Abstract
The chapter defends the view that Kotarbiński’s ‘theory of efficient action’ (or ‘praxiology’) is an example of the fully fledged philosophy of action. It shows its key virtues and explains why it has been gone nearly unnoticed for over a half of the century. This explanation discloses serious interpretative difficulties which partially come from the presence of reism in Kotarbiński’s theorizing. In the last step, the chapter sketches the framework, which is projected both to remove internal difficulties related to the original exposition of Kotarbiński’s theory and to reveal its connections with other contemporary theories.
Wenn ich meine Teufel vertreibe,
dann vertreibe ich auch meine Engel.
Rilke (‘If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well’ (quoted by Rollo May, Love and Will. New York: Delta 1969: 122))
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- 1.
Where possible, I give references to English editions or versions of Kotarbiński’s works. In the case of the translation of Treatise, I have changed, when necessary, the term work to job (for Polish robota), which satisfies better both philological and philosophical needs.
- 2.
It is good to note that there is also the French root of praxiology connected with the work of Louis Bourdeau and Alfred Espinas (see e.g. Alexandre and Gasparski 1999). Kotarbiński used to stress that praxiology has some predecessors (e.g. Kotarbiński 1965: Chap. 1), but I agree with those who claim that it was just a result of his modesty. In fact, these two French authors had had an indiscernible influence on the shape of praxiology in the Treatise. Compare: Stonert (1970: 257).
- 3.
The birth of praxiology can be dated from 1910 when Kotarbiński wrote his address: The Goal of An Act and the Task of An Agent (Kotarbiński 1983a). For more (see e.g. Gasparski 1993, 1996). The term praxiology was first used in a 1923 paper Zasady teorii czynu (Kotarbiński 1927). I will not go into historical details of the birth of praxiology since it is beyond the interest of this study.
- 4.
This statement refers to praxiology understood as the philosophy of action. From the perspective of economics, the matter may look differently.
- 5.
Kotarbiński himself considered eclecticism as the most unjust criticism of his philosophy (see Woleński 1985: Chap. XI).
- 6.
In fact, Kotarbiński’s followers quickly realized this fact (see e.g. Szaniawski 1972: 10–12).
- 7.
Such a study of the dynamics of progress in efficiency would be methodologically similar to, say, the history of biology or the history of physics. Kotarbiński was aware that its role would be ‘ancillary to the preceding two’ (Kotarbiński 1965: 8), so I ignore it in what follows.
- 8.
I shall have something more to say about this issue in the conclusion of this chapter.
- 9.
The idea of bridging theory and practice—which is at stake here—is an old and complex issue. Naturally, I do not claim that there is no such thing as a connection between empirical practical sciences and practical philosophy. (Nor do I want to claim that philosophy does not have a practical import at all). But this is a different problem than the problem of praxiology as a systematized, unified ‘science’ with something like ‘bridging laws’ between simple practical advices and abstract praxiological norms.
Notice also that the relation which is criticized here is a bit similar to the relation between the Kantian categorical imperative and individual rules of actions (‘maxims’). I cannot go into details of this comparison; it will be enough to say that such similarity is only structural (and one cannot save praxiology as a ‘science’ from the Kantian position).
- 10.
In Poland, many of Kotarbiński’s pupils and followers could take this manoeuvre as unacceptable (odd at best). This might be so because the idea of praxiology as a science gave birth to a great number of more or less viable and interesting proposals. To list only a few: praxiometrics, an attempt at strictly quantitative account of praxiological concepts and relations (see e.g. Gasparski 1969); formal praxiology, a project of the deductive science of action with a new conceptual-logical apparatus (Stonert 1967, 1968; Konieczny and Stonert 1971); praxiosemantics (or praxiosemiotics), a theory of optimal sign (Wójcik 1969), praxiological organization science (e.g. Zieleniewski 1969). I cannot discuss these proposals here. Nevertheless, many of them deserve much attention—not only for historical purposes. At any rate, the reader should also be aware of the following: the strategy I use in this book is not meant to undermine the weight of all the valuable applications, or extensions of praxiology that emerged from Kotarbiński’s Treatise.
- 11.
Again, this is what makes the Kotarbińskian approach to praxiology much more refined than the von Misesian.
- 12.
- 13.
Those authors who think that praxiology does not have much in common with the analytical action theory probably treat the latter too rigidly. It is well established that philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School—even the philosophy of Kotarbiński himself—shared its specificity with the Vienna Circle. We have strong reasons to treat Kotarbiński’s praxiology as belonging to the analytic tradition, even if it stands out of its mainstream.
- 14.
Translation slightly altered (optional impulse instead of free impulse). The need of such alterations is explained in what follows.
- 15.
‘States of affairs’ in the English edition of Treatise appear, misleadingly, as ‘states of things’ (Ibidem.).
- 16.
Kotarbiński to highlight this phenomenon recalls the French dictum: embarrass de richesse (Kotarbiński 1965: 43).
- 17.
In English translation all these three are called tests, which is, again, somewhat misleading. I discuss the problem of Kotarbiński’s language (and its translation into English) in section 1.3.
- 18.
Translation slightly altered.
- 19.
In what follows we shall see that Kotarbiński’s language of action is peculiar which makes his praxiology significantly different from the mainstream action theory.
- 20.
- 21.
Again, if we want to find Kotarbiński’s ideas in the works from this field, we are faced with a rather mind-bending task.
- 22.
For a complex discussion of this idea in Aristotle, see my paper (Makowski 2009).
- 23.
Compound act in Wojtasiewicz’ translation.
- 24.
The pun proposed by Professor Wojciech Gasparski (e.g. Gasparski 2000: 192).
- