Pragmática formal, verdade e realismo: do conceito epistêmico à indeterminação da verdade em Jürgen Habermans

Abstract

The present work exposes and analyzes the theoretical-argumentative route that led Habermas to sustain an antirealist consensual-discursive concept of truth to defend a pragmatic concept that aims to account for the realistic presuppositions inherent to the communicative practices of subjects capable of action and speech. Having initially identified truth as the product of a rational agreement between arguers forged within an ideal speech situation, Habermas was convinced by the criticisms of authors such as Donald Davidson, Ansgar Beckermann, Albrecht Wellmer and Cristina Lafont, of the unsustainability of an antirealist grasp of the truth if, with this concept, we intend to clarify the communicative practices of understanding and intervention in the world of members from a linguistic community. The revision of his concept of truth is performed along with the establishment of a more adequate space in formal pragmatics for non-representational realism and weak naturalism. Knowledge cannot be reduced to mere representation of reality, but rather must incorporate the learning process effected by overcoming the failures concretely experienced in the sphere of action. The revision of his concept of truth is performed along with the establishment of a more adequate space in formal pragmatics for non-representational realism and weak naturalism. Knowledge cannot be reduced to mere representation of reality, but rather must incorporate the learning process effected by overcoming the failures concretely experienced in the action sphere. On the other hand, the de-transcendentalisation of the cognitive structures of the life-world that mediate our experience with the objective world does not authorize a causal explanation of life-world‘s normativity. The distinction between the epistemic concept of justification (rational acceptability) and the non-epistemic concept of truth is at the basis of Habermas's rejection of Richard Rorty's contextualism, since it results from a bad theoretical step that would make it impossible to elucidate our effective communicative practices and would require the reformulation of one's own common sense which would be based on a démodé platonic difference. However, with his pragmatic conception of truth, Habermas defends the existence of an unrenounceable epistemic relationship between truth and justification that finds no support in the discourse sphere. We need to recognize that, in this, what sets in is an epistemic relationship between the process of justification of our beliefs and their rational acceptability and not between the realistically apprehended concept of truth and the justification. In this way, we come to the conclusion that Habermas's pragmatic concept of truth suffers from a fundamental indetermination. This derives from Habermas' refusal to theoretically discuss the relationship between language and world demanded by the realistic non-epistemic apprehension of truth. Habermas argues that the attempt to theoretically explain this relationship would involve metaphysical premises incompatible with a post-metaphysical thought, which implies that our author prefers to bequeath us an indeterminate concept of truth, to advance theoretically in the explanation of what is presupposed by the formal pragmatics itself.