The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Harry Hillman Chartrand
April 2002
Jean Piaget
MAIN TRENDS IN INTER-
DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH -
Section II - Structures and RulesSection Index
Page
II - STRUCTURES AND RULES (OR NORMS)
21
7. Examples
of interferences in the field of
28
8. Systems
of non-deducible norms: sociology of law,
31
etc.; customs
and habit patterns
9. Diachronic and synchronic problems in the
33
II - STRUCTURES AND RULES (OR
NORMS)
Having posed the problems in their most general forms in
sections 1 to 4, let us now try to go into the details of common
mechanisms by following the plan provided by the distinction between rules,
values and signs.
One of the most general trends of avant-garde movements
in all the human sciences is structuralism, which is taking the place of
atomistic attitudes or ‘holistic’ explanations (emergent
wholes).
The method intended to master problems of wholes - which
at first seems to be the most rational and rewarding because it corresponds to
the most elementary intellectual operations (those of assembling or adding
together) – consists in explaining the complex by the simple, in other words in
reducing phenomena to atomistic elements the sum of the properties of which is
supposed to represent the whole which has to be interpreted. Such atomistic methods of posing problems
eventually lead to the laws of the structure as such being forgotten or
distorted. They have by no means
disappeared from the field of human sciences and may be found for example in
psychology in associationist theories of learning
(
The second trend which can be observed in a number of
separate disciplines is one which, in the face of complex systems, consists in
stressing the characteristics of ‘wholeness’ peculiar to these stems while considering that wholeness
to be directly ‘emergent’ from the assembly of elements and as imposing itself
upon them, by structuring them, as a result of this constraint of the ‘whole’;
above all, it consists in considering the whole to be self-explanatory by the
mere fact of its description. Two
examples of such an attitude may be given, one
21
corresponding to certain current psychological trends
and the other connected with a sociological school which is now extinct. The first example is that of certain
adherents of ‘Gestalt’ psychology which was principally the product of
experimental studies on perception but was extended by W. Köhler and M.
Wertheimer into the field of intelligence and by K. Lewin into that of
affectivity and social psychology. According to some of these authors we
proceed in all fields from an awareness of wholes preceding any analysis of the
elements, these wholes being due to effects of ‘fields’ which determine the
forms by quasi-physical principles of equilibrium (minimum action, etc.); the
whole being distinct from the sum of its parts, Gestalts then obey laws of composition
which are non-additive but are of qualitative predominance (Pragnauz)
(the ‘best’ forms prevail by reason of their regularity, their
simplicity, their symmetry, etc.)
The prevalent opinion today is that this method offers good descriptions
but not explanations and that, if one advances from perceptive or motive
Gestalts to forms of intelligence, these latter constitute systems which are
additive but which nevertheless involve laws as being complete systems (which
puts the problem in terms of algebraic structures or systems of transformations
and no longer in terms of Gestalts).
In an entirely different field, Durkheim’s sociology
proceeded in a similar manner by seeing in the social whole a new totality
emerging on a higher scale from the assembly of individuals and reacting upon
them by imposing on them a variety of ‘constraints’. It is interesting to note that this
school, whose twofold merit was to emphasize with particular vigour the
specificity of sociology as distinct from psychology and to supply an impressive
body of specialized work, likewise died a natural death for the lack of a
relational structuralism which might have supplied some laws of composition or
construction instead of referring unremittingly to a totality conceived as
ready-made.
The third position, then, is that of structuralism, but
interpreted as relational, that is to say as positing systems of interactions or
transformations as the primary reality and hence subordinating elements from the
outset to the relations surrounding them and, reciprocally, conceiving the whole
as the product of the composition of these formative interactions. It is of great interest, from our
interdisciplinary point of view, to note that this trend - which is increasingly
evident in the human sciences 11 - is still more general and
manifests itself just as clearly in mathematics and biology. In mathematics the Bourbaki movement has
led to breaking down the frontiers between the traditional branches in order to
identify certain general structures regardless of their content and to draw, by
combinations or differentiations, the details of particular structures from
three mother-structures. And
although this process-of-fusion has today been replaced by analysis of
‘categories’ (classes of elements with their functions), that is again a form of
relational structuralism, but one which comes closer to the effective
construction characteristic of the work of mathematicians. In biology ‘organicism’ similarly
represents a tertium between pseudo-mechanistic atomism and the
emergent wholes of vitalism, and the most convinced theoretician of organicism
has created a movement of ‘general theory of systems’ with interdisciplinary
aims as regards, inter alia, the field of
psychology
22
(Bertalanffy has been influenced by Gestalt theory but
goes considerably beyond it).
