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Z E E B R O A D , A N N A R B O R , Ml 4 8 1 0 6 18 B E D F O R D ROW, L O N D O N WC1R 4 E J , E N G L A N D 7922530 MILCZAREK, GARY JOHN A THEORY OF INQUIRY FOR EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS AN APPLICATION OF THE CRITICAL THEORY OF JURGEN HABERMAS. THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, PH.D., 1979 University M icrprilnns International 3 0 0 n z e e b h o a u . a n n a u b o r , m i 4 b i o g A THEORY OF INQUIRY FOR EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: AN APPLICATION OF THE CRITICAL THEORY OF JURGEN HABERMAS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University by Gary John Milczarek *■*•** * * The Ohio State University 1979 Reading Committee Approved by Robert R. Bargar Philip L. Smith Donald R. Bateman Adviser Faculty of Education!:' Foundations and Research P-0_/ For My Mother and My Father in deepest gratitude and to happiness, peace and liberation for all life ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you Bob and Phil and Don. You believed in me. I owe my path to Jean Butman, and I shared that path with John Lohman and Gretchen Wilson. Kathy McLaughlin and Ed Turner helped me reconnect that path to my past and my future. Thank you Jean, and John and Gretchen, and Kathy, and Ed. And thanks to so many others on my journey in Columbus, to you Judith and Paul, and Ross and Maria and Diane, and you George and Jim and Janet, and you Jack and Jim and Linda and Dale and Craig and Chris and Tanya and Liz and Louise and Jack and Ann and Nancy and Frank. Thanks to you who helped me write this, you Mary and George and Phyllis. Thank you Mary, who lived through this process. Thanks to one who is conspicuous in her absence. Thank you Gary, for the time to write. Thank you my teachers. Thank you Jurgen. And thank you Jane. VITA April 15, 1942 1967 ........ 1969 1968 1970 1970 1976 1977 1979 . . Bora Salt Lake City, Utah B.A., University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, Major studies Psychology , Philosophy, Education and Biological Sciences M.A., University of Utah; Major studies Educational Psychology, Educational Research and Philosophy Teacher, Salt Lake City School District; Research Assistant, Bureau of Educational Research, University of Utah; a conjoint posi- tion for learning and teaching in the Learning Adjustment Program Research, Evaluation and Develop- ment Specialist, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, Portland, Oregon Graduate Research Associate, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Educational Foundations and Research Studies in the Philosophy and Methodology of Educational Inquiry, Educational Research and Educational Evaluation Studies in Human Development and the Creation of Educational Community TABLE OF CONTENTS PageACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................ iii V I T A ........................... iv LIST OF F I G U R E S ..................................... vi LIST OF TABLES ........................................vii Chapter I. INTRODUCTION ................................. I II. REASON AND A C T I O N ........................... 26 III. HABERMAS' THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN INTER-ESTS .......................................... 48 The Theory of Cognitive Interests ........ 50 A Theory of Inquiry........................ 64 A Theory of A c t i o n ....................... 71 A Theory of Communication................. 72 IV. THEORETICAL DISCOURSE: THE JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH C L A I M S ............................. 90 V. PRACTICAL DISCOURSE: THE JUSTIFICATIONOF MORAL CLAIMS .............................. 110 VI. INQUIRY AND DEVELOPMENT....................... 139 VII. INQUIRY IN EDUCATION........................... 169 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................... 211 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Ego Development: Stage I, Egocentric; Stage II, Sociocentric; and Stage III,Universalistic ............................... 147 LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Dimensions of the Three Cognitive Interests . . 52 2. Bernstein and Freeman Codings of Evaluation Quality Variables ............................. 173 vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION I believe there is a fundamental incompatibility be- tween a developmental perspective of education and certain instrumental and scientific conceptions of rationality that dominate much of educational thought, practice and inquiry. In the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas I have found an expanded conception of rationality that is consistent with a developmental perspective. In this study I draw on Habermas' work to present a theory of inquiry--an integrated theory of knowledge, value and action- for educational development. 1 The Personal and Interpersonal Dimensions of Human Unders tanding^ I'll begin by asking you to imagine three ellipses joined together at their bases and radiating upward and out- ward like the petals of a tulip. Let each petal or ellipse stand for a different realm of being. Let the sphere on the left stand for the objective material world of nature, the sphere on the right for the intersubjective interpersonal world of society, and the sphere in the center for the sub- jective personal world of each individual. From the earliest recorded thought in ancient Greece to the modern present, people have pleaded a case for three such realms of being and have tried to explain their relations to each other or to reduce them to just one of the three. In particular, I believe that prevailing conceptions of rationality tend to reduce individual and social experience to the objective material sphere. Under these conceptions rational beliefs are those that can be ultimately grounded in sense certainty. Knowledge is defined as justified true belief and both justification and truth are based on perceptual certainty.^ These concep2tions also obj ectify all experience by making experience an object of natural science and instrumental action sepa- rate from and external to the experiencing subject. To make something an object of instrumental action is to treat it as means for our own ends, as instrument for the creation of a desired state of affairs. Inquiry based on these con- ceptions seeks justified beliefs concerning objective states and processes of nature that are technically exploitable. In this objectivistic framework human action is rational when it is guided by true beliefs and effective means to desired ends. We are limited to a technical rationality. Our experience of persons and human interac- tion can be objectified in this way--we can treat people and their actions as objects--but not without loss of critical personal and interpersonal dimensions. Our experience can- not be completely reduced to the objective material realm. An adequate conception of rationality must provide theories for justifying our beliefs and actions that go beyond sen- sory perception and technical effectiveness to include this personal and interpersonal dimension. I find these objectivistic and instrumental conceptions of rationality to be incompatible with a developmental per- spective of education because these conceptions limit rationality in ways that deprive people of both their autonomy and their community, and divest their actions of ethical significance. I will systematically consider development in Chapter VI, but briefly, my argument is that a developmental perspective of education includes a personal and an interpersonal dimension that a strictly objectivistic and instrumental rationality cannot encompass. I believe we grow, develop and evolve individually and in relation to others. We are individuated members of the community-autonomous and yet integrated into the collective. On the one hand, we are inalienably social beings. Our experience is mediated through an intersubjectivity of common symbols; our needs, values, and knowledge grow out of and, in turn, inform this symbolic structure. On the other hand, we are inalienably individual beings. Our experience includes a singular aspect so that the things we experience acquire meaning and significance relative to our unique life his- tories . Yet prevailing conceptions of rationality in edu- cational inquiry do not adequately account for these social and individual dimensions of human experience and under- standing . A rationality limited to a purely objectivistic and instrumental perspective must treat the educational process as a state of nature to be studied and manipulated for the efficient realization of educational goals. This kind of rationality ultimately assumes that the learner is a mechanism of nature that can be controlled and organized within certain limits, and that through the application of empirical laws the learner can be manipulated so as to ex- hibit specified characteristics defined as learning outcomes. However, unlike inanimate objects in our experience, human behavior has dimensions that preclude this kind of predic- tive stability. Inanimate objects have no individual will, 5 nor do they share our intersubjectivity of mutual under- standing . Such an objectivistic and instrumental approach to inquiry is incompatible with a developmental orientation to education because it excludes dimensions of human experience and understanding that are critical to human development. Conceived developmentally, the learner is in dynamic inter- action with a social as well as physical environment that in- cludes a rich and complex organization of materials , energies , people, ideas, and culture. The individual must not only become integrated into this world, but must build and main- tain an identity secured against either disintegration or absorption. In other words, the learner must become an individuated part of the social world, and must ultimately share in the responsibility for this process. The individual literally comes into being, learns, and matures in a process of dynamic interaction that involves three moments: the emerging ego, the objective material world, and the intersubjective social world. From this per- spective, inquiry in education must attend equally to the individual, social, and material aspects of the educational process. Yet it seems to me that the logic of inquiry in education lacks a systematic theoretical perspective on the dynamic interplay of these three realms in the experience of the learner. 6 I believe this deficiency is partly due to the pre- dominant positivistic conception of the inquiry process, positivistic not so much in the more restricted and now abandoned form of logical positivism but rather in the broader form of classical positivism with its reduction of objectivity to measurable facts and their correlations, and its separation of knowledge from values. Consider, for example, the role in empirical-analytic science of practical interests (practical in the philosophi- cal sense of relating to human conduct.) Practical interests are systematically excluded from the logic of inquiry. They serve only as the unproblematic context which guides inquiry from outside the inquiry process itself. When practical in- terests are considered problematic, then political processes outside of formal inquiry are expected to resolve the situation. More generally, I believe that the implicit and explicit theories of knowledge and theories of value inher- ent in prevailing theory and practice are important factors contributing to many problems that beset educational re- search and evaluation today. A logic of inquiry that is concerned with the developmental processes of education must provide for the autonomy of the learner and the ethical nature of human conduct, and not only the justification of knowledge claims concerning empirical regularities. What is needed is an expanded conception of rationality that takes into account both the personal and interpersonal dimensions 7 of human understanding. This study is an attempt to articu- late these dimensions and to incorporate them into a theory of inquiry. A Personal Dimension to This Inquiry My goal of articulating an expanded conception of rationality can be better understood within the context of my own professional experience. This dissertation repre- sents a bridge between two sides of my professional develop- ment. Throughout my career, I have been concerned almost simultaneously with both empirical inquiry and with the development and self-actualization of people. On the side of empirical inquiry, it is clear that the sciences have held a dominant place in my education and represent a major influence in my professional life. While my experience and training in science was a unique constellation of my own teachers, texts and learning experi- ences, I believe that experience was very similar to many others of my generation. I emerged with a particular, if implicit, view of science that I attempted to apply in my early professional life. Much of my formal academic train- ing was in the t.i.-'ory and methods of educational research and evaluation: statistics, experimental design, sampling, problem formation, hypothesis testing and measurement. I learned the technology of instructional development as well: needs assessments, product formulation, specification of objectives, performance specifications, product development and data collection, reduction, analysis and reporting.3 This was the curriculum for those who studied educational research and evaluation. It was a curriculum based on recommendations from professional associations, by leaders in the profession, and even on mandates from the National Institute of Education. I learned early that application of the scientific method is undoubtedly the most efficient and reliable means tQ knowledge, and that the object of scientific inquiry is to explain, predict and control phenomena.^Educational research, the scientific method applied to education, is the explanation, prediction and control of educational phenom- ena . I have a somewhat idealized image of myself at that time. I was one of a community of educators and researchers with different but overlapping goals and points of view. We all shared the overarching common way of science, a way I imperfectly understood but tried to clarify in concert with my co-workers. I continued to study and learn the methods of my discipline, to teach and share them with my colleagues. Together we tried to discover the methods that made the most sense for what we were trying to do. So the view of science I acquired was unique to me and yet shared in varying degrees with the whole broad educational research and evaluation community, In retrospect, although the characterization is some- what artificial in oversimplification, I see that the view of science I received was one of a search for the nature of an objective reality. It was objective at least in the sense that while I was to be considered a part of nature, I could not find that reality by looking within myself. It was an objective search for an external reality, the regu- larities and laws of nature that might be put to use in solving problems and reaching goals. Of course we never had the final picture. There was always controversy, disagree- ment and progress. New, more accurate and comprehensive theories and explanations replaced older less adequate views, only to be revised and replaced by yet more complete ones. But the search was still for the truth, the way things really are. In relation to specified problems and goals the search was for the best solution, the way to go. I took these things for granted, so thoroughly assumed as to receive no special attention. I knew no alternative. The image I have portrayed seems true of a period of my life that was followed by a disintegration of this confident outlook and the transformation of my personal and profes- sional life. The disintegration happened gradually as the outlook and methods I had learned failed to yield their promise and as differences with and among colleagues grew into conflicts and even battles. It became increasingly clear that more was at stake than the most appropriate 10 methods of unveiling an objective reality. Here was obviously a very social and political process of gaining control of scarce resources and the power to influence and define the scope and direction of work. I came to see con- flicts among the administrators, developers and evaluators between fundamental assumptions underlying their positions. While these conflicts centered around methodological issues, the process for coping with them was very clearly a politi- cal and not a scientific one. This fact was seldom, if ever, acknowledged. Instead, appeal was generally made to theoretical considerations underlying the methods of research; the political and ethical choices implicit in these theories were neglected. This gradual transformation, in my view of scientific inquiry, also took place under the influence of a wide variety of experiences associated with humanistic psychology. Throughout the period of my formal education and course work I found myself drawn to projects and professional interests that focused on the development arid self-actualization of people. However, the methods of scientific research from my formal training seemed to play an unclear and limited role in relation to these activities. I found the theories, models, methods and activities of these humanistic and developmental efforts exciting and compelling but somehow at the edge of scientific and academic legitimacy. I was energized and animated by the power of their goals and the 11 excitement in their ideas, but I was skeptical and pessi- mistic because they seemed to be taken seriously only by those disaffected with mainstream science and academics. They were also relatively unknown or lacked scientific respectability within professional circles with which I was acquainted. I naively assumed that these theories and methods had to be tested with the inquiry processes I had learned. I could see the difficulty of doing so, but it seemed the only way to confirm them and to gain respecta- bility. I seriously tried to apply these inquiry methods to some of the ideas, but increasingly, I felt that something was wrong. Slowly the idea emerged and grew within me that there was a fundamental incompatibility between the models of research I had learned and the theories and models of development I pursued. I could not see how to bring the two realms together. Let me illustrate with an example. The difficulty I encountered was in reconciling the methods and logic of empirical inquiry with my experience of how people grow and develop. This difficulty was especially evident in certain non-standard learning situations such as therapy and ex- periential learning programs. In one professional setting, I helped develop and evaluate a number of workshops for edu- cators on a variety of process skills in such areas as inter- personal communication, problem solving, and conflict resolu- tion. Let us consider the workshop on coping with conflict. 12 The conflict workshop was designed to help participants conceptualize and integrate their own experience about con- flict so as to enable them to respond more successfully to real conflict situations in their lives. I discovered that the technological mentality of my early professional development was a barrier to my contribution in creating and evaluating this personal-integration kind of learning experience. The theories and models I had learned called for the specification of behavioral objectives in cognitive, affec- tive and psychomotor domains. Instructional sequences were to be designed to enable participants to master these objec- tives . Evaluation designs were to provide tests of mastery so that discrepancies between actual and expected perfor- mance could be used in revising the instructional sequences. A'gainst this orientation, the people developing the workshops considered the cognitive content of the training as merely an initial framework to aid participants in con- ceptualizing their own experience. Cognitive mastery of their models was considered by the developers to be the least important of outcomes. In fact, by itself, it was considered evidence of a failure at the level that was most important. Simply feeding back the models we gave them was incompatible with our goal that participants reorganize and integrate their workshop experience in such a way that they can better fit their actions, motives, and environment as 13 they confront new conflict situations. The individual participants' intentions, goals, dis- positions and conceptual structures were considered to be the focal starting point and the contextual framework for the training. The workshops were intended to facilitate participants1 own reconstruction of their initial states and dispositions in the light of their workshop experience. There was, however, no place in the inquiry logic and pro- cesses I had learned, for the participants' intentions, motives, goals, dispositions and conceptual frameworks. There was no place for the social norms and values that play at least as important a role as empirical regularities do in the process of human development and individuation. I experienced the frustration of being unable to find a way to evaluate these workshops that remained consistent with their personal focus and developmental orientation, and yet still spoke to the issues of the justification of konwledge and truth claims raised by the tradition of empirical research and by my professional peers. There were times when my confusion seemed to resolve into two main stances--a scientific and technical empirical research side on the one hand, and a personally focused search for meaning and understanding in one's life on the other. Both were searches for understanding. They were like James' tough and tender minded temperaments.^ One was an objective search in an external world for scientific 14 truth--the unveiling of an objective reality. The other was a personal search for meaning and understanding. Yet, as X tried to focus on the distinction, it seemed to slide around and even to evaporate. Just as James, I wanted both. I was learning to see all inquiry as personal, creative and developmental- social and political as well as theoreti- cal and technical. 1 was also coming to see the general view of science X had acquired as more than just a philoso- phy of science, but as a standpoint reflecting an entire world view with ramifications in perhaps all aspects of life. Furthermore X was coming to see an alternative to this received view. My dissertation represents an attempt at a reconstruction of inquiry based on the transformation that has taken place in my own world view. What I'm suggesting is that professionally I (along with many others) am the embodiment of a conflict between the prevailing paradigm of scientific rationality, on the one hand, and the concern of many in our culture with the humanistic self-actualization of persons, on the other. My problem is one of integrating the experience and perspectives gained from my own personal explorations and transformation with my experience and training in main- stream science. My dissertation is both the medium and culmination of this synthesizing effort to this point in my life. Thus, I see my dissertation as a part of my own inte- gration and development; and as I reflect the institutional 15 and socializing processes of our culture, so an integration of my experience can contribute to a synthesis in the larger culture. The healing and bridging of these fragmented parts of myself can contribute to an integration of these same incongruities in our society. In offering this account of the genesis of my disser- tation, I am aware of motives I would like to acknowledge but minimize in some euphemistic manner. Yet I think their presence is felt in the tone and style of some of my writ- ing, The disorientation of a disintegrating intellectual foundation, the sense of powerlessness at not having an adequate response to the evaluation problems I faced, the embarrassment over my inability to back up my seemingly empty claim of an incompatibility between research assump- tions and developmental assumptions were difficult to bear at times. Let me balance my motives for vindication and retribu- tion with a more intentional motive of reconciliation. The models and methods underlying my earlier work represented the best solution that fine minds could generate to prob- lems and issues they considered very real. How can we ground our knowledge with some reasonable measure of certainty? How can we differentiate what is of value among the plethora of theories and claims made by educators. My effort has been to attempt to get below the answers I learned to these questions and to gain a clearer 16 understanding of the questions themselves. For, at that level, I share with my colleagues the concern for rational- ity and the justification of our beliefs and action. I also realize now that my understanding of the under- lying philosophy of inquiry was superficial and fragmented. However, I feel that even this result was partly due to the technological mentality I criticize. Foundational and historical concerns were minimized in my professional train- ing. The theoretical and technical ones were considered sufficient. Nevertheless, the difficulties I encountered then have defined my cause and my project and perhaps given rise to a tendency to oversimplify or overemphasize. If I do not completely avoid polemics, I hope you will take this failure as an indication of the strength of my convictions concerning the importance of the issues. This recapitulation of my personal experience is in- tended to provide a context for my dissertation. It gives an account of my perceptions of the need for an expanded conception of rationality. In my investigations of the theoretical underpinnings of educational research and evalu- ation I have been impressed with the work of Jurgen Habermas. I wish to present Habermas' theoretical formula- tions as a framework for a more adequate theory of inquiry for education seen from a developmental perspective. 17 Jurgen Habermas: A Biographical Sketch Jurgen Habermas was born in 1929 and studied at the universities of Gbttingen, Zurich and Bonn. He has been professor of sociology and philosophy at the universities of Frankfurt am Main, Marburg and Heidelberg, and is presently director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Research in Starnberg, West Germany. Habermas has been called the most influential thinker £in Germany today. He has developed an amazingly compre- hensive social theory which integrates much in the philoso- phies of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Dilthey and Marx in the German philosophical tradition. He has incorporated Husserl, Weber, Schutz, Gadamer and others in the phenomeno- logical and hermeneutical traditions. He has provided a critique of the positivism of Comte and Mach and examined the continuing influence of positivism in contemporary philosophy. The major American pragmatists, Peirce, Dewey and Mead have been critically interpreted and integrated into his work. The psychodynamics of Freud, the theories of cognitive and moral development of Piaget, Kohlberg and Loevinger, as well as the linguistics of Chomsky, and language philosophy of Austin and Searle, along with others such as Wittgenstein, Popper and Parsons all find a place in his systematic social theory, I certainly agree with Thomas McCarthy that "Habermas1 work represents a rarely equaled combination of range and depth, synthetic power, 18 and moral-political vision."^ His capacity for comprehen- sive synthesis and integration and the depth of his analysis have prompted this comment by George Lichtheim in a review of Habermas' Knowledge and Human Interests in the Times Literary Supplement, June 5, 1969: The baffling thing about Habermas is that, at an age when most of his colleagues have painfully established control over one comer of the field, he has made himself master of the whole, in depth and breadth alike. There is no corner-cutting, no facile evasion of difficulties or spurious enunci-ation of conclusions unsupported by research: whether he is refuting Popper, dissecting the pragmatism of Charles Peirce, delving into the medieval antecedents of Schelling's metaphysics, or bringing Marxist sociology up to date, there is always the same uncanny mastery of sources, joined to an enviable talent for clarifying intri- cate logical puzzles. He seems to have been born with a faculty for digesting the toughest kind of material and then refashioning it into orderly wholes. Hegel, whom he resembles at least in his appetite for encyclopedic knowledge, possessed this capacity in the highest degree, but he was cursed with an abominable style and a perverse fondness for obscurity, whereas Habermas writes as clearly and precisely as any empiricist.8 As McCarthy warns, the last statement is an exaggera- tion; Habermas' writings can be very difficult to read. They assume the readers' knowledge of a fairly wide range of ideas and literature. His work is filled with unfamiliar approaches to problems and expressions that resist easy translation and explanation. These difficulties not withstanding, I have found that once I gained some familiarity with the scope of Habermas' work and the individual theorists he integrates, his style and way of putting things took on a clarity and precision 19 that is difficult to paraphrase or simplify with any justice. The investment in time and energy to gain this familiarity has been very large but has provided rich dividends. Through Habermas, I have begun to formulate my own comprehensive social theory. This structure provides an extremely useful framework for understanding and inte- grating the other theorists I confront. The overall thrust of Habermas' work can be seen as a systematic critique of contemporary theories of inquiry and their philosophical roots, and an articulation of an expanded conception of rationality that can serve as a foundation for social theory. In this study, I draw on a fairly small proportion of Habermas' work. Much of it has not been translated into English and many of his pursuits are beyond the scope of my own endeavors. I have attempted to draw together those basic ideas that seem to have the most relevance and promise for the formulation of a theory of inquiry for educational development. Scope of the Dissertation My task is, first, to articulate an expanded conception of rationality, providing theories for justifying our beliefs and actions which explicitly incorporate the per- sonal and interpersonal dimensions of human experience and understanding. Then, using this conception as a foundation, 20 I lay out a theory of inquiry for educational development. It may be helpful to see these two aspects of my task as proceeding at two levels, the level of ordinary experience, and the level of inquiry as a specialized extension of ordinary experience. At the level of ordinary experience, I begin Chapter II by considering traditional and modern conceptions of rationality in a brief historical overview of the way that reason has been seen to relate to and guide human action. This review of reason and action serves as a context for better understanding Habermas T account of the three realms of human experience, the material, the interpersonal, and the personal. This account is presented in Chapter III as Habermas' theory of cognitive interests. In this Chapter, I show how three fundamental human interests, the technical, the practical, and the emancipatory, prefigure and guide our experience in the material, interpersonal and personal realms, respectively. In ordinary experience, the three cognitive interests function together. The three realms of experience are completely integrated and constantly interact with each other. Moving to the level of inquiry, I represent inquiry processes as historically evolved specialized extensions of life processes in ordinary experience in the three realms. As the technical, practical and emancipatory cognitive 21 interests are the basis for objective, intersubjective and personal experience, so are they the bases for three corresponding forms of inquiry that are extensions of these three realms of experience. The three forms of inquiryare empirical-analytic, hermeneutic and critical, respectively. I give a brief overview of each of these forms of inquiry that shows, first, their derivation from their respective experiential realms, and then indicates the logic of inquiry, the object domain, and the kind of knowledge gained from each. Habermas looks to language for a foundation to a more adequate conception of rationality. He believes that an examination of language and communication provides an account of the inter-personal dimension of human experiences that allows us to move beyond the inadequate theories of experi- ence based on individual consciousness. Furthermore, language provides a medium through which we represent and communicate about our experience in the three realms. An analysis of the structure of language reveals an important relationship between objective, intersubjective and subjec- tive experience and the justification of our beliefs and actions. Chapter III continues with ar. examination of this relationship and an examination of the role of language in representing our experience in the three realms in Habermas1 theory of communication, 22 An expanded conception of rationality must provide an account of how we can rationally justify our beliefs and actions. In this regard Habermas' theory of cognitive interests and theory of communication serve as a foundation for his account of the justification of truth claims con- cerning our beliefs, and the justification of rightness or moral claims concerning our actions. The justification of truth claims is considered in Chapter IV which presents Habermas1 consensus theory of truth. Then the justification of moral claims is considered in Chapter V which presents Habermas' theory of communicative ethics. As inquiry processes are derived from ordinary experience, so they feed back into ordinary life. Inquiry processes generate beliefs, self-understanding and implications for action that are sub- ject to the same processes of justification that are devel- oped in Chapter IV and V. Inquiry processes are born out of and in turn transform human development. In Chapter VI, I explore this relation- ship by tracing the genesis of experience in the three realms from a developmental perspective. By integrating the work of Piaget, Mead and Freud into Habermas' theory of cognitive Interests and theory of communication we derive a theory of human development that provides a foundation for both a developmental orientation to education and a theory of inquiry for educational development.9 23 Finally, Chapter III consists of an examination of the relation between the theory of inquiry developed in this study and the current theory and practice of inquiry in education. Specifically, I focus on educational evaluation because of my greater familiarity with evaluation inquiry and because the difficulties X had in using standard approaches to evaluation led me to the focus of this disser- tation . I begin Chapter VII with a review of eight prevailing models of evaluation and consider their relation to empiri- cal-analytic, hermeneutic, and critical inquiry. I go on to briefly discuss the contributions of each form of inquiry. Then, I conclude with an illustration of the application of the theory to the development and evaluation of the conflict workshop which I used to illustrate my difficulties with prevailing conceptions in Chapter I. FOOTNOTES CHAPTER I ■1-See, for example, The Encylopedia of Philosophy, 1967 ed. , s.v. "Knowledge and Belief," by'"Anthony Quinton. 2 In this text, I follow the usage of J.J. Shapiro in which "objectify" and "objectivate" refer to different concepts: "To objectify (ver^egenstandlichen) means to make into an object of Instrumental action or of natural science separate from and external to the subject-in other words, to constitute in the Kantian sense. To objectivate (chiefly obj ektivieren) means to give form in a symbolic system] that is to make into a vehicle of communicative action. The latter may become external to the subject in the sense that others can participate in it, but it is at the same time that in which the subject exists." (J.J. Shapiro, translator's note in Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests [Boston: Beacon Press, iy /1J: footnote 23 to Chapter 2, p. 323). ^See, for example, Eva L. Baker, "The Technology of Instructional Development," in Second Handbook of Research on Teaching, ed. Robert M.W. Travers (Chicago: Rand McNally 6c Company, 1973), pp. 245-285, especially, pp. 252-267. 