Editing Universal pragmatics (section)

[[File:Habermas-Comm-evol-book.jpg|right|frame|[[Jürgen Habermas]] (1979): ''Communication and the Evolution of Society'' – the book that universal pragmatics appears in]]

'''Universal pragmatics''' ('''UP'''), also '''formal pragmatics''', is the philosophical study of the necessary conditions for reaching an [[understanding]] through [[communication]]. The [[philosopher]] [[Jürgen Habermas]] coined the term in his essay "What is Universal Pragmatics?"<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Communication and the Evolution of Society|url=https://archive.org/details/communicationevo00habe|url-access=registration|last=Habermas|first=Jürgen|publisher=Beacon Press.|year=1979|location=Toronto}}</ref> where he suggests that human [[competition]], conflict, and strategic action are attempts to achieve understanding that have failed because of [[modal logic|modal]] confusions.  The implication is that coming to terms with how people understand or misunderstand one another could lead to a reduction of social [[Group conflict|conflict]].

By coming to an "understanding," he means at the very least when two or more [[social actor]]s share the same [[Meaning (linguistic)|meanings]] about certain words or phrases; and at the very most when these actors are confident that those meanings fit relevant social [[expectation (epistemic)|expectation]]s (or a "mutually recognized [[normative background]]").<ref name=":0" />

For Habermas, the [[Objective (goal)|goal]] of coming to an understanding is "intersubjective mutuality ... shared knowledge, mutual [[Trust (social sciences)|trust]], and accord with one another".<ref name=":0" />  In other words, the underlying goal of coming to an understanding would help to foster the enlightenment, consensus, and goodwill necessary for establishing socially beneficial norms. Habermas' goal is not primarily for subjective feeling alone but for the development of shared (intersubjective) norms which in turn establish the [[Coordination game|social coordination]] needed for practical action in pursuit of shared and individual objectives (a form of action termed "[[communicative action]]").

As an interdisciplinary subject, universal pragmatics draws upon material from a large number of fields, from [[pragmatics]], [[semantics]], [[semiotics]], [[informal logic]], and the [[philosophy of language]], through [[social philosophy]], [[sociology]], and [[symbolic interactionism]], to [[ethics]], especially [[discourse ethics]], and on to [[epistemology]] and the [[philosophy of mind]].