Having said this, there exists a whole range of possible
‘structures’ spread over three directions, and our first problem is to
understand the relation between them (the first of these directions corresponds
to what we called completed structures in section 3 and the other two to
structures in process of formation or not closed):
1. Algebraic and topological structures, including
logical models since logic is a particular case of general algebra (for example,
the ordinary logic of propositions is based on Boolean algebra). Thus in ethnology Levi-Strauss reduces
kinship relations to group or lattice structures, etc. In intelligence theory we have tried to
describe intellectual operations the formation of which can be followed in the
course of individual development by defining overall structures in the form of
elementary algebraic structures or ‘groupments’ (akin to groupoids) and
then, at the level of pre-adolescence and adolescence, of lattices and groups of
assembled quaternities. Structuralist linguistics likewise has
recourse to algebraic structures (monoids, etc.) and the same is true of
econometrics (linear and non-linear programmes).
2. Cybernetic circuits which describe systems of
regulations and whose use is essential in psychophysiology and in learning
mechanisms. Ashby, the designer of
the famous ‘homeostat’ which enables problems to be solved by a process of
balancing, has recently supplied in his Introduction to Cybernetics
a model of regulation whose feedback actions are themselves determined
by an imputation table of the games theory type. This model, which he regards as one of
the most general and simplest to be made biologically, shows a possible link
between psychological and praxeological or even economic regulations (see
section 13).
3. Stochastic models used in econometrics, demography
and often in psychology. But
whereas chance plays a constant role in human events and therefore requires to
be treated on its own, it is never pure in the sense that the reaction to the
fortuitous, whether favourable or unfavourable, is in varying degrees an active
reaction, which brings us back to regulations. Thus this type 3 results from a
complication of 2, as type 2 is of 1 (remembering that the
operation is a ‘perfect’ regulation with pre-correction of
errors).
Thus structuralist research gives rise to at least three
major interdisciplinary problems (without semantic correspondence with these
three types of structure but in relation to them as a
whole):
a. A
problem of comparison of structures according to their sphere of application.
It is not by chance, for example,
that structures of perception (‘good forms’, perceptual constancy regarding
size, etc., systematic errors or ‘illusions’, etc.) refer to models of
regulations which are more or less close, or applicable, to an assumed whole,
and that structures of intelligence at various levels of equilibrium relate to
algebraic models; the reason is that the latter involve a logic, whereas
perceptual structures, despite their partial (but only partial, while Gestalt
theory postulated direct identifications) isomorphisms with the former, contain
a possibility of systematic deformation (or ‘illusions’) which from the
algebraic viewpoint constitute ‘non-compensated
transforma-
23
tions’. The
same goes for the unquestionable advantage to be found in looking among social
phenomena for those which do or do not relate to a particular type of structure,
which amounts in the end to delimiting what is amenable to logic and what is a
matter of guesswork and readjustment.
In this connexion attempts can be made (and we have
tried to do this in genetic psychology) to establish ‘partial isomorphisms’ to
facilitate such comparisons between structures, in particular by specific
fields. Such a concept has no
meaning from a purely formal point of view, which requires that an isomorphism
must be total or not exist at all; after all, anything is partially isomorphic
with anything else. But the method
acquires concrete and genetic meaning if two preliminary conditions are set for
such research: 1) that one can determine the transformations which are necessary
in order to pass from one structure to an adjacent one, and especially, 2)
that one can show, genetically or historically, that these transformations
are effectively achieved in certain situations, or are sufficiently probable (by
direct affiliation or by collateral kinship, the common trunk from which the
branches diverge being specified).
b. This
leads us to the second of the major intradisciplinary or interdisciplinary
problems raised by structuralist research. Whereas the explanation of wholes by
atomistic methods leads to a geneticism without structures and the theory of
emergent wholes leads to a structuralism without genesis (which is also
partially true of Gestalt theories or of any irreducible social view in
sociology), the central problem of structuralism in the biological and human
sciences is that of reconciling structure and genesis, since every structure
involves a genesis and every genesis must be conceived as the (strictly
formative) transition of an initial structure to a final structure. In other words, the fundamental problem
is that of the filiation of structures, and the triad of algebraic, cybernetic
and stochastic structures immediately raises the question of the possibilities
of transition from one of these categories to the others.
There is above all the problem of relations between
cybernetic and algebraic structures, and in this connexion genetic psychology
supplies some highly significant indications. Between the elementary levels where
cognitive conduct proceeds by trial-and-error or immediate perceptive intuitions
(two forms implying regulations in the sense of cybernetic circuits) and those
levels where, towards 7-8 or 12-15 years, algebraic structures
recognisable by the strict co-ordination of ‘operations’ are constituted (as
actions which are directed inwards, reversible and related to overall structures
with their laws of composition), one finds all the intermediary stages in the
form of pre-operational representations still involving simple regulations but
tending towards a form of operation. From this one may conclude that operation
constitutes the limiting stage of regulation in the sense that the latter, being
at first a correction of error as the result of action and later a correction of
action as anticipating its possible deviations, finally becomes pre-correction
of error, which is the function of operational deduction: feedback is then
promoted to the rank of an inverse operation and the system by its composition
alone ensures all the possible compensations. Although it is not possible at present to
say whether this process is peculiar to the field under consideration or can be
more generally applied to
24
others, we may conceive of similar processes in the
spheres of the sociology of knowledge, sociology of law and sociology of moral
facts, and possibly also in structuralist
linguistics.12
c. The third major problem which arises in
comparative studies is that of the nature of the structures arrived at, i.e.
