J Gen Philos Sci (2013) 44:320

DOI 10.1007/s10838-013-9221-9

ARTICLE

Can Science Cope with More Than One World?

A Cross-Reading of Habermas, Popper, and Searle

Lars Albinus

Published online: 3 July 2013

 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Abstract The purpose of this article is to critically assess the three-world theory as it is
presentedwith some slight but decisive differencesby Jurgen Habermas and Karl
Popper. This theory presents the philosophy of science with a conceptual and material
problem, insofar as it claims that science has no single access to all aspects of the world.
Although I will try to demonstrate advantages of Poppers idea of the third world of
ideas, the shortcomings of his ontological stance become visible from the pragmatic point
of view in Habermass theory of communicative acts. With regard to the critique that the
three-world theory has met in both its pragmatic and ontological versions, I will take a
closer look at John Searles naturalistic counter-position. By teasing out some problematic
implications in his theory of causation, I aim to show that Searles approach is, in fact,
much closer to Poppers than he might think. Finally, while condoning Habermass dis-
tinction between the natural world and the lifeworld, I will opt for a pragmatically dif-
ferentiated view of the real, rather than speaking of different worlds.

Keywords Causation
Communication theory
Habermas
Ontology
Popper
Searle

Three-world theory

1 Introduction

How many worlds are we living in? The answer depends on what one means by world,
but, of course, that is trivially true. Why is it, exactly, that we shall not be able to say: We
live in one world and one world only? It stands to reason that all existing things belong to
the same world. How can one question this? In fact, we can, when it comes to determining
our criteria for referring to this world. If we look more closely, it seems difficult, if not
impossible, to find a single type of reference that encompasses all that we actually think of
as belonging to this one world. Indeed, positivists thought otherwise, and there are still

L. Albinus (&)
Department of Culture and Society, Study of Religion, University of Aarhus, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
e-mail: LAL@teo.au.dk

123
4 L. Albinus

respected scientists and philosophers who subscribe to materialism and a nomological view
of causality as the unquestionable principles of true (and undivided) reality. In this article,
my aim is to show how and why they are wrong.
Specifically, I will engage in a cross-reading of three important twentieth-century
philosophers who approach the question of the world from slightly, though not entirely,
different positions. I will outline the differences between the three-world view as presented
by Jurgen Habermas and Karl R. Popper, forming a background for critically examining
John Searles alleged one-world naturalism. As it turns out, I will defend a kind of
threefold-world differentiation, though from a pragmatic, not an ontological, point of view.
A part of my argument is that the sciences, humanities included,1 run the risk of
misconstruing their object if they dissolve the level of interpretation into the domain of
empirical statements, as is often the case in cognitive science, for instance. Against the
view that all knowledge derives from experience, which still has plenty of followers in the
tradition of Quines epistemology (cf. Quine 1974), the three-world theory may direct our
attention towards the intricate, yet often neglected, relationship between understanding the
world and the world of understanding.
The threefold differentiation of validity claims that comprises the core of Habermass
theory of communicative action indicates something significant in this respect, namely,
that in order to defend a one-world view, we must modify it, by differentiating the notion
of the real. Otherwise, we would inhibit ourselves from approaching all possible aspects of
reality, and even risk falling into the positivistic trap of being unable to account empirically
for an all-including principle of empirical knowledge. In actual practice, this may even
become ethically illegitimate, if it causes us to overlook the level of self-understanding,
which is integral to being human in the first place. Surely, it should not exchange analysis
for a simple approval of the content of self-interpretation. The point is rather that irre-
spective of the kind of analysis we engage in, we are not justified in dismissing the
condition of its own possibility, that is, the level of rational reflection and understanding, as
such.

2 From Kant to Habermas

Emmanuel Kant directed his philosophical attention to the human faculty for making
judgements instead of trying to penetrate reality itself (das Ding an sich), and realized that
what it takes for something to be true, good, or beautiful cannot be subsumed under a
single criterion of reason. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he analysed the limits for making
valid theoretical judgements, in the Critique of Practical Reason he analysed the sovereign
law of morality, and finally, in the Critique of Judgment, he turned to the issues of taste and
disinterested assessment of aesthetic value. However, it would be a mistake to believe that
1
Although my intention is to speak on behalf of science in general, I am aware that the word science is
not used with the same connotation in English as in other European languages, where the concept is still
influenced, among other things, by the Neo-Kantian distinction between Naturwissenschaft (natural sci-
ence) and Geisteswissenschaft (roughly the humanities). Although the specific qualification indicated by
the general concept of the social sciences, as well occasional references to interpretative sciences and
life sciences have widened the scope of the science concept somewhat, it is my impression that, in general,
science is taken to include methods of testing theories from the collection of hard data. Nevertheless, it is
the purpose of the present article to tackle some philosophical problems of coping scientifically with
reality in its various shapes and forms, and for that reason, I take the liberty of using the concept of
science in a very broad sense.

123
Can Science Cope with More Than One World? 5

Kant regarded these areas of judgemental criteria as isolated from one another. Rather, they
were interrelated to the extent that a metaphysical ontology, which could neither be sup-
ported nor rejected by propositions of theoretical knowledge, re-emerged as a reasonable
postulate (grounding a moral metaphysics) within the bounds of practical reason and
aesthetic judgement.
For Hegel, Kants tripartite organization of the reasoning faculties participated in, but at
the same time obstructed, the process of self-recognition by which the reason of the Spirit
(Geist) parts from itself, in order to regain absolute self-knowledge. Hegel firmly believed
in one world, the final and non-dualistic coincidence of spirit and matter. Yet, Hegels
historical reason continued beyond his own system, and the tripartite differentiation of
the human world recurred in various theoretical approaches, for instance, in the sociology
of Max Weber. According to Weber, the process of rationalization, characteristic of the
Western world, divides the achievements of culture into the realms of (1) science and
technology, (2) politics, law, and religion, and (3) art (1963, 555 ff.). Truth, goodness, and
beauty slip into separate, institutionalized approaches to an inhabited world.
The German philosopher and sociologist Jurgen Habermas draws our attention to the
basic structure of this tripartite differentiation through his elaborate exposition in Theorie
des kommunikativen Handelns (1981). In this work, he revealed it to be part of an
overarching, historical learning process, in which a phylogenetic and an ontogenetic
transmission of communicative skills, owing to contingent empirical conditions, have
released the rational resources and binding commitments of communicative interaction.
Soon, in the course of the rationalization process, it became generally illegitimate to
regard unfortunate events as morally significant (as in the tribal custom of holding a king
responsible for a failing harvest, or regarding disease as an indication of sin). In short,
Habermas theory is that the differentiation between various validity claims has evolved
contingently, but irreversibly, in the course of history, owing to the communicative
potential of language. In principle, this linguistically grounded differentiation prevents us
from conflating what is true with what is right or expressively authentic, and from
identifying right or wrong with what inspires attraction or repulsion, let alone with
empirical fact. Habermas often refers to these domains of rationality using a three-world
model consisting of the objective, the social, and the subjective worlds. The condition of
possibility for dividing the world in this way stems from the fact that we do not
reproduce physical nature in our cognitive relationship with it, but represent it through a
variety of signs. Habermass specific claim is that individuals who interact by means of
un-coerced communication possess the means for discursively coming to an agreement at
the horizon of a lifeworld (1981, I, 107).2 Inasmuch as this lifeworld consists of more or
less diffuse elements of unproblematic background assumptions, we cannot reduce it to
the world of empirical investigation. Instead, the lifeworld is the condition of possibility
for conceiving of the physical world. Assessing our observations of the world, we already
rely on given standards, which we share because of their location in the lifeworld, not
because of their empirical availability. It is possible to subject specific elements of the
lifeworld to critical scrutiny, insofar as the rest of the horizon in casu remains hidden
from view, as it were, but it would be a contradicto in adjecto to imagine that we could
gain access to the totality of a lifeworld. This would be the same as to see ourselves
looking; this we cannot do.

