or warning is open to a truth-judgement. The speech act contains a constative (predictive) dimension. Yet it also contains a practical dimension. It is constative in respect of events in the physical world. It is practical in respect of repercussions (the frustration of purposes, the destruction of human goods) in the practical world. And certainly we are entitled to question whether the engineer was right in issuing a practical warning that the bridge was going to collapse on the basis of an inaccurate calculation of the forces and stresses operating on the physical structure. Similarly, to use Austins example,31 a judges finding of guilt is in a certain respect, constative: it asserts that certain actions happened. (The accused did commit the crime.) But overlaid upon such assertoric content is a practical content. The judges finding of guilt is no pure description (indeed it is doubtful whether there is such a thing as a pure description). To judicially determine that a person has committed a crime is also to judge a person normatively and to tie them into a web of practical consequences (imprisonment, loss of esteem, public ostracism, etc). This practical content, however, depends crucially upon the assertoric. Everything hangs on the assumption that a criminal act has taken place if it hasnt then the judges finding of guilt is wrong in the practical sense of unjust.

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All sorts of things we say, which have practical significance, have informational contents which are assumed by the utterer and are built-in (with varying degrees of explicitness) into these non-constatives. Habermas, of course, goes further than this in the essay on universal pragmatics, arguing that all speech acts have prepositional contents which are susceptible of truth judgements (vide the theory of the double structure of speech acts). I would want to argue (less formalistically) that our practical anticipations, concerns and judgements are shaped, or given boundaries, by a diffuse background knowledge which we can call informational or assertoric if we want, although at some level it is always irreducably, if often only trivially, practical as well. Descriptions of actions e.g. of a persons entry into a house the latch had been forced; the latch had been left open; the latch was always open are never without practical connotations. Such descriptions contain practical judgements of unpermitted entry, of neglectfulness, of a standing invitation to enter. But at some point in our discourses, the practical significance of such descriptions is assumed to be given and it is their assertoric significance (this was the case; this happened) that becomes the focus of our attention and, as such, these utterances become the minor premises of our practical reasoning. It is, however, often these assumptions, these minor premises, that get us into trouble in our practical reasoning. If someone convincingly suggests, contrary to the operative assumption, that hospitality rather than violence may account for the latch having been open, after all, then we are in a position to question the rightness of the judges findings. The judges decision may have been based on untrue assumptions (this was not the case, after all) but the decision was wrong and unjust. An individuals life may have been ruined; his or her character vilified, etc, because of the finding and so questions of justice are inextricably connected with a finding based on untrue premises. But does this mean, then, that Austin is correct in suggesting that interlocutors are able to assess whether the speaker was right to command or sentence, warn or advise on the basis of whether or not the non-constative utterance corresponds with the facts (or some similar empirical criterion)? In a certain, limited respect, Austins thesis is of interest. Yet the capacity of this thesis to account for the validation of practical utterances is highly circumscribed. Austin concedes far too much to that very powerful analytical dogma that questions of validity have to be restricted, in some way or other, to matters of fact. This attitude strips practical reason of its own distinctive approaches to the questions of validity. Take the example, again, of a judge who has found a person guilty of a crime and has passed sentence on him/her. The judge, in finding guilt, may have wrongly assumed a certain state of affairs to be the case, so that the factual presuppositions of the judges practiced conclusions are, in principle, open to questions about their truth-value. But the judge may also have been negligent in listening to arguments presented regarding the facts; the judges knowledge of the law may have been carelessly applied. In a word, the judges behaviour is open to practical judgements. Yet, beyond this, the judges actions and utterances are also governed by normative requirements: as to what kind of evidence can be

