Why we need to avoid theorizing about rationality: a ...

Social Epistemology

ISSN: 0269-1728 (Print) 1464-5297 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tsep20

Why we need to avoid theorizing about rationality: A Putnamian criticism of Habermas's epistemology Louise Cummings To cite this article: Louise Cummings (2002) Why we need to avoid theorizing about rationality: A Putnamian criticism of Habermas's epistemology, Social Epistemology, 16:2, 117-131, DOI: 10.1080/02691720210150761 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02691720210150761

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Why we need to avoid theorizing about rationality: a Putnamian criticism of Habermas’s epistemology LOUISE CUMMINGS It seems to be almost customary in discussions of rationality to begin one’s account of this notion by joining in the widespread lament that logical positivism has restricted unduly the true scope of rationality. Almost equally customary is the attempt to respond to the restrictive impact of positivism on rationality by instituting in the place of a positivistic conception of this notion, an alternative, but similarly restricted conception of rationality. Just such a scenario can be shown to characterize Ju¨rgen Habermas’s attempt to expand post-positivistic conceptions of reason and knowledge. In the discussion to follow, this paper develops the claim that quite apart from overcoming the limiting effect of positivism on the notion of rationality, Habermas’s expanded epistemology of knowledge and human interests serves only to perpetuate this effect. The paper begins by examining a challenge to positivism by the philosopher Hilary Putnam. This challenge seeks to expose a type of metaphysical theorizing which, it is claimed, motivates the positivists’ thinking on rationality and speci cally the positivists’ attempt to circumscribe rationality through the identi cation of this notion with certain logical and scienti c criteria. This same metaphysical theorizing, it is argued, can be shown to motivate Habermas’s expansion of post-positivistic conceptions of reason and knowledge. The manifestation of this theorizing in both the position of the positivists and of Habermas is the unintelligibility of certain of their theoretical claims. Nothing is offered in the way of a positive account of what rationality consists in, for the reason that if the author’s view is in any way correct, just such a positive account is exactly what we should not aim to attain. 1. Putnam on logical positivism In the sections to follow, I examine Hilary Putnam’s analysis of the conception of rationality advanced by logical positivism. I discuss Putnam’s claim that the positivists’ conception of rationality is self-refuting. This self-refutation claim comes about through an examination of the positivists’ argumentative practice, a practice that is revealing of a form of rationality that is no part of the positivists’ conception of rationality but which cannot legitimately be omitted from that conception. I

Author : Dr Louise Cummings, Department of English & Media Studies, Nottingham Trent University, Clifton Campus, Clifton Lane, Nottingham NG11 8NS, UK. Social Epistemology ISSN 0269-1728 print/ISSN 1464-5297 on line # 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

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describe how Putnam links the self-refuting nature of the positivists’ position with the unintelligibility of that position. Speci cally, it is Putnam’s contention that a prior form of rationality—this is exactly what the positivists’ argumentative practice comes to—confers sense on the conception of rationality advanced by the positivists. And it is exactly this prior form of rationality that is lacking in the case of the positivists’ proposed identi cation of rationality with logical and scienti c norms. I relate the completeness of analysis that is entailed by the positivists’ identi cation of rationality to an urge to theorize in discussions of rationality, an urge that, I claim, leads inevitably to the unintelligibility of the analyses that constitute that theorizing. In the meantime, however, I examine the nature of Putnam’s charge of self-refutation against logical positivism. 1.1.

Self-refutation: positivism’s argumentative practice

Putnam’s self-refutation charge against logical positivism can be characterized as follows. In arguing for a conception of rationality that is founded exclusively on logical and scienti c norms, the positivists, Putnam claims, must rst employ a type of rationality that extends beyond those norms. Speci cally, they must appeal to norms of philosophical argumentation, norms that—whilst similar to—cannot be identi ed with the norms by means of which scienti c inquiry proceeds. Moreover, these philosophical norms share with the norms of scienti c inquiry a claim to rational status. It is just this shared claim that invalidates the positivists’ attempt to identify rationality with scienti c norms—clearly rationality cannot be identi ed with the norms of scienti c inquiry, for the reason that norms which are outside of that inquiry and which share with the norms of scienti c inquiry a claim to rational status, are required in order to establish this identi cation. The challenge to positivism takes the form of a self-refutation argument: if it is true that only statements that can be criterially verified can be rationally acceptable, that statement itself cannot be criterially verified, and hence cannot be rationally acceptable. If there is such a thing as rationality at all—and we commit ourselves to believing in some notion of rationality by engaging in the activities of speaking and arguing—then it is self-refuting to argue for the position that it is identical with or properly contained in what the institutionalized norms of the culture determine to be instances of it. For no such argument can be certified to be correct, or even probably correct, by those norms alone (Putnam, 1981, p. 111).

