The world of daily life - taken as a product of cultural beings living in a certain state of knowledge -is in the philosophical reflexion not primary of interest as a field of scientific research. Life-world - constituted in itself by knowledge - provides an occasion to discuss the pretensions of social and philosophical sciences. This paper tries to outline some possibilities to see the relations between knowledge of different levels as a means to advance the understanding of the role of daily life and scientific knowledge.

This paper argues that Niklas Luhmann's theory of modem society's differentiation into autopoietically operating subsystems is widely accepted on false grounds. Modem society's empirical differentiation into relatively autonomous subsystems is falsely taken as the empirical point of reference for Luhmann's theory. Luhmann, his advocates and his critics; however; conflate analytical differentiation with empirical differentiation which occurs on a basis completely opposite to autopoiesis. Empirical differentiation consists of the permanent production and reproduction of codes and programs for economic, political, legal or other types of action by societal struggles which include elements of cultural legitimation, legal regulation, political enforcement and economic calculation. Such codes and programs are not evolutionary universals but historically particular institutions. Secondary conservative and critical interests support Luhmann's theory because they take it as a reflection of what they want either to preserve or to change, as the case many be.

The paper presents an outline of the systemtheory of Niklas Luhmann. The foci here are the basic conceptual decisions of his approach, the relationship between systems-, media- and theory of social evolution on the one hand and the status of systemrationality and the rationalization of lifeworld on the other. One aspect of Luhmann's theorizing will be discussed critically, namly the status of relationship between structure and process of the social integration in terms of norms which regulate the interaction process.

Public Opinion in the United States of America can rightfully be described as an important part of everyday life. It is shaped by different structural constraints as well as through social interaction. In order to relate public Opinion and political Culture it is therefore necesary to begin with methodological presuppositions. In this article a qualitative macro-sociological approach is put foreward instead of methodological individualism. It is argued that it is possible to delineate elements of the political culture within the realm of public opinion from a cultural standpoint.American political culture is used here to illuminate some traits of public opinion: Republicanism, the Liberal Tradition, Populism, Civil Religion and a specific brand of american Can-do-Philosophy.Vied form this perspective political culture as well as public opinion in the United States provide a system of complex world views which might best be interpreted through the schema approach known form cognition psychology. Criticism form communitarians as well as from multiculturalists against a supposedly closed system of every-day has to therefore be rejected.

The individual disciplines of the social sciences appear to be divided as if they were concerned with different objects but they are united through many of the questions which they are asked to answer. Although the individual disciplines were about to be institutionally separated at the time of the historical school major proponents of the historical method like Schmoller were still able to combine the different approaches in a unified framework The psychology of individuals establishes a link between social behaviour and economic interests. The intuuitive method allows to understand analogies between different manifestations of the lifestyle in a nation. There have to be coherent ethical norms for individual behaviour; social integration and economic cooperation. The article describes how Schmoller came to treat ethics as a unifying principle of sociological and economic research, starting from observations on the unifying power of culture in Germany in the classical period. Lessons are drawn for modern interdisciplinary research by examining examples of topical research projects.

The concept "Präsenzfigur" combines conversation analysis and objektive Hermeneutik to show how language structure and social meaning are related. The concept concentrates on the local sensitivity of interactional structures. Empirical data are not taken to show the realization of contextfree general structures (e.g. turn taking conditional relevance). Contextsensitivity is analysed both as document and result of the selectivity, inherent in the participants’ activities in contributing to the local construction of social organization according to their dominant orientations as participants. For empirical analysis a four step modell (including maximal and minimal contrast) is proposed.

This paper is concerned with the question which role intentions play in verbal action. In many (mainly cognitively oriented) branches of linguistic research, as well as in the philosophy of language, it is (often implicity) assumed that speakers' intentions are the most important element for the explanation of linguistic behavior. This position has also been challenged, however, mainly by anthropologically and sociolinguistically oriented scholars. In this paper I will try to adress this issue in the framework of a more general discussion concerning the functionality of language. In the first section I will briefly consider the framework sketched in the first part to discuss the arguments which have been put forward in the literature against the intention-dominated view of linguistic behavior.

I shall propose that the primary form of all references is that reference to ourselves that we normally express when we use the first-person pronoun. In the case of believing, this reference may be called 'direct attribution'. Our reference to all other things is by way of such reference to ourselves. I shall argue that; although we express ourselves in first-person sentences, the reference to ourselves that we thus express does not involve the acceptance of first-person proposition- for, I shall contend, there is no good reason to assume that there are such propositions. The primary form of believing is not a matter of accepting propositions; it is a matter of attributing properties to pneself I am the primary object of my own attributions and the properties are the content