Page 31 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

8 Communication and Evolution of Society

they make to a universal pragmatics, their weaknesses also be-
come apparent. In many cases, I see a danger that the analysis of
conditions of possible understanding is cut short, either

a. Because these approaches do not generalize radically enough and
do not push through the level of accidental contexts to general and
unavoidable presuppositions—as is the case, for instance, with most
of the linguistic investigations of semantic and pragmatic presupposi-
tions; or
b. Because they restrict themselves to the instruments developed in
logic and grammar, even when these are inadequate for capturing
pragmatic relations—as, for example, in syntactic explanations of the
performative character of speech acts; 74 or
c. Because they mislead one into a formalization of basic concepts
that have not been satisfactorily analyzed—as can, in my view, be
shown in the case of the logics of norms that trace norms of action
back to commands; or finally,
d. Because they start from the model of the isolated, purposive-
rational actor and thereby fail—as do, for example, Grice and Lewis?®
—-to reconstruct in an appropriate way the specific moment of mutual-
ity in the understanding of identical meanings or in the acknowledg-
ment of intersubjective validity claims.
It is my impression that the theory of speech acts is largely free
of these and similar weaknesses.

A Remark on the Procedure of Rational Reconstruction

I have been employing the expression formal analysis in opposi-
tion to empirical-analytic procedures (in the narrower sense)
without providing a detailed explanation. This is at least mis-
leading. I am not using formal analysis in a sense that refers,
say, to the standard predicate logic or to any specific logic. The
tolerant sense in which I understand formal analysis can best be
characterized through the methodological attitude we adopt in
the rational reconstruction of concepts, criteria, rules, and sche-
mata. Thus we speak of the explication of meanings and con-
cepts, of the analysis of presuppositions and rules. Of course,
reconstructive procedures are also important for empirical-analytic
research, for example, for explicating frameworks of basic con-