Re-Reading Lyotard's POstmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge

A. Preliminary Remarks This chapter analyzes and interprets Lyotard’s observation on the condition of knowledge in computerized societies. His assumptions with regard the overwhelming development of computer technology and his views on the function of narrative within scientific discourse and knowledge will be put to scrutiny. The first section will be devoted on the Postindustrial society and its implications to knowledge. The following section will be about narrative and scientific knowledge and discussion on the role of these types of knowledge to politics. In section C, the politics of legitimation was explored and how the concept of legitimation of Lyotard is different from that of Habermas.

Lyotard believes that technological transformations e.g. advent of cybernetics, informatics, computer languages, the emergence of information storage such as data banks, and other developments that occurred in the field of communications have enormous impact on knowledge. The two principal functions of knowledge i.e. 1) research 2) transmission of acquired learning have been greatly affected by these technological developments and will be more affected in the future. On research, he described how the theoretical paradigms of cybernetics were employed to genetics in order for it to be more accessible to laymen. With respect to the second function, the emergence of Open Universities that utilize information-processing machines and exploit the advent of internet communications has radically changed the circulation of knowledge; in the same manner contemporary media and transportation systems affected the circulation of sound and visual images and human circulation respectively. Lyotard says: “ The nature of knowledge cannot manage to remain unchanged within the context of general transformation”. This assumption of Lyotard classifies him as one of those ‘technological determinists’ Dorothy Nelkin is referring to in her analysis on the issues of the evolution of science studies. One of these issues is technological determinism. Lyotard opined that by and because of the changes that occurred in the postindustrial societies, scientific communities have prescribed a set of policies that would accept some types of knowledge and drop other types. The reason behind is to cope up with the demands of the new kind of world economy. The following are just some of these: 1) knowledge must be operational and 2) knowledge must be translated into quantities of information or can be translated into computer languages. This only means that any body of knowledge, which does not conform to the mentioned laws of legitimation, is altogether abandoned. Those, which conform, are maintained. Producers and users of knowledge may have to equip themselves with proper means of translating knowledge into computer languages before they invent or learn. By extension, Lyotard has brought into view the merchantilization of knowledge or commercialization of knowledge. Knowledge has been for decades the principal force of production. Developing countries need this knowledge, which is translatable into computer languages, to ever survive and adapt to the changes brought about by postindustrial and postmodern age, as highly developed countries need this kind of knowledge to sustain and maintain their status. Lyotard clarifies: “The relationship of the suppliers and users of knowledge and use is now tending, and will increasingly tend, to assume the form already taken by the relationship of commodity producers and consumers to the commodities they produce and consume—the form of value. Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production: in both case, the goal is exchange”.

Knowledge becomes a commodity to be sold and consumed. Hence, knowledge is commodified. This situation may, according to Lyotard, widen the gap between developing countries and developed ones. Science will continue to strengthen the productive capacities of developed nations, while less developed ones slowly loss their productive capacities and thus, become economically unfit. This brand of economic condtion or system has been termed by Arthur Kroker as ‘ virtual capitalism’. In the opinion of Krorer, the technological virtual class is manning virtual capitalism. Kroker elaborates: “ The virtual class has driven to global power along the digital super highway. Representing perfectly the expansionary interests of the recombinant commodity form, the virtual class has seized the imagination of contemporary culture by conceiving a technotupian, high speed, cybernetic grid for traveling across the electronic frontier.”

Contemporary society must be equipped with all technological artilleries for it to get even with other societies. If a particular society cannot, in anyway, cope up, then it simply ceases to exist as a functioning member of technotupia, borrowing Kroker’s term. Thus, this commercialization of knowledge will generate a world wide competition for power. Those who control information dominate the world and become powerful. Lyotard, in describing this scenario, states: “ It is conceivable that the nation states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control of access to exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor.”

The question of authority rests on who handles and manipulates the information technology and the knowledge it produces. The more developed the technology of specific state, the more it becomes powerful. Hence, it has been made clear that the transformation of the nature of knowledge have social and political implications. Narrative and Scientific Knowledge It must be emphasized that Lyotard advanced a clear distinction between narrative and scientific Knowledge. A clear presentation about this distinction will be made in the following paragraphs. For Lyotard, knowledge is not the same as science. Science is just a subset of learning. Like learning, science is composed of denotative statements, which may either be true or false. “ Science imposes two supplementary conditions on their acceptability: the objects to which they refer must be available for repeated access and it must be possible to decide whether or not a given statement pertains to the language judge relevant by the experts,” says Lyotard. The object of science is limited only to those concrete and observable things, which our senses have easy access on. On the other channel, knowledge is not only a set of denotative statements. It includes notions of know how e.g. knowing how to live, how to listen, etc. Knowledge does not only determine ‘truth’ but instead goes beyond this. It is extended to the determination of efficiency, justice and of beauty. Hence, knowledge is what makes someone capable of forming good denotative utterances, but also good prescriptive and good evaluative utterances, etc. As a parenthetical discussion, utterances and phrases (denotative, evaluative, deontic et.) do not only convey meanings but they also situate, within the context of conversation and interviews, an addressor, addressee, and referent in a pragmatic situation. Avers Lyotard: “ The specific utterance places the addressor in the position of knower (the one who knows about the referent); the addressee is put in the position of having to give or refuse his assent; and the referent itself is handled in a way unique to denotatives, as something that demands to be correctly identified and expressed by the statements that refers to it”.

These utterances may be distinguished into different categories or families depending on what specific criteria and question they do raise. The utterance ‘The university is closed’ is classified as a descriptive phrase because it is governed by the criterion of truth or falsity, the question is whether or not the university is closed. “Close the University’ is altogether different. It is a ‘prescriptive phrase’. The question it seeks to raise depends on the justice of the order given to the addressee and on the execution of the act prescribed. The same is true with other phrases; they respectively raise questions to satisfy a particular criterion (truth, efficiency, competence, beauty, etc. ). Lyotard accepts the fact that the mentionsd observation on language is not at all his original. Lyotard claims that Wittgenstein, a 20th century philosopher of language, had already made an exhaustive explanation on this character of language. Wittgenstein called these enuciations ‘games’. How did Wittgenstein define language game? Language game, according to him, is when a phrase/statement is viewed as a move in a game. A specific phrase in a game being categorized depending on the rules specifying its properties and the uses to which they can be put. Lyotard further observes that there are three major points on Wittgenstein’s language game. First, in language game rules do not carry within themselves their own legitimation. They simply become objects of a contract agreed upon by players. Second, the game ceases when there are no rules. Third, every utterance is a “move’. Lyotard states positively that observable social bond is composed of language moves. But he never claims language game as the sole nature of social bond. According to Lyotard, the human child becomes a referent, even before he is born, in the stories told by those that surround him. From these, the child will chart his own course. Lyotard explains further that the question of social bond, being a question, is already a game (game of inquiry). States Lyotard: “ It immediately positions the person who asks, as well as the addressee and the referent asked about: It is already the social bond.” Lyotard’s language games opened a new kind of politics: politics of multiplicity. This is a result of heterogenous language games that gained popularity all throughout his book. It has been made clear in the preceding sections that a single language game does not seek out to legitmate other language games. By analogy, this principle has been applied to politics. Hence, a particular civil society, which represents minority, can have an equal worth with other existing civil societies and groups of the same nature. Any of these civil societies does not have the authority over other civil societies. Modern Democracy, which recognizes minority positions is an embodiment of this brand of politics. Scientific Knowledge and Narrative Knowledge In section 7 of Postmodern Condition, Lyotard clarifies the distinction between scientific knowledge and narrative knowledge. Scientific Knowledge, explains Lyotard, requires only one language game that is denotation. It excludes other language games. It focuses only to the truth-value of statements. Lyotard further points out that a person who produces scientific statements must have to be certain that such statements may either be verifiable or falsifiable. Moreover, these statements should be accessible to experts so that they may be able to determine whether or not these statements speak truth about their respective referents. Thus, one is a scientist if he can produce such statements. An illustration for this would be the treatises advanced, in Philosophy of Science, by Alfred Jules Ayer and Karl Popper. Ayer and Popper belong to the logical positivist school. Generally, they try to argue that language (phrases) should have a material correspondence. Those phrases which cannot be verified, on the basis of Ayer’s verifiability theory, and falsified, on Popper’s falsifiability theory, are deemed meaningless or just simply tautologies. Narrative knowledge is entirely different. States Lyotard: “ Narrative form lends itself to a great variety of language games”. Narrative knowledge, hence, is not only concern with any single language game but instead it incorporates myriad of language games. In Greek Mythology, there are denotative statements e.g. ‘ Zeus is the highest of all the gods and goddesses in Olympia’ satisfies the criterion of truth, whether or not Zeus is the highest god; interrogative statements also come in especially in episodes involving challenges like the one which started the Trojan war, the question “Who’s the fairest among Athena, Hera and Aprhodite?’; evaluative statements also enter in, etc. All these statements or enunciations are consolidated in a narrative. Moreover, questions pertaining to the right or authority of the narrator to recount what he recounts to the narrate are also raised. States Lyotard once more: “ Narratives determine criteria of competence.” But, as has been just explained, narratives determine as well criteria of truth. In scientific knowledge the sender or addressor plays a major role especially in research. Competence is required of him. The researcher must prove that he is competent enough in terms of intellectual qualification i.e. ha can easily form strong arguments in defending and criticizing other existing scientific theories. Copernicus, for instance, is supposed to be capable of providing proofs about his assertion that the path of the planets is circular. And he is also supposed to be capable of refuting other contradictory or opposing statements concerning the same referent. Hence, there is no competence required of the referent and addressee. In contrast, narratives require competence of addressor, addressee and referent. In the transmission of narratives, the one who recounts the story (sender) claims competence for telling the story because he was once an addressee or narrate who heard the story recounted by a narrator or addressor. Hence, the hero was himself once a narrate and a narrator, of the same story (referent). Lyotard says: “ The narrative posts (sender, addressee, hero) are so organized that the right to occupy the post of sender receives the following double grounding: It is based upon the fact of having occupied the post of addressee, and of having been recounted oneself, by virtue of the name one bears, by a previous narrative—in other words, having been positioned as the diegetic reference of other narrative events.”