2
Although Husserl coined the term Lebenswelt, Habermas refers to its sociological conception as pre-
sented by Husserls student, Alfred Schutz, cf. Habermas (1981), II, 189.

123
6 L. Albinus

Communication occurs between subjects who, among other things, engage in a dis-
course about the world as an objective reality. Yet, the means of reaching an agreement
about a specific state of affairs cannot possibly spring from this reality as such. As Hab-
ermas points out, we must restrict ourselves to saying that some proposition stands for
some state of affairs, not that it corresponds to it (How could we ever know?). More
importantly, there is no drawback to subscribing to this pragmatic stance. As competent
users of language, we know what it means, and what it takes, to refer objectively to some
state of affairs, and that is all we need as a scientific starting principle.3
Suppose we acknowledge that these criteria (for presenting the world through state-
ments) rest on shared abilities and background assumptions intrinsic to communicative acts
themselves. We may then be inclined to turn some of our attention towards the level of the
lifeworld by way of critical self-reflection, and realize that this enterprise is different from
approaching the objective world on the grounds of theoretical statements.
Close to Webers stance, as it is, Habermas view on our social world nevertheless
differs from Webers in that he regards modernity as entailing a divorce between rights and
values. Whereas morality encompasses every issue that may be universally justified by all
parties involved, ethics, that is, questions of a good life, can only address a limited group of
people sharing a common historical or religious background.4
Habermas confesses to being a soft naturalist (1999, 32), implying that the learning
processes by which we have developed a differentiated worldview are natural, yet irre-
ducible to empirical standards such as those pertaining to neurologic or biogenetic
explanations (op. cit. 38). Paradoxical as it may seem, the detranscendentalization of
reason means that the epistemic category of nature, or in other words, a one-world model,
cannot conceptually embrace every aspect of reality. Reality in the physical sense is not
interchangeable with reality in a social sense. We will have to distinguish, for instance,
between the objective reality and our claims about it. Habermas expresses this point by
regarding die objective Welt als System fur mogliche Referenzenals das Ganze von
Gegenstanden, nicht von Tatsachen. (cf. op. cit. 37). Subject matter is the impetus for
empirical observation; matters of fact, on the other hand, are the cognitive and commu-
nicative result produced in the social word. By pronouncing a statement, we partake in a
kind of reality that is not only physical or natural, but also irreducibly communicative. As I
will try to demonstrate in this article, it is extremely important to acknowledge this,
concerning an adequate differentiation of scientific criteria. However, Habermas seems be
content with analogies between the criteria of validity pertaining to objective statements,
on the one hand, and to normative statements, on the other.5 As I am not entirely satisfied
with this notion of analogy, I will aim for a more precise principle of demarcation, as this
article draws to its conclusion.
Although it may not be entirely clear at first glance, we must not confuse Habermass
tripartite world-discrimination with an ontological differentiation. Ontologically speaking,

3
The obvious objection would be that, in fact, this amounts to claiming metaphysically that res and verba
correspond to one another. Without pursuing the matter here, I will merely refer to the agreement between
Habermas and Putnam on this matter, in that they subscribe to a form of realism in which concepts are
regarded as revisable tokens of actual reference, cf. Putnam (1975, 215 ff); Habermas (1999, 44 ff).
4
At an etymological level, it would be rather difficult to make a clear-cut distinction between the Greek
ethos and the Latin mores, but Habermas obviously borrows Hegels distinction between Sittlichkeit
and Moralitat.
5
As already mentioned, subjective statements occupy a different position in this respect, inasmuch as they
cannot not be immediately submitted to discursive criteria of rational validity, yet they still partake in the
sphere of communicative rationality, by way of sincerity or truthfulness (Wahrhaftichkeit).

123
Can Science Cope with More Than One World? 7

our world is twofold, a physical world and a lifeworld. The lifeworld determines what we
make the physical world out to be, by dealing with it, cognizing it, and inhabiting it. The
lifeworld is our communicative frame of orientation within a physical world. Over the
course of time, this communicative practice has procured a threefold distinction between
(1) objects, (2) norms, and (3) expressions, which pertain to different criteria of commu-
nicative validation. Habermass approach is thus formally pragmatic in that it focuses on
communicative attitudes rather than kinds of objects (Gegenstanden). Either we speak
about objectsdemanding theoretical and empirical criteria for validating objective
truthor we speak about rules of conductdemanding moral criteria for justification.
Finally, we may express feelings, faith, beliefs, or other individual states of mind, but these
expressions, which are communicated along with other types of speech acts, do not
demand any immediate discursive criteria for justification. At any rate, the three worlds are
not separate realms of objectivity, but intermingling spheres of (1) objectivity, (2) inter-
subjectivity, and (3) subjectivity, which together form the cultural horizon of the lifeworld,
embedded in the one world common to all: objective reality.

3 The Three-World Model, According to Karl Popper

Apart from obvious similarities in Habermass and Poppers views on different worlds
according to referential criteria, a closer examination will soon disclose how Poppers
conception of objective reality differs fundamentally from Habermass. The main point of
divergence is that Habermas relates his notion of a threefold world-differentiation to
different validity claims, whereas Popper speaks of different areas of objective reality, in
line with his purely epistemological point of view. Eventually, I will return to the prag-
matic view of communicative rationality in my concluding remarks about the conceptual
relations among ontological, epistemic, and pragmatic issues, but first, some impor-
tant variations among the three-world theories must be explored.
Intriguingly, Poppers commitment to the critical balance between theoretical conjec-
tures and worldly cause and effect was what led him to discriminate among the three
worlds, yet with a difference that goes to the heart of the problem, begging the initial
question: How are we to conceive of our world as several worlds? For Popper, the
specific question was, how would it make sense to see the world of causality as distributed
among three ontological domains? For Kant, Weber, and Habermas, the pertinent differ-
entiation was a division of rationality, that is, the ways in which we rationally come to
grips with the world, not a differentiation of the world as such. For Popper, the three
dimensions of objectivity also involve different criteria for rational agreement, but the
latter follow from the former, not the other way round.
In contrast to the positivist members of the Vienna Circle, Popper noted that the criteria
of induction were logically illegitimate, inasmuch as no concrete act of verification could
secure a universal claim. No empirical confirmation could, in itself, support more than a
theoretical conjecture whose pending validity depended on its ability to meet the possi-
bility of falsification (whether directly on empirical grounds or indirectly via other
hypotheses). What science should admit to be offering, then, were theories that ran the risk
of being refuted, rather than trivial statements of empirical facts, let alone unwarranted
generalizations on the grounds of these facts. The daring proposal of risky conjectures
(including challenging, explanatory models) was what the enterprise really needed to fuel
the progression of scientific knowledge.

123
8 L. Albinus

By this principle of demarcation, Popper distinguished between speculative theories of

a more or less metaphysical kind, on the one hand, and testable scientific theories, on the
other. Although this demarcation, along with the principle of falsification, seemed to
dissolve the confusion of empirical generalization, new problems were to follow in the
wake of the old ones. Indeed, Popper recognized at least some of these aporias. For one
thing, difficulties arise even when we set out to define what it means for something to count
as an empirical fact. In fact, an observation always implies some sort of theory, even if
only in a minimal sense, namely, to identify something as something.6 Yet, instead of
drawing a sceptical conclusion from this observational dependency, Popper suggested
cutting into the tissue of objectivity by discriminating among the various elements included
in the counting as. Thus, Popper hailed the discovery of a third world outside the
dualor dualistdistinction between mental and physical reality. In other words, Popper
found it necessary to distinguish among different types of ontological reference, or in his
own phraseology, among three worlds (1972, 153 ff).
The first world, or world 1, comprises all that we can determine as empirical facts (i.e.
physical objects and events). We could also simply call it the physical world. World 2
consists of mental or psychological phenomena that are activated as emotions, thoughts, or
communication, for example, by referring to a feeling of joy or, at the other end of the
scale, by claiming something about empirical facts. We could call this world the mental
world, insofar as it refers to our inner mental state, abilities, and experiences. Yet, the very
fact that problems or ideas are introduced, the implications of which clearly surpass the
limited scope of our individual intellectual efforts, reveals that the products of mental
activity cannot be reduced to psychological abilitieslet alone to psychological phe-
nomenaalone. Poppers own example is as illuminating as it is simple. If we regard the
human mind as the inventor of natural numbers, we must acknowledge the fact that,
although no equation (between numbers) exists that could not, in principle, be produced
or pronouncedempirically, it is impossible, in fact, to produce every possible equation
(op. cit. 160). In other words, they surpass, in potentia, the confines of world 1 and world 2.
Nature has furnished each normally developed human with some innate disposition to
learn language and the logics of mathematics, but the realm of concepts, notions, logic,
arguments and ideas, with which human beings build a (socially accessible) world of
theories and symbols, identifies a realm of its own, namely the products of the human
mind. This realm of intelligible objects, as it were, Popper terms world 3. While
underlining its human origins, as well as its autonomous character, we might even be
tempted to use a Platonic phrase, calling it the world of ideas. Actually, Popper counted
Plato, along with Leibniz, Bolzano, and Frege among those philosophers who pointed out
the existence of a third world (op. cit. 153).7
These three frames of reference, which Popper sees as defining the scope of scientific
approaches to the world, closely parallel Freges tripartite division, presented as early as in

6
Although we generally use the word theory in a much narrower sense, we should not overlook the basic
meaning of beholding as in the Greek theoria (normally rendered as contemplation), insofar as it is the
framework of the outlook that defines the factual criteria needed for falsification, cf. Chalmers (1978).
7
Popper actually hails Plato for being the first to have discovered the objective Forms or Ideas (1972,
156). Platos concept of Ideas is, in fact, literally incompatible with Poppers definition of world 3 objects as
being products of human mind, inasmuch as the notion of idea in most of the Platonic dialogues has it
the other way round: Man is an instantiation of the idea of man which means that nous, the faculty of
reason in man, only participates in the realm of eternal ideas, which originate in nothing but themselves.
Even so, Popper rejects the view of ideas as simply man-made, and finds that Platonists are supported by
the fact that we can speak of eternal verities, (1972, 158).

123
Can Science Cope with More Than One World? 9

1892 (p. 92), and prominently re-stated in 1918 in Der Gedanke. Die Gedanken, writes
Frege, sind weder Dinge der Auenwelt noch Vorstellungen. Ein drittes Reich muss
anerkannt werden (1986, 30).8 Apart from, or transgressing, the imagination (Vorstell-
ungen), which permeates the inner world of our individual minds, we also engage in
thoughts (Gedanke), which are collective or inter-subjective. Thoughts do not belong to
the material outer world, but are, nonetheless, out there, as manifested in the use of
language. This seems almost equivalent to identifying the third realm of thoughts with the
content shared by, if not simply the content of, communication. However, fearing an
association with psychologists connotations of expressionist view, Popper avoids
speaking of the third world in terms of communication and expression (1972, 158).
Instead, he attacks philosophical materialists for reducing every possible reference to
empirical facts of nature. In the eyes of hard-core materialists, once called positivists, we
should strive to turn everything that seems to escape this criterion, for instance, subjective
impressions, into underlying physical causes. We might agree that it may very well be true
that we cannot have one single thought or even the tiniest feeling of joy without there being
some firing of synapses in the brain, or some level of dopamine in the blood causing it.
Yetin keeping with Poppers argumentwe must be very careful about what burden of
explanation we bring to bear on the concept of cause, in this respect. The notion of a
causal effect itself is easily misapplied, for even though in principle it may provide us with
the necessary precondition for experiencing a mental phenomenon of some sort, it takes
much more (if it is even feasible) to demonstrate that it also constitutes a sufficient cause.
Speaking about the experience of something involves a different frame of reference than
just indicating some neuro-physiological state in the brain. In whatever way we approach
the object of experience, it involves the recognition of meaning. This is what mentalists
believe provides them with an argument for being immaterialists or phenomenologists (in a
reductive sense). Since every statement of fact depends on data of sense-experience, all we
have, in fact, are experience and the interpretation of experience as something imbued with
meaning.
However, what we need to acknowledge in this respect, speaking from a pragmatic
point of view, is that meaning presupposes communication, which is the most important
means by which we effectively orient ourselves in the world, individually and collectively.
Without claiming to access any ultimate connection between verba et res (as far as the
ontological grounding of science goes), we may still be able to define stable criteria for
speaking aboutand coping withsomething as an object of empirical tests.9 The basic
condition of interpretation and communication is not itself an obstacle to the objectivity or
reliability of science, as long as the denotation of hard facts allows the objects to kick
back, as it were.
Therefore, mentalists are just as wrongheaded as materialists are. We need both the
physical and the mental worlds, or, to be more precise, both frames of reference. Symbols
are not neurons firing in the cortex, and firing neurons are not symbols. Yet, it takes
symbols to even begin speaking about firing neurons, and when we use such symbols, we
use our mental capacity. Without symbolic understanding, no shared investigation would
8
According to Popper, Freges criticism of Husserls initial psychologism (in Philosophie der Aritmetik,
1891) may have pushed Husserl towards the anti-psychologism of Logische Untersuchungen (1968 [1901]),
where he actually divides science into the interrelated dimensions of objects under investigation,
cognitive experiences and logical interrelations (Husserl 1968, 224 ff) concurring with the three
world theory of Bolzano, to whom he refers.
9
This doesnt entail meaning being superfluous, but rather that it must be cast as the means of com-
munication involving some kind of socio-cultural ontology, or world 3 in Poppers vocabulary.

