The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Harry Hillman Chartrand
April 2002
Jean Piaget
MAIN TRENDS IN INTER-
DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
- Section III Functioning and ValuesSection Index
Page
III - FUNCTIONING AND VALUES
35
10. Functioning and functions. Affectivity and
praxeology
36
11. Classification of Values
40
12. Regulations and operations relative to valorizations
of finality
43
13. Cybernetic circuits and economic adjustments
46
14. Synchronic and diachronic problems in the sphere of
function and value
49
In all the sciences of life and of man there has always
been opposition between so-called functionalist trends and structuralist trends.
In biology
Lamarck
35
maintained long ago that ‘the function creates the
organ’, whereas the neo-Darwinian theory of fortuitous variations and of
selection after the event tended to deprive Lamarck’s formulation of any
significant content; but the contemporary views; according to which the
phenotype is a ‘response’ of the genome to the tensions of the environment; tend
to go beyond both terms of the alternative by creating a new synthesis. In the psychological and social
disciplines the conflict is equally general between a functionalism some of
whose adherents see in the ‘structures underlying the observables’ no more than
simple abstractions created by theoreticians, and a structuralism some of whose
adepts regard the functional aspects of behaviour as secondary characteristics
without explicative meaning. It is
therefore a major interdisciplinary problem to identify the common mechanisms
which might be capable of co-ordinating functions and structures in all human
behaviour. This problem naturally
leads to that of utility or values as objective or subjective indices of
functioning, and also to the problem of the possibility of a general theory of
values based not on a priori reflection but on possible convergences that
may emerge from mutual connexions between research in all our
fields.
10. Functioning and functions. Affectivity and
praxeology
We must first ask ourselves whether the conflicts
between functionalism and structuralism do not in part stem from too narrow a
conception of structures which emphasises only their characteristics of totality
and internal transformations but overlooks their essential property of
self-adjustment. For if this
property is neglected, the structure takes on a static aspect which devalorizes
functioning, thus giving the impression that with structure one has established
a kind of permanent ‘entity’ related to the unchangeable properties of the human
spirit or of society in general. Hence the scepticism of functionalists
vis-à-vis such a hypothesis, which can in effect lead to
anti-functionalism.
But if one distinguishes between formal or formalized
structures, whose adjustment is due to the axioms conferred upon them by
theoreticians, and real structures which exist independently from theory, it is
necessary to ask how structures are conserved and how they act, which comes down
to raising the question of their functioning. Their self-adjustment can in some cases
be assured by rules or norms, as we have seen under II, but then these
rules already represent a function, that of maintaining the integrity of the
structure by a system of constraints or obligations. On the other hand it may be that the
structure is not completed; in its formative stages its self-adjustment will of
course as yet imply not a system of rules but a self-regulation whose
functioning may involve multiple variants. In particular it may happen that a
structure is not capable of ‘closure’ but depends on continual exchanges with
the exterior (see section 3). It is
in such situations that functions are distinct from structures and that
functionalist analysis becomes necessary to such a point- that its partisans
sometimes forget that it is difficult to conceive of functions without organs or
overall structure.
36
Thus the problem of accurately defining the relations
between structures and functions is a general one in the human sciences and
requires constant interdisciplinary help. In this connexion we should recall how K.
Lewin, whose social psychology is the product of Gestaltist structuralism, came
to describe the actual needs in that language and how W. Köhler, his teacher,
wrote a whole work on ‘the place of values in a world of facts’. Let us also recall how T. Parsons called
his method in sociology ‘structural-functional’, considering structure to be the
stable arrangement of the elements of a social system unaffected by fluctuations
imposed from outside, and function as occurring in the adaptations of structure
to situations exterior to it.
21 In economics, J. Tinbergen sees structure
as ‘the consideration of not immediately observable characteristics concerning
the manner in which the economy reacts to certain changes’. These characteristics, expressed in terms
of econometric coefficients, give on the one hand an architectural picture of
the economy but, on the other hand, indicate the ways in which it reacts to
certain variations; thus we find once again that structure is accompanied by
functions because it is capable of ‘reactions’.
If the structuralism of Levi-Strauss leads to a certain
devalorization of functionalism, that is essentially due to the fact that
genetic and historical factors are, so to speak, bound to be overlooked when one
is studying societies whose past is unknown and doubtless lost without recall.
On the other hand it is interesting
to note that the ‘neo-functionalism’ of young American sociologists such as A.
W. Gouldner and P. M. Blau is by no means closed to structuralist perspectives.
Thus both these authors endeavour
to clarify the relations between sub-systems and system, and to re-examine the
classical problem of social stratification, basing their analyses, however, on
the central notion of ‘reciprocity’ in the one case and on that of elementary
‘exchanges’ in the other. It seems
clear that such viewpoints in no way conflict (quite the reverse) with what we
described in section 5 as relational structuralism, their specific nature being
that they do not proceed from totalities in order to come down to constituent
relations but from the latter in order to illuminate the functioning of
sub-systems.
Generally speaking one may (cf. section 3) consider
functioning as the structuring activity whose structure constitutes the result
or the organized event. In the case
of a completed structure functioning is identical with those transformations
which are real among all those which are possible, and which characterize the
system as such. As to function, the
term can be used to designate the particular role played by a specific
transformation relative to that entire set of transformations (the two meanings,
biological and mathematical, 22 of the word ‘function’ then tend to
become interchangeable). But in the
case of a structure in process of formation or of development, or generally not
‘closed’, where for that reason self-adjustment so far consists only in
regulations and where exchanges are open to the exterior, functioning is
formative and not merely transformative and functions correspond to utilities
(or values) of various kinds depending on the roles of conservation,
reinforcement or perturbation which the functioning of sub-systems may play in
relation to the total system, or vice versa.
It is from this viewpoint, among others, that an
interdisciplinary model
37
such as that of the theory of ‘general systems’ is of
particular value (a system being defined as a complex of elements in
non-contingent interaction). In his
works on scientific thought A. N. Whitehead already supported the notion that
interpretations usually denounced as being ‘mechanical’ could not deal
exhaustively with the analysis of the real and that the concepts of organism or
organization have specific characteristics which ought to be used. Proceeding from biology (but also from a
Gestalt-oriented psychological view), L. von Bertalanffy studied this problem by
seeking to derive from this ‘organicism’ certain general models whose interest
is not merely biological (theory of ‘open’ systems and their specific
thermodynamics) but also extends to a certain number of the human sciences
insofar as it is possible to generalize the notions of homeostasis (inter
alia for the theory of needs), differentiation, stratification, etc.
23
Experiments in the
mathematical analysis of such structures having an ‘organized complexity’, with
which A. Rapoport and others have been associated, rapidly showed the
convergence between some of these anticipations and N. Wiener’s
24
cybernetics, especially in the field of ‘equifinality’ (arrival at final states
which are relatively independent of initial conditions). But the central problem remains that of
relations between sub-systems and the total system when (and this is the general
case of structures not yet reducible to algebraic forms) the composition of the
whole is not additive or linear.
To return to functions, utility or values, it therefore
seems evident that to the extent that the structures under consideration are in
process of development (or of regression), questions of functioning are at the
heart of the problems. Any genetic
process which results in structures undoubtedly consists of balancings
alternating with imbalances followed by rebalancing (which may succeed or fail),
since human beings never remain passive but constantly pursue some aim or react
to perturbations by active compensations consisting in regulations. It follows from this that every action
proceeds from a need which is connected with the system as a whole and that
values likewise dependent on the system as a whole are attached to every action
and to every situation favourable or unfavourable to its execution. In the sphere of cognitive structures,
where needs and values are relative to the activities of comprehension and
invention, such a model makes it possible to explain simultaneously the
psychological progression of stages of mental development and the logical
nature of the structures thus achieved (since regulations lead to operations and
balancing leads to their reversibility; see section 7). This cognitive development is already a
social as much as a psychological or even a biological one, since the operations
of the individual are indissociable from inter-individual co-operation (in the
most etymological sense of the word). Thus the model seems to be partly open to
generalization in the social field as a whole (we shall return to this issue in
section 14), but only on condition that consideration is given to needs and
values of whatever nature, not only in their cognitive
forms.
In this connexion reference should undoubtedly be made
to a specific type of research which may be called ‘praxeology’ (cf. Main
Trends, vol. 3) and which is a theory, essentially interdisciplinary, of
behaviours as relations between means and ends from the viewpoint of yield as
well as of choice. Certain
authors
38
have tried to reduce all economics to this question,
e.g. L. Robbins who speaks of ‘relations between rare (or limited) ends and
means with alternative uses’ (An Essay on the Significance of Economic
Science, 1932) and L. von Mises; but although economics does in
certain respects constitute a sector of praxeology, it is a sector which
involves many other factors and a complexity of social interactions and which
cannot be reduced to these simpler relations already present in exchanges
between the individual subject (or the organism itself) and his physical and
inter-individual surroundings.
In order to understand the very general scope of these
praxeological analyses and their effects on the theory of values as a whole, it
is necessary to start by recalling the present state of trends as regards
relations between affective life and cognitive functions.
A highly significant fact likely to concern all the
human sciences strikes us from the outset, namely the surprising difficulty met
in trying to characterize affective life in relation to cognitive functions
(insofar as these relate to structures) and especially of defining their
inter-relations in the actual functioning of behaviour. This fact immediately gives rise to the
general problem as to whether values, or at least some values, are determined by
structures and in what sense; whether these values or some of them (on
the contrary or in turn) modify structures and which ones; or whether values and
structures are two aspects - indissociable but so to speak parallel - of all
behaviours whatever they may be. It
is immediately evident that the problem goes well beyond the sphere of
psychology, for whereas praxeology, as the ‘general theory of effective action’
(E. Slucki as early as 1926, T. Kotarbinski 1955, O. Lange, etc.)
invokes a ‘principle of rationality’ (maximum effects with a minimum
of means), that principle concerns affective values as much as cognitive
structures.
In psychology the general trend today is to distinguish
in any behaviour a structure which corresponds to its cognitive aspect and an
‘energetic’ element which characterizes its affective aspect. But what is the meaning of this somewhat
metaphorical term ‘energetic’? Freud, who was reared in the atmosphere
of the ‘energetic’ school (as opposed to atomism) of the physicist E. Mach,
himself sometimes a psychologist, saw instinct as a reserve of energies whose
‘charges’ are stored in certain representations of objects which by that fact
become desirable or attractive. The
terms ‘investment’ or cathexis have become current in this connexion. K. Lewin visualizes behaviour as a
function of a total field (subject and objects) in the Gestalt manner, the
structure of this field corresponding to perceptions, acts of intelligence,
etc., while its dynamics determine functioning and eventually attribute positive
or negative values to the objects (characteristics of attraction or repulsion,
barriers, etc.). But the problem
which remains is that an operational mechanism unquestionably involves a dynamic
and that it is necessary to distinguish within it the structure of
transformations as such and what makes them possible in their desirability,
interest, speed, etc.; and this second aspect brings us back to an ‘energetic’.
P. Janet distinguishes in all
behaviour a primary action or relation between subject and object, which
corresponds to (cognitive) structures, and a secondary action which regulates
the former as to its activations (interest, effort, etc.,
on
39
the positive side or fatigue, depression, etc., on the
negative side) and to its terminations (rejoicing in the case of success,
sadness in that of failure). This
suggests that elementary affective life expresses behaviour adjustments, but
what kinds of adjustments (for these may be structural or cognitive)? Janet explicitly puts forward the
hypothesis of a reserve of physiological forces which are stored, used up or
reconstituted in accordance with variable rhythms, and suggests that it is these
forces which affectivity regulates in accordance with a ‘behaviour economy’
co-ordinating gains and losses of energy. Going on to generalize at the
inter-individual level, Janet analyses sympathy and antipathy from this point of
view, people for whom one feels sympathy being energy sources or excitants and
those for whom one feels antipathy being tiring or
‘costly’.
