C. S. Peirce’s Dialogical Conception of Sign Processes

This article examines the contention that the central concepts of C. S. Peirce’s semeiotic are inherently communicational. It is argued that the Peircean approach avoids the pitfalls of objectivism and constructivism, rendering the sign-user neither a passive recipient nor an omnipotent creator of meaning. Consequently, semeiotic may serve as a useful general framework for studies of learning processes.     

Transzendentalpragmatik und Diskursethik. Elemente und Perspektiven der Apelschen Diskursphilosophie

Transcendental Pragmatics and Discourse Ethics. Elements and Perspectives of Apel's Discourse-Philosophy. The author follows Apel's intellectual biography and shows the conception of a critique of meaning qua ‘reflection upon the discourse within the discourse’ to be the centre of Apel's language-pragmatic ‘Transformation of Philosophy’ (Frankfurt a.M. 1973). Beginning with an explication of the situation of a speaker/thinker, especially of the situation of a philosophising speaker/thinker, Apel reconstructs a two fold apriori of communication: Every thought is situated within the context of a particular, historically evolved, community of language and interaction. At the same time, however, the validity-claims of thoughts transcend the context of their origin towards an unlimited community of argumentation. On the basis of the first apriori Apel criticises the methodical solipsism as well as the objectivism of modern philosophy and theory of science. Drawing upon the second apriori he develops a universalist critique of meaning of relativism and contextualism. In the sixties and seventies Apel worked out a differentiated theory of the – more or less – communicatively cognizing humanities and set it apart from the theory of the causal-explanatory natural sciences, thus challenging the objectivism of a Theory of Unified Science. Building upon this work Transcendental Pragmatics, as developed by Apel and others, sets philosophy primarily two tasks: firstly, a (fallible) internal reconstruction of argumentative discourse as the (logical) situation of speech and thought which seeks to elucidate the conditions of the meaningfulness, i. e. the presuppositions, of discourse. These presuppositions comprise, thus Apel with Habermas, the four validity-claims to intelligibility, sincerety/credibility, truth and normative rightness/legitimacy. Their moral content consists, thus Apel, not only in the recognition of the equality of all beings capable of discursive reasoning but also in their recognition of a co-responsibility for the realizability of discourses and of responsibility. The author argues that the existence of a co-responsibility of this kind is indisputable because the discursive claims to validity are intertwined with a set of ‘primordial promises of dialogue’. Only with the elucidation and explication of these promises can the reconstruction of the internal conditions of discourse be completed.The second task of a pragmatics of argumentation isthe strict resp. actual reflection of the thinker upon the presuppositions of the discourse in which he currently engages. This reflection has a Socratic character and can only be done in the form of discussion and debate (‘Auseinandersetzungen’, Apel, Frankfurt a.M. 1998) with critics of the reconstruction. In this context, the author proposes a method of Socratic reflection upon the presuppositions of dialogue which suspends the usual, theoretically oriented, attitude of the scientist and the philosopher in favour of an actual reflective attitude. Within a dialogue with a sceptic who doubts one of the results of the internal reconstruction of dialogical presuppositions, say X, it is tested whether his doubt as to the unrestricted validity of X can be understood as a sincere contribution to the current dialogue or whether this particular sceptical thesis does not make sense, because it is incompatible with the role of a sincere participant of argumentation which, after all, the sceptic cannot refuse to claim for himself.Finally the author explains Apel's characterization of the tension between “Discourse and Responsibility” (Frankfurt a.M. 1988). In the course of discussions with Max Weber, Lawrence Kohlberg, Hans Jonas et al., Apel formulates and justifies an ethics of responsibility and gives an affirmative answer to the crucial question of whether the fulfilment of the moral obligations connected with the recognition of co-responsibility can be demanded within the non-dialogical circumstances of social reality. Apel's answer employs the idea of counter-strategies which are morally legitimate in virtue of their being worthy of argumentative consensus. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Concluding Dialogue: Challenging the Past, Grasping the Future

Abstract. A dialogue between the outgoing and incoming directors of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science took place as part of the inaugural symposium. In their conversation they speak of the past and present challenges and goals of the Center, outline what is foremost in their minds, and offer glimpses into what they see as the Center's priorities for future work.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Raymond D. Boisvert, John Dewey: Rethinking Our Time
Larry A. Hickman, ed., Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a Postmodern Generation
Jennifer Welchman, Dewey's Ethical Thought
Richard Shusterman, Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life
Richard E. Hart and Douglas R. Anderson, eds., Philosophy in Experience: American Philosophy in Transition
Richard Kearney, Poetics of Modernity: Toward a Hermeneutic Imagination     

The Challenge of Global Ethics: Learning and Organizing

This is a response from the point of view of religion to three articles—by Ewert Cousins, David Loye, and Solomon H. Katz—that together call for a decisive new moral grounding for the human race. This commentary calls on science, as the dominant power in society today, to initiate a new partnership with religion. It goes on to advocate for an urgent mutual-learning endeavor in which science and religion will derive needed information and understanding from each other. The commentary finds a common thread in the three articles—that religion informed by science is the principal force capable of stimulating a global moral transformation—and ends by proposing a series of concrete action steps.     

Argumentative Ordering of Utterances for Language Generation in Multi-party Human–Computer Dialogue

In trying to control various aspects concerning utterance production in multi-party human–computer dialogue, argumentative considerations play an important part, particularly in choosing appropriate lexical units so that we fine-tune the degree of persuasion that each utterance has. A preliminary step in this endeavor is the ability to place an ordering relation between semantic forms (that are due to be realized as utterances, by the machine), concerning their persuasion strength, with respect to certain (explicit or implicit) conclusions. Thus, in this article, we propose a mechanism for assessing utterances, in terms of their argumentative force. The framework designed conflates insights from Asher and Lascarides’ SDRT (“Segmented Discourse Representation Theory”), and from Anscombre and Ducrot’s AT (“Argumentation Theory”). These mechanisms are included in a language generation component of a multi-party dialogue system for book reservation applications (i.e., a “virtual librarian”), and thus evaluated via typical human–machine conversations.

The Effectiveness of Argumentative Strategies

In this article, I further analyze the notion of the effectiveness of argumentative strategies, introduced in Jovičić, 2001. The most relevant achievements of the theories of reasonable discussion and the theories of persuasion are called to mind with the aim of explaining the mechanism of the argumentative effectiveness. As a result, a procedure for evaluating the effectiveness of argumentative strategies is suggested.