Praxiological Essays

Texts and Contexts

Wojciech W. Gasparski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351595353
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The 25th volume in the series Praxiology: The International Annual of Practical Philosophy and Methodology brings a praxiological perspective to current issues facing our society. In sixteen brand-new essays, a team of international scholars expands praxiology beyond the borders of its historically philosophical application and uses it to address real-world problems in a variety of fields. The volume outlines new approaches and reflections on traditional praxiological method, and then applies these developments as tools in fields as diverse as ethics, psychology, sociology, economics, management, and entrepreneurship. Grounded in the tradition of the Polish praxiologist Tadeusz Kotarbi?ski (1886-1981), the 25th volume, entitled Praxiological Essays: Texts and Contexts, highlights the rich mosaic of issues perceived in the practice of human action, and carries a tradition of Praxiological inquiry forward into our contemporary philosophy, methodology, and social sciences.

Chapter 1 Trouble with Success

The Problem of Effectiveness in Praxiology

Timo Airaksinen

Introduction: The Problem of Goals

The “Three E’s of Praxiology” are often said to be Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Ethics. Ethics is such a wide and complicated topic, much more so than many people tend to realize, that I do not intend to tackle it here. I try to avoid ethical and moral issues in this paper.¹ Efficiency sounds like a term in engineering science, and my suspicion is that it is a pretty well-understood concept, yet philosophers can complicate any term and topic, if they are given a chance. Anyway, I do not have anything to say about it now. We are left with effectiveness, which is, as I want to show, a complicated and demanding term to use and understand, if we do not use it in its naïve colloquial sense. Many praxiologists may want to bypass such issues and say, simply, that effective action and work reach their given goal or get the job done. In other words, effectiveness means that action reaches its goal, which is understood as an object or content of, say, the relevant intention. We can put this idea, thus effective action realizes the relevant intention of the agent. For example, I want to build a bridge and as a result of my effective action, we have a bridge, as I intended. What could be simpler? I do what I intended to do, and that is it.

It is a mistake, it seems to me, to focus solely on actions when we do praxiology.² This is to say that it is a mistake to focus solely on intentions, because actions and intentions go hand-in-hand. What we need are the concepts of a design, project, job, and work. We work, which entails a job that again entails a set of actions whose intentions anchor it to the real world. However, the main focus should remain at the level of work, its design and projects, which are the key concepts here.

What happens in the case of a bridge? We want a bridge; if we do not, we never start the project of building one—here, building is work, and no work may proceed effectively without a project. Now, there is a job to be done, or actually a systematically connected constellation of jobs that will result in a bridge if we succeed. If we do not succeed, we will not get a useable bridge. In this case, the failure seems quite one-dimensional: no such bridge. However, if our desires are more demanding, our failures will also be more complicated: It is possible that we get something but it is not what we wanted or aimed at. We get something but not what we wanted. We educate young men to become brave soldiers but, in the event of a failure, we do not get heroes but instead, say, violent monsters. They are still soldiers but not the kind of soldiers we wanted. The source of complication is obvious: We want a certain kind of soldier, not just a soldier as such. Actually, we rarely want a simple thing as such, in the sense that we want it without qualifications, like we wanted a bridge as a bridge. If we want a bridge simpliciter, the circumstances are likely to be somehow exceptional. The same can be said of the training of soldiers: We may want to train soldiers, as such, as cannon fodder, as it used to be said, but this is exceptional. We feel the need to explain it, for instance, the river is regularly flooded and we need a bridge, any bridge, in order to protect the people on the other side. Therefore, any bridge works for us; we cannot afford to be choosy. If we train cannon fodder, we are likely to be hit by moral concerns, or our reasons for such a nasty project must be exceptionally cogent. I have a hard time seeing what kinds of reasons could be mentioned, perhaps an imminent military catastrophe? Anyway, when we work for a given goal, we normally qualify this goal in various ways. We are more or less demanding. This makes the evaluation of success of the project more complicated.

