Away MAVE

The Distance Mode of MA in Values and the Environment at Lancaster University

Block 4: Communicative Rationality and Deliberative Democracy

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	From instrumental to communicative rationality
	Communicative action
	Discourse ethics
	Deliberative democracy
	Problems for the deliberative theories of democracy
	Science, deliberation and democracy

From instrumental to communicative rationality

Habermas, in his response to Marcuse, rejects Marcuse's criticisms of science as such. What he accepts is his criticism of scientism, the claim that science alone embodies standards of reasoned discourse. The problem in modern society is that instrumental action associated with science is extended beyond its appropriate domain. The result is the reduction of political and ethical life to the application of instrumental reason for the realisation of 'non-rational ends' - a scientisation of society founded upon an ideology of 'scientism' that only science gives knowledge. What has to be resisted is the colonisation of the life-world by instrumental reason. In particular his account is aimed against a technocratic conception of political life.

To make good this claim Habermas has to show that identification of reason with instrumental reason is a mistake - that there are forms of public rationality other than instrumental rationality.

Think for a moment

What makes for rational public deliberation?

Habermas's answer runs roughly as follows:

dialogue is rational to the extent it is free from the exercise of power and strategic action, such that the judgements of participants converge only under the authority of the good argument - ‘no force except that of the better argument is exercised’ (Habermas, The Legitimation Crisis of Late Capitalism 1975, p.108).

Public deliberation is to be governed by the standards of communicative rationality.
In this block we examine this Habermas's account of public deliberation in more detail. In the final block we will consider issues around the relation of democracy, science and environmental policy.

Communicative action

Habermas's later work starts with a basic distinction between communicative action which is consent orientated aims at arriving at mutual understanding and purposive-rational action which is success orientated and aims at arriving at the best mean to achieve some end. Habermas distinguishes between two kinds of purposive-rational action

• Instrumental actions - actions orientated to some goal in the physical world and which are judged by norms of efficiency
• Strategic actions - action that aims at influencing other persons with the aim of achieving some end.

Communicative action: His account is based on the theory of speech-acts developed by Austin and Searle.

The basics of Habermas's approach runs something as follows.
Different kinds of utterances require different kinds of validity claims.

• Constatives - make claims to truth: e.g. 'I assert the window is open '. The aim of the utterance is to represent a state of affairs. A criticism of this utterance will dispute the truth-claim made. To agree with the utterance is to accept the truth of what the speakers say - 'yes it is open'.
• Regulatives - make claims to normative rightness: e.g. 'I request you open the window', 'you ought to open the window'. The aim of the utterance is to establish social co-ordination or relations between social actors. A criticism of the utterance will dispute the normative appropriateness or rightness of the offer or demand made by the utterance. To accept the claim is to accept its appropriateness.
• Expressives - make claims to sincerity or truthfulness: e.g. 'I wish the window was open'. The aim of the utterance is to express a subjective experience, feeling or desire. To criticise the claim is to question the sincerity of the speaker. To accept the claim is to accept the sincerity of the speaker.

In each case part of understanding a speech act is knowing what validity claim it is making: ‘we understand a speech-act when we know what makes it acceptable’.

Exercise

Think of examples of constative, regulative and expressive utterances. What kinds of question might a person make in challenging the validity of those claims? How would you defend those claims against those challenges? What would be required to redeem the validity claim?

Please send some examples to the discussion site.

Ideal speech situation

To make an utterance is to implicitly raise a validity claim: to truth, to normative rightness or to sincerity. One must in principle be able to redeem or make good those claims. What are the conditions required to make good those claims? The are claims one could redeem in an ideal speech situation.

The ideal speech situation represents the conditions required to arrive at communicative agreement or understanding.

1. Every speaker with competence to speak and act is allowed to take part in a discourse
2. a. Everyone is allowed to question any assertion whatever.
b. Everyone is allowed to introduce any assertion whatever into the discourse.
c. Everyone is allowed to express his/her attitudes, desires and needs
3. No speaker may be prevented, by internal or external coercion, form exercising the rights laid down in 1 and 2.

In the ideal speech situation the only force is the force of the better argument.
This ideal is assumed by speakers and hearers in making and interpreting utterances.
It is also a regulative ideal that can be used in the criticism of the course of actual discourse.