whether they constitute simple ‘models’ in the service of theoreticians or
whether they should be considered as inherent to the reality under study, in
other words as structures of the subject or subjects themselves. This question is fundamental, because in
the eyes of authors critical of structuralism the latter is merely a language or
a computing instrument which refers to the observer’s logic but not to the
subject. This problem is often
raised even in psychology, where experimentation is relatively easy and where
one can in certain cases be fairly sure that structure reaches down to the
underlying explanatory principle of phenomena, in a sense which recalls what the
philosophers call the ‘essence’, but with the addition of an undeniable
deductive power. But in disciplines
where experimentation is difficult, even in the broadest sense as in
econometrics, experts often stress the divergence they see between the
mathematical ‘model’ and the ‘experimental design’, a model without sufficient
relationship with the concrete being no more than a play of mathematical
relations, whereas a model which adopts the details of the experimental design
can claim the status of a ‘real’ structure. It goes without saying that in most
situations the models used in the human sciences are placed, still more than
physical and even biological models, halfway between the ‘model’ and the
‘structure’, in other words between the theoretical design partially related to
the observer’s decisions and the actual organization of the behaviours to be
explained.
Note. -
Lastly, we should say a few words about a problem allied to the preceding one
which we were advised to include in the list of topics covering all the sciences
of man, namely that of what some have ventured to call the ‘empirical analysis
of causality’. Two questions should
be carefully distinguished here, that of causal explanation in general and that
of functional dependence between observable facts which can be identified either
by dissociation of factors in experimental research or by analysis of
multi-variabilities in non-experimental research (in economics and sociology,
of. the works of Blalock, Lazarsfeld, etc.). The second of these questions does indeed
concern all the human sciences, but from an essentially methodological point of
view, without leading, properly speaking, to the discovery of new common
mechanisms unless by further refining the concept of functional dependence as
opposed to simple correlations. On
the other hand, the problem of causal explanation in general brings out the
latent conflict which will doubtless exist for a long time yet between the
partisans of a positivism wedded to observables and those authors who seek
identify, beneath those observables, ‘structures’ capable of accounting for
their variations. It goes without
saying that problems of causality are reduced, if such structures exist, to the
lattices formation, their internal transformations and their self-adjustment;
seen in this light, the search for functional dependence is only a stage towards
the discovery of structural mechanisms, and the analysis of function could not
be pursued to any length without arriving sooner or
25
later at these mechanisms. As to which of these two fundamental
lines of approach will eventually prevail, it is not for us to say. For the moment we should merely note the
rather striking convergences becoming apparent between schools of thought which
may be described by the very general name of genetic structuralism in
psychological research on development, in the study of ‘generative grammars’ in
linguistics, and in certain analyses, outwardly very different, in economics and
Marxist-inspired sociology.
The third problem we have raised (under c)
often finds a possible solution in the following form: when following
the formation of a structure one observes on its completion some modifications
in the subject’s behaviour which are difficult to explain otherwise than by that
completion itself, in other words by the ‘closure’ of the structure. These are fundamental facts which are
translated in the consciousness
13 of the subject by feelings of
obligation or of ‘normative necessity’ and in his behaviour by obedience to
‘rules’. Let us recall that
according to the habitual, if not general, terminology of experts in the study
of ‘normative facts” 14 a rule is recognized by the fact that it
imposes an obligation but can be either violated or respected, contrary to a
causal ‘law’ or determination which suffers no exceptions unless it be by reason
of contingency variations due to a mixture of causes.
An example should explain this role of the closure of
structure. A child of 4 or 5
years is generally unable to deduce that A <C if he has
noted separately that A <B and then that B < C
(but without having seen A and C together). Moreover, he is unable to construct a
seriation of slightly differentiated objects A <B < C < D
... or manages to do so only by groping. On the other hand when he later achieves
a flawless construct consisting in the successive placing of the smallest of the
remaining elements (hence comprehension of the fact that an element E
is simultaneously greater than the preceding elements, E > D, C,
etc., and smaller than the following elements, E <
F, G, etc.), he resolves by so doing the problem of transitivity and will
no longer judge A < C as undecidable or simply probable,
but as necessary (‘it’s got to be’, etc.) if he has seen that A <B
and B < C. This feeling of logical
necessity, difficult to evaluate like all states of consciousness, will be
translated in behaviour by the use and recognition of
transitivity.
Many other examples could be quoted in other fields of
individual development such as the emergence of a sense of justice as a highly
imperative norm succeeding a morality of obedience at the age where relations of
reciprocity are structured outside or in opposition to relations of
subordination. In the historical
development of societies it seems clear likewise that democratic ideals have
gained currency as a function of changes in structures,
etc.