This brings us to a first problem: does affectivity as
‘investment’ or as a series of regulations depending on gains and losses
actually modify structures or does it merely ensure their functioning in terms
of energy? Some authors believe the
former, arguing that the systematic defect of ‘investment’ characteristic of
schizophrenics who are not interested in reality leads to a schematic and
pathologically formal type of thought, while the ‘over-investments’ of
paranoiacs lead to loss of reason (delusions of grandeur, etc.). Other authors (including the writer)
think that a child with a lively interest in arithmetic and another suffering
from multiple complexes regarding itself will both recognize that two and two
make four and not three or five, because activity makes structures function by
accelerating or retarding their formation but without modifying them; and that
the behaviour difficulty in a schizophrenic or a paranoiac can simultaneously
affect structures and their affective functioning according to a dynamic which
always involves both aspects at once.
25 But of course it remains possible
that a distinction should be made between structures whose form determines the
content (logico-mathematical structures) and those whose content depends on a
variety of values, although in a ‘value judgement’ the form (or judgement) is
structural and therefore cognitive and the content is relative to affectivity
precisely as a value.
The second problem, however, is even more important and
concerns all the human disciplines to a still greater extent, namely that of the
multiplicity of values or of their reduction to their energetic ‘economic’ (in
the praxeological sense) dimension alone. When the economist speaks of production,
exchange, consumption, reserves or investments, etc., we see clearly enough that
these terms recur in exactly the same form in every field, including that of the
affectivity of infants before all language (in terms of expenditure or recovery
of energies, ‘investing’ in objects or people, etc.); but it remains to be known
whether the meanings involved are always comparable. And it is impossible to attempt a
classification without immediately finding that it applies to all the sciences
of man (certainly including linguistics, if only because F. de Saussure drew his
inspiration from economics and because the ‘affective language’ described by Ch.
Bally gave rise to a theory of values by the sociologist G.
Vaucher).
As an introduction to this classification (in section
II) we should first recall that in the sphere of individual as well as
inter-individual values there exists a
40
fundamental duality which recurs everywhere,
26
namely that of values of finality (or instrumental values, i.e. means and
ends) and values of yield (costs and benefits) which are inseparable but clearly
distinct from one another. In the
individual sphere this distinction is based on the double meaning of the word
interest. On the one hand all
behaviour is dictated by interest in the general qualitative sense, in that it
pursues an end which has value because it is desired, and this end can be
entirely disinterested (in the second meaning of the term) although it is of
great interest in the first sense. On the other hand interest is an energy
adjustment which releases the available forces (Claparède and Janet), that is to
say increases the yield, and from this second point of view a behaviour is
called ‘interested’ if it is intended to increase the yields from the viewpoint
of the subject’s ego. By playing on
these two meanings of the term while refusing to distinguish between them,
utilitarianism sought to explain altruism by selfishness under the pretext that
all behaviour is interested - which is false since behaviour is always directed
by interest in the first meaning of the term and can therefore be, as we have
just shown, disinterested and interested at the same time. This sophism is sufficient in itself to
justify the two types of values. Furthermore, when Janet explains sympathy
and antipathy in terms of values of yield he is right in a large number of
cases, e.g. when one chooses a travelling or table companion, but it is possible
to love an extremely tiring person, and one does not always marry a woman for
the sole reason that she is ‘economical’ in the sense that she will not prove
very wearying. We may even consider
that ‘investments’ of affective charges which occur in love are a function of a
common scale of values, of twin production projects in the broadest sense and
even of values which are highly disinterested although they involve interest (in
the other sense of the term) to an exceptional degree.
The gist of the foregoing is that praxeology is
everywhere, but nowhere by itself. It is impossible to accomplish a moral
act or to perform a logical operation without expenditure of energy, which is a
matter of values of yield, whereas the behaviours studied by economic science
may have no matter what intrinsic finality and whereas concepts of production
and consumption are necessarily related to structures accompanied by their own
values or finalities. It is
therefore evident that all the sciences of man lead to the search for a
classification of values.
1. One must first justify the first dichotomy suggested
by the psychology of affectivity, which recurs everywhere. Values of finality, or
instrumental values, bring together those which are by their very quality
related to structures, in other words which correspond to the needs of
qualitatively differentiated elements, with a view to the production or
conservation of structures. That is
not to say that values and structures are identical; a structure exists on the
strength of its own laws, which can be described in terms of algebra (including
logic) or topology without reference to speeds, forces or energies as working
capacities;
41
and this same structure can be desirable and indeed must
be so for the subject to take an interest in it; this then presupposes an
intervention of affective charges or ‘investments’, etc., i.e. of energy. From this second point of view a further
distinction has to be drawn between the choice of elements to be invested
(values of finality) and the quantities involved. Values of yield are then precisely
relative to this quantitative aspect if we admit by definition that a yield is
distinguished from a qualitative result by reason of the quantity produced or
expended (quantity of energy in the case of intra-individual ‘economy’ or
technical production, conventional or accountable quantity in the case of
commercial exchanges).
2. Values of finality may give rise to a second
dichotomy. Structures to which
these values are attached can be translated by rules which are to a greater or
lesser extent capable of logical expression, or which may remain at the level of
simple regulations. In the former
case we may speak of normative values to the extent that the value is
influenced or actually determined by the norm, whereas in the case of
spontaneous and free exchanges we may speak of non-normative values.
As to the former, one may once more
wonder whether value and norm or structure are identical. But, once again, that is not the case
since the norm comprises its (cognitive) structure on the one hand and its value
on the other, the latter being as usual related to affectivity; we have seen (in
section 8) that a moral norm is accepted only as a function of specific feelings
of respect which are a valorization of the person issuing instructions or of
partners in a relationship of reciprocity. A legal norm, on the other hand, is
valorized only as a function of an attitude of ‘recognition’ which is the
valorization of a custom or of a trans-personal
relationship.
