Essays by Jurgen Habermas on truth, objectivity, normativity, naturalism, and realism after the linguistic turn.

A rare systematic thinker, Habermas has furthered our understanding of modernity, social interaction and linguistic practice, societal institutions, rationality, morality, the law, globalization, and the role of religion in multicultural societies. He has helped shape discussions of truth, objectivity, normativity, and the relationship between the human and the natural sciences. This volume provides an accessible and comprehensive conceptual map of Habermas' theoretical framework and its key concepts, including the theory of communicative action, discourse ethics, his social-political philosophy and their applications (...) to contemporary issues. It will be an invaluable resource for both novice readers of Habermas and those interested in a more refined understanding of particular aspects of his work. (shrink)

A rare systematic thinker, Habermas has furthered our understanding of modernity, social interaction and linguistic practice, societal institutions, rationality, morality, the law, globalization, and the role of religion in multicultural societies. He has helped shape discussions of truth, objectivity, normativity, and the relationship between the human and the natural sciences. This volume provides an accessible and comprehensive conceptual map of Habermas' theoretical framework and its key concepts, including the theory of communicative action, discourse ethics, his social-political philosophy and their applications (...) to contemporary issues. It will be an invaluable resource for both novice readers of Habermas and those interested in a more refined understanding of particular aspects of his work. (shrink)

In 1971 Jürgen Habermas delivered the Gauss Lectures at Princeton University. These pivotal lectures, entitled "Reflections on the Linguistic Foundation of Sociology," anticipate The Theory of Communicative Action and offer an excellent introduction to it. They show why Habermas considers the linguistic turn in social philosophy to be necessary and contain the first formulation of formal pragmatics, including an important discussion of truth.In these lectures and two additional essays, Habermas outlines an intersubjective approach to social theory that takes the concepts (...) of meaning and communication to be central. In doing so, he situates his project relative to other influential accounts of how meaning is constituted, in particular those of Edmund Husserl, Wilfrid Sellars, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He examines the nature of social interaction and its connection to communication, developing a linguistic conception of convention and intentionality. He also offers an account of social and individual pathologies using the concept of systematically distorted communication. Taken together, these analyses contribute significantly to current debates in the philosophy of action and language. (shrink)

Representing, and Discursive Commitment (reviewed by Barbara Fultner).

A juxtaposition of Frege’s and Heidegger’s conceptions of reference (Bedeutung and Verweisung) shows them to be complementary. The thesis that meaning determines reference has been attributed to both Frege and Heidegger. Contrary to the view that this commits them to linguistic idealism, I defend a weak version of the determination thesis according to which both Fregean and Heideggerian reference allow for the possibility of error and for the objectivity of discourse. Thus, what we refer to is accessible to us only (...) by our grasping its sense of meaning; sense is a way of fixing reference, but does not constitute the referent as what it is. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of Habermas's concept of the lifeworld in processes of reaching mutual understanding. This concept is shown to be ultimately too amorphous to bear the theoretical weight Habermas places on it. He conceives the lifeworld both as diffuse and holistic, yet also as structured; as a set of taken-for-granted and counterfactual presuppositions, yet also as a kind of knowledge. In the end, he presupposes what the lifeworld is supposed to explain: mutual intelligibility of subjects in interaction. (...) These conceptual tensions affect the explanatory power of the lifeworld and the usefulness of the theory of communicative action for conflict resolution. Where conflict resolution is aimed at mediating radical disagreements with minimal concord between parties, presuming consensus may not be possible or optimal. The present analysis argues for the need to develop other means of establishing a sufficient level of background consensus against which communicative action can take place. (shrink)

Abstract Jürgen Habermas has proposed a tripartite classification of analytic philosophy of language into formal semantics, intentionalistic semantics, and use?theories of meaning. Here, I focus on the relationship between formal semantics and Habermas? own account of meaning and truth. I argue against his early ?consensus theory of truth?, according to which truth is defined as idealized warranted assertibility and explained by the ?discursive redemption? of validity claims. A claim is discursively redeemed if it commands rationally motivated consensus of all discursive (...) partners. I argue that this is not so much a theory of truth as of justification. As an account of truth, it is unsatisfactory because warrants can be lost in light of new arguments, and because consensus is seen as criterial for truth only if it is in principle defeasible ? hence there remains a gap between truth and even idealized warranted assertibility. In The Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas? views undergo a shift. Following Dummett, he cashes out meaning in terms of assertibility conditions. While Habermas continues to insist on an epistemically conditioned notion of truth, he no longer explicitly defines truth as idealized warranted assertibility; nor does his meaning?theoretic framework require him to do so. I argue that truth is an irreducible and ineliminable regulative idea. In particular, it can be explicated in terms of justification only indirectly. Contrary to some commentators, I do not believe that the regulative function of truth is merely negative. Fallibilism does not exhaust the meaning of truth. For we do not make truth claims provisionally, that is, with the understanding that they may turn out to be wrong. Rather, we gamble that we will not turn out to be wrong. Therefore, the concept of truth has not only a critical, but also a positive function in our discourse. (shrink)

Swindal seeks to incorporate temporality into the formal-pragmatic analysis of discourse by developing what he calls ‘event-determining’ reflection. After outlining his motivations for introducing this new form of reflection, I offer a critique, first, of his appeal to meta-discourse about when to engage in discourse and, second, of the function of truth in his account. Finally, I suggest that Swindal’s theory of reflective acceptability fruitfully complements Robert Brandom’s normative pragmatics.

Swindal seeks to incorporate temporality into the formal-pragmatic analysis of discourse by developing what he calls ‘event-determining’ reflection. After outlining his motivations for introducing this new form of reflection, I offer a critique, first, of his appeal to meta-discourse about when to engage in discourse and, second, of the function of truth in his account. Finally, I suggest that Swindal’s theory of reflective acceptability fruitfully complements Robert Brandom’s normative pragmatics.

Brandom's inferentialism provides a semantics that complements Habermas's theory of communicative action without sacrificing its intersubjectivist insights. Pace Habermas, Brandom's conception of communication is robustly intersubjective. At the pragmatic level, interlocutors inherit each other's commitments and entitlements and must justify their claims when challenged; at the semantic level, anaphora show how the web of meaning is knit together, connecting expressions of the language as well as interlocutors. Finally, Habermas's thesis that there are three irreducible types of validity claim is preserved (...) by linking claims to truth and rightness with mutually irreducible patterns of inference. (shrink)

A juxtaposition of Frege’s and Heidegger’s conceptions of reference shows them to be complementary. The thesis that meaning determines reference has been attributed to both Frege and Heidegger. Contrary to the view that this commits them to linguistic idealism, I defend a weak version of the determination thesis according to which both Fregean and Heideggerian reference allow for the possibility of error and for the objectivity of discourse. Thus, what we refer to is accessible to us only by our grasping (...) its sense of meaning; sense is a way of fixing reference, but does not constitute the referent as what it is. (shrink)

A rare systematic thinker, Habermas has furthered our understanding of modernity, social interaction and linguistic practice, societal institutions, rationality, morality, the law, globalization, and the role of religion in multicultural societies. He has helped shape discussions of truth, objectivity, normativity, and the relationship between the human and the natural sciences. This volume provides an accessible and comprehensive conceptual map of Habermas' theoretical framework and its key concepts, including the theory of communicative action, discourse ethics, his social-political philosophy and their applications (...) to contemporary issues. It will be an invaluable resource for both novice readers of Habermas and those interested in a more refined understanding of particular aspects of his work. (shrink)

A rare systematic thinker, Habermas has furthered our understanding of modernity, social interaction and linguistic practice, societal institutions, rationality, morality, the law, globalization, and the role of religion in multicultural societies. He has helped shape discussions of truth, objectivity, normativity, and the relationship between the human and the natural sciences. This volume provides an accessible and comprehensive conceptual map of Habermas' theoretical framework and its key concepts, including the theory of communicative action, discourse ethics, his social-political philosophy and their applications (...) to contemporary issues. It will be an invaluable resource for both novice readers of Habermas and those interested in a more refined understanding of particular aspects of his work. (shrink)

A rare systematic thinker, Habermas has furthered our understanding of modernity, social interaction and linguistic practice, societal institutions, rationality, morality, the law, globalization, and the role of religion in multicultural societies. He has helped shape discussions of truth, objectivity, normativity, and the relationship between the human and the natural sciences. This volume provides an accessible and comprehensive conceptual map of Habermas' theoretical framework and its key concepts, including the theory of communicative action, discourse ethics, his social-political philosophy and their applications (...) to contemporary issues. It will be an invaluable resource for both novice readers of Habermas and those interested in a more refined understanding of particular aspects of his work. (shrink)

Pace Dummett, the issue between molecularism and holism does not turn on whether a meaning theory is compositional, but on how successful communication is conceived. Given a notion of partial understanding, molecularism escapes the two most prevalent objections against holism (learnability and communication). Holism, too, can escape these objections, provided we also grant the holist a notion of partial understanding and suitably amend our conception of successful communication.

I focus on holism in philosophy of language, particularly in Donald Davidson's truth-conditional semantics and Jurgen Habermas's formal pragmatics. An adequate semantics must take account of three dimensions: the subjective, the social, and the objective. It must, in this sense, be holistic. All three aspects are mutually irreducible and interdependent. Yet holistic approaches lack a clear sense of how they are related. Both Habermas and Davidson recognise that language is spoken by individuals whose intentions it expresses, that it is social (...) , and that it makes claims about the objective world. Habermas places paramount importance on speakers' mutual recognition of norms, whereas Davidson maintains that conventions play no essential role in interpretation. I argue that Davidson's idiolectic conception of language overemphasises the achievements of individuals. Distinguishing between a public and a social theory of meaning, I argue that meaning is social and depends on communities of language users who share a lifeworld. Habermas, however, fails to recognise that if the background knowledge of the lifeworld is holistic, this holism extends to the theory of meaning. Davidson's principle of charity and Habermas's lifeworld are both transcendental notions: they refer to the conditions of possibility--the pragmatic presuppositions--of interpretation. Habermasian transcendentalism, correctly understood, is much closer to Davidson than might initially appear. An important complementarity between them concerns the relation between truth and justification. While Habermas aptly articulates the connection between meaning and justification, Davidson's conception of truth as a semantic primitive avoids problems associated with accounts of truth as idealised warranted assertibility. Nonetheless, it is compatible with taking truth to be a regulative idea. Finally, I argue in favour of an assertibilist semantics in order to accommodate the holistic relation of subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and objectivity. Considerations of meaning holism and the fact that both Davidson and Habermas acknowledge a contextual element in meaning, however, continue to fuel scepticism concerning such a theory. (shrink)

The phrase "natural kind term" has come into the linguistic and philosophical literature in connection with well-known work of Kripke (1972) and Putnam (1970, 1975a). I use that phrase here in the sense it has acquired from those and subseqnent works on related topics. This is not the transparent sense of the phrase. That is, if I am right in what follows there are words for kinds of things existing in nature which are not natural kind terms in the current (...) sense - e.g. planet, woman, and weed. I use the term "nondescriptional", following Salmon (1981), to mean "lacking a Fregean sense", where a Fregean sense is taken to be a property or group of properties semantically associated with an expression which determines its denotation. I hope that the term "nondescriptional" will be clarified in subsequent discussion, but perhaps a few words about it and its opposite, "descriptional", would be useful here. These terms (as Salmon notes (p.15, n. 11)) should be taken as technical terms. The idea is that descriptional words, of which bachelor is the overwhelmingly favorite example, express a semantic content, or sense, which is what mediates their denotation. Entities fall in their denotation in virtue of possessing the property or properties expressed as their sense. (It is not necessary, however, that this sense be as easily paraphrasable with descriptive synonyms as it is typically held to be in the case of bachelor, or even that it be paraphrasable at all.) In the case of nondescriptional words there is no Fregean sense to mediate the link between word and object. Hence such terms are described by what Salmon, following Kaplan, calls "the theory of direct reference". What it is that does associate such terms with their denotations is another question which will be touched on briefly at the end. I have several aims in this paper. The first is to defend a conservative position on nondescriptionality. I will argue that relatively few natural language words have this property. My other aims are primarily clarificatory. Among the issues I would like to clarify are those connected with the determination of this property and flae explanation of why it exists, its relationship with other properties such as rigid designation and essentiality, and its significance for lexical semantics. The organization of the paper is as follows. The first section identifies the position taken here on the question of which expressions are nondescriptional and provides a general defense of it. The second section is a critical examination of criteria associated with nondescriptionality. In the third section provide further defense for the conservative position, and in the fourth section we turn to related issues in lexical semantics. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck's best selling Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management. The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck's ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck reverberate widely throughout (...) social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arguments in Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck. (shrink)