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presented in court; what kinds of punishments are to be imposed on offenders, etc. And just as there is no empirical criterion to which we can have recourse to validate or appraise the judges actions in summing up or listening to the arguments, so also there is no empirical criterion that we can use to judge whether the infliction of bodily pain or public humiliation or deprivation of liberty or disciplinary action or therapy or re-education are valid or reasonable forms of punishment. (This, however, does not warrant us inferring that there are no relevant criteria of validity.) Habermas, similarly, is unwilling to reduce questions of normative validity to questions of truth. (He identifies Austins arguments as a species of naturalistic ethics.)32 He argues that, rather than correspondence to facts, the criteria that can be used by interlocutors to establish whether or not a speaker was right in issuing a non-constative is whether or not the speech act conforms with a normative background mutually recognized by speaker and hearer.33 Responding to Austins identification of the validity-judgements of lightness with validity-judgements of truth, Habermas argues: . . . the right to issue certain warnings or advice depends on whether the presupposed norms to which they refer are valid (that is, are intersubjectively recognised) or not (and, at the next stage, ought or not to be valid).34 This formulation is a logical consequence of Habermas move in the essay on universal pragmatics to construe the rightness claim of utterances first and foremost in terms of the relationship of speech actions to a normative context: their validity is conditional on their conformance to socially recognized expections, recognised norms, conventions, institutional bounds, and so forth which endow or deny persons with rights to speak in certain ways, to certain persons, in certain circumstances, etc.35 But is this in fact an improvement on Austins position? Note carefully the terminology Habermas uses when he says the right to issue certain warnings or advice depends . . . (emphasis added). Austin might have replied to Habermas yes, the right to issue advice or warnings does depend on the normative background of the speech act. But whether the speaker is right in advising or warning depends on the utterance corresponding with the facts. And to the extent that Habermas understands the claim to normative validity as the claim that speech actions conform with a (presupposed) normative background, he really can provide no answer to this sort of rebuttal. Indeed, ironically, in spite of Habermas critique of Austins naturalistic ethics, it should be recognized that the claim that a speech act conforms with background norms or conventions involves, at least in part, a truth-claim viz. the speaker in fact has acted in accordance with the normative background. The problem with Habermas analysis is that it does not properly distinguish between the question of whether the speaker had the right to issue a warning or piece of advice (or any other genuine non-constative) and the question of whether the speaker was right in issuing the warning, advice, etc. Habermas, in other words, reduces the validity-judgement of rightness (which assesses content) to the validity-judgement of legitimacy (which is concerned with the relationship between the act of speaking and the norms, whether hypothetical or shared, which govern communicative interaction). This is not

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an incidental anomoly, but is symptomatic of a pervasive problem in Habermas theory. Validity-judgements of rightness, as Habermas correctly points out, are related to the capacity of utterances used by speakers to generate interpersonal relationships with others.36 The notion of utterances generating interpersonal relationships, although rich in its implications, is rather limited in its application by Habermas. Intuitively it suggests the idea of speech as the medium actors use to integrate their actions with each other. The integration of acts entails the bringing of a subjects acts within the bounds of common norms recognized by, or at least acquiesced in, by parties toward whom such acts may be performed. This can be contrasted with (a) the co-ordination of acts of different subjects, which entails the orientating of subjects actions toward a unitary goal, or with (b) the securing of act performances, so that subject X can rely on and, in turn, act in the expectation of subject Y making good the performance. In this case, one party makes a commitment to another party to perform an act or set of acts (perhaps in return for a reciprocal commitment). Although Habermas, in developing the theory of speech acts, makes many asides invoking the idea of speech as the medium which actors use to integrate their actions with each other, the dominant conception which he has, nonetheless, of interpersonal relationship is the strictly communicative relationship that is, the relationship speaker-listeners enter into when they advise, condemn, etc. But this relationship needs to be distinguished from those relationships which are the outcome of such advice or condemnation. This distinction becomes blurred in Habermas treatment. Actors form communication relationships (they perform speech acts towards one another), true, but consequent upon this, further interpersonal relationships, distinct from the immediate communicative relationship, may