This only means that in a narrative, the narratee will soon become the narrator because of the fact that he once heard the story. He too becomes the ‘hero’ (referent) of the same story he recounts because of the name he bears. Therefore, the referent, the narrator and the narratee should have the same level of competence. Despite of the mentioned differences of these two: Narrative and Scientific knowledge, they do converge in a certain point. Lyotard says that the recourse to narrative is inevitable. Even the non-narrative form of scientific knowledge could not avoid resorting to stories or narrative. An example of this is the following. Scientists, after making a discovery, recount stories of knowledge in televisions and newspapers. Epic of scientific knowledge possesses every element of an ordinary narrative story. There is a beginning. It begins with the conditions or circumstances before the actual discovery. These conditions merit the necessity of discovering a specific knowledge. It has sequences of actions. The narration of hardships and struggles of the scientist from making scientific guesses to testing these hypotheses through experiments embodies actions. The difficulty of formulating critical theories that would run in contradiction with the existing or previous theories on the same referent is another action that comprises the middle portion of the story. The end of the story is the discovery itself. Hence , scientists make use of narrative to be able to communicate, manifest and make known the truthfulness of their denotative statements.

Lyotard avers: “ Scientific knowledge cannot know and make known that it is the true knowledge without resorting to the other, narrative, kind of knowledge, which from its point of view is no knowledge at all”.

Lyotard is aware about the irony embedded in scientific knowledge. The irony is: Scientific Knowledge, with all its efforts to destroy and dismantle the authority of narratives, which it claims to be non-knowledge, falls down by using narrative as its source of authority. Finally, the key assertions of Lyotard about knowledge are the following: 1. The nature of knowledge changes over time i.e. knowledge was commodified; 2. There are two types of knowledge: Narrative and Scientific, which are in themselves different in one way and the same in another way. 3. Language game have a direct relation with knowledge and ; 4. Conditions of knowledge have social and political implications.