Non-normative values of finality extend to many diverse
fields. In the first place, they
grow from individual interests to inter-individual sympathies and to those in
numerable exchanges which make up everyday social life, whether these be
exchanges of information, economically non-quantified services of all kinds,
politics, courtesy, etc. In
addition they also include those valorizations which occur in symbolic
expression by means of gestures, clothes, words, etc., since systems of symbols
or signs include - besides their strictly semeiotic laws -a body of values which
tend either to reinforce or diminish expressivity, as Bally has shown with
regard to what he called ‘affective language’.
3. Lastly, values of yield accompany all the foregoing
but give rise to specific valorizations which express themselves both in the
internal energetic praxeology of action (cf. in section 10 the conceptions of P.
Janet) and in inter-individual economics dealt with by economic science. In both cases it is striking to note the
predominant importance of quantification as compared with the qualitative nature
of values of finality. In other
words, as soon as there is a question of yield, what counts is no longer the
quality of the objective judged in relation to a differentiated need (that need
itself expressing either a gap or a momentary imbalance in a structure which has
to be completed or re-balanced), but the quantum of the result obtained in
relation to the expenditure required in order to obtain
it.
42
12. Regulations and operations relative to
valorizations of finality
The concept of finality has a bearing on all the human
sciences since there is scarcely a form of human behaviour that does not involve
intention. Yet we know well enough
that finalism has given rise to many difficulties and presented a problem in
biology until the formulation of present-day solutions which seem to offer
satisfaction, at least on the level of principles. Three phases may be distinguished in this
connexion.
During the first phase, which was of psychomorphic
origin, finality seemed to carry its explanation within itself as being a causal
principle. Aristotle, who
attributed finality to all physical movement as well as to living processes,
separated ‘final causes’ from ‘efficient causes’, as though the existence of an
aim entailed ipso facto the possibility of attaining it, which
presupposes either a consciousness (within which the aim corresponds to an
existing representation) or an effect of the future upon the
present.
In the second phase, the unintelligible nature of this
final cause led to the concept of finality being broken down into its
components, a causal explanation being sought for each. Thus the concept of direction found its
explanation in processes of achieving balance; that of anticipation in the
utilization of previous information; that of functional utility in the
hierarchic nature of organization, etc. As to the central concept of adaptation,
efforts were made to reduce it to two concepts of fortuitous variation and of
selection after the event, which replaces finality by a set of tentative efforts
(at the phyletic as well as the individual level) directed from the outside
through successes and failures.
The present phase, which is marked by very comparable
schools of thought in the sphere of the human sciences, results from the
conjunction of three kinds of influences. In the first place, while finalism has
never supplied satisfactory explanations, it has always excelled at denouncing
the inadequacies of over-simplified mechanistics. To explain the eye by hazard and-
selection is all very well if one has plenty of time, but if it requires more
generations than the age of the earth will allow, as has been calculated on the
basis of, if anything, favourable postulates, it is best to search in other
directions. Secondly, analysis of
phenomena - which always begins in an atomistic mood - leads in all spheres of
life to the unveiling of regulations; after the discovery of physiological
(homeostasis) and embryogenetic regulations, the notion was abandoned that the
genome is an aggregate of independent particles, and it was sought instead to
establish the existence of co-adaptations, regulator genes, ‘responses’, etc.
Thirdly and particularly, these
organistic trends, which originated in part independently from mathematical
models, were found to converge with one of the fundamental discoveries of our
age, that of the mechanisms of self-regulation or self-direction studied by
cybernetics. This was rapidly
followed by the realization of the possibility of supplying a causal
interpretation of finalized processes and of finding ‘mechanical equivalents of
finality’ or, as one says today, a ‘teleonomy’ without
teleology.
It is in this context, needless to say, that a certain
number of trends are at present evolving towards an analysis of regulations in
the field of functioning
43
and values as well as in that of structures. But it should also be noted that in the
human sciences as in all others, but in the biological disciplines in
particular, efforts are directed first of all - and rightly so - towards the two
extreme ends of the range of phenomena, for it is the comparison between these
extremes which offers the best chance of understanding the whole range of
mechanisms involved. This pendulum
action is particularly evident in economics. After limiting itself in many cases to
micro-economics, economic science - following the intuitions of Quesnay and
especially the conceptions of Marx - struck out on the path of macro-economics,
and the same is true of the differently oriented work of Keynes. However, with operational research and
econometrics there has been a new trend to re-establish the micro-economic
approach. In sociology, where the
degree of precision is naturally much smaller owing to the complexity of
the problems involved, we observe an instructive process of shuttling back and
forth between macro-sociology and micro-sociology. In the sphere of values of finality it
goes without saying that a double approach is needed, since while global
exchanges, etc., show irreducible aspects depending on overall mechanisms, it is
only in the sphere of elementary reactions and exchanges that we may hope to
witness the birth of valorizations and in certain cases to determine
their connexions with psycho-biological functioning.
In the sphere of normative values it goes without saying
that moral facts are studied principally from their psychological and
micro-sociological angles, especially as there exists no adequate method at the
higher levels except where societies are of limited dimensions, like those
studied in cultural anthropology. But even in fields where consideration of
wholes would appear to be necessary, as for instance in the sociology of law
(since positive law is linked with the life of the entire State down to its most
individualized applications), there exists a movement which has attempted the
study of, as it were, micro-juridical processes. Thus, marginally to codified law, or at
the point where it begins, Petrazycki has analysed attributive imperative
relations such as that the right of one partner corresponds to an obligation for
the other. This relation, which is
distinguished from the moral relation (although less so than Petrazycki
believes, since while it is true that the moral obligation of a subject B
confers no right upon his ‘neighbour’ C, it nevertheless results from
the right which A or C had to issue instructions to him or
to enter into reciprocity with him), is also clearly distinguished from codified
or structured legal order and thus characterizes a kind of spontaneous or
deontological juridical view which is interesting from the viewpoint of
mechanisms of valorization.
