Abstract
In the philosophical theory of communicative action, rationality refers to interpersonal communication rather than to a knowing subject. Thus, a social view of rationality is suggested. The theory differentiates between two kinds of rationality, the emancipative communicative and the strategic or instrumental reasoning. Using experimental designs in an fMRI setting, recent studies explored similar questions of reasoning in the social world and linked them with a neural network including prefrontal and parietal brain regions. Here, we employed an fMRI approach to highlight brain areas associated with strategic and communicative reasoning according to the theory of communicative action. Participants were asked to assess different social scenarios with respect to communicative or strategic rationality. We found a network of brain areas including temporal pole, precuneus, and STS more activated when participants performed communicative reasoning compared with strategic thinking and a control condition. These brain regions have been previously linked to moral sensitivity. In contrast, strategic rationality compared with communicative reasoning and control was associated with less activation in areas known to be related to moral sensitivity, emotional processing, and language control. The results suggest that strategic reasoning is associated with reduced social and emotional cognitions and may use different language related networks. Thus, the results demonstrate experimental support for the assumptions of the theory of communicative action.
Highlights
The theory of communicative rationality by Jurgen Habermas [1] is a contemporary philosophical approach to practical reasoning
Signal changes demonstrate less activation for strategic reasoning in these regions compared with both control and communicative reasoning. In his theory of communicative action Jurgen Habermas tried to analyze in which way humans communicate to establish social relationships [1]
The current study aimed to test these hypotheses by employing an experimental fMRI design
Summary
The theory of communicative rationality by Jurgen Habermas [1] is a contemporary philosophical approach to practical reasoning. Actors here do not primarily aim at accomplishing their own success, but want to harmonize their plans of actions with the other participants [1,2]. This attempt to sustain consensus is based on the intersubjective recognition of criticisable validity claims [1]. Habermas argues that the use of language with an orientation of understanding is the ‘original’ mode of language. Communicative reasoning is inherent in language and semantics, whereas the strategic use of language is ‘parasitic’. ‘ordinary’ language is implicitly social and consensus oriented [1]
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