4-See, for example, L.R, Gay, Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application (Columbus, Ohio: 1976) p[ ZT] ^William James, Pragmatism and Other Essays (New York: Washington Square Press, 1963) pp. 7-14" ^Thomas McCarthy, Translator's Introduction to Legiti- mation Crisis, by Jurgen Habermas (Boston: Beacon Press, 19737 pT viiT ^Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jurgen Haber- mas (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1978) inside front of dust jacket. Scited by McCarthy, Translator's Introduction to Legitimation Crisis, by Habermas, p. vii-viii. 24 25 oBy providing educational development with a philo- sophical foundation on the one hand, and a theory of inquiry on the other, I hope to give the Educational Development Program Area at The Ohio State University a theoretical basis for its place in the Faculty of Educational Founda-tions and Research. CHAPTER XX REASON AND ACTION One of the central features of Habermas' work is his attempt to articulate and defend an expanded conception of rationality. As part of this effort he examines the role of reason and the relation between reason and action in the philosophies of most of the great philosophers from ancient Greece to the present. To understand his position in detail, it would be necessary to follow his analysis of reason and action in its early formulation with the Greeks, through Roman and Medieval philosophy, the Renaissance, Enlighten- ment and finally nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy. X find both the scope and depth of this analysis to be truly amazing. It is a richly rewarding journey through the his- tory of philosophy. While it is beyond the scope of this work to review Habermas! analysis in detail, I would like to present some of the highlights in order tc, illustrate the meaning of theoretical, practical and technical knowledge for Habermas and to provide a context for the theory of knowledge and theory of value that comprise Habermas 1 expanded conception of rationality. 26 27 The Classical Relation Between Theoretical and Practical Reason and Human Action For Aristotle, human action aims at the good and just life and is guided by both reason and desire. "What affirmation and negation are in the realm of thought, pur- suit and avoidance are in the realm of desire."I For action to qualify as moral, these two faculties must come together in a particular relationship: "reason must affirm what desire pursues."^ Only that desire which operates through reason is rational. Reason, the human rational faculty, is central in Aristotle's philosophy. Its function as a whole is the attainment of truth. In the realm of moral action, for example, reason aims at "truth in harmony with correct desire. The rational faculty has application in three major arenas of human activity which define Aristotle's three forms of knowledge; theoretical, practical and productive. The highest is theoretical knowledge, involving the use of reason in its purest form: the attainment of truth for its own sake. Theoria, detached contemplation of the universal truths of nature to see things as they really are without desire to change them, apprehends realities whose fundamen- tal principles "do not admit of being other than they are."^ Theoria yields episteme, apodictic knowledge of the unchang- ing and eternal order and nature of the cosmos. The 23 rigorous practice of theoria develops the capacity of sophia, theoretical knowledge or wisdom, the highest intellectual and philosophical excellence of the human mind. While the human theoretical faculty is concerned with the universal and unchanging order and nature of the cosmos, the practical and productive faculties bring reason to bear on the changing realm of human kind and its activities, on that which does admit of being other than it is. In the practical sphere reason guides changing human activity as such; in the productive sphere, the realm of coming-to-be, reason guides the production of a given product or state of affairs. The practical realm concerns humans as moral agents and refers to the sphere of praxis, or human action, the pursuit of the good and just life for its own sake. Praxis signifies the realm of human ethical and political life. The search for principles of moral conduct on which one can base right action, and the cultivation of a virtuous charac- ter develops the rational capacity of phronesis, practical or prudential knowledge or wisdom. Aristotle considered ethics, the doctrine of the good and just life to be in- separable from the master science of politics. This is be- cause the human person is a zoon politikon, a social and political being who realizes a truly human nature only in the polis or state. Moral action is impossible outside of human society, for it is only in relation to other persons 29 that actions can be morally right or wrong. Ethics, politics and phronesis, the capacity for moral judgment, are directed toward achieving social praxis and maintaining order of virtuous conduct among the citizens of the polis. The third form of knowledge, productive, is desired for the sake of making. The productive sphere concerns the person as producer, whose task is completed with the achieve- ment of the desired result. The telos, or goal, for the employment of reason in this realm is the production of a desired product or outcome which, in turn, serves a higher human purpose. The rational capacity applied to production is techne. the art, craft or skill of the producer. The possession of techne enables one to produce a particular state of affairs. For example, it is the capacity of the shoemaker to produce a pair of shoes, the composer to create a symphony, or the physician to bring about a state of health. Poesis, the production of useful and beautiful artifacts or outcomes, has the quality of producing guided by true reason; lack of art, of producing guided by false reason. It is important for our purpose to note that theoreti- cal, practical and productive ultimately referred to dif- ferent spheres of being. The telos of each was different: knowledge for its own sake, knowledge for right action, and knowledge for artful creation, respectively. In particular, as a guide to social praxis, neither theoretical nor 30 1productive knowledge had concrete relevance, Theoria was directed to the universal truths of the cosmos, to an order of realty that could not be other than it is, could be neither changed nor made. And techne, used only in the sphere of coming-to-be, provided no useful understanding of how to act in relation to one's peers, of what products or states of affairs to create, nor even of the ends to which an artistic creation might be put once completed. While theoretical reason provided no precepts for action in either the practical or productive realms, it did have the potential for entering the conduct of a few individuals, and through them, the life of the polis. An individual who had the leisure and the capacity for the contemplative life, through strenuous mental effort in the practice of theoria, could be brought sympathetically into accord with the harmony and proportion of the cosmos, reproducing them internally. Through the soul's tuning itself to the order of the cosmos, sophia entered the con- duct of the person. In turn, through the teachings and administerings of such individuals, sophia entered the praxis of the polis, bringing the ethos or character of the polis into harmony with its own order. Finally, the citizens of the polis, through participation in its ethos and socialization in the healthy social climate, incorpora- ted this order into the conduct of their own lives. 31 Nevertheless, theoretical knowlege, per se, did not pro- vide a basis for right action. That function remains with phronesis, or practical knowledge, which was gained not through contemplation but pedagogically through a teacher and through practice and cultivation of a virtuous character in real social praxis. Theoria addressed none of the things that make people happy, nor was it to be done with a view to any action. But unlike theoretical knowledge, practical knowledge issues commands ; its function was to tell us what we ought to do and what we ought not to do. It was concerned with what is just, noble and good. Its telos was right action. Aristotle made it clear that it is better to have practical knowledge based on experience that results in right action, than knowledge of universal principles.^ Neither was right action a part of the realm of posesis, or artistic creation; right action could not be guided by technical knowledge. Techne, the logic of method, was cleverness of appropriate means to a given end. It could not guide the choice of ends. Such choice required virtue and moral insight. For, as Aristotle said, "If the goal is noble, cleverness deserves praise; if the goal is base,gcleverness is knavery." While cleverness was necessary for leading the good and just life, practical wisdom could not be reduced to cleverness. Neither could it be reduced to methodological competence, to skill or techne. In summary, the classical conception called for three realms of being and three kinds of knowledge, theoretical, practical and technical, each with its own telos, and none reducible to the others. Transformation of the Classical Relation Between Theoretical, Practical and Productive Reason. The classical constellation of theoretical, practical and productive knowledge has changed radically with the rise of positivism and modern science. Social, behavioral and political sciences now search for universal laws of social relations (in the theoretical realm) that can be used as a basis for the development of a technology (the productive realm) for social regulation and control (in the practical realm). Praxis has been reduced to techne guided by theoria. The meaning of each realm has been transformed, as well. Theoretical knowledge, episteme, which once referred to the unchanging and perfect order of the cosmos, desired for its own sake, has become the quantitatively expressed, empiri- cally grounded, analytically integrated theories found in the most advanced natural sciences. In the words of Carl Hemp el, A scientific theory might therefore be likened to a complex spatial network: Its terms are repre-sented by the knots, while the threads connecting the latter correspond, in part, to the definitions and, in part, to the fundamental and derivative hypotheses included in the theory. The whole sys- tem floats, as it were, by rules of interpretation.These might be viewed as strings which are not part of the network but link certain points of the latter with specific places in the plane of observation. By virtue of those interpretive connections, the 33 network can function as a scientific theory: from certain observational data, we may ascend, via an interpretive string, to some point in the theoreti- cal network, thence proceed, via defintions and hypotheses, to Other points, from which another interpretive string permits a descent to the plane of observation,7 The aim of this complex hypothetico-deductive network is to enable us to begin at the level of observation with a description of an initial state of nature, then to proceed to the level of theory in order to derive principles we can use at the level of observation to predict or produce a future (desirable) state. The meaning of the productive and practical realms have changed too. Techne, artistic skill and craftsmanship, has become our modern theoretically ground technology-applied science which bears little resemblance to the classical concept of craftsmanship. Finally, phronesis, practical knowledge regarding moral and ethical conduct has become absorbed into the technical realm by way of scientifi- cally grounded social theory which aims at regulating social interaction for the welfare and order of the state. Such regulation does ultimately influence the welfare of individuals, although this usually occurs ''behind their backs," that is, without the need for awareness of, or con- scious cooperation with, the larger processes of social in- teraction. This contrasts with Aristotle's view of theoria penetrating the social realm through the action and interac- tion of enlightened individuals. 34 In Theory and Practice,8 Habermas traces the evolution of this transition in the classical constellation of theoretical, practical and technical reason through an examination of the social philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas More and Thomas Hobbes. His concern is with showing that the loss of the ethical dimen- sion in the practical realm renders the modern conceptions inadequate. Beginning with St, Thomas, he shows how the function of social orientation once provided by phronesis, and through participation in the polis, has been assumed by the system of lex naturae, or natural law. The concept of natural law was grounded in the metaphysical premise of the Greeks that the universe is a rational whole governed by a universal principle of reason. Thus natural law could provide norms for action derived from the nature and telos of human kind. While St. Thomas remained within the Aristotelian tradition in recognizing that a state can only gain the right to be called a state by rendering its citizens capable of virtuous action, the guiding force for such action was no longer the citizens' capacity for moral conduct, but the administrations of the prince in accord with natural law. This shift repre- sents a move away from Aristotle's critiria for a Polis. For St, Thomas, the criterion of social order became the peace and welfare of the citizens rather than virtuous con- duct and the freedom of the citizens. 35 Yet, Aristotle had made a distinction between a mere association of citizens, a koinonia symmachia, and the polis, maintaining that a legal community founded merely for safe- ty and the orderly exchange of commerce is not, in itself, a polis. The ethical dimension is missing. Therefore, in the social philosophy of St. Thomas, social order was no longer anchored in the practical knowledge and praxis of free citizens but was maintained in accord with natural law by the legitimate power of the prince or monarch. However, when the teleological metaphysics of Aristotle and St. Thomas declined under the critique of the nom- inalists, the ontological basis of natural law was criti- cally weakened.^ From the Greek philosophical tradition to the thirteenth century, only universals were considered to be the objects of thought. William of Ockham refuted this conception, claiming that there was nothing general in the world, but only particulars. All knowledge was based on empirical evidence from experience of individual things and events. From such experience we cannot deduce any final causes or telos for human kind that could ground a natural theology. If appeal to the divine order of nature could not provide a basis for social regulation, then by what means was society to be ordered? Habermas discusses the works of Machiavelli and More to show how their proposals continued to empty political theory of its moral force and contribute to the divorce of politics 36 and ethics once united for Aristotle, Both philosophers dealt with the organization of society through technical, rather than practical means. Social institutions were re- duced to their instrumental significance. Gone was the telos of right action for its own sake. Machiavelli and More had thus broken through the class- ical barrier between praxis and poesis by suggesting social organization through the use of techne, through "acting in the mode of producing."10 However, this endeavor could not be carried out until a theoretical foundation for tech- nical knowledge could be produced. This, in turn, required a change in emphasis from the classical premium on contem- plation to the value of action, from the vita contemplativa, to the vita activa. In classical philosophy both techne and and phronsis were considered lower cognitive faculties whose ultimate function was to create the conditions for theoria; they themselves could never be derived nor justified through theory. In this sense praxis was theory free. With the rise of science in the seventeenth century, however, this perspective began to change. Through scientific inquiry, theory, in the form of universal truths of nature, was pur- sued in the manner of the technician: discovery for the purposes of prediction and control. Classical theoretical knowledge, episteme, however, was desired for its own sake and was explicitly contrasted with the pragmatic knowledge of the artisan and technician. Under the new scientific 37 perspective, theory took on the pragmatic function of arti- ficially reproducing natural processes and thereby gained a new criterion for its truth: successful prediction of experience in a given context, It only remained for Thomas Hobbes to focus this new science on the universal laws of society in order to develop a scientific basis for St. Thomas' natural law. Rational natural law represented an attempt to find a theory... by which one can produce, with scientific precision, political institutions which will regulate the affairs of men with the reliability with which a clock regulates the motions of time, or creation understood in terms of a clock, regulates the processes of nature. 1*1 Hobbes believed that he could show a causal connection be- tween man's asocial instinctual nature and a normative system of social control. Man's instinctual fear of violent death impels him toward establishing conditions for survival in peace and order through a system of social contracts and the necessity of having this system of contracts enforced empowers the state with its sovereignty. Justice becomes obedience to the law and now is justified in the "nexus of causality. In this way, by using the mechanistic assumptions of the theory of science of his time, Hobbes was able to derive norms of practical reason (in the civil Natural Law) from the mechanics of natural desire: And I found the reason was, that from a com- munity of goods there must needs arise contention, whose enjoyment should be greatest. And from that contention all kinds of calamities must unavoidably 38 ensue, which by the instinct of nature every man is taught to shun, .,.which principles being laid down, I seem from them to have demonstrated by a most evident connexion, in this little work of mine, the absolute necessity of leagues and con- tracts , and thence the rudiments necessary of leagues and contracts, and thence the rudiments both of moral and civil p r u d e n c e . - ^ Here, in Hobbes' political theory, the moral and ethi- cal concerns of the good life in the classical tradition were no longer present. The power of the sovereign was based on and directed to preserving life and making it as pleasant as possible. Sovereign normative laws for the care and welfare of the citizens, by their mechanistic derivation from natural desire had the sanctioning force of universal laws of nature but their moral content was lost. In place of sophia infused praxis, Hobbes directs his readers to seek a less elevated goal: I persuaded myself... that you will esteem it better to enjoy yourselves in the present state, though perhaps not the best, than by waging war endeavor to procure a reformation for bther men in another age, yourselves in the meanwhile either killed or consumed with age.^ Furthermore, Hobbes' inquiry into social relations par- alleled the methods of scientific inquiry into the motion of bodies in nature: For as in a watch, or some such small machine, the matter, figure, and motion of the wheels cannot well be known, except it be taken insunder and viewed in parts; so to make a more curious search into the rights of states and duties of subjects, ...that we rightly understand what the quality of human nature is, in what matters it is, in what not, fit to make 39 up civil government, and how men must be agreed among themselves thatintend to grow up into a well-grounded state, 1~) Habermas points out that the relationship of theoria to praxis was now conceived in terms of the model of clas- sical mechanics. The social relations of life became objectified as objects of nature which could be investigated scientifically in the search for causal laws that would per- mit the derivation of norms for an orderly functioning society. The development of natural law became a "physics of sociation. n1^ However, the technical regulation of society under the guidance of natural laws fails to include the dimension of social praxis that was the basis of moral conduct in tra- ditional philosophy. It cannot enter into the consciousness and convictions of acting human beings. Habermas maintains that control over the processes of nature is essentially different from control over social processes.The act of the technical domina- tion of nature is in principle a solitary and silent act--free form any negotiated agreement among active subjects who wish to control their social relations practically.1' Methodological certainty does not obviate the need for pub- lic discussion: even if control of social proceses con- verged with control of natural processes "a prior mediation through the consciousness of the citizens who discuss and act still is needed."1® In the practical sphere, the cost 40 of a gain in methodological rigor is too high if access to praxis is lost in the process. For Aristotle, action was guided, not by the universal laws of nature, but by accumulated traditional precepts and rules, which were in turn legitimated in their successful application to particular practical affairs. Traditional rules and social norms arise inductively as schemata gained from the previous experience of the community--dialectically creating and being created by concrete social interaction. These norms exist within the consciousness and conduct of the citizens, and thereby serve to orient the citizens into a community. The legitimating function of conventional wisdom cannot be provided by technical knowledge itself, for technology does not release us from decision and judgment. We must still resolve conflict and seek fulfillment of our needs and interests through language mediated interaction. Technical knowledge itself is in part legitimated through social interaction regarding the needs and interests of the com- munity and the relevance of existing techniques or the need for new ones, The Need for an Expanded Conception of Rationality In tracing the transition in the relationshp between the theoretical, practical and technical (productive) realms I have tried to illustrate the difference between practical 41 and technical questions. There is a fundamental difference in the way reason guides action in the social and natural realms. In the social world, action is irreducably communi- cative and is guided by reciprocally acknowledged norms embedded in the language and institutions of the culture. Practical questions involve the acceptance or rejection of norms for action based on valid reasons. In the natural world, action is instrumental and is guided by knowledge of empirical regularities in nature. Technical questions involve the rational selection of instrumental alternatives and organization of means once the goals have been given. The discovery and efficient use of means appropriate to a given end seems the defining characteristic of rationality. Yet to treat persons instrumentally in this way is to ignore the moral and ethical character of interpersonal social action and to violate the humanity of those involved. Nor, as I argue in Chapter IV, can language-mediated social interaction in the practical sphere be properly understood in the same way we understand objects in nature. That is, actions cannot be understood without recourse to the intersubjective meaning of the actions to the people themselves. With Habermas, I maintain that practical questions, questions concerning the normative orientation and regula- tion of human action, cannot be reduced to the instrumental logic of empirical-analytic inquiry and treated technically. 42 Yet, as I have tried to show in the transition from classi- cal thought, there has been an effort to bring about just such a reduction. Consider, for example, the following statement by Michael Scriven, a philosopher who has had considerable influence on the practitioners' understanding of the inquiry process in educational research and evalua- tion: The most powerful way to prove that value judgments have a place in science is to prove that ethics is a science. I believe it is, po-tentially at least, though not for the usual reasons. Given the preceding arguments, it is clear that one can construct a type of ethics by addressing the applied social science problem of determining the optimal set of social rules and attitudes for a society facing given economic, psychological, and environmental constraints, where "optimal" is defined pre-morally, that is only with regard to the value-bases of the ele-ments in the society. Since the system resulting will probably cover about the same domain of be- havior as what is traditionally called ethics and will involve about as many of the traditional moral precepts as any two traditional ethical systems share, and since it will not involve any- thing notably different, it is entitled to be called ethics. And since it can be scientifically justified, it is entitled to be viewed as the only defensible system of ethics, alternative justifi- cations for ethics having been long since exposed as untenable. Scriven's recommendation reduces ethics to an applied social science which seeks to generate optimal rules for maximiz- ing premoral values of social elements (people and institu- tions?) . He simply continues in a more sophisticated manner the attempt since St. Thomas, through Hobbes to the present, to guide human conduct by principles removed from human error, 43 By removing the burden of justification from public dis- course in the community of enlightened citizens to the scientific procedures of technical specialists, Scriven claims to give us the only defensible system of ethics; but I think he removes the moral dimension itself from ethics. Prevailing conceptions of rationality in this century have been formulated within the natural and technical sphere and the empirical-analytic framework of inquiry. As Kurt Baier shows, rationality has been conceived as the exercise of the faculty or power of reasoning which involves, a kind of non-sensory perception of logical relations, and the imaginative conjoining of them in chains of reasoning, arguments, inferences, or deductions. Reasons, the links in these chains, are thought of as known propositions entailing others for which they are reasons.20 Under this conception., rational action requires only consis- tency of belief and the pursuance of appropriate (and avoidance of inappropriate) means to one's irrationally adopted ends. The ends are considered irrational because reason cannot guide the choice of ends; reason is the slave of the passions. With rationality limited to logical entailment, reasons for something (for example actions) are limited to facts that entail the thing or action. Yet no fact can logically entail an action; one cannot logically deduce action consequences from a given state of affairs. Rationality is thus limited to the rational choice of means and knowledge is limited to the sphere of technical 44 knowledge of empirical regularities that we can use for pre- dicting and controlling nature to bring about pre-given ends. More generally, knowledge has been held to be justified true belief with both the theories of justification and the theories of truth falling within the technical and instru- mental realm. Yet these theories of action, knowledge, justification and truth are not adequate for a conception of rationality for the practical realm. They lack the moral dimension. While I believe that practical question cannot be reduced to technical questions, I see no reason to denigrate the contribution that empirical-analytic science can make to the quality of social life. I do not support a romantic rejection of science and technology as such. The problem is not technical reason per se but its universalization, the loss of the distinction between practical and technical questions. The problem is to articulate and defend a distinction between them and yet to show their relation to each other by locating both forms of reason in a comprehen- sive theory of rationality. I will now turn to Habermas' attempt to formulate such an expanded conception of rationality. In Chapter III, I examine Habermas' theory of cognitive interests and his theory of communication. These theories form a foundation for his theory of justification. The justification of problematic knowledge claims in the 45 technical realm form Habermas' theory of truth, while justification of problematic knowledge claims in the practical realm forms his theory of ethics. I examine the theory of truth in Chapter IV and the theory of ethics in Chapter V. FOOTNOTES CHAPTER II ^Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, 1962) pp. 147-148. ^Ibid., p. 148, 3ibid. ^Tbid. , p . 147 5Ibid., pp. 157-158. 6Ibid., pp. 169-170. ?Carl G. Hempel, Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, vol. I~& II: Foundations of the Unity of Science, vol. II, no. 7 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1952) p. 36. 3Jurgen Habermas, Theory and Practice (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973). ^See, for example, The Encylopedia of Philosophy, s.v. "Epistemology, History of," by D.W, Hamlyn, pp^ I5-To, and "William of Ockham," by Ernest A. Moody. ^Hannah Arendt, Vita Activa (Stuttgart: 1961) p. 293 cited by Habermas, Theory and Practice, p. 60. H-Ibid., p. 61. ^Habermas, Theory and Practice, p. 64. ■^Thomas Hobbes, De Cive in English Works, ed. Sir Wil- liam Molesworth (London": T538) Epistle Dedicatory, p. vi, cited by Habermas, Theory and Practice, p. 66. 14Ibid., p. 70. ^Ibid. , pp. 70-71. ■^Habermas, Theory and Practice, p. 71. 46 47 17Ibid., p. 75. 18Ibid. l^Michael Scriven, "The Exact Role of Value Judgments in Science," in Program Development in Education, (Van- couver, B.C.: Centre-for Continuing Education, University of British Columbia, 1974) p. 50. 20Kurt Baier, "The Social Source of Reason," Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association 51 (August 1978): 708. CHAPTER III HABERMAS' THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN INTERESTS In Chapter II, the role of reason i .1 guiding human action was examined in relation to three kinds of reason and knowledge, theoretical, technical and practical. In classical thought, these three realms remained autonomous, but their relationships to each other were problematic. In modem thought practical knowledge has been reduced to technical knowledge guided by theoretical knowledge, but the moral and ethical dimension of practical knowledge is lost. That critical interpersonal dimension must be re- established in an adequate conception of rationality. While modem conceptions neglect the interpersonal dimension, neither classical nor modem conceptions provide an adequate account of the personal dimension of human experience and understanding. In Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas has formulated a social theory of knowledge which articulates three realms of human experience. First, he collapses the theoretical and technical dimensions into one realm of objective experience. Second, he expli- citly provides for an interpersonal dimension of intersubjective experience. Finally, he adds a personal realm of subjective experience. 48 49 This chapter presents an account of these three realms of experience. I briefly outline the three cognitive interests that constitute experience in each realm, derive three corresponding forms of inquiry, consider two kinds of human action, and examine the role of language in represent- ing experience in the three realms. The chapter begins with Habermas1 theory of cognitive interests, the technical, practical and emancipatory. These "semi-transcendental11 cognitive interests prefigure and guide our experience in the objective, intersubjective, and subjective realms, respectively. From this framework I develop a theory of inquiry in which inquiry processes are seen as historically evolved specialized extensions of life processes in the three realms of experience. Three forms of inquiry--empirical-analytic, hermeneutic, and critical--are derived from the three cog- nitive interests and realms of experience. In this account, I describe the logic of inquiry, the object domain, and the kind of knowledge gained from each form of inquiry. Based on the theory of cognitive interests, we can distinguish two kinds of human action. Chapter III con- tinues with a brief consideration of instrumental and commun- icative action. Chapter III concludes with an examination of Habermas' theory of communication. Here, I consider the role of lang- uage in representing our experience in the three realms. 50 Furthermore, this analysis of language provides a basis for justification of our beliefs and actions in an expanded conception of rationality. The Theory of Cognitive Interests The penchant for comprehensive systems is common among German philosophers and Habermas is no exception. He dis- tinguishes three fundamental human interests, or human needs, that define the conditions for human evolution. These interests also designate three frames of reference from which we apprehend reality, three classes of human action, three categories of knowledge, and three corresponding forms of inquiry. The three interests include the technical:, the practical and the emancipatory. Habermas calls them cognitive interests because they guide the development of perceptual and cognitive processes. They each characterize a particular frame of reference from which we apprehend reality and they guide the generation of three corresponding categories of knowledge; thus they are interests that deter- mine what we know. In Habermas 1 terms, they are knowledge constitutive interests. Each cognitive interest unites a particular configuration of experience, action, knowledge, language use, human development, species evolution, social organization and specialized form of inquiry. While a com- prehensive account of these configurations is beyond the scope of this study, I will outline them briefly. 