In addition, Habermas argues that in the course of social evolution, systems of economic and political action arise whereby action is coordinated by the consequences of self-interested action, rather than consensual understanding. It argues that the critical model developed by Habermas in Theory of Communicative Action is more functionalist than straightforwardly normative.
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All Rights Reserved. In this essay, I address the question of whether the indisputable progress being made by the neurosciences poses a genuine threat to the language game of responsible agency. I begin by situating free will as an ineliminable component of our practices of attributing responsibility and holding one another accountable, illustrating this via a discussion of legal discourse regarding the attribution of responsibility for criminal acts.
I then turn to the practical limits on agents' scientific self-objectivation, limits that turn out to be mirrored philosophically in the conceptual problems that plague reductionist strategies.
Having shown that free will is rooted in unavoidable performative presuppositions belonging to agents' participant perspective, I then take up the difficult issue of how to reconcile an epistemic dualism of participant and observer perspectives with the assumption of ontological monism.
I critically review a range of proposed physicalist solutions, including non-reductionist and standard compatibilist approaches. An underlying problem with scientistic, physicalist approaches is the methodological fiction of an exclusive? Since there is no way of getting around the requisite complementarity of both the observer's encounter with the objective world and the participant's involvement in shared lifeworld practices, the remaining option is to take an epistemological turn.
But even the recognition that science is ultimately constituted from within the lifeworld still leaves us with the question as to how the human mind can understand itself as the product of natural evolution. I conclude with some tentative suggestions as to how this difficult question might be addressed. Compatibilism in Philosophy of Action. Free Will and Neuroscience in Philosophy of Action. Free Will and Responsibility in Philosophy of Action.
Edit this record. Mark as duplicate. Find it on Scholar. Request removal from index. If this dissenting idea can challenge a preexisting conception on a discursive subject and find a way to attain public recognition, then it becomes something of a consensus.
This consensus, which originally formed from a social action of dissensus, can then be challenged by new actions of dissensus until a new consensus emerges, and so the cycle continues. This all, then, implies the existence of a consensus or some type of understanding that is mutual and shared. In order for dissensus to exist in the ways in which Lyotard outlines, then consensus must be the mechanism for which prospectively dissenting views can be formulated and uttered.
Rather, dissensus simply stays as dissensus; there is no subversion of a consensual thought or idea, but instead a contestation of seperate and impenetrable local narratives that are constantly in a state of discord and variance Tomiche I believe this approach to discourse to be awkward and impractical, one which leaves any society in a state of perennial antipathy, and I will now proceed to make this case.
The practical applicability of Lyotardian and Habermasian discourse. If individuals engage in a language game where consensus is not attainable, one can then assume that such a language game has to foster or engender a winner since, otherwise, there would be no reason to participate Papastephanou One can conclude from here that the winner of a language game — advancing a particular ideal, thought or doctrine — is rewarded with a degree of social status or power where the ideal can be secured, implemented and enacted.
This again, however, presupposes the formation of some type of consensus or mutual understanding at the very least in the sense that the ideal has been won and allowed to be advanced , and thus invariably brings us back to the same problem raised earlier.
Surely, if this language game Lyotard speaks of has a winner, the winner becomes the apparatus to which decisions and progress can be made. For Lyotard, however, this ostensible procurement at consensus and mutuality is not legitimate but instead driven by power and coercion.
This paints deliberation and political discourse as an infinitely inert process, governed by no universalistic criteria that can differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate forms of knowledge and consensus. If there is no way to discern which argument or mode of discourse is acceptable, communicatively rational or legitimate, what is there to stop every function of social action as being demoted to a power play, a privileged narrative, an act of oppression that is regulated by a metanarrative Garrett ?
In my view, an underlying universal criteria is needed if there any way to move on past the imperviousness of argumentation where every speaker in discourse has a veto of apparently endless proportions. Habermas — whilst in agreement with Lyotard on the need to value for pluralism and dissent and on attempting to erode the privileging of particular arguments and narratives over others in discourse — does indeed bring some form of universality to this subject.
In Communication and the Evolution of Society , p. This criteria, neutral from ideological and political exploitation, transcends historical location and can be applied to any social setting since language, in Habermasian terms, is universally oriented towards reaching understanding.
The third condition, society or intersubjectivity, refers to the interactional processes two or more people share when deliberating. A statement uttered would only be appropriate if both participators have mutually agreed on the conventional rules that govern these interactions.
For example, if two individuals debating policy are allowed five uninterrupted minutes to offer their argument, and one of the debaters interrupts halfway through and proceeds to make a point, such an utterance would not be considered appropriate. Indeed, validity claims are reflexive, and what may be considered truthful and rational now may be considered unsound and problematic later — truth, rationality and legitimacy are constructed communicatively as opposed to instrumentally or empirically Niemi What is significant for Habermas, however, is that if consensus does appear to have been reached — and the discursive mechanisms that governed this consensus adhered to the transcendental criteria of universal pragmatics and discourse ethics — then consensus is not only justifiable but also legitimate.
It engenders a criteria, a set of rules that appear to be erode coercion and privilege out of the deliberative process — something which Lyotard would support — and therefore enables for the production of legitimate political and social policies that can move a society beyond perpetual discord and contestation Benhabib Furthermore, a strength of communicative action theory, as earlier alluded to, is that it is not culturally or historically contingent in the sense that one society or community can attain mutual understanding and the other can not.
Rather, it is inherent to the very action of communication itself. Moreover, as inferred throughout this essay, Lyotard embraces a strategic, as opposed to communicative, form of action. The individual is oriented towards achieving their own goals and intensions without the slightest acceptance — or recognition — of diverging validity claims Weber This presupposes individuals as confined within their own local narratives where the prospects of progress, emanating from consensus and mutual understanding, is hopeless Tomiche As critical theorist Seyla Benhaibib , p.
This somewhat dramatic assertion sums up the practical utility of Lyotardian discourse rather well. Let us suppose, for a moment, that consensus can not be attained and concepts such as truth and rationality are indeed defunct products of the Enlightenment tradition.
Does this mean we should, as Papastephanou , p. Should we abandon the idea of trying to communicatively reach rationality and consensus when deliberating on consequential subjects such as vaccinations, healthcare and gun control? In Theory of Communicative Action Habermas pins his hopes for resisting the colonization of the lifeworld on appeals to invigorate and support new social movements at the grassroots level, as they can directly draw upon the normative resources of lifeworld.
This model of democratic politics essentially urges groups of engaged democratic citizens to shore up the boundaries of the public sphere and civil society against encroaching domains of systems integration such as the market and administrative state. As section 5 will show, this model was heavily revised in Between Facts and Norms. Before turning to that work, we must flesh out discourse ethics—an idea that figured into Theory and Communicative Action but which was only fully developed later.
It is designed for contemporary societies where moral agents encounter pluralistic notions of the good and try to act on the basis of publically justifiable principles.
This theory first received explicit and independent articulation in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action German , English a and Justification and Application German a, English , but it was anticipated by and depends on ideas in Theory of Communicative Action.
The overview that follows draws upon these works. Much like the prior section, it only traces the broad outline of discourse ethics. Discourse ethics applies the framework of a pragmatic theory of meaning and communicative rationality to the moral realm in order to show how moral norms are justified in contemporary societies.
It could be seen as a theory that uncovers what we pragmatically do when we make and defend the moral validity claims underlying and manifested in our norms. Yet, we need to be careful with this characterization. Because of its cognitive commitments to moral learning and knowledge discourse ethics cannot simply be a reconstructive description of how it is we practically avoid conflicts and stabilize expectations in post-conventional social contexts.
It is also an attempt to provide a formal procedure for determining which norms are in fact morally right, wrong, and permissible. Discourse ethics is squarely situated in the tradition of Neo-Kantian deontology in that it takes the rightness and wrongness of obligations and actions to be universal and absolute.
On such a view, the same moral norms apply to all agents equally. They strictly bind one to performing certain actions, prohibit others, and define the boundaries of permissibility. As long as these caveats are kept in mind we can understand discourse ethics by analyzing the practice of making and defending validity claims and how there are certain conditions of possibility tacitly underpinning and enabling this practice.