The Politics of Legitimation Explored In the previous pages, there are a number of times wherein the term ‘legitimation’ was used and mentioned. But little has been said about it. This section will be devoted in exploring the concept ‘legitimation’. The definition attached by Jurgen habermas and how he applied it in his political analysis, will be the concern of the first part. Lyotard’s concept of legitimation and how it is different from Habermas’, will be the content of the following part. The third sub-section will summarize the whole section. Legitimation Defined. Generally, legitimation means ‘ make legitimate’. How an institution or an individual ‘legitimate’ its/his beliefs, statements and actions? In the first portion of this chapter, we have mentioned how knowledge in the postindustrial society is being looked at and legitimated. There are types which are dropped and there are other types which are maintained. Those dropped do not conform to the policies of legitimation formed by computer societies. Hence, this type do not have any place in computer societies. A narrator of a narrative or a story should also justify his being one. He has to prove that he himself had heard the story he narrates. He was once a listener of the same story he recounts. Jurgen habermas, a known sociologist, links legitimation to his political and economic analyses. In his ‘Legitimation Crisis’, Habermas shows the problem of legitimation in contemporary society. Political systems, Habermas opines, have enhanced their role in managing the growth and development of capitalism. In Habermas sense, the capitalism he is referring to remains to be the capitalism contemporary Marxists talk about. He neither shares Kroker’s concept of capitalism nor agrees with the idea of knowledge commodification. However, his understanding on the term legitimation and the way he applied it to politics and economics is obliquely similar to that of Lyotard. The two writers would only differ as to their resolution. We will discuss this later relative to Lyotard’s legitimation by paralogy. A Political system, in the contemporary context, should be careful with its every action. Its actions should always be legitimated. Here comes the capitalism’s legitimation problems. How? Why? A specific political system becomes a subject to ‘contradictory imperatives’ in its efforts to expand its sphere of action in order to avoid economic crises. What are these? On the one hand, its actions must accord with the class interests of capital in continued accumulation and, on the other, with the demand of the population that the political system expresses universalistic and democratic values. Thus, for Habermas, the state is in difficulty because it has to implement class-based, economic imperative and yet secure at the same time general normative acceptance in terms of universalistic criteria. The state really finds it hard to legitimate its actions but it really must. If it fails to, its authority will be challenged by the emerging critical consciousness. However, there are lifeworld pathologies which could hinder the emergence of this critical consciousness. Hence, could relieve the state of the pressure for legitimating its actions. For Habermas, then, alienation, disintegration of collective identity and cultural impoverishment or loss of meaning are all life world pathologies which hold back the emergence of critical consciousness. This only means that Habermas does not provide any idea or argument that could eliminate the crises of legitimation encountered by states in legitimating their actions. It is not clear whether he views legitimation crisis as insurmountable or not. One thing is clear, the state can avoid legitimating its actions by preventing the emergence of critical consciousness. Habermas termed this instance as ‘withdrawal of legitimation.’ In the advanced capitalist societies, as Habermas points out, problem of legitimation is synonymous with ‘contradictory imperative’. If an action conforms with the first imperative, it necessarily refuses to obey the other imperative. In addition, contradiction of imperatives or rules is only tenable because Habermas puts forward types of laws: 1) regulative, that which regulates some pre-existing, on-going activity, e.g., rules for safe driving, and ; 2) Constitutive, that which constitutes some form of activity, e.g. the rules of chess. In this distinction, “ Habermas argues that law increasingly takes on a constitutive systems in constituting new spheres of action or re-constituting pre-existing ones,” White writes in interpreting Habermas. In the constitutive character of law, contradiction of imperatives become possible. The imperative of economic system (capital accumulation) contradicts the imperative of administrative system ( universalistic criterion). Thus, a law, which possesses constitutive character, allows the problem of legitimation (contradiction of imperatives) to surface. Habermas puts a little emphasis on the regulative character of law. White says: “ regulative laws attach themselves to pre-existing institutions of the life world in the sense that new laws stand in a continuum with ethical norms and merely modify spheres of action which are already informally constituted.” Nothing is noteworthy of this type of law since it never constitutes any new action at all. Parallel to the distinction between regulative and constitutive, Habermas presents another distinction: between law which is ‘capable of material justification’ and law which ‘can only be legitimated through procedure’. The former type is more comprehensible and is defended by the elite class on material grounds. It can be justified, more so, and legitimated by employing concrete proofs, which may either be another law or a tangible evidence which has a practical and economic value like monetary gains. On the other hand, the latter is less comprehensible and enacted by a few competent elite. Its legitimation rests on the fact that it has been legislated by these competent and responsible elite. An external proof is no longer needed for its legitimation and justification. The legislator’s competence is enough. The question of authority may thus be parallel to that of legitimation. What makes a legislator competent enough to be able to legislate? What are the criteria to satisfy? Finally, problems of legitimation are inevitable , notwithstanding the ‘withdrawal of legitimation’ that Habermas suggests. Critical consciousness would always emerge, however strong the structural pathologies e.g. alienation, loss of meaning, etc may be and whatever amount of obstruction these pathologies may advance. So, critical consciousness would always challenge the legitimacy of state’s action. Lyotard’s Legitimation. In this subsection, the central theme of the discussion will be focused on the concept of legitimation of Jean Francois Lyotard. How he defined it? How did he apply it to several fields especially politics? What is meta-narratives and petit narratives in relation to legitimation? Is legitimation be paralogy possible? These questions would be answered utilizing Lyotard’s Postmodern Condition, and other works like Memorandum of Legitimation. In the preceding sub section we come to learn that the problem of legitimation is a major problem of states. It has also been made clear that legitimation is more a question of authority rather than a question of law. A law is subject to legitimation. What authority does the legislator of that law has? What kind or type of law it is? Is it constitutive or regulative? Furthermore, Habermas has managed to present his impressions on legitimation associating it to political spheres. In the assumptions of Habermas, all states or forms of government are duty bound to legitimate their actions to convince all their constitutents that they do deserve the power they possess. Contemporary sociologist by the name Richard Hooker shared Habermas assumptions: “ All forms of government operate as a form of authority in which an individual or group of individuals wield power over the majority. In order for any government to perform effectively, then, those in power must convince everyone else that they deserve the authority they have. This is called in political science and sociology, Legitimation of authority.”

Lyotard does not counter this aspect of legitimation. He accepts it but says: “ In the computer age, the question of knowledge is now more than ever a question of government.” Hence, legitimation of authority is tenable yet it must be noted that it intertwines with the question of knowledge. Moreover, he reveals that when one poses questions about legitimacy of knowledge, he is at the same time posing questions on who possess the authority or power. This is evident in the conditions Lyotard brought to light with respect to scientific knowledge. In the scientific community, before a statement can be accepted in the scientific discourse, it must first satisfy the conditions set forth by the legislators who are authorized by the same community to prescribe so. It shows that Lyotard deals the term differently. He uses and treats the term broadly compared to the discussions by contemporary german Theorists. In the language of Lyotard, “ Legitimation is the process by which a ‘legislator’ is authorized to promulgate such a law as a norm.” It seems that the definition attached by Lyotard to the term is quite similar to the definition of Habermas. However, Lyotard utilizes the term more frequently in studying and analyzing the condition of knowledge rather than focusing on its political implications. But other works of Lyotard focus on this aspect. In our discussion on knowledge in the preceding sections, we have established that in the opinion of Lyotard, scientific knowledge resorts to the authority of narrative knowledge to be able to legitimate and prove the validity of its knowledge claims. Hence, knowledge can only be legitimated by way of narratives. Narratives, which validate and legitimate knowledge, take two forms depending on suvject they represent. If the narrative represents cognitive subjects, then it is philosophical. On the other hand, if the narrative represents practical subjects, then it can be said to be political. In section 9 of the Postmodern Condition, Lyotard examines the two leading versions of the narrative of legitimation: Political and Philosophical. Political Version of Legitimation. Political institutions (such as states and nations) tend to utilize higher education to produce officers of its government and managers of civil societies. The state, in assuming the control over the “ training of the people”, resorts to the narrative of freedom or emancipation. The state does this under the guise of ‘nation’. Those who were trained by the State become the heroes of liberty. The effect of this resort to the narrative of freedom is detrimental to the state itself since the state can no longer legitimate itself but rather it receives its legitimacy from the people. Constitutional law, for instance, has been legislated by authorized members of the constitutional commission or convention. They are legally authorized and appointed by the Chief Executive of a democratic country, who was himself/herself put to such position by the electorate, to promulgate such a law as a norm. Hence, the promulgation of such a law is legislated. It follows then that the constituents, including the Chief Executive and the members of the Constitutional Commission, are enjoined to obey the law that has gain normative value. There would arise a legitimation crisis only when either the authority of the chief Executive or the authority of the legislators is not accepted by the Society or by some powerful group in society such as the Civil Societies and Non-Government Organizations whose leaders realized their being heroes of liberty through the functions of higher education. According to Hooker: “ Whenever the authority is not accepted by society or by some powerful group in society, there occurs a crisis of legitimation. There are two alternatives: A change in the form of government, sometimes through revolution, to reflect a different legitimation of authority, or a modification in an effort to retain unchanged the same structure of governmental authority.” Hooker says that the American Revolution is an example of the former; and the Republican victories in 1996 is an example of the latter. There have been series of legitimation crises that occurred over history stretching from the medieval period onwards. These crises, which destroyed the institution of the monarchy, produced Modern democratic states. We have discussed earlier on this section that political version of narrative of legitimation of knowledge bunks on the narrative of emancipation. It means that every knowledge that has a practical consequence, such as political mobilizations organized by Civil Societies and laws enacted by legislators, must be legitimated through this narrative. The second version of the narrative of legitimation is philosophical. As we have said, its subject is cognitive. Unlike political version, knowledge gains its legitimacy from the narrative of speculation. Lyotard insists the importance of this version: “ The language game of legitimation is not state-political, but philosophical”. Lyotard says that this version has started in the establishment of the University of Berlin. Hence, in this version the significant function of higher education, specifically Universities, is not dismissed. The tradition propounded by German Idealist discernibly embodies this version. Of course, we cannot discount other traditions that made similar position e.g. the modern rationalist philosophers like Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza; as well as the empiricist tradition of Great Britain founded by John Locke; the Kantian Tradition did not also manage to depart from this. What is it in their respective philosophies that makes them epitome of this version? Lyotard claims that these modern traditions set forth a method of legitimating a scientific statement solely based on the narrative of speculation, which must be universal, distinct and certain. So a specific scientific statement must meet these conditions before it could be included in the scientific discourse. Thus, “there should be unity to learning”. These two versions signify the recourse to meta-narratives or grand narratives of the modern traditions. This recourse is necessary for a particular statement, knowledge, action to be legitimated. Hence, legitimation by grand narratives i.e. narrative of speculation and narrative of emancipation characterizes modernity. What are grand narratives as opposed to petit narratives? Grand narratives are those narratives that have universalizing features. Meaning, everything should go within their bounds. Those that escape it, lose their legitimacy. Grand narratives are more important than the knowledge themselves being legitimated whose legitimacy rests upon these types of narratives. In the last paragraph, we mentioned that these Grand narratives distinguish modernity. Lyotard claims: “ The Meta Narratives I was concerned with in the Postmodern Condition are those that have marked modernity: the progressive emancipation of labor (source of alienated value in capitalism), the enrichment of all humanity through the progress of capitalist technoscience, and even-if we include Christianity itself in modernity (in opposition to the classicism of antiquity)-the salvation of creatures through the conversion of souls to the Christian narrative of martyred love.”