The self-refuting nature of the positivists’ position, Putnam contends, stems from the positivists’ attempt to deny a precondition on rational thought, one to the effect that rational thought is only possible and intelligible in the presence of a prior form of rational thought. What this precondition comes to is that in the absence of a prior form of rational thought, it is not simply the case that all discussion and description of rational thought is precluded—in the absence of a prior form of rational thought the concepts, in terms of which such discussion and description proceed, are lacking. Rather, it is the case that in the absence of a prior form of rational thought, the very possibility of rational thought is precluded—the same concepts that allow us to discuss and describe rational thought, also allow us to say that rational thought is possible. The positivists are effectively denying this precondition through their identi cation of rationality with logical and scienti c norms. It is central to this identi cation that it should fully exhaust the extent of the concept of rationality, that is, that there should be no residual notion of rationality that exists apart from the


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rationality of the positivists’ identi cation. However, in denying the existence of a residual notion of rationality the positivists are, in effect, denying both the possibility and the intelligibility of their conception of rationality—there are no concepts of rational thought outside of this conception, on the basis of which we can proceed to discuss and even make sense of this conception. The charge of self-refutation comes about when it is demonstrated that the positivists are unable to reconcile their theoretical conception of rationality with the rationality of their own argumentative practice—this practice gives rise to a residual notion of rationality, a notion of rationality that is not part of the positivists’ proposed identi cation of rationality with logical and scienti c norms. The question that should now be asked is what leads the positivists to overlook the rationality of their own argumentative practice and, in so doing, formulate an account of rationality that is complete, or so they argue, in the sense of representing the full extent of this concept. 1.2.

Theorizing and the metaphysical standpoint

In short, all the positivists’ problems—the unintelligibilty and the impossibility of their conception of rationality—stem from the attempt to theorize about rationality from the perspective of a metaphysical standpoint. From this standpoint, the positivists believe that it is possible to both state fully what rationality consists in, and to produce a complete account of rationality, an account that does not presuppose rationality. So it is, for example, that the positivists proceed in their theorizing to identify rationality with logical and scienti c norms, an identi cation that, I argued above, does not presuppose any residual notion of rationality. I have already discussed the implications of the absence of a residual form of rationality for the intelligibility of a theoretical conception of rationality (the positivists’ identi cation is just such a theoretical conception). In the remainder of this section, I want to examine what motivates theorists of rationality like the positivists to pursue a type of completeness of analysis in relation to rationality, a completeness of analysis that I have been claiming is destructive of the intelligibility of theoretical conceptions of this notion. The positivists, I have been arguing, are aiming to attain a type of completeness of analysis through their pursuit of an all-encompassing conception of rationality, that is, a conception of rationality that does not presuppose rationality. In respect of completeness of analysis, the positivists’ philosophical inquiry differs little from the inquiries of many other philosophers. Thus we nd Myerson remarking of theorists of dialogic rationalism: Of course they [theorists of dialogic rationalism] face other demands—to be rigorous, comprehensive, consistent enough, systematic—and these demands lead to an internalisation of their approach, and an attempt to achieve complete formulation (1994, p. 16, emphasis added).

As Myerson’s comments indicate, completeness of analysis exists alongside a number of other theoretical aims of the philosopher: the aim to produce theories that are rigorous, comprehensive, consistent and systematic. That the achievement of certain theoretical aims is what motivates much philosophical inquiry is beyond doubt. The questions that I want to consider in the case of one such aim, the aim of completeness, are (1) what motivates the philosopher to pursue the theoretical aim of completeness in the context of philosophical inquiry and (2) what impact does the theoretical aim of completeness have on the intelligibility of philosophical inquiry?


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Question 2 has already been given consideration—the pursuit of complete theoretical analyses in philosophy (recall that the positivists’ theoretical identi cation of rationality with logical and scienti c norms is just such an analysis) has the signi cant effect of rendering these analyses unintelligible. A better understanding both of this effect and how it comes about can be achieved by considering what motivates the philosopher to pursue the theoretical aim of completeness in inquiry (question 1). The philosopher, I believe, is motivated to pursue a speci cally scienti c conception of completeness on account of his desire to achieve for his own philosophical analyses some of the success of science. Few domains of inquiry have had the recorded success of science in attaining the end goal of inquiry (the goal of truth), and scienti c completeness, as one of the theoretical aims guiding scienti c inquiry, must surely share in this success. Notwithstanding the appeal of the scientist’s conception of completeness, the assumption of this conception in philosophical inquiry leads to a type of intellectual confusion, a type of intellectual confusion that Putnam aims to reveal by means of his criticism of the conception of rationality contained in logical positivism. A proper appreciation of this last claim can only be gained by re ecting on the type of problems that are examined by science and philosophy respectively. The scientist’s domain of inquiry is that of the natural world.1 When the scientist poses questions about the natural world, he is concerned to establish not only the physical entities which make up this world, but also how these physical entities connect to other physical entities to form the basis of structures that are biological, chemical, geological, etc., in nature. Each physical entity and each interconnection between physical entities nds representation in the form of a theory, a theory that undergoes successive reformulations as new knowledge emerges from inquiry. This process of theory construction proceeds against a background in which there is at least the possibility that a point will be reached in inquiry where no further reformulations of theory can be achieved and the development of a theory will be complete. What makes the completeness of scienti c theorizing possible in principle, if not in practice, is the relationship of the processes of scienti c thought to the processes of rational thought. Scienti c thinking, whilst representative of rational thinking, is effectively subsumed by rational thinking. Indeed, it is on account of this relationship of subsumption between scienti c and rational thought that the processes of scienti c thought are both possible and intelligible. Now, a complete scienti c theory is a theory that cannot be reformulated on the basis of any processes of scienti c thought that are within our present-day scienti c knowledge. However, while we make necessary use of processes of scienti c thought in developing complete scienti c theories, any assessment of the completeness of a scienti c theory is an assessment that can only proceed when processes of rational thought that are of a different order to the processes that are involved in the establishment of a scienti c theory are presupposed by that theory. My point is, quite simply, that in posing scienti c questions and in developing complete scienti c theories, the scientist is not posing questions and developing complete theories about rational thought; rather, the scientist’s theories and questions presuppose rational thought. Now consider the case of the philosopher in pursuit of inquiry. The philosopher believes, mistakenly I contend, that he can pose questions about and develop complete theories of rational thought in much the same manner that the scientist poses questions about and develops complete theories of physical phenomena. However, what the philosopher fails to appreciate when he poses such questions and



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develops such theories is that when those questions and theories involve rational thought itself, then the rational framework which is presupposed by scienti c inquiry and which confers sense upon the questions and theories of the scientist is lacking in the case of philosophical inquiry. The philosopher’s entire theoretical pursuit is the unintelligible one of attempting to theorize about rational thought from a perspective that is itself devoid of rational thought. Certainly the philosopher’s motivation in pursuing a scienti c conception of completeness in the context of philosophical inquiry is an understandable motivation: the philosopher, like the scientist, wishes to attain truth through his analyses and the completeness of theoretical analysis in science appears to guarantee that such truth will be attained. However, the nature of the particular questions and theories that the philosopher is concerned to investigate requires that he deny the rational presuppositions of scienti c inquiry. While the scientist can claim completeness for his analyses—analyses which at the same time presuppose rational thought—the philosopher, who is theorizing about rational thought itself, can only claim completeness for his analyses by denying that these analyses presuppose rational thought. The philosopher, I am claiming, is like the scientist in his desire to pursue complete theoretical analyses. However, it now emerges that when the philosopher pursues complete analyses, he is effectively engaging in metaphysical theorizing. It is certainly the case that the group of philosophers that are relevant to the current discussion, the positivists, refused to characterize their own practice as one of engaging in metaphysics. In fact, it was an avowed aim of the positivists’ movement to reject all metaphysical questions that failed to be reduced to positive science: ‘The scienti c world-conception rejects metaphysical philosophy’ (Hahn et al., 1973, p. 307).2 However, leaving the self-image of the movement to one side, the positivists did construct complex metaphysical systems in the course of their analyses: the great logical empiricists – the most famous example is Rudolf Carnap – produced ‘rational reconstructions of the language of science’ which looked for all the world like elaborate systems of metaphysics – or at least that is how they looked to philosophers who did not join the movement 3 (Putnam, 1994, p. 101).

It remains for me to demonstrate how a similar metaphysical impulse underlies Habermas’s attempted expansion of post-positivistic conceptions of knowledge and reason. Before doing so, however, I consider a possible objection to the viewpoint that I have advanced above. 2. A possible objection At the centre of the above self-refutation challenge to logical positivism is the view that the positivists’ conception of rationality is invalidated by the rationality of the positivists’ argumentative practice, that the rational features of this practice show that the positivists’ identi cation of rationality with logical and scienti c norms cannot possibly be true. An objection can immediately be raised. This objection consists in the claim that I am confusing what is, in effect, a pragmatically motivated decision to adopt a particular conception of rationality with the theoretical content of that conception and that this confusion of practical with theoretical knowledge is essentially what motivates the above self-refutation charge against positivism. An early statement of the viewpoint that underlies this objection is to be found in

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Carnap’s distinction between questions that are internal to a framework and questions that are external to a framework:4 And now we must distinguish two kinds of questions of existence: first, questions of the existence of certain entities . . . within the framework; we call them internal questions; and second, questions concerning the existence or reality of the framework itself, called external questions (1950, pp. 21–22).


For Carnap, internal and external questions are not only asking about quite different things, but responses to these questions are drawing upon two quite different types of knowledge, theoretical and practical knowledge respectively: To be real in the scientific sense means to be an element of the framework; hence this concept cannot be meaningfully applied to the framework itself. Those who raise the question of the reality of the thing world itself have perhaps in mind not a theoretical question as their formulation seems to suggest, but rather a practical question, a matter of a practical decision concerning the structure of our language (1950, pp. 22–23, emphases added).

Yet Carnap’s insistence on a distinction between the questions that can be asked of entities within a framework and that can be asked of the framework itself is not as damaging to the view that motivates the above self-refutation criticism of positivism as it might at rst appear. The critical impact of Carnap’s distinction is weakened as a result of a concession on his part. Even for Carnap, the practical decision to adopt a particular framework involves a range of theoretical questions: The decision of accepting the thing language, although itself not of a cognitive nature, will nevertheless usually be influenced by theoretical knowledge, just like any other deliberate decision concerning the acceptance of linguistic or other rules. The purposes for which the language is intended to be used, for instance, the purpose of communicating factual knowledge, will determine which factors are relevant for the decision. The efficiency, fruitfulness, and simplicity of the use of the thing language may be among the decisive factors. And the questions concerning these qualities are indeed of a theoretical nature (1950, pp. 23–24).

Moreover, while these theoretical questions cannot be identi ed with external questions—‘But these questions cannot be identi ed with the question of realism’ (p. 24)—it is nevertheless reasonable to conclude—by virtue of the fact that these theoretical questions pertain to practical deliberations—that they are distinct in kind from theoretical questions that are asked of entities within a framework. But then there is nothing to set apart the viewpoint that is implicit in Carnap’s distinction between internal and external questions from the viewpoint that is central to the above self-refutation challenge to positivism. For that self-refutation challenge to succeed, all that is required is that some form of rationality that is distinct in kind from the rationality of the positivists’ proposed conception of this notion should fall outside of this conception. This residual form of rationality, I argued, consists in the rationality of the positivists’ argumentative practice. Carnap, it now emerges, concedes a similar residual form of rationality when he admits to the existence of theoretical questions in relation to the various practical deliberations involved in responding to external questions. These theoretical questions, I have argued additionally, are distinct in kind from the theoretical questions that are asked of entities within a framework (this claim proceeds on the unproblematic assumption that the very content of a question is determined by the particular domain of inquiry—in this case, practical deliberations—within which that question is asked).