123
10 L. Albinus

be possible. Popper would say that the act of understanding involves not only world 2, but
also world 3, since symbols are not just mental representations. Symbols belong to lan-
guage, rather than to the individual mind, and they reflect the set-up of an operational
scientific vocabulary, rather than the mental capacity of observation.
Distancing himself from materialism as well as mentalism, Popper is a professed plu-
ralist. This position entails the materially causal explanations being what we seek when we
refer to objects in world 1, and mentally causal explanations being what we seek when we
refer to world 2. Equally important, when we refer to objects of world 3, we are speaking
of the autonomous level of ideas, theories, works of art, and religious beliefs; in short, the
products of the human mind.
Back in 1972, Popper opposed the view that there should be a method of understanding
to distinguish the humanities from the natural sciences (1972, 185).10 Poppers critique is
clearly directed at the verstehende Methode of classical hermeneutics and historicism in
general. It may include Droysens concept of Verstehen as der Methode der Ges-
chichtswissenschaften, as well as Diltheys famous notions of Einfuhlung and Nachle-
ben, but it is explicitly directed at the views of R.G. Collingwood, who opted for a method
of subjective re-enactment (1972, 187). What Popper regards as essential to the interpre-
tation of a historical phenomenon, for example, is not any psychological taking-the-per-
spective-of-the-other, but a situational analysis (op. cit. 188). In an earlier book, where he
elaborates more thoroughly on the study of history, he allows for selective points of view,
which cannot be tested (1966, 151), and in this sense, historical approaches, which his-
toricism falsely identifies as theories, are just interpretations (ibid). However, once we
launch a hypothesis with an explanatory pretention, it must meet independent criteria of
testability (ibid. 154 f.). Suggesting a historical, or hermeneutic, interpretation is no
exception to the rule. Thus, there is nothing wrong with interpreting history in the light of
class struggle, for instance. What is wrong is to claim history to be the result of class
struggle from the mere fertility of the theory, without being willing to accept objective
criteria of possible refutation.11 Moreover, interpretation in the sense of coming to grips
with the uniqueness of the subject matter is not reserved for the humanities, which Popper
notes in 1972 (p. 183); it is an inevitable part of the natural sciences as well. This last point is
crucial to Poppers reluctance to grant the humanities a specific method of understanding. In
Poppers eyes, scientific statements (about the nature of things, or causal relations between
them) demand theoretical conjecture, regardless of the kind of topic one addresses. The
point is that every conjecture is interpretative, and that every conjecture (not to be confused
with a selected point of view) is refutable as a matter of principle. On the other hand, by
subscribing to an exclusive method of interpretation, one risks locating the act of conceiving
something as something in a sort of mental enterprise that is immune to objection.
With regard to historicism and a hermeneutics of psychological re-enactment, Popper
seems justified in his criticism.12 Yet, his critical comment on the method of

10
Popper defended the same view in his criticism of historicism, in 1957, when he explicitly condoned the
positivist view that the methods of sciences of nature and of society are fundamentally the same (1966,
130 f).
11
In this respect, Popper has famously condemned the prophetic argument of Marxism (2003, 182 ff.),
and not least the communist movement, which he criticized specifically for having neglected obvious
instances of historical falsification, ibid. 206 ff.
12
I would be reluctant, however, to include in this critique the principles of existential re-enactment in
Heideggers early works. Although this stance has generally been associated with classical British or neo-
Kantian hermeneutics, it may rather be seen as Heideggers first steps towards his fundamental ontology,
which, after all, is something rather different, cf. Kisiel (1995, 59 ff.; 315 ff).

123
Can Science Cope with More Than One World? 11

understanding does not do justice to hermeneutics in general, and when it comes to

philosophical hermeneutics as presented by Hans-Georg Gadamer (12 years prior to
Poppers own book), he is quite off the mark. In Wahrheit und Methode, Gadamer took
pains to disengage the condition of understanding from a scientific method (1960).
Hence, according to Gadamer, methods for dealing with matters of fact have no bearing on
the process of understanding. As he points out, the question of understanding emerges in
the encounter with a text, which provides the reader with the option of assuming the role of
an addressee. If this option is rejected, the condition of understanding is never established
in the first place. If, on the other hand, the reader actually accepts her role as recipient, that
is, takes the text seriously with regard to its possible truth, she is already engaging in a
hermeneutic circle, and is thus part of a dialectic enterprise for which there is no method of
securing the right interpretation. What is required is the willingness to engage in the
process of revising ones own prejudices and, eventually, recognizing what is at stake in
the textual message.
In Poppers eyes, all kinds of interpretation, theoretical or otherwise, are involved in
problem solving, which, in the last instance, would have to take the form of refutable
conjectures. On this particular point, namely by subscribing to of a unity of method in
science, Poppers views still seem to be consistent with a fundamental principle of posi-
tivism. This builds a point of criticism to which I will return in due course. However,
Popper resolutely rejects the assumption of non-interpretative exercises implied by the
purity of logical empiricism. What matters here, at any rate, is that Popper finds it nec-
essary to differentiate among the dimensions of reality, that is, the three objective worlds,
not among our scientific approaches.
The crucial point is that the ideas of world 3 must be activated in world 2 through
mental intervention, in order to relate to the physical world 1. However, this begs the
questions of how the ideas of world 3 actually do so, and what it implies. Popper takes
world 2 to include all psychological phenomena, that is, all kinds of subjective experi-
ences, including subconscious and unconscious experiences (1978, p. 114). It is not
immediately clear, however, what an unconscious experience is. An experience may be
thought of as being influenced by something that is not transparent to its possessor (and in
that sense, it may be called unconscious), but this is not the same as to speak of an
experience as unconscious in itself. Even if this is understood as simply being a matter of
terminology, it may not resolve the substantial problem of how to make a clear-cut dis-
tinction between unconscious experiences (whatever they are taken to imply) as phe-
nomena of world 2, and unconsciousness forces (e.g. micro-processes in the brain) as
phenomena of world 1. If we do not reserve world 2 for the conscious realization of either
pre-cognitive or cognitive elements, we let empirical reductionism in through the back
door, as it were. Whereas many scholars of cognitive science would probably welcome
this, I am quite certain that Popper would not.
What Popper regards as an autonomous world of ideas (and products of the human mind
in general) may be analysed as anything but autonomous from a psychological point of
view where unconscious causality must also be considered. Without a clear-cut distinction
between unconscious events, on the one hand, and self-reflective thoughts and acts, on the
other, cognitive science will have good reasons to dismiss the concept of an autonomous
world 3.
Poppers hypothetical criteria are thus unsatisfactory, insofar as they include as
products of the human mind that which may also be explained, at least in principle, as
empirical phenomena of world 1. On the other hand, the validity of turning every product

123
12 L. Albinus

of the human mind into empirically available data, as practised by various approaches in
cognitive sciencefor instance, the theory of memes13is equally debatable.
Though preferable to the positivistic agenda of explaining thought processes on
empirical grounds, Poppers model suffers from an unclear epistemic status. For
instance, it comes dangerously close to being a vicious circle by being a (postulated)
world 3 object about other (postulated) world 3 objects. Inasmuch as the model amounts
to a definition, that is, a selected point of view, rather than a testable theory, it does not
quite have the theoretical status it claims for itself. However, having said that, we
should also note that Poppers model takes pains to avoid self-referential validation, by
appealing to reasoned argumentation, that is, the objectivity of rational criticism (cf.
1972, 190). In this respect, it differs completely from the positivistic agenda, whose
inconsistency stems from the fact that it operates with a non-empirical criterion for
deriving any true statement from empirical observation. In contrast, Popper insists on the
irreducibility of rational reflection, and according to his anti-materialist position, theories
only become meaningful at an inter-subjective level (by activating world 2 of mental
and communicative capacities). Yet, theories are also objective, even though they are
not conceivable at the same ontological level as chemical substances or neural firings in
the cortex14; they are objects in an intelligible and logical world and as such they can
cause people to act.

