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...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs