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opinion, the credentials of which have to be certified in their turn,
and so on. We may safely assume that after a few steps down this
path we reach a point where nobody has any determinate opinion
on the matter any more. For instance, there may be a majority
opinion, at a given time, that the world economy is currently in a
slump, and there may be a corresponding majority opinion that the
former opinion was formed in the proper manner (for example,
that it was based upon reliable economical statistics). But it is
highly doubtful whether anybody would have any opinion as to
whether the latter opinion was based upon proper data, or, if so,
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The Broad Arguments
whether this new opinion was so based. At any rate, by repeating
this question a couple of times, one would soon draw a blank from
even the most conscientious observer of society. Thus, social truth
is once more rendered indeterminate.
THE THEORY REFINED: INTRODUCING
HYPOTHETICAL AGREEMENT
A critic might object that we have overlooked a way to save the
idealist argument. We have established that, if determinate social
fact requires actual human agreement (or consonance), then social
facts are utterly indeterminate. For the determinateness of social fact
requires an infinite series of such agreements. And no such series
can exist. However, it might be claimed, the position does not
necessarily call for actual agreement. All that is required is
hypothetical agreement; that is, such agreement as would have
occurred if human beings had taken the matter up for explicit
consideration.
A position of this kind has actually been advocated by
philosophers of social science, notably (among others) by Jrgen
Habermas. In the article Wahrheitstheorien ( Theories of Truth ),
Habermas launches an attack upon traditional conceptions of truth
and introduces his own alternative, called the consensus theory of
truth (Habermas 1974). In his formulations of this theory, the
hypothetical element is much in evidence the truth of a statement
is said to consist in the potential agreement of that statement with
those of other individuals. Indeed, Habermas puts such stringent
conditions upon the kind of agreement that defines truth and the
setting in which it may occur, that it is highly doubtful if such
conditions can ever be realised. Habermas actually describes the
hypothetical setting in which truth can be attained as rather of the
nature of a regulative ideal something towards which actual
discussion may strive, but which can never be fully realised.
I do not believe that the social generation view can be saved by
this manoeuvre, however. It is highly uncertain that such radically
hypothetical assumptions possess a determinate truth value at all, and
hence can serve as the basis of determinate social fact. The most
potent source of indeterminacy is the difficulty of specifying what
counts as ideal conditions for the genuineness of a consensus. The
conditions specified by Habermas all revolve around the idea of the
equality of the participants to the discussion they must all have
42
Ethnomethodology
equal chances of having their arguments heard. Habermas is at pains
to stress that these equal opportunities are not purely formal ones, but
have substantive content. He does not go into detail about this in
Wahrheitstheorien , but we know from other writings that he
considers inequalities in economical conditions, educational
background, etc. to be inimical to the equality of participants in a free
discussion. Moreover, not all impediments to a person s participation
in dialogue are external ones. A person may also be hampered by
internal factors, such as neurotic tendencies that impede his
rationality. These, too, must be removed in order to achieve a rational,
truth-generating dialogue.
I believe that there is simply no a priori answer as to which
such constraints define rational dialogue and hence bestow the
virtue of Truth upon its outcome. Must the participants in a
dialogue have undergone psychoanalytic therapy, liberating them
from their repressions? Or is the truth rather, as enemies of
psychoanalysis will suggest, that the very belief in psychoanalysis
is a commitment to irrationality? (The writer Karl Kraus, a
contemporary critic of Freud, once wrote that psychoanalysis is
the disease for which it claims to be the cure.) How similar must
people s social and economic conditions be for them to be fairly
matched in a truth-finding discussion? Only a rash man would
claim that these questions have firm, a priori answers. Still, the
consensus theory, and the use of it made here, presuppose that a
precise answer can be given.
Habermas s consensus theory of truth embodies an idea that has
been a crucial element of Western thinking since the enlightenment
to wit, that human understanding is bound to converge towards
agreement once superstition and bias are cleared away. The
consensus theory owes its initial attraction to this circumstance. In
its hypothetical version, however, it abolishes a crucial component
of that view, namely a realist conception of reality. In the
enlightenment view, reality is represented as an independent
instance against which man can measure his theories, as well as his
methods for testing them his canons of rationality. With reality
serving as a touchstone, faulty theories and methods will in due
time be weeded away and we shall be guided towards a conception
of reality that somehow mirrors that reality. This entire picture
collapses, however, once the constructivist view is adopted. All
forces that might serve to propel the cognitive process towards
convergence must now somehow come from within that process, in
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The Broad Arguments
the form of inherent, a priori constraints, since there is no
independent reality from which they could spring. Once this is
realised, the consensus view loses whatever plausibility it may have
(illicitly) gained through its association with the enlightenment view,
and we realise that there is no reason to expect the cognitive process
to display convergence. That process will come to look to us more
like, say, the development of art, which we see as taking twists
and turns, some of which we may want to designate as
progressive , but which we do not see as converging towards
consensus among artists. This is because we do not (any longer)
see art as representing an independent reality, which would
impose constraints upon it and channel its development in one
particular direction.
THE FLAW IN THE CONSTRUCTIVIST ARGUMENT
Above, I have tried to show the untenability of the
ethnomethodologist position by a reductio ad absurdum. Clearly, such
an argument does not in itself pinpoint the flaw in the reasoning that
led to the refuted position, nor is this my concern in the present
context. However, I would like to offer a reflection on the conditions
of using language and to indicate how the idealist argument conflates
two kinds of language use.
The ethnomethodologist argument for the social construction of
reality was based upon two premises. I want to show that the
premises are only true if the core terms in them are read in different
ways in each of the two premises, with fatal consequences for the
soundness of the argument.
The two premises were as follows:
1 What is commonly agreed to be the correct application of a rule
to a particular case, is indeed the correct application; there is no
higher court of appeal. As a special case, this holds for rules for
the use of linguistic terms.
2 In laying down the correct use of a linguistic term on a concrete
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