4 John Searles Counter-Position

The American philosopher John Searle, especially famous for his rule-focused elaboration
of speech acts (1969), seems to share important points of agreement with Poppers view of
social reality. Even so, he explicitly denounces the three-world model, which he associates
primarily with John Eccles, Roger Penrose, Popper, and Habermas (2007, 21). According
to Searle, it is obvious that we belong to only one world, namely the real world, and the
proper way to deal with it both philosophically and scientifically, regardless of the aspect
we are considering, is by getting the basic facts right (op. cit. 18). This means that, at the
basis of every scientific investigation, we must look for natural causes. This does not
imply, however, that Searle is inclined to regard human consciousness as epiphenomenal.
Hence, he disassociates himself from the hardliners in cognitive science and instead sets
out to define consciousness as subjective, qualitative states of sentience or feeling of
awareness. Although he states that conscious states are entirely caused by neuronal
processes in the brain and are realized in the brain (op. cit. 5), he also claims that
consciousness has a first-person, or subjective, ontology, and is thus not reducible to
anything that has a third-person, or objective, ontology (op. cit. 50). It is not entirely clear,
however, what is gained by making this apparent distinction between consciousness and
conscious states (if, indeed, such a distinction is intended at all). While it may be
unreasonable to deny that conscious states are realized in the brain, it is a whole other
matter to suggest that they are entirely caused by neuronal processes. Either conscious
states are not conscious after all, or Searle just uses an alternative term for conscious
13
Cf. Dennett (1995, 366; 2007, 32 f; 297 ff).
14
The tendency of neuroscience to put a micro-process in the brain on the same footing as a conscious
thought is, according to Bennett and Hacker, to commit a mereological fallacy, that is, to conflate the part
with the whole, a fallacy they also ascribe to John Searle s biological naturalism, Bennett and Hacker
(2007, 444), see below.

123
Can Science Cope with More Than One World? 13

awareness. If the latter holds, it is hard to understand what the concept of cause actually
means in Searles statement. Glancing at his notion of a first-person ontology, one would
guess that he is merely thinking of necessary causes, that is, conditions of possibility, for
otherwise, the notion of a first-person reference would be redundant.
That Searles insistence on this first-person ontology is anything but a superfluous
gesture becomes pertinent in his opposition to the eliminative-materialist reduction of
intentionality as a third-person phenomenon (op. cit. 20). Yet, it is not immediately
obvious how his own naturalizing approach to consciousness differs from this view. At
some point, he even claims that [c]onsciousness has no causal powers beyond the powers
of the neuronal (and other neurobiological) structures (op. cit. 50, my italics). Although he
actually wants to let explanations in terms of reasons in through the back door, as it were,
he admits that they are not ordinary causal explanations (op. cit. 55). There is little doubt
that the adjective ordinary implies a sufficient cause in this clause (ibid.), and the
aporia, already addressed, thus becomes inescapable. Searle may seem aware of this
problem, insofar as he actually comes up with something that looks like a solution, but we
will soon see that this does not settle the matter, either.
The way in which Searle repeatedly uses the concept of cause in his major works does
not sit too well with his naturalistic stance of the past 10 years. This becomes especially
clear in The Construction of Social Reality (1995), where he introduces a theory of
background causation. Background causation, as Searle defines it, is what allows persons
to act with some acquired ability in relation to social rules, which do not cause anything by
themselves (op. cit. 137 ff). Yet, the dismissal of strict behavioural causation (and Searle is
certainly not a behaviourist) calls for the explication of another basis of causation, namely
the background causation, which is not salientor empirically presentin social rela-
tions themselves. If I understand him correctly, he still believes that a philosophy of mind
provides the framework for understanding this basis.15 Thus, Searle regards our acts,
whether or not they are instances of a free will, as the results of a causal chain that leads
down to a ground level where intentionality and physical impulses meet in the totality of
the brain. Although philosophy is inclined to speculate about how this might be possible, it
is, in fact, only up to science to offer an empirically reliable answer. Yet, philosophy must
be acknowledged for being committed to the important task of raising innovative ques-
tions, and identifying possible ways of coping with empirical issues at various levels. In
this respect, Searle holds that by subscribing to a distinction between causal relations at a
physical level and causal relations between intending and acting, we merely give into our
habitual intuition. A more promising prospect for philosophy and science would be to step
away from this comfortable (and Cartesian) dualism, and to instead look for a common
ground of explanation.
Searle is quite aware that the spell of dualism still lurks beneath the surface, inasmuch as
the difficulty of realigning physical causation with intentionality, that is, third-person
ontology with first-person-ontology, remains unsolved. The discrepancy he has in mind,
however, addresses neither the validity criteria (as does Habermas) nor the differentiation of
objects (as does Popper), but a split between our self-conscious belief in a free will and the

15
In Freedom and Neurobiology (2007), Searle does not hesitate to refer to his earlier work on the
rediscovery of the mind (1992), which marked what many regarded as a departure from the rule-governed
pragmatics of his theory of speech acts (see, in this respect, the critical remarks with which Habermas (1993)
and Apel (1993), reacted to this development. Thus, Searle writes: [W]e need to see language as derivative
from more basic, biological forms of intentionality, (2007, 29). Although his books from 1995 and 2007
took up different issues, I see no fundamental disagreement with the points he emphasized in his initial
engagement with the philosophy of mind.

