#27 Luhmann on Values being irreconcilable with truth, reality, science
Morals and values cannot be scientific, i.e. true or false
Niklas Luhmann wrote:
We speak of truth only when the selection of information is attributed to none of the participants. Truth presupposes external selection … Reduction to external selection shows that the medium of truth tolerates no differing opinions. The truth content of a statement can therefore not be derived from the will or interest of one of the participants, for this would mean that it is not binding for others … The immense apparatus of theoretical generalizations and methodological rules is intended to neutralize the influence of action on the result of investigations; for only then can results be presented as truth. In other words, if we allowed surprising, unaccustomed, puzzling knowledge to be introduced by action and made subject to compulsory acceptance, arbitrariness would have free rein. In this case, we would have to do without medium-specific conditioning. Surprising as it may seem at first, reduction to experience therefore considerably limits permitted possibilities and in this manner provides the point of departure for wide-ranging conditioning.
In the case of values, it is doubtful in the first place whether a symbolically generalized communication medium exists, or even if such a medium can be seen to be developing; suitable terminology dates back only two hundred years or so. The problem referred to is clear: the operational closure of psychic systems. In this respect, the experience of double contingency in social encounters makes it extremely unlikely that a common basis can be found and contacts continued. Nor can this be achieved through negotiation, as some now believe, but only through recursive consolidation of corresponding assumptions in the communication process itself. The same problem occurs where the medium separates off a value semantics of its own from assumed common values. There must, one feels, be “inviolate levels”, beyond all contingencies, which shift when contingencies are discovered here, too. This implies that values cannot be conceived of as independent of action, but, vice verse, actions must be conceived of as dependent on values. Among attribution constellations, only reference to experience is therefore to be considered. The pragmatic context of value theory, one might say, leads us astray. Also harmless is the assertion that values have normative meaning; that they are not mere preferences but prescribed preferences. There can be no question of values being in a position to select actions. They are far too abstract and, from the standpoint of action situations, always take the form of a conflict of values. Their function is only to provide orientation that no one calls into question for action in communicative situations. Values are therefore nothing other than a highly mobile set of viewpoints. They do not, as ideas once did, resemble fixed stars, but rather balloons kept on hand to be inflated when called for, especially on festive occasions. We therefore cannot speak of “unconditional preferences.” Although they do not explain the conditions of application, they are subject to deliberation, so that how they can be realized has to be determined from case to case …
Not everything that is needed in the way of congruence to keep communication going can be provided through the medium of truth. But the difference between truths and values was clarified only in the course of the nineteenth century. Only then was a semantics of validity universalized, parallel to that of being, and one of the reasons is likely to have been the differentiation of science. The forms for the respecification of science are to be found in theories and methods. There is no use for them in the field of values. This respecification takes place through ideologies and argumentation; in contrast to theories and methods, ideology commits the big crimes and argumentation engages in the petty stratagems. This imposes differentiation of the media and at the same time excludes taking truth itself as a yardstick in the field of values (ideologies, arguments). For this would have to mean placing the value of all values in their truth …
Unlike truths, values are introduced into the communication process not by assertions, which can then be questioned and tested, but by supposition. Communication avoids “marking” values, because this would convey the possibility of contradiction. No one asserts that health, peace, or justice are values in order to generate the yes/no bifurcation of acceptance or rejection. One does not provoke, one suggests. If health is a value, we may still consider washing regularly to be harmful and discuss the question. In other words, values are actualized by allusion and their indisputability consists in this. If this no longer works, they have to be abandoned. Values therefore convince because objections are lacking in communication, not because we can justify them. They make it possible to waive justification. Where necessary, they rely on “gag rules,” that is, on tacit agreement that certain conflicts of values are not spoken about and the corresponding values are used only in separate contexts. Values are the medium for assuming common ground, which limits what can be said and demanded without determining what should be done …
As always with symbolically generalized communication media, what matters is social not psychic ordering. Values are socially stable because they are psychically unstable. However, they lack important qualities that characterize other media, for example, a central coding (such as true/untrue) and, associated with this, the ability to form media-specific functional systems (such as science). Their directive value is low because no value can determine an act or even, as we might say with Pascal, excuse an act. All this shows that indications of value demonstrate that even an important reference problem in combination with an appropriate attribution constellation does not suffice to generate a fully functioning communication medium. While values bind too weakly, love binds too strongly …
As far as morality is concerned, we now typically find unarticulated (assumed) consensus in value relations. No one says he is against peace, against justice, against honesty, against health, and so on. But this makes no provision at all for conflicts between values. Decisions on value conflicts — and only in the event of conflict are values relevant at all — must depend on the given situation; they are made ad hoc, only in subsystems of society or by individuals. In this regard, moral dissent typically arises about the forms of morality, about the conditions for approval and disapproval. Inequalities (for example, in granting loans) are justified on the grounds that they are required by the functional logic of the economic system and for the optimal exploitation of economic resources to cover demand (wealth); others are opposed to inequalities because they mean that the people who most need loans are not granted them …
There is much to suggest that morality now assumes a sort of alarm function. It emerges where urgent societal problems come to notice that cannot obviously be solved by means of symbolically generalized communication media and in the corresponding functional systems. Society clearly recruits moral communication for serious problems caused by its own structures and above all by its differentiation form. As long as this served to justify center/periphery differentiations or stratification, the impression could be upheld and cultivated that society was morally integrated at its center or its apex. This notion can no longer be maintained in modern society. Moral communication now has free rein and is directed to where disquieting realities are apparent: the social question in the nineteenth century, the stark worldwide differences in prosperity, and the ecological problems of this century, which seemingly cannot be overcome either economically or politically. This leads to an inflation of moral communication, albeit highly selective. Its code is easily actualizable without clear directives; its criteria (rules, programs), however, are no longer amenable to consensus. Morality takes on “prolegomenous”, war-generating traits: it arises from conflicts and encourages conflicts.
Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Volume 1, Translated by Rhodes Barrett, Stanford University Press, 2012, originally published in German under the title Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, Band 1, Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main, 1997 [pp. 203-205, 242, 244]