Communication both in principles and in rules

Now we tend to march in a larger leap by referring to thoughts (opinions) and

languages (communication) as rules and principles.

In a more practical sense, language serves to one of the ultimate goals as

communication. That is, the use of language plays the roles of not only expressing

one’s thoughts in his minds but as well exchanging ideas with other persons. The former involves only the processing of brains from one’s thoughts into one’s own languages, while the latter, inevitably, has something to do with exchange of thoughts with one another by means of other people’s languages. Such thought-sharing and language-sharing engagements are the core of communication.

1. communicability as common interests

As indicated in the above, languages must deal with communication of different people’s thoughts, sometimes different languages. Thus, such differences in thoughts and languages, stresses the importance of the pluralistic character in a society, reaffirming the fact that different values exists in the same society and needs to be negotiated, communication becoming an unavoidable process.

In a more optimistic sense, even though pluralism may deny the commensurability¹ of thoughts, it doesn’t necessary follow the denial of possibility of communicability. In reality, the recognition of such existing possibility is an appropriate explanation for a functioning yet plausible society of pluralistic values.

Furthermore, pluralism cannot refuse the construction of the universality for communication. Such universality, however, requires a mechanism for mutual understanding, namely a communicable language.

2. Logic and the rule-principle relation

i. Difficulty of application to the communication process

1 Here refers to T. Kuhn’s definition in Kuhn (19702).

From the above, we have proposed that there is a similarity of logic between the relations of rules and principles both in the field of linguistics and jurisprudence. Even though however different the two disciplines appear in its nature and functions, such disparity does not affect the similarity of the relations proposed.

In terms of the application of such relation, however, the outcome appears not as satisfying. Due to the fact that communication involves not only the process of both principle and rule of thoughts but as well the element of knowledge, if the process of the exchange of thoughts does not cover the exchange of knowledge, such communication would become mere logical yet non-developing conversation. Simply speaking, it is the difference between exchange of knowledge and exchange of thoughts that makes the application unconvincing.

As a result, a possible explanation would be that the logic of knowledge different from the logic of either language or thoughts. Such proposition includes two deductions.

First, knowledge which is transmitted through language is not merely language itself.

Conversely, language serves as the transmittance for communication as well as an interpretation of thoughts. Second, knowledge and thoughts have different significance.

It is not incorrect to say that knowledge could be a more concrete form of thoughts, but to say the logic of knowledge has somewhat reorganized the logic of thoughts would be even more precise.

Based on this assertion, the paper tends to focus on the differentiation of logic between

knowledge and thought.

ii. Introduction and further implication of Perelman’s “dialectic logic”

According to Perelman, logic is not only formal logic like mathematical formula, but as well dialectic logic like value judgments. Value judgment is a judgment about

“purposes of human action”. In this sense, value judgment is the standards for evaluating right or wrong, good or bad, useful or not, etc.¹

Different opinions could all be reasonable at the same time. The concept of reasonable is internally pluralistic. A reasonable man is governed by “common sense”, who tries to do things that are acceptable by his surroundings and all the other people. So people consider on-changing things, evolution and feelings of human beings, and the

1 See Tipke(1983), Wang(1997), Shen(2007)

development of morals, etc.¹

iii. A Principle of Language

Thanks to Perelman’s classification of logic, rules and principles could thus find themselves in a logical relationship.

Since people live in a pluralistic public environment and different opinion could all be acceptable, people should try to make believe others among different opinions so as to find the most support. Therefore, it would not be difficult to understand why dialogues, persuasions, debates are stressed by Perelman.²

Further, when communicating knowledge from different backgrounds, the only way to understand these differences is by language. Applied to Perelman’s logic, that is, the application of different principles, which bears different values or moral grounds, can only be understand each other or reach a certain degree of exchanging ideas by means of languages as rules which links between the concerned principles. Therefore, the

principle of language, in terms of dialectic logic, can no longer be a thought of

1 See Shen (2007).

grammatical language only but as well a kind of knowledge, the logic of which is either innately different or transformed afterwards.

Illustration 11 Application of logic to rule-principle relation

Formal logic Dialectic logic

Language Rules Language Principles

Perelman’s concept of logic

The relation between language and thought

C

I

V

J

T

L

—the righteous-beneficial differentiation

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social

existence that determines their consciousness.

K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859^∗

In the long history of human beings, people in the pre-modern age were born within a society and at the same time, in a state; thus shadowed by such “community” hovering above.¹ In turn, generally speaking, it is difficult for us to get rid of the influence from such factors as society and state. Therefore, when it comes to making decisions, (or, to put it differently, when we are considering how to act), such factors², not only become the variables we take into account, but as well turn into one of the major criterion of our

value judgments (Wertentscheidung) which we depend on.

I. Fiscal Constitution—positioning the relation of taxpayers and tax systems

∗ Original text: „Es ist nicht das Bewußstsein der Menschen das ihr Sein, sondern umgekehr, ihr gesellschaftliches Sein das ihr Bewußstsein bestimmt“ English translation from: K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, with some notes by R. Rojas.

1 Ray Huang, The historical thinking of the new era (新時代的歷史觀)[stressed part added in this paper]

2 In the paper, only two factors are to be touched upon, values of the society and the institution of the