Thus the study of rules or normative facts constitutes
an important sector of the study of structures, the more so as it provides a
link between structuralism and the actual behaviour of subjects. Moreover, such rules are observed in all
the
26
fields covered by the human sciences; even in demography
it is impossible, for example, to dissociate the birth rate from a
variety of moral and legal rules. Where Durkheim saw the process of
‘constraints’ as the most general social fact, he was expressing this common
characteristic of various social behaviours, namely, that they are accompanied
by rules.
There arise out of this a certain number of
interdisciplinary problems which are as yet far from being resolved, but in
respect of which a twofold trend can be observed: they are raised in every field
and they are treated by means of bilateral connexions. We may distinguish three such
problems:
a. The
first question is to establish whether rules or obligations are necessarily of a
social nature, that is to say whether they presuppose an interaction between at
least two individuals, or whether they may be of endogenous character. The question is merely a sub-division of
the more general question whether all ‘real’ or natural structures (as opposed
to exclusively theoretical ‘models’) are translated in the behaviour according
to rules.
To this more general question one might be tempted to
reply immediately in the negative, since there exist, for example, perceptive
structures whose social component is nil or very small
15 and which
are not accompanied by ‘rules’ in the normative sense. However, they are translated by
‘predominances’ (‘good form’ wins over an irregular form, etc.), and in the
opinion of certain authors there are many intermediate stages between
predominance and logical necessity which would raise the question of
relations between the normative and the ‘normal’, not in the sense of a simple
dominant frequency but of the state of equilibrium (achieved, moreover, by
self-regulation, which implies possible new connexions between the ‘regulable’
and the ‘rule’).
The question therefore is far from simple. The dominant trends would seem to be the
following: on the one hand there is increasingly general doubt as to the
existence of ‘innate’ rules such as a logic or a morality transmitted through
hereditary channels. 16
Natural logical operations begin to occur only very gradually (on an
average hardly before 7 or 8 years in developed societies) in accordance with a
constant sequential order but without that fixed regularity in age levels which
would bear witness to internal or nervous maturation. They are certainly drawn from the most
general forms of co-ordination of actions, but these are collective as much as
individual actions, so that they appear to be the result of a progressive
balancing of a psycho-socio1ogical kind, far more than as biologically inherited
(in other words the human brain contains no hereditary programming, as would be
the case if logico-mathematical behaviours constituted something in the nature
of instincts; instead it shows a hereditary functioning the utilization of which
allows both collective life and the setting up of general co-ordination from which these
structures obtain their point of departure). Moral obligations, as J. M. Baldwin, P.
Bovet and Freud have shown, are linked in their formation with inter-individual
interactions, etc.
Moreover it appears increasingly probable that if every
balanced structure imposes not only regularities but also a certain predominance
due to its own regulations, and if every system of regulations involves, by the
very fact of its successes or failures, an obligatory distinction between the
normal and the
27
abnormal (concepts peculiar to living matter and devoid
of meaning in physico-chemistry), there nevertheless exists a kind of limiting
point which both separates and unites regulations and operations (see section
5). This point of transition
might well in many cases be that between the individual and the
inter-individual.
b. A second
general problem which follows on from what we have just said is that of types of
obligations or rules. Logical
necessity is translated into coherent operations capable of constituting
deductive structures, but there exists a large number of obligations and rules
without intrinsic consistency, arising essentially from constraints of a more or
less contingent or momentary kind, the extreme case being that of the rules of
spelling whose arbitrary nature is sufficiently demonstrated by history. Even independently from the questions
raised under a, it is evident therefore that not every obligation
extends into possible ‘operations’ in the limited sense in which we have adopted
this term (section 5), but that a certain number of systems of rules do not go
beyond the level of structures of regulations.
The second general problem raised by systems of rules is
thus to construct, by means of interdisciplinary comparisons, a hierarchy of
varieties of structures, starting with operational structures of various forms
and ending with those which are based on regulations, likewise of various forms
and involving a greater or lesser degree of chance.
c. The
third great problem raised by systems of rules is that of interference between
rules belonging to different fields. This problem, some examples of which we
shall presently discuss occurs in two forms. First there is the question of effective
intersections of structures leading to interferences between rules: for example,
a legal system is a body of rules sui generis, that is to say
irreducible to moral or logical rules; but objectively it involves all kinds of
interferences with those other two systems by the mere fact that it must not
contradict either of them (which may be easier in one case than in another).
17 But there are also
intersections due to the subject’s realization of the structure, this
realization perhaps being adequate but partial or distortive as a result of
various subjective influences. Thus
the usual grammar of teachers is nothing other than a very incomplete and in
part distortive realization of linguistic structures and generally interferes
with obligations of the quasi-moral type.
7. Examples of interferences in the field of logical
structures
The case of logical structures is a good example of how
impossible it is today to isolate a form of research which yet is very distinct
and possesses every characteristic that might have made of it a kind of
absolute, secure from interdisciplinary contacts. Formal logic is at present perhaps the
most exact of disciplines in terms of the rigour of its demonstrations. It can be placed at the starting point of
mathematics, so much so that one might hesitate to include it among the sciences
of man and that those responsible for the organization of the present series
have not included it among the disciplines selected for study. Above all, logic, using as it does an
axiomatic or ‘formalizing’ method, ignores
28
the psychological ‘subject’ as a matter of principle,
having become a ‘logic without subject’ so that the attributes it has mapped out
for itself forbid it even to inquire whether ‘subjects without logic’ even
exist.