Communicative rationality

The ideal speech situation defines the standards of communicative rationality (as against instrumental rationality.)

Here is Dryzek's useful summary of the idea of communicative rationality:

Communicative rationality clearly obtains to the degree social action is free from domination (the exercise of power), strategizing by the actors involved, and (self-) deception. Further, all actors should be equally and fully capably of making and questioning arguments (communicatively competent). There should be no restrictions on the participation of these competent actors. Under such conditions, the only remaining authority is that of a good argument, which can be advanced on behalf of the veracity of empirical description, the understanding, and, equally important, the validity of normative judgements. (Dryzek, J. (1990) Discursive Democracy: Politics, Policy and Political Science, p.15)

Discourse ethics

Habermas argues that from these presuppositions of argumentation and communication in the moral domain we can derive the following principle of discourse ethics:

Principle of universalisability

Every valid norm must satisfy the condition that all affected can accept the consequences and the side effects its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone’s interests (and these consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities). (Habermas The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity p. 65)

Features of discourse ethics:

1. Cognitivist: Habermas's discourse ethic is cognitivist. That is, it holds that ethical claims are a matter of judgement and belief that are open to rational deliberation. Habermas rejects the non-congitivist view that ethical claims are simply the expression of the attitudes, preferences or emotions of the speaker, in part because he holds that would take morality out of the realm of reasoned discussion. However, while Habermas holds that moral claims are open to rational deliberation, he is not a moral realist. He rejects the claim that moral utterances are true or false in the way that constative or assertive utterances do. They rather make validity claims that are 'analogous' to the validity claims of truth. What matters for Habermas is not the truth of moral claims but their being open to reasoned deliberation.

2. Formalistic: Habermas's discourse ethic is formalistic: it does not state any substantive moral norms. Rather it offers a formal procedure which any norm must satisfy if it is to be morally acceptable. It is a procedural theory.

3. Priority of the right over the good: Related to the last point, Habermas like many other contemporary philosophers influenced by Kant, hold that basic moral principles must not presuppose any particular conception of the good life. The claim commits Habermas to a particular form of liberalism that holds that the basic principles of justice that govern public life should be neutral between different conceptions of the good life. That neutrality is required by the diversity and pluralism of ethical outlooks in modern societies. Given the existence of a plurality of different conceptions of what it is to live a good life one requires public procedures for conversation which are themselves neutral between competing conceptions of the good life. Larmore offers the following useful account of 'universal norm of rational conversation' that attempts to capture Habermas's argument for political neutrality.

When two people disagree about some specific point, but wish to continue talking about the general problem they wish to solve, each should prescind from the belief that the other rejects, (1) in order to construct an argument on the basis of his other beliefs that will convince the other of the disputed belief, or (2) in order to shift to another aspect of the problem, where the possibilities of agreement seem greater. In the face of disagreement, those who wish to continue the conversation should retreat to neutral ground, with the hope of either resolving the dispute or by passing it. (Larmore, C. (1987) Patterns of Moral Complexity p.53)

Exercise:
1. Before going on to the next section consider what kinds of procedures or movements would best realise Habermas's ideal of public deliberation in modern societies? In particular, what implications would they have for deliberation about environmental matters?
2. Are there any features of Habermas's discourse ethics that would make it either problematic or useful for environmental concerns?

Your answers to these really do need to go to the discussion site so that we can continue the conversation there.

One issue that might have concerned you is how those who cannot speak - non-humans or future generations - enter into Habermas's account of ethics.

Deliberative democracy

Enlightenment and the public use of reason

Habermas's account of communicative rationality has its roots in the Kantian model of the enlightenment. Consider again Kant's description of the enlightenment which we discussed in block one.

Kant ‘What is enlightenment?’

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. The immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of the enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding...For enlightenment of this kind, all that is needed is freedom. And the freedom in question is the most innocuous form of all - freedom to make public use of one's reason in all matters. But I hear on all sides the cry: Don't argue! The officer says: Don't argue, get on parade! The tax-official: Don't argue, pay! The clergyman: Don't argue, believe!...The public use of man's reason must always be free, and it alone can bring enlightenment among men... (Kant 'An Answer to the Question "What is enlightenment?"')

Autonomy: The ideal of maturity is closely related to that of autonomy. The heteronomous character is one who lacks maturity, who is willing to let his own judgement and understanding be guided by others and who lacks the capacity, desire or courage to exercise them for himself. To be autonomous is to have maturity and courage in using one's own understanding and judgement.