51 In Table 1, I provide a heuristic summary of the various dimensions of these three knowledge constitutive, or cognitive interests. I do not mean to draw hard and fast distinctions among these dimensions, but making the chart seemed to require that I give names for the dimensions and in some cases the words I chose seemed not to be com- pletely satisfactory. I had similar difficulties in filling in some cells of the table. Nevertheless, the summary may be useful as a reference in helping you keep track of the large number of terms and ideas the theory attempts to integrate. Experiment with your own terms and try to get at the underlying ideas. It will be advantageous to begin our description of the cognitive interests by considering three domains of experience. Intuitively, we can distinguish the experience of an objective external nature, an inter-subjective social reality and our own subjective internal reality. These modes of experience represent frames of reference, or points of view, from which reality is apprehended. While we can focus on our experience from any of these three points of view, experience is not completely reducible to any of the three. Experience in each domain is mediated or consti- tuted in relation to a particular cognitive interest, but the three kinds of experience are interdependent. TABLE 1 Dimensions of Che Three Cognitive Interests 52 Dimension Knowledge Constitutive/Cognitive Incerest Technical Practical Emancipatory Experiential Dimensions Telos/Goal Technical Control Practical Orientation Individuated Autonomy Dimension of the World Mature Society Self Dimension of Reality External Reality Social Reality Inner Reality Dimension of Experience Objective Intersubjective Subjective Frame of Reference Material Interpersonal Personal Kind of Action Instrumental Communicative Enlightened Inquiry Dimensions Form of Inquiry Empirical/Analytic Hermeneutic Critical Kind of Knowledge Theoretical/ Technical Practical Self Knowledge Ordering Principles Laws Norms Insights/selfunderstanding Object Domain Objectified Experience: Thir.gs/Events Objectified Experience: Persons/Meanings Pseudo-obiective/ -normative patterns Repressed Motives Speech/Language Dimensions Pragmatic Functions of Language Repres entatlve Descriptive Cognitive Analytic Interactive Prescriptive Performative Expressive Evaluative Class of Speech Acts Constacive (e.g. Asserting/Denying) Regulative (e.g. Requesting/ Refusing Representative (e.g. Revealing/ Concealing) Validity Claim Truth Rightness/ Legitimacy Authenticity/ Veracity Focal Dimension Propositional Content Interpersonal Relationship Normative Content Intentional Content Modalities Being-Illusion Ought-Is Essence-Appearance Developmental Dimensions Social Medium/ Life Structure Labor/Work Language/ Interaction Power/ Authority Dimension of Development Cognitive Interactive Motivational Ego Functions Adapts to External World Integrated into Symbolic Structure Needs Expressed Through Social Structure 53 Technical Control The technical cognitive interest designates the need to function successfully in nature. We must secure control of natural processes if we are to survive and achieve our purposes. As a species, we have evolved physical forms and cognitive processes that facilitate our interaction with nature. With Marx, we can say that the formation of the five senses is the work of all of previous history. At the same time, it is easy to see that our experience of the world is a function of our perceptual and cognitive appara- tus . Our grasp of reality is determined by cognitive processes which themselves evolved to further our control over nature. Not only has the interest in control guided the devel- opment of our means for knowing the world, it has also guided the production of knowledge itself. Through cumula- tive learning processes we have acquired knowledge and skills that expand our power to control and act successfully in nature. This knowledge and skill has become organized into the social institutions of labor and work, and has evolved into the various trades, crafts, industries and technologies of our modern world. Habermas suggests that empiricalanalytic sciences are an extension of these institutions; they disclose reality from the same point of view, namely, instrumental control over objectified processes. From this frame of reference, knowledge is conceived functionally; it 54 is an instrument for furthering human adaptation and sur- vival, and the attainment of human values. Empiricalanalytic inquiry merely formalizes and lends methodical rigor to the cumulative learning processes that occur in everyday life. It generates theoretical, technical or empirical knowledge. Practical Orientation In the same way that cognitive interest in technical control concerns successful transactions between social beings and nature, so the practical cognitive interest con- cerns successful transactions among social beings themselves. The practical cognitive interest designates the need for securing a shared social reality that can orient the action of individuals in a community. Habermas calls this kind of shared orientation an intersubjectivity of mutual under- standing. Intersubjectivity refers to the communality between individuals who mutually acknowledge the validity of certain norms of conduct and who use and understand the meaning of certain symbols, as in language or traffic signs. As a species we have evolved physical and cognitive capaci- ties in the form of ordinary language that facilitate inter- action among individuals in a community. In turn, we recog- nize the influence that language has in shaping our experience of reality. Reciprocal understanding by means of a common language binds a group of individuals into a community. A given 55 symbol in this language has an intersubjectively valid meaning which is binding for all subjects on penalty of not being understood. The experience of individuals in the community is mediated through these shared symbols and therefore the interest in the formation of an actionorienting intersubjectivity of mutual understanding is a knowledge constitutive interest. Experience is organized into the general categories of ordinary language. Yet ordinary language consists in more than its formal symbols and their syntax and semantics. An individual "life history" might be thought of as the unit of life processes in the human species. It is an experienced unity composed of the accumulated relations between the individual and the things and people that enter into the individual's world. These accumulated relations, called "life relations", establish the significance of other people and things for an individual. Significance, in this context, is global in that it reflects a fusing of cog- nitive meaning, action orientation, and affective attitude even though these dimensions of meaning can be distinguished in descriptive, prescriptive and evaluative or expressive terms. The significance that a person or thing acquires for individuals is related to their entire developmental history and is therefore inalienably individual. However, meanings are never completely private. On the one hand, they have a certain intersubjective validity from 56 common life experience and can be expressed symbolically by individuals who communicate with each other in the same language. Habermas quotes Dilthey: Every individual expression of life represents something common. Each work, each sentence, each gesture or civility, each art work and each histori- cal deed is understandable only because there is something common linking him who expresses himself in them and him who understands. The individual constantly experiences, thinks, and acts in a sphere of what is common, and only in it does he understand.2 It is only in this sphere of what is common that I can under- stand another's expressions of life or that I can reflexively reconstruct and understand my own experience. On the other hand, individual experience does contain an inalienably individual element and is therefore imper- fectly represented in the general categories of language. Yet ordinary language has a structure which allows this individual element to be communicated indirectly. To show how this is possible, Habermas draws on Diltheyrs three classes of life expressions: linguistic expressions, actions, and experiential expressions. Linguistic expres- sions take place through symbols of the language that can be completely abstracted from concrete life context. Under- standing through these formal categories is "monologic." That is, dialogue is impossible through formal symbols because the speaker's identity is lost in the universal forms of language abstracted from any time, place or 57 speaker. There is no provision for speakers to retain their individuality, their separateness as individual speakers. But life experience is also expressed in conduct or intentional actions that obey general norms. Actions are the second form of life expressions. As with linguistic expressions, however, individual conditions of life cannot be directly expressed through actions that obey general norms. The individual is misunderstood when identified strictly by his spoken word or by his manifest action. It is the third class of expressions which show the relation between the individual's experience and its explicit expression in linguistic terms or intentional actions. This is the class of "experiential expressions," such as gestures or facial and body expressions like "blushing or turning pale, rigidification, nervous glances, relaxation and even laughing and cyring." Such expressions are signs of unstated intentions and provide a qualifying context for more direct and explicit expressions through general cate- gories or general norms. Through experiential expressions individual life experience is communicated indirectly. However, experience, expressions and understanding are never perfectly congruent. Therefore, understanding another's expressions always requires interpretation. It is just this role of interpretation in mutual understanding at the level of ordinary language that has evolved into 58 socially-organized systems of interpretation that are the prescientific basis for hermeneutic inquiry to which we now turn. For Habermas, cognitive processes are embedded in certain life processes, called self formative processes, by which the human species evolves and reproduces itself. These processes, work and social interaction, are guided, respectively, by fundamental interests in technical control and social orientation. These interests, therefore, are also responsible for the evolution and development of the corresponding cognitive processes by which experience is organized and knowledge is formed. In this sense, these interests in technical control and social orientation are knowledge constitutive interests and they aim at successful instrumental actions and social interactions respectively. Each defines a category of knowledge: information that expands our power of technical control on the one hand, and general interpretations transmitted by traditions that make possible the orientation of action within common tra- ditions . Work and interaction are processes of cumulative learn- ing and arriving at mutual understanding. They are selfformative processes and, in a sense, they are processes of inquiry as well, which have evolved into the specialized methodological form of the sciences. Just as the systems of socially organized labor are the cumulative learning process 59 by which the species reproduces itself from the point of view of technical control, so also does the interest in a socially orienting intersubjectivity of mutual understand- ing mediate a system of self-formative processes. These include the various sources of traditional practical wisdom: the ancient systems of administration of justice and social regulation, the systems of philosophy and religion, and the humanities such as literature, poetry and art. Hermeneutic inquiry lends methodological rigor to the interpretive processes inherent in these traditions. As an inquiry process it has been developed primarily in the social and cultural sciences such as history, sociology, philosophy and anthropology. Not only has the practical cognitive interest governed the development of the means of social interaction, it has also guided the accumulation of the kind of knowledge that successfully orients individuals in a community. The common realm of language and social norms reflects the accumulated practical wisdom of the culture--the general- ized, pooled and stored learnings from successful social interactions. This accumulated conventional wisdom com- prises the category of practical knowledge. Through ordinary language we establish and regulate interpersonal relationships with respect to these mutually acknowledged norms and the practical knowledge they reflect. Habermas would say that ordinary language is the medium through which 60 the practical interest finds expression. Ordinary language reflects our norms and practical wisdom, and is the medium of social exchange. It is the medium through which we orient ourselves with respect to each other. Ordinary language also enables a social being to appre- hend the uniqueness of its own experience and still express that experience in universal terms that can be understood by another. Yet, this expression will always imperfectly represent a person's unique experience. There will always be the necessity of interpreting verbal expressions both in relation to correlative conduct and nonverbal expressions, and in the context of a mutually shared social reality. We can understand another's life expressions only to the extent that we participate in the same intersubjectivity. Hermeneutic inquiry is a specialized form of inquiry that interprets an inadequately understood life expression. The object of inquiry can be any kind of human activity. The investigator expands our horizon of understanding, thereby bringing the subject and ourselves into the same cultural reality or intersubjectivity. Hermeneutic inquiry formal- izes and gives methodical rigor to the kind of interpretive understanding that always takes place in ordinary language and social interaction. Individuated Autonomy The cognitive processes by which we apprehend reality are shaped not only by the cognitive interests in technical 61 control and social orientation, they are also the product of an emancipatory interest in autonomy, as well. Cognitive processes in the form of self-reflection evolved to establish and continuously maintain an autonomous ego. The emancipatory cognitive interest defines the self-formative process of individuation in which individuals must reconcile their own interests with those of the community. Individu- als must construct their identity in the conflict between individual and common interests, between their own conscious experience and the intersubjectivity of the community. Common interests are mediated in a normative structure which is created and maintained by community members. However, there is generally an imbalance in the influence that individual members have in the establishment and maintenance of social norms. This imbalance is reflected in the system of power relations in the community and the authority structure that enforces norms. The process of individuation toward autonomy and responsibility takes place in this system of power relations. Autonomy and responsibility mean that the individual is able to freely participate in and influence the norms of the group and is not unnecessarily restricted by these norms in the expres- sion of individual interests. But the institution of power relations in a community always restricts communication among its members. Since norms are created and maintained in communicative 62 interaction, some individuals will be prevented free expres- sion of their interests in the formation of group norms. To the extent that communication is not free of systematic constraints imposed by power relations, the normative struc- ture will contain an element of repression and will not represent the true needs and interests of community members. Systematic constraints bring about a distortion in communication that prevents formation of what Habermas calls a rational will of the group. Yet, to escape negative social sanctions, individuals will generally attempt to maintain the appearance of an open intersubjectivity. This leads individuals to internalize the limits of communication and repress their own interests. Repression means that motives become cut off from public symbols and norms of language and action, and their expression is limited to un- intentional and nonverbal forms. For example, there are times when we conceal our true motives even from ourselves by constructing alternative explanations that serve in lieu of the real ones. This process of rationalization occurs on a social level in the form of ideology. In neither case can we act with autonomy and responsibility. Instead we are subject to the false consciousness of social patterns that appear to have the necessity of natural law or the consent of society but in reality are forms of social dependence and domination. 63 The emancipatory cognitive interest is embedded in and arises out of this social medium of power relations. Cog- nitive processes serve us in both the natural and the social world; but in self-reflection reason also turns back on itself to free us from what we have become as a result of individual and social self-formative processes through insight into these processes. Reason, in the form of insight, has emancipatory power; through critical reflec- tion a subject can free itself from false consciousness, whether the veil of rationalization or ideologically frozen social traditions. Critical reflection is directed to the self-formative process itself so that the subject becomes aware of its own development. By analytically reconstructing its own genesis the subject gains insight into unconscious inter- action patterns and repressed motives. As long as these patterns and motives remain cut off from awareness they retain their power over the subject. Santayana might have said those who do not know their own history are doomed to repeat it. Insight is the experience of release from false consciousness as the subject moves toward autonomy and re- sponsibility. Habermas gives psychoanalysis as the only formal example of critical reflection in an inquiry process. Critical social theory would be another example although it is not systematically developed as a method. 64 A Theory of Inquiry In this section I want to describe briefly the three forms of inquiry that can be distinguished from Habermas 1 theory of knowledge. In particular I want to give some idea of the logic of inquiry within each form. Empirical-Analytic Inquiry The logic of inquiry for the empirical-analytic sciences mirrors the cumulative learning process that takes place at a prescientific level in the behavioral system of instrumental action. This logic illucidates the processes for generating valid beliefs in the form of true statements about reality. These processes are not concerned with analytically deducing true statements from other statements but with the logic of methods for obtaining synthetically valid statements under the continuous constraints of addi- tional experience. The function of inquiry is the "fixation of belief." Following Peirce, a belief is a behavioral rule, expressing a habit, which remains unproblematic so long as the actions it governs'have their anticipated consequences. When habitual actions fail, the validity of their guiding beliefs is brought into question and this doubt motivates the search for new beliefs. Valid beliefs are universal propositions permitting conditional predictions about singular events that will 65 occur under specified conditions. These beliefs have the form of the major premise of a syllogism whose minor premise describes initial conditions and whose conclusion is the predicted result. A particular result is "explained" with reference to a general law. This is the logic of instru- mental action in which symbolic processes of inference are connected to objectified experience--to external conditions of existence, empirical constructs and variables, or ordi- nary things and events. These beliefs are tested against the resistance of reality. That is, the validity of beliefs is determined with reference to the cognitive interest in technical con- trol. In this framework, understanding assumes the form of the prediction and control of objectified phenomena. The process is cumulative, yielding empirically based concepts in the form of crystallized beliefs, and empirical knowledge in the form of sedimented successful habits. Scientific inquiry formalizes the syllogistic logic of instrumental action. It proceeds in the context of dis- covery by forming explanatory hypotheses (abduction) which, in the context of verification, can be tested through induction and deduction. Scientific inquiry differs from the logic of instrumental action by isolating the inquiry process from the context of ordinary life to hypothetically test its claims and to provide systematic control over experimental variables. Precision and intersubjective 66 reliability are provided through formal experiment and measurement procedures. Finally, it systematizes the pro- gression of knowledge by integrating universal propositions into theoretical structures of hypothetico-deductive sys- tems . The object domain of empirical-analytic inquiry is objectified experience--the objects we encounter as moving bodies, things, events, behavior, processes and conditions capable of being manipulated. Hermeneutic Inquiry While empirical inquiry focuses on an external nature and man as nature, hermeneutic inquiry focuses on social nature and man's symbcl-making activity. The objects of hermeneutic inquiry are cultural meaning structures them- selves and human life expressions couched in these struc- tures. Hermeneutic inquiry aims at a systematic enrichment and expansion of the horizon of our understanding of both our own as well as others' expressions of life. It is the science of interpretation. The paradigm problematic situa- tion is a life expression that cannot be adequately under- stood, such as an ancient text, an eskimo culture or an elementary school. The investigator attempts to recon- struct these life expressions so that the experiences they express are generated within the investigator. The idea is to grasp the meaning structure of the life expression so 67 that the expression can be understood from its own intersubjective frame of reference. The goal is to let one's own experience be mediated by the same horizon of under- standing as the subject. It is not possible to jump one's horizon to do this, but instead a mutual intersubjectivity is created between the investigator, the subject, and the investigator's audience. In this way the investigator expands the field of common understanding that binds us into a community and that orients our actions in relation to each other. The logic of hermeneutic inquiry tends to follow a pattern model of explanation rather than the hierarchicaldeductive model more frequently found in empirical inquiry. The pattern model consists of a "circle of interpretation" in which the investigator cycles between a pre-understood general interpretation on the one hand, and the initial experience of concrete elements of the life expression on the other. Each end of the continuum conditions and cor- rects the other until a coherent, unified pattern emerges. The recognition of such a pattern constitutes understanding. An individual event is explained by its place in the general scheme or its relations to the whole. Coherence and under- standing emerge from the reciprocal illumination of the parts and the whole. As a metaphor consider a constellation of jewels in which each gem shines with the light reflected 68 from all the others. Or consider the image that suddenly "clicks" into place in classical Gestalt figure-ground pictures. While hermeneutic inquiry uses traditional categories of meaning and seeks organizing general principles to order the phenomena it studies, the emphasis is on understanding the individual case in its complexity and richness. We do not understand something when we have merely got hold of a general principle that has been shown to apply, or a general category that it exemplifies. Such abstractions are, by logic and function, uncommitted to particular characteristics and qualities. Hermeneutic inquiry aims at filling out these generalizations with concrete detail and context that enriches understanding. Hermeneutic interpretations are validated by their coherence and usefulness. What keeps the circle of inter- pretation from being a vicious one is its breadth, its fruitfulness in illuminating the terrain. An explanation falls into place and is accompanied by the "aha" of insight that has a self-validating quality. But a valid interpreta- tion can stand the test of further experience, both one's own and that of others. It has the capacity to account pro- gressively for new elements and must be adjusted on the basis of inconsistencies. Since hermeneutic inquiry considers a life expression within a traditional context of meaning, this form of 69 inquiry requires that the investigator be well grounded in the relevant traditions. These traditions provide direc- tion and a frame of reference for the inquiry. Otherwise the observations would be rudderless. Useful interpreta- tions require "personal virtuosity" and expert judgment. Critical Inquiry The logic of critical inquiry can be illustrated with the logic of psychoanalytic interpretations. The structure of ordinary language governs the interconnections among linguistic expressions, patterns of action and nonverbal expressions, so that they normally cohere and reinforce each other to express the intentions of the speaker. Under ideal conditions of open communication, our underlying motives would be expressible in the public symbols of language so that motives, actions, and linguistic expres- sions would coincide. But in all cultures social norms restrict the expression of some motives, When needs are repressed, they remain severed from public linguistic symbols and can find expression only through private incom- prehensible symbols. They cannot be understood because they do not follow the culturally learned patterns of expression and socially acknowledged norms of language and action. We take care to maintain the intersubjectivity of mutual under- standing to escape negative social sanction. When we internalize these social constraints some need dispositions 70 remain inaccessible to ourselves. We cannot act from tinconscious motives in functional ways. Successful transac- tions in the natural and social worlds are inhibited by rationalizations and unconscious and nonfunctional patterns of action. The starting point for critical inquiry is the experi- ence of resistance against free expression of our interests and intentions. Critical inquiry aims at dissolving this resistance by reversing the process in which motives are cut off from linguistic symbols. Through critical self- reflection we reconstruct our problematic interactions to uncover the repressed motivesand conflicts, With this insight into ourselves we gain the freedom to resolve on a conscious level the conflicts between public and private interests and to pursue our interests in functional and rational ways. The price of community will always be a measure of repression. Collective self-preservation, for example, involves some degree of repression of individual needs and interests. Yet the suffering that we experience under the suppression of our interests is the occasion for reflection on the sources of our discomfort, and provides the impetus for emancipation from suppression. The forces of socializa- tion, reflecting the practical cognitive interest, are countered by the forces of individuation, reflecting the emacipatory cognitive interest. 71 A Theory of Action Based on his theory of cognitive interests, Habermas makes an analytical distinction between two kinds of human action that correspond with the distinction between the technical and the practical realms. Instrumental action is goverened by technical rules based on empirical knowledge; it organizes means that are appropriate or inappropriate according to criteria of effective control of experience. Communicative action, on the other hand, is governed by consensual norms which define reciprocal expectations about behavior and which must be mutually understood and recog- nized. The validity of these norms is grounded in the intersubjectivity of reciprocal intentions and the mutual recognition of obligations by speaking subjects. The meaning of these norms is manifest in ordinary language communication. This is not to say that instrumental action is not social, that it is not grounded in intersubjectivity or not governed by social norms. It is rather that in acting instrumentally, we emphasize the means-end orientation of the action and the technical knowledge on which it is based. We stress economy and efficiency with which means are employed to realize specified ends, With regard to communi- cative action we emphasize the consensual norms and reciprocal expectations in which the intersubjectivity of 72 action is grounded. For example, when we act instrumentally in relation to others, we treat them as objectives and their behavior as effectively controllable- as objectifiable in terms of observable regularities. The potential for recipro- cal communicative relations recedes into the background. Action is guided by the standards of efficient realization of ends that are not communicatively validated. Communica- tive action, on the other hand, is guided by the inter- subjectivity of mutually shared intentions. Habermas regards moral action as essentially communicative, as a relation between subjects who mutually create their social realm. Therefore, social action is also moral action. Habermas is trying to avoid, as did Aristotle, the reduc- tion of praxis to techne. A Theory of Communication Until fairly recently in philosophical history, theories of human experience have been based on the private conscious- ness of individual subjects. By construing experience as a relation between a perceiving subject and an objective reality, these accounts have given inadequate attention to the interpersonal dimension of human experience. Because theories of experience derived from individual consciousness do not appreciate the intersubjective nature of knowledge, they mistakenly attempt to justify beliefs on the basis of their correspondence with an external and independent 73 reality as revealed by sense certainty. Since we cannot ground ethical principles for guiding human conduct in this way, such principles are considered incapable of rational justification. I believe we cannot adequately justify our beliefs and actions by means of theories that do not account for intersubjective experience. For an adequate conception of rationality, we must look to language, for language is the medium of interaction among the three realms of experience. that is, between the individual and the social and natural world. An analysis of the relation between language and experience provides us with a basis for rationally justifying our beliefs and actions that does justice to the social dimension of human knowledge and experience. Chapter III concludes with an examination of this relation in Habermas' theory of communication. The Representation of Experience Ordinary language has a structure which allows us to form expressions that focus on any one of the three experi- ential domains we identified in section one. These include an objective external nature, a normative social reality and our own subjective internal reality. When we want to focus on external nature, we emphasize the propositional content of expressions. For example, we make statements about objects of states of affairs in the world. This defines 74 the cognitive or descriptive use of language. Besides the propositional component of language expressions, there is also an illocutionary or performative component by means of which we accomplish things interactively in relation to other persons. We establish and regulate interpersonal relationships through the performative component, as when we make promises, give orders or make assertions. When we want to focus on this normative social reality we emphasize the performative component of expressions. This defines the interactive, or prescriptive use of language. When we want to focus on our own subjective experience we emphasize neither the propositional content nor interpersonal rela- tionships, but instead we emphasize our own experience and intentions. This defines the expressive use of language. These three modes of communication are always at least tacitly involved in any expression. Their importance is not so much in serving as a classification scheme for expressions. Rather, they delineate three classes of speech acts in terms of which a speaker can unambiguously focus on a particular experiential domain. That is, the speaker can state a propositional content, stress an interpersonal relationship or express an intention. Validity Claims Each class of expressions presupposes a specific kind of validity claim, A proposition expresses a truth claim. 75 A performative expression implies a normative claim, that is, the rightness or legitimacy of the interpersonal rela- tionship established with respect to mutually acknowledged norms. Finally, self-representative expressions make a claim to the authenticity or veracity of the speaker. These validity claims are simultaneously presupposed in ordinary language interaction. Otherwise there would be no basis for attempting communication. Nevertheless, a given validity claim may become problematic, and require justification. Justification and Discourse Habermas attempts to derive a theory of justification from an analysis of the structure of ordinary language. A theory of justification must be based on the nature and func- tion of the claims needing justification, and there is a fundamental difference in the nature of what is implicitly or explicitly claimed in expressions focused on each of the three experiential domains. Expressions representing our experience of the external world imply a truth claim. Those that create interpersonal relationships imply a claim to appropriateness--a normative claim. And those expressing our subjective intentions imply a claim to authenticity. If, in the normal flow of communication, one of these claims becomes seriously questioned, communication cannot continue as before. If communication is to continue at all, and not break off altogether, it must proceed with a different quality of interaction in which we treat the 76 problematic validity claim hypothetically and attempt to redeem or refute it. In other words, in communication that takes place in the ordinary context of interaction, these three validity claims, implicit in every speech act, are more or less taken for granted. Minor disturbances in communication that occur because one or more of the validity claims is brought into question can be resolved in the normal context of interac- tion. But situations arise in which disturbances are so fundamental that the de facto validity of these implicit claims is no longer sufficient to warrant continuing as before and communication is withdrawn from the normal con- text of interaction. Communication moves to a different level in which we suspend judgment concerning the validity claims in an effort to vindicate them through argument. This kind of language interaction, in which problematic validity claims are justified, Habermas refers to as dis- course . We will have more to say about discourse in Chapter IV when we examine the discursive redemption of truth claims, and in Chapter V concerning the redemption of normative claims. However, we must first look further into Habermas' theory of communication, for it is through an analysis of the conditions and structure of discourse that the theory of justification emerges. The conditions and structure of discourse are related to certain universal features of language which enable us to represent our 77 experience in the three realms of experience. These uni- versal features of language are explored in Habermas1 theory of universal pragmatics, to which we now turn. Universal Pragmatics Semiotics, or the theory of signs, includes three divisions: semantics, syntactics and pragmatics. Semantics is the theory of the relations between signs and their referents, that is, what signs denote or designate. Syn- tactics refers to the formal relations among signs, that is, their logical syntax or the formal rules that govern the kinds and order of symbols that make up expressions in a language. Pragmatics is the theory of the relations between signs and the people who use them, in other words, what people who produce, receive and understand signs, do with them. One of the projects of the study of languages has been the search for universal patterns of semantics and syntax that underly all languages in a search for linguistic universals. Noam Chomsky, for example has introduced a distinction between linguistic competence and linguistic performance. The distinction is analogous to the difference between a student's knowledge of a subject, such as logic, and how well the student demonstrates that knowledge on an exam: performance reflects competence, but also irrelevant conditions such as motivation or distractions. It is 78 different in that linguistic competence refers to the theoretical knowledge an ideal speaker and listener must have about language that enables them to engage in their real language performance under empirically limited condi- tions of actual speech. Through an analysis of language performance, linguistic theory seeks to abstract and recon- struct a theory of linguistic universals, that is, formal syntactic and semantic features of language that are empirically derived yet independent of particular empirical conditions. In other words linguistic universals are analy- tically inferred from the empirically given structure of language itself, and in turn can account for empirically given linguistic performance. But the logical analysis of language has been generally limited to the syntactical and semantic features of language to the exclusion of pragmatic features which are relegated to empirical inquiry in the form of psycholinguistics or com- parative linguistics. Habermas contends that language, as a form of human action, also contains universal pragmatic features. These pragmatic universals can be theoretically reconstructed from an analysis of ordinary language speech acts to yield a theory of communicative competence analogous to the way linguistic universals are reconstructed from an analysis of language performance in sentences to yield a theory of linguistic competence. 79 ^Universal pragmatics!] thematizes the elementary units of speech (utterances) in the same attitude as linguistics does the elementary units of lang- uage (sentences). The aim of reconstructive linguistic analysis is the explicit decription of the rules that a competent speaker must master in order to form grammatical sentences and to utter them in an acceptable way....The assumption is that communicative competence has just as univer-sal a core as linguistic competence. A general theory of speech acts would thus describe exactly that system of rules that adult speakers master insofar as they can satisfy the conditions for a happy employment of sentences in utterances- no matter to which particular language the sentences belong and which accidential contexts the utter-ances are embedded.4 Analytic Reconstruction. Habermas attempts to recon- struct analytically the universal features of language that provide it with the capacity to fill certain pragmatic functions. To analytically reconstruct is to make systema- tically explicit the implicit knowledge of language we must have to do what we do with it. We are all able to accomplish things with language without necessarily being aware of the underlying or "deep structure" of language, or the rules, criteria and schemata on which our performance is based. Rational reconstruction seeks to disclose this underlying structure. It is not directed to the particular ways par- ticular cultures use language under empirical conditions, but to universal competencies underlying all languages. The reconstruction of linguistic competence is not itself sufficient for understanding language communication. Communication involves more than the mastery of an abstract system of linguistic rules of syntax and semantics for 80 generating sentences. It includes producing the situation of potential communication as a necessary competence. This includes a performativê or illocutionary element--a pragmatic element that links utterances to the speech situ- ation as a whole. John Searle makes a similar point: "speaking a language is a matter of performative speech acts according to systems of constitutive rules."6 This extralinguistic aspect of communication necessitates extending the elementary unit of language analysis beyond the sentence to include the entire speech act. Utterances are always more than just sentences. An utterance lies embedded in a system of norms and constitutive rules that give language its illocutionary force and the capacity to fulfill its pragmatic function of establishing interpersonal relation- ships. This is illustrated in an example given by Searle: Human communication has some extraordinary properties, not shared by most other kinds of human behavior. One of the most extraordinary is this: If I am trying to tell someone something,then (assuming certain conditions are satisfied) as soon as he recognizes what it is I am trying to tell him, I have succeeded in telling it to him. Furthermore, unless he recognizes that I am trying to tell him something and what I am trying to tell him, I do not fully succeed in telling it to him. In the case of illocutionary acts we succeed in doing what we are trying to do by getting our audience to recognize what we are trying to do. But the 1 effect on the hearer is not a belief or response, it consists simply in the hearer understanding the utterance of the speaker. It is this effect that I have been calling the illocutionary effect. The way the reflexive intention works then. . . is : the speaker S intends to produce an illocutionary effect IE 81 in the hearer H by means of getting H to recog-nize S 1s intention to produce IE.7 Categorial Schemes. These pragmatic language conven- tions remain empirically contingent in particular cultures. But underlying every possible speech situation is a struc- ture that makes the performative capacity of language pos- sible. This structure consists in certain universal features of language that allow the speaker to form expres- sions that focus on each of the three experiential domains, and to simultaneously situate an uttered sentence in relation to each realm. This structure consists of a system of reference and predication in which experience is constituted in each realm: for possible denotions of objects in exter- nal nature, for potential speakers and their actions in the intersubjective realm, and for the representation of inten- tions and subjective experience. Thus, all languages provide a structure through which it is possible to reliably identify something in nature--a categorial scheme for all possible objects--through which experience is objectified. This structure is provided by such universal pragmatic features of language as deictic (pointing) expressions of space and time, articles and demonstrative pronouns. Similarly, universal pragmatics, such as the personal pronouns and performative verbs, form a structure through which speaking and acting subjects can establish 82 interpersonal relationships. The personal pronouns make possible identity of meaning through reciprocal recognition of the meaning of a given symbol. Through simultaneously grasping the meaning of a symbol from our own position or ego (I), and from the position of another, or alter ego, (you) we form a linguistic intersubjectivity through which a shared experience is constituted. Finally, a structure for transparently representing our own inner world and subjective intentions is provided by such universal pragmatics as intentional verbs and modal verbs used in the expression of intentions. (Examples of intentional verb: to think, believe, hope, fear, love, hate, want and desire. Examples modal verb: can, shall, will, must, might, could, would, may, dare.) Pragmatic Functions of Language. These universal prag- matic features provide language with a structure which gives it the capacity to fill three pragmatic functions: repre- sentative, interactive and expressive. The representative function is provided by the cognitive or descriptive use of language in which we represent our experience of an external reality through statements or propositions about objects or states of affairs in the world. The interactive function is provided by the prescriptive or performative use of language in which we establish and regulate interpersonal relationships within an intersubjective social reality. The expressive function is provided by the expressive use 83 of language in which we represent our own subjective inten- tions or inner reality. While all three functions are implicitly involved in any language expression, a particular function can be emphasized through the use of particular classes of speech acts. 1. The Representative Function and C'on'stative Speech Acts. Constative speech acts (from the Latin Constat: "it is settled, established, undisputed, certain, well known, etc."^), such as asserting, reporting, explaining, pre- dicting, or conversely, denying, contesting, doubting and questioning, make explicit the representative function of language. The propositional content of expressions is topical in constative speech acts and the truth of the proposition is implicitly claimed. Thus, constative speech acts mark out the distinction between being and illusion that is implicit in all speech acts. All speech acts imply an intended consensus on that which really is, as distinct from that which subjectively only appears to be. This pre- supposes a differentiation between a public world of intersubjectively acknowledged interpretations and a private world of personal feelings and impressions.° Experience of an external reality takes on its objectivity by being constituted within the social intersubjectivity through the categorial scheme for objects of instrumental action. Such experience is constituted in relation to the cognitive interest in technical control. As I shall show 84 in Chapter VI, the categorial scheme for objectified experi- ence is itself acquired developmentally through the instru- mental manipulation of things and events in nature. This reference system is institutionalized into the linguistic intersubjectivity of a particular culture and provides the basis for the representative function of language. 2. The Interactive Function and Regulative Speech Acts. The interactive function of language is made explicit in regulative speech acts such as commands, requests, pleas, warnings, recommendations, advice, orders, demands, refusals, violations and submissions. The normative element of expressions is topical in regulative speech acts and their legitimacy is implicitly claimed. Through regulative speech acts we mark the distinction between what is and what ought to be that is implicit in every speech act. All speech exists in a context of actions and intentions. The mutual recognition of the subjects who communicate with one another includes the certainty that they can conduct themselves reciprocally towards one another's expectations, i.e. act according to valid norms. This presupposes the differentiation between valid rules, which are intentionally followed, and regularities of observable events, which can be stated empirically.-*-^ This distinction allows us to differentiate between valid social norms and those that are merely empirically extant in a given institution. The interactive function of lan- ■ guage, grounded ultimately in the cognitive interest in 85 3. The Expressive Function and Representative Speech Acts. The expressive function of language is made explicit in representative speech acts such as to reveal, expose, admit, conceal, pretend, express, present and allude. Our intentions are topical in representative speech acts and their authenticity is implicity claimed. Through repre- sentative speech acts we mark the distinction between essence (the individuated self) and appearance (the empiri- cal utterances and actions through which the self appears), that is implicit in all speech acts. In all speech acts the subjects in their speech-act performances unavoidably express their own selves at the same time as they converse with one another on some propositional topic. This presupposes a differentiation between a communi- cation on objects and a meta-communication on the level of intersubjectivity.il As we noted in the discussion of the cognitive interest in social orientation, communicating persons must represent their individual experience and intentions in the general categories of language. They must metacommunicatively qualify their literal statements so as to indirectly represent the individual element in their experience or intentions. This metacommunication takes place within the intersubjectivity of mutual understanding maintained by reciprocal self-representation among participants. The capacity to communicate indirectly at this level allows one to distinguish essence and appearance. When 86 we communicate about objects, perceptions take on objectiv- ity by being constituted within the linguistic intersubjec- tivity. Thus, in a sense, we can come to an understanding about objects through direct communication. The expression "the cat is on the mat" stands by itself. But the meaning of "I would like to help you", by itself, does not tell much about the speaker's intentions. If we were limited to direct communication involving the intentions and subjec- tivity of others, only appearances, that is, the literal utterances and actions, could guide us. It is through indirect communication within the linguistic and extralinguistic intersubjectivity that we grasp the indefinable individualized aspect of a person's intentions. This indirect understanding cannot be captured in the explicit terms of the linguistic intersubjectivity. Summary: The Ideal Speech Situation Habermas' theory of communication suggests that under- lying all empirically contingent languages is a universal structure for potential speech. A system of "dialogue con- stitutive universals" forms the foundation of an intersub- jectivity that makes it possible for us to mutually understand each other and communicate. These universal pragmatic features of language are mastered in the acquisi- tion of communicative competence parallel to the mastery of 87 the abstract rules of generative grammar in the acquisition of linguistic competence. Above all, communicative competence relates to an ideal speech situation in the same way that linguis- tic competence relates to the abstract system of linguistic rules. The dialogue-constitutive universals at the same time generate and describe the form of intersubjectivity which makes mutuality of understanding possible. Communicative com- petence is defined by the ideal speaker's mastery of the dialogue-constitutive universals, irrespec-tive of actual restrictions under empirical condi-tions . 12 Every communication aims toward an ideal speech situa- tion and any consensus achieved under the conditions of this ideal speech situation can be considered, ipso facto, to be a valid consensus. Any questioned consensus can be examined in terms of the conditions of the ideal speech situation. These conditions require that communication be free of constraints due to external or internal forces or distortions, and that there be a symmetry of opportunity to take dialogue roles and use various speech acts that enable us to distinguish true and false statements, right and wrong actions, and authentic and deceptive expressions. Only under these conditions does "the peculiarly unforced compulsion of a better argument dominate. According to Habermas, Discourse is the last resort for the re-establishment of a disturbed consensus in cases of doubt about justification. In the end the legitimation of existing orders lets itself be confirmed only in discourse, i.e., is reduced to the basic norms of conversation. For when justifications are 88 made problematic long enough, we come upon a final compulsion for legitimation which we cannot avoid and according to which only those norms for action are rational and thereby reliable which are capa- ble of repeatable justification in unlimited and unforced discussion.^ Using Habermas' theory of cognitive interests and his theory of communication as a foundation, the next two chapters take up the question of the rational justifica- tion of our beliefs and actions. Chapter IV considers the discursive justification of truth claims, and Chapter V focuses on the discursive justification of rightness claims concerning actions. FOOTNOTES CHAPTER III ^Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971). ^Wilheim Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften, (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913-1967) /:146 f ., cited by Habermas in Knowledge and Human Interests, p. 156. ^ H a b e r m a s , Knowledge and Human Interest, p. 166. ^Habermas, "Was heisst Universalpragmatic?" in Sprachpragmatik und Philosophie, ed. K.O. Apel, (Franfurt, 1976), p. 205, cited by Thomas McCarthy in The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MITPress, 1978), pp. 274-275. ^Not to be confused with perlocutionary. 6John R. Searle, Speech Acts (New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1969; p. 38. ^Ibid., p. 47. ^Charlton.T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1879) p . 39. ^Habermas, "Toward a Theory of Communicative Compe- tence," Inquiry 13 (1970): 371. 10Ibid. ^Ibid. , p . 369 . ■ ^ H a b e r m a s "Summation and Response," Continuum 8 (1970): 131. --------- ^Ibid., p. 133. 89 CHAPTER IV THEORETICAL DISCOURSE; THE JUSTIFICATION OF TRUTH CLAIMS Habermas' theory of truth grows out of the theory of communication we considered in Chapter III. There we encountered three pragmatic functions of language--representative , interactive and expressive. Each of these functions can be a source of breakdown in communication. Our expressions can fail to represent, or misrepresent, our experience of the natural world. They can fail to establish the relationships we seek, or establish inappro- priate ones. They can also fail to express our intentions, or express deceptive ones. However, in everyday communica- tion / these functions are at least implicitly assumed to be unproblematically fulfilled. Whenever we initiate language communication, we make the implicit claim that the propositional contents of our expression are true, that interpersonal relationships initiated by means of our expression are appropriate, and that the intentions or personal experiences represented in the expressions are authentic. These validity claims are not only assumed in particular speech interaction, they are a presupposition of language communication itself. Without assuming, in principle and in general, that our expressions are true, 90 91 appropriate and veridical, we would have no basis for attempt- ing to communicate. In principle, to engage in communica- tion is to seek an authentic understanding. Even efforts to deceive must rest on the implicit claim that expressions are true, appropriate and authentic. Discourse and Truth However, on any particular occasion, these validity claims are subject to question. When a disturbance in communication occurs, based on a questionable validity claim, we generally try to defend our claim in the normal context of interaction by, for example, referring to our sources of information, to generally accepted norms or to past behavior. But when the context of the disturbance is important enough, and the threat to validity serious enough, then communication either breaks off all together or else shifts to another level, that is, to the level of discourse. At the level of discourse, we attempt to argumentatively vindicate the truth of our propositions and the appropriate- ness of the norms guiding our interactions. (Problematic claims to authenticity are not tested discursively, but are confirmed through the consistency of further action and interaction.) In discourse, validity claims,(truth claims and rightness claims are treated hypothetically and communi- cation is directed toward their vindication or rejection. 92 Habermas suggests that an analysis of the logical structure of discourse concerning truth claims can reveal a "logic of truth," In other words, a theory of truth can be derived from an analysis of the way we establish the truth of propositions in language interaction directed to the resolution of problematic truth claims, In this account, it is important to distinguish and understand the relation between the objectivity of experi- ence, on the one hand, and the truth of propositions repre- senting that experience, on the other hand. This is because the objectivity of experience is a matter of the manner in which experience is constituted, while truth is a matter of human discourse. As we saw above, the discursive resolution of validity claims is removed from the context of ordinary life in which experience is objectified. So, before we «consider the formal conditions and structure of discourse in deriving Habermas' theory of truth, we must take a closer look at how experience is constituted in the realm of every- day life. Categorial Schemes: The Constitution of Experience You will recall in our discussion of Habermas' theory of cognitive interests that these interests represent frames of reference from which we apprehend reality and that experi- ence in each domain is mediated or constituted by a particu- lar cognitive interest. After our review of Habermas' 93 theory of universal pragmatics we are now in a position to see how universal pragmatics comes together with cognitive interests to account for the way that experience is con- stituted, This is Habermas' "constitution theory of experi- ence" which still remains to be developed. However, he makes a number of observations that give an idea about what such an analysis might look like, A constitution theory of experience would essentially be an analysis of the universal pragmatics of the use of fundamental concepts that lie behind every experience. As examples of such concepts Habermas gives those suggested by Kant and pursued in the work of Piaget: substance, space, time and causality. These concepts are a kind of "minimum content of properties which objects as such have. . and they form the content of a frame of reference for "objectivating experiencable happenings as happenings,"^ that is, for constituting experience. In other words, experience is constituted or mediated in terms of a frame of reference based on a use of the concepts of substance, space, time and causality. Every language includes such a reference system which permits us to reliably identify objects in experience about which we would like to communi- cate and act. While each language may differ in the par- ticular features of such a frame of reference, underlying all languages is a universal structure which provides for 94 the categorization of all possible objects of experience in these terms. This categorical scheme enables us to classify, localize, temporalize and serialize in relation to the basic categories of substance, space, time and causality. However, experience is mediated differently in the technical and the practical realms and therefore the categorial framework is applied differently for objects of experience in the two realms. This is because experience at the level of sensations and perceptions is different from experience at the level of intersubjective communication. Observations of things and events yields an experience that seems to us to be objective and can be made the propositional content of an expression. The experience can be objectivated in a state- ment- can enter the linguistic intersubjectivity--with no change in categorial meaning; it remains at the level of propositional contents. Understanding, on the other hand, is the performative constitution of an interpersonal rela- tionship: "it is tied up with the nonobjectivating orientation common to speakers during the performance of speech acts."^ The intersubjectivity of mutual understand- ing is shared nonobjectified experience. Once the experi- ence (what is understood) becomes the content of the propo- sition it becomes objectivated as, for example, statements about persons, actions, institutions or traditions. Yet to 95 experience these objects of the communicative objective domain, we must understand the performative aspect of the expression: ...as we state such an experience, experience itself shifts from the level of intersubjectivity where it was first encountered to the level of propositional contents. In order to be able to understand a simple sentence like 'Peter gave Paul an orderT, I must at some point in time have participated in a communication which enabled me to experience what it means to give or receive an order.^ There is no shift when we move from observation of sensory experience to statements about them that is compar- able to the shift from intersubjective understanding to propositional statements concerning that understanding, "...non objectivated perceptions would be a contradiction in terms. They would not be perceptions but figments of the 5imagination, illusions, phantasms, etc." Sensations are transformed into perceptions by entering into the linguistic intersubjectivity of language. These perceptions derive their objectivity from the intersubjectively shared categorial structure of objects of possible experience in which they are constituted. To paraphrase Austin, the objectivity of perceptions remains a matter of the concepts used being the ones conventionally appointed for situations of the type referred to.^ All this is to say that the categorical reference system functions differently for the experience of objects of perception (things and events) than it does for the 96 objects of communicative experience (acting and speaking persons): ...the sense of substance and causality, of space and time, is differentiated according to whether these categories are applied to the objects within a world or to the linguistically consti- tuted world itself, which allows for the mutuality of speaking subjects. The interpretational schema, 'substance , has a different meaning for the iden-tity of items which can be clearly categorized analytically from that which it has for speaking and interacting subjects theriiselves, whose ego identity, as has been shown, just cannot be grasped by analytically clear-cut operations.The intepretational schema of causality, when applied to observable events, leads to the concept of 'cause1; when it is applied to an asso- ciation of intentional actions it leads to the concept of 'motive'. In the same way 'space' and 'time' undergo a different schematism when viewed in regard to physically measurable proper-ties of observable events from that which they undergo when viewed according to experienced interactions. In the first case the categories serve as a system of coordinates for observation controlled by the success of instrumental action; in the latter case the categories serve as a frame of reference for the experience of social space and historical time from a subjective point of view.7 The two object domains are different because of the differ- ent ways in which the two cognitive interests, technical control and social orientation, guide action within these categorial frames of reference. ...categories like 'bodies in motion' or 'acting and speaking individuals' implies an a priori relation to action to the extent that 'observ-able bodies' are simultaneously 'instrumentally manipulable bodies', whereas 'understandable persons' are simultaneously 'participants in linguistically mediated interaction', hense some- thing which can be both an object of instrumental action and a rival in interactions. We create 97 the two fundamental object domains by rendering schematic in the same set of categories (or cog- nitive schemata) in the realms of instrumental or communicative action.8 Discourse In the realm of everyday life, experience expressed in a proposition is implicity assumed to be objective, but there is the possibility of error or deception. The test of objectivity of the experience is its being intersubjectively shared- its being constituted in the shared categorial framework through which experience is interpreted. In everyday interaction a statement expressing a proposi- tional content implies a truth claim by presupposing the truth of the stated proposition. We naively assume the validity of the claim as long as it does not seem inappro- priate to do so. But when communication is disturbed because a reported state of affairs does not appear to be intersubjectively valid, we no longer take the claim of truth at face value. Instead of assuming the truth of the proposition, the problematic validity claim is isolated from the normal con- text of instrumental and communicative action and considered hypothetically in argumentative discourse. Discourse, that is focused on the redemption of problematic truth claims, Habermas refers to as theoretical discourse; that focused on problematic moral claims is called practical d i s c o u r s e . ^ 98 For Habermas discursive justification of validity claims is a normative concept which implicitly refers to conditions which must be met if validity claims are to be settled in a rationally justified consensus. Initiating a process of discourse assumes that genuine agreement is possible. In discourse, the questionable validity claim is bracketed and becomes the sole topic of discussion. All motives are excluded except for the cooperative resolution of the problematic claim. The out- come of deliberation must be the result solely of the force of the better argument and not the result of any distortions from systematic constrains on communication. The absence of systematic constraint can be formally characterized in terms of the structure of ordinary language that permits expressions of the three experiential domains. That is, in discourse there must be a symmetrical distribu- tion among participants of opportunities to represent their experience in any domain. Specifically, they first must have equal chances to assert and dispute propositions and to argue for or against their validity with explanations, interpretations and justifications. Second, they must have equal opportunity to prescribe norms, and to conform to or resist them or question their legitimacy. Finally, they must be equally free to express their own intentions, atti- tudes and feelings, and to question the veracity of others self-representative expressions. As long as these symmetries 99 exist we have the conditions for a pure intersubjectivity and communication will not be distorted by any systematic constraints arising from its own structure. A Consensus Thesis of Truth Habermas' theory of truth is derived from an examina- tion of the logic of theoretical discourse. An analysis of the logical structure of communication in which we rationally decide on the validity of truth claims is, in a sense, an analysis of the logic of truth. The meaning of truth is grasped through an understanding of the function it plays in language and the way that truth claims are examined, rejected, revised or accepted. Habermas proposes a consensus theory of truth similar to that proposed by Charles Peirce. Wiener summarizes this theory with the statement that whatever beliefs "the com- munity of minds (in the future as well as the present) finds itself constrained to accept and agree upon, after continued observation and reflection, will constitute 'the truth'."10 Peirce's theory of signs led him to appreciate the social nature of human experience and belief and to be ! critical of views that "make single individuals absolute judges of the truth."H But Habermas believes that Peirce falls prey to a hidden positivism by making beliefs, referring to the con- nections among empirical events, empirical events themselves. 100 This reduction undermines the intersubjective foundation for beliefs in the community of investigators which is the basis of Pierce's conception of truth. And it leaves problematic the relation between this community and the solitary or monologic character of Peirce's theory of inquiry and pragmatic theory of meaning and beliefs (which we considered in Chapter III). ...the ground of intersubjectivity in which investi-gators are always already situated when they attempt to bring about consensus about metatheoretical problems is not the ground of purposive-rational action, which is in principle solitary. True, sub- jects acting instrumentally make use of representa- tional signs, and the technical rules that can be sedimented as habits must be capable of formulation in statements about relations of events. Neverthe- less, as we have shown, the symbolic representation of matters of fact knowable from the transcendental perspective of possible technical control serves exclusively for the transformation of expressions in processes of reasoning. Deduction, induction and abduction establish relations between statements that are in principle monologic. It is possible to think in syllogisms, but not to conduct a dialogue in them. I can use syllogistic reasoning to yield arguments for a discussion, but I cannot argue syllogistically with an other. Insofar as the employment of symbols is constitutive for the behav- ioral system of instrumental action, the use of language involved is monologic. But the communica- tion of investigators requires the use of language that is not confined to the limits of technical control over objectified natural processes. It arises from symbolic interaction between societal subjects who reciprocally know and recognize each other as unmistakable individuals. This communi- cative action is a system of reference that cannot be reduced to the framework of instrumental action. To some extent, Peirce anticipated the separation of truth from the constitution of experience in his distinction 101 between the social process of resolving truth claims in the community of investigators (the consensus theory of truth), and the instrumental consitution of experience in his prag- matic theory of meaning. The pragmatic maxim, that the meaning of a proposition is its conceivable practical con- sequences, governs the meaning of expressions concerning the objects of experience in the realm of instrumental action. There is no comparable account, however, for the meaning of expressions concerning the objects of experience in the realm of communicative action--the intersubjective realm of the community of investigators who must argumenta- tively resolve disputes regarding truth claims. So while experience is constituted and organized in the instrumental and practical categorial frameworks, the resolution of problematic truth claims must take place within the intersubjectivity of the practical realm. As we saw above, this has led Habermas to build on Peirce's separation of the problem of the constitution of experience from the problem of the resolution of truth claims. Habermas gives his own view as follows: I may ascribe a predicate to an object if and only if every other person who could enter into a dialogue with me would ascribe the same predicate to the same object. In order to distinguish true from false statements, I make a reference to the judg-ments of others,--in fact to the judgment of all others with whom I could ever hold a dialogue (among whom I counterfactually include all the dia- logue partners I could find if my life history were 102 coextensive with the history of mankind). The con- ditions of the truth of statements is the potential agreement of all o t h e r s . 