Re: BHA: In defense of Habermasian Angelism

["Howard Engleskirchen,WSU/FAC" <howarde@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry for the multiple posts just sent!  My mail system was asserting that the
mail was being returned as undeliverable.  But everytime (Colin chuckles), it
lied!

Doug, Colin and all you truth seekers --

Doug writes:

> 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.
>
I don't think the "promising game" tradition has made enough sense of
promising to offer it is a beachhead for understanding anything else.  The
puzzle of promising is to figure out what accounts for the obligation that
attaches to a promise once made.  On analogy to eg touchdown in American
football ("why does a touchdown score 6 points?"), a fashionable response is to
argue "well that is just the way the game of promising is played."  But the
analogy to a game fails because obligation then is presupposed and we haven't
explained anything.  If we say promising is defined by certain constitutive rules,
then we have to explain what accounts for those rules and we are back to the
beginning: what accounts for the obligation of promise?  Appealing to the rules
of the game is another way I think of attending only to the network and not what
the network describes.

Colin writes:

> Try this one: I promise (illucutionary) that i think Fukuyama's original article
>on the end of history is masterful.

and then continues

>since I understood you to be claiming (and Louis defending) that according to
>Habermas asserters will always be committed to their assertions. Whether or
>not Jurgen actually does mean this is a moot point, but it is clearly not the
>case. We make many assertion to which we are not committed, I mean it
>seems to me social life would be impossible if this were the case.

We use language in a confusing way to say that we are "committed" to an
assertion or "promise" it.  You can't commit to an assertion.  To promise or
commit to something is to set yourself to make it happen; it is to identify
yourself as a causal agent.  "I am committed to the relationship" means I set
myself to make it work.   I'm committed to the proposition that it is raining
doesn't make sense unless you seed clouds for fun and profit.   "I promise I
think Fukuyama is masterful" is simply to make an assertion with an
explanation point.

While we don't need the game game to say so, it is true that when I make a
promise it is a fact independent of the promise whether I intend the
performance promised or not.  Similarly when I make an assertion it is a fact
independent of the assertion whether I believe it or not.  I don't understand
Louis to be saying anything different.  Assertion means I present such and
such as so about the world.  Because it has this meaning, and because my
beliefs are independent of what is asserted, lying is possible.  Or I can subvert
my meaning unwittingly, as in the wonderful example of the narrator in The
Remains of the Day.

Howard

Howard Engelskirchen
Western State University	

		


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