123
14 L. Albinus

causal powers at a neurological level (2007, 61).16 The wrong way to dissolve this duality
would be to reduce free will or conscious thought processes in the brain to a neurobiological
system that is deterministic (ibid.). Instead, as a way out, Searle suggests that consciousness is
a natural feature, which manifests a quantum indeterminism, and quantum indeterminism is
indisputably established as a fact of nature (op. cit. 74).17 In other words, indeterminism
leaves some room for explanations based on reasons. I understand this to imply that neither
reasons nor neuronal effects alone make for sufficient causes, which are instead resulting
from some interaction in the overall state of the brain. Yet, how are we to make any exact
sense of this? Searle concludes that the randomness at the micro level does not by itself
imply randomness at the system level (op. cit. 76), which may be taken to mean that although
free will is not something that adds to the micro-level of physical causes, it somehow plays a
role in allowing some action to replace the open-endedness, or indeterminism, of these
causes. Still, how evident is this? What is the exact difference (if indeed there is any) between
ascribing a discrete causal power to consciousness (i.e. free will), on the one hand, and taking
it to merely influence the outcome at the system level (by somehow interacting with the
indeterminate micro-processes), on the other?
Whatever we make of this, it is clear that Searle argues for employing the principle of
quantum indeterminism in approaching the neurological network of the brain. It might turn
out that this suggestion bears some nontrivial resemblance to the stochastic model of
connectionism in cognitive science, but it would transgress the scope of the 3 world
discussion to further address this issue here.
Searles conjecture is indeed interesting as a thought experiment. Yet even as a philo-
sophical suggestion for further scientific investigation (regardless of how it is supposed to
be performed), Searles suggestion has its flaws. For one thing, it begs the question of how
we are to conceive of the relation between indeterminist workings at the neurological level
and the level of symbolic representations. If conscious thought is to be capable of pushing
the indeterminist micro-processes in the direction of actual action and decision, then
intentionality is, in fact, located at a separate level, which means that we quickly end up with
the dualism that Searle himself strives to avoid. If, on the other hand, we believe conscious
decision-making takes place at the same basic level as the network of neuronal firing
(indeterminate as they might be), then some kind of translation is required. This is, by the
way, Jerry Fodors standing objection to the above-mentioned connectionism.
If we were to follow this line of reasoning, however, it would divert us from our present
focus, so I will instead stick to arguing that Searles views are, in fact, much closer to
Poppers than he is inclined to believe. For one thing, he draws a clear distinction between
observer-relative facts, such as institutional facts, and observer-independent facts, such as
the empirical facts of nature (1995, 9 ff),18 and, as we have seen, rejects the possibility of
reducing subjective ontology to objective ontology (2007, 50).19 This is not all, for, as it

16
It should be noted that Habermas is aware of this split as well, but that he draws an entirely different
conclusion from it than Searle, cf. (2005, 155).
17
It would be more in line with Poppers principle of demarcation to speak only of a theoretical conjecture
that has gained some foothold in natural science.
18
Popper doesnt exactly make such a distinction, but, as is discussed below, his demarcation between
physical entities and products of the human mind is not entirely different from Searles distinction between
brute facts (of nature) and institutional facts, (1995, 34 ff).
19
Despite the issues dealt with in 2007, which are at least partly different from those of 1995, Searle
actually refers to this study as a more elaborate presentation of the ideas brought to fruition in the present
discussion of Political Power (2007, 79 ff), and there is no reason to believe that he distances himself from
any of the ideas developed in 1995.

123
Can Science Cope with More Than One World? 15

has already been noted, Searle also speaks of collective intentionality and the con-
struction of social reality as consisting of institutional facts (1995, 23 ff). One example
of such a fact is money. Money is not identical with coins, paper notes, or any other
physical manifestation, but neither is money identical with any ones mental representation
of the value of money. What money is, the monetary system establishes as an institutional
fact, that is, as a social construct, which is as real as it makes people act in certain ways.
Moreover, what is this level of social reality other than part of world 3 of Poppers model?
According to I. C. Jarvie, who has worked out the implications of Poppers three-world
model for the social sciences, the third of the three ontological categories (meaning
worlds) may be correlated with social entities like institutions and groups, and the
relationship between these entities and the mental conceptions of them that we possess
(1972, 151).20 Like Searle, Jarvie also uses the concept of money as one of his examples
(op. cit. 147).
Popper himself mostly speaks of ideas and theories as instances of world 3, but that may
be due to his preferences as a philosopher of science, rather than the result of any intrinsic
demarcation of world 3 objects (which would be untenable anyway).21 Moreover, just as
the three-world model involves a psychological world 2, which mediates between worlds 1
and 3, Searle speaks of the social ability to act according to the social structure of insti-
tutional facts and constitutive rules.22 Searle even finds it crucial to note that we should not
reduce this social ability to some kind of automatic rule, the following of which would
make the intentional states redundant. Rather, the intentional state is the necessary level for
understanding what it is to be a social being, and acting according to a notion of a free will,
that is, to act rather than just respond. This means that Searle actually opts for a model that
looks very similar to that of the three-world model. Bringing Popper and Searle on the
same footing, we might be inclined to say that our intentional states, corresponding to
world 2, enable us to bring theories and social facts, corresponding to world 3, to bear on
the world of physical objects, corresponding to world 1.
This makes it difficult to appreciate the reason why Searle is dissatisfied with the three-
world model. Could it be that Searle suspects a threefold world-division to prevent us from
trying to answer the ultimate questions of deeply-layered causal connections? However,
Searle himself does not abstain from speaking about ontologies of first and third orders,
and he positively discriminates between observer-dependent facts, that is, social reality,

20
Jarvie, whose book was published in the same year as Poppers Objective Knowledge, is referring to two
early articles on the subject, which Popper published in 1967 (Epistemology Without a Knowing Subject)
and 1968 (On the Theory of the Objective Mind), but the 3 world model presented there doesnt differ from
his 1972 presentation of them.
21
In his Tanner Lecture, he actually deals with Beethovens 5th Symphony as an example of a world 3
object, 1978, 145.
22
Interestingly, Searle puts his concept of constitutive rules, a term coined in his Speech Acts (1969), to
use in his explication of an institutional fact. Admittedly, an institutional fact differs in important respects
from the brute facts of nature, but what makes an institutional fact solid is the social stability of having
something (X) count as something else (Y), and this is, basically, what a constitutive rule is (1995, 45).
Instead of simply taking note of this rule as efficient, a point that the analysis of speech acts brings out rather
forcefully, he proceeds along the lines of his philosophy of mind by stating that collective intentionality
assigns a new status to some phenomenon, where that status has an accompanying function that cannot be
performed solely in virtue of the intrinsic physical features of the phenomenon in question. This assignment
creates a new fact, an institutional fact, a new fact created by human agreement. (op. cit. 46) I am not sure
what kind of intentionality this human agreement is thought to bear out, but at least Searle makes it
obvious that institutional facts are, in line with Poppers ideas, products of the human minds that attain
autonomy.

123
16 L. Albinus

and observer-independent facts, that is, physical reality. In recent years, Searle has
explicitly shown an effort to bridge the gap between fundamental facts of neurological
causality and intentional states of the mind, without reducing the latter to a deterministic
mechanism. His tentative solution, as we have seen, is to harvest insights from the inde-
terminism of quantum mechanics.
In this respect, it is of pivotal importance to note that although Popper also subscribes to
a view of indeterminism as an official creed of modern physics (1988, 124126), he
simultaneously refrains from explaining world 3 objects in those terms. When it comes to
the notion of human freedom, we want to understand [] not only how we may act
unpredictably and in a chancelike fashion, but how we can act deliberately and rationally
(ibid.). Thus, Popper finds indeterminism to be a necessary precondition, but not a suffi-
cient cause, when accounting for human creativity. In other words: World 1 is incomplete
(ibid.); what we have to comprehend, theoretically, is the openness of World 1 towards
World 2, and of World 2 towards World 3, and the autonomous and intrinsic openness of
World 3 (op. cit. 130). Thus, Popper commits himself to the view that [m]an is certainly
part of nature, but, in creating World 3, he has transcended himself and nature, as it existed
before him. (ibid.).23 Does Searle radically depart from this view? While speaking of a
social ontology, he claims that [t]he capacity for social cooperation is a biologically
based capacity shared by humans and many other species (2007, 84), and by social
cooperation he literally means collective intentionality, implying that it may be viewed
in analogy with the intentionality of the mental state of individual persons. However,
collective intentionality, stemming from the social body, as it were, only manufactures
institutional facts owing to the presence of constitutive rules, and, as Searle himself
wonders, where do these come from? Claiming that these are instigated by institutional
facts would merely create a circular argument (op. cit. 90; Habermas 2012, 66, n. 15)!
In Searles eyes, one solution would be to regard constitutive rules as procured from
the imposition of a status function, which is barely conscious to begin with. The status
function has the form X counts as Y in some social setting, for instance, when the
members of a tribe simply regard a certain person as their chief or leader (op. cit. 91). So,
the deontic powers that provide human agents with the fundamental key for organized
human society: the capacity to create and act on desire-independent reasons for action
come from our biological nature, after all (ibid.). In some trivial sense this is undeniable,
since if there were no biological nature there would be no biological beings to begin with,
but it still leaves the causal complexity ranging from biology to deontic powers unde-
termined. Part of the problem is that Searle, when no longer able to postpone the question
of how to reconcile quantum mechanics and conscious decision (i.e. free will), simply
exchanges this issue with the choice between the materialist hypothesis (leading to epi-
phenomenalism) and his own hypothesis involving the interaction between indeterminate
micro-processes and conscious decision (op. cit. 76 f.). Although Searle understands
himself to be biological naturalist in this respect, he actually makes explanatory use of
three different kinds of facts in a way that brings him very close to a three-world model.

