What does the term normative presupposition mean?

Question

as it relates to sociology...I know the definitions of "normative" and "supposition", but can't conceptualize the two words together. Also, what is a "cognitive presupposition? Thanks.

Answer 1

Universal pragmatics, more recently placed under the heading of formal pragmatics, is the philosophical study of the necessary conditions for reaching an understanding through communication. The philosopher Jürgen Habermas coined the term in his essay "What is Universal Pragmatics?" (Habermas 1979), where he suggests that human competition, conflict, and strategic action are attempts to achieve understanding that have failed due to modal confusions. The implication is that coming to terms with how people understand or misunderstand one another could lead to a reduction of social conflict.

By coming to an "understanding", he means at the very least, when two or more social actors share the same meanings about certain words or phrases; and at the very most, when these actors are confident that those meanings fit relevant social expectations (or a "mutually recognized normative background"). (1979:3)

For Habermas, the goal of coming to an understanding is "intersubjective mutuality … shared knowledge, mutual trust, and accord with one another". (1979:3) In other words, the underlying goal of coming to an understanding would help to foster enlightenment, consensus, and good will.

As an interdisciplinary subject, universal pragmatics draws upon material from a large number of fields, from pragmatics, semantics, semiotics, informal logic, and the philosophy of language, through social philosophy, sociology, and symbolic interactionism, to ethics, especially discourse ethics, and on to epistemology and the philosophy of mind.

Contents [hide]

1 History

2 Goals and methods

3 Three aspects of universal pragmatics

4 Communicative action

4.1 Communicative competence

4.2 Examining the validity of speech

4.3 Ideal presuppositions of communication

5 See also

6 References



[edit] History

Universal pragmatics (UP) seeks to overcome three dichotomies: the dichotomy between body and mind, between theory and practice, and between analytic and continental philosophy.[citation needed] It is part of a larger project to rethink the relationship between philosophy and the individual sciences during a period of social crisis. The project is within the tradition of Critical Theory, a program that traces back to the work of Max Horkheimer.

The term "universal pragmatics" includes two different traditions that Habermas and his collaborator, colleague, and friend Karl-Otto Apel have attempted to reconcile. On the one hand, ideas are drawn from the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, wherein words and concepts are regarded as universally valid idealizations of shared meanings. And, on the other hand, inspiration is drawn from the American Pragmatist tradition (feat. Charles Sanders Peirce, George Herbert Mead, Charles W. Morris), for whom words are arbitrary signs devoid of intrinsic meaning, and whose function is to denote the things and processes in the objective world that surrounds the speakers.[citation needed]

UP shares with speech act theory, semiotics, and linguistics an interest in the details of language use and communicative action. However, unlike those fields, it insists on a difference between the linguistic data that we observe in the 'analytic' mode, and the rational reconstruction of the rules of symbol systems that each reader/listener possesses intuitively when interpreting strings of words. In this sense, is an examination of the two ways that language usage can be analyzed: as an object of scientific investigation, and as a 'rational reconstruction' of intuitive linguistic 'know-how'.

[edit] Goals and methods

Universal pragmatics is associated with the philosophical method of rational reconstruction.

The basic concern in universal pragmatics are utterances (or speech acts) in general. This is in contrast to most other fields of linguistics, which tend to be more specialized, focusing exclusively on very specific sorts of utterances such as sentences (which in turn are made up of words, morphemes, and phonemes).

For Habermas, the most significant difference between a sentence and an utterance is in that sentences are judged according to how well they make sense grammatically, while utterances are judged according to their communicative validity (see section 1). (1979:31)

Universal pragmatics is also distinct from the field of sociolinguistics. This is because U.P. is only interested in the meanings of utterances if they have to do with claims about truth or rightness, while socio-linguistics is interested in all utterances in their social contexts. (1979:31,33)

[edit] Three aspects of universal pragmatics

There are three ways to evaluate an utterance, according to UP. There are theories which deal with elementary propositions, theories of first-person sentences, and theories of speech acts.

A theory of elementary propositions investigates those things in the real world that are being referenced by an utterance, and the things that are implied by an utterance, or predicate it. For example, the utterance "The first Prime Minister of Canada" refers to a man who went by the name of Sir John A. Macdonald. And when a speaker delivers the utterance, "My husband is a lawyer", it implies that the speaker is married to a man.

A theory of first-person sentences examines the expression of the intentions of the actor(s) through language and in the first-person.

Finally, a theory of speech acts examines the setting of standards for interpersonal relations through language. The basic goal for speech act theory is to explain how and when utterances in general are performative. (1979:34) Central to the notion of speech acts are the ideas of "illocutionary force" and perlocutionary force, both terms coined by philosopher J.L. Austin. Illocutionary force describes the intent of the speaker, while perlocutionary force means the effect an utterance has in the world, or more specifically, the effect on others.

A performative utterance is a sentence where an action being performed is done by the utterance itself. For example: "I inform you that you have a moustache", or "I promise you I will not burn down the house". In these cases, the words are also taken as significant actions: the act of informing and promising (respectively).

Habermas adds to this the observation that speech acts can either succeed or fail, depending on whether or not they succeed on influencing another person in the intended way. (1979:35)

This last method of evaluation -- the theory of speech acts -- is the domain that Habermas is most interested in developing as a theory of communicative action.

[edit] Communicative action

There are a number of ways to approach Habermas’s project of developing a formal pragmatic analysis of communication. Because Habermas developed it in order to have a normative and philosophical foundation for his critical social theory, most of the inroads into formal pragmatics start from sociology, specifically with what is called action theory. Action theory concerns the nature of human action, especially the manner in which collective actions are coordinated in a functioning society.

The coordination and integration of social action has been explained in many ways by many theories. Rational choice theory and game theory are two examples, which describe the integration of individuals into social groups by detailing the complex manner in which individuals motivated only by self-interest will form mutually beneficial and cooperative social arrangements. In contrast to these, Habermas has formulated a theory of communicative action. (Habermas 1984; 1987) This theory and the project of developing a formal pragmatic analysis of communication are inseparable.

Habermas makes a series of distinctions in the service of explaining social action. The first major differentiation he makes is between two social realms, the system and the lifeworld. These designate two distinct modes of social integration:

The kind of social integration accomplished in the system is accomplished through the functional integration of the consequences of actions. It bypasses the consciousness of individuals and does not depend upon their being oriented towards acting collectively. Economic and industrial systems are great examples, often producing complex forms of social integration and interdependence despite the openly competitive orientations of individuals.

The social integration accomplished in the lifeworld, by contrast, depends upon the coordination of action plans and the conscious action-orientations of individuals. It relies on processes of human interaction involving symbolic and cultural forms of meaning. More specifically, as Habermas maintains, the coordination of the lifeworld is accomplished through communicative action.

Thus, communicative action is an indispensable facet of society. It is at the heart of the lifeworld and is, Habermas claims, responsible for accomplishing several fundamental social functions: reaching understanding, cultural reproduction, coordinating action-plans, and socializing individuals.

However, Habermas is quick to note, different modes of interaction can (in some ways) facilitate these social functions and achieve integration within the lifeworld. This points towards the second key distinction Habermas makes, which differentiates communicative action from strategic action. The coordination of action plans, which constitutes the social integration of the lifeworld, can be accomplished either through consensus or influence.

Strategic action is action oriented towards success, while communicative action is action oriented towards understanding. Both involve the symbolic resources of the lifeworld and occur primarily by way of linguistic interaction. On the one hand, actors employing communicative acti