Subject: HAB: Re: What are institutions?
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 09:08:18 -0800


>From: Bill Hord <hord_b-AT-hccs.cc.tx.us>
....
>

>Habermas's view does not include intentionality.

GD: This is false. Speech acts are actions. All actions are intentional. The 
always at-least-tacit validity claim to genuineness expresses one of the 
three basic validity dimensions of every speech act--the dimension of 
subjectivity and intentionality--that Habermas has indicated in every 
account of the validity basis of speech that he has offered over the past 
quarter century. In a typical speech act, I tacitly claim to genuinely 
intend what my speech act lexically indicates (illocutionary force is that 
of the speaker's intent; s/he is not posturing or performing a role in a 
script). In speaking, one is using language, not merely mentioning it.

BH: Certainly Searle's account of speech acts is the most clearly stated (H 
acknowledges this as well).

GD: Certainly not. Habermas' [inter]subjective theory of communicative 
action is incomparable to Searle's egoistic theory.

....

BH: How does Habermas account for the fact that by making certain sounds he 
makes a promise, creating a real obligation for himself?  .... To say that 
his claim to be promising is valid if he is in a position (is authorized by 
a norm) to promise doesn't get us very far.

GD: I may make a promise because one recognizes what promise-making is. 
Whether I really made the promise rather than postured depends on whether I 
am performing the speech act genuinely, i.e., that I really intend to 
promise. I am in a position to make a promise not by normative 
authorization, but by self-possession or maturity: Am I able to follow 
through on my own commitment to the other? Are my commitments credible, as a 
matter of my own life management? And so on, pertaining to my reliability. 
The institutionality of promise-keeping is useful for a very 
non-institutional understanding about commitment to some state of affairs to 
be actualized later that is in my control to actualize.

BH: Habermas admits that his theory is more complex and vague than Searle's. 
  Mysterious would be another good description.

GD: There is nothing vague about Habermas' sense of communicative action. 
Complex, yes, because communicative action is complex.

BH: On the most pragmatic level, until H can take a lot of the mystery out 
of his account, it can do very little real work.  One area that could be 
much clearer is the relationship of speech acts to human institutions(and 
social practices more generally).

GD: I heartily vote 'YES' for doing real work with Habermas' account. As for 
mystery, this is just metaphorical for the *difficulty* of highly worked up 
clarifications of our communicative form of life, e.g., in "What is 
Universal Pragmatics?", "Introduction" to _Theory of Communicative Action_, 
vol. 1, or the sense of institutionality in _Between Facts & Norms_.


Best regards,


Gary







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