Kotarbiński himself writes (1972) as follows: “In short, practical evaluation, i.e. efficacious one, comes down to the question of effectiveness and economy of action. What are effective acts? Those which lead to a chosen goal.”³ This short quotation illustrates quite well my own goals in the present paper. I want to make three comments on it. First, Kotarbiński mentions “economy action,” which means, as I take it, efficiency of action, that is, the way the goal is reached with the least possible effort and, accordingly, cost. Second, in the quotation above, the term “efficacious” must mean the same as “successful,” and the quotation makes perfect sense. Thirdly and most importantly, he says that effective acts are those that “lead to a chosen goal.” I argue both that this crucially important statement needs to be understood correctly and that such a correction is far from easy or straightforward. To do this, we must treat Kotarbiński’s notion of action in its widest possible sense and then ask, what are those goals and how are they related to acts and action understood as work?

Needs and Desires

The real problem here is this: When we start working on a project in order to realize a goal, we also want or desire this goal.⁴ There are exceptions, of course: I am coerced to act in a goal-directed project that I do not like or want. I aim at the goal only because I must, in the sense that I work under a threat. This is not an uncommon situation. Also, social obligations and moral duties may result in a situation where I act and work reluctantly: It is my duty and I must do so, regardless of my negative feelings against the task as such. For instance, it is my duty to help you in distress, although you happen to be my rival in work and love. I would not want to help you except that I (morally speaking) must. I want to be a moral person and hence I do it. Here I only discuss cases where the agent is free from such constraints.

Our desires establish a goal, which we then intend to realize by means of some suitable projects. The key term here is “desire.” Some people may disagree and argue that the key term is “need,” and then there emerges a distinction between needs and desires; they must not be conflated.⁵ This relationship is complicated, but I still want to argue that the fundamental term is “desire” and not “need.” To me, there is no need without a corresponding desire. Let me explain this and then move on towards some deeper problems concerning desire and its objects in relation to the praxiological E of effectiveness.

We need a bridge over a troubled water; suppose we all agree on that, and then we start building one because we believe that our need ascription is, in a sense, valid, that is, supported by good reasons. There are no good reasons against the bridge and we believe that the bridge will bring about good results in terms of safety, economy, and welfare.

To put is simply, life is better if we have a bridge than it would be without the bridge. Also, no viable alternatives to the bridge, such as, for instance, a ferry or a tunnel under the river, seem to exist in this case. So, we design a bridge and start working on the relevant projects.

It is easy to see how the primacy of desire comes into the picture here. We desire the good effects provided by the bridge, or we say that the bridge has its good effects on our life, such that we desire them. Let us look at the case of soldiers. We need soldiers because the times are dangerous, and we train a bunch of new recruits to become heroic soldiers. We say we need more such soldiers and not mere cannon fodder. All this is based on our desire to be safe in the long run. We do not need cannon fodder because in the long run this is not a viable answer to our call for safety, and we desire safety. That is why we need more heroic soldiers. Suppose we are near-pacifists, all of us, which is to say we dislike armies and are basically afraid of soldiers. We do not like or want them as such. What we want is safety, and because we believe that the only way to be safe in the long run is to have an army and train good soldiers would we want new soldiers to be trained. We do not want them as such, but we know we need them in order to keep safe, which is what we desire. In other words, we would like to live a life of safety and without soldiers around, but we cannot if we want to get what we want. The best possible world is of course such that there are no soldiers and life is safe. The least desirable world is such that there are soldiers and life is unsafe, which is quite possible, too. In this sense, “need” is an instrumental and not a foundational concept, unlike desire and want. We want something and hence we need something that helps us realize our desire. Notice that many instruments that we need are undesirable as such. I need a root canal job, which I do not find independently desirable at all. But what else could I do if I want to live a healthy life, which is what I do? What we need is a theory of needs and desires. One way to handle this issue is by saying that need ascriptions result in conditional desires: I want the root canal job on the condition that it helps.