Yet the internal evolution of logic itself as well as
the external evolution of branches outside its field compel us to note the
existence of numerous centrifugal trends which inevitably give rise to problems
of interdisciplinary connexions.
The first of these trends arose from the discovery by K.
Goedel in 1931 of the limits of formalization. In a series of celebrated theorems Goedel
showed that it is impossible for a theory of a certain richness (e.g. elementary
as opposed to transfinite arithmetic) to demonstrate its own non-contradiction
solely by its own means and by logical means weaker than those it implies; in
this way it must of necessity arrive at certain undecidable propositions, and in
order to decide these it is necessary to resort to ‘stronger’ means (e.g.
transfinite arithmetic). In other
words logic is no longer an edifice resting on its base but a construct whose
consistency depends on higher levels which are never completed because each in
turn has need of the next. But as
soon as there is a construct we must ask: a construct of what and by whom? And if there are limits to formalization
we must ask why, to which J. Ladriere, for instance, replies by invoking the
impossibility for the subject to embrace in a single field the totality of its
possible operations (which in fact is an appeal to psychology to produce an
epistemology of logic: see below).
Another and equally remarkable internal trend is the
concern shown by certain logicians for establishing a connexion between formal
logic and certain systems of norms or rules used by subjects collectively. We have already quoted (section 4) works
like those by Weinberger, etc., which apply formal logic to connexions between
norms posed in the imperative. But
mention should be made especially of the important work of the Belgian logician
Ch. Perelman in the field of argumentation. Perelman sets out to study from a logical
point of view the many situations where a partner seeks to act upon another not
through sentiment or extrinsic arguments of authority, etc., that is to say not
through those sophisms which have so wrongly been grouped under the name of
‘logic of sentiments’ (for the true logic of sentiments is morality, with which
Perelman is beginning to concern himself), but through an argumentation which is
logically coherent although directed and organized so as to convince. A vast body of works has appeared on this
subject 18 among which we find in particular a study by L. Apostel on
the presuppositions of such a theory and more particularly on the relations
between logical operations and the general co-ordination of actions (Apostel
shows in this respect the kinship between Perelman’s analyses and the writer’s
own research on the development of logical structures proceeding from action).
Starting from the theory of
argumentation, Perelman has naturally been led to study the logic of legal
structures, and a very active collaboration on this issue between jurists and
logicians has been established under his direction and has already yielded a
number of studies.
A third trend common to certain logicians consists in
taking an interest in psychology, not of course in order to find in it the
internal foundations of logic
29
(which would mean going from the fact to the norm, or
‘psychologism’, as little valid as the inverse movement or ‘logicism’) but with
a view to its general epistemology. If it is the nature of logic to be a
construct, it becomes difficult to interpret it epistemologically as a simple
language and moreover a strictly tautological one as logical positivism
proposes. That is why logicians who
no longer believe this thesis or have never believed it are turning in the
direction of psychological or psycho-social construction of structures. It should be noted, however, that this is
not simply a formalization of ‘natural’ thought or logic, which is of limited
interest (except in situations where it develops specific techniques such as
that of argumentation, which has been analysed by Perelman): first because
natural logic is generally poor compared with the richness of axiomatics, but
especially because it constitutes only a highly imperfect realization of the
underlying structures. What these
logicians are seeking is therefore less an analysis of the consciousness of
subjects than a study of structures, in their filiations and formations, which
then makes it possible to show the stages whereby one arrives, starting with
elementary behaviours, at the algebraic structures of logic itself (Boolean
algebra and network, etc.). This is
the subject studied by the logicians working at the lnternational Centre of
Genetic Epistemology in
One of the reasons why the problem of the epistemology
of logic thus forms a bridge between logic and genetic psychology, is that the
latter has for years gone out to meet problems of this kind. For it is impossible to study the
development of the intelligence from the first years of childhood to adolescence
or to the adult state without coming up against a certain number of findings
which fall within ‘the sphere of logic. The first of these findings is that even
in the pre-language stage there exist, at the level of sensori-motor action
patterns, certain structures of interlocking, order, correspondence, etc., which
prefigure logic and display its links with the general co-ordination of action.
Later we find that by a process of
successive balancings the common operations of classification, seriation,
correspondence or intersection come to constitute (towards 7-8 years)
formalizable structures halfway between ‘groups’ and ‘networks’, which we have
called ‘groupings’. We find above
all that at a third stage (11-12 years) these groupings are co-ordinated
simultaneously in a quaternality group and a network of interpropositional
connections. For interdisciplinary
research it is of interest to note that this ‘group’ of
propositional transformations, widely studied by logicians since 1950,
was discovered in genetic psychology before it was analysed in its logistic
formalization.