What are the conditions that enable this practice? As touched on above, Habermas posits certain unavoidable pragmatic presuppositions of speech which, when realized in discourse, can approximate a counterfactual ideal speech situation to greater or lesser degrees ; MCCA, Discourse participants need to presuppose these conditions in order for the practice of discursive justification to make sense and for arguments to be truly persuasive.
Four of these presuppositions are identified as the most important: i. The point is not that actual discourses ever realize these conditions—this is why the ideal speech situation is best understood as a counterfactual regulative ideal. As soon as a violation is discovered this casts doubt upon the validity of the discursive outcome. In addition to these pragmatic presuppositions Habermas proposes his discourse principle D.
BFN ; TIO 41 While D was initially framed as a principle for moral discourses it was soon revised to the more general form above, as there are many practical norms concerning interpersonal interaction that are not directly moral even if they must be compatible with morality. Yet even in its broadened form it is crucial to note that D only applies to discourses concerning practical norms about interpersonal behavioral expectations, not all discourses about theoretical, aesthetic, or therapeutic concerns which may or may not involve interpersonal social interaction.
The guiding thought is that if discourses about an action norm are carried out in a sufficiently ideal manner and they yield consensus then this is a good indication the norm is valid. The principle does not hold that consensus reached through discourse constitutes validity, nor that whatever norm people coalesce around after discourse that looks sufficiently ideal is assured to be valid.
Rather, D simply holds that consensus about a norm can be a good test of validity if it has been achieved in the right type of discursive way. It is important to note that, because of its very broad scope, D mainly functions by pointing out invalid norms.
By itself the discourse principle cannot tell us which norms are valid. It can only help us identify norms that are good candidates for validity. Moreover, before the validity of an action norm can be assessed, we need more details on the types of discourse and validity claims at issue TIO Each type deploys practical reason differently, framing and analyzing questions under the rubrics of the purposive practical , the good ethical , or the just moral.
Instead, any norm can be discursively thematized in any of these ways and should not be arbitrarily limited to a given type. With that caution in mind, we can begin to understand discourse types and the norms they produce. Ethical discourses are a good place to start.
For, while they are constrained by the outcomes of moral discourses and therefore not foundational, our prior discussion of the lifeworld provides an apt segue. Ethical discourses are paradigmatically about clarifying, consciously appropriating, and realizing the identity, history, and self-understanding of a group or individual.
They make validity claims to authenticity rather than truth or rightness. They also involve value judgments about a particular social form or practice concerning the good life in a community. This is one reason why the outcomes of ethical discourses will have relative validity: they are meant to redeem validity claims for actors in some community or another.
Another reason is that values differ from the types of generalizable or universalizable interests embodied in moral norms. While moral norms are supposed to strictly oblige agents to either do or not do some action, values admit of degree. While moral norms express principles backed by reasons, values are affective components of meaning acquired in virtue of living in a given social context. They are connected to reasons but not reducible to them. Values can orient us to goals, aid motivation, and help successfully navigate the lifeworld but cannot ground moral obligations by themselves.
Like many philosophers, Habermas separates the realm of the right from the realm of the good. Following a loosely Hegelian terminology, he parses this as the difference between morality and ethicality. Ethicality is a way of life composed of both cognitive and affective elements as well as more structural elements that reproduce this way of life: laws, institutions, conventions, social roles, and so forth.
It is particularistic in that it defines goals in terms of what is good for a group as a whole and its members. No one can simply drop their internalized ethical perspective just as no one can simply step out of the lifeworld they have inherited.
Individuals are always in some sense bound up with the identity, practices, and values of their upbringing and traditions even if they come to largely reject them. Ethical discourses explain how this is by mediating between inheritance and transcendence.
While we inherit and internalize an ethical perspective as individuals, we can always question parts of it that we wish to challenge, refashion, or reject for lack of sufficient reasons underwriting certain norms. This dialectic between the ethicality we internalize through socialization and the way in which we wish to consciously reappropriate and dis own portions of such ethicality helps to explain why, in contrast to other discourse types, Habermas pays a great deal of attention to ethical discourses at both the individual and group levels.
Ethical discourses at the individual level are called ethical-existential while ethical discourses at the group level are referred to as ethical-political discourse. For example, an individual considering a certain profession would engage in an ethical-existential discourse for example, is this profession right for me given my character and goals?
There are two key points about these levels. First, the outcomes of such discourses are constrained by morality irrespective of what would be authentic at individual or group levels: an individual cannot simply decide to become a serial killer just as a country cannot simply enact a policy that has patently immoral consequences for example, for those outside it.
While Habermas thinks it is important to account for the way in which morality is embedded in social contexts through ethical discourses, he is staunchly opposed to postmodern or communitarian takes on morality and justice. Second, there will often be a reflexive interplay between these two levels of ethical discourse. Discourses about what it means to genuinely inhabit a collective identity can impact the ordering and strength of the values held by individuals, and discourses about who one fundamentally is and wishes to be can, through resistance to dominant interpretations of traditions and highlighting unacknowledged injustices, impact how others in a collectivity appropriate their identity and normative practices moving forward.
This interplay is bookended by broader moral discourses at both levels, thereby helping the outcomes of such discourses stay in the realm of permissibility. Pragmatic discourses are similar to ethical discourses in that they start from the teleological perspective of an agent who already has a goal. But in contrast to the reflexive, clarifying, and potentially transformative self-realization and collective self-determination of ethical discourses, pragmatic discourses simply start with a goal of presumed value and set about realizing it.
This goal may involve identity and values but it could also refer to more pedestrian concerns and interests. Because the goal is presumed to be worthwhile the values, interests, or goals at issue show up as relatively static. Pragmatic discourses simply focus on the most efficient way to realize or bring about a goal, and their claim to validity concerns whether or not certain strategies or interventions in the world are likely to produce a desired result. Finally, we turn to what might be seen as the most important type of discourse: moral discourses.
Moral discourses are broader in scope and establish stronger validity claims than either ethical or pragmatic discourses. They seek to discern and justify norms that bind universally rather than simply in the confines of a specific community or because an agent happens to find a goal valuable. These norms have binarily coded, unconditional validity instead of the gradated, relative validity of the outcomes produced by pragmatic and ethical discourses.
While U has gone through several different formulations, the basic idea is that for whatever valid moral norms there are, such norms can be accepted by all affected persons in a sufficiently ideal discourse wherein they assert their own interests and values.
U checks if the norms we take to be moral actually are in virtue of whether or not they are universalizable. If they are not universalizable, they cannot be moral norms. Beyond this basic characterization there are some interpretive issues with U. Three are worth brief focus: its apparent reference to consequences, where U comes from, and the role of interests.
Fully satisfying U would require discourse participants who had unlimited time, complete knowledge, and no illusions about their own interests and values; it would require participants who transcended their human condition. The circumscribed task of U is key: it is only supposed to justify moral norms in the abstract. What about novel, atypical, or completely unforeseen situations to which the norm might unexpectedly apply?
Discourses of application look at a concrete case and survey all potentially applicable norms, relevant facts, and circumstances. There is a division of labor between the two types of recursively related discourse: whereas discourses of justification lay out the reasons why we should endorse a norm as a general rule with reference to typical situations, discourses of application seek to apply norms to concrete cases which may be wholly new or defy expectations.
As fallible agents we can make a variety of different errors in our discursive justification of a norm or fail to anticipate new situations or altered understandings of facts, values, and interests—a failure that would be revealed in application. The recursive interplay of justification and application is supposed to progressively address prior errors and oversights. New insights gleaned from application discourses or novel situations can lead us to revisit norms whose justification was taken for granted, and this refinement of our understanding regarding how and why norms are justified will help us apply them better.
If we had providential foreknowledge we would not need application discourses. The second interpretive issue is where U comes from. Habermas initially claimed that U could be formally deduced from a combination of the pragmatic presuppositions of discourse and D , but weakened this claim shortly thereafter JA 32 n In short, U is now proposed as the best candidate principle for helping to explain moral normativity.