For Kant to be autonomous is to be guided by reason: ‘For reason has no dictatorial authority; its verdict is always simply the agreement of free citizens, of whom each one must be permitted to express, without let or hindrance, his objections or even his veto.’ (Kant (1933) A738/B766.)

Enlightenment requires institutions that embody free public dialogue.

Institutionalising public reason:

Habermas's account of communicative rationality has been one important source of the recent revival of deliberative models of democracy.

A. Deliberative model democracy: democracy as a forum through which judgements and preferences are transformed through reasoned dialogue between free and equal citizens.

The deliberative model of democracy contrasts with the following model democracy.

B. Economic model of democracy: democracy is a procedure for aggregating and effectively meeting the given preferences of individuals. Through votes individuals are able to record their preferences.

Against that model the deliberative account argues that preferences are not given, but open to transformation through reasoned dialogue.

Policy practice: formal policy practice has seen the development of a variety of 'new' formal deliberative institutions which have been introduced alongside 'older' democratic institutions and which are often presented as experiments in deliberative democracy. These include

• citizens' juries,
• citizens' panels,
• consensus conferences,
• mediation panels,
• focus groups,
• in depth discussion groups
• round tables.

Application to environmental issues:

Both the theory and practice of deliberative democracy have been particularly developed in the environmental sphere. A great deal of recent work on environmental politics has been concerned with elaborating a defence of deliberative approaches to our environmental problems. Environmental conflicts are open to reasoned debate and judgement which aim to change preferences not record them, it follows that different institutional forms are required for their resolution. Since conflict is open to reasoned adjudication, discursive institutions are the appropriate form for conflict resolution.

Similarly environmental policy has been a prominent site for the development of new experiments in deliberative democracy like citizens’ juries, focus groups and consensus conferences.

Problems for the deliberative theories of democracy

How far these experiments meet the ideal of deliberative democracy is an open question. Here are some possible problems.

1. The distribution of voice:

Within deliberative fora voice can be unevenly distributed.
The capacity and confidence to speak and to be heard, differs across class, gender and ethnicity.

2. Nature of deliberative process: the politics of controlled conversations

Who controls?

• the space in which deliberation takes place
• constituency of deliberation - who is included
• the agenda on which participants are brought together
• the opening and closure of conversation
• the identities which participants are ascribed
• the afterlife of the results of deliberation and their effects on policy making

3. Strategic use of deliberative institutions.

• Political use of focus groups to anticipate and close public deliberation
• Corporate use of stakeholder engagement to disaggregate the different actors in communities, to create local alliances and to use local alliances against larger environmental regulation

A deliberative response:

The deliberative theorist can respond that these are internal problems in practice that the deliberative theory of democracy is able to itself to make. It is against the ideal of communicative rationality that the potential failings of experiments in deliberative democracy are judged. While 'the actual course of the debates deviates form the ideal procedures of deliberative politics...presuppositions of rational discourse have a steering effect on the course of the debates' (Habermas Between Facts and Norms p.540)

Science, deliberation and democracy

One of the central arguments for deliberative democracy in the policy world has been the decline of trust in scientific experts and the legitimacy of political decisions arrived at by technocratic means.

Exercise

On what grounds do the authors of this paper suggest there has been a decline of public trust in science? Is that claim defensible? If there has been a decline of trust is that decline in trust warranted or is science still worthy of trust in our deliberations? How if at all could deliberative institutions address those problems of trust?

While deliberative democracy is sometimes presented as a response to the problem of a decline in trust in scientific experts, the existence of expertise also raises a problem for deliberative theories of democracy. Public decisions in the modern world rely on claims by experts the grounds for which are often opaque to direct inspection by the citizen and indeed by other scientists. Nor is this opacity eliminable. The capacity to make and evaluate particular claims in the special sciences relies on a background of training within particular scientific practices. It relies on particular competences and know-how not all of which is open to explicit articulation. Both citizen and scientist in most matters rely on the competences of others which they lack. Habermas’s assumption of equality of competence that is built into the model of communicative rationality fails to acknowledge the existence of epistemic inequality even in the ideal conditions of his non-coercive speech community.

In the next block we consider these problems in more detail.

Block 4 by John O'Neill