In the sphere of non-normative qualitative values the
writer has attempted to analyse the mechanism of the exchange which determines
valorization and its relations with normative consolidations. 27
In any relationship between two
individuals A and B, what is done by one of them, say rA,
is evaluated by the other according to a satisfaction sB - positive
or negative - which may be conserved in the form of a kind of debt or
psychological gratitude tB, the latter for that reason constituting a
credit or a valorization vA for A (process naturally following a
sequence rB, sA, rA and vB). A large number of circumstances may
of course prevent a balance in the form of equivalences r = s t =
v: over- and
44
under-evaluation, forgetfulness, ingratitude, using up
of credit, inflation, etc., and especially discordances between momentary or
durable individual scales of values. Nevertheless the formula can be used to
describe the most varied situations: sympathy between two individuals as based
on a common scale and profitable exchanges; a person’s reputation with or
without inflation; real or fictitious exchanges of services which affect credit
in micro-politics, etc. Although
without practical interest, this type of analysis helps to establish two small
theoretical assumptions.
One is the often striking analogy between such processes
of qualitative exchange and certain elementary economic or praxeological laws.
In the first place it goes without
saying that evaluations and reputations s and v are rather closely
subject to the law of supply and demand: the same average talent gives rise to
entirely different estimations in a small town, where it enjoys a certain
‘rarity value’, and in a more dense environment. Furthermore one finds here, despite the
absence of quantification, an equivalent of Gresham’s law (‘bad money drives
good money out’) in situations of crisis or imbalance where new scales of values
take the place of others and where reputations are readily inflated but fragile,
etc. -
Secondly, it is easy to see that the conservation of the
virtual values t and v (as opposed to the real or existing
values r and s) remains partially contingent so long as the
exchange remains non-normative, whereas any course of action launched in
accordance with an obligation leads to new relationships imposed by this
structure (just as in economic exchange, cash sales involve few legal relations
while credit sales presuppose a greater measure of protection). Thus the value t is eroded of its
own accord through forgetfulness or ingratitude, etc., whereas the intervention
of a moral sense of reciprocity leads towards conservation (the French word
‘reconnaissance’ means both spontaneous gratitude and the fact of
recognizing a debt or an obligation). The transition from spontaneity to
normative reciprocity is marked by a new type of exchange where there is no
longer simply an approximate correspondence between services and satisfactions,
etc., but substitution of points of view, that is to say access to decentred or
disinterested attitudes.
The above is only a small example of possible analysis.
Many others can be found in the
current, highly lively work of American neo-functionalism already referred to
(Gouldner, Blau, etc.). Hence the
sphere of qualitative values represents a fairly large potential area of
comparative research, even including transition from regulations to reversible
operations. We have already seen
(in section 5) that this transition is under study in the structural
sphere proper (cognitive regulations and operations). There is no reason why the same should
not apply to the sphere of values, in terms of attractions or ‘investments’ of
affective charges, reciprocities and exchanges, in isomorphism with what is
observed in the case of structural regulations and operations. A first striking fact in this connexion
is the logical form assumed by scales of values - seriations, genealogical
trees, etc. - and authors like Goblot have attempted a ‘logic of
values’.
But above all there exists a system of operations
bearing not on the knowledge of structures, but on the regulation of available
forces, and the theory of
41
games has given it status under the name of ‘decision’:
this is the will, the explanation of which has never ceased to create problems
and difficulties for psychologists. Since W. James it has been generally
agreed that the will is not a simple tendency capable of isolation, unless
confused with effort or intention. The will intervenes when there is a
conflict between a tendency which is judged inferior and is momentarily the
stronger (a specific desire, etc.) and a tendency which is judged to be superior
but is initially the weaker (a duty, etc.); the act of will consists in
reinforcing the latter tendency until it overcomes the former. A. Binet concluded from this that there
is a need for an additional force, and Ch. Blondel suggested that this force
derived from collective imperatives (a questionable solution since if such
imperatives are sufficient to determine an action there is no further need for
the will, and if they are not sufficient the problem remains intact). The solution would seem to be the
following: a tendency is neither strong nor weak in itself but only in relation
to the context; so long as that context is merely a matter of fluctuating
adjustments bound up with the perceptive existing situation, the lower tendency
is likely to prevail; if the will is interpreted as a reversible operation or as
the extreme stage of normal energy adjustments, the act of will can then be seen
to consist in deflecting the subject’s concentration from the existing situation
(‘decentration’) so as to allow a return to the permanent values of his scale.
Hence having a will means being in
possession of a scale of values sufficiently resistant to be referred to in the
course of conflicts. The analogy
with intellectual operations (section 5) is
evident. 28
13. Cybernetic circuits and economic
adjustments
Values of finality play a very general part in all
fields of the human sciences, but unfortunately they are not always measurable
for that reason. Values of yield,
on the other hand, are measurable by their very nature, and since economic
science is concerned with both types of values simultaneously, it is in this
field that the meaning of these two kinds of common mechanisms, active in all
human behaviour, can be most readily appreciated. -
Generally speaking every value is the expression of the
functioning of the structure and every functioning is a flow subject to
regulations, that term being taken in its broadest sense to cover both the
spontaneous processes of balancing and intentional and systematic regulations
such as economic regulations resulting, for example, from a policy of
stabilization or one of growth. Our
problem in this section is therefore to seek to identify the most general models
of regulations applicable to all spheres of values, and for this purpose to
examine the manner in which economists use the notions of cybernetic circuits to
master the complex systems of interactions with which they are confronted. This is not to say, of course, that loop
circuits (or feedbacks) are the result of the work of economists; quite on the
contrary, economists are only now beginning to take an interest in the
operational content of the theory of servo-mechanisms, 25 not merely
as a result of intellectual inertia but owing to the difficulty of adapting the
complexity of experimental measurements to that theory. But the example
46
of economics is of particular interest, in the first
place because of the convergence between these models and classical concepts
such as that of the economic circuit and, secondly, because the generalized
nature of economic mechanisms is already becoming apparent, some of their
central aspects recurring in the fields of biology, psychology and even of
linguistics.
