French and Other Perspectives in Praxiology

Wojciech W. Gasparski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780765802484
• eBook ISBN: 9781351322621
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Volume 12 in this distinguished series explores current topics in praxiology as studied in France and elsewhere. As is characteristic of contemporary praxiology, contributors both investigate new topics and use new methods to re-examine older approaches.Part 1 is composed of three sections by French scholars. These deal with humans as a subject of action as well as a subject of knowledge. In respecting the particular domains of psychology and praxiology, they demonstrate how they converge to shed light on the human being as an individual or as part of a group. The first section discusses relations between individual action and collective action, while the second section is concerned with relations between the act, objects, and space, and explores work spaces, production spaces, office spaces, and social spaces. The third section examines relations between action and cognition, a domain considered to be little understood in general. Finally, the role of mathematics in decision-making is discussed as a determinate of the praxiological process.The second part is composed of contributions by scholars from Finland, Great Britain, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the United States. The topics are: how praxiology helps economists understand cooperative actions and related issues of different responsibilities; how and to what an extent university education creates conditions for competitive advantage in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and how problems of corporate governance are approached in the region; how innovation influences competence in the region of established economy in Spain; and how information systems constitute a multi-agent system. Finally, a formal analysis of praxiological dimensions in light of the fuzzy logic approach is discussed.

PART ONE

The French Perspective

Editor: Victor Alexandre

Introduction

Victor Alexandre
University of Franche-Comté
Besançon, France

Part One of the “Topics in Comtemporary Praxiology, French and other Perspectives” is divided into three sections which we believe treat important and representative aspects of current praxiology: Individual Action and Collective Action, Actions, Objects and Space, Actions and Knowledge. The reader will find here a general orientation with a psychological leaning due to the qualifications of the authors, the majority being social psychologists, as well as an impression of the preoccupations which are addressed particularly to French society. But these two influences cannot be considered as such in orientating praxiology in a direction to which it does not belong: reflection on action at whatever level it is placed and this must be “the highest” which, according to A. Espinas (1897), cannot, in our opinion, hide the three dimensions of humain existence: collective, technological and cognitive. The question of the individual, the collective and the social concerns social psychology, a borderline discipline between the individualistic and holistic paradigms, in a singular way. This discipline which cannot resolve itself to total opposition, acknowledges the reality of one and of the other and takes into account the totality of the praxiological process, particularly the individual effects of the collective act and the social effects of the individual act. Technology and praxiology are so closely connected that Espinas (op cit) appeared hesitant about separating them, and he also found it suitable to give the tool a place, it being a source of energy as well as a specific form of human action according to Kotarbinski (1955). The idea of taking space, Euclidian as well as represented, into account is more recent, but it is undoubtful that this constitutes “the matter of action” as Moles stated (1997). The importance that the cognitive sciences have acquired in psychology then suffices to justify the interest in the manner in which the human being processes information relative to acts. It is thus natural to examine some of their concepts in the light of praxiology and to linger on the manner in which the agent understands his acts and those of others, the one which he undertakes and, finally, which is more classic, the one by which he decides.

The first section deals with a double approach to action, individualistic or holistic. In his text, P. Livet distinguishes three categories of collective action: the action of several whereby each one identifies the acts of others only in so far as these have an effect on their own acts, the concerted action which supposes a sufficiently precise appreciation of the collective result and consequently the existence of a convention, and the mutual action which implies mutual aid and a willingness to help others correct their faults. He also undertakes to describe the methods of interpretation of collective action, in other words the modes, verbal or not, thanks to which individuals indicate to others what they are doing, the rules of execution, the intentions and the conventions, without the role of objects in communication. Using a duo musical performance as an example, he shows the existence of low and high limits in the interpretations of acts, in the interior of which types and levels of errors are specified and corrected so that there is coordination of individual acts and procurement of a durable collective action of a definite nature. He concludes by interchanging procedures and categories and, in taking up the concept of “cities” by Boltanski and Thévenot (1987), proposes giving different contents to this concept based on the obtained matrix.

J.P. Minary deals with the organization and the efficiency of social work. At the same time a global action of society focused on itself to increase security, an activity with a humanitarian goal that is either an individualized or a collective mode, social work is described as a meeting place for divers fields: that of individual psychology and suffering, that of social representations and collective risks, that of professional and institutional skills and, finally, that of public politics and legislation. First of all the author describes social work as it is exercised in France: the actors, the relational and symbolic character of acts, the role of speech, material for action, tools and background, the institutional framework, practice by multi-disciplinary teams. Then he questions its organization. Can one envisage a veritable management of this activity and evaluate its efficiency when the effect of customary criteria of the success of acts (for example, confidence and the intentions of the actor, respect of known laws) can be reversed at any moment by the meaning drawn from it by the beneficiary? Nevertheless he assesses with others that certain conditions, such as the existence of perspectives, real empathy, cooperation and coordination, must be strictly followed by social workers so that this social activity is free from an excess of bureaucracy or a charismatic attitude.

J.L. Dumont deals with the possibilities of the application of praxiology to social work. Firstly, he discusses the double solicitude that the social services, particularly sociology and psychology, try to preserve: the actor and work organization, and notes the frequent difficulty of determining the nature of the finality of the social act: individual aid, liberation of the actor or a change in the social structure. According to him, each action is fundamentally social. In this respect he appears to agree with Mead, Parson and Touraine. He gives special attention to social and cultural values, to the project and the symbolic function of acts, in other words to the way in which the significations of acts are communicated and understood. In discussing the transition from social work to social action and their effectiveness, he affirms that the principles of effective action established by Kotarbinski (economy, cooperation, immanentization, anticipation, role of values) are applicable to social work. He also maintains that praxiology can benefit the formalization and the efficiency of social work, the legitimacy of it, and the transformation of empirical practices into scientific knowledge. Finally, he offers as example a method elaborated with certain colleagues called P.E. which allows to trace individual itineraries, to establish the knowledge acquired and thus identify a new project thanks to a pilot case capable of favoring individual acts in the praxical environment.

The second section is devoted to acts, objects and space. In his text on work spaces, G.N. Fischer treats a double concern: to cite the functionality of these places on the basis of industrial rationality and to point out the social psychological aspects which the occupants experience. Hence, the work place is specific: a distinct place of habitation that does not belong to the individual who occupies it, programmed for determined activities, but also having a symbolic and psychological value for self esteen and, consequently, an object of personal appropriation. He concentrates on three types: production spaces influenced by Taylorism and by the recent invasion of automation, office spaces and their evolution: compartmentalized office, open-plan, pools, office landscape and the expected and unexpected effects of the effected transformations, and finally social spaces or intermediate zones which have a double function of transition and catharsis. He also discusses the aesthetic treatment of space, particularly a company’s desire to communicate its culture and values to the exterior world. Regarding social psychological aspects he points out the correlations between the heirarchal status and the type of arrangement of the occupied space, some paradoxes between the tasks and the disposition of the space as well as the conclusions drawn from his own research: sexual differences related to the quantity of space that one possesses, precarious sites, even the lighting, which cannot be considered as technological imperatives but rather as a manifestation of the social division of masculine and feminine roles.

B. Lefort analyzes the relationships between the tool, thought and action. According to him, the tool, “any object incorporated into action in order to carry out an operation on another object,” is analogous to the word, to the sign because it evokes a reality other than itself. In the same manner tooling is comparable to a language. He proposes that the evolutionary theory and child and animal psychology demonstrate the direct relation between the concept of tool (something used as a tool as well as an object made with a fixed purpose) and the cognitive process because each use of a tool, even the simplest, necessitates a representation and restructuring of the act. Hence, it is through its physical reality and by the qualities that are attributed to it in general or specific circumstances that the tool participates in the development of intelligence, detour behavior and adaptation, even if that participation, such as language, can be done in a particular manner, especially when the tool is used in a deviated way. In referring to this alteration known as catachresis, a term used in linguistics, the author refers to his own research (1978) and discusses the formal utilization of formal tools, the informal utilization of formal tools and the utilization of informal tools. He terminates by noting that even if norms exist, these distinctions are due in particular to the observer and the actor has, in the interest of efficiency, the freedom to interpret and to use the qualities offered by the tool since it falls to him to conceive schemes of action according to appropriate psychological laws such as that of the least-effort (Zipf 1949).