The reference to interests leads us to the third interpretive issue with U. The inclusion of value orientations is potentially confusing.
As noted above values are not necessarily cognitively grounded. As Habermas has always presented his moral theory as cognitivist it would be odd to give values such a central role. How then should the inclusion of value orientations be understood? This does not mean that values are on a par with interests. Instead, his point is that interests and values are always bound together.
Value orientations exert at least some indirect influence on moral discourses insofar as they subtly influence the very interpretation of our own interests JA Proceeding as if value orientations can be expunged from moral discourses may in fact introduce discursive blind spots. A final interpretive issue that merits attention is the precise status of moral rightness. Habermas has always held that morality and truth are analogous in that both are cognitive, binarily coded, and subject to learning processes.
Moreover, he has always been sharply critical of approaches that would reduce morality to a purely subjective or relativized affair. Yet, given that rightness is not reducible to truth and that Habermas has repeatedly disclaimed a moral realist reading of his theory, it is unclear precisely how far this analogy is supposed to extend. He now wishes to articulate a notion of moral rightness that can be cashed out in terms of a pragmatist constructivism that also avoids the perils of relativism and skepticism—that is, which maintains an anti-realist account of moral rightness that still resists collapsing into a form of moral consensus theory.
Whether he succeeds in this endeavor is a hotly debated topic. Moral norms cannot pick up the slack to achieve social integration and cohesion by themselves. And, as Habermas noted in Theory of Communicative Action , while systems like the bureaucratic state and economy can achieve stability and coordinate expectations through money and power, this can erode mutual understandings and social solidarity; markets and bureaucracies tend to displace and colonize the lifeworld. Indeed, his political essays from this period cast democratically created law as holding the line against system encroachments in a siege mentality BFN , Habermas b This may leave us asking: What other resources exist for legitimate social integration?
If law is linked to democratic political structures in the right way it confers legitimacy on legal norms, thereby fostering social integration and stability. Broadly speaking, the relation between legal legitimacy, procedural-democratic popular sovereignty, and public discourse is nested and reflexive: legitimate law must be rooted in democracy, which itself depends upon a robust public sphere.
A vibrant democratic public sphere is what allows for the revision and questioning of prior law. As long as legal decisions are arrived at in the right type of procedural, discursive fashion there is a presumption in favor of their rationality and legitimacy. And, as long as the public sphere continues to be a robust and open forum of contestation, any prior decisions are revisable such that there is a circulation between the informal public sphere and more formal institutions of the state.
While the prior model saw democratically generated law as a defensive dam or shield against the demands of systems, the new model sees a certain type of lawmaking as mediating the circulation between lifeworld and system in a way that produces legitimate and binding legal norms. Modern law works with systems and alongside post-conventional morality to stabilize social expectations and resolve conflicts.
We can start to understand the relation between law, democracy, and the public sphere by focusing on legal legitimacy and democracy. Between Facts and Norms posits a tension within law itself, as well as an internal relation between modern law and democracy. To function, all law must demand compliance, threaten coercion, and however tacitly appeal to an underlying normative justification.
This tension helps explain the relation between law and democracy in contemporary contexts. Pre-modern law appealed to God, nature, human reason, or shared culture for its justificatory backing. In post-conventional societies the fact that law is coercible and changeable yet merely rooted in fallible humans is laid bare. The thought is that democracy is the only mode of lawmaking that is up to this legitimacy-engendering task.
The democracy Habermas has in mind differs from overly populist varieties. This non-subordinate concordance of legality and discourse theoretic morality is the hardest sense of legitimacy to explain and the easiest to overlook, so it is fruitful to start there. Yet it seems puzzling to hold that democratically determined law should be compatible with but not subordinate to discourse-theoretic morality.
What about cases where law and morality seem to conflict? At a general level these answers take the same shape: while there are many ways that legal systems can square with moral permissibility, there are nevertheless structural and conceptual features endogenous to processes of modern procedural-democratic popular sovereignty that, at least at an abstract level, tend to harmonize legal norms with moral permissibility.
This avoids concerns with morality trumping legality in an exogenous manner.
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