3 He agrees with Strawson that truth and falsity are properly predicated of the asserted propositional content of constative speech acts. But this refers only to the semantic meaning of truth. As we saw above, all speech acts contain both a performative and a propositional moment. In a constative speech act, the propositional con- tent is being asserted; it is declared to be true. Thus, in constative speech acts while it is the propositional component that is focal, through the performative component we make the implicit claim that the asserted statements are true. For such speech acts to succeed, they must meet the normative conventions that guide the use of constative speech acts. In the realm of life praxis, these include the universal pragmatics of the conditions for successful reference and predication of objects in the technical realm we considered in Chapter III. We implicitly claim that the propositional contents of constative speech acts are true. If that validity claim is questioned and radical doubt per- sists, then communication breaks off or moves to a differ- ent context--that of theoretical discourse. We are now in a position to see why it is important for Habermas to distinguish the realm of ordinary experience, in which experience is objectivated from the realm of 103 discourse. This is because he wants to distinguish the meaning of the objectivity of statements representing our experience from their truth. Truth has for so long been equated with sense certainty that the conditions for sense certainty must be distinguished from the conditions for truth. The conditions for sense certainty relate to the categorial meaning of empirical statements. That is, in the realm of instrumental action, objects are constituted under the cognitive interest in technical control within the intersubjective categorial framework for things and events. The categorial meaning of an empirical statement is determined by the structure of the object domain to which it refers. This meaning constitutes itself along with the objects of possible experi- ence . In other words, it is the material a priori of experience which enables us to open up reality by objectivating it. This is different from the discursive verification of the meaning of a truth claim which we imply in all our assertory state-ments . The meaning of the truth or untruth of a statement does not consist in the conditions guaranteeing the objectivity of our experience but in the possibility of argumentative corroboration of a truth claim which is falsifiable in principle. The categorial meaning of propositions is connected with the existence of states of affairs which we render in those statements. In every speech act, categorial meaning is contained in the proposi-tional content, whereas the truth claim is contained in the performative part. For the categorial meaning always reflects the Way in which we experience something in the world--as a thing or event, as a person or as that person's utterance The truth claim, on the other hand, reflects the intersubjective validity, on the basis of which 104 something may be predicated of objects of experi-ence, i.e. that a state of affairs is indeed a fact. 14In the realm of ordinary experience, the objectivity of experience lies in its being intersubjectively shared. This objectivity comes from the categorial framework within which the experience is constituted. Objectivity is manifest in action on the basis of the experience accompanying the action. It is, in a sense, the reaction of "reality" that confers obj ectivity on experience with the instrumental categorial framework. Truth is not conferred in this way by some pro- cess in nature, but instead through argumentative reasoning in discourse. "Objectivity of experience means that every- body can cound on the success or failure of certain actions; the truth of a proposition stated in discourses means that everybody can be persuaded by reasons to recognize the truth 15claims of the statement as being justified." If the truth of a statement means that everyone can be persuaded that the claim of truth is justified, Habermas still holds that truth is not thereby reduced to the de facto achievement of a consensus. There can be such a thing as a false consensus and so criteria are needed for distin- guishing discursively realized rational agreement from the mere appearance of consensus. But these criteria cannot themselves require discursive justification for such a necessity would catch us in a circle. At the same time, if these criteria are not discursively confirmed, on what 105 basis are they to be justified and is not this basis then outside the framework for the validation of truth claims? To escape this problem, Habermas appeals to the universal pragmatics of theoretical discourse: he believes that the criteria for a "rationally motivated consensus" can be derived from the structure of communication directed to resolving truth claims. In theoretical discourse, agreement is reached purely from the "force of the better argument." Thus we are not talking about the syntactical character of logical necessity but the pragmatic quality of cogency, the power of compelling consent. A consensus is rationally motivated if it is achieved solely by the cogency of the arguments and not through external force or internal constraints from the structure of the discourse. This freedom from constraints is given a formal render- ing in Habermas * characterization of the "ideal speech situation." The ideal speech situation is neither an empirical phenomenon nor a mere construct, but rather an unavoidable supposition reciprocally made in dis-course. This supposition can, but need not, be counterfactual; but even if it is made counter-factually, it is a fiction that is operatively effective in the process of communication. There-fore I prefer to speak of an anticipation of an ideal speech situation...a normative foundation of agreement in language... 16 From an analysis of the pragmatic structure of the ideal speech situation Habermas suggests some general conditions 106 that must hold for argumentation to lead to a rationally grounded consensus. The very act of engaging in discourse assumes that agreement is possible and that a true consensus can be distinguished from a false one. We equally assume that the outcome will be the result only of the cogency of arguments and not of constraints on communication. This freedom from constraints consists in a symmetrical distri- bution of opportunities to participate verbally in the interaction and to assume various dialogue roles. Speci- fically, as summarized by McCarthy, participants in dis- course must have: ...the same chance to employ constative speech acts, that is, to put forward or call into question, to ground or refute statements, explanations, and so on, so that in the long run no assertion is exempted from critical examination. ...the same chance to employ representative speech acts, to express their attitudes, feelings, inten- tions and so on so that the participants can be truthful in their relations to themselves and can make their "inner natures" transparent to others;...the same chance to employ regulative speech acts, to command, to oppose, to permit, to forbid, and so on, so that privileges in the sense of one-sidedly binding norms are excluded and the formal equality of chances to initiate and pursue communication can in fact be practiced.17 Habermas also is aware that the cogency of an argument is related to the conceptual framework in which it is embedded and so he maintains that there must also be freedom to question the conceptual frame of reference itself, and 107 to suggest new ones, that is, to move to a metatheoretical level of communication. If these conditions hold, then discourse can be free of any systematic constraints or distortions in the communication, and there exists the potential for a rational consensus. In summary, Habermas maintains that truth is a norma- tive concept and is irreducibly social and that we must, in distinguishing true from false statements, make reference to the judgments of others. The concept of truth, then, refers to a universal pragmatic convention of the unforced agreement of an ideal community of inquirers. FOOTNOTES CHAPTER IV 1Jurgen Habermas, MA Postscript to Knowledge and Human Interests," Philosophy of the Social Sciences 3 (1973): 173. 2Ibid. 3Ibid., p. 173. 4Ibid. 3Ibid., p. 171. ^J.L. Austin, "Truth," in Truth, ed. George Pitcher (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964) p. 25. ^Habermas, "On Systematically Distorted Communication," Inquiry 13 (1970): 212. 3Idem, "Postcript," p. 174. 9Habermas suggests that the discursive resolution of problematic validity claims has historical roots and has become institutionalized in a number of important social contexts in our culture: It is only late in history that discourses have lost their sporadic character. Only when dis- courses are institutionalized for certain domains, to the extent that under specificable conditions there exists a general expectation that discursive interchanges will be initiated, can they become a systematically relevant learning mechanism for a given society. In the course of social evolution, such institutionalizations of partial discourses specific to certain domains signify innovative achievements ... Dramatic examples are, firstly, the institutionalization of discourse in which the validity claims of mythical and religious world-views could be systematically questioned and tested; we understand this as the beginning of philosophy in the Athens of the classical period. Secondly, the institutionalization of discourses in which the validity claims of the technically 108 109 exploitable profane knowledge transmitted in the professions could be systematically questioned and tested; we understand this as the beginnings of modern empirical science...Finally, the insti- tutionalization of discourses in which the validity claims connected with practical questions and poli- tical decisions were supposed to be continually questioned and tested, 1 x1 17th century England, then on the Continent and in the United States, with precursors in the Italian cities of the Renaissance, there arose the bourgeois public sphere, and in connection with it, representative forms of govern- ment- -bourgeois democracy. (Habermas, Theory and Practice, Boston: Beacon Press, 1973, pp. 25-26, cited by (with minor retranslations) Thomas McCarthy in The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas, Cam- bridge"] Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1978, pp. 292-293.) "^Philip P . Wiener, Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writ- ings (New York: Dover Publications, 1953) , p . 75"! 11Charles Sanders Peirce, "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities," in Philosophical Writings of Peirce, ed. Justus Buchler (New York: Dover Publications, 1955), p. 229. 12Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests . (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971) ,p. "^Idem, "Wahrheitstheorien," in Wirklichkeit und Reflexion: Festschrift fur Walter Schulz (Ptuilingen, 1973), p . 219, cited by Thomas MeC ax thy in The Critical Theory of Jttrgen Habermas, p. 299. ^Idem, "Postscript," p. 167. 15Ibid., p. 170. ^Idem, "Wahrheitstheorien," p. 251, cited by McCarthy in The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas, p. 310. ■^Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas, pp. 306-307. CHAPTER V PRACTICAL DISCOURSE: THE JUSTIFICATION OF MORAL CLAIMS Habermas' philosophy, inherited from the German rationalist tradition, is deeply grounded in the ideas of such philosophers as Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. It is useful to consider Habermas' ethical theory within this tradition. Kant: Individual Ethical Formalism Kant's eighteenth century Germany was caught up in the spirit of the Enlightenment in its celebration of individual reason as a restorative against the ignorance, corruption, poverty, and carnage brought on by the religious authority and tradition of the Reformation. For Kant the Enlighten- ment was humanity's coming of age from an infancy in which people were incapable of using their own reason without the aid of others. Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in the lack of resolution. and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere audeI 'Have courage to use your own reason.' --that is the motto of enlightenment.-** But whereas reason for the utilitarians was practical intelligence in pursuit of happiness, Kant retained the rationalists' conception of reason as the intuition of 110 Ill abstract truths. In his Critique of Pure Reason, he tried to show that the laws of science could be known with cer- tainty by reflecting on the a priori structure of knowledge imposed by the mind on sense perception. Similarly, in his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant tried to ground morality on a system of a priori laws applied by practical reason in the guidance of human conduct. Thus, Kant distinguished two familiar kinds of knowl- edge: theoretical and practical. Theoretical knowledge is limited to the realm of experience--the phenomenal world of the senses. Practical knowledge concerns the realm of will and feelings--noumenal or intelligible realm that transcends sensuous experience but must be postulated to explain the possibility of freedom. While theoretical knowledge pertains to the laws of na- ture according to the principle of causality, practical knowledge concerns the laws of freedom imposed by the will on human actions. As phenomenal beings, we are subject to the laws of nature, but it is our own sense of moral obligation that leads us to follow the ethical laws of practical reason. This division of knowledge is required by Kant's con- ception of the free and autonomous will. We intuitively know that we are capable of moral choice and that duty and self-interest are not the same thing. Yet moral choice and duty would be impossible if our actions were the necessary result of natural laws. So, we must be more than phenomenal beings subject to the principle of causality. 112 While Kant agreed with the utilitarians concerning the generalization that all people seek happiness, this is merely a psychological law of nature which, as free and autonomous beings, we must be capable of resisting. Against the utilitarians, Kant believed that to act out of anything but the laws of practical reason, as for example desire in the pursuit of happiness or pleasure, is to surrender our freedom and rationality. The motive for moral action cannot be any subjective interest, for pursuing merely empirical interests reduces us to the amoral phenomenal world. Nor can rational conduct be guided by empirically contingent hypothetical principles that must depend on our choice of goals. Rational conduct must be guided by a truly universal law of reason. Kant found such an imperative in the sense of moral duty which we all intuitively feel. i Kant believed the sense of obligation to obey ethical prin- ciples is caused by a demand of reason, operating in the noumenal realm, that action follows universal law. Thus, he introduced the categorical imperative or principle of universalizability: act only on the maxim that you can will to be a universal law. But Kant's account leaves us with two problems: the relation of the noumenal to the phenomenal realm (how can a neumenal practical reason qualify empirical actions as moral?), and the monologic character of Kant's ethics. 113 How Can Actions Qualify as Moral. First, how it is possible for reason to cause us to feel a sense of obliga- tion, Kant cannot say: In order to want that for which reason prescribes an ought exclusively to rational beings affected by the senses, a faculty of reason is required that can instill a feeling of pleasure or satis- faction in the fulfillment of duty, one that thus has causality that can determine the senses in accordance with its principles. But it is entirely impossible to comprehend...how a mere thought that in itself contains nothing sensual can produce a sensation of pleasure or pain....Yet here pure reason is to be the cause, by means of mere Ideas (which supply absolutely no object for experience) of an effect Cthat is, of pleasure in the fulfil- ment of dutyH that occurs in experience. Thus it is entirely impossible for us humans to explain how and why the universality of the maxim as law, and thus morality, interests us.2 Thus, we are left with a dichotomy of two realms of knowledge. In the theoretical realm, reason informs us that freedom and a noumenal realm beyond the senses are not impossibilities, but these possibilities cannot be accounted for by a theoretical reason which is limited to the phe- nomenal realm of the senses where everything is determined by causal necessity. In the practical realm, on the other hand, reason assures us that these practical postulates (of freedom and a neumenal world) are indeed valid. Yet freedom is expressed in actions that take place in the empirical world. Just how the principles of freedom relate to the principles of nature remains a mystery. We do not know how reason operating in a pure practical nou- menal world can influence us in relation to empirical 114 actions and thereby qualify our actions as moral. Somehow we know that the idea of freedom and autonomy makes us certain that pure reason can be practical; but how this is so, theoretical reason, by its very nature, cannot say. Monologic Ethics, Second, since Kant presupposes an autonomous will subject to the categorical imperative as the basis for his ethics, Habermas maintains that he removes moral action from the realm of morality itself. Kant unwit- tingly uses the identify of consciousness that is the basis of his theoretical philosophy as a model for the self in his practical philosophy as well. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant begins his argu- ment for the transcendental deduction by asserting that the manifold of perception is incapable of being thought and ordered into objects of knowledge unless self-conscious- ness (Kant's I think) is capable of accompanying all experi- ential representations. This presupposes a transcendental (vs. empirical) unity of consciousness, a transcendental ego within which the manifold of intuition is connected to a single permanent self-consciousness. This permanent ego is not given in experience but is a condition of all experi- ence. It belongs to the sphere of noumenal reality purged of all empirical contents. This transcendental ego, derived from the theoretical deduction, is, perhaps unwittingly, made the subject of 1X5 the practical deduction. It thereby remains an autonomous individual ego and its relation to other subjects becomes problematic. When the individual ego encounters the cate- gorical imperative there results a peculiar form of intersubjective obligation in which it attributes its own maxims as equally binding to all individuals. The asserted reciprocity of expectations is isolated in the individual will cut off from communications with other subjects. Thus, the autonomous will is an abstraction or limiting case of intersubjectively communicating individuals. While moral subjects can be assured that they act harmoniously in accord with moral principles derived a priori by practical reaon, moral action is withdrawn from communication among individuals and reduced to monologic status. Indeed, this was the motto of the Enlightenment: "have the courage to use your own reason." But problems of morality are thereby abstracted from the context and intersubjectivity of communicating individuals in which they occur. By isolating moral choice in an autonomous will, and abstracting it from human welfare, interests, and con- crete action consequences, practical reason does not confer moral significance on human conduct; it dissociates moral significance from human conduct. The price for Kant1s moral autonomy and ethical cer- tainty is that the moral agent is placed in opposition to nature, tradition and human interests. 116 Radical freedom seemed only possible at the cost of a diremption with nature, a division within myself between reason and sensibility more radical than anything the materialist, utilitarian Enlighten- ment had dreamed, and hence a division with external nature, from whose causal laws the free self must be radically independent, even while phenomenally his behaviour appeared to conform. The radically free subject was thrown back on himself, and it seemed on his individual self, in opposition to nature, and external authority, and onto a decision in which others could have no share.4 Fichte: Subjective Ethical Formalism Fichte's solution was to reduce the theoretical realm to the practical, the phenomenal world to the noumenal: nature became the projection of an absolute will. He analytically abstracted the united subject and object of consciousness into the conceptually isolated subjector intelligence-in-itself and objector thing-in-itself, and asked which was the ground of all being. Was experience the creation of the knowing subject, intelligence-in-itself, or was it an effect of. the object, the thing-in-itself? Obviously if experience is reduced to the effect of the thing-in-itself we are on the road to materialism and determinism on which we loose our freedom and intelligence. With Kant, Fichte, believed in the ultimate primacy of practical reason, therefore the experience of causal neces- sity and the material world must be explained in reference to intelligence-in-itself, to the "I" or ego. But what is this ego? Again, with Kant, Fichte finds a pure ego as the condition of all experience. Through the 117 act of self-reflection we are intuitively aware of the transcendental ego as the self-consciousness of the act of reflection itself. Our experience is objectified by a "self" that transcends objectification in the same sense. For Fichte this was no individual ego, however, but the supra-individual creator of all phenomena. The absolute ego was conceived as pure activity, pure striving which posits both the limited ego as intelligence, and the limited non-ego as the world of nature- a field for moral action. This noumenal will was a universal force that creates both the finite "I" or knowing subject, and the material world or object. Individual beings can free them- selves from the illusion of the phenomenal world through a simultaneous act of reflection and will. Through an act of self-reflection we recognize ourselves as temporary embodiments of the absolute will, and in an act of will we emancipate ourselves from dogmatic dependence on the material world. The world of nature is but the means for the ful- fillment of one's duty. For Fichte, in contrast to Kant, the individual is not conceptually isolated but exists only as an element in a system of rational beings, a manifold of intelligence. We are all manifestations of the one absolute ego. In spite of this fact, ethical choice is still left to the individual. Moral action must meet just one condition: to follow one's 118 own best conviction of one's duty. So, as with Kant, moral decision is withdrawn from intersubjective dialogue. Hegel: Dialectical Intersubjectivity Fichte cannot completely escapte the formalism that disabled Kant's ethics. His own ethics succumbs to his construction of the self in the dialectic of "I" and "not-I" within the subjectivity of an absolute ego. In Hegel, Habermas finds the first attempt to construct the self in the dialect of "I" and "not-I" within the inter- subjectivity of communicating subjects. The self is created within the intersubjectivity of the ego in interaction, not with itself as projected non-ego, but in interaction with another ego. Hegel called this medium for the creation of the self the intersubjectivity of spirit, in the sense of the spirit of a nation or team spirit, the sense of community that transcends individual consciousness. For Hegel, self consciousness is derived in the intersection of perspectives on the basis of reciprocal recognition. ...spirit is...the medium within which one "I" communicates with another "I"" and from which as an absolute mediation, the two mutually form each other into subjects. Consciousness exists as the middle ground on which the sub-jects encounter each other, so that without encountering each other they cannot exist as subjects.5 Hegel conceives Kant's individual transcendental ego as the limiting moment of the universal general will. 119 Applied individually, the "I" is abstracted from the suc- cession of external and internal experiences of an indi- vidual. Applied universally, the "I" is a place holder for all persons as individuals, for the personal point of view. Thus, the "I", as self identity, represents ..an identity in difference both of internal and external experi- ence, and of speaking and acting subjects. The "I" is an individuated universal, an abstract category of self consciousness for "the inalienably individual and singular subject."6 Whereas Fichte saw the ego as the identity of the "I" and the "not-I", it is the identity of the universal and singular for Hegel, and spirit is the dialectical unfold- ing of this unity. According to Habermas, The "I" as the identity of the universal and the singular can only be comprehended in terms of the unity of a spirit which embraces the identity of an "I" with an other not identical with it.Spirit is the communication of individuals in the medium of the universal, which is related to the speaking individuals as the grammar of language is, and to the acting individuals as the system of recognized norms. It does not place the moment of universality before that of singularity, but instead permits the distinctive links between these singularities. Within the medium of this universal- which Hegel therefore called a con-crete universal--the single beings can identify with each other and still at the same time main-tain themselves as nonidentical.7 The contribution of Hegel was his insight that self consciousness has to be seen as a moment of collective consciousness- an objective intersubjectivity through which 120 non-identical subjects reciprocally acknowledge one another and themselves. This universal medium is objec- tive in the sense that it is essentially independent of particular individuals; it exists before them, crystallized as the particular norms and institutions, objectivated in the particular language of the culture. It is a social world that faces the individual as an external and coercive fact. Yet, it is not something distinct over and above the individuals collectively, but rather the common life that binds them together as persons. Individuals and the social life world dialectically create each other. While Kant's concept of the ego was derived from the theoretical realm, Hegel draws his from the practical realm of interacting subjects embedded in an emergent intersub- jectivity. This change would allow Hegel to ground his ethics in tangible human action rather than a transcenden- tal realm of a priori forms. But Hegel never followed out this possibility. Instead he later abandoned the formula- tion that led to his dialectic of spirit, ultimately reduc- ing it to the single movement of absolute spirit realizing itself in history. Habermas: Communicative Ethics Habermas attempts to reconstruct Hegel's dialectic of self consciousness in terms of a theory of communication. This we considered in Chapter III. Language provides a 121 medium through which the sujectivity of human experience is tranformed into an interpersonal intersubjectivity and, thereby, allows us to form generalizable needs and interests. This permits us to ground ethics in human interaction rather than isolated individual consciousness. Symbolically Mediated Human Needs. When impulses, need dispositions, and feelings are integrated into the linguistic intersubjectivity they become objectivated as reciprocally acknowledged needs, interests, and desires. It is only by being attached to linguistic symbols and thereby becoming mutually acknowledged that needs can become stable intentions and find intentional expression in our language and conduct. In fact, the concept of prelinguistic impulse potentials is something we only analytically recon- struct from incongruities in linguistic expression, actions and bodily gestures. For Habermas notes that "we never encounter needs that are not already interpreted linguis- tically and symbolically affixed to potential actions."® It is only by taking form in a symbolic system--by becoming objectivated into the linguistic intersubjectivity that needs can become motives for intentional expression and action. Thus, Habermas sees intentional expressions and motives for action as linguistically interpreted needs or "subjectively guiding, symbolically mediated, and reciprocally interrelated 9intentions." 122 Norms and Human Need Fulfillment. Human needs must find their expression not only within the linguistic inter- subjectivity, but within the matrix of generally recognized norms of a given culture as well. Norms represent the historically sedimented means and courses of action avail- able to individuals in the pursuit of their interests. As routinized patterns of action which allow us to interact without continually defining everything as we go, norms and institutions provide a stable background for social intercourse. Norms are mutually binding expectations for behavior that exert a controlling influence on the expression of needs, not so much through external sanctions as through constituting the only recognized array of options. Thus, as reciprocal expectations concerning legitmate, or even the only recognized courses of action and behavior, norms play a regulating role in the fulfillment of human needs and interests. Because of their role in regulating human action, norms have the effect of legitimating some endeavors and disqualifying others. They dictate what constitutes a legitimate need and they govern the expression of that need in social activity. We have also seen that norms are embedded in language. Through the performative use of language in its regulative function we establish and maintain interpersonal relation- ships reflecting mutually acknowledged needs. 123 Legitimate Norms and Generalizable Needs.. Once inter- preted linguistically, human needs have the capacity to become public through intentional expressions and actions. Mutually acknowledged needs constitute generalizable interests, interests that can be communicatively shared. Generalizable interests are contrasted with particular interests that remain subjective within the individual. Generalizable interests are the basis of truly legitimate norms. Legitimate norms are mutually acknowledged patterns of conduct in relation to mutually acknowledged interests. They necessarily reflect a general will of those who freely participate. But we also know that norms do not always or even often reflect the true interests of all persons constrained by their force. It is only when norms reflect the genuine needs and interests of all involved that they can represent a rational will of the collective. So, while actions carried out within the normative field of reciprocally held expectations have a de facto claim to legitimacy, the validity of these norms is in principle subject to challenge on the grounds that they do not reflect a generalizable interest. Moral Action and the Rational General Will. Since norms regulate opportunities for the satisfaction of human needs, 124 _the legitimacy of any norm must always depend on its con- sequences in relation to human welfare and generally accepted needs. Thus, for Habermas, moral human conduct is interaction guided by norms that regulate human needs, that is, by norms that embody a rational general will. At the level of ordinary experience it is possible to challenge any proposed interaction as wrong or inappro- priate in terras of generally accepted norms. Such chal- lenges are generally met by appeal to the established norm- ative framework. But if the dispute cannot be resolved within established conventions and institutions, because the norms themselves are called into question, then, as in the case of problematic truth claims, communication is removed from the context of ordinary interaction to the level of discourse. Practical Discourse. Practical discourse is simply the name applied to the situation in which we withdraw from the ongoing unproblematic interaction because we seriously question the appropriateness of some interaction, but con- tinue communication at another level in an effort to come to an understanding. We seek a consensus, if possible, con- cerning the legitimacy of the norm reflected behind the problematic interaction. Is this kind of interaction, in this kind of context, appropriate, that is, does it speak to the genuine needs and welfare of those involved? The 125 validity of the claim to appropriateness is treated hypo- thetically and made the subject of argumentative discus- sion in which certain conditions must hold if the decision is to represent an unconstrained consensus. The conditions of unconstrained consensus are the same as those that must hold for theoretical discourse. The validity claim is bracketed and becomes the sole topic of discussion. All motives are excluded except for the cooperative resolution of the problematic claim. The outcome of deliberation must be the result solely of the force of the better argument and not the result of any distortions from systematic constraints on communication. There must be a symmetrical distribution among participants of opportunities to represent their experience in any domain, that is, to freely engage in constative, regula- tive and representative speech acts. Finally, since needs must be interpreted within the linguistic intersubjectivity, the ability to adquately represent one's needs will depend on the adequacy of the available symbolic structure and it must be possible to call into question and modify the language system being used. Participants must be able to know and say what they really want, and they must have the language to do it. There can be no use of force or strategic manipulation, nor evidence of deception, self-deception or unconscious distortion of communication. 126 Univeraalizability, An agreement achieved under these conditions can be said to constitute a consensus and to represent a rational general will of the group. It is con- sidered rational because it is the result of no force but the cogency of argument. It represents the will of the group because it constitutes mutually shared expectations concerning reciprocally recognized needs, that is, it re- flects only generalizable needs and interests. In practical deliberation, norms are tested for their universalizability. Kant's principle of practical reason, the categorical imperative, thus becomes grounded in the reality of communicatively interacting subjects. Practical discourse, the argumentative justification of moral claims, is simply the "procedural realization of universalizability."^ For Habermas, this principle is inherent in the structure of practical discourse and presupposed in all human communi- cation. It is not necessary to introduce it as a special moral principle. The problematic that arises with the intro-duction of a moral principle is disposed as soon as one sees that the expectation of discursive redemption of normative-validity claims is already contained in the structure of intersubjectivity and makes specially introduced maxims of universal- ization superfluous. In taking up a practical discourse, we unavoidably suppose an ideal speech situation that, on the strength of its formal properties, allows consensus only through generalizable interests. A communicative ethics has no need of principles. It is based only on fundamental norms of rational speech that we must always presuppose if we discourse at all. This, 127 if you will, transcendental character of ordinary language... can be reconstructed in the framework of a universal pragmatic.H Whereas Kant attempted to ground ethics in the formal laws of freedom of a transcendental ego, Habermas looks to the formal properties of human communication. For Kant, moral autonomy required individual moral deliberation detached from both other individuals and from empirically given human needs and interests. Habermas 1 communicative ethics excludes only non-generalizable needs and interests, that is, those that remain exclusively private and particular. Communicative vs. Positivistic Conceptions of Ethics One of Habermas1 principal concerns is to show that interests can be more than particular. More generally, he maintains that human needs and interests are more than simply irrationally given empirical properties of particular individuals. Some ethical systems predominant in this century, especially those based on positivistic assumptions have held precisely the opposite view. Some forms of positivism assert a narrow conception of rationality limited to beliefs that can be justified as true by certain narrow standards. ^ Because moral claims are held to be incapable of truth by these standards, they are declared ultimately irrational. Under these positivistic assumptions, it is believed that value statements simply express the attitudes or needs of the individual, or are intended to 128 influence or effect a change in others. Needs and inter- ests are seen as irrationally given empirical properties of individuals. Moral questions are reduced to irrational decisions and technical questions concerning the attain- ment of goals. Justification is limited to the truth of propositions concerning states of affairs and is excluded 1 from moral choice itself. J For Habermas, the justification of problematic moral claims, like that of truth claims, takes place by means of the performative aspect of language. It is the pragmatic cogency of arguments, rather than the theoretical proof of propositions, that is at issue. Practical arguments provide rational grounds for the acceptance of a general norm. Rather than presupposing that all interests are particular, argumentative discourse assumes the possibility of distinguishing generalizable interests from those that remain particular. Needs and interests are neither empiri- cally given nor simply decided; rather, they emerge in the dialectical interplay of unique individuals interacting in a shared social and material world. That is, human needs and interests are limited by empirical conditions, by intersubjective conventions and by the self-knowledge of the person. In particular, human needs are dependent on the linguistic intersubjectivity and conceptual structure in which they can be potentially objectivated. Therefore,129 new technologies, new conceptual structures, new forms of social interaction, and release from repressive norms and reified inner compulsions all interact in the ongoing forma- tion and discovery of human needs and interests. If human interests are assumed to be subjective and particular, and incapable of being shaped and emerging out of dialogue and interaction, then there can be no meaning to the existence of a rational will of generalizable interests that transcend individuals. In this case, human action is reduced to instrumental action and practical ques- tions are reduced to technical questions. In such a setting, there can be nothing more valid than a science of ethics; social practice is a matter of empirical analysis and admin- istration of technological controls. However, when empirical criteria are used in the norma- tive selection of courses of action, then the implicit standard is the facilitation of instrumental action. This standard is implicit because efficiency and economy in the selection of means to valued ends seems almost a defining characteristic of rationality itself. Under these assump- tions, however, practical questions that cannot be framed in terms of technical problems cannot be taken seriously. With its strict separation of descriptive and normative domains, empirical inquiry can neither acknowledge its standard of instrumental efficiency nor reach into the 130 practical arena to guide the selection of ends or values that guide and orient action. Action orientation is provided through traditional interpretations.formed through practical deliberation. When empirical inquiry refutes the claim of a traditional interpretation, it cannot itself fill the orienting role of the refuted idea because the logic of its method does not aim at the generation of normative or action-orienting knowledge. The relation of empirical knowledge to practice must necessarily come from outside the inquiry process itself. Emotivism, noncognitivism and other systems of ethics consistent with positivistic conceptions of inquiry reduce norms to decisions which cannot be rationally justified. Empirical inquiry serves only to limit the domain of possi- ble decisions: when technological rationality is brought to bear, then rational consideration is limited to the domain of empirical knowledge. We are limited to goals for which inquiry can provide appropriate technologies. Even where appropriate technology exists, there are frequently many routes to a given end. The logic of empiri- cal inquiry can only analyze alternative means in terms of their instrumental efficiency. If standards have not been identified, or are found to be in conflict, then a technological rationality resorts to 131 needs assessments and other methods for identifying values and resolving conflicts through summation and averaging. The values themselves are considered to be fundamentally and irrationally given, to be measured and pooled and used as a basis for decision making. Under positivistic assumptions of rationality, individ- uals, singly or collected in groups, must simply discover (or choose) the appropriate means for the interests they dis- cover (or choose), and attempt to produce a state of affairs that fulfills the given interests. There is no place for critical practical discourse. Norms that cannot find discursive consensus and reflect generalizable interests must be based on force. Under the conditions and assumptions of private interests and an instrumental perspective, norms can only serve to reflect and stabilize existing power relations. They can never claim to meet the genuine needs of those affected. To the extent that communication is not free of sys- tematic constraints imposed by power relations, the norma- tive structure will contain an element of repression and will not represent the true needs and interests of the com- munity. Systematic constraints bring about a distortion in communication that prevents the formation of a rational collective will. This happens because individuals must maintain the appearance of an open intersubjectivity in order to escape negative social sanctions. They thereby internalize the limits of communication and repress their 132 own interests. Their needs, feelings, and emotions become cut off from the linguistic intersubjectivity and their expression is limited to unintentional forms that show up only in the incongruities in linguistic expression, action and bodily gestures by which we infer the existence of unconscious supressed motives. Practical deliberation concerning normative validity claims, assumes that the linguistically expressed intentions of speakers can, in principle at least, correspond to their true motives and interests. When the true needs and inter- ests cannot be expressed because they have been psychologi- cally or ideologically repressed under the influence of an imbalance in power relations, then deliberations will depart from the ideal speech situation with a corresponding deformity in intersubjectivity. This means that the interests, motives and goals of some members of the com- munity cannot be adequately reflected in the deliberation process and in the formation of community standards and norms. When the possibility for symmetrical self-expression is inhibited, attempts at clarification of value perspec- tives may only serve to further supress the interests of less powerful constituencies. There is a certain protec- tion that comes from remaining vague and operating in the shadows, so to speak, either consciously or unconsciously. 133 To the extent that there is distortion due to systema- tic constraints in the communication, to that extent selfrepresentation is inhibited and decisions cannot reflect the rational will of the community. Positivistic conceptions also limit or distort our options in responding to conflicts in interests. In general, when there are conflicts over interests, two courses of action are available. Conflicting parties can use strategy and attempt to coercively force their will on each other; or, they can attempt to reach a free agreement among the individuals involved. Yet, when interests remain, subjective and particular, agreement must ultimately be seen as instru- mental for one's own will rather than the formation of a common will. Under the conditions of practical discourse, uncon- strained communication oriented toward consensus aims for agreement as an end in itself that cannot be instrumentalized for other ends. Rather than effecting a state of affairs through coercive means, the power manifest in com- municative action is drawn from the convictions of those who have come to be of one mind. Their convictions arise under the "forceless force with which., insights assert themselves. Agreements reached in unconstrained communi- cation gain their power from their claim to rationality, a claim inherent in the structure of communication itself. 134 The authenticity of the conviction stands or falls with the belief in the rightness of the norm in question. Rather than trying to satisfy their respective interests, participants simply strive for agreement. Their use of language is illocutionary--the noncoercive establishment of the relationship of understanding, instead of perlocutionary --to effect others to a desired end. Summary In summary, we see that Habermas regards moral action as necessarily communicative, as a relation between inter- acting people. Social interaction is necessarily moral interaction. Individual and collective identity are reciprocally formed in its process. The idea of an uncon- strained intersubjectivity that reflects generalized needs and interests and grounds moral action is inherent in the very structure of human communication. Moral discourse takes place in a language that has evolved in a self formative process of the human species based on both empirical transactions in the natural world and intersubjective interaction in a community of social beings. Thus moral discourse contains at. least implicit reference to empirical conditions and intersubjectively valid conventions that can be rationally justified by appeal both to empirical evidence concerning their contribu- tion to human welfare, and to analytical interpretations of 135 the meaning of terms. Justification is ultimately a matter for argumentative discourse in which problematic moral claims are tested for the generalizability of the interests they mediate. The use of technological and scientistic methods for deciding and justifying solutions to practical questions generally removes the issues from communicative interaction and thereby divests the ensuing actions of ethical signifi- cance. A case in point was the process recently used by our own faculty to choose a name for itself. This process consisted of the Delphi Technique in which individuals rated a list of proposed names and added comments and addi- tional names of their own. The results were tallied and recirculated through several cycles. The process finally yielded a rank ordered list of names, buttressed with appropriate statistics, that supposedly reflected the preferences of the members of the faculty. Presented with the name at the top, one member observed, "Now that just isn't the kind of name I thought we would have come up with to name our faculty," and a process of deliberation was initiated which resulted in the choice of a different name. Such practical deliberation allows those involved to form rationally their individual and sometimes conflicting interests into a common interest tha;t' expresses the will of the group. Norms are reinforced and built in this process. 136 Individuals linked together through such norms have created a mutual understanding that guides their conduct in relation to each other. More is gained than just the name of the faculty. An intersubjectivity is created that transforms individuals with conflicting perspectives into community. Their actions acquire coherence, purpose and ethical significance in relation to each other. FOOTNOTES CHAPTER V Immanuel Kant, ''What is Enlightenment?" in Kant on History, ed. L.W. Beck (New York: 1963), p. 3, cited by McCarthy in The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas (Cam-bridge, Massachusetts: MiT Press, iy/8) , p~! TT~. 2Immanuel Kant, "Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten," Werke, 4:42n, cited by Habermas in Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), pp, 200-201. George Dixon, An Application of Critical Theory to the Foundations of Educational Thought: An Examination of the Ideas of Jurgen Habermas, unpublished dissertation,The Ohio State University, 37977, p. 40. ^Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1975), p. 33, cited by Dixon, p. 40. 5Jurgen Habermas, Theory and Practice (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973) p. 145. 6Ibid. ^Ibid, p. 146. oIdem, Knowledge and Human Interests, p. 285. 9Ibid., p. 255. "^Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jurgen Haber- mas , p. 314. 11Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), p. 110. 12See, for example, Rudolf Carnap, "Testability and Meaning," Philosophy of Science 3 (1936): 410-471 and 4 (1937): 1-40, and "The Methodological Character of Theoreti-cal Concepts," in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. I: The Foundations of Science and the Con-cepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, ed. Herbert Feigl and Michael Scriven (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1956), pp. 38-76; Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961); and Carl 137 138 Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 19(16) and Aspects of ScientificExplanation (New York: The Free Press, 1956). 13See, for example, C.L. Stevenson, "The Emotive Mean- ing of Ethical Terms," Mind XLVI (1937); "Persuasive Definitions," Mind XLVII' (1938); and Ethics and Language (New Haven: 1944) . For a review of emotive theories, see J.O. Urmson, The Emotive Theory of Ethics (London: 1968). See also, R.M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (Oxford: 1936) and The Language of Morals (Oxford: 1952')" For a critique of these theories, see G.J. Wamock, Contemporary Moral Philosophy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967). T / Habermas, "Hannah Arendt's Communications Concept of Power," Social Research 44 (1977):6. CHAPTER VI INQUIRY AND DEVELOPMENT In the previous chapters I have argued that the inquiry processes we have emphasized in education tend to look at our experience from a particular perspective. Empiricalanalytic inquiry is concerned with phenomena that appear within a particular constellating framework. The object domain of empirical-analytic science is experience object- ified from the perspective of instrumental action and tech- nical control. The very phenomena this science studies owe their existence, so to speak, to our processes of coping with an external world, to our need for successful transactions in nature, to that aspect of ourselves that is external nature. Our need to transact successfully in nature is one guiding orientation for all our action and experience. Empirical-analytic science is just this orien- tation made into a principle. It is inquiry that carries this orientation into a highly sophisticated and refined logic. Unfortunately, we have sometimes misled ourselves into thinking that this logic constitutes knowing. As researchers in education, we have tended to lock ourselves into the same orientation that underlies our methods. We 139 140 have tended to equate rationality with a particular and limited dimension of itself. Following the empiricalanalytic model we look to regularities in nature for principles that can help us teach better and learn better, help us to build educational practices and institutions that are more effective. What does effective mean? "Effective" is simply one aspect of the guiding orientation that underlies the logic and methods of empirical-analytic inquiry itself. We do not want to blind ourselves by our very principles and methods for seeing. All our seeing and understanding has a personal and inter personal dimension that can never be reduced to questions of technical effectiveness. We want to try to expand our way of seeing, our logic of inquiry, to encompass this personal and interpersonal dimension. We want to incorporate these dimensions into our logic of inquiry. In our efforts to plead a case for the role of empirical-analytic science in education, we do not want to reduce education to an objectivating and instrumental ration- ality and proclaim that it only is worthy of the name of science. Education is a developmental process that must include these personal and interpersonal dimensions. Science as the logic and method of inquiry must be broad enough to encompass these dimensions of human understanding. Inquiry 141 processes are an integral part of our developmental process. We need inquiry processes that incorporate these personal and interpersonal dimensions to carry on our developmental process. Although inquiry in education relies mainly on empirical-analytic inquiry, we need to add something like hermeneutic inquiry and critical inquiry to make education, and inquiry in education, a fully self-formative process. Left to the perspective of empirical-analytic inquiry, education, as a self-forming process, is limited to just one dimension of this process--the objective dimension based on the knowledge constitutive interest in technical control. A personal dimension, based on the cognitive interest in individuated autonomy, and an interpersonal dimension, based on the cognitive interest in social orientation, are needed as well. We are social beings as well as natural ones, and we are persons as well as objects. Inquiry processes are b o m out of and in turn transform human development. Inquiry reflects and infuses the developmental processes of education. In this chapter I want to expand on those developmental processes that education partakes in. Using the writings of Habermas, I will lay out a framework for human development in the three dimensions of experience--the objective, the interpersonal and the personal. I believe that in seeing the developmental processes of education in their various dimensions, we can see more 142 clearly the three forms of inquiry that prefigure this dis- sertation. I do not mean to emphasize any one of these inquiry processes to the exclusion of the others. This whole dissertation can be seen as an act of balancing what I see as an over-reliance on one particular form. It is through articulation of these perspectives (admittedly incompletely achieved) that I wish to avoid the imbalance which results from inquiry being reduced to just one dimens ion. Ego Development and Identity Formation Habermas conceives of ego development and the forma- tion of individual identity as a process in which the indi- vidual is progressively integrated into the universal structures of cognition, speech, and interaction, and learns to interpret individual needs within these structures. Ego identity refers to the individual symbolic structure which permits a personality system to secure continuity and consistency in changes of biographical circumstances and position in social space. The universal structure of cognition refers to the categorial framework through which our experience of an exter- nal world is constituted. Habermas uses Jean Piaget's work in genetic psychology as a model for how individuals acquire competence in relation to objectified experience. 143 The universal structure of interaction refers to a parallel categorial framework for interpersonal experience. This includes a reference system for speaking and acting persons and a social structure of norms, roles and values that compose the intersubjectivity of social life. Habermas uses the work of George Herbert Mead to suggest the develop- ment of interactive competence in relation to this social dimension of our experience. The universal structure of speech refers to the lin- guistic intersubjectivity of language and the systems of speech acts we use to represent our experience in each domain. This speech structure does not have a relationship with experience parallel to cognition and interaction but can be seen as an aspect of these two structures which can be ab- stracted from them as the medium of their development that exhibits a structure in its own right. The acquisition of, or incorporation into, the speech structure leads to communi- cative competence in a process which Habermas refers to as lingui stic development. The process of gradually learning to interpret one's needs within these three structures is called motivational development. Habermas borrows from the work of Sigmund Freud to build a model of development in this personal dimensino. Freud's work is also used to build a related model of systematically distorted communication based on suppressed needs. 144 The structures of cognition, interaction and speech have an existence that is, in a sense, independent of the particular individual organism. Ego development and identity formation is the process of becoming integrated into, or incorporating these structures and ultimately differentiating ourselves from them as autonomous individu- als . An individual experiences his or her inner nature sub- jectively in relation to "the objectivity of outer nature, the normativity of society and the intersubjectivity of language." Ego development is the formation of a subjec- tive self as marked off from, or as contrastable with, (a) perceptions of a world that are objective in the sense that everyone in the same place would perceive the same thing, (b) norms that are valid in the sense that everyone in the same situation would acknowledge their validity, and (c) utterances that are comprehensible by anyone that shares the same language. Through these demarcations, the ego can identify with itself in the distinction between its own subjectivity and its nonsubjective experience as mediated through the uni- versal structures of cognition, interaction and speech. Thus the ego develops in the reciprocal constitution of subject and object. In the words of Charles Peirce, "We 3become aware of our self in becoming aware of the not-self." The sense of externality, or non-ego, in dialectical 145 interplay with the ego gives rise to the sense of self, to the sense of an emergent will. This not-self or non-ego includes a material and a social aspect which, at a certain stage in development, are both mediated through a third element of language. The developing ego internalizes the universal structures of cognition, interaction and speech and gains a measure of autonomy from experience constituted within each. As Piaget noted, "The organism constantly assimilates the milieu to its structure while simultaneously, it accomodates the structure to its milieu; the adaptation can be defined as an equilibrium between such changes. To become an autonomous and responsible person it is necessary to gain the technical and practical skills and the language of one's culture. But an equally important dimension is Learning to express and pursue one's needs by means of these capacities . Through development processes we acquire competen- cies for (a) coping with the world, (b) interacting with others and (c) speaking. At the same time we gain the capacity for (d) meeting our needs , goals and aspirations , individually and col- lectively, within the instrumental means of existing technology, within the guiding structure of social norms, and within the available linguistic symbols of language. These processes dedefine cognitive development, interactive development, linguistic development and motivational development, respec- tively. Through these processes the individual is pro- gressively integrated into the culturally given structures 146 of cognition, interaction, and speech and eventually differ- entiated from these structures' in the process of individu- ation. In the remainder of this chapter, I will briefly intro- duce and follow these developmental processes through three sequential stages. Stage I, consisting of approximately the first seven years of life, refers to egocentric development which results in the formation of a natural identity. Stage II, or sociocentric development, includes the years from about age seven to about age twelve and results in the formation of a role identity. Finally, stage III, called universalistic development, begins at about the age of twelve years and reaches equalibrium at approxi- mately age fourteen years and results in the formation of an ego identity. Figure 1 provides a graphic representation of cognitive, interactive and motivational development traced through these three stages. Development is shown as progressing within the three experiential realms of nature, society and the individual, each portrayed as an ellipse which is joined with the others at their bases. This is intended to represent the lack of differentiation between the experien- tial realms at birth and the progressive differentiation that takes place as the individual is integrated into the various structures at each stage of the developmental Cognitive Development Technical Realm (Nature) Motivational Development Emancipatory Realm (The Self) 147 Interactive Development Practical Realm (Society)Stage III Ego Identity Principles Reflexive Norms Formal Operations Universalized Need Interpretations Automomous Will 12 Years Stage II Role Identity Norms, Roles Generalized Behavior Expectations Concrete Operations Culturally Interpreted Needs 7 Years Individual Behavior Expectations Generalized Pleasure-Pain Concrete Needs-Desires Birth Figure 1* Ego development: Stage I, egocentric; Stage II, sociocentric; and Stage III, universalistic. 148 process. Linguistic development is not depicted as a separate realm but can be conceived as an aspect of develop- ment in the three represented realms that begins at about the age of eighteen months. The model of development begins with the autistic infant in which there is no subjective separation between the individual and the physical and social environment. Stage I: Egocentric Development Cognitive Development. The first stage includes Piaget's sensorimotor and preoperational stages of cogni- tive development. The sensorimotor period precedes speech and lasts until about the age of eighteen months. Constructured in this period are the basic structures of cog- nitive competence: space, substance, time and causality. For example, let us consider the notions of substance and space. Place an object before an eight month old infant that can reach out and grasp something it sees. As the infant reaches out, screen the object so that it cannot be seen. The infant will not try to reach beyond the screen for the object. The object has no substantiality, no permanence, but simply loses its existence once it disappears from view. Two months later, the infant will reach behind the screen to take the object. Yet if you remove the once grasped object and place it behind a second screen in 149 another location (while the infant watches you), it will reach behind the first screen: there is semipermanence but without localization. By the age of eighteen months the infant will search for the object localized by the series of movements and displacements of the object up to the moment of disappearance. The infant will have developed the basic structure of substance. Similarly, for the new b o m child there is no differ- entiated sense of space in which to localize objects, for there are no objects. The infant will gradually develop a sense of tactical, visual, and auditory space all centered on the body but not including the body itself as an element in space. Rather, it is a series of uncoordinated ego- centric spaces. Yet by eighteen months the child will have developed a notion of a general space for localizing all objects, including him or herself. There has been a com- plete decentralization of the ego which now sees itself as an element among others and can differentiate itself from them and the environment they comprise. Already the ego has begun to emerge in the process of mutual adaptation of the organism and environment. The preoperational phase begins at about eighteen months. The child begins to acquire what Piaget calls the "symbolic function," the capacity to represent something with something else. The symbolic function is acquired by differentiating symbols from their significations so 150 that objects and situations can be called up that are not actually perceived. Objects and actions can be represented by gestures, drawings, other objects, mental images, and social symbols or words in the form of speech. One has implicitly the response one would have to the object in the presence only of a symbol representing it. The symbolic function eventually gives the child the capacity to interiorize actions that formerly it could only perform materially. For example, we saw above that by age eighteen months an infant will have acquired the ability to follow and localize an object through a series of displace- ments in space. By age four years, a child has progressed in this capacity to the point that it can repeatedly follow a route to and from school. Yet given a set of materials to represent the streets and buildings on the way, the child will be unable to place them in the order of the journey home from school. The child can give only a kind of "motory representation." One child said, "I leave the house, I go like that (gesture), then like that (gesture), then I make a turning like that, then I reach school.11"* The journey to school can be done materially, but is only partially represented. The action is incompletely interiorized . Through the symbolic function, actions become increas- ingly capable of being carried out in thought or 151 symbolically. The actions are interiorized. During the preoperational phase the child develops emerging represen- tations of actions involving applications of the schemes of time, space, substance and causality. By age seven, these representations begin to form into complete structures which we will consider in Stage II. Interactive Development. In the preoperational stage of cognitive development the child begins to symbolize experience in a clearly explicit way. We noted that some symbols the child assimilates are social symbols, including speech symbols. Mead develops this social aspect of the symbolic, function more systematically than Piaget and we can use his analysis as a basis for the acquisition of interactive competence. The individual develops the ability to interact with others by learning the system of symbols, the symbolic structure, by which members of a culture communicate. A symbol is social if it implicitly calls up the same response in the one who generates the symbol as it does in the one to whom the symbol is addressed. The responses are the same in the sense that they are functionally similar. If I ask you to close the door I anticipate the response that will be invoked in you. My expression has the func- tionally identical meaning to myself as it does 152 to you. Through this functional identity of responses to *symbols we can mutually produce, we enter into each others' perspective to communicate and interact. We control and coordinate social behavior through these social symbols. They constitute our shared social awareness, the inter- subjectivity of our social life world. We can see that Mead builds on Hegel's construction of the self in the intersection of perspectives. Awareness is the response to objects in experience and we share awareness through social symbols. Individual consciousness is a moment of collective consciousness, Individuals in social interac- tion share a functionally identical perspective by means of this collective consciousness. Therefore, then can enter into each others1 perspective to control and coordinate interaction by means of social symbols. The individuals each look at their own actions from the standpoint of the others; they share a perspective. In any interaction, each participant responds implicitly in the same way as the others and thereby anticipates their responses while simultaneously carrying out his or her own part. Inter- subjectivity is this awareness of shared habitual responses to corresponding objects evoked by common symbols. Just as we saw that the self arises out of interaction between the ego and the non-ego as nature or the environment, 153 so we see that another moment of the emergence of the self is in the interaction between ego and non-ego as other speaking and acting persons, as society. The self is part of a social process and part of a natural process. The fully developed self cannot be identified with the body only, but in Stage I of ego development, the child secures identity in the persistence of its body, that is, by its temporal continuity and boundary-maintaining proper- ties . The child thereby develops a natural identity in which practical and technical concerns are not clearly dis- tinguished. As we saw above, the child has learned to per- ceive permanent objects in the environment but the differ- entiation between physical and social domains remains unclear. Piaget notes that the first objects to acquire cognitive permanence are other persons rather than inani-gmate objects. While the child can differentiate itself from the environment, it retains a body-centered perspective. The child cannot understand its experience from a perspec- tive outside its own standpoint. Ego development is ego- centric . In early stages of play, the child cannot consciously organize its behavior in terms of the general expectations of others. It plays various roles, like doctor, nurse and patient, with no reciprocal unity and stability. The child does not play according to rules, but impulsively and with- out hesitation. It cannot leave its own point of view. The 154 child forms only individual concrete expectations, incorpo- rates only individual actions, and responds only to indi- vidual consequences of its actions. The acquisition of interactive competence involves the mastery of the symbolic structure given in one's culture. In Stage I, the child incorporates only individual concrete expectations, actions and consequences of actions. Motivational Development. Psychosexually, the child is in the preoedipal phase during Stage I . Only concrete needs are experienced. These needs are integrated into the technical and practical structures solely by means of actions reinforced through generalized pleasure and pain. The child acquires habits and orientations that are tech- nically effective in this regard, as well as practically successful in relation to expectations it must obey. The individual is growing into the symbolic structure of the family and learning to express its intentions and needs in that structure. The child assimilates actions that tend to satisfy concrete needs. Linguistic Development, or communicative development, takes place along two dimensions. The first is the degree to which the individual can differentiate speech itself from other forms of action and the context of interaction. The second dimension is the degree to which the person has integrated cognitive structures into the speech structure. 155 In Stage I we have seen that the child learns to master •*symbolically mediated interaction, to internalize and use linguistic symbols to mediate interaction with others. However, at this stage, speech and action are not clearly differentiated. There is no distinction between the semantic content of expressions and the behavioral disposi- tions of the child. Neither cognitive, nor interactive competence has been integrated into speech and therefore the performative, representative and expressive functions of speech are not distinguished. Summary. By the end of Stage I, the child has acquired the fundamental cognitive structures and the ability to carry out symbolically actions organized by these structures. Interactions are guided by individual behavior expectations and are motivated by generalized pleasure and pain, and concrete needs and desires. The child has formed a natural identity in which the social and material realms are not distinguished. Linguistically the child has acquired the symbolic function, but has not integrated speech and cogni- tion nor distinguished speech and other forms of action and interaction. Stage II: Sociocentric Ego Development Cognitive Development. By about the age of seven, the child begins the stage of concrete operations in the realm of cognitive development. In this stage interiorized actions 156 become coordinated into total systems which Piaget calls operations, The symbolic function begun in Stage I has made possible the interiorization of actions. In Stage II, these actions now become organized into systems or struc- tures in such a way that they become reversible. The individual thereby gains an additional measure of decenter- ing from the limited perspective of its own ego. Operations are interiorized complete systems of reversable actions. With the operations organized into an integrated system, the child can abstract from the various dimensions of the action structure and look at a problem from different aspects. Operations do not become organized into the logic of speech or propositions in this stage, but remain a logic of concrete object manipulations such as classfications, rela- tions and numbers. For example addition, at this stage, is an interiorized scheme for collecting or combining concrete elements. It is reversible in the operation of subtraction. During the period of concrete operations the child gradually develops and internalizes a complete system of reference for space, time, substance and causality. An example concerning substance: The operation of classifying substances by including a subcategory within a larger category requires an understanding that the part is smaller than the whole and the capacity for reversibility in 157 moving back and forth from parts to wholes. Before Stage IX, a child shown a dozen flowers including six daisies, and asked whether there are more daisies or more flowers, will reply, "There are more daisies", or, "it is the same because there are six on one side and six on the other."