The advantage of loop systems is that they confer a
clearly defined status on some of the innumerable situations in which concepts
of interaction and circular causality have to be substituted for the concept of
a linear causal sequence. In
physics the principle of action and reaction, the existence of many systems
which retain their balance by compensation of the various equivalent efforts
which they allow, and Le Châtelier’s law (or the law of equilibrium
displacements in the direction opposite to that of the initial disturbance) show
the impossibility of reducing certain forms of causality to a linear sequence
pattern. In biology the very fact
of organization and its conservation through successive adjustments involving on
each occasion a set of gains and losses makes the consideration of loop systems
more and more indispensable, and even in the case of apparently simple effects
of an environment on an organism (phenotypical modifications or selection with
genetic effects) it is increasingly believed that the organism chooses and
modifies its environment as much as it depends upon it, which suggests the
relevance of cybernetic circuits. In the sphere of the human sciences, where
interactions are always accompanied by automatic or more or less intentional
regulations, the notion of circuits is even more obviously applicable and it is
becoming increasingly apparent that even the general pattern S—R
(stimulus-reaction) is itself circular in nature, for a subject reacts to a
stimulus only if he is sensitized to it, and he is sensitized to it only as a
function of the pattern which determines the response, without it being possible
to interpret the latter in turn independently of the habitual
stimuli.
In the field of economics, which offers the advantage of
allowing extensive measurements, a certain number of notions which have gained
currency prepared the way for cybernetic models. Such a notion, for instance, is the
somewhat intuitive one, but one essential to economic thought, of a ‘variable
which is self-influencing by means of other variables dependent upon it’. Such also is the notion of the ‘economic
circuit’, for instance in the relations between production, consumption and
investment, which constitute numerous cases of circular causality. Such too are the notions of
multiplicator and accelerator, frequently used by economists, which can furnish
examples of simple transformations in a loop system.
Let us, for the sake of concreteness, give an elementary
example (taken from L. Solari) of the translation in feedbacks of an economic
circuit. Let us suppose that this
model refers to a closed national economy (without exchanges with other
countries) and let us assume only three variables, as follows: Y(t) =
national product, C(t) = global consumption and I(t) = global
investment. These variables are
continuous functions of time (t); they represent monetary flows within an
interval t, t + dt. We then
obtain the accounting relationship:
Y(t) = 1(t)
+ C(t)
which may be completed, e.g. by the introduction of the
two behaviour laws
48
C(t) c.Y(t) and
1(t) = v dY(t)
c and v
being respectively the marginal propensity towards consumption and the
investment coefficient.
The former is a function of consumption of the most
common type. The second law
translates globally the reactions to the investment decisions of economic agents
faced with variations in the national income: we have here, in its simplest
form, the well-known phenomenon of the accelerator which ‘repercusses’, as
regards investment, the variations in the national income. This elementary dynamic model may then be
reduced to the differential equation
I-c/v = I/Y(t) dY(t)/dt
the immediate solution of which, taking account of the
initial condition Y(o) = Yo, is Y(t) = YoO pt
with, for the sake of simplification,
p = I – c/v =
S/V
where S represents the marginal propensity to save.
The rate of growth p,
normally positive, is therefore proportional to the propensity to save and
inversely proportional to the investment coefficient. The model can then be represented by the
following diagram in which the circles represent variables and the
parallelograms represent the transformations undergone by them (in the direction
of the arrows):
Feedbacks may be recognized in the two loops of the
diagram. The first translates the
‘multiplicator effect’: Y(t) is self-influencing through the agency of
C(t). The second translates
the ‘accelerator effect’: Y(t) is self-influencing through the agency of
1(t). Both effects are
additive. 30
The method of which the foregoing is a concrete example
offers two advantages, one from the viewpoint of economic research itself and
the other in that it supplies a representation of mechanisms common to all the
life and human sciences (not only because loop systems are found in them all but
also because circles of production, consumption and investment recur in all
fields of values of finality as well as values of yield).
From the viewpoint of economic science (which, we
repeat, can serve as an example because, inter alia, of its infinite
possibilities of measurement), patterns
48
such as the one we have just examined make it possible
to carry out a logical and causal analysis of the interactions involved, and
there is nothing to prevent this analysis from being extended to the
consideration of more complex transfers or of new feedbacks. In particular it is possible to add to
the model we have shown, which already relates to regulations in the general
sense of the term, a regulatory feedback in the limited economic sense (policy
of stabilization, which here would in fact be a policy of growth): it would be
enough to introduce a new variable G(t), such that
Y(t)-->G(t)-->Y(t), making it possible to modify the rate of growth
p by the nature of the transfer achieved 31 (the model would
of course have to be expanded to take account of delayed variations, which play
an essential motivating role in economic regulations).
32
The general significance of such models is considerable;
in fact they represent one of the most important common mechanisms in the field
of values and even in that of the build-up of structures.
33
As for values, that is to say, as we have seen (section
10), the role of the
affective life in general, it is clear that the loops connecting production with
consumption or investment recur in the most widely different situations: all
production, i.e. all constructive action, is reinforced or held back by its own
results, i.e. by the consumer actions to which it gives rise; on the other hand
it leads to new affective ‘investments’ which reinforce the initial action or
supplement it with others. Thus we
have here a very general mechanism from which the economic models we have just
examined differ only by their specific social characteristics and by the
remarkable degree of quantification to which they lend
themselves.
As to the build-up of structures, this is closely linked
to what we have just called production in the general sense of constructive
actions. From this it follows that
in all fields a structure which finally acquires a well-regulated or
logicomathematical nature (e.g. a ‘group’ structure) starts with a phase of
simple adjustment, i.e. of construction by trial and error whose corrections are
effected by means of feedbacks analogous to those described. Later, once the structure has been
sufficiently balanced, the play of reversible operations takes the place of the
initial regulations (as we have seen in section 5): correction as a function
of the results alone is then replaced by an anticipatory pre-correction of the
actions in progress, and the loop system thus arrives at a system of direct and
reverse operations whose regulation is now identical with its constructive
activity (the values initially involved being thereby promoted to the rank of
normative values).
14. Synchronic and diachronic problems in the sphere of
functions and values
We have seen (in section 9) that the normative structure
achieves a condition of equilibrium (with, of course, variable degrees of
stability depending on the relations between form and content: see section 8) as
a function of a process of development which itself constitutes at all stages a
balancing in the sense of a process of self-regulation. This self-regulation is to varying
degrees inherent in the actual production of the structure in that there are no
constructive mecha-
49
nisms on the one hand and no corrective mechanisms on
the other hand or after the event, but that progressive organization - in which
construction consists - is at the same time a regulating one and therefore
proceeds by balancing. We shall see
(in section 18) that a system of meanings, in contrast to this, shows a maximum
of disjunction between the history of the sign-vehicles, on which their present
meaning depends only in part, and the synchronic balance of the system which is
relatively independent from diachrony. The system of functions, utility or
values lies halfway between these two extreme situations, and it is highly
interesting in the study of common mechanisms to note that this intermediate
position, from the viewpoint of relations between synchrony and diachrony,
recurs in all disciplines having an important functionalist dimension, from
biology to economics by way of psychology and sociology, in other words wherever
a distinction has to be drawn between present utility and historical
filiation.
In the field of economic history, for instance, this
intermediate situation shows the two following characteristics. On the one hand one frequently finds a
bipolarity between the endeavour to explain some set of present (or in any
manner synchronic) facts by its previous development and the reverse approach
which seeks to interpret a set of historical events by general mechanisms
considered to be ‘timeless’ and related to the laws of balance. But on the other hand one finds in Marx
and his followers a methodology which sets out to overcome this duality of
historical and supra-historical factors dialectically by resorting to what might
be called today a genetic structuralism in the sociological, psychological and
even biological fields.
As regards the duality of interpretations found in
authors not influenced by Marx, everyone agrees in assuming that major economic
structures are explained by their history, whereas events related to current
situations (such as the cost of certain foodstuffs in the 13th or 16th
centuries, referred to in section 2)
are interpreted in the light of theories on the determination of
prices which lead to these mechanisms being considered ‘timeless and necessary’,
by no means because these prices do not vary but because their variations in
historical curves which are irregular in detail are held to depend on laws of
balance recurring over a fairly wide range of social
situations.
By contrast, the originality of Marx’s approach
consisted in seeking to
overcome this conflict between structures and fundamental laws by
regarding neither as ‘eternal’ and subordinating both to an overall dynamic
force. As regards structures, Marx
of course emphasized the temporary or historically transitory nature of
capitalism, whose laws were regarded as permanent by the classical economists.
But with regard to the laws of
functioning, Marx made the very basic point that these laws frequently begin to
operate ‘in the pure state’ at the stage of maturity of the system; thus a study
of function at the terminal stages would lead to an understanding of the history
of the structure from which this functioning proceeds. Hence the fundamental observation (in the
Critique of Political Economy) revealing the links between Marx’s
methodology and biological problems: ‘The anatomy of man is the key to the
anatomy of the ape’, which is to say that final states illuminate the process
from which they result as much as that process is necessary to the development
of those states.
50
But this reference to biology, which stresses the very
general nature of the problem of relations between structural diachrony and
functional synchrony, leads us to enquire into the particular status of concepts
of function, utility or values in relation to structural development and,
finally, to reflect once more on the reasons why it is difficult to treat
history as a nomothetic discipline.
In the field of biology an organ can change its function
without that change resulting from the previous history of the structure
concerned: to borrow a classical example, the fact that the swim-bladder of the
Dipneusti now serves as their lung is not due to the general historical
factors which ensured the evolution of the Invertebrates into Fishes, but
results from unforeseeable changes in the environment. It is therefore doubtful whether it will
ever be possible to create a deductive model of the history of life which would
supply the details of all known transformations, whereas we may be permitted to
hope for an ‘organicist’ model (see section 10) which would account both
for the general characteristics peculiar to living structures and for the major
functions common to all or almost all organisms, such as assimilation,
respiration (except for viruses), etc. But these ‘functional invariables’ are of
variable content and are thus differentiated in the course of their history, and
that history, like all genuine history, constitutes an inextricable mixture of
deducible and contingent structurations: whereas reactions to the contingent
consist in regulations or rebalancings which are intelligible after the event,
the sequence of their succession is nevertheless unforeseeable, and this makes
the present functions of a sub-structure relatively independent of its previous
development.
The same applies in part to the sphere of human history,
despite the corrections implied in man’s twofold specificity, of having created
a culture which incessantly enriches itself because it is socially transmitted
and of having a reflexive intelligence which makes it possible to multiply
rational behaviours (despite their obvious limits in the common consciousness).
It follows that although certain
historians would like to give nomothetic status to their discipline by means of
interdisciplinary fusion of the history of science and technology, of economic,
cultural and political history and of diachronic sociology, etc., the laws of
development or functioning that could be derived therefrom might nevertheless
differ considerably, depending on the types of structure envisaged and,
consequently, on the varieties of possible relations between structures on the
one hand and of functions, utility or values on the other.
