BHA: In defense of Habermasian Angelism

[Doug Porpora <porporad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I didn't want to throw this into my previous post, but I have also been
puzzling over Colin's exchange with Louis re truth and lies.  I think Louis
is on the right track calling our attention to types of speech acts.  Here
is what I come up with:

Habermas perhaps overstates the case.  It need not be all utterances that
presuppose truth as a validity claim.  I think it is sufficient to say that
at least assertions do.

Suppose we think of assertions as a language game, defined, like promising,
questioning, etc. by certain constitutive rules.  In these terms, to assert
something is to propose the truth of what is asserted.

Now, just as one can promise falsely, one, like Nixon, can assert falsely.
One can propose the truth of something without personally believing it.
But what one is then doing is proposing the truth of something one does not
actually believe in. As I think Louis finally suggested, the proposal of
truth is primarily a property of the language game of assertion and not of
the individual. (Although given that property of assertion, we routinely
presume the asserter believes the assertion.)

If we think of assertion as a language game, then other language games can
be constructed out of it. So irony is a language game built on the language
game of assertion, which presupposes the governing rules of assertion to do
the exact opposite.  In that case, irony is a different illocutionary act
than assertion.  It is also a more complex act insofar as it incorporates
assertion and its rules.

So when I read Colin's paean to Rorty, I reinterpret the illocutionary act
Colin is performing from simple assertion to assertion in the service of
irony. But the irony is only possible if simple assertion has the validity
claims it has. I think this applies to Antony and Austen too. I am not sure
whether it applies to Iago, whose actual speech I do not remember at all.
But it seems that if Iago did not intend his counsel to be interpreted by
Othello as irony, then the seeds of doubt Iago plants in Othello is a
perlocutionary act and not at all part of Iago's illocutionary act, which
remains assertion.

That ends my spontaneous attempt to defend Habermasian angelism.  What are
the appropriate symbols to designate a shrug signifying "That's all I've
got?"

doug


doug porpora
dept of psych and sociology
drexel university
phila pa 19104
USA

porporad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx




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