Relations between logic and economics are of two kinds,
thanks to the theory of games. On
the one hand the logician may take an interest in games theory as in any other
logico-mathematical procedure in order to establish its axiomatics. On the other hand, however, induction (in
other words the full range of inferences applied to a field of experience where
contingency intervenes) is a ‘game’ between the experimenter and nature, and it
is possible to conceive of a theory of induction based on strategies and
decisions. Since several authors
regard deduction as an extreme case of induction, we thus see the connexion
between logic as a whole and epistemology. There is no need to recall that
this
30
epistemology of logic can a fortiori be
placed in relation with cybernetics by a double movement similar to that just
referred to, which we may cite with T. Greniewski, an expert in connexions
between logic and cybernetics.
As to exchanges between logic and linguistics, we shall
come to them when discussing the latter.
8. Systems
of non-deducible norms: sociology of law, etc.; customs and habit
patterns
Independently of the specific questions of legal logic
which have been discussed, there exists a major problem the importance of which
has found expression in several contemporary trends in a variety of disciplines,
namely that of the general structure of systems of norms. From this viewpoint of overall
structures, which is becoming increasingly dominant, it is by no means
sufficient to know that a particular legal reasoning can be put in logical form;
this does not alter the fact that a legal system in its total form in the sense
employed by H. Kelsen (from the ‘fundamental norm’ and the constitution to
individualized norms such as all court judgements, diplomas, etc.) is at the
same time very close to a logical system and very different from
it.
The analogy is that in both cases there exists a
construct of normative values achieved by means of actions or operations, and
that these results are valid depending on a series of transitive implications.
If such and such axioms are
accepted, then such and such theorems T1 follow which lead to such
and such other theorems T2, etc., according to a series of
implications placed in hierarchical order. Thus if a constitution is accepted, then
parliament has the right to enact laws L which are valid by virtue
of the constitutional norm; then the government has a right to take a decision
D which is valid by virtue of the law L; then such
and such an office has the right to settle an individual case C in
a valid manner by virtue of the governmental decree D, etc. This succession of normative
constructions (each norm being at the same time the application of the previous
one and the creation of the next one) is readily comparable to a series of
implications, and Kelsen explicitly defines this implicative relationship under
the term of ‘imputation’ (central or peripheral depending on whether it
qualifies the subjects of law or the implications alone).
The great difference however is that if one knows the
content of axioms, one can deduce the succeeding theorems: they were not, of
course, tautologically pre-formed within the axioms, since these axioms are
independent one from another, but the new combinations obtained are ‘necessary’
(they could not have been other than they are by virtue of the given
operations). In the legal system,
on the other hand, one merely knows that parliament cannot violate the
constitution, but within this framework it votes what it likes; in other words
the constructive operations take place in a valid fashion as a function of
transitive and necessary imputations, but their results remain contingent
because they are not determined by the form of these operations, only their
validities being so determined to the extent that they are not in contradiction
with norms of a superior category.
31
In other words there exist normative structures whose
actual form determines their content and which for this reason can be described
as formal, and others whose form does not determine their content. The former, which can give rise to ‘pure’
deductive disciplines (pure logic and mathematics) nevertheless concern all
human behaviour, since economic exchanges could not proceed beyond the barter
stage if everyone did not accept the fact that twice two makes four. There is therefore some advantage in
making a comparison of structures and systems of rules from the standpoint of
these relations between form and content, and it will be seen at once that such
comparative analyses can be carried out only by means of close interdisciplinary
collaboration.
The study of moral facts offers another example of such
problems and it is not pure chance that this subject has attracted the interest
of sociologists, psychologists, certain logicians, jurists,
19
experts in the sociology of law and an appreciable number of economists
(utilitarian explanations of moral facts are essentially the product of schools
of thought built up by Anglo-Saxon economists). The French economist J. Rueff, in a
highly stimulating study on moral facts, has raised the problem of the
formalization of different moralities, using the significant terms ‘Euclidian’
and ‘non-Euclidian’ moralities to bring out the differences in postulates
associated with moralities observable and widespread in the social group. By following the psychogenetic
development of moral rules in the child and adolescent, the writer has been led
to distinguish in that development two clearly distinct forms of structures
depending on whether the source of the norms is to be found in obedience to
persons who are the object of unilateral or whether it relates to a system
reciprocity or mutual respect (that being, in particular, the source of concepts
of justice which are acquired independently and often to the detriment of the
morality of obedience). From the
point of view which concerns us here, the former of these moralities clearly
belongs to those structures whose form does not determine their content, while
in the latter we do observe an effect of form upon content. The writer was accordingly able to try to
formalize the second of these two systems, in which it is not difficult to find
analogies with those logical operations which are involved in an
inter-individual co-operation of a cognitive nature. Thus the generality of such problems
becomes evident at once.