Szabó follows Heim in viewing familiarity, rather than uniqueness, as the essence of the definite article, but attempts to derive both familiarity and uniqueness implications pragmatically, assigning a single semantic interpretation to both the definite and indefinite articles. I argue that if there is no semantic distinction between the articles, then there is no way to derive these differences between them pragmatically.

This paper explores the prospects for dispositional accounts of abilities. According to so-called new dispositionalists, an agent has the ability to Φ iff they have a disposition to Φ when trying to Φ. We show that the new dispositionalism is beset by some problems that also beset its predecessor, the conditional analysis of abilities, and bring up some further problems. We then turn to a different approach, which links abilities not to motivational states but to the notion of success, and (...) consider ways of implementing that approach. Our results suggest that there are principled disanalogies between abilities and disposition which prevent any dispositional account of abilities from succeeding. (shrink)

Dispositionalism about modality is the view that metaphysical modality is a matter of the dispositions possessed by actual objects. In a recent paper, David Yates has raised an important worry about the formal adequacy of dispositionalism. This paper responds to Yates’s worry by developing a reply that Yates discusses briefly but dismisses as ad hoc: an appeal to a ’plenitude of powers’ including such powers as the necessarily always manifested power for 2+2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} (...) \begin{document}$$2+2$$\end{document} to be 4. I argue that the reply is not ad hoc at all, by defending the metaphysics of dispositions that should underly it. I then argue, first, that a proper understanding of dispositions’ degrees provides us with an argument for such necessarily always manifested dispositions; second, that all the natural attempts to block that argument can be resisted without being ad hoc; and third, that pragmatic considerations explain our intuitive resistance to the ascription of necessarily always manifested dispositions. Dispositionalism can be formally adequate after all. (shrink)

Cette introduction explique la perception, reconnue par Husserl sous le titre de "donation par esquisses". Il s'agit d'opérer une réduction radicale qui va de la critique du néant au monde comme a priori de tout apparaître. A ce monde correspond un sujet dont le sens d'être fait problème puisqu'il est à la fois un moment du monde et en rapport avec la totalité comme telle.

An extended analysis and account of the psychological/social/cognitive dynamics of intellectual controversy. The immediate focus is the recurrent failure of intellectual engagement, in encounters having to do with with truth, knowledge, language, science, and/or objectivity, between, on the one hand, rationalist-realist-objectivist philosophers and/or those they have instructed and, on the other hand, constructivist-pragmatist ("postmodern") theorists and/or those persuaded by their critiques and/or alternative views. Individual chapters examine critiques and defenses of objectivist-rationalist views in law, politics, literary studies, ethics, communication theory, (...) and philosophy of science. Theorists whose views are discussed critically at some length include legal scholar Robin West and philosophers Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel, and Philip Kitcher. (shrink)

