Category Error II: People talking past each other

I don't necessarily recommend that you read  Jurgen Habermas. His writing is almost impenetrably dense, grinds ideas into nanoparticles, and slays entire forests reviewing the ideas of obscure German social philosophers at nearly as much length as the original writings. Nevertheless I commend to you an idea at the core of his Theory of Communicative Action. It isn't really original -- he harks back to Plato in his discussion, and he also owes a debt to his mentor John Searle. But he recontextualizes it and builds on it.

Habermas proposes three "worlds" of "criticizable validity claims." If people are to communicate effectively, whether they are trying to cooperate or are debating, they need to mutually understand what world they are in.

The First World is intersubjective reality, truth claims about the world "out there." The earth revolves around the sun. The sun is a star. (Of course we must have an agreed-upon definition of the word "star" in this context.) This [the object in my hand] is a mango.  Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb and the phonograph. Life on earth evolved over approximately 3 1/2 million years or more from simple forms and all life on earth has a common ancestor.

The means of verifying each of these statements differs, but we nevertheless recognize that they are somehow in the same domain, in that if they are true they are true for everybody, and somebody who does not agree with them is mistaken, i.e. believes something that is not true.

The Second World is the world of morality, what we believe is right and wrong, what people ought to do. See the most recent Sunday Sermonette, on the commandments propounded in Exodus 20. The Second World obviously interacts with the First. One point of frequent confusion is the domain of social facts. It is a fact that societies designate certain roles for particular individuals, that they have laws that people are generally expected to follow, that they enforce consequences for disobeying rules. It is a First World assertion that Donald J. Trump occupies the office of President of the United States, but it is a Second World claim that he does so properly, or must be respected by virtue of his office. Morality claims are not verifiable in the same sense as Truth claims. We may have different conceptions of justice, rightness and obligation. If I dispute one of your values, I can point to consequences of your position that might be awkward for you in that they put you in conflict with yourself in some way; or because it is unclear how your values apply in a given situation. I can also point out that you are misapplying your values because you are misconstruing the factual context. But if you are a libertarian who insists that you have no obligation to rescue a drowning child at the risk of soiling your clothes, well, that's what you believe, even if I believe that you are reprehensible.

The Third World is just our personal preference -- what we as individuals find pleasurable, desirable or gratifying. These have no direct consequences for what others ought to desire or what they ought to do, except to the extent we believe that other people ought to please us. Just because you like chocolate is no reason why I have to like it.* People tend to like many of the same things, which I suppose means there is some value in art criticism and restaurant criticism, in giving us suggestions about how to spend our time and our money, but if somebody is profoundly moved by the art of Jeff Koons well, it is what it is.


As Habermas notes, these worlds roughly correspond to the Platonic ideals of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.

The way these worlds rub together and otherwise interact can be complicated and confusing, to be sure. I'll refrain from further complexity today. But as a first order proposition, if we're going to have a conversation, we need to keep them straight. It's a wrong move to go from IS to OUGHT, from OUGHT to IS, or from WANT to OUGHT or any other step. OUGHT must be consistent with IS, but cannot be derived from it. (In other words it makes no sense to say that people ought to do the impossible, or ought to produce contradictory outcomes.) WANT can be disparaged from the standpoint of OUGHT, but its existence cannot be denied. What I WANT does not imply what you OUGHT to do, or at least it won't suffice to convince you. (If you happen to WANT to please me then you may do what pleases me because you want to, but it doesn't follow that you ought to.)

If we can keep all this straight, or at least do our best, we can communicate.

*On the other hand, it is objectively evil to be a New York Yankees fan.