Raising validity claims for reasons
pp. 209-231
in: Halla Kim, Steven Hoeltzel (eds), Transcendental inquiry, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstract
Within Apelian transcendental pragmatics of communication, central importance is given to the project of grounding some morally normative requirements in the practice of argumentative discourse. According to Karl-Otto Apel, the dialogical practice of fully engaged argumentative discourse necessarily involves conceptually normative presuppositions some of which have a universally valid and recognizably moral content. The central contention of a "discourse ethics" is to identify conceptually normative presuppositions of argumentation, to select those that are morally charged, and then to develop whatever thin moral content they have into a coherent core conception of a morality with unassailable rational credentials. This chapter offers an elaborate defense of Apel's original intuition that by reflexive recourse to practices of discoursive argumentation we can ground in a rationally definitive way certain normative requirements (moral and other) which rational persons as such must meet.