L'oeuvre de Merleau-Ponty est tout entiere commandee par le souci de mettre rigoureusement en oeuvre le mot d'ordre husserlien de retour aux choses memes, ce qui exige, conformement au geste amorce par Husserl dans la Krisis, de reconnaitre l'oeuvre de l'idealisation -c'est-a-dire de l'objectivation- la meme ou elle se fait oublier, afin de la neutraliser. A l'instar de Bergson, pour qui la tache de la philosophie etait d'aller chercher l'experience au-dessus du tournant ou, s'inflechissant dans le sens de l'utilite, elle (...) devient proprement l'experience humaine, pour Merleau-Ponty, la tache de la pensee est de se situer a ce tournant ou l'experience s'accomplit et se voile a la fois dans des productions ou elle se fait proprement humaine, de definir un sens de l'Etre anterieur a la bifurcation du preobjectif et de l'oeuvre idealisante. Le but des recherches est de tenter de clarifier la nature exacte du tournant de l'experience ainsi que le projet phenomenologique merleau-pontien. (shrink)

This paper responds to the contributions by Alexander Bird, Nathan Wildman, David Yates, Jennifer McKitrick, Giacomo Giannini & Matthew Tugby, and Jennifer Wang. I react to their comments on my 2015 book Potentiality: From Dispositions to Modality, and in doing so expands on some of the arguments and ideas of the book.

This book presents the most important problems of reference and considers their solution. It presupposes no technical knowledge, presents analyses from first principles, illustrates every stage with examples, and is written with verve and clarity. This is the ideal introduction to reference for students of linguistics and philosophy of language.

This book considers the context of the colonial policies of Britain, Locke's contribution to them, and the importance of these ideas in his theory of property. It also reconsiders the debate about John Locke's influence in America. The book argues that Locke's theory of property must be understood in connection with the philosopher's political concerns, as part of his endeavour to justify the colonialist policies of Lord Shaftesbury's cabinet, with which he was personally associated. The author maintains that traditional scholarship (...) has failed to do justice to Locke by ignoring the implications of contemporary British imperial policy for the interpretation of his political thought. (shrink)

Contemporary issues involving knowledge and science examined from a constructivist-pragmatist perspective often labeled "relativism." Individual chapters include a review of the difference between constructivist-pragmatist epistemology and "social constructivism;" an examination of recent writings by Bruno Latour; a critique of computational methods in literary studies; a skeptical look at current efforts to "integrate" the humanities and the natural sciences; and reflections on the social dynamics of belief in relation to denials of climate change and to hopes expressed by environmentalists.

This paper investigates Slovak migrants’ use of new media to build social capital. It draws on data from a pilot study with 36 Slovaks living in the UK, and on content analysis of the main Facebook page for Czechs and Slovaks in the UK. The data suggest that Facebook is used for sharing emotions rather than to build a community and share practical information. While Facebook and Skype are used to maintain preexisting strong ties in the country of origin, face-to-face (...) contact and mobile phones are used to maintain ties within the UK. However, social media do not seem to facilitate the formation of weak ties prior to migration, with face-to-face contact being dominant upon arrival. Transnational migration experience forms a separate dimension within the participants’ identity, independent from social capital. The data are discussed in relation to findings from previous studies about Slovak migrants in the Republic of Ireland. (shrink)

Making room for character -- Pluralism and the community of moral judgment -- A cosmopolitan kingdom of ends --Responsibility and moral competence --Can virtue be taught?: the problem of new moral facts -- Training to autonomy: Kant and the question of moral education -- Bootstrapping -- Rethinking Kant's hedonism -- The scope of moral requirement -- The will and its objects -- Obligatory ends -- Moral improvisation -- Contingency in obligation.

Anerkannt zu werden, ist nicht nur ein menschliches Grundbedurfnis, sondern vermittelt ebenfalls das Gefuhl, in einen sozialen Kontext integriert zu sein.

The book introduces young researchers to phenomenology and the two primary philosophical approaches along with the vocabulary of phenomenology including how to set up the research design and execute the study to include data collection, data analysis, and presentation of findings.

A critical examination of the charge of self-refutation, particularly as leveled by orthodoxy-defending philosophers against those maintaining epistemologically unorthodox, especially relativistic or skeptical, views. Beginning with an analysis of its classic illustration in Plato’s *Theaetetus* as leveled against Protagoras’s “Man is the measure ...,” I consider various aspects of the charge, including logical, rhetorical, pedagogic, affective, and cognitive.