be generated. In making those non-constative utterances, such as praising (good-statements) or advising and commanding (oughtstatements), which are intended to bring about the integration of action, two kinds of interpersonal relationship are implicated. The first is the communicative relationship the relationship between the speaker (I) and addressee (You). The second is the interaction relationship the relationship between a subject who makes a claim to orientate anothers actions and the other person whose acts fall within the ambit of the claim. In a successful practical communication I would argue that a relation of intersubjectivity is established on two levels: between speakers and listeners and between action-subjects. The root difficulty of Habermas thesis in the essay on universal pragmatics is the idea that speech has a double (illocutionary/ prepositional) structure in other other words, that through the illocutionary act speakers form the relations that permit them to come to an understanding with each other about objects or states of affairs represented in the prepositional component. If we were to accept this notion then we must accept that, in the case of an action-orientating utterance like, Joanne, you leave the room, the speaker enters into a relationship with an addressee (Joanne) in order to come to an understanding about (an anticipated) state of affairs in the world (Joannes leaving of the room). But the speaker does not speak about Joannes leaving the room as if the speaker were commenting in an

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objectivating manner upon the activities of a person (I believe Joanne will leave the room). Joanne is spoken to, not about and she is spoken to on two levels: both as an addressee of a communication and as an action-subject. In such cases, while the communicative relationship is brought about by the use of a performative clause, the interactive relationship is brought through a practical clause. The practical clause is composed of: (i) an identifying expression to indicate the subject of the act. This may be an expression of self-identification in cases where a speaker (as an individual or on behalf of a collectivity) refers to him or herself as the doer of the action. Self-identification normally can be made using first person pronouns or definite descriptions. In cases where the performer of the act is not identical with the speaker, an expression of other-identification will be used. This may be a second-person pronoun, a proper name or either an indefinite or a definite description. Where the other is not addressed directly, an action-subject may be referred to by using a third person pronoun; and either (ii) an assigning expression which prospectively specifies an action to be performed or omitted by the subject. The expression grants to the subject an action or inaction of a specific modality. The primary modalities of action are: goods, ends, norms, commitments and normalizing disciplines. Each of these modes of action can be specified or concretized in different ways. Goods, for example, are expressed in appraisals; ends in directives or imperatives; norms in practical judgements; commitments in promises and plans; and normalizing disciplines in rules, regulations, codes of behaviour and procedures. In each consecutive instance, an action is worthy of being, should be, ought to be, is bound to be and is required to be performed or omitted by the subject but the question of whether the subject will perform or omit the act is open The generic character of action is that it is voluntary in being committed, required, obligated, etc, to perform or refrain from an act, the subject may choose otherwise; or (iii) an assigning expression that retrospectively grants to the subject an act that was bound to have been, should have been, ought to have been, etc, performed or omitted. In this case, the past is re-envisaged as being open to the future. We cannot alter the past, but we can hope that what has been done will not be repeated in the future, that a different choice will be made on a future occasion. Our reproach, our regret, our blame emphasizes the voluntariness of the act and underlines the subjects (ourselves or other persons) capacity to have acted otherwise, to have chosen a different course of action. (In the case of praising, we express the hope that, in similar circumstances, the act of omission will be repeated); or (iv) an evaluative expression which makes an assessment of action-subjects in relation to their having participated in goods or having fulfilled commitments, achieved ends, satisfied obligations, or having conformed to disciplines. In the case of a positive assessment, persons typically may be judged reliable for carrying out their pledges, capable for their achievement of ends, upright or normal for their conformance to the rules and procedures of disciplines, good for their observance of the ethical norms and excellent for their participation in human goods. These examples are only typical, not exhaustive. There are many judgements similar in character to these, but each

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expressing a nuance of difference in meaning. The trustworthy person does not resort to deceit or renege on a pledge; the skilful person is proficient at applying technical rules in the achieving of ends; the critical or discerning person is able, with considerable adeptness, to distinguish worthwhile from trashy, trite, undemanding, uninteresting and merely instrumental activities; the correct person is accomplished with dealing in other persons in institutional settings; while persons who are helpful, courageous, generous, gentle, non-authoritarian are good in a particular respect. Habermas efforts to use the double structure of speech thesis to show the manner in which moral-practical utterances can be validated ultimately does not come to fruition. True, Habermas can show that all speech acts (including those which interpolate norm contents) are subject to norms or rules or disciplines which demarcate legitimate from non-legitimate, appropriate from inappropriate performances of these acts. But he does not show, on the basis of this argument, the way in which the norm contents conveyed in these acts can be validated. But so long as Habermas wants to insist on the universality of the claims to rightness he cannot consistently go beyond this. Fundamental to his idea of a universal pragmatics is the proposition that the claim to rightness is raised implicitly with all speech acts. This makes sense, however, only if we identify the claim to rightness with the claim that the speakers illocutionary act conforms to a mutually recognized normative background. But this does not help us to answer the question of whether and how norms can be validated. Moreover there is a tacit assumption here that the claim to rightness raised with different speech acts, and by different speakers, will always be identical in character. But this is a highly problematic assumption, in particular because it assimilates moral-practical contexts or backgrounds to all sorts of other codes of behaviour, disciplinary orders, institutional rules, administrative regulations, precepts of appropriateness, etc, which while perhaps normative, are certainly not ethical or moral in character. They are norms of an administered world or a disciplinary society which has replaced morality with normality; the good with the appropriate; virtue with conformity; pleasure with rigor; and practical judgement with the application of rules. Habermas, of course, is not insensitive to these sorts of issues. After all, his whole inquiry into the nature of truth was set off by his dismay with the shrivelling of the moral-practical in the face of administrative and strategic rationalities. But in turning to speech act theory as one possible basis for criticising the suspension of morality by an administered or disciplinary society, Habermas is also caught up in some of the implicit assumptions of that theory assumptions which treat procedural correctness, codified and narrowly institutionalized behaviour as paradigmatic of the normative. Yet it is not so much recognition of this that prompted Habermas more recently to drift away from a universal pragmatics. Rather it was his recognition that communication partners do not always have recourse to a mutually recognized normative context when performing speech actions. This applies to cases where a speakers claim to rightness is challenged and where the communication partners appeal to conflicting norms, standards or conventions in their

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assessment of the speech action. The question of validity then, necessarily, becomes whether the norms (of communicative interaction) appealed to are valid or not. Habermas argues in light of this that we need to assume a further condition of utterance validity: illocutionary acts may be unacceptable not only because of rule violations37 (the transgression of a given normative context) but also because the speaker cannot justify the underlying norms.38 Habermas then turns to a version of the good reasons approach to ethics39 viz discourse ethics. In this conception, the idea of valid norms is assimilated to that of rationally justified norms. It is only when he begins to move in this direction that Habermas guiding intention of demonstrating the capacity of practical questions for truth shows promise of being realized.40 Habermas is skeptical of the foundational thesis of modern ethical subjectivism that norms are not susceptible of validation and he rejects Webers belief that we simply confront an irresolvable pluralism of competing ethical-value systems. He wants to show that we can again think in terms of an ethics in which practical deliberations are not conceived of in terms of capricious and decisionistic modes of choice. Yet his theory of speech acts, in the final analysis and precisely because it is a theory of speech action cannot answer the central question which an ethics must address if it is to adequately respond to the serious concerns of the subjectivist theories. A theory of speech action lends itself most readily to the treatment of that dimension of the assessment of utterances that Ive called legitimacy. This is by no means an irrelevant consideration. It goes some way towards a refutation of