^ The child thinks the flowers are what are left after the daisies, and cannot distinguish part-part relationships from part-whole relationships, which requires the capacity of reversibility--from, the parts back to the whole from which they came. By age nine, the child can do this easily. Interactive Development. Parallel to rhe decentering that takes place in the child's cognitive development is a corresponding decentering in interactive development. Instead of incorporating only concrete expectations, actions and consequences from the social structure, the developing child begins to form generalized expectations that are reciprocally shared with important reference persons. The child begins to share the perspectives and attitudes of the surrounding culture. These general perspectives and attitudes become the context within which the child under- stands and interprets its actions. Mead names this general perspective in which everyone participates, the "generalized other." The generalized other is not simply the combined attitudes and perspectives 158 of all the individuals in the culture. Rather, these atti- tudes and perspectives exist independently of individuals in the sense that individuals incorporate and take part in them. These alternative perspectives represent different ways of responding to situations, objects and events in our experience. They are different ways to do things, different possible organizations of events. They comprise the norms and values of the culture. The generalized other, or community perspective has an external objectivity. Yet it evolves and is transformed in the>'process of social interaction. Individual perspectives grow out of it. Social interaction is possible because each actor can anticipate the responses of other actors in particular situations. Each person takes the attitudes of the others in terms of a generalization of their perspectives. In concrete interaction, the individual implicitly takes the role of the others while overtly performing his or her own role. The capacity to take the role of others in this way results in the general perspective of any actor in a comparable situation--the perspective of the generalized other. In Stage II the child becomes more integrated into the social structure by beginning to learn these generalized expectations, norms and roles of social interaction. Similarly, the individual begins to differentiate particular expectations and actions from general norms and particular 159 actors (including him or herself) from anonymous roles. Speaking and acting intentional subjects are thereby differ- entiated from perceptible and manipulable things. This increased generalization and differentiation of perspective allows an increasing decentralization of ego development. The child learns to play social roles and to take part in social interaction. It gradually learns what that part is as defined by sex and position in the family and other elements of society. The child locates itself in the social life world and begins to develop a role identity. The unity of self is based on membership in a particular social structure and internalized and intersubjectively shared norms and roles. The child's perspective has expanded from the limitations of its own ego to that of the generalized other so that development in this stage is sociocentric. Motivational Development. Stage II represents the oedipal phase of psychosexual development: the child must assimilate the social structure of the family. The child's needs are met subject to the approval of primary reference persons. The child must learn to interpret its needs within the norms of the f a m i l y social structure. It is thereby freed of the egocentric bond to its own gratification in terms of concrete desires and aversions, Motives for action become culturally interpreted needs, Satisfaction of these 160 needs depends on adherence to socially recognized expecta- tions . The child thus learns to distinguish sociallysanctioned conduct from its own interests, duty from mere impulse or desire. However, since the child can now make these distinctions, it can pursue its own interests strategically within the constraints of social norms and values. Linguistic Development. During this second stage of development the child gains a mastery of natural language. In the first place there is an integration of speech and cognition so that the child's cognitive operations become linguistically organized. The child can now refer to situa- tions different from the situation at hand. It becomes possible to use language independent of the concrete action context. The child can now differentiate the propositional content of its utterances from what it is trying to do with the utterance in relation to the listener. Language becomes an independent medium over against the speaker, the normative structure of society and the world of external nature. This happens in a way that allows the child to emphasize the propositional content, the interpersonal relationship, or the expressive aspect, so that the child can choose among cognitive, interactive and expressive uses of speech. This capacity is acquired by mastering the sys- tems of constative, regulative and expressive speech acts. 161 Finally, the child learns to differentiate two refer- ence systems. One reference system is for categorizing the objects of an objectified reality--of things and events that are accessible through instrumental action. The other reference system is for a nonobjectified reality of social life experienced through interpersonal communication. Summary. In summary, the key structural feature in the transition from egocentric to sociocentric development of Stage II is the ability of the child to take on the perspec- tive of an anonymous observer. The child acquires a decentered perception of reality and is able to respond with increased reflexivity, generalization and differentiation. Cognitively, the child has reached the level of con- crete operations and, interactively, has incorporated the norms, roles and generalized behavior expectations of the immediate culture to form a role identity. The child's actions are motivated by culturally interpreted needs and both cognitive operations and social interaction have become linguistically organized. Stage III: Universalistic Ego Development Cognitive Development. In the third stage, beginning about age twelve, cognitive development matures into the capacity for formal operations. The logic acquired and internalized in relation to concrete actions are now developed at a propositional level. The operations 162 themselves become linguistically organized. We enter a stage of operations on operations, by casting these opera- tions into propositional form. For example, the child learns to combine the operations involved in weight and volume to yield the ratio of density--an operation on oper- ations . Most importantly at this stage, with the ability to linguistically formulate and work with sets of operations, the child can now begin to abstract himself from concrete operations on physical objects in his immediate presence. The child learns to work with hypothetical states of affairs represented by statements, propositions and hypothe- ses that can be verbally expressed. Previous to Stage III a child is limited in possibilities to the direct extension of what is actually present in his sensory experience--to immediate concrete reality. The capacity for formal opera- tions allows the child to consider hypothetical states of affairs to formulate new possibilities and to accept and discard hypotheses in his mind. Interactive Development. With the acquisition of for- mal operational thought, an additional degree of decentering takes place. The individual can now become detached to a degree from the inherited views of nature and the roles, norms and values of society. It becomes possible to con- sider them hypothetically, Habermas explains, 163 Until then, the epistemic ego, bound to concrete operations, confronted an objectivated nature; and the practical ego, immersed in group perspectives, was dissolved in quasi-natural systems of norms. But as soon as the youth no longer naively accepts the validity claims contained in assertions and norms, he can transcend the objectivism of a given nature and explain the given from contingent boundary conditions in the light of hypotheses; and he can burst the sociocentrism of a traditional order and can understand (and if necessary criticize) existing norms as mere conventions in the light of principles.8 The individual comes to see that a person's perspective of nature is relative to the progress of science and the system of social norms is relative to social interaction. He or she begins to learn and acquire principles that can be used to critically evaluate and generate norms. In this process the individual gradually acquires an autonomous ego identity. During this time the youth learns the important dis-tinction between norms, on the one hand, and prin- ciples according to which we can generate norms, on the other. Such principles can serve as standards for criticizing and justifying existing norms; to one who judges on principle, all binding norms must appear as mere conventions ... the ego can no longer identify with itself through particular roles and existing norms...it must retract its identity, so to speak, behind the line of all par-ticular roles and norms, and stabilize it only through the abstract ability to present itself in all situations as the one who can satisfy the requirements of consistency even in the face of incompatible role expectations ....The ego identity of the adult confirms itself in the ability to con- struct new identities and simultaneously to inte-grate them with those overcome, so as to organize oneself and ones interactions in an unmistakable life history,9 164 Through the various stages of ego development the individual has gradually incorporated increasingly compre- hensive segments of the social structure: from concrete actions, to generalized behavior expectations, to princi- ples for justifying norms. Thus development moves through three stages characterized by increasing reflexivity. Individual behavior expectations in Stage I become reflexive in Stage II: expectations are mutually expectable. These reciprocal expectations become reflexive in Stage III in the form of standardized norms. That is, norms are tested for their generlizability. Interactive competence has pro- gressed to the stage where the individual can achieve rational autonomy and an ego identity. Motivational Development. At Stage III the individual reaches the adolescent stage of psychosexual development. The child must grow out of the specific social structure of the family to become an adult in the larger society. It thus repeats at a higher level the decentering that took place in Stage II with the dissolution of natural identity and the formation of a role identity related to the family. The child's needs that were interpreted and integrated into the social structure reflected in the family, are now treated hypothetically. It becomes possible to discover, shape and modify the individual's needs and interests in reciprocal interaction- what Habermas calls the discursive 165 formation of the will. The critique and justification of needs can itself achieve a motivating force. Motives for action can now include principles. Action is guided not merely by existing norms and values but by norms that are in principle justifiable. The individual's need fulfill- ment is integrated into the process of discursive will for- mation and the discovery of generalizable interests. Linguistic Development. With formal operational thought the individual can now participate in pure discourse or argumentation. Speech and cognition become completely differentiated. The speaker only cannot separate cognitive, interactive and expressive uses of speech to thematize a particular dimension, but can now question or treat hypo- thetically the validity of the claims to truth, legitimacy and authenticity implicit in speech acts. The propositional content can be abstracted from assertions and treated as hypothetical states of affairs which may or may not be factual. The question can be re- solved discursively. The speaker can also abstract communication from the practical context of ongoing interaction in which relation- ships are being formed, to consider hypothetically the legitimacy of a norm or standard reflected in a proposed interaction. The proposed relationship and its normative context are thematized. The problematic norm is isolated 166 and tested for rightness; the needs and interests at stake are examined for their generalizability. Habermas does not consider the claim to authenticity to be discursively redeemable. Rather it is tested through the consistency of actions, expressions and gestures over a period of time. The experiential domains of external nature, society and inner nature, with respect to which the ego is differ- entiated, are thematically represented in the representa- tive, interactive and expressive uses of speech. The valid- ity of such expressions is tacitly assumed in ordinary interaction. With the acquisition of hypothetical thought these "regions" of experience are expressed under the possi- bility of their repudiation. This implies that the individ- ual has learned to differentiate the "modalities of being, that is, he or she can distinguish being (that which really is) from mere appearance, what is from what ought to be, and essence (the individuated self) from its appearances. Summary. In Stage III, the individual attains an additional degree of decentering and autonomy in the form of hypothetical thought. In cognitive development, the individual reaches the level of formal operations, the capacity to perform cognitive operations hypothetically. Interactively, the individual learns to treat norms, roles and values hypothetically and incorporates principles and reflexive norms from the social structure to form an ego 167 identity. Needs, too, can be considered hypothetically so that actions are motivated by universalized need interpre- tations gained through discourse. Finally, the individual can hypothetically consider the validity claims of truth, legitimacy, and authenticity inherent in linguistic expres- sions . FOOTNOTES CHAPTER VI Jiirgen Habermas, MOn Systematically Distorted Communi- cation," Inquiry 13 (1970): 205-218. 2Idem, "Zur Entwicklung der Interaktionskompetenz," unpublished manuscript (1974), p. 4, cited by Thomas McCarthy in The Critical Theory of Jiirgen Habermas (Cam-bridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 19/8), note 10, p. 436. OCharles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, I960), p. 324. ^Jean Piaget, The Child and Reality, trans. Arnold Rosin (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), p . 166. 5Ibid., p. 19. ^Ibid., p . 46. 7Ibid., p. 23 QHabermas, Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismis (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), pp. 15-16, cited by McCarthy in The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas, p .340. Q Idem, "Zur Einfiihrung," in R. Dobert, J. Habermas and C. Nunner-Winkler, eds., Die Entwicklung des Ichs (Koln, 1977), p. 10, cited by McCarthy" Critical Theory, p. 342. 10Habermas, "Some Distinctions in Universal Pragmatics," Theory and Society 3 (1976): 165. 16.8 CHAPTER VII INQUIRY IN EDUCATION It is my belief that much of educational theory and practice is based on and hampered by a restricted concep- tion of rationality. Trends in education such as the behavioral objectives movement, the competency movement, the. behavior modification movement, the accountability movement, natural system models, strategic decision models, and research, development, dissemination and evaluation (RDD&E) models all suffer from a common failing: they are based on an objectifying and instrumental perspective that splits educational entities into subject and object and means and ends. From curriculum development to the dissemi- nation of innovative programs, educational practice is repleat with assumptions that not only reduce our humanity, deprive us of autonomy and responsibility, and divest our actions of moral import, but stand in the way of effective human development and genuine social progress as well. This is particularly true of inquiry in education for educational research and evaluation have modeled themselves after the empirical-analytic sciences. Much of inquiry in education is derived from the theory and methods of 169 170 psychology and social psychology which themselves are based on positivistic conceptions of rationality. The dominance of positivistic conceptions of rational- ity could lead Hay Brodbeck to the following assertion in an article on "Logic and Scientific Method in Research on Teaching" in the prestigious Handbook of Research on Teaching: The language of science, devoid of greetings, exclamations, questions, and commands, consists wholly of declarative sentences. By means of them, the scientist talks about the world. These sentences may be as simple and qualitative as the statement that ice is cold or as complica- ted and quantitative as the Newtonian law of attraction. *■ By limiting the language of science to declarative sentences about the world, scientific inquiry is reduced to the objectifying, technical realm. Interactive and expressive uses of language are barred from scientific rationality except as they are reducable in some way to the representa- tive function. Excluded are the personal and interpersonal dimensions of experience and human understanding. Similarly, in the article that follows Brodbeck's, "Paradigms for Research on Teaching," the editor of the Handbook, N.L. Gage, defines teaching as "any interpersonal influence aimed at changing the ways in which other persons can or will behave," and defines research as "activity aimed at increasing our power to understand, predict, and control 2events of a given kind." Only the word "understand" keeps 171 Gage's definitions from completely reducing teaching, and inquiry on teaching, to the technical realm. The same picture holds for educational evaluation, the focus of my own professional involvement with educa- tional inquiry. In this Chapter I want to further illus- trate the dominance of the empirical-analytic framework in educational inquiry by considering eight prevailing models of evaluation. I explore the relation between these evaluation models and the theory of inquiry developed in this study by comparing these models with the three forms of inquiry, empirical-analytic, hermeneutic, and critical. Following this analysis, I explore some methodological implications of the theory of inquiry by briefly illustra- ting how one might conduct an evaluation using this frame- work. I take as my example the workshop on conflict I used in Chapter I to illustrate the difficulties I experienced in relation to the inadequacies of prevailing conceptions of rationality. Predominant Evaluation Models To illustrate the prevailing paradigm, I choose evalu- ation inquiry primarily because I am most familar with that form of inquiry in education. Additionally, evaluation illustrates the problematic place of values and practical interests in the inquiry process. With educational research reduced to empirical-analytic inquiry, it is easier to 172 overlook the place of values in the inquiry process; with evaluation it is not possible. In spite of this, the dominant perspectives still offer considerable enertia to the recognition of the place of values in educational evalu- ation. In 1974, Bernstein and Freeman published a study sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation in which they reviewed the quality of 236 evaluation studies directly 3funded by agencies of the federal government in 1970. The standards of quality they used are simply a quantitative operationalization of the preodominant evaluation research paradigm. Table 2 shows the criteria they used and the code by which these criteria were quantified. Inspection of this table reveals that Bernstein and Freeman limited their attention to the following aspects of the evaluation studies they reviewed: the nature of the research design, the representativeness of the sample, the sampling plan, the type and nature of data analysis and the quality of measure- ment procedure. These are the same considerations that re- ceive the most attention from any standard textbook on edu- cational research. The highest ratings are given to experimental designs using multivariate statistics on the quantitative analysis of adequate measures drawn from a representative random sample. The criteria for measures 173 TABLE 2 Bernstein and Freeman Codings of Evaluation Quality Variables^ Variable Measuring Some Aspect of Evaluation Quality Coding Scheme (where higher coding number represents higher quality) 1. Nature of Research Design 0 = Descriptive Study 1 Comparative, longitudinal or cross-sectional studies with- out randomisation or control 2 = Experimental designs without both randomization or control 3 ■ Experimental designs with randomization and control 2. Representativeness of the Sample 0 Haphazardly drawn samples 1 ■ Moderately representative 3. Sampling 4. Type of Data Analysis 0 " Non-systematic, non-random, non-systematic random, and random or non-random cluster samples 1 = Stratified random, simple random, or all (i.e. universe) 0 TM No statistics, ratings or impressions 1 " Narratives or imnressionis- • tic summaries 2 " Rating from qualitative data 3 ° Simple descriptive statis- tics 4 •* Multivariate statistics 5. Nature of Data Analysis 0 " Qualitative Analyses 1 « Evenly divided between quali- tative and quantative analy- ses 2 = Quantitative analyses 6. Quality of Measurement Procedures 0 ° Inadequate Measurement 1 *> Adequate 174 are those of adequate content validity from Kerlinger in Foundations of Behavioral Research. Patton, in reviewing Bernstein and Freeman's study concludes with the following statement: While there can be some argument about the reasons for the dominance of the natural science model in educational social scientific research, the fact of the dominance cannot be seriously doubted. The issue for us is that the very domi- nance of The Scientific Method in evaluation research appears to have cut off the great majority of its practitioners from serious consid-eration of any alternative "'research paradigm~ The label "research" has come to mean the equivalent of employing The Scientific Method- of work- ing within the dominant paradigm.6 It is true that in recent years evaluation theorists have attempted to delineate a broad range of evaluation models appropriate for a wider range of evaluation func- tions, assumptions and perspectives. At the same time, however, it remains true that positivistic influences still dominate evaluation methodology and the prevailing models are predisposed toward positivistic theories of knowlege and values. To illustrate this bias I will review eight evaluation paradigms and contrast them with empirical-analytic , hermeneutic and critical inquiry. Systems Analysis Models. In this approach evaluation is generally initiated by high level administrators and managers in order to improve and justify large scale social action programs. Value judgments are made by specialists and top level administrators on the basis of efficiency in 175 the production of social services, quality control and accountability. These judgments are justified by empirical evidence of the attainment of expected results. The logic of inquiry consists in the reduction of the evaluatum to a causal relationship between program inputs and output variables. Agreement is presupposed on the choice of a few output measures which must meet classical measurement criteria. Program alternatives are treated as planned variations and must meet classical criteria of the internal and external validity of experiments. Through homogeneous scaling, all variables are reduced into a quantitative model such as regression analysis. Program alternatives are systematically compared through cost bene- fit analysis and the most efficient alternative is judged most valuable. Goal Attainment Models. Evaluation is generally initiated by administrators charged with responsibility for the success of educational programs, sometimes at the request of funding agencies or public officials. Evaluation focuses on the achievement of prespecified instructional goals in order to facilitate effective curriculum design and instruction, as well as to hold educators accountable for student learning. Value judgments are based on empiri- cal evidence of student performance meeting prespecified standards. 176 The subject of goal based evaluation is the effective- ness of instructional activities. The logic of inquiry treats the evaluatum as a cause whose effect is the students' performance. The desired post instructional status of the learner is described and, for evaluation purposes, reduced to indices meeting the standards of criterion referenced measurement. Since instruction is judged against these measures, it must be demonstrated that the instruction itself':and not something else produced the results obtained. In other words a causal relationship should be shown to exist between instruction and student performance. Therefore evaluation designs should approxi- mate as closely as possible the criteria of classical experimental designs for external and internal validity. Value judgments are based on the extent to which educational programs lead to (in a causal sense) learner behavior which meets stipulated performance standards. Both the systems analysis and goal attainment models are consistent with the empirical-analytic form of inquiry. Both are guided by the cognitive interest in technical con- trol. Both assume the problematic situation to be a lack of technically tested rules for behavior that would produce desired effects. Finally, both take place in the behavioral system of instrumental action in which the evaluatum is conceived as a means which should take advantage of natural 177 empirical regularities and thereby lead to a subjective end which has, in turn, been objectified into quantitative indices. They therefore aim at the discovery of the pertinent empirical laws or relations. Knowledge claims in each case are justified by appeal to the appropriate stan- dards of empirical research which, in turn, depend on the success of instrumental operations. Decision Making Models. Evaluations are conducted to provide administrators with useful information for judging decision alternatives, including accountability decisions. An evaluation generally addresses a complete educational program and can focus on the program's goals, development, process or results. The formal theoretical foundation for these models is based on synoptic decision making models "which assume complete delineation of decision alternatives, complete delineation of criteria on which the alternatives are to be judged, and complete assessment of Qeach alternative on each criterion." In practice, however, the evaluations tend to be less formal. The evaluation consists in clarifying decision alter- natives, delineating the information needed, obtaining this information and applying it to the decision tasks. The information required will generally be different for each stage or aspect of the program being evaluated. Examples of methods include needs assessments, questionnaires, inter- views and criterion referenced tests. Panel visits, 178 advocate teams and PERT analysis are also sometimes used. The basic goal is to obtain that information which is both feasible and useful in making the required decisions. The information acquired represents a factual claim and is expected to meet scientific criteria of internal and external validity, reliability, and objectivity. However, traditional causal-comparative and experimental designs are generally believed to have limited applicability in decision models. Value judgments are based on empirical evidence of anticipated results or of conditions that support a particu- lar course of action. I believe that decisions models of evaluation can best be characterized as practical deliberation supported very strongly by empirical inquiry, with most of the actual evaluation following the procedures and standards of empiri- cal inquiry. Hermeneutic inquiry is not necessarily exluded and may enter in as a case study or ethnographic description of a program. Panel visits and advocate team approaches take on a hermeneutic quality. Goal Free Models, Goal free evaluations usually address particular products or programs which are sponsored by private or public funding agencies and then developed by an intermediate group or institution for public consumption. Evaluations are initiated by sponsors strictly for the benefit of consumers of these programs, Goal free 179 evaluations, whether formative or summative, focus exclu- sively on results or effects of the product or program, with no consideration given to the developer's goals or intentions so as to escape co-option and other difficul- ties usually encountered in goal statements such as grandiose over-statement or vagueness and incompleteness. This model is analogous to the approach used by the Consumer's Union or Ralph Nader. The evaluation task is to discover the positive and negative effects of the program and compare these with i the results of competing options against a profile of demonstrated needs. Needs assessments sometimes provide the positive standard for judging the program. The information gained for this comparison is usually quantitative and must meet criteria of scientific validity and reliability. The identified needs are then treated as ends which the program should produce more efficiently than its competitors in order to receive a favorable judgment. Based on an instru- mental model, the inquiry process seeks to relate the inter- vention and a set of desirable effects discerned by the evaluator. Through experimental or "modus operandi" methods a causal relationship is sought. The modus operandi pro- cedure, used by detectives, historians and anthropologists, established a configuration or "MO" of events from the "trail" left by the object that can be pieced together to build a "case" connecting a cause with an effect. 180 While there is clearly an important role for empirical inquiry in goal free evaluation, I do not believe this model can be completely reduced to the empirical form. Qualita- tive analysis and description are also important in the search for positive and negative effects. Since objectivity is not defined as intersubjective reliability in this frame- work, "it is possible for a single observer, unaided by any psychometric instrument, to be more objective than a batotalion of observers loaded with reliable instruments," provided there is sufficient control of bias. The most important considerations are that the evaluation be guided by consumer interests and that irrelevant interests and other sources of error and bias be adequately controlled. Empirical evidence and rational argument are combined to build a case linking a program to its effects. The merit of the program is expressed in an overall summative judg- ment that ranks it against its competitors in terms of consumer needs. Hermeneutic inquiry per se probably has limited use. Art Criticism Models. Drawing on the traditions of art and literary criticism, Elliot Eisner has proposed a "connoisseurship" model of evaluation. This approach aims at helping "teachers and others in education learn to see and think about what they do."^ Connoisseurship is the art of perception that makes it possible to appreciate 181 complex qualities and their relationships and to judge them against highly developed and sensitive standards. Such judgment requires a profound understanding and familiarity with the phenomena involved and with the standards of the tradition it represents. "If connoisseurship is the art of appreication," says Eisner, then "criticism is the art of disclosure.... the critic aims at providing a rendering in linguistic terms of what it is that he or she has encoun- tered in such a way that others not possessing his level of connoisseurship can also enter into the work,"^ In Dewey's words, "The end of criticism is reeducation of the percep12tion of the work of art;" in this vein, Eisner suggests that "the function of criticism is education. Its aim is to lift the veils that keep the eyes from seeing by pro- viding a bridge needed by others to discern the qualities 13and relationships within some arena of activity." The bridge is often provided by literary devices such as metaphor, contrast, redundancy, and emphasis. The portrayal requires familiarity with the socio-cultural context of its audience and must be guided by a frame of reference usually developed and represented in some tradition. "Sheer desn I cription, unguided by value considerations, is rudderless." ■ In the classroom, criticism is the art of capturing what it is that is happening, the meaning and significance of actions in their cultural matrix, Criticism is itself 182 judged on the bais of the quality of its illumination and its referential adequacy. The critic's audience should be able to see in the event what it is the critic has dis- covered and described. Another criterion'is coherence: the critic's portrayal should organize the events in ques- tion into a unified configuration that is clearly signifi- cant relative to the purposes for the critique. The audi- ence should have a kind of "aha" experience as insight develops and a pattern falls into place. Disputes are set- tled through argument in reference to traditional standards. While it is not developed into a systematic methodo- logical form and is generally not regarded as scientific, I believe that art criticism is the first evaluation model in our considerations that is clearly consistent with hermeneutic inquiry. Art criticism is guided by the interest in developing mutual understanding about a phenomena that can facilitate its progress and orient our actions in rela- tion to it. It aims at expanding the horizon of our under- standing. The interpretations it offers are judged by pragmatic and coherence norms. Value judgments are justi- fied on the basis of traditional standards. The problematic situation is conceived as inadequate understanding that requires interpretation to orient and sustain purposeful action.all are characteristics of hermeneutic inquiry. Professional Judgment Models, Many professions have developed procedures to insure the quality of their own 183 programs and individual members. Qualified experts are called to make judgments about a particular activity or even an entire college. Examples include site visits to review federally funded programs, doctoral oral examinations, and accreditation agencies such as the North Central Association. Some explicit standards of judgment are developed through collective interaction of highly qualified and experienced professionals. The evaluation usually centers around these standards but in order to capitalize on the reviewers' expertise, much room is left to the tacit standards involved in making a wholistic qualitative assessment against the tradition of the profession. Quality control is addressed by using multiple reviewers, traditionally established standards and employing profes- sionals of recognized competence. The evaluation process is carried out in direct interaction with those under re- view permitting judgments to be corrected through two-way communication. Procedures for appeal are made explicit. Professional judgment models of evaluation exemplify a general process of practical deliberation in which no form of specialized inquiry tends to predominate. In some situations such as site reviews of publicly funded programs the results of empirical studies may play an important part in the deliberations. But the role of any systematically methodological inquiry will depend on the 184 tradition and norms of the institution and the kind of claims requiring justification. Adversary Models. This approach uses quasi-legal procedures to present the pros and cons of a proposed course of action, or to compare alternative courses of action. Modeled on the form of an administrative hearing, advocates for opposing points of view present evidence, testimony and arguments to develop the best possible case from the perspective they represent. Bias is assumed and controlled by the adversary process where each side emphasizes the strengths of its own position and carefully notes and exploits weaknesses in the opponents' position. The audi- ence or decision makers are then left to choose or judge for themselves. Adversary evaluation represents a form of practical deliberation in which participants are partitioned into separate interest groups of equal power in relation to the issue being considered. A decision is made through nego- tiation. The rationale of the model is not committed to any particular form of inquiry. Transaction Models. What distinguishes these evalua- tion models is that they tend to be more responsive to the actual concerns and issues of all groups legitimately involved in the activity concerned. Neither preconceived standards of science or tradition are used in the evaluation. 