Abstract

Recent debates on collective action and social cognition are changing the philosophy of social science from both the epistemological and the normative point of view. Evidence in particular turns out to support traditionally controversial claims about the nature of social action, the normative infrastructure of cooperation, and democratic theory. In this paper I will argue that considering the role of social cognition in underpinning cooperation and communication is likely to affect the theory of communicative action. As for epistemology, it supports an account of cooperation and communication that removes language from a foundational position and displaces it into a more specific constructive position, thus dispensing with transcendental arguments. As for normativity, it suggests an account of moral development that runs against Kohlberg's view and suggests a different route to moral universalism.