Коммуникативті ақыл-ой: Келісімге жету нормалары мен процедуралары

Philosophical concept concerning reason and agreement, pioneered by Apel and Habermas

Communicative rationality or communicative reason (kommunikative Rationalität) is a theory or set of theories which describes human rationality as a necessary outcome of successful communication. This theory is in particular tied to the philosophy of German philosophers Karl Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas, and their program of universal pragmatics, along with its related theories such as those on discourse ethics and rational reconstruction. This view of reason is concerned with clarifying the norms and procedures by which agreement can be reached, and is therefore a view of reason as a form of public justification. According to the theory of communicative rationality, the potential for certain kinds of reason is inherent in communication itself. Building from this, Habermas has tried to formalize that potential in explicit terms. According to Habermas, the phenomena that need to be accounted for by the theory are the "intuitively mastered rules for reaching an understanding and conducting argumentation", possessed by subjects who are capable of speech and action. The goal is to transform this implicit "know how" into explicit "know that", i. e. knowledge, about how we conduct ourselves in the realm of "moral practical" reasoning. The result of the theory is a conception of reason that Habermas sees as doing justice to the most important trends in twentieth century philosophy, while escaping the relativism which characterizes postmodernism, and also providing necessary standards for critical evaluation.

According to Habermas, the "substantive" (i. e. formally and semantically integrated) rationality that characterized pre modern worldviews has, since modern times, been emptied of its content and divided into three purely "formal" realms: (1) cognitive instrumental reason; (2) moral practical reason; and (3) aesthetic expressive reason. The first type applies to the sciences, where experimentation and theorizing are geared towards a need to predict and control outcomes. The second type is at play in our moral and political deliberations (very broadly, answers to the question "How should I live? "), and the third type is typically found in the practices of art and literature. It is the second type which concerns Habermas. Because of the de centering of religion and other traditions that once played this role, according to Habermas we can no longer give substantive answers to the question "How should I live?" Additionally, there are strict limits which a "post metaphysical" theory must respect – namely the clarification of procedures and norms upon which our public deliberation depends. The modes of justification we use in our moral and political deliberations, and the ways we determine which claims of others are valid, are what matter most, and what determine whether we are being "rational". Hence the role that Habermas sees for communicative reason is formulating appropriate methods by which to conduct our moral and political discourse. This purely formal "division of labour" has been criticized by Nikolas Kompridis, who sees in it too strong a division between practical and aesthetic reasoning, an unjustifiably hard distinction between the "right" and the "good", and an unsupportable priority of validity to meaning.

Habermas' conception of communicative rationality moves along with these contemporary currents of philosophy. Concerning (1) it can be said that:
Blockquote|[Communicative] rationality refers primarily to the use of knowledge in language and action, rather than to a property of knowledge. One might say that it refers primarily to a mode of dealing with validity claims, and that it is in general not a property of these claims themselves. Furthermore this perspective suggests no more than formal specifications of possible forms of life it does not extend to the concrete form of life for being blind to issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality, and for ignoring the role of conflict, contest, and exclusion in the historical constitution of the public sphere. More recently, Nikolas Kompridis has taken issue with Habermas' conception of rationality as incoherent and insufficiently complex, proposing a "possibility disclosing" role for reason that goes beyond the narrow proceduralism of Habermas' theory. Habermas's theories are based on an utopian society while this just is not the case. The authors argue that this type of communication that Habermas offers could not actually be implemented because people do not have access to the resources they would need. This is not only in societies outside the west. European countries have problems with lack of education and the technology necessary to be prepared in order to participate in this community. In Byron Rienstra and Derek Hook article titled, "Weakening Habermas: The Undoing of Communicative Rationality", they discuss that Habermas expected too much of the people he is talking about. Habermas insinuated that the people are participating in communicative rationality have a broad knowledge on the topic at hand. But according to the authors, this is too much to ask of the people. And since these people do not have the knowledge to participate in communicative rationality, they would have no reason to defend their reasoning or position in society. They even go on to say that the preconditions that Habermas has put forward are extremely demanding and taxing on the public. Habermas also ignored the hindrances that people may face that may cause a person not to stay educated on the topics in order to participate in communicative rationality. For example, in "From Communicative Rationality to Communicative Thinking: A Basis for Feminist Theory and Practice" by Jane Braatan, it is discussed that women have a less advantage to be involved in communicative rationality due to the history of discrimination in schools. Women have not always had complete access to schooling, and according to Habermas they should not be able to defend their opinions. Another issues that is raised on this topic is the idea that if this theory is developed in today's age, it will segregate people even more. Due to the discrimination that people in lower social classes face, people would not be able keep up with new developments and therefore not be able to continue to contribute. Habermas wants communicative rationality to be considered an everyday language according to "Communicative versus Strategic Rationality: Habermas Theory of Communicative Action and the Social Brain". He believes everyone should strive for the ability to be educated and able to defend their position on every topic.