23
On the surface, this may sound like Dennetts solution to the problem of human autonomy and free
will (1995, 366), when he states that what makes us special is that we, alone among species, can rise
above the imperatives of our genesthanks to the lifting cranes of our memes (op. cit. 365). In fact,
Dennett rather repudiates the problem insofar as the memes, which have played a major role in determining
who or what we are (ibid.), are themselves blind (or pre-conscious) entities of natural selection. How can
there be decision where there is only competitive replication? Memes pull us back into nature, as it were,
making World 3 collapse into World 1. A similar accusation against Popper would not hold up, because of
his insistence on the autonomy of World 3 and its realization in World 2 pertaining to World 1.

123
Can Science Cope with More Than One World? 17

After all, what is the difference between Searles (1) brute facts, (2) mental facts of
intentionality, and (3) social facts of collective intentionality, on the one hand, and Pop-
pers (1) physical objects, (2) mental activity and (3) the products of the human mind, on
the other?
Actually, there is a slight, but crucial difference between Searles and Poppers views.
Whereas Searle speaks of facts, Popper speaks of objects. Although, Searle undoubtedly
thinks of facts as statements about some kinds of objects, and Popper most assuredly thinks
of objects as represented by factual, albeit conjectural, statements, it is worth noting that
Searle too, albeit rather briefly, distinguishes between Epistemic objectivity and Onto-
logical objectivity (as well as between Epistemic subjectivity and Ontological subjectiv-
ity). This is consistent with Searles distinction between observer-dependent features and
observer-independent features of the world (and consistent with Habermass distinction
between Tatsachen and Gegenstanden, cf. above p. 4), but it also raises questions that
transgress the purely objective, or rather objectifying, horizon of Poppers three-world
model.
Whereas ontological states of subjectivity and objectivity are features of reality, epi-
stemic states pertain to claims (Searle 2007, 83). In Poppers model, these claims, being
theoretical conjectures, would belong to world 3. However, the crucial question is, whether
the ontological reduction of claims to objects, even of a separate kind, is not circular. If I
claim that any product of the human mind, including my own claim, belongs to a separate
world, it must already be from the point of view of this world that I argue, petitio principii,
for its existence. On the surface this might seem to endanger the principle of demarcation
between testable theories, on the one hand, and speculative hypotheses, on the other.
However, world 3 entities are not objects which can be approached and tested empirically
but intelligibles whose autonomy no one has been able to convincingly explain away.
Thus, Popper does not hypothetically claim the existence of a separate world of ideas, but
rather infers it from the ontological irreducibility of the products of the human minds.

5 Returning to Habermass Theory of Communication

We have reached the point of taking a stance on the pragmatics of Habermass commu-
nication theory. Part of what we may learn from it is that the world in which we live is not
merely a world of objects, but a lifeworld as well. Among other things, this means that
facts, whether brute or institutional, are not just there as objects available for mental
activation of whatever kind, but that facts are facts in the sense that they are acknowledged
socially, that is, intersubjectively. This level of communicative agreementor consen-
susis not reducible to individual states of mind, and it requires no specific mental ability
other than the socially acquired and competent use of language. This only threatens to
make Habermas a dualist if we cling to a hard naturalist ontology, from the outset. On the
other hand, while recognizing that the social world is every bit as natural as the physical
world, we may, at the same time, appreciate that it is not identical with it. This is the
difference between a hard and a soft naturalism. When we communicate, we communicate
about something, which takes place in the world just as our communication does, but the
exchange of arguments is not an event in the same sense. Dialogue and argumentation are
not merely empirical phenomena, but must also be appreciated as instantiations of social
and logic rules, which allow us to make sense of empirical data to begin with. Being thus a
premise for conceiving of sufficient, natural causes and, accordingly, performing empirical
tests, these rules are not themselves up for testing, and cannot intelligibly be comprehended

123
18 L. Albinus

as a result of natural causes, though, paradoxically, they only exist insofar as natural causes
exist. The argument obviously parallels Kants transcendental point about the law of
causality being the premise, and not the product, of experience and judgment, and although
Habermas finds it crucial to detranscendentalize Kants concept of reason, he seems to
agree with the logical structure of this kind of argument.
In claims about the world, it is not the world that speaks; it is we who speak about the
world. Weas well as our assertionsare ontologically part of that world, but episte-
mologically we have created a reference system that differs from the world, insofar as it
represents it. The dimension of representation is the dimension of the lifeworld.
While the split between the lifeworld and the physical world may be somewhat in line
with Searles distinction between Epistemic and Ontological objectivity, the agreement
breaks off, when, in the same breath, Searle adds the distinction between Epistemic and
Objective subjectivity. By drawing a distinction between the individual experience of facts
and the actual facts, he seems to suggest that the experience is also a fact that may be
objectively explained, in principle at least, namely as a matter of intentionality. However,
if we detach the notion of rules (e.g. Searles ingenious concept of constitutive rules) from
a philosophy of the mind, as Habermas does along Wittgensteinian lines, we cannot reduce
these rules to anything but the social level at which they play out. Furthermore, if we
consider the concept of collective intentionality as having its place at this level, rather
than being just another term for joint intentions (reducible, in principle, to the coordination
of individual states of mind), it would also connote the autonomy of communicative action.
At any rate, it is of utmost importance to understand that this kind of action, as Habermas
theoretically unfolds it, is not merely epistemic. It is epistemic insofar as it relates, by way
of statements, to some state of affairs in the physical world, but it is normative, insofar as it
relates to rules of conduct in the social world, and it is subjective, in a non-epistemic
fashion, insofar as it expresses a personal attitude or some other state of mind according to
the psychic world. We are living in the same world, but we are referring to different aspects
of it, and we do so in different ways.