the subjectivists contention that moral-practical utterances are immune from validating appraisals. But it still does not confront directly the central question of whether and how norms either carried in utterances or which regulate utterances admit of validation if they come into conflict, that is to say, into radical opposition. Habermas does offer an answer to this question in the guise of a theory of moral-practical argumentation but this sits uneasily with his post-Searlian theory of speech acts. Once Habermas moves beyond looking at validity in terms of the normative context or institutional boundedness of speech acts and turns to consider instead the underlying norms themselves and their rational justifiability41 it is a short step to dispensing altogether with the thematic emphasis on the theory of speech acts, and in particular with the preoccupation with the norms of speech action. All norms of action can be treated as being open to rational justification and thus to validation. But, it should be pointed out, when Habermas takes this step in his later work, The Theory of Communicative Action, he is, in fact, only resurrecting an attitude he had already adopted previously in the Legitimation Crisis.42 The turn away from the theory of speech acts towards the theory of moral-practical argumentation, however, is not without cost. The turn toward a theory of moral-practical argumentation is at the expense of a definite criterion of validity. The universal pragmatic requirement that speech acts conform with a normative context provides a very specific condition of validity that, moreover, can set arguments in motion. In justifying an utterance, a speaker can indicate that the speech action performed fits an existing normative background. Now, of

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course, this criterion is extremely weak. It takes background norms for granted and it makes no distinction between disciplinary and ethical norms. Yet, for all this, it is still something that interlocutors can argue about. Communication partners can enter into a discourse about whether or not, and to what extent, the speech action is norm-conformative. By contrast, in the theory of moral-practical argumentation, making rational justifiability the criterion of the validity of norms, leaves unanswered the question: justifiable in what respect? The Problem of Rational Authority Now it might appear that Habermas principle of universalization goes some way towards answering such a question.43 The theme of universalization makes its appearance in Legitimation Crisis, emerges again in The Theory of Communicative Action and since his response to Steven Lukes critique of communicative ethics in A Reply To My Critics it has become an increasingly important component of his discourse ethics. The reference to universalization bears, of course, a resemblance to Kantian themes and is in a sense an attempt to subsume, and re-interpret, the Kantian legacy in the light of communication theory. It is also an attempt to furnish a general rule or pivot of argumentation that allows persons to generate a rational consensus in the face of differences of interest and opinion. It does this by offering a criterion of the validity of norms, viz the principle of universalization. But whether this principle either serves as a pivot of argumentation or indeed even adequately captures the strengths of the Kantian legacy is certainly open to question. Habermas begins with the presumption that norms affect the possibilities of actors satisfying their interests or needs. Different norms structure the possibilities of need satisfaction in different ways. Habermas distinguishes between particularistic and universalistic need satisfaction and suggests that valid norms are those which embody generalizable interests or needs. A norm, thus, is valid if, and only if, the effects and side-effects, which foreseeably follow from its general observance in the interest of any individual, can be accepted by all without coercion. A norm is valid, in other words, if it is not addressed to specific groups or persons and if all persons can freely accept the exactions it imposes on, and the possibilities it opens up, for them satisfying their needs or interests. This certainly represents a criterion of normative validity. But is it a pivot of argumentation? Can it set arguments in motion? To ask whether the effects on every individual are acceptable to all individuals does not, in fact, invite arguments, but rather arithmetical addition. The employment of such a criterion does not imply the recourse to arguments. It merely requires actors to raise their hands to signal whether they regard the effects on each other as acceptable. This criterion of validity does not necessitate a rationally motivated agreement. This principle cannot be appealed to by one communication partner to demonstrate to another the invalidity of a norm. It operates more like a veto, wherein each person can block a norm by signaling that it imposes unacceptable exactions. The principle provides neither formalistic nor substantive value criteria of acceptable exactions or openings. Yet it is such criteria that are pivotal in arguments.

