“The formal-pragmatic approach to meaning theory begins with the question of what it means to understand an utterance — that is, a sentence employed communicatively. Formal semantics makes a conceptual cut between the meaning [Bedeutung] of a sentence and the meaning [Meinung] of the speaker, who, when he uses the sentence in a speech act, can say something other than it literally means” (Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action vol. 1, p. 297).
His use of the adjective “formal” seems chosen to contrast with “empirical”. Pragmatics comes out looking better than semantics. Unlike Brandom, he does not also invent a new semantics to complement his new pragmatics.
“We understand a speech act when we know what makes it acceptable. From the standpoint of the speaker, the conditions of acceptability are identical to the conditions for his illocutionary success. Acceptability is not defined here in an objectivistic sense, from the perspective of an observer, but in the performative attitude of a participant in communication. A speech act may be called ‘acceptable’ if it satisfies the conditions that are necessary in order that the hearer be allowed to take a ‘yes’ position on the claim raised by the speaker. These conditions cannot be satisfied one-sidedly, either relative to the speaker or to the hearer. They are rather conditions for the intersubjective recognition of a linguistic claim” (pp. 297-298, emphasis in original).
Brandom treats something very like this intersubjective acceptability as a normative judgment, and refers to a background requirement of mutual recognition.
“Registering a validity claim is not the expression of a contingent will; and responding affirmatively to a validity claim is not merely an empirically motivated decision…. And one who doubts the validity of the underlying norms has to give reasons…. Validity claims are internally connected with reasons and grounds. To this extent, the conditions for the acceptability of directions can be found in the illocutionary meaning of the speech act itself; they do not need to be completed by additional conditions of sanction” (pp. 301-302).
Habermas is saying that validity is necessarily intersubjective. It could not be private.
“In general, no special obligations follow from the meaning of constative speech acts” (pp. 303-304).
“Not all illocutionary acts are constitutive for communicative action, but only those with which speakers connect criticizable validity claims” (p. 305).
“The fact that the intersubjective commonality of a communicatively achieved agreement exists at the levels of normative accord, shared propositional knowledge, and mutual trust in subjective sincerity can be explained in turn through the functions of achieving understanding in language” (p. 308).
“Semantic investigations of descriptive, expressive, and normative sentences, if only they are carried through consistently enough, force us to change the level of analysis. The very analysis of the conditions of the validity of sentences itself compels us to analyze the conditions for the intersubjective recognition of corresponding validity claims” (p. 316).
Here he does gesture in the direction of a more interesting semantics.
“It is part of understanding a sentence that we are capable of recognizing grounds through which the claim that its truth conditions are satisfied could be redeemed” (p. 317, emphasis in original).
This should be recognized as elementary. Understanding an assertion is not only concerned with vocabulary and grammar, but also with grounds and consequences.
“As with the meaning of assertoric sentences, it can also be shown for expressive and normative sentences that semantic analysis pushes beyond itself. The discussion that stems from Wittgenstein’s analysis of first-person sentences makes it clear that the claim connected with expressions is genuinely addressed to others. The intersubjective character of the validity of norms is even clearer” (p. 318).
Next in this series: Uncurtailed Communication
The Postmodern Peripatetic 