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Furthermore, it is these practically oriented theoretical questions that demonstrate that the scope of our theoretical knowledge extends beyond that represented by theoretical questions within a framework. So quite apart from presenting a challenge to the above self-refutation criticism of the conception of rationality advanced by logical positivism, comments that Carnap makes in the discussion of his internal/external questions distinction are actually consistent with that criticism. In the nal analysis, I subscribe to a viewpoint that prizes our various rational practices for what these practices are able to tell us about the notion of rationality. On this view, the rationality of practice, although distinct from the rationality of thought, is interrelated with the rationality of thought, as Carnap himself concedes when he describes how theoretical knowledge is involved in the various practical deliberations that are required to settle external questions. Moreover, this interrelationship of practical and theoretical rationality precludes the establishment of distinctions of the kind discussed by Carnap between internal and external questions and more generally characterized as a distinction between rst- and second-order forms of knowledge, discourse, language, etc. Carnap recognizes just this implication of the type of holism of rationality that I am advancing when he remarks of Quine, a major proponent of this view: Quine does not acknowledge the distinction which I emphasize above, because according to his general conception there are no sharp boundary lines between logical and factual truth, between questions of meaning and questions of fact, between the acceptance of a language structure and the acceptance of an assertion formulated in the language (1950, p. 32).

Moreover, any attempt to so establish distinctions leads to the type of self-refutation criticism examined above. Irrespective of whereabouts in the network of discourse, etc., we decide to erect this distinction, the knowledge and concepts of one half of the distinction can be shown to be dependent on the knowledge and concepts of the second half of the distinction and vice versa, thus defeating any attempt to claim for the concepts of either side of the distinction that they are uniquely de nitive of rationality. Finally, in attributing analytic signi cance in a theoretical analysis of rationality to how we use rationality in a range of practices is a simple extension of the idea that practical and theoretical forms of rationality are conceptually interdependent. It is not to claim that we must have at our disposal an analysis of rationality to be able to so much as even engage in rational practices and it is not to deny the quite different rational characters of theoretical analysis and practice. 3. Habermas on rationality In the sections to follow, I substantiate a claim made earlier, a claim to the effect that Habermas is engaging in metaphysical theorizing in relation to rationality. I begin by examining Habermas’s assessment of the impact of positivism on reason. Such an examination serves to establish at least part of the motivation for Habermas’s analysis of rationality. I discuss the central role that Habermas gives to communication in his emerging conception of rationality. As part of this discussion, I consider how Habermas takes rationality to obtain in the case of a process of argumentation in which the various validity claims that attach to communicative actions undergo criticism and grounding. My critical challenge to Habermas’s conception of rationality consists in the claim that in seeking to expose the pragmatic

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presuppositions of this argumentative process, Habermas is committed effectively to the same metaphysical theorising and consequent unintelligibility of analysis that vitiated the positivists’ conception of rationality. 3.1.

Habermas on positivism’s impact on reason

In Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas writes:


In this period [until the threshold of the nineteenth century] what characterised philosophy’s position with regard to science was precisely that science was accorded its legitimate place only by unequivocally philosophical knowledge. Theories of knowledge did not limit themselves to the explication of scientific method – they did not merge with the philosophy of science (1972, p. 3).

Habermas remarks further that for Kant ‘the critique of knowledge was still conceived in reference to a system of cognitive faculties that included practical reason and re ective judgment’ (1972, p. 3). With the rise of positivism, however, practical and re ective spheres underwent a process of scientization, the effect of which was to drive reason from these spheres and, through doing so, to bring about an identi cation of science with the theory of knowledge: For the philosophy of science that has emerged since the mid-nineteenth century as the heir of the theory of knowledge is methodology pursued with a scientistic self-understanding of the sciences. ‘Scientism’ means science’s belief in itself: that is, the conviction that we can no longer understand science as one possible form of knowledge, but rather must identify knowledge with science (1972, p. 4).

Habermas sets out to restore reason to both practical and re ective domains in an attempt to expand post-positivistic conceptions of knowledge and reason. His strategy for achieving the restoration of reason to these domains is the historical one of reconstructing ‘the prehistory of modern positivism’: I am undertaking a historically oriented attempt to reconstruct the prehistory of modern positivism with the systematic intention of analyzing the connections between knowledge and human interests. In following the process of the dissolution of epistemology, which has left the philosophy of science in its place, one makes one’s way over abandoned stages of reflection. Retreading this path from a perspective that looks back toward the point of departure may help to recover the forgotten experience of reflection. That we disavow reflection is positivism (1972, p. vii).

The ‘connections between knowledge and human interests’ form the cornerstone of Habermas’s theory of cognitive interests.5 This theory adopts a threefold classi cation of processes of inquiry. The natural sciences and the social sciences—to the extent that they aim at attaining nomological knowledge—are classed as empirical-analytic sciences by Habermas. The humanities and the historical and social sciences—to the extent that they aim at an interpretive understanding of human communicative interaction— constitute, according to Habermas, the historical–hermeneutic sciences. Finally, psychoanalysis, critique of ideology (critical social theory) and philosophy (understood as a re ective and critical discipline) constitute Habermas’s third category: the critically oriented sciences. Each category of inquiry incorporates a speci c cognitive interest: The approach of the empirical-analytic sciences incorporates a technical cognitive interest; that of the historical-hermeneutic sciences incorporates a practical one; and the approach of critically oriented sciences incorporates the emancipatory cognitive interest (1972, p. 308).



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The interrelationship of these three cognitive interests is immediately revealing of the structure which Habermas envisages for his expanded conception of rationality. It is clear that for Habermas these cognitive interests do not occupy the same conceptual level. Rather, some interests are conceptually dependent on other interests, indeed, owe their possibility to these other interests. The technical cognitive interest describes the orientation of the sciences and technologies, an orientation in which man is related to nature in a manner that makes instrumental action possible. However, the various norms and standards by means of which this action proceeds cannot be examined by these sciences and technologies—these norms and standards are more properly the domain of study of the historical-hermeneutic sciences.6 A similar relationship of conceptual dependence is envisaged to exist between the empirical-analytic and historical-hermeneutic sciences on the one hand and the critically oriented sciences on the other. The knowledge of the technical and practical spheres is subject to criticism in the critically oriented sciences. Indeed, it is the criticism of the communication structures of these spheres which is at the centre of Habermas’s attempt in his critical social theory to dispel ideology.7 The methodological framework, including the norms and standards by means of which this criticism proceeds, is necessarily distinct from the methodological frameworks of the inquiries of the technical and practical spheres. Moreover, it is this methodological framework that constitutes the foundation of Habermas’s entire hierarchy of knowledge and interests and, as such, of his expanded conception of rationality. Yet Habermas’s characterization of the foundational function of this framework, particularly his attempt to render explicit the pragmatic presuppositions of the argumentative process by means of which we criticize and provide grounds for the various validity claims that attach to our communicative actions, expose him to the same charge of metaphysical theorizing that was shown above to render the positivists’ conception of rationality unintelligible. It is to an examination of this claim that I now turn. 3.2.

Habermas on communication

That communication was to perform a pivotal role in Habermas’s expanded conception of rationality is evident from his comments in The Theory of Communicative Action: if we start from the communicative employment of propositional knowledge in assertions, we make a prior decision for a wider concept of rationality connected with ancient conceptions of logos. The concept of communicative rationality carries with it connotations based ultimately on the central experience of the unconstrained, unifying, consensus-bringing force of argumentative speech, in which different participants overcome their merely subjective views and, owing to the mutuality of rationally motivated conviction, assure themselves of both the unity of the objective world and the intersubjectivity of their lifeworld (1984, p. 10).

Embodied in these comments is an indication of the composition of Habermas’s theory of communicative competence. That theory combines a universal pragmatics, a consensus theory of truth and an ideal speech situation. In the discussion to follow, I provide an overview of the parts of this theory that are most directly relevant to my own argumentative aim. My critical challenge to this theory consists in the claim that the type of reconstructive analysis which is integral to Habermas’s universal pragmatics, when applied to the conditions which make possible the ‘unconstrained, unifying, consensus-bringing force of argumentative speech’, leads to the same

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negation of preconditions on rationality that was shown above to render the positivists’ identi cation of rationality with logical and scienti c norms unintelligible. 3.2.1. Universal pragmatics. It was indicated earlier that Habermas takes argumentation to be the procedure by means of which we arrive at an unconstrained, unifying consensus. It is unsurprising, therefore, to discover that for Habermas the theory of argumentation should represent the various conditions that must hold in order for such a consensus to be achieved: ‘to it [the theory of argumentation] falls the task of reconstructing the formal-pragmatic presuppositions and conditions of an explicitly rational behavior’ (1984, p. 2). Habermas proposes to extend to the reconstructive task of a theory of argumentation the same type of analysis pursued by Chomsky in relation to grammar. 8 In other words, Habermas believes that it is possible to represent as pragmatic universals or dialogue-constitutive universals of the communicative competence of speakers the implicit knowledge that speakers draw upon in their communicative exchanges with each other. A model for the type of account to emerge from this reconstruction is to be found, according to Habermas, in the theory of speech acts of Austin and Searle.9 I will demonstrate subsequently that this reconstructive analysis proves ultimately to be destructive of the intelligibility of Habermas’s analysis of rationality. In the meantime, I examine Habermas’s further notion of argumentative discourse. 3.2.2. Argumentative discourse. Through their production of utterances in communication, speakers become committed to validity claims. 10 For example, through his production of an assertion a speaker becomes committed to a truth claim, a claim to the effect that he is committed to the truth of the particular state of affairs represented by the propositional content of his assertion. Other validity claims in communication take the form of claims to rightness and sincerity.11 Normally within communication, utterances are exchanged against a background in which these various validity claims can simply be assumed.12 Moreover, the assumption of these claims is not arbitrary in nature, but is essentially rational.13 The rational character of these claims derives from their capacity to be criticized and grounded within an argumentative exchange.14 So it is that if a participant’s commitment to one of these claims lapses, then communicative action (interaction) between the participants must cease in order that the now questionable validity claim can become the subject of argumentative discourse.15 A further feature of this discourse—one that is central to my subsequent criticism of Habermas’s conception of rationality—is its capacity to extend to increasingly re ective levels of argument.16 Indeed, as we move to ever more re ective levels of argumentation, we come to debate the very conditions of possibility for knowledge itself: At the most radical level of argumentation – the critique of knowledge – the boundaries between theoretical and practical discourse are no longer sharp. For here we must consider the question, What should count as knowledge? And this requires in turn a consideration of the role of knowledge in life, that is, of the basic interests that knowledge can incorporate (McCarthy, 1978, pp. 305–306).

I will argue subsequently that the discourse in which we come to debate the conditions of possibility of knowledge itself is necessarily unintelligible in nature. I will also argue that the reconstruction as pragmatic universals of a speaker’s communicative


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competence of the implicit knowledge by means of which speakers produce utterances in communication is similarly unintelligible. Appearances notwithstanding, I will contend that these two views are not distinct but that they are more accurately two different ways of expressing the same claim. That claim is that the reconstruction of a speaker’s implicit communicative knowledge and the explicit representation of the conditions of possibility for knowledge are both manifestations of the attempt to pursue completeness of theoretical analysis and, more ultimately, metaphysical theorizing in relation to rationality.


4. Exposing the unintelligibility of Habermas’s expanded conception of rationality Habermas is engaged in the task of reconstruction of the knowledge that is implicit in ordinary language communication. Habermas’s motivation for pursuing such a reconstructive analysis of language is clear indeed. Habermas is in search of a foundation for his expanded epistemology of knowledge and interests. It is within this context that a study of communication, particularly a speech act analysis of language, assumes epistemological signi cance. Communication, Habermas would appear to be suggesting, can function in a foundational capacity only if the conditions of possibility for communication are rendered explicit as part of a reconstructive analysis of language. However, while the motivation for Habermas’s pursuit of a reconstructive analysis of language is clear, what is less clear is how Habermas’s attempt to ground his expanded epistemology in communication-theoretic terms can evade the charge of unintelligibility which vitiated, I claimed earlier, the positivists’ account of rationality. That account was unintelligible, I argued, for the reason that the positivists had undertaken a complete description of the notion of rationality, a complete description which served only to negate rationality as a precondition on the possibility and intelligibility of yet further rationality. In the same way, I now want to argue that Habermas is similarly engaged in the task of producing a complete description of rationality through his attempt to disclose as universals of an individual’s communicative competence the conditions of possibility of ordinary language communication. It was described above how, as we move to ever more re ective levels of argumentation, the very conditions of possibility for knowledge itself come to be debated. It is unproblematic to suggest that the conditions of possibility for knowledge can only be debated when those conditions are rendered explicit. I want to consider these statements in the context of two further statements: that it must be possible, even if such a possibility will never be realized, to bring the process by means of which the conditions of possibility for knowledge are rendered explicit to an end and that this end is co-extensive with the communicative competence of an individual and with the notion of rationality itself. My point is, quite simply, that when these various statements are considered together—the statement that in order to debate the conditions of possibility for knowledge, these conditions must be rendered explicit and the statements that it must at least be possible to bring to an end the process that renders these conditions explicit, an end which will be coextensive with the notion of rationality—no sense can be made of Habermas’s expanded conception of rationality, for the reason that there are no prior concepts of rationality, no concepts of rationality outside of this expanded conception, with which to make sense of this expanded conception. This claim is suf ciently important to warrant further examination of it.


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Consider, again, the central claims of Habermas’s position. Habermas aims to disclose the conditions of possibility for ordinary language communication. Habermas undertakes this aim by rendering explicit knowledge that is more usually implicit in communication. A further claim of Habermas’s is that it is at least possible to arrive at a complete reconstruction of this implicit knowledge. In fact, this possibility is realized in the case of the communicative competence of an individual. So, in effect, Habermas is engaged in a task of reconstruction that ends only when all the knowledge that is implicit in communication is rendered explicit as the universals in the communicative competence of speakers. However, in fully reconstructing the communicative competence of speakers, Habermas is circumscribing, at the same time, the notion of rationality—the communicative competence of speakers is to form the foundation of Habermas’s expanded conception of rationality. Yet, this circumscription of rationality is achieved only at the expense of denying the presence of a form of rationality outside of this circumscription, a form of rationality that constitutes a precondition on the possibility and intelligibility of the rationality subsumed by this circumscription. The reason it appears possible to Habermas to both fully reconstruct the conditions of possibility of rationality and still make sense of the outcome of this reconstruction is the assumption on Habermas’s part that we can survey rationality in its entirety without, in turn, presupposing rationality.17 Further examination of this assumption takes us to the heart of the metaphysical theorizing of Habermas’s position. The positivists, it was argued earlier, come to engage in metaphysical theorizing about rationality through their pursuit of the scienti c theoretical aim of completeness of analysis in relation to this notion. The speci c manifestation of this aim in the context of positivism is the positivists’ identi cation of rationality with scienti c and logical norms, an identi cation which is, in effect, a circumscription of this notion. This circumscription, I argued, serves to negate the existence of a form of rationality outside of this circumscription, a form of rationality that acts as a precondition on the possibility and intelligibility of the rationality subsumed by this circumscription. My above criticism of Habermas’s claims is intended to expose a similar type of metaphysical theorizing, this time in relation to Habermas’s expanded conception of rationality. In the case of this conception, Habermas is pursuing a form of completeness of analysis, albeit unconsciously, when he attempts to ground his expanded epistemology of knowledge and interests in communication-theoretic terms.18 The manifestation of this completeness of analysis is, once again, a circumscription of rationality, a circumscription which results from Habermas’s attempt to explicitly reconstruct the knowledge that is implicit in communicative action. As is the case with positivism, however, this circumscription serves to negate a precondition on the possibility and intelligibility of rationality, the presence of a form of rationality outside of this circumscription. To see this, one need only recall the type of reconstructive analysis undertaken by Habermas. The logical limit of Habermas’s reconstructive analysis of the knowledge that is implicit in communication is one in which the rational presuppositions of rationality itself come to be rendered explicit as part of this reconstruction. Yet in the absence of these rational presuppositions—these presuppositions cannot be rendered explicit as part of a reconstructive analysis of rationality and assume a conceptual position outside of this reconstruction—we lack the rational concepts on the basis of which we can proceed to make sense of the rationality of this reconstruction.