Why would this be difficult to accept, as it seems? The reason may well be that many desires are so basic and obvious and as if automatic that they remain in the background, unnoticed and unappreciated when we consider work and its projects. It is not worth emphasizing that we want to stay alive, lead a healthy life, have a safe environment, enjoy happiness and welfare, experience economic success, and other such good things we actually like and desire. However, simply omitting to mention those things does not imply that they would not be there as a foundation of our practical life; they are our fundamental desires. We say we want a bridge for good reasons; hence, we need a bridge because otherwise we cannot get what we want. We need a bridge because otherwise we cannot prosper, and we want to prosper. We desire prosperity, and without this common and self-explanatory desire, it makes no sense to say that we need a bridge.

Objects of Desire

Desiring something seems to entail that something exists that is the object of my desire; that is, there is a desirable thing that I actually desire, in this given case. We find this object by considering our desires. I want a bridge and hence the object of my desire is a bridge. In this way, I first desire X, where X is the object of my desire, and then I realize that I need Y in order to get X. If I do not mention X, I cannot know what I need, and in this way the concept of effectiveness loses its very meaning and content. Obviously, effectiveness and its evaluation are anchored to the idea of the object of desire via the concept of need. Effective work realizes what is needed, which satisfies the relevant desire. We work on the bridge that we need in order to live a prosperous life, which we all desire.

Here comes the bad news: Desire has no object, but without an object we cannot specify what we want; if we cannot say what we want we cannot say what we need; hence, we cannot design a project according to which we work towards its realization. Why do I then say a desire lacks an object? In everyday practical contexts, this certainly does not seem to be the case. In other words, according to a naïve approach to the interplay of need and desire, desire has its object or at least such an object can be constructed. The reason for this is obvious: In many cases, even normally, we know what we need to do to realize our goals. We work on our needs, and this (conversationally) entails that we know what we want; that is, we know the relevant object. Where do we get this object? I must now give my reasons for saying that desires have no object. Then I must explain why we still think that desires have their object. All this is necessary because the key praxiological concept of effectiveness is now under a severe threat. Finally, I will say something about how to save this essential concept. We need it, there is no question about it!

Desire has its object in a formal logical sense, namely, according to the de re-interpretation of desire statements. I say, “We want brave soldiers” and I mean it de re: We want new soldiers who are brave. I also may mean it de dicto: “We want that our new soldiers are brave.” It is easy to see that in the de re-sense the objects of our present desire are brave soldiers. Here is a problem: Only if you are a stern realist in ethics can you say that such thick moral notions as “brave soldier” are referential terms or, in other words, that something like brave soldiers actually exist. The word “brave” constitutes the problem here. For an antirealist, “brave” is an idealization or a subjective construction that corresponds to no facts of the real world. One man’s brave soldier looks like another man’s monster. Moreover, if you look at the corresponding de dicto-reading of the example above, you quickly see that it allows for no object (of desire). We have soldiers whose certain attributes are what we desire, and those constitute no object. We want the braveness of soldiers. If we say we want braveness, we create a rather strange object; I do not think it is a good idea. Of course, one may say we want their braveness as a fact, and that very fact is the required object. Such an argument seems to conflate de dicto and de re-readings. Be that as it may, let us now stay at the level of de re-reading.

So, if this is the case, desire has no particular object. Of course, I may say, trivially, that I want a cone of ice cream, where ice cream looks like the object of my desire. I cannot discuss the problem of such trivial desires here. Here is a hint: I can ask you, what do you desire when you desire ice cream? The correct answer may well be, I take a trip back to the sunny days of my childhood. The trick is in my asking what makes ice cream desirable to you. You may well answer by saying that you got ice cream because others did, which means that you wanted to conform. In other words, you wanted ice cream because others wanted it. Actually, you needed ice cream because you wanted to conform. Simple objects may not be that simple! Moreover, I do not think we should say desire sometimes has an object, sometimes not—this sounds too ad hoc to be plausible at all. Either X is always there as a real object or it is never there. Let me explain. There is a deeper reason than those above for arguing that desire takes no real object. The new reason is this: in “I want/desire X,” X ranges over such a wide field that definitely extends the realm of real things, including facts. Let me explain.

I desire so many different things. Suppose I want to desire nothing, like a good Buddhist does; I want all the good things in the world; I desire immortality, etc. In all these cases, the de re-object of my desire can be formulated in the formal logical sense, but such a de re-object may not pick out any corresponding real object, fact, or event. Its real description is empty. If I want nothing, nothingness is my de re-object although we have a hard time specifying what kind of a fact nothingness is, in the sense in which I desire it. But if I want not to want it, where is the requested object now? It is easy to depict a corresponding fact—I desire to desire nothing—but the success conditions of all this are quite problematic: When I successfully desire nothing, I am still desiring something. Also, when I desire immortality, I desire something that may not exist; many people know this, and yet they desire it. And no one who desires immortality may say what that really means. People desire even if the supposed object is controversial, fuzzy, or empty. This is not an exception; on the contrary, it is rather the paradigm case.

Even when I want a bridge to be constructed over the river in our little town, I need to specify what I want before you know what I want. A bridge as such is not yet the desired bridge, as every prospective bridge builder knows. We need to design a good and suitable bridge first. Now it can be asked: Once the bridge is designed and built, is it not possible to go and say that we got exactly what we wanted, which is to say that our desire had an object, the object is now realized in the real world, and the original desire is accordingly satisfied? The object of my desire is there in front of my very eyes clad in steel and concrete, ready to be used. Well, yes, the bridge is now there, and it satisfies our practical needs, but this is different from saying that we actually got what we desired: happiness and prosperity. Notice that we need the bridge in order to be happy and prosperous. It again seems that the idea that we got what we wanted results from a confusion between needs and desires. We may get what we needed (a bridge) but this does not imply that we got what we desired (happiness and prosperity).⁶

This is how the logic of desire works: I mention prosperity, happiness, and well-being (X), all of which are desires that are now internally anchored to the idea of a bridge. They cannot be achieved without the bridge. But even after the bridge, a good bridge, is there, X is still far away. Here, it is best to say that we need a bridge and forget “We want a bridge,” because then we can forget the fact that what we want does not exist and never will as a realized fact in this real world. What I desire is a new possible world where we all, the future generations included, are prosperous and happy, except perhaps my enemies and rivals. I aim at such a new possible world, which world obviously cannot be a fact of this present, given, real world of ours. I want something that is out of this world. The range of my desires is always wider than this given world. In this sense, I may be able to do what I intended and realize an object I needed, but I can never get what I wanted de re. My desires are always larger than this given world, unlike my needs.

A Problem and Its Solutions

What does all this mean in the praxiological terms? The praxiological task is to achieve your chosen goals in a systematic, efficient, and effective manner without causing any ethical problems. The question is, accordingly, as follows: how to understand the norm “achieve your goals,” if the logic of desire does not allow you to fix any definite goals? One solution is to return to the level of intentions and needs. I intend to build a bridge and by doing so I satisfy my socially understandable and morally acceptable needs. This solution certainly works in the pragmatic perspective, however dissatisfying it may be in a wider philosophical view. I do not think we can avoid the following question: “How to achieve what we desire?” I repeat the reason for this, namely, without desires, needs become impossible to satisfy. Why do I need a bridge if I want nothing? I can always ask, “Why do we need this bridge?” and the answer must be given, directly or indirectly, by ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Editorial
• 1 Trouble with Success: The Problem of Effectiveness in Praxiology
• 2 Social and Psychological Aspects of Rare Acts
• 3 Praxiological Implications for Modern Start-Ups
• 4 From Behavioural Economics to Economics of Identity: Forging an Economic Praxiology
• 5 Aspects of Human Action
• 6 The Praxiology of Collective Leadership
• 7 Old and New Perspectives on Economic Systems
• 8 Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s Typology of Economisation Measures and Its Relevance for Modern Management Science
• 9 Hatred—A Challenge to Contemporary Collective Identity
• 10 Kotarbiński’s Praxiology and the Analytic Action Theory
• 11 New Areas of Research in Praxiology
• 12 The Praxiological Lifeworlds and the Design Universes
• 13 Praxiological Reflections: Introductory Remarks
• 14 Praxiology: A New Approach
• 15 Ethical Measure of Authorship by Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s Conception of Action
• 16 Market Fundamentalism versus Responsible Economizing
• Notes about the Authors and Editors