Lyotard continues by saying that Hegel’s philosophy seeks to totalize all these narratives and hence a strong evidence of speculative modernity. In the modern period, Grand Narratives are only source of legitimation. An eminent scholar of Lyotardian philosophy by the name Bill Readings says that: “ Grand narratives are stories tha claim the status of universal meta narratives, capable of accounting for all other stories in order to reveal their true meaning.” Grand Narratives are, thus, so powerful to make other narratives speak their language. The grand narrative of emancipation, for instance, is powerful enough to suppress the particularity of a specific narrative, story or knowledge. Hence, the meaning of the story is lost without the grand narrative upon which it rests its value. Petit narratives on the contrary are those narratives, which refuse to be incorporated to some meta-narrative or grand narrative. These narratives are fragmentary and thus analogous to language games. Lyotard supposes those petit narratives or little narratives are local and provisionary and do not have any universalizing power. In the wordings of Readings, he puts it clearly: “ Little narratives are understood as a non-finite series of heterogenous events of narration which resist incorporation into grand narrative by virtue of being discontinuous and fragmentary. A such , they are analogous to language games.” If grand narratives characterize modernity, what characterizes post modernity? Lyotard assumes another form of legitimation, which would properly distinguish post modernity. The question he addressed was : Is legitimation by paralogy possible? Legitimation by paralogy is a significant contribution of Lyotard to philosophical and sociological studies. The central argument is that legitmation by paralogy rests upon conversation and tolerance. A particular statement or action is legitimated by local and provisional laws, which were results of ‘conversation’ that transpired in the society that allows and tolerate minority positions and ‘move’ (similar with that of in language game), and not by resorting to grand or meta narratives e.g. narrative of emancipation, narrative of the unfolding spirit, etc. Lyotard prudently puts it: “ We have no longer resource to the grand narratives-we can resort neither to the dialectic of spirit nor even to the emancipation of humanity as a validation for post modern scientific discourse”. Postmodern scientific discourse is legitmated not be meta narratives but by paralogy. This assumption of LYotard gains credit in combating Habermas’ theory of ‘consensus’. Contrary to Habermas’ consensus’, Lyotard supposes ‘dissension’. Dissension marks the varied moves or games of individuals within a society. Invention is never out of consensus but of dissension. Conclusion. The concepts of legitimation of both Lyotard and Habermas are parallel. They both speak of how to validate an action and /or statement. However, they are different in their approach. In Habermas, an action is validated and legitmated by the collective individuals who belong to a particular community, whereas an action or statement is legitimated by way of resorting to meta narratives (modernity) or by way of paralogy (postmodernity), in Lyotard.

Science imposes two supplementary conditions on [denotative statements'] acceptability: the objects to which they refer must be available for repeated access and it must be possible to decide whether or not a given statement pertains to the language judge relevant by the experts. -Jean-François Lyotard

How does a statement "pertain to a language judge"?

Mr. Nutcracker.... To simplify: knowledge and language in Lyotard's works are oftenly used interchageably.

Lyotard opined that by and because of the changes that occurred in the postindustrial societies, scientific communities have prescribed a set of policies that would accept some types of knowledge and drop other types. The reason behind is to cope up with the demands of the new kind of world economy. The following are just some of these: 1) knowledge must be operational and 2) knowledge must be translated into quantities of information or can be translated into computer languages.

This only means that any body of knowledge, which does not conform to the mentioned laws of legitimation, is altogether abandoned. Those, which conform, are maintained. Producers and users of knowledge may have to equip themselves with proper means of translating knowledge into computer languages before they invent or learn. By extension, Lyotard has brought into view the merchantilization of knowledge or commercialization of knowledge. Knowledge has been for decades the principal force of production. Developing countries need this knowledge, which is translatable into computer languages, to ever survive and adapt to the changes brought about by postindustrial and postmodern age, as highly developed countries need this kind of knowledge to sustain and maintain their status.

Finally, Mr. Nutcracker, language/or a set of knowledge may or may not be accepted or maintained as may be judged by experts (scientific community). Meaning, if experts think that language/or a set of knowledge does not conform to the policies set forth, the language is abandoned.

Mr. Nutcracker, can you privately send me your name and profile. I am very much willing to have a fruitful correspondence with you. Think you're interesting.

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