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Habermas dismisses the relevance of Kantian formalism because, he suggests, it is something we can apply as individuals (monologically) but not in arguments (dialogically).44 Habermas is probably right that Kant envisaged the critical question viz whether the maxims of actions can become universal laws as a query that we addressed to ourselves.45 If we anticipated as a rule ignoring the distress of others, letting our talents rust, etc, Kant invited us to consider what this meant if such maxims were universal norms, applicable to and observed by everyone. Would we not find that our own stake in the alleviation of suffering and the development and enjoyment of social wealth was put into jeopardy? Kant assumed explicity in the Doctrine of Virtue, implicitly in the Groundwork that there are certain material values which everybody has a stake in and that fundamental politico-ethical problems arise because the particularistic regard for our own participation in those material values often eclipses our regard for the participation of others in those goods. Kant merely invited us to engage in certain throught experiments (putting outselves in the place of the other with respect to these material values) so that we might regain some proportionality in our concern. Kant, of course, for certain purposes exemplified in the Doctrine of Justice entirely bracketed any recourse to material values, invoking instead an egoistic, contentless concept of freedom, which, as Habermas rightly stresses, reduced the role of at least legal norms to one of reconciling the free pursuit of private interests of each person with all persons.46 Yet Habermas further suggestion that the formalism of Kants Groundwork was moral rather than ethical is not tenable. Had Kants example, say, of the rusting of talents been concerned with individual motivation or commitment to participation in the development of abilities (and had thus been concerned with the sorts of moral norms individuals adopt to orientate their pursuit of such a good), then Habermas critique would have been quite appropriate. But Kants interest is the repercussions for others, or ourselves in the position of others, when we follow certain maxims. And it does not take too much to expand the scope of the Kantian approach, and to locate it in a dialogic content. We can interrogate others, just as much as we can address our own selves, about the universalizability of maxims that are proposed. We can argue against proposed norms because they impede or put at risk the participation of some, even many, persons in fundamental material values. We can argue that such proposals could not be consistently maintained by their advocates if they were to be put in the place of those who were to be denied rights or opportunities (freedom) to participate in these values. In raising these sorts of questions we are not asking whether a communication community accepts this or that norm of action, but whether the norm is acceptable in the light of principles. We appeal, in argumentation, to a rational authority (backing): viz the idea of universal participation in material values. Habermas, in contrast, wants to make the validity of norms conditional upon wether or not the norms in question express or embody interests in common. Such generalizable interests Habermas, earlier on suggested can be ascertained by discourse (Legitimation Crisis); yet the idea of generalizable interests is (in later formulations) invoked as the pivot or ground of

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arguments (The Theory of Communicative Action). Habermas suggests that such generalizable interests can be ascertained by discourse, because a constraint free consensus that issues from discourse would permit only what all can want.47 In Legitimation Crisis, Habermas was confident that the ideal speech situation, on the strength of its formal properties alone, would allow a consensus only through generalizable interests.48 The procedures or presuppositions (freedom and equality) of argumentation were represented as the conditions under which an agreement would express the common interest of those involved. The problem for a theory of discourse, however, is how do you get agreement, unless those in discourse can rely on some common principle? Apparently to rectify this gap, Habermas introduces the idea of generalizable interest as a pivot of argumentation, so that in practical discourse reasons or grounds are meant to show that a norm recommended for acceptance expresses a generalizable interest.49 But this appears only to create a vicious circle. We cannot ascertain generalizable interests through discourse if discourse ultimately has recourse to the idea of generalizable interests. But the vicious circle is more apparent than real. To ascertain the common interest in Habermas sense (of communicatively shareable need) does not necessitate argumentation. We can find out, by voting, or other forms of indicative communication, whether the general observance of a norm has acceptable implications for the needs of all affected. How accurately we ascertain this of course depends on the freedom and equality of communication. But such indicative