Ethically Structured Processes

Virgil Cristian Lenoir

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781786301741
• eBook ISBN: 9781119616177
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Ethics
• Index: Business

Whilst research and innovation may allow for increasing efficiency in the pursuit of human ends, they also pose dangers, linked to the unpredictability of their development, which call for unprecedented responsibility. This book contends that the structure of a "process", in the sense of an efficient propensity in the possible that can be actualized by research and innovation, can be intrinsically ethical, that is, it can take into account and preserve the freedom of the actors concerned. This point is explored through a consideration of four processual ethical structures, each of which can constitute a point of reference for the exercise of a responsibility. Ethically Structured Processes questions dualities that are very firmly established in the West, such as "theoretical/practical" and "descriptive/prescriptive", through a detour into historical Chinese traditions of thought. The generality of the thesis concerning ethical processes is tested, in a privileged way, on the case of the "Invisible Hand". Is this notion based on a philosophically and ethically consistent concept of "freedom"?

PART 1
Ambiguity and Responsibility

1
The Possible and the Necessary

To proceed by “withdrawal” means to go back upstream from objects that are given as fixed structures and to restore them to the possible where they are constantly formed in open processes. We do not encounter fixed objects, nor do we define them once and for all. But in the encounter the conventionality of what is encountered takes on meaning. This restitution of objects to their contingency, to their very possibility, which provides continuity for an efficient process, is a responsibility. But such an attitude requires a distance from any “ontological” approach. It requires thinking about the possible and the necessary outside ontology, otherwise it will fall back into the trap of irreconcilable theoretical/practical duality. This attitude only becomes intelligible and relevant, as such, through prior theoretical marking. But this marking must be a theoretical thought that undoes a univocal consistency of the theoretical, which too often separates it from ethics. It is therefore appropriate to start by setting up some definitions in this mode.

1.1. The formal and the transcendental, or the logical point of view

A “logic” links, in a coherent way and according to their structure, “terms”, or defined units of meaning that can be stated. Or, a logic is the articulation and setting in motion of a given set of conditions for effective purposes: to achieve a desired result, theoretical or practical. These terms, or conditions, each constitute the resources of a specific language for expressing a specific aspect of an encounter: what converges in the exteriority and is transformed in this encounter, the latter becoming knowledge. A formal logic links terms that are defined as “tools”¹ with a view to their technical use. A transcendental logic articulates terms as “categories”, i.e. conditions of possibility of our relationship to the world². The word “condition” will generally refer to both “tools” and “categories”.

Where the formal expresses the useful, usable side of knowledge, the transcendental expresses the conditions of possibility of the “encounter” that makes up this knowledge. The transcendental alone is structuring, the formal being structured. This does not mean that the transcendental is a “necessary” or “universal” pre-determination, as will be explained below. A formal expression is, strictly speaking, only a set of operations rigorously defined in their uses, reducible to the definition of their roles in the expression. As such, it is the expression of relationships, each term being itself a relationship, and a relationship of relationships. The formal proceeds by articulation, a sequence obeying entirely explicit rules, while the transcendental is a presupposition. The formal gives a coherent ordering of “conditions”³; the transcendental provides the conditions of possibility, and therefore of production, of knowledge, in its objective constitution. However, the conditions, in both directions, should not be seen as purely limiting. At the same time, they constitute opportunities to further develop knowledge in the encounter with the outside world. A condition has a more or less strong constraint dimension. Constraint is exerted on the situation in which it is thought, known, and where it therefore intervenes in a structuring way. But this condition also has a value of opening possibilities: those of new conditions to be discovered, but also of a viable circulation of the possible itself⁴, thought of as an element.

In other words, a category makes it possible to come across a situation, i.e. a recorded experience in that situation, for which it “explains” an aspect. This category can be a general law or knowledge of how things work, or an exact experimental measurement inscribed in a scientific⁵ theory, to which it provides an anchor in the facts. Each time it is “knowledge” of what is being encountered. A formal tool, on the other hand, is a useful, manipulable and transposable instrument, which is not necessarily semantically charged, or whose semantic charge is subject to redefinition. It should be noted that the same condition can sometimes be a tool, sometimes a category⁶. Categories therefore change and redefine themselves according to the contexts and theories available, and it would be futile to draw up a definitive “list” of them.

Moreover, one cannot simply speak of “space” or “time” in general⁷ but rather of a punctual arrangement of the intuitive faculty, which expresses the way in which various complexes of conditions are known in a particular context and in relation to a defined activity. In a Galilean world, on the one hand, and within the framework of general relativity on the other, space-(and)time do not respond to the same intuitions (notably through their mutual relationship). But intuition itself is formed and educated to the point of espousing the theories that express a specific state of knowledge⁸. Even in terms of space and time, there is no definitive list of intuitions whose disposition gives them meaning.

As for distinguishing the possibility of a specific experiment from that of a general experiment, which would offer a limited and therefore countable number of categories, it would also be futile. For who can say, exposed to a specific experiment, how it fits into what makes the general experiment, and how it is distinctive? It is often posterity alone that decides this. Actually, the conditions of the experiment in general may have to be redefined, following an unforeseen discovery, from what was previously considered to be limited to a specific experiment.

We call a perspective “definitorial” according to which a condition can only be made possible by another condition (or other conditions). This can be done at the formal level, but also at the transcendental level. The categories would then contain every possibility of formal condition, downstream, as they would offer every possibility in the way we become aware of what we encounter.

In what follows, we will argue against this definitorial perspective. The regressive aspect of the method will consist in going back from a condition to its possibility, that it takes from other conditions, but also from a creative element of possibility which permeates the situation⁹. When we return to the situation, the elemental dimension of the possible becomes significant. This leads to relativizing the transcendental categories and thinking about their possible revision according to periods. At the same time, it opens up a strict distinction between the terms “a priori”, “necessary” and “universal”¹⁰.

1.2. Conditions and determinations: a matter of freedom

If the term “condition” covers both aspects, tool and category, it can also refer to a mutual relationship between consciousness and terms in general. The distinction is then made between “condition” and “determination”. A determination bites into the consciousness, which it renders partial. A condition is assumed in consciousness. But both are the linguistic or symbolic expressions of a knowledge that can be integrated into the exposure of a mode of occurrence, functioning or interaction of a certain group of factual data, which can be found, gathered and distinguished by this knowledge. It is only the relationship to consciousness, alienated in one case (determination), free in the other (condition), that makes the difference. What is at stake is therefore the correct understanding of the concept of freedom, for the purpose of its realization.

A condition has an active dimension, often unnoticed by the consciousness, of opening and closing of possibilities. Together, the conditions are what surrounds us as it is known to us, that is, brought to the level of intuitive thinking. They are “what” surrounds us and, in the same movement and in an inseparable way, the “meaning” of what surrounds us. Each time it is an expressed knowledge, so not only of language, but also of a linguistic expression of a lived relationship to a context. We must reject from now on a naive ontological vision that would have us face a world of objects determined in themselves, that we would be content to meet and name and that we would talk about while trying to “match” what we say to what we encounter. It must also be denied that our categories, and therefore the transcendental, constitute the objects we encounter through and through.

The knowledge encounter, which will be discussed below, starting from the specific characteristics of a language, expresses specific aspects of what surrounds us. It is a specific consistency of the situation in which we find ourselves and reaches, upstream, more general determinations. It is not a question of accounting for everything that exists. This would be an ontological approach. There is no “separation” between proposals and beings. Knowledge, made possible by a term or a particularity of the language in which it is expressed, and which it may have invented for this language, expresses complexes of relationships where it may involve beings. This does not mean that they are determined as such independently of this knowledge. The entities or beings that we distinguish around us (trees, swans, neighbors, etc.) are, as far as we know, conditions for a full and open relationship with the world. Not that conditional knowledge “constitutes” beings – which would then be reducible to it, or which would be an image, a fleeting reflection, of it – but beings and conditions redefine themselves mutually, one through the other, at each stage of the process. There is no pre-determination of the being in the categories, nor is there an “abstraction” of the categories in relation to the beings around us. There is, each time, entanglement and interrelation. This point will become very important when it is linked to the question of the possible.

Determinations and conditions are expressions of a living relationship of knowledge, and can manifest themselves as hypotheses, axioms, factual measures, rules of language use, definitions, values, principles, etc. A logic will be a coherent articulation of the relevant conditions (or determinations) in accordance with their own structures, and in relation to the knowledge in question.

The difference is that a “determination” bites into and conditions the consciousness, which then only has the illusion of freedom, while a “condition” is taken up and assumed freely in the consciousness. What is at issue is therefore the relationship to the knowing consciousness. A formal “tool” or “category” can be, at a given time, a determination, and a condition to another, and for another, person.

One of the challenges in defining “conditions” is to neutralize the opposition between facts and values. While keeping a distinction between the two, which is extended to the downstream distinction between epistemic values and ethical values, etc., this definition avoids reducing the latter to what would be a subjective matter of opinions or desires.

It is also a question of moving the lines in relation to a questioning that may have become bogged down in an opposition between “moral properties”¹¹ which would make an object, a value or an action “good” and would be accessible to a moral intuition alongside the properties discovered by the sciences. According to this vision, there are both natural and unnatural properties. If the moral terms refer exclusively to the former, moral knowledge would be reducible to that of the natural sciences, which is clearly inaccurate. If they refer to the latter, the status of the intuition that gives us access to it becomes problematic, and threatens to sink into subjectivism or psychologism.

On the contrary,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• PART 1: Ambiguity and Responsibility
• PART 2: Four Criteria of the Effectiveness of a Process
• PART 3: Demystifying the Invisible Hand
• Conclusion
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement