Online research in philosophy

I propose a few epistemological and methodological reflexions to account for intercultural daily communication. These reflexions emerged during a sociological research in Mendoza, Argentina, with Huarpes Indigenous students at the University of Cuyo. I observed that Indigenous people became quasi ethnographers of diverse environments. To make intelligible their classmates’ behavior, and to account for their own behavior, Huarpes follow, in diverse environments and interactions, public rules of meaning. The objective of this paper is twofold: (a) to stress the methodological scope of ordinary communication and ordinary reasoning in order to study understanding between people from different groups and categories, and (b) to contest a kind of pessimist standpoint in social sciences and philosophy according to which the use of ordinary language reduces possibilities for understanding. Interviews, participant observation in natural situations, and a review of literature about language and understanding are the basis of this paper.

Jurgen Habermas, particularly in his master work Theory of Communicative Action (1981), takes us several of the basic insights of the philosophical tradition of reflection initiated by Kant, and sets it on a new and highly original emancipative path. He claims that reflection not only can determine the limits of reasoning about thought and action, but also can grasp the limits that human agents face in freeing themselves form unjust social and economic structures. Human agents can engage in constructive and emancipative communication with others by determining the limits not of their own consciousness, but of the intersubjective structures shared in everyday communication. Reflection Revisited examines Habermas’ own two-stage development of this theory of emancipative reflection and explicates how he applies reflection specifically to the problems of personal identity development and ethics.

Theodor W. Adorno and Jürgen Habermas both champion the goal of a rational society. However, they differ significantly about what this society should look like and how best to achieve it. Exploring the premises shared by both critical theorists, along with their profound disagreements about social conditions today, this book defends Adorno against Habermas' influential criticisms of his account of Western society and prospects for achieving reasonable conditions of human life. The book begins with an overview of these critical theories of Western society. Both Adorno and Habermas follow Georg Lukács when they argue that domination consists in the reifying extension of a calculating, rationalizing form of thought to all areas of human life. Their views about reification are discussed in the second chapter. In chapter three the author explores their conflicting accounts of the historical emergence and development of the type of rationality now prevalent in the West. Since Adorno and Habermas claim to have a critical purchase on reified social life, the critical leverage of their theories is assessed in chapter four. The final chapter deals with their opposing views about what a rational society would look like, as well as their claims about the prospects for establishing such a society. Adorno, Habermas and the Search for a Rational Society will be essential reading for students and researchers of critical theory, political theory and the work of Adorno and Habermas.

Since the early seventies, when English translations of Jürgen Habermas’ principal works became available to English-speaking scholars, there has been a virtual “Habermas explosion” of research papers, dissertations and books. Informative and penetrating discussions already exist discussing Habermas’ encounter with positivism and his relationship to the “Frankfurt school.” There are however few detailed discussions of the theoretical relationships between Habermas’ project of a critical theory of society and Hegel’s system. We attempt to correct this previous omission in the following paper.The central thesis of Jürgen Habermas’ Knowledge and Human Interests is that theoretical discourse is fundamentally tied to human experience. Habermas wishes to show that all theoretical statements about the world have their genesis in the experience of everyday life and practices. His particular understanding of this approach to the question of the possibility of knowledge has its origins in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. The Phenomenology defines the development of knowledge in terms of a science of experience and must therefore constitute the main text in locating the philosophical parameters of Habermas’ thought. Our paper is an exercise in hermeneutics addressed to this task.In rejecting both Hegel’s philosophy of identity and Marx’s ontology of nature, Habermas has forced himself into a position where he must elaborate exactly how knowledge is possible at all. That is, the question which he confronts concerns the underlying basis of human experience. Hegel and Marx in Habermas’ opinion, were both unsuccessful in developing an adequate account of human life precisely because they tended to give an absolute basis to the the structure of the world. Knowledge itself, was considered as knowledge of something which existed beyond the scope of human control. Habermas attempts to overcome these difficulties by developing an explicitly ontological account of man through his theory of cognitive interests. Thus the process of reflection is ‘guided’ by certain cognitive interests. These interests perform the same function in Habermas’ system as does the notion of Geist in Hegel’s or Nature in Marx’s. They determine the conditions by which ‘knowledge’ can be generated and thus constitute the grounds upon which our world-view is constituted.

Given the prominent position Habermas' philosophy has gained, it is surprising that his method, rational reconstruction, has not caused more debate. This article clarifies what this method consists of, and shows how it is used in two of Habermas' research programs. The method is an interesting, but problematic way of confronting some of the basic epistemological questions in the social sciences. It represents an alternative to both the empirical-analytical and the hermeneutic tradition. On the basis of this methodology, Habermas' work is situated between the transcendental and the empirical approach. A fundamental problem is that it remains unclear how to test the hypothesis put forward through rational reconstruction. Key Words: Philosophical method • rational reconstruction • critical theory • formal pragmatics • development theory • Jürgen Habermas.

"Ethical Leadership" in modern multicultural corporations is first the consideration of different personal and cultural value systems in decision-making processes. Second, it is the assignment of responsibility either to individual or organisational causalities. The task of this study is to set the stage for a distinction between rational entities and the arbitrary preferences of individuals in economic decision making processes.Defining rational aspects of behaviour in economics will lead to the formal structures of organisational systems, which are independent of concrete but varying values. Luhmann''s Theory of systems of communication describes the internal dynamic forces of economic communication processes in terms of formal structures. On the other hand Habermas'' Theory of discourse integrates the previous relationship between individual subjectivity and rational behaviour. Habermas gives an indication of how to separate subjective values and meaning from rational arguments in rational communication processes. The translation of these theoretical structures into practical applications for decision making processes and decision taking acts links the ethical, or value-oriented, context precisely to both individual and organisational areas of responsibility.

Habermas' theory of practical rationality is a significant theoretical attempt to preserve both rationality and democracy at the level of political decision making that transcends both technocratic and decisionistic theories of rationality. Habermas' theory of rationality accords with his epistemological, sociological, psychological, and linguistic premises. His theory, however, overlooks the interactions between instrumental action and symbolic interaction, the relevance of professional knowledge of facts for the choice of ends, the conflict between the norms of efficiency and democracy, and the duality of subject and object in historical formation. The rational interest in reproduction of free communication, however, can be used to reformulate Habermas' theory of rationality.

There is a huge chasm between the notion of lawful determination that figures in fundamental physics, and the notion of causal determination that figures in the "folk physics" of everyday objects. In everyday life, we think of the behavior of an ordinary object as being determined by a small set of simple conditions. But in fundamental physics, no such conditions suffice to determine an ordinary object's behavior. What bridges the chasm is that fundamental physical laws make the folk picture of the world approximately true in certain domains. How? In part, by entailing that many objects are approximately isolated from most of their environments. Dynamical laws yield this result only in conjunction with appropriate statistical assumptions about initial conditions.

This article proposes "equality" as a topic for interactionist research. By drawing on the perspectives of Herbert Blumer, Alfred Schutz, and Harold Garfinkel, an attempt is made to lay the theoretical groundwork for studying the interpretive and experiential aspects of equality. Blumer's fundamental premises of symbolic interactionism, Schutz's analysis of relevance and typification, and Garfinkel's treatment of reflexivity and indexicality are explicated and applied to the subject of equality. I then draw upon the moral theory of John Dewey to suggest the positive role that interactionist theory and research might play in the resolution of problematic situations that are framed in terms of equality. Collectively, the complementary aspects of Blumer's, Schutz's, Garfinkel's, and Dewey's thought are used to justify and launch a program of research on a neglected yet important topic: the social construction of equality in everyday life.

Everyday life as a sociological/philosophical concept is widely considered to be both a familiar and yet taken-for-granted subject matter for analytic investigation. In considering the works of three leading scholars, Michel de Certeau, Harold Garfinkel, and John Fiske, one can look toward possible referents to this term. Starting with Certeau’s critical semiotics of the everyday, with its emphasis on such distinctions as place and space as well as strategies and tactics, the everyday can be theorized in terms of contrasts between discourse and practice. Similarly, with Garfinkel’s ethnomethodological emphasis on the practical actor and Fiske’s ethnographic and cultural studies emphasis on local meaning, the everyday can be conceptualized in terms of distinctions between lived order and a theorized version of the everyday. By examining the approaches of these three scholars as well as drawing upon a visual examination of everyday urban scenes, the article concludes with an affirmation of a multi-conceptual and methodological approach to the everyday and with recognition of the everyday as a signifier loaded with a multitude of possibly overlapping meanings.