communication is not argumentative. And it is not discursive because it does not rest upon any rational authority or principle of acceptability. There is no real suggestion from Habermas of what in principle would be an unacceptable imposition on, or infringement of, the opportunities for need satisfaction. A large part of Habermas problem is that he offers no middle term between inner nature (the world of desires, interests, needs, hopes) and the social world of norms and rules. Norms affect in multitudinous ways individuals chances of satisfying their needs, aspirations, interests, and so forth. Norms both facilitate and impede the satisfaction of needs and interests. But what impositions cannot, ethically speaking, be tolerated are those which secure rights and opportunities to participate in goods or values for some persons while at the same time presupposing the exclusion of others from participation in such goods. On this account, values or goods represent the social or abstract face of need and desire. Values play a crucial interpretative and justificatory role in relation to desire. They provide the public, socially meaningful frames into which the private sensuous matter of desire can be placed, rendered intersubjectively intelligible and justified. They also provide the locus around which complexes of rights (and correlative obligations) crystallise. The ultimate rationale of norms and rules is the securing of goods and values. Habermas is certainly aware of the role that values played in traditional societies in the shaping of needs (in a unreflective manner).50 He also recognizes, in the formation of postconventional moral identities, that needs can obtain free access to the justificatory possibilities of such cultural-evaluative contents.51 But what he

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does not acknowledge is that values also represent a bridge between inner nature and the social world. For Habermas, rather, values are the ultimate possession of circles and milieu.52 They have no broader, or deeper, social significance. Yet if we were actually to bracket value terms, then what content would social norms or rules have? For it is rights and opportunities (freedoms) to share in, or have access to, material values that provides norms and rules with their raison detre. And correspondingly, it is the question of the universality of access to material values or value-guided practices that constitutes the essence of the problem of the justness or fairness of norms and rules.
NOTES
1. 2. 3. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), para. 39. Ibid., Paragraphs 40, 53. But not only Habermas. A similar proposition is put forward by Paul Ricoeur in his Structure, Word and Event (1968), Creativity in Language (1973), Metaphor and the Main Problem of Hermeneutics (1974) in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978); also in his Interpretation Theory (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976) and The rule of Metaphor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), Study 3. Jrgen Habermas, What Is Universal Pragmatics?, Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), p. 46. Ibid., p. 47. Ibid., pp. 47-48. In The Theory of Communicative Action (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), Habermas locates himself in a positive relationship to the truth-conditional semantics of people like Frege and Dummett (p. 276). He indicates that in a distinct analogy to the basic assumptions of the semantics of truth conditions, he wants to explain understanding an utterance by knowledge of the conditions under which a hearer may accept it. In other words, he assumes that we understand a speech act when we know what makes it acceptable. But what distinguishes Habermas theory from other truth-conditional semantics is that Habermas wants to move beyond the preoccupation of conventional truth-conditional semantics with assertoric sentences and adapt its basic postulate viz. that the meaning of a sentence is determined by its truth-conditions to take account of the appellative and expressive functions of language (p. 277). Thus, for example, in respect of imperative expressions, Habermas argues that, just as one must know the truth conditions of a proposition in order to understand it, one must know the conditions of acceptability in order to understand an imperative expression. These conditions are that (a) the hearer knows what s/he must do or not do in order to bring about the state of affairs desired by the speaker and (b) the speakers utterance could, if necessary, be rationally grounded (pp. 299-303). This latter rationality condition viz that an utterance is acceptable or valid if it can be rationally grounded is perhaps the distinguishing feature of Habermas truth-conditional semantics. It is a condition of acceptability not only of imperative expressions but of propositions as well. Moreover it is something that has been elevated in importance over time in Habermas work. Whereas in the essay What Is Universal Pragmatics, op. cit., Habermas referred frequently to the conformance of regulative speech acts to a normative context as a condition of acceptability, there is relatively little mention of this