185 Instead only those standards, values and interests actually held by the participants are represented. Evaluation compares the entire constellation of values actually per- ceived in the program with the whole complex of expectations and standards actually held by all groups legitimately involved. The methods of investigation are chosen by their usefulness in obtaining information about these per- ceptions and expectations for the program and to facilitate their comparison. There is much interaction between the various groups and between them and the evaluator. The evaluation depends heavily on informal case studies, obser- vation and negotiation to arrive at an overall assessment. Transactional models of evaluation tend to down play formal inquiry processes of any kind. In principle, however, any form of :v~ j may be found to be appropriate in a particular context. The overall process is one of practical deliberation in which validity claims are justified in many different ways according to the context. Summary. Two of the three forms of inquiry identified by Habermas find some utilization in prevailing evaluation models. By far the most pervasive in actual use has been the empirical-analytic form of inquiry. Two models, systems analysis and goal based approaches, are strictly modeled on the logic of empirical inquiry. A case could probably be made that for a time it was considered the only form of scientific inquiry. 186 While it has not found widespread use in evaluation, hermeneutic inquiry has come to be recognized as a viable method in the social sciences. The art criticism model of evaluation comes closest to a form of hermeneutic inquiry. Since it is modeled after the traditions of art and literary criticism, perhaps it should not, as Eisner sug- gests, be regarded as scientific inquiry. But I think there are analogs to his proposal that are similar and yet still considered to be methods of scientific inquiry. For exam- ple, consider naturalistic inquiry and ethnomethodology. I will consider the relation between art and science only by noting Dewey's statement: "Science states meanings; 15art expresses them." A meaningful statement provides direction for action that leads to an actual experience of that meaning, while an aesthetic or artistic expression constitutes an experience. A teacher in the classroom may be an artist, and teaching may be an art, but criticism and analysis of this experience is inquiry that can lead to practical and theoretical knowledge useful in guiding the activities of teaching. As long as justification is not limited to logical entailment, or conclusive empirical evi- dence, the insights gained could be counted as knowledge. Finally, it does not seem to me that any of the evalua- tion models we considered make any reference to something like critical inquiry. Those models that set evaluation 187 in the context of practical deliberation, such as the decision, professional judgment and transactional models, are not logically inconsistent with critical inquiry and could be expanded to include this form. It seems to me that even the possibility of practical deliberations pre- supposes that certain conditions obtain and that only criti- cal inquiry can address these conditions. Application of the Theory of Inquiry Because education includes natural, social, and indi- vidual dimensions, inquiry in education must proceed from an integration of the material, interpersonal and personal perspectives. I have developed and explored three forms of inquiry based on these three guiding orientations. Each form of inquiry has a place in the study of education. The three forms of inquiry each provide knowledge that guides action in a unique way. Empirical-analytic inquiry provides knowlege of natural regularities that guides action instrumentally . Hermeneutic inquiry provides practical knowledge of social uniformities that gives action a social orienta- tion guided by common norms, traditions and understandings. Critical inquiry provides personal knowledge that can free action from unconscious forces and repressed motives. Even when we emphasize one form of inquiry, the others will be implicitly involved. The three forms of inquiry inter-penetrate and the knowledge gained by one is subject to the critique of the others. 188 Impirical-Analytic Inquiry, This form of inquiry can be used to look at a course of action in terms of its instru- mental efficiency. It provides a background of technology and laws, of technically tested rules for behavior and universal relations among empirical variables, that can guide the choice of means to particular ends, permit predictions about the results of particular actions, or provide explanations of problematic events . The validity of beliefs or truth claims can be discursively tested against these empirical uniformities. Under this model, actions are guided by an empirical concept of rationality. In the words of Dewey: "How shall we employ what we know to direct our practical behavior so as to test these be- . liefs and make possible better ones? What shall we do to make 16objects having value more secure in existence?" In Aristotle's framework, poesis was the production under the guidance of right reason, of useful and beautiful outcomes. In facilitating the search for correct means , empirical-analytic inquiry can help make education an art or techne in the classi- cal sense. Our actions are then guided by right reason in the form of instrumental knowledge in the creation of the useful and the beautiful. However, inquiry limited to the instrumental framework cannot do justice to the practical dimension of rational action. As we have seen, the technological orientation of social practice excludes the ethical and moral character of interpersonal and communicative action. It monologically 189 excludes rational discourse from the clarification and resolution of practical questions. We need a logic and methodology of inquiry that facilitates rather than hinders our attempt to formulate basic concepts of communicative action in the realm of praxis. Social action is oriented by communicable meanings that are embedded in the collec- tive expectations of social norms. Inquiry must have access to this intersubjectivity and, therefore, cannot limit" itself to the controlled observation and experimentation of the natural sciences. Empirical-analytic inquiry is limited to objectified experience. Approaches to inquiry in education that try to follow the logic of empirical-analytic science are excluded by that same logic form seriously engaging the nonobjectified intentions, motives and meanings of the personal and interpersonal dimensions so central in educa- tion. Inquiry must attend to the intersubjective meaning structures of participants in the educational process. Therefore, those approaches to inquiry are inadequate which exclude meaning as a basic category for inquiry. Inquiry approaches constructed on the models of the behavioral sciences and based on behaviorism are inadequate in this regard. Yet, inquiry in education has attempted to follow the behavioral methods of psychology and social psychology. This approach treats the subjective contents 190 of our experience (for example, intentions, motives and me.anings) as epiphenomena which have no independent effect on behavior and no explanatory value. Hermeneutic Inquiry. This reduction of intentional action to behavior completely ignores the symbolically structured interaction that is basic to education and the ground of ethical conduct. To include the interpersonal dimension in inquiry, the investigator must participate in this interaction. A course of action must be understood from the perspective of the actor; intentions constitute behavior for human beings. The most elementary description of human behavior will contain at least implicit intentional elements or be completely devoid of significance. To grasp the meaning of social action, the investigator must work from the participant's own understanding of what is happen- ing. The controlled observation of empirical-analytic science is supplemented with interactive dialogue in which the investigator hermeneutically interprets people's actions and expressions. These first-level interpretations, through which the participants themselves understand their actions, can then be reconstructed by the investigator in the light of the purposes of the inquiry. The starting point for inquiry is the problematic sit- uation of disturbed or incomplete understanding,. Hermeneutic inquiry attempts to assimilate an unclear or foreign inter- action. 191 The process of practical deliberations depends on and takes place within an intersubjectivity of mutual under- standing among participants. If a course of action is not adequately represented within this horizon of under- standing then a decision cannot reflect the reality of the individuals invested in that course of action. In general, hermeneutic inquiry can facilitate normative resolution in practical deliberations by enlarging the frame of reference of participants to include the course of action as a life expression. There are occasions when a course of action is not adequately understood and this gap in understanding inhibits communication and resolution in practical deliberations. Many complex social innovations have been initiated in education. When evaluated through quantitative empirical methods no significant effects have been demonstrated. Yet often enough these studies have not provided a truly sensi- tive and emphathic understanding of the program and what it contributes to the people involved. The lack of statisti- cally significant output measures does not demonstrate that nothing of value was gained, nor that the program was not worth its investment. A sensitive observer, skilled in hermeneutic methods, can give a richly textured and coherent representation of a program from its own frame of reference. An illuminating rendering of the program will 192 provide a bridge to the participants in the deliberation process, enlarging their frame of reference and permitting them to see more clearly the qualities and relationships of the program. Narrative accounts of interactions are appropriate data for hermeneutic inquiry. The elements of the descrip- tion form a coherent pattern that brings insight into the nature of the problematic situation. Objective observation for prediction and control is replaced by interpretive characterization for mutual understanding. The knowlege gained is practical in the sense that it represents a reorientation of the cognitive, interactive, and motivational dimensions of the meaning of the situation so that the insight acquires the power to motivate actions congruent with this reoriented cognitive and interactive structure. This knowledge becomes part of our personality in the form of a pattern of understanding that dialectically assimilates, and adapts to, our future perceptions, interactions and actions. Critical Inquiry. This form of inquiry focuses on the identification of distorted communication and its source and on its transformation into open communication. It is a self-healing process that aims at freeing interaction from unconscious domination of selective interests in the form of rationalization and ideology". It thereby aims at 193 establishing the conditions that allow for the formation of a community of autonomous and responsible beings, of indi- viduals who can create and freely participate in norms to guide their conduct. It aims at enlightened action, action animated with shared purpose and the ethical significance of mutually created and mutually maintained norms that can truly address the welfare of the community because they are based on genuine human needs. The Conflict Workshop: An Illustration Detailed application of this theory of inquiry to particular educational problems would vary according to the context of application and is beyond the scope of my study. However, I would like to briefly explore the appli- cation of this theory to one of the situations that was, in a sense, the problematic context for the inquiry of my dissertation--the development and evaluation of the con- flict workshop to which I referred in Chapter I . This analysis is very tentative and is meant to be only sugges- tive, but it may help illustrate the application of the theory of inquiry to a particular kind of educational prob- lem- -the development of experiential learning programs. From the perspective of this theory of inquiry the workshop as a set of learning experiences will be seen as a developmental process that proceeds simultaneously along cognitive, interactive, and motivational dimensions. This 194 perspective becomes persuasive once we recognize the rela- tionships between human evolution, development, inquiry and cognitive interests, All human life depends on three fundamental interests which aim toward technical control, practical orientation, and individuated autonomy. These three ''anthropologically deep-seated interests" assimilate human evolution, development and experience to themselves. Inquiry continues these evolutionary and developmental processes at an institutionally-specialized level. Inquiry recapitulates ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny as organized by the technical, practical, and emancipatory cognitive interests. Each process is a different level of self-formative process. These three categories define universal structures which provide a normative basis for inquiry--in our case for the development of an integrated series of learning experiences. Our aim is to create learning experiences that lead to a reorganization of ourselves along cognitive, interactive and motivational dimensions so that we can respond more successfully in relation to the three corresponding realms of experience--nature, society and our own needs. In relation to the motivational dimension, our goal is to become more aware of our own needs and the motives for our actions--to grow toward greater autonomy and respon- sibility in recognizing our needs and fulfilling them. 195 In relation to the cognitive and interactive dimensions, our aim is to grow in competence for meeting these needs through more successful instrumental and communicative actions--to gain the foresight to anticipate the conse- quences of our actions. Our actions will become more congruent with conscious motives and our motives will become more grounded in genuine needs. One way to see this process of developmental recon- struction is to think of ourselves as dynamic patterns with cognitive, interactive, and motivational dimensions, each dimension constellated into a particular structure at a given time. This pattern of ourselves is in dialectical interaction with both nature and society, informing and formed by our experience of these two realms. Of particular importance in this context is the dialectical relation between this pattern of ourselves and other patterns in the form of other persons and their ideas and activities. Through the workshop experience these patterns transact in ways planned to facilitate growth as specified above.. I want to divide the overall process of creating this workshop into three tasks, each building and being guided by its own emerging structure or pattern: (a) developing and formulating the content of the workshop, (b) developing 196 the teaching process, that is, designing the learning activities and conducting the workshop, and (c) designing and conducting the evaluation of the workshop. The patterns that emerge and guide these three tasks are the content theory, the teaching theory, and the inquiry theory, respectively. These three tasks occur simultaneously and the three theories interpenetrate, dialectically transform17ing each other. I would like to consider each in turn. Content Theory. The content of the workshop consists of a pattern of understanding regarding some problematic situation. In our example we have an organized set of ideas, a theory, if you will, about conflict and responding to conflict situations. This theory is a pattern of under- standing developed and formulated by people in social inter- action. Under the belief that this pattern of understanding can be useful to others, it is made the content of a learn- ing experience. In the workshop experience, participants will adapt and assimilate this pattern, incorporating it into their own structure to some extent ranging from complete rejec- tion to complete integration. In this process, the partici- pants' own cognitive, interactive, and motivational pattern is reconstructed in relation to the workshop content as suggested above. Teaching Theory. The teaching task is to develop a theory of how to structure participants' interaction with 197 the workshop content so as to facilitate their growth in the ways intended. Guided by this theory, the teaching task is to design an integrated series of learning activi- ties that support participants' reciprocal reconstruction in a way that is responsive to the autonomy arid responsi- bility of the learner, the ethical nature of human inter- action, and the developmental nature of learning. As an__illustration I suggest the following general form. I believe it is potentially compatible with the three conditions referred to iri the preceding paragraph. 1. The particpants are introduced to the problematic context in which the content theory has relevance. In the case of our example concerning conflict, we might use a simple role play situation involving conflict. This pro- vides an experiential base in which participants can begin to observe and understand their own patterns of responding. A structure should be provided to support this kind of observation and analysis. For example, participants might be asked to respond in writing to key questions about their experience and to share their responses with each other. This insures that participants will have the opportunity to use their own material, 2. The content theory is made available to participants through some appropriate media such as theory papers, films, recordings, lectures or lecturettes, texts, workbooks, slides, discussions, etc. 198 3. Participants are provided with opportunities to act in relevant problematic contexts on the basis of their self-understanding gained from previous experience and the content theory. For integrated learning to take place, the crucial element is the participants1 ability (supported by the workshop structure) to see or to be aware of what they are doing. This awareness includes cognitive (or descriptive), interactive, and motivational dimensions. To see in this context means to be able to acknowledge (at least to ourselves) the real motives for our actions, and to be in touch with the situational context, our own and others' actions and expressions, and the meaning of these actions and expressions in light of our motives and the situation. 4. In the process of acting on the basis of their perceived motives and their present conceptions, partici- pants have the opportunity to experience the consequences of their actions. This, again, requires that they be aware of, or said more proactively, that they make contact with what is happening as described in the previous step. The workshop structure can support this kind of contact. 5. Participants are given the opportunity to describe and evalute their actions and conceptions in the light of their motives, the consequences they experienced, the content theory and their own and others' emerging recon- structions. A teaching structure is provided which supports 199 participants' describing what they did and what happened, and then individually and interactively evaluating these actions and consequences. For example, participant's might be asked to describe what they liked and disliked, what they would keep and throw away, 6. Participants are provided with the opportunity to further integrate and generalize the emerging pattern of understanding by projecting it onto other relevant situa- tions they typically encounter, This might take the form of anticipating what they would do similarly and differently another time in the same or similar situations. In this process, their experience in this situation becomes meta- phor for the next. 7. This process of (1) experience, (2) theory, (3) action, (4) consequences, (5) description, evaluat:_on and reconstruction, and (6) integration and generalization recycles through new contexts and new elements of the con- tent theory in such a way as to provide an integrated over- all design. The crucial aspects of this process are providing support for participants in contacting their experience and in reconstructing their understanding and the meaning of this experience along cognitive, interactive and motiva- tional dimensions of development. Generally, this means that participants must be able to make contact with their experience in the face of a certain 200 amount of resistance to doing so. The resistance encoun- tered is the motivational component of meanings attached to the situation expressing repressed needs and motives. That is, we cannot afford to acknowledge some motives that do, indeed, guide our actions and we reconstruct our under- standing of our motives and actions to maintain selfidentity . If the learning experience is to provide support for the motivational dimension of development, it must have a structure which supports the critical reconstruction of our conceptions about our motives and actions. Only when we gain access to our true motives can we pursue genuine needs in functional ways. Such self-knowledge is a precon- dition, if not a defining characterization, of autonomy and responsibility. As we have seen, ethical interaction, as well, depends on our true needs and motives. The interactive dimension of development is furthered through the interpersonal process of evaluation and recon- struction. In this process participants are dialectically forming the intersubjectivity of mutually acknowledged meanings and norms that, in turn, guide their further inter- action. As this interaction approaches the conditions of the ideal speech situation, the intersubjectivity takes on the quality of a rational general will. This quality of intersubjectivity imparts ethical significance on their conduct. The cognitive dimension of development is not empha- sized in this kind of workshop as it would be in, for example, a course in logic or physics. Inquiry Theory. Inquiry is focused on the development, formulation and evaluation of the content theory and the teaching theory and design. The experience of all participants in the teachinglearning situation is crucial to the development of these two theories. This experience provides a continuous test of these theories against the constraints of reality in the form of nature, society and our own needs. Experience within each of these frames of reference is assimilated to the structure of the content theory. Simultaneously, the content theory is adapted to realities of experience in each realm that resist incorporation. The same is true for the teaching theory and the experience of those implementing it. This inquiry process is essentially hermeneutic, but has critical dimensions. The task is to build a pattern of patterns--a congruent argument that articulates the patterns of the content theory and the teaching theory, characterizes the experience of the people in the teaching-learning situ- ation, and offers a reformulation of content and teaching theories based on that experience. To do this, the investigator must thoroughly under- stand the content theory and teaching theory and must gain 202 access to the personal and interpersonal experience of par- ticipants in the teaching-learning situation. The investi- gator seeks both to understand this experience from the participants' own perspective, and then to interpret this experience in relation to the purposes of the workshop. The principle goal is an insightful account that makes this experience intelligible in light of the instructional con- tent and the teaching methods. The investigator explores participants' use of the teaching design and conceptual content in understanding and integrating their own experi- ence in relation to the focus of instruction. Through the "circle of interpretation," he or she develops a sensitive and emphathetic representation of the teaching-learning process in all its richness, detail and complexity, and builds an overall pattern of understanding that integrates the variability of peoples' personal and interpersonal experience into a coherent whole. The data for such inquiry are participants' actions and expressions--interpersonal communications in all their varied forms. The investigator seeks any appropriate means for objectivating and objectifying peoples' experience. He or she taps participant's subjectivity and intersubjectivity through participant observation, interviews, audio and video taping, reviewing taped episodes with participants, question- naires, written responses to key questions, participants' 203 work samples, expressive drawings, metaphorical expressions, free writing exercises, formal observation, informal dis- cussion, simulations, Q-sorts, role plays, psychodrama, and many other methods. Participants' subjectivity will be most available and most vived in face to face interaction. Through communicative interaction, the investigator and the partici- pants in the teaching-learning situation dialectically form a shared pattern of understanding of the workshop experience. This pattern is incorporated into the investi- gator and is objectified in the accumulated data. Through this pattern of understanding and the acquired data, the investigator must develop, formulate and communi- cate a convincing story, a story that builds our under- standing of the phenomena investigated, that gives us in- insight into what happened and foresight concerning future actions. This story must account for people's experience in relation to the content and teaching theories and the realities of nature, society and their own needs, and must stand the test of further experience in these realms. It must capture and portray the participants' growth along the cognitive, interactive, and motivational dimensions of development. The investigator's account is evaluated by the quality of its illumination, the force of its insight and fruitful- ness of its foresight. It is judged by the cogency, 204 coherence, comprehensiveness and efficiency of its argu- ments in portraying and accounting for peoples' experience so that we can see more clearly and act more congruently. The investigator has the task of creating an inter- personal relationship of understanding- of hermeneutically expanding the horizon of understanding to include the work- shop experience. This involves communicative action and the interactive use of language. The dimensions along which understanding takes place become focal points for justifi- cation. Symbolic expressions must be intelligible in relation to the linguistic and extra-linguistic inter- subjectivity. Propositions must be true in relation to our experience of nature. Proposed interactions and their guiding norms must be appropriate in relation to universalizable interests. Intentional expressions must be authentic in relation to genuine needs. The investigator must not only maintain the perforative attitude of a participant in interpersonal communication, but must raise and discursively support the validity claims implicit in the various theories and accounts. The dimension of critical inquiry in the theory is con- cerned with uncovering systematic distortions in the intersubjectivity of the teaching-learning situation. Whereas hermeneutic inquiry seeks to disclose the meanings, motives and intentions of participants' interactions from their own 205 perspective, critical inquiry examines the structure of this intersubjectivity. Do participants (including the instruc- tors or facilitators) have equal chances to put forward, refute and defend assertions, to initiate and oppose inter- personal relationships and norms for action, and to offer and question expressions of attitudes, feelings and inten- tions? To what extent do imbalances in the power and authority structure distort the symmetry of opportunities to engage in these various kinds of speech acts, To what extent do repressed needs and unacknowledged motives distort communication and prevent ''witting" conduct? How well does the workshop structure provide the conditions for an ideal speech situation and support the formation of an open inter- subjectivity? How well does this structure support partici- pants 1 reconstruction of their actions and experience to better understand their real needs and motives? Perhaps I can illustrate the focus of critical inquiry with an example. In a summer workshop on teacher selfevaluation , I observed two participants who seemed to resist active involvement in the workshop activities. During structured interactions and informal discussions, they were critical of the ideas and activites of the workshop and they rated them low on evaluation questionnaires and rating scales. All evidence seemd to indicate that they perceived the workshop to be of little value. 206 Yet their attitude was evident from the beginning of the workshop on the first day--before they had experienced much of the design--and contrasted rather sharply with the attitudes of other participants. They seemed predisposed for a negative experience. As I became better acquainted with these participants, I shared my impressions and asked them if they would be willing to elaborate on theirs. Again, their responses seemed to reinforce the view that the workshop experience was not very useful to them. At one point I asked how they became involved in the course, their reasons for coming and what they hoped to gain. This time, it became clear that they had been pressured by a superior into attending the workshop against their own desires not to attend. They felt resentful and preferred to invest as little as possible. As we pursued this discussion it became obvious that their perceptions of the usefulness of the workshop had little to do with the workshop itself and everything to do with their resentment in having to be there. Their conduct and experience could better be understood as an expression of this previously hidden resentment. The use of authority in requiring their attendance introduced a distortion into the intersubjectivity of the workshop. They did not feel free to express their genuine interests and their actions were guided by unacknowledged motives, It seems likely that their experience may have affected those 207 they worked with to decrease the value of their experience as well. And, until the resistance these participants projected onto the workshop content, methods and facilita- tors was disclosed for what it was, the evaluation of the workshop itself remained distorted. Critical inquiry focuses on such systematically dis- torted communication. It aims at. analytically reconstruct- ing the ongoing formation of our experience to free interac- tion from hidden motives and selective interests. Conclusion I believe that Habermas' social theory of knowledge and his theory of communicative competence can provide an important framework for expanding inquiry beyond its narrow preoccupation with empirical methods. It provides a way to fit specialized inquiry processes within a larger frame- work of practical deliberation. Empirical-analytic inquiry can provide us with knowlege of patterns in the natural world that we can use to achieve human purposes. But over reliance on empirical understanding tends to substitute technology for enlightened action. Hermeneutic inquiry can provide us with interpretations that enlarge our frame of reference, orient our actions with respect to each other and bind us into community. But over-reliance on hermeneutic understanding tends to substitute tradition for enlightened action. Only critical inquiry can free us from ideologically 208 frozen relations of dependence so that the dialogue of autonomous and responsible human beings can take place. Taken together these inquiry forms can facilitate our appre- hension of reality from any grame of reference, natural, social or personal. FOOTNOTES CHAPTER VII May Brodbeck, "Logic and Scientific Method in Research on Teaching." in Handbook of Research on Teaching, ed. N.L. Gage (Chicago: Rand McNa.liy it Cotnpaffŷ iyb3) , pT 45. 3Ibid., p . 96. 3I. Bernstein, and H.E. Freeman, Academic and Entre- preneurial Research: Consequences of Diversity in Federal Evaluation Studies (New Yorx: Russel Sage Foundation, 1974) . 4Michael Quinn Patton, Alternative Evaluation Research Paradigm (Grand Forks, N.D, : University of North Dakota, 1975) p. 3. 3Fred Kerlinger, Foundations of Behavioral Research (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), pp-. 444-447. ^Patton, Alternative Evaluation, p. 6. ^This review is adapted and expanded from Ernest R. House, "Assumptions Underlying Evaluation Models", Educa- tional Researcher 7 (1978): 4, and Egon G. Guba, "Educational Evaluation: The State of the Art," paper presented to the Evaluation Network meeting, St. Louis, September 27, 1977. 3Guba, "Educational Evaluation," p. 7. gHouse, "Assumptions," p. 8. ■^Elliot W. Eisner, "The Perceptive Eye: Toward theRformation of Educational Evaluation," Invited Address, Division B, Curriculum and Objectives, American Educational Research Association, Washington, D.C., March 31, 1975. i:LIbid. , p. 5. 12Ibid., p. 5. Quoted from, Art as Experience (New York: Capricorn Books, 1934), p. 324, 13Ibid., p. 5. 209 210 ■^Ibid. , p . 9 . 15John Dewey, Art as Experience, p. 84, ^John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty (New York: 1960), p. 43. Quoted in Habermas, Theory and Practice, p. 272. 17X first encountered some of the ideas in this formu-lation through interaction with two of my colleagues at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, Jean W. Butman and Fred E. Newton. These include, in particular, the idea of conceiving the development of the workshop in terms of content, teaching and inquiry theories, and the general form of the teaching theory. For additional development of these ideas, please see Jean W, Butman, and Fred K. Newton, A Plan for Evaluating the Educational Product "TRIM" During the Field Testing and Outcome Testing Phases of Product Development (Portland, Oregon: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL), 1974); pp. 1-28; A Report of the Evaluation of Cycle 4 of TRIM (NWREL, 1974); and Jean W. Butman, in collaboration with Gary J. Miiczarek, Evaluation Design for Social Conflict and Negotiative Problem Solving, Interim Milestone (NWREL, 1978). BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle. Nicomachaen Ethics . Translated by Martin Otswald" Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962. Austin, J.L. "Truth." In Truth. Edited by George Pitcher. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964. Baier, Kurt. "The Social Source of Reason." Proceedingsand Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 5T (August 1978): 708. Baker, Eva L. "The Technology of Instructional Development." In Second Handbook of Research on Teaching. Edited by Robert M.W. Travers. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1973. 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