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Habermas, it thus emerges, must now join the logical positivists in failing to institute a form of intelligible inquiry into rationality. Habermas responds to the narrowness of earlier, positivistic conceptions of rationality by instituting in the place of the positivists’ identi cation of rationality with logical and scienti c norms, an identi cation of rationality with the reconstructed communicative competence of speakers. And while Habermas’s emphasis on communication in his expanded conception of rationality is to be applauded—this emphasis truly represents an improvement on the narrow, exclusive focus on science and logic of the conception of rationality pursued by the logical positivists—the discussion of the above sections is intended to demonstrate that rationality is necessarily wider than even the communicative activities of human beings.19 What makes it seem otherwise, that is, what makes it seem that it is possible to identify rationality with human communicative activity is the illusion that we can assume a metaphysical standpoint, a standpoint from which it seems that we can fully circumscribe rationality. This illusion blinds Habermas to the fact that what is problematic about the positivistic models of rationality that he opposes is not the fact that the positivists who propose these models pursue a particular type of rationality identi cation—the identi cation of rationality with certain scienti c and logical norms—but rather that these theorists pursue a rationality identi cation at all. 5. Conclusion I have been careful throughout this discussion to avoid creating in the reader the impression that although the positivists’ and Habermas’s accounts of rationality are unintelligible, that some degree of theoretical tinkering will restore these accounts to intelligibility. I have also been careful to avoid even the merest suggestion that although I do not subscribe to the conceptions of rationality advanced by the positivists and Habermas that I subscribe to some other conception of this notion, a conception that avoids the unintelligibility charge that has been examined in relation to these theorists. My caution stems from the belief that no amount of theoretical reformulation will rid the positivists’ and Habermas’s accounts of unintelligibility, for the reason that it is within the theoretical process itself that the source of the unintelligibility of these accounts can be located. Inherent in the process of theorizing is a perpetual striving for completeness of analysis. This completeness of analysis is deemed to be desirable in many areas of inquiry, for example, scienti c inquiry. However, it has disastrous (unintelligible) consequences in the case of theorizing about the notion of rationality. A complete rejection of theorizing about rationality represents, I believe, the only method of avoidance of the charge of unintelligibility. However, in rejecting theorizing about rationality, I am not claiming that there is nothing to be said in relation to this notion—various aspects of this notion can be, and are being, intelligibly examined both in philosophy and in non-philosophical disciplines. Rather, I am claiming that we need to operate in discussions of rationality with the awareness that the very questions we are attempting to address in relation to this notion—questions such as ‘what is rationality?’ and ‘what does rationality consist in?’—commit us to providing comprehensive, all-inclusive accounts of rationality, accounts that fail more for what they do not leave outside of their scope of description—a prior form of rationality—than for anything that falls within their scope of description.

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Acknowledgement This paper was written while the author was in receipt of the Eila Campbell Memorial Award from the British Federation of Women Graduates. The author wishes to express her gratitude to the Federation for its nancial assistance.


