  The interpretive, or cultural-hermeneutic sciences, rest on a second, equally deep-seated “practical interest” in securing and expanding possibilities of mutual and self-understanding in the conduct of life. These sciences presuppose and articulate modes of action-orienting (inter)personal understanding that operate within socio-cultural forms of life and the grammar of ordinary language. Human societies depend on such understanding, and the interpretive competences that go with it, just as much as they depend on mastering the natural environment. The hermeneutic sciences, then, bring methodical discipline to features of everyday interaction, and in that sense are on a par with the empirical-analytic sciences, which elevate everyday instrumental action to experimental method. By making these first two cognitive interests explicit, Habermas seeks to go beyond positivist accounts of the natural and social sciences. On his view, those accounts tend to ignore the role that deep-seated human interests play in the constitution of possible objects of inquiry. 