condition in The Theory of Communicative Action. In this later work, epistemic expectations raised in respect of referring and attributing as conditions of acceptability are also de-emphasized, again with the rationality condition being highlighted. Amongst other conditions, an utterer must be able to: follow consistently and correctly the conventions of language games or genres; follow the rules of a semantic grammar; anticipate where the rules leave meanings indeterminate and provide additional sign-posting for hearers; produce coherent meanings; make explicit typical attitudes and asumptions which determine (in significant ways) verbal meanings. A hearer, on the other hand, must be able to: recognize the generic conventions or language games which a speaker is following; have recourse to the same semantic grammar as the utterer; estimate the significance of speakers attitudes and associations in determining verbal meaning; recognize and correct incoherent construing of an utterers meanings

4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

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9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

the construing of part of the utterers discourse in conflict with the understanding of the rest; understand the parts of what a speaker says in terms which do not make impossible (or render nonsensical) the understanding of the rest. J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 73, 99-100. Ibid., pp. 103, 109. Jrgen Habermas, What Is Universal Pragmatics?, op. cit., pp. 44-45. Ibid., p. 49. J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words, op. cit., Lecture VI. Ibid., pp. 74-76. Ibid., p. 73 Ibid., p. 76. Ibid. Jrgen Habermas, What Is Universal Pragmatics?, op. cit., p. 60. Ibid., pp. 3S, 59. Jrgen Habermas, Toward A Theory of Communicative Competence, Inquiry No. 13, pp. 369-370; Systematically Distorted Communication, in P. Connerton, ed., Critical Sociology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), p. 354; Thoughts on the Foundation of Sociology in the Philosophy of Language, The Gauss Lectures, Lecture 3. This is also discussed by Paul Ricoeur. See his Structure, Word, Event (p. 115) and Metaphor and the Main Problems of Hermeneutics (p. 137) in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, op. cit. Hegel, in the Logic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) put it this way: When I say I, I mean my single self to the exclusion of all others; but what I say, viz i is just every I, which in like manner excludes all others from itself. (p. 31). Jrgen Habermas, Toward a Theory of Communicative Competence, op. cit., p. 370. Peter A. de Villiers and Jill G. de Villiers, Early Language (London: Collins, 1979), p. 73. Ibid. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980), pp. 163-168, 323. Ibid., p. 165. Jrgen Habermas, What Is Universal Pragmatics?, op. cit., pp. 3, 29. J. L. Austin, Performative-Constative in J. Searle, ed., The Philosophy of Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 20-22; J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words, op. cit., Lecture XI. J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words, op. cit., p. 145. J. L. Austin, Performative Utterance, Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 247; How To Do Things With Words, op. cit., p. 141. Jrgen Habermas, What Is Universal Pragmatics?, op. cit., p. 55. Ibid., pp. 3, 28, 29, 35, 37-39, 53-54, 58. Ibid., p. 56. Ibid., pp. 2K, 29, 35, 37-39. Ibid., pp. 34-35. Ibid., p. 60. Ibid., p. 64. Pioneered by Stephen Toulmin. See his Reason In Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960). Jrgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), p. 101. Jrgen Habermas, What Is Universal Pragmatics?, op. cit., pp. 60-64. Jrgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, op. cit., Part III, chapters 1-3. See, in particular, Habermas, A Reply To My Critics in John B. Thompson and David Held (eds.), Habermas: Critical Debates (Macmillan: London, 1982), p. 257. Habermas, Moral Development and Ego Identity, Communication and the Evolution of Society, pp. 90, 94; Theory and Practice (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), pp. 150-151. Ibid. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, op. cit., pp. 88-89; Moral Development and Ego Identity, op. cit., p. 90; Theory and Practice, op. cit., p. 84. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, op. cit., p. 108.

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48. Ibid., pp. 110, 184-5, 187. 49. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, p. 20. It should, however, be noted that a not radically dissimilar formulation also appeared earlier in Legitimation Problems in the Modern State in Communication and the Evolution of Society, where Habermas suggests that to say that a recommended norm is legitimate is the same as saying it is in the general interest and that arguments provide reasons or grounds for holding that norms and regulations are in the general interest of everyone involved. (pp. 187-8; 204). 50. Habermas, Moral Development and Ego Identity, op. cit., p. 84. 51. Ibid., pp. 78, 93-94. 52. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, op. cit., p. 20.