Notes 1. Of course, the domain of scienti c inquiry extends beyond the physical/natural world to include social scienti c phenomena. However, for ease of description I restrict my discussion in the main text to an examination of scienti c inquiry into the physical/natural world. 2. Statements expressing the grounds for that rejection include the following: ‘The metaphysician and the theologian believe, thereby misunderstanding themselves, that their statements say something, or that they denote a state of affairs. Analysis, however, shows that these statements say nothing but merely express a certain mood and spirit’ (Hahn et al., 1973, p. 307, emphasis added); ‘If a mystic asserts that he has experiences that lie above and beyond all concepts, one cannot deny this. But the mystic cannot talk about it, for talking implies capture by concepts and reduction to scienti cally classi able states of affairs’ (1973, p. 307, emphasis added). 3. Putnam comments on the extensive discussion that has taken place with regard to the metaphysical content of one of Carnap’s major works as follows: Certain features of Carnap’s Logische Aufbau der Welt have received a great deal of attention in this regard – his phenomenalism, his logicism, his doctrine of the ‘incommunicability of content’, and the ‘methodological solipsism’ associated with that doctrine, have all been extensively discussed. Indeed, the ontology and epistemology associated with the Logische Aufbau der Welt are now so widely known that there is a tendency to assume that that metaphysical picture was the metaphysics of logical positivism (Putnam 1994, p. 101). 4. ‘If someone wishes to speak in his language about a new kind of entities, he has to introduce a system of new ways of speaking, subject to new rules; we shall call this procedure the construction of a framework for the new entities in question’ (Carnap, 1950, p. 21). 5. For Habermas, knowledge and rationality are closely related: ‘When we use the expression ‘‘rational’’ we suppose that there is a close relation between rationality and knowledge. Our knowledge has a propositional structure; beliefs can be represented in the form of statements. I shall presuppose this concept of knowledge without further clari cation, for rationality has less to do with the possession of knowledge than with how speaking and acting subjects acquire and use knowledge’ (1984, p. 8). 6. McCarthy comments on the conceptual dependence of the empirical-analytic sciences on the historicalhermeneutic sciences as follows: The communication structures presupposed by the community of natural scientists cannot themselves be grasped within the framework of empirical-analytic science. The dimension in which concepts, methods, theories, and so forth are discussed and agreed upon, in which the framework of shared meanings, norms, values and so on is grounded, is the dimension of symbolic interaction that is neither identical with nor reducible to instrumental action. The rationality of discourse about the appropriateness of conventions or the meaning of concepts is not the rationality of operations on objectified processes; it involves the interpretation of intentions and meanings, goals, values, and reasons. Thus the objective knowledge produced by empirical-analytic inquiry is not possible without knowledge in the form of intersubjective understanding. This availability of an intersubjectively valid pre- and meta-scientific language, or a framework of shared meanings and values, is taken for granted in the natural sciences. The cultural life-context . . . , of which scientific communication is only one element, belongs instead to the domain of the cultural sciences (1978, p. 69, emphases added). According to Habermas’s view, which is summarized here by McCarthy, the knowledge of the historicalhermeneutic sciences is presupposed by the knowledge of the empirical-analytic sciences and is neither identical with nor reducible to this knowledge. Indeed, in the absence of the knowledge of the historical-hermeneutic sciences, the knowledge of the empirical-analytic sciences is not possible. 7. The goal of Habermas’s critical social theory is the Marxist one of the emancipation of mankind from false consciousness rooted in ideology. Ideology, as understood by Habermas, is ‘a structure of systematically distorted communication, that is, a communication system whose key semantic contents are sheltered from the light of critical examination’ (Burleson, 1978, p. 7). Habermas undertakes his critical theory of communication with a view to ridding communication of ideologies.



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8. ‘The aim of reconstructive linguistic analysis is the explicit description of the rules that a competent speaker must master in order to form grammatical sentences and to utter them in an acceptable way . . . A general theory of speech acts would thus describe exactly that system of rules that adult speakers master insofar as they can satisfy the conditions for a happy employment of sentences in utterances – no matter to which particular language the sentences belong and in which accidental contexts the utterances are embedded’ (Habermas, 1979, p. 26); ‘[Universal pragmatics] thematizes the elementary units of speech (utterances) in the same attitude as linguistics does the elementary units of language (sentences) . . . The assumption is that communicative competence has just as universal a core as linguistic competence’ (1979, p. 26). 9. The theory of speech acts of Austin and Searle is widely rehearsed in both philosophical and linguistic literature and for this reason I avoid any direct examination of it in this context. 10. ‘Normatively regulated actions and expressive self-presentations have, like assertions or constative speech acts, the character of meaningful expressions, understandable in their context, which are connected with criticizable validity claims’ (Habermas, 1984, p. 15). 11. ‘Their reference [the reference of normatively regulated actions and expressive self-presentations] is to norms and subjective experiences rather than to facts. The agent makes the claim that his behavior is right in relation to a normative context recognized as legitimate, or that the rst-person utterance of an experience to which he has privileged access is truthful or sincere’ (Habermas, 1984, p. 15, emphases added). 12. ‘According to Habermas, a smoothly functioning language game rests on a background consensus formed from the mutual recognition of at least four types of validity claims that are involved in the exchange of speech acts’ (McCarthy, 1975, p. xiii). 13. ‘With their illocutionary acts, speaker and hearer raise validity claims and solicit their recognition. But this recognition need not follow irrationally, because the validity claims have a cognitive character and can be tested. I would like to defend the following thesis: in the nal analysis, the speaker can have an illocutionary effect on the hearer (and vice versa) because the speech-act-typical obligations are tied to cognitively testable validity claims that is, because the reciprocal bonds have a rational basis’ (Habermas, 1979, p. 63). 14. ‘The possibility of intersubjective recognition of criticizable validity claims is constitutive for their rationality’ (Habermas, 1984, pp. 15–16). 15. ‘We use the term argumentation for that type of speech in which participants thematize contested validity claims and attempt to vindicate or criticize them through arguments’ (Habermas, 1984, p. 18). 16. ‘His [Habermas’s] central thesis is that these conditions must permit a progressive radicalization of the argument; there must be the freedom to move from a given level of discourse to increasingly re ected levels’ (McCarthy, 1978, p. 305). 17. Given the relationship of rationality to knowledge in Habermas’s account (see note 5), Habermas is effectively rendering explicit the conditions of possibility for rationality when he takes on the task of rendering explicit the conditions of possibility for knowledge. 18. In describing Habermas as engaging in metaphysical theorizing in relation to rationality and as pursuing completeness of analysis in relation to this notion, there is no suggestion on my part that either of these activities constitute explicit aims for Habermas. Rather, it is my claim that Habermas is subject to the illusion of a metaphysical standpoint, an illusion that leads him to engage in metaphysical theorizing even when he is explicitly opposed to doing so. 19. Putnam (1983) makes this very point in ‘Beyond Historicism’. Following discussion of the interconnections between rationality and total human ourishing, Putnam remarks: ‘But I see no gain in trying to derive our whole conception of human ourishing from one activity, however important and central that human activity may be, even as central an activity as human dialogue’ (p. 301).

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