This chapter situates the conception of language (and communication) in enaction in the context of the research program of the cognitive sciences. It focuses on the formulation of the synthesis of hermeneutics and speech acts and the vision of language according to the metaphor of structural coupling. The exclusion of expressive speech acts in this design is problematized. An examination is offered of the critical steps to the theory of language as a reflection and the linguistic correspondence of cognitivism. We examine the foundations of the proposal in the line of language and social enaction as emergent phenomena which are not reducible to autopoiesis but which constitute a new neurophenomenological position in the pragmatic language dimension. A proposal is made for the integration of hermeneutic phenomenology with genetic and generative phenomenology in social semiotics. The inclusion of expressive speech acts based on the functions of language in the Habermas–Bühler line is also addressed. An opening is proposed of enaction to the expressive dimension of language and meaning holism with the referential use of language.

Key words: enaction, neurophenomenology, performative speech acts, expressive speech acts, background, meaning holism.

In this article, the author examines Colin Grant’s recent criticism of the so-called “interaction paradigm” and Jürgen Habermas’s universal pragmatics. Grant’s approach, which is presented as an open challenge to communication theories grounded in philosophical conceptions of communality and dialogue, can be construed as an exemplar of a radical constructivist approach to vital questions of contingency and incommensurability in communication studies. In response, the author outlines a classical pragmatist approach to the problem areas identified by Grant, with the aim of outlining how a pragmatist outlook can offer promising theoretical alternatives to universal pragmatics and radical constructivism. It is argued that moderate Peircean pragmatism, appropriately interpreted, can provide a philosophical platform capable of addressing issues of contingency, uncertainty, and autonomy in communication theory without succumbing to incommensurabilism, traditional objectivism, or nominalistic individualism.

Ashby’s Law of Requisite variety, Beer’s Viable System Model, Maturana’s Biology of Cognition, Habermas’s theory of communicative action and Luhmann’s theory of social systems have assisted my reflections upon issues such as power, democracy, participation and fairness in society. I have explored these issues from a cybernetics perspective in several publications (Espejo, 2001a, 2001b, 2004) and they remain a central concern of my current work on nuclear waste management in Europe.

Problem: Can communication emerge from the interaction of “self-referentially closed systems,” conceived as operating solely on the base of the “internal” output of their onboard means? Or in terms of philosophical conceptions: can communication emerge without (“outward” directed) “intention” or “will to be understood”? Method: Multi-agent simulation based on a conceptual analysis of the theory of social systems as suggested by Niklas Luhmann. Results: Agents that co-evolutionarily aggregate probabilities on how to cope with their environment can structurally couple and generate a form of “eigenbehavior” that retrospectively (i.e., by an observer) might be interpreted as communication. Implications: The “intention” or the “will to be understood,” as prominently claimed to be indispensable in communication by theoreticians such as Jürgen Habermas, can be seen as a retrospective ascription to an emergent property of complex interaction. Constructivist content: The paper attempts to base constructivist reasoning on data generated in simulations.

Key words: Communication, information, contingency, structural coupling, intentionality, observer dependency, multi-agent simulation.

It is twenty–five years since Jürgen Habermas published his Theory of Communicative Action. Colin B. Grant shares the same commitment to a philosophical theory of communication but issues a range of challenges to Habermas’ magnum opus. Uncertainty and Communication mounts a critique of theories of dialogism and intersubjectivity, proposes a radical rethinking of the communicating subject in society and explores the new contingencies of culture and media in our interconnected global communication system.

We explore Ernst von Glaserfeld‘s radical constructivism, its criticisms, and our own thoughts on what it promises for the reform of science and mathematics teaching. Our investigation reveals that many criticisms of radical constructivism are unwarranted; nevertheless, in its current cognitivist form radical constructivism may be insufficient to empower teachers to overcome objectivist cultural traditions. Teachers need to be empowered with rich understandings of philosophies of science and mathematics that endorse relativist epistemologies; for without such they are unlikely to be prepared to reconstruct their pedagogical practices. More importantly, however, is a need for a powerful social epistemology to serve as a referent for regenerating the culture of science education. We recommend blending radical constructivism with Habermas‘ ’theory of communicative action‘ to provide science teachers with a moral imperative for adopting a constructivist epistemology.

Excerpt: I argue that the theory of communica¬tive action, together with the discursive reality it describes, constitutes an autopoietic system in the sense in which Habermas’s long-time opponent Niklas Luhmann uses the term. My contention is that the universalizing tendency of what Habermas calls discourse is an effect of the “operational closure” of a system that observes itself from within its own perspective and thereby conceals its contingency. If this argument holds, the first three claims above can be reanalyzed as self-descriptions of the system’s recursive operation, whereas the last claim needs to be qualified in view of Luhmann’s contention that sys¬tems are incapable of operating beyond their own boundaries. With regard to Habermas’s discourse theory, this means that, considered as an autopoietic system, it is self-validating and irrefutable on its own grounds. To the extent that the theory of communicative action incor¬porates a principle of falsification in the form of a counterfactual communicative a priori (the ideal speech situation) into its founding postulate, the theory is capable of transforming every act of refutation into an indirect affirmation of itself. The trouble is that once the sys-temic operations of discourse are identified with rationality itself, it becomes virtually impossible to formulate a critique of the former that would not be self-refuting. Critiques of modernity from Nietzsche to Lyotard amply illustrate this dilemma: in order to state their position these critics are forced to appeal to the very principles of discursive rationality they call into question, an inconsistency their opponents are quick to point out.

I elaborate on the tension between Luhmann’s social systems theory and Habermas’ theory of communicative action, and argue that this tension can be resolved by focusing on language as the interhuman medium of the communication that enables us to develop symbolically generalized media of communication such as truth, love, power, etc. Following Luhmann, the layers of self-organization among the differently codified subsystems of communication versus organization of meaning at contingent interfaces can be distinguished analytically as compatible yet empirically researchable alternatives to Habermas’ distinction between “system” and “lifeworld.” Mediation by a facilitator can then be considered as a special case of organizing historically contingent translations among the evolutionarily developing fluxes of intentions and expectations. Accordingly, I suggest modifying Giddens’ terminology to “a theory of the structuration of expectations.”

One can discard Luhmann’s contributions as flawed (e.g., Padgett & Powell, 2012, pp. 55–58) or discuss the limitations of the theory from a sociological perspective (e.g., Giddens, 1984, at p. xxxvi f.; Leydesdorff, 2010), but in my opinion, important steps were made by Luhmann in sociological theorizing when compared with his predecessors such as Parsons and Habermas, but also when compared with more empirically oriented contemporaries such as Merton and Giddens. These new developments were made possible by an interdisciplinary orientation in which Luhmann absorbed into his sociology, on the one side, Maturana’s theory of autopoiesis (self-organization) and, on the other, Husserl’s philosophy, and then provided a sociological reconstruction that can eventually be operationalized (Leydesdorff, 1996 and 2012). In my opinion, these new steps in terms of sociological theorizing were made mainly in the 1970s and 1980s, whereas the emphasis shifted to a synthesis of this oeuvre in the 1990s (e.g., Luhmann, 1997) and to the more philosophical ambition of developing a general theory of observation (Baecker et al., [1992] 1999; Gumbrecht, 2003 and 2006; Leydesdorff, 2006).

Handlungstheorie ist zur Zeit eine umstrittene Angelegenheit. Hier wird vorge-schlagen, die biologische Theorie autopoietischer Systeme zur weiteren Klärung heranzuziehen. Handlungen müssen vor allem als Ereignisse begriffen werden, die nicht dauern können. Damit verlagert sich der Schwer¬punkt der Handlungstheorie von der Sozialdimension des Sinnes in die Zeitdimension. Handlungssysteme er¬fordern Kommunikation, um sich selbst laufend zu reproduzieren. Es ist dieser Kontext, in dem die klassische Differenz von Zweck und Mittel ihre Funktion gewinnt als “difference that makes a difference” (Bateson). Da¬mit allein ist jedoch die Sozialdimension allen Sinnes nicht ausreichend repräsentiert. Es ist das Verdienst von Habermas, darauf immer wieder hingewiesen und Forschungen über kommunikative Verständigung angeregt zu haben. Für Habermas läuft dies jedoch auf die Frage nach den Gründen für vernünftigen Konsens hinaus. Eine Theorie autopoietischer sozialer Systeme würde dagegen auf die Differenz von Konsens und Dissens abstellen im Sinne einer “difference that makes a difference”.