6 Conclusion

It seems as though I have ended up stating that all we need to do is follow Habermass
pragmatic differentiation, although it is likely to be misunderstood when presented as a
three-world differentiation. Indeed, I believe it is important to stress the pragmatic, rather
than ontological, interpretation of this differentiation, but this is not the only point I am
trying to make. With respect to Habermass communicative view of the world, we might
ask ourselves what criterion of validity pertains to the theory of those criteria of validity by
which we raise questions regarding truth, rightness, and sincerity. Habermass post-
metaphysical reluctance to launch a theoretical system, owing to the principle of fallibi-
lism, deprives him of an absolute criterion of truth (which, in this case, would admittedly
be self-denying), but apart from the specific irrelevance of the criterion of sincerity,
rightness cannot be a legitimate candidate, either. That the theory of communicative
action might serve to secure a normative coordination of acts does not provide us with an
argument for its hypothetical or analytical legitimacy. Truly, Habermas does not claim to
present any hypothesis at all, but rather to work out a rational reconstruction (rationale
Nachkonstruktion), that is, to explicate what it takes to reach a mutual and rational
understanding (e.g. scientific agreement) owing to standards of communication that have
developed in modern times.

123
Can Science Cope with More Than One World? 19

In Poppers eyes, Habermass reconstruction would still be a theoretical conjecture,

and I am not immune to Poppers arguments in this respect. At any rate, related to a
danger of circularity lurking in the wings of the theory of validity claims, we might also
wonder: if we claim that the lifeworld encompasses the totality of our attitudes towards
the world, one another and ourselves, what kind of claim is that? Does it belong to the
lifeworld about which it is a statement? If so, it seems that such a statement could be
anything: a meme, a theoretical conjecture, perhaps even a symbolic result of some micro-
processes in a philosophers brain! It could also be a reflection, that is, a reconstruction
of the social praxis in which we are already engaged.24 The problem is that we cannot be
certain. The claim of knowledge comes to a halt.25 This is where Poppers emphasis on
world 3 actually reveals its ingenious insight, namely that the ideas we foster in our
brains, by reflection or by nature, come to live a life of their own; they contribute to
defining our reality, our cultural and social worlds. Some of these ideas will not survive
the test of falsification, while others, for instance, logical systems, artistic expression, or
self-reflective interpretations transgress the strict limits of empirical testability (which
does not imply that they are immune to criticism). Habermass theory of validity dif-
ferentiation is such a plausible, strictly non-refutable, and self-reflective interpretation (or
reconstruction, to use his own term), which does not merely represent a social reality,
but also influences it.
The problem with Poppers objectifying attitude is his tendency to regard every attitude
as a theoretical conjecture, as though norms and expressions were merely intelligibles, a
limitation that undoubtedly stems from his unwillingness to speak of the communicative
nature of the World 3 entities. With regard to Searle, a drawback to his naturalizing
approach is partly that it seems to misunderstand itself, and partly that it announces the
issue of translation between biological micro-processes and intentional states of mind
without offering an intelligible way to actually solve it (conceptually as well as
empirically).
Eventually, we are left with a world that we cannot pronounce in one sentence, as it
were. By reflecting on and speaking about the world, we create various representations
that extend it indefinitely in our minds and in our social lives. As we act upon these
representations, they become real, and therefore something moreor rather something
otherthan just representations. They become parts of the world in their own right.
Perhaps, in this regard, we should shift the semantics from insisting on the substantive
world, to using the adjective real. It is not that this solves the matter, but it is perhaps
more intelligible to think of thoughts, feelings, norms, and attitudes as real, than to even
begin thinking about different worlds. After all, the task of science is to reveal exactly what
is real. My final point is that science may inadvertently missapprehend this task, however,
if it embarks on a quest for the real without realizing the differentiation it requires to even
begin speaking about it.

24
That this reconstruction may, in many respects, be counterfactual is duly noted by Habermas himself, and
is rightly dismissed as an immaterial argument against it. The problem is that Habermass reflective
enterprise, being a communicative theory about communicative acts, eludes any precise estimation as to its
theoretical status, and it is, after all, announced as a theory of communicative action, claiming merely the
status of plausibility.
25
Subscribing to Peirces notion of fallibilism, Habermas himself acknowledges that we cannot obtain a
final knowledge. More importantly: we need not to know, since it is not, ultimately, a question of epistemic
truth, but the need of a social praxis to sustain itself that matters, and this issue still demands a reflective
sociology.

123
20 L. Albinus

References

Apel, K. O. (1993). Is intentionality more basic than linguistic meaning? In E. Lepore & R. Van Gulick
(Eds.), Searle and his critics (pp. 3155). Oxford & Cambridge, Mass: Basil Blackwell.
Bennett, M. R., & Hacker, P. M. S. (2007). Philosophical foundations of neuroscience. Oxford: Blackwell.
Chalmers, A. F. (1978). What is this thing called science? Milton Keynes: The Open University Press.
Dennett, D. (1995). Darwins dangerous ideas. Evolution and the meanings of life. London: Penguin.
Dennett, D. (2007). Breaking the spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon. London: Penguin Books.
Frege, G. (1892). Uber Sinn ind Bedeutung. Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, 100,
2550.
Frege, G. (1986). Logische Untersuchungen, 3. Aufl.. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht.
Gadamer, H. G. (1960). Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzuge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Tubingen:
Siebeck Mohr.
Habermas, J. (1981). Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, I-II. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.
Habermas, J. (1993). Comments on John Searle: Meaning, communication and representation. In E. Lepore
& R. Van Gulick (Eds.), Searle and his critics (pp. 1729). Oxford & Cambridge, Mass: Basil
Blackwell.
Habermas, J. (1999). Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.
Habermas, J. (2005). Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.
Husserl, E. (1891). Philosophie der Aritmetik. Leipzig: C.E.M. Pfeffer.
Husserl, E. (1968). Logische Untersuchungen. Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Tubingen: Max Niemeyer
Verlag.
Habermas, J. (2012). Nachmetaphysiches Denken II: Aufsatze und Repliken. Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin.
Jarvie, I. C. (1972). Concepts and society. London & Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Kisiel, T. (1995). The genesis of Heideggers being and time. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University
of California Press.
Popper, K. R. (1966). The poverty of the historicism (1957). London: Routledge.
Popper, K. R. (1972). Objective knowledge. An evolutionary approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Popper, K. R. (1978). Three worlds. In The Tanner lecture on human values, Delivered at the University of
Michigan, April 1 1978 (unpublished: available at tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures//popper80.pdf).
Popper, K. R. (1988). Indeterminism is not enough. In W.W. Bartley III (Eds.), The open universe: An
argument for indeterminism from the postscript to the logic of scientific discovery (pp. 113130).
London: Routledge.
Popper, K. R. (2003). The open society and its enemies, vol. 2: Hegel and Marx, London: Routledge and
Kegal Paul.
Putnam, H. (1975). Mind, language and reality, philosophical papers, II. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Quine, W. V. O. (1974). The roots of reference (The Paul Carus Lectures). La Salle, IL: Open Court
Publishing Company.
Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts. An essay in the philosophy of language. London: Cambridge University
Press.
Searle, J. R. (1992). The rediscovery of the mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Searle, J. R. (1995). The construction of social reality. London: Penguin.
Searle, J. R. (2007). Freedom and neurobiology. Reflections on free will, language, and political power.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Weber, M. (1963). Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie, Bd. 1. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck.

123