Indeed these problems are so general that they can be
found in all those aspects of social life which Durkheim described under the
common term of ‘constraints’ and within which we must distinguish at least two
poles: that of norms imposed by an authority or by custom, which place an
obligation on the individual without his participating in their creation, and
that of norms resulting from a collaboration of a kind in which the partners
contribute to the formation of the norm which places an obligation upon them.
It will be seen at once that the
latter case is oriented in the direction of systems whose form determines their
content to varying degrees.
The problems crystallize in particular around the
question (always a central one) of relations between custom or habit and
obligation or rule. When Thurnwald
in a famous phrase laid down that ‘recognised constraint transforms custom into
law” he was raising a much more general problem than that of the birth
of
32
law in tribal societies, and one which is still under
study today: how does one move from a structure which is simply regular or
balanced to a system of rules or norms? In the sociology of law the formula we
have quoted emphasizes with great truth that custom does not suffice so long as
there has been no ‘recognition’. Similarly in the field of moral facts
neither habit nor example are sufficient, so long as a certain relation of
‘respect’ or recognition of a value connected with the person has not been
established (and no longer connected merely with transpersonal functions or
services, as in the legal sphere). But in the field of intellectual
operations where, as we have just seen, the very form of the norms determines
their content, although logic is certainly a morality of the exchange of thought
and of cognitive co-operation, a certain coefficient of internal necessity
attaches to any deduction based on a balanced operational structure, as though
the transition from action to reversible operation were sufficient to engender
the regulated structure which governs cognitive common production as well as
individual constructs. Lastly, in
the sphere of patterns of habit and perception peculiar to the individual alone,
although no normative necessity is involved, there nevertheless exist phenomena
of predominance due to an internal balance where there is no longer any question
of norms but where we are nevertheless faced with an attenuated form of that
necessity which dominates in the higher varieties of
balance.
Hence the trend which we discern in this line of
research would lead to the acceptance of the fact that the transition of
structures into rules presupposes two conditions. The preliminary condition is a condition
of balance: the structure becomes a rule only if it closes back on itself in a
sufficiently balanced form which expresses itself in predominances of different
kinds if that balance is due to regulations, and by intrinsic necessity if it is
operational. The second condition
appears with inter-individual relations and is once again a matter of forms of
balance, but in this case forms which are relative to these collective
situations: their regulations or the operations which derive from them are then
expressed by those different states of consciousness which lead from
trans-personal recognition or from respect for persons to various forms of
obligation properly speaking.
9. Diachronic and synchronic problems in the field of
norms
It is well-known that linguistics, beginning with the
works of F. de Saussure, has proceeded to dissociate diachronic studies, or
studies of history and evolution of language, from synchronic considerations
connected with the balance of language as an existing system in a state of
relative independence from its past. We also know the extent to which economic
crises can modify the state of values and so dissociate them from their previous
history. On the contrary, it is in
the nature of rules or norms to introduce compulsory conservation, which is why
their function is of such great importance in the life of societies and
individuals. The norm is therefore
by its very nature the essential instrument of connexion between the diachronic
and the synchronic.
33
The fact
remains that structures and rules develop, that they were formed
little by little, and that even in the case of progressively acquired stability
new structures or norms can modify the meaning of preceding ones to a more or
less deep extent, even if they do not replace them. We are thus confronted with a new major
problem of interdisciplinary comparison, that of the uniformity or variety of
relations between diachronic and synchronic factors depending on different types
of structures or norms.20
Taking logical norms first, these may appear to
constitute the prototype of unchangeable structures since a variety of
philosophers from Plato to Husserl have linked them with Ideas, a priori
forms or eternal or at least timeless fundamentals. A. Comte, one of the precursors or
founders of scientific sociology, described the development of fundamental
concepts in his Law of the Three States (whose value we are not
called upon to discuss here), but maintained that this development concerned
only the content of human reason whilst its forms, in other words the actual
processes of reasoning or ‘natural logic’, remained invariable. A trend which is fairly general today,
owing to the history of sciences and techniques; to work on comparative
sociology and on genetic psychology; and especially to the evolutionist
viewpoints which are now dominant in ethology and zoopsychology, leads us to
think on the contrary that reason was built up by stages and continues to
evolve, not without reason or reasons but in such a manner that not only is the
evidence transformed but even that which appears logically demonstrated or
rigorous at a given stage may subsequently appear doubtful and may give rise to
considerably greater degrees of rigour.
On the other hand, if reason evolves, the progressive
constructs to which it give rise constitute an extremely remarkable type of
development in the sense that the previous structures are not set aside or
destroyed but are integrated in the subsequent ones as specific cases valid in a
certain sector or at a certain scale of approximation. The same is not true of the experimental
sciences, starting with physics where a theory can be contradicted by another or
retain only a limited degree of truth. But in the field of logico-mathematical
structures no structure which has been demonstrated as valid at a moment in
history is subsequently abandoned, the error consisting merely in believing it
to be unique and in that sense necessary, whereas later it becomes the
sub-structure of a richer and broader whole. From the point of view of relations
between the diachronic and the synchronic we thus have here an exceptional
situation in which the existing equilibrium appears as the product of a
historical process of more or less continuous balancing (crises or momentary
imbalances being no more than crises of growth or break-throughs to new
problems).