The final section concerns the relations between actions and cognition. F. Girandola questions the predictability of certain models frequently used in social psychology, models based on early theories such as attitudes (Allport 1935) as well as more recent ones such as the theories of Causal Attribution (Heider 1958), Locus of Control (Rotter 1966), Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger 1957) and Engagement (Kiesler 1971). He focuses particularly on the last two theories because they allow to specify the role of the subject’s attitude, of the situation and of the act itself in behavioral predictability and in the stability of the obtained aleration. The author cites several examples of prominent French experimental research: job searching, risk behavoir, economy of energy, AIDS prevention (Joule, Beauvois 1998) which illustrate these theories and more often validate them. Certain acts are thus more engaging than others. The act is particularly engaging when it is public, irrevocable, repeated, with considerable consequences, costly and especially when carried out in a context of freedom. In other respects, the human being can be led to act in a situation congruent with his opinions, one can then speak of an unproblematic act, or if it is incongruent, one speaks then of problematic act. Different behavioral and cognitive effects are the result of this. In the first case there is a consolidation of attitudes and behavioral coherence, in the second there is rationalization, a possibly durable adjustment in the attitude towards the act, the subject adopting new behaviors in a direction contrary to his initial attitude. Nevertheless he concludes by recognizing a certain autonomy between cognition (intention attitudes, beliefs, etc.) and behavior and implies that the best explanation of actions is perhaps found in the acts themselves, which gives praxiology the place it should have in psychology.

As for myself, I begin my text “How do we know what we are doing?” with the distinction between the search for efficiency and the search for truth in emphasizing that in spite of the theoretical independence between action and knowledge, common sense and the most important schools of philosophy have not ceased to postulate on the existence of relations between them, relations whose nature they wanted to define. This is followed by a resume of the essential aspects of the Theory of Action Identification by Vallacher and Wegner (1985) whose aim is to close a portion of the gap between action and cognition and deserve credit for wanting to explain how by starting with an initial representation of the act, formed by intention, the understanding of this can change and lead to an act of another nature as the case may be, particularly when the actant finds himself confronted by a precarious state. Thus there exists between understanding and execution a dynamic process, a reciprocal influence which is noticeable because of the change in the linguistic statement used by the actant, high level identities referring to the pursued goal and being indications of perseverance, low level identities designating the manner in which to carry out the act and being linked more to an uncertain state. Taking into account the temporal dimension, the condition of the philosophy of language and the experimental verifications that it provides arouses interest and gives credibility to this theory, particularly regarding the chaotic aspect of the realization of the act and the comprehensive approach. Nevertheless it is not certain that before undertaking an act, the human being requires the maximum understanding of the future act and its consequences, in other words to fix on the highest level of identification and agree to the duration necessary to attain it. The psychological as well as the unpsychological reasons on which the perserverance of an act depend are numerous. A good number of them remain to be discovered.

The text by T. Martin deals with the competency of mathematics of action concerning empirical reality, the originality of its contribution and its place in the decision making process. After a discussion of the four properties of action (singularity, complexity, incompletion and contingency), the author shows the interest of resorting to mathematics, how it considers possible acts more than real acts and reduces complexity by proposing a logically structured simplified model. Hence the application of mathematics to action describes, classifies, organizes, programs, in short it foresees more than it measures, which distinguishes the difference of its application to other sciences. But it also has a normative function in so far as the human being is rational, capable of logical coherence and where reality itself conforms to the demands of rationality. The relation between mathematics and action is secondary and indirect. It refines reality from the start by a multi-criteria analysis, but only answers a question if the conclusions of the act are correctly and clearly fixed. It can then elevate these to the conditions which make them possible, going from the future towards the present, without it even being capable of defining the goals. Because it contributes lucidity and order, it can thus aid in the decision making of conditional counsel which is never an imposed prescription.

We have attempted here to shed light on the relations between praxiology and psychology and to discuss certain aspects which merit attention. There exists a mutual utility between the two disciplines. Praxiology or the science of acts complements psychology by calling to mind that man is a subject of action as well as knowledge. Learning, emotions, pain can almost always be associated with acts carried out by the individual himself or by others, intentionally or not, in a near or a remote distance. In this sense activity is indeed the area where metaphysics finds the conditions for its development and evolution. Psychology complements praxiology by calling to mind that the structure and the efficiency of individual as well as collective acts depends on psychological, social and cultural factors, cognitive capacities, social representations, values and the beliefs of the actants in an inexclusive manner. Certainly no assimilation is desirable since there is an irreducible distance between what is and is not observable, but from this double approach we can hope for a better understanding of the reasons and forms of action as well as of the thought process.

Translated from the French
by P. Delendick-Alexandre

The Categories of Collective Action¹

Pierre Livet
University of Aix Marseille I
Marseille, France

The depiction of a collective action category system below is written to satisfy several requisites. It is first necessary to describe the difference between individual action and collective actio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Editorial
• PART ONE: The French Perspective
• PART TWO: The Other Perspectives
• Notes about the Authors