“With this model of action we are supposing that participants in interaction can now mobilize the rationality potential-which according to our previous analysis resides in the actor’s three relations to the world-expressly for the cooperatively pursued goal of reaching understanding. If we leave to one side the well-formedness of the symbolic expressions employed, an actor who is oriented to understanding in this sense must raise at least three validity claims with his utterance, namely:

1. That the statement made is true (or that the existential presuppositions of the propositional content mentioned are in fact satisfied);
2. That the speech act is right with respect to the existing normative context (or that the normative context that it is supposed to satisfy is itself legitimate); and
3. That the manifest intention of the speaker is meant as it is expressed.

Thus the speaker claims truth for statements or existential presuppositions, rightness for legitimately regulated actions and their normative context, and truthfulness or sincerity for the manifestation of subjective experiences. We can easily recognize therein the three relations of actor to world presupposed by the social scientist in the previously analyzed concepts of action; but in the concept of communicative action they are ascribed to the perspective of the speakers and hearers themselves. It is the actors themselves who seek consensus and measure it against truth, rightness, and sincerity, that is, against the ‘fit’ or ‘misfit’ between the speech act, on the one hand, and the three worlds to which the actor takes up relations with his utterance, on the other. Such relations hold between an utterance and;

1. The objective world (as the totality of all entities about which true statements are possible);
2. The social world (as the totality of all legitimately regulated interpersonal relations);
3. The subjective world (as the totality of the experiences of the speaker to which he has privileged access).

Every process of reaching understanding takes place against the background of a culturally ingrained preunderstanding. This background knowledge remains unproblematic as a whole; only that part of the stock of knowledge that participants make use of and thematize at a given time is put to the test. To the extent that definitions of situations are negotiated by participants themselves, this thematic segment of the lifeworld is at their disposal with the negotiation of each new definition of the situation” (Habermas 1984:99-100).

Habermas, Jürgen
1984[1981] The Theory of Communicative Action Volume One: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Thomas McCarthy, trans. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

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