Max Miller

Culture and collective argumentation

What are the mechanisms underlying the reproduction and change of collective beliefs? The paper suggests that a productive and promising approach for dealing with this question can be found in ontogenetic and cross-cultural studies on ‘collective argumentations and belief systems’; this is illustrated with regard to moral beliefs: After a short discussion of the rationality/relativity issue in cultural anthropology some basic elements of a conceptual framework for the empirical study of collective argumentations are outlined. A few empirical case studies are summarized; the results deliver some empirical evidence to the assumption that as the ‘logic of collective argumentations’ develops in children and adolescent there will be different and increasingly more complex constraints on the kinds of basic moral beliefs that can be collectively accepted. Most importantly, as children approach adolescence they may have acquired a ‘logic of argumentation’ which makes possible a collectively valid distinction between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’ of some disputed particular moral issue. A comparison with a land litigation among Trobriands (Papua New Guinea) shows that the ‘logic of argumentation’ and the corresponding basic moral beliefs of Trobriands very much resemble the ‘logic of argumentation’ and moral rationality standards of (German) adolescents.

Discourse and Morality: two case studies of social conflicts in a segmentary and a functionally differentiated society

No sociologist was more concerned with morality and the interrelation between morality and society than Emile Durkheim; and at least sociological approaches to understand morality can be expected to clarify whether and to what extent they are willing to follow Durkheims account.

Kollektive Erinnerungen und gesellschaftliche Lernprozesse

Ein Lernen aus der sozialen Vergangenheit setzt kollektive Erinnerungen voraus. Da selbst diejenigen, die eine vergangene Epoche personlich erlebten, nur kleinere oder grosere Ausschnitte davon selbst erfahren haben, ist jeder (nicht nur die Spatergeborenen), der aus jener Vergangenheit lernen mochte, auf kollektive Erinnerungen angewiesen; und dies gilt, a fortiori, fur die Frage, ob nicht nur Einzelne sondern soziale Gruppen oder Gesellschaften aus ihrer sozialen Vergangenheit gelernt haben, denn dann scheinen nur noch die kollektiven Erinnerungen relevant zu sein. Im Zentrum der folgenden Uberlegungen steht deshalb die Frage: Kann mit einer Theorie ‚kollektiver Erinnerungen‘ ein Beitrag geliefert werden zur Klarung des Gelingens oder Scheiterns gesellschaftlicher Lernprozesse in der Auseinandersetzung mit einer sozialen Vergangenheit?

We-Intentions and Process-Oriented Problems of Social Action

Raimo Tuomela presents a persuasive and elegant theory of what constitutes the jointness of individual agents’ social actions. Some of Tuomela’s points of view I can immediately accept, e.g., his point that in philosophy and psychology ‘social actions’ have not yet been studied very seriously, although to say that this equally holds true for sociology (cf. Tuomela, p. 103) would be an exaggeration. Another point of view I share is that ‘non-intentional behaviorism’ does not provide an adequate conceptual framework for the characterization of either individual or social human actions. Moreover, I think Tuomela is right in postulating that his conception of a ‘purposive-causal theory of action’ should be integrated into a full-blown theory of social action. However, since the basic problems of causation, willing and intending do not seem to be the central problems of a sociological theory of action, I would rather like to circumvent these traditional pitfalls for philosophical laymen and to concentrate my comments on those parts of Tuomela’s paper where he exposes the main thread of his theory of intentional social actions (especially Sections III and V).

Who Conducts a Discourse? A Reply to my Commentators

It is amazing how differently texts can be interpreted, evaluated and thought further by different people. In the case of my paper Some Theoretical Aspects of Systemic Learning (in the following abbreviated as SL) my commentators have opened up a rather wide range of interesting and challenging differences, and an exploration of those differences will hopefully move on our discourse on its trajectory to learn. Of course, within the frame of this publication a discourse on discourse learning can only be initiated, and it remains to be seen whether there will be a continuation and a possible amplification, and to what extent some relevant insights have already been gained or perhaps will follow. At any rate, I am very grateful to my commentators for their interest, cooperation and fairness in participating in this first round of debate; and the journal sozialer sinn deserves great respect for the venture of publishing the whole discussion. Obviously, individual actors and corporate actors, their intentions and competencies, can make a difference; they are clearly indispensable and most important for the possible success of any learning process who could deny that? But, there is more to say about learning on a supraindividual or systemic level, and here our differences begin. In a certain respect, however, there seems to be a far-reaching consensus among us; at least none of the commentators attacked or questioned a main thesis in the first part of my paper: that structural learning (or the development of basic knowledge) in individual subjects presupposes social discourse as a necessary (although not sufficient) condition. This consensus came as a great surprise to me because one or two decades ago my efforts to argue for such a discourse theory of learning met with rather strong opposition (cf. e. g. Geulen 1987, Döbert 1992), or at best, with some uninterested nonchalance among psychologists, educationalists, and sociologists. Has receptiveness for (classical and recent) theories of the social constitution of individual minds changed and improved in the meantime? Of course, that would be encouraging, since my present considerations regarding some theoretical aspects of systemic learning appear (at least to me) to follow rather straightforwardly from my earlier work on