Pojęcie wartości I celu nauki w świetle teorii aktów mowy Jurgena Habermasa

In the paper it is argued that, in order to explicate the concept of the aim and value of science from the standpoint of Habermas’s theory of speech acts (the theory of communicative action or universal pragmatics), one is required to take up the position of moderate realism. The theory implies that even though science serves many different purposes and might be harnessed to realise diverse values, it must be seen as subordinated to the highest-level principle, which, in certain contexts, should be comprehended as the chief cognitive value. And since, as I demonstrate later on, universal pragmatics formally corresponds to the reticulated model of scientific justification as put forth by Laudan in his Science and Values but, at the same time, is much more deeply rooted philosophically, the result obtained is important on the part of philosophy of science and purports to offer a new paradigm of analysis.