Page 45 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

22 Communication and Evolution of Society

versality has not been refuted, we term transcendental the con-
ceptual structure recurring in all coherent experiences. In this
weaker version, the claim that that structure can be demonstrated
a priori is dropped.
From this modification follow consequences that are scarcely
compatible with the original program. We can no longer exclude
the possibility that our concepts of objects of possible experience
can be successfully applied only under contingent boundary con-
ditions that, let us say, have heretofore been regularly fulfilled
by natural constants.*® We can no longer exclude the possibility
that the basic conceptual structure of possible experience has
developed phylogenetically and afises anew in every normal
ontogenesis, in a process that can be analyzed empirically. 50 We
cannot even exclude the possibility that an a priori of experience
that is relativized in this sense is valid only for specific, anthropo-
logically deep-seated behavioral systems, each of which makes
possible a specific statategy for objectivating reality. The tran-
scendentally oriented pragmatism inaugurated by C. S. Peirce
attempts to show that there is such a structural connection between
experience and instrumental action;>! the hermeneutics stemming
from Dilthey attempts—over against this a priori of experience—
to do justice to an additional a priori of understanding or com-
municative action.®?
From the perspective of a transformed transcendental philos-
ophy (in Apel’s sense), two further renunciations called for by
the analytic reception of Kant seem precipitate: the renunciation
of the concept of the constitution of experience and the renunci-
ation of an explicit treatment of problems of validity. In my
opinion, the reservation regarding a strong apriorism in no way
demands limiting oneself to a logical-semantic analysis of the
conditions of possible experiences. If we surrender the concept
of the transcendental subject—the subject that accomplishes the
synthesis and that, together with its knowledge-enabling struc-
tures, is removed from all experience—this does not mean that
we have to renounce universal-pragmatic analysis of the applica-
tion of our concepts of objects of possible experience, that is,
investigation of the constitution of experience.*® It is just as little
a consequence of giving up the project of a transcendental deduc-