Were we to assume that we could adopt as one
methodological ideal that of genetic structuralism, which indeed seems to be
common to many disciplines, the fact nevertheless remains that the distinction
between structures capable of ‘closure’ and structures as yet incomplete or
destined to remain open for all time imposes a series of differentiations which
express themselves in particular in the need to recognize several varieties of
values depending on whether they are normative or non-normative, etc. (sections
10 and 11). C. Nowinski, an
expert in Marxist methodology, has pointed out, for instance, that ‘the kinship
of methods as between genetic psychology and Marx’s theory is sometimes
surprising. There remains, however,
an important difference. For Piaget
the notion of balance as the central mechanism and necessary mainspring of the
process of
51
development remains characteristic, although each state
of equilibrium succeeds the previous one by reason of the imbalances which
engender it. For Marx, conversely,
the central mechanism of development is the continuous destruction of
equilibrium, with all the methodological consequences which
result’.34 The reason
for this difference is strikingly obvious: the development of intelligence
culminates in completed structures in which functions and values are entirely
subject to the normative laws of internal structural transformations, which
means that such development is directed by equilibrations or self-regulations
leading to the final balance; but biological, economic, political, etc.,
structures, being constantly open, cannot - because of the absence of closure -
involve such complete integration of function in the structural mechanism,
whence the historical role of imbalances which can actually lead to integrations
of structures.
This situation, peculiar to structures incapable of
closure, explains the relative independence of values connected with synchronic
balance from the diachronic formation of the corresponding structure. This is observed in the case of certain
crises (provided they are neither accidents of growth nor durable
disintegrations) where one may find abrupt modifications of economic, political,
or social values (reputation, personal credit) or of the affective values of an
individual. And it also accounts
for the difficulty of characterizing sequential stages (i.e. stages occurring in
a necessary order of succession) in the social sphere and the relatively small
success of the ‘stages’ which Rostow believed he had discovered in the processes
of economic growth (from take-off to maturity). The general problem in this respect
consists in distinguishing a sequence of transformations without organized
internal development from a development with sequential stages involving in
particular what Waddington in embryology called ‘homeorhesis’ (automatic return
to the necessary trajectory in the case of a deviation imposed from
outside).
Such facts seem to demonstrate that functions and values
are the more dependent on history and diachronic explanation as they are better
subordinated to the corresponding structures. A system of values, on the other hand,
obeys laws of equilibrium or of present regulations which are the less dependent
on the preceding stages the less those values are normative, that is to say the
less they are conditioned by the structure alone and depend on exchanges whose
external conditions may vary. In
other terms, the balance of these values does not in such a case represent the
final stage of a progressive diachronic balancing but remains the synchronic
expression of situations in part independent of development; in this case there
occurs only a succession of rebalancings whose laws may be constant but whose
contents vary, in part contingently and in part
cyclically.
52
21. Cf. inter alia the collective work edited by
T. Parsons and E. Shils, Toward a Theory of Action,
22. In the present-day mathematical sense function is
defined as an ‘application’ or an oriented couple, which psychologically makes
its origin go back to the general patterns of action. Cf. Epistemologie et psychologie de la
fonctton, Etudes d’Epistémologie génétique, vol.
xxiii.
23. Mention should also be made of the conception of
‘systems’ of a group of researchers from the Case Institute of Technology in
Ohio (M. Mezarovitch, R. Akkof, D. Fleming, etc.), the theory of systems
developed by L. Zade (a much wider class essentially of a technical nature), the
conception of O. Lange, and the numerous works of theoretical research in
relation with ‘man-machine’ systems (e.g. within the framework of the System
Development Corporation of
24. This does not mean that the translation of processes
into cybernetic language automatically allows the mathematization which might be
hoped for from that language; however, the fact that questions are formulated in
qualitative terms of interactions may in itself constitute an advance because it
means a liberation from one-way forms of causality.
25. Pathology is not merely a matter of affective
aspects. Let us make clear that
while affectivity as energetic functioning can naturally be the cause of
accelerations or retardations in the formation of structures (since energy
affects speed among other things), this does not mean that it intervenes
causally in the structure as such, or vice versa.
26. Cf. primary and secondary utility as distinguished
in section 3.
27. See J. Piaget, Etudes sociologiques, Droz,
1965, pp. 100—142.
28. It is not within the scope of this volume to discuss
the general problem of measurement. The human sciences have no units
comparable to those available in physics; in the sphere of values the difficulty
is overcome by the establishment of various scales (ordinal, super-ordinal,
etc.), examples of which may be found in Variations in Value Orientations
by F. R. Kluckhohn and F. F. Strodtbeck ; their significance may be
ascertained by reference to the well-known works of Stevens who, in psychology,
has endeavoured to construct a kind of subjective
psycho-physics.
29. Avant-garde schools, such as the Polish school, being of
course duly excepted.
30. Without wishing to refer here to the mathematical
aspects of feedbacks, we may recall that in the case of this simple model the
transfer function is in the form F(p) = v/s where p = a+iW and for
the ‘free variations’ of the system F(p) = I hence W = o and a =
s/v in the absence of sinusoidal fluctuations. The latter would appear if delayed
reactions between variables were introduced.
31. Supposing that G(t) represents State demand (negative in
the case of subsidy), one would obtain, for example, G(t) = -g.[dY(t)/dt] or g
> o, which would constitute a new feedback allowing the rate of growth f to be increased in the form p’ =
s/v-g
32. Let us note further that H. A. Simon (‘On the
Application of Servomechanism in the Study of Production Control’,
Econometrica 20, 2, 1952,
pp. 247-268) has tried to
formulate, in situations of a dynamic kind, decision criteria enjoying certain
properties of stability. He thus
arrived at a loop system making it possible to determine qualitatively a
criterion whose intuitive meaning is immediate: the rate of production must be
increased or diminished proportionally to the deficit or surplus of effective
stocks as compared with optimum stocks and proportionally to the variations
of that deficit or surplus.
33. Cf. inter alia H. A. Simon’s well-known
formalization of Festinger’s experiments on communication in small social
groups.
34. Logique et connaissance scientifique
(Encyclopedie de la Pleiade), pp. 879-880.
Next Section