If we compare this situation with that of a system of
legal norms, the contrast is striking. A well-made system of such norms does, of
course, provide for its own modification in the sense that as soon as a
constitution exists, and at every stage of normative construction provided and
implied by it, there is a possibility of revision or modification. In a certain sense therefore there is
continuity in normative creation, and in this respect we find here the connexion
between the diachronic and the synchronic which is peculiar to systems of rules
as opposed
34
to systems of non-normative values or signs. Yet the situation is quite different from
that which exists in the case of rational norms. In the first place there is nothing to
prevent the new norm from replacing and contradicting the one which is
abolished; this does not create any break in the transitive succession of valid
‘imputations’, but it does create a discontinuity in the actual content of the
norms. Secondly, the relative
continuity of which we have been speaking remains subordinate to the stability
of the political régime; in the event of a revolution, the entire system is
abolished for the benefit of a new one unrelated to the
old.
In the field of moral norms continuity is doubtless
greater, but the problem of relations between diachronic and synchronic factors
nevertheless arises in very different terms from those of logical norms. When Durkheim, who tended to subordinate
the synchronic entirely to history, explained the prohibition of incest in
developed societies by the exogamy of tribal organizations, he was forgetting to
explain why so many other rules likewise attributed to totemism have not been
perpetuated in our time.
There is no point in piling up examples to show that
this is a field of interdisciplinary research of considerable general
importance. In the last analysis
the question comes down to this: to what degree is contemporary man dependent on
his history? A superficial answer
based on what has just been demonstrated would be to maintain that historical
factors are vitally important precisely because they are timeless and are, like
rational norms, a matter of invariables which history uncovers but does not
create or explain; while the great historic changes which introduce continuities
between certain systems of norms and the preceding ones would, by this
reasoning, stress the importance of synchronic re-balancings rather than of
continuous constructive processes. In reality there is a history of events
or of visible and in part contingent manifestations, and there is also the
history of the underlying dynamism or of processes of elaboration and
development. We are becoming
increasingly aware that organic development is far more than a history of events
or a succession of phenomena, but is a matter of progressive structuration or
organization whose qualitative stages are subordinate to an increasing
integration. That is why the
history of civilization is becoming more and more an interdisciplinary task
within which the history of science and technology, economic history, diachronic
sociology, etc., have to analyse concurrently the innumerable facets of the same
transformations. But it is also why
history is explicative even in what appear to be its timeless invariables,
because they have become such only as a result of constructive processes and
balancings which have to be reconstituted and which, by varying from one field
to another, mutually illuminate one another both in their differences and in
their common mechanisms.
35
Notes
11. It should be noted in particular that these trends of relational structuralism show considerable similarity with those of research in epistemology and methodology in the works of a certain number of Soviet authors (V. I. Kremyanski, Y. A. Levada, G. P. Chtchedrovitski, V. N. Sadovski, V. A. Lektorski, E. G. Youdine, etc.).
12. True, one may wonder what the term ‘operation’ signifies in a social system. But if we define an operation as an action which is capable of interiorisation, reversible and related to other operations within an overall structure, it is clear that operations occur in all inter-individual actions which are not based solely on relations of force or authority and in all collective actions where norms apply, in short wherever a trace of rationality can be found in a social system (which is by no means exceptional).
13. When we say ‘translated in the consciousness’ this means that the causality involved should not be sought within the consciousness but in the underlying structures of which the subject’s consciousness knows only the results, which he translates into terms of implications (see the end of section 3).
14. A ‘normative fact’ is the establishment by the sociologist (in sociology of law, etc.) of the fact that the subject recognizes a norm as binding upon him; by establishing this fact the observer merely notes it without himself adopting any position normatively, i.e. without evaluating the norm of the subject under study.
15. The role of language in colour perception has been studied but the effect is axguable. Bruner and Postman’s celebrated experiments on estimations of the diameter of a dollar coin or of any disc, varying with the subject’s economic level, have not been generally confirmed and are moreover open to other interpretations (centration effects) in those cases where they may possibly have been verified.
16. Exception should be made for N. Chomsky who believes that grammars have an ‘innate fixed kernel’; but one is entitled to wonder from the psychological point of view whether the rational fixed kernel does not result from the balancing of the sensori-motor mechanisms whose constitution precedes language and is only partially programmed by heredity.
17. Cf. the problem of ‘role conflicts’ (N. Gross, etc.).
18. Cf. inter alia ‘La theorie de l’argumentation. Perspectives et applications’, Logique et Analyse, nos. 21 to 24, 1963.
19. We should mention the important and still lively movement created by Petrazycki, to which we shall refer in section 12.
20. This problem coincides with one of the aspects of the question of relations between logic and history as they are formulated in Marxist literature: the relation of historical continuity in the formation of a system with structural dependence within the system under consideration (this as a reaction against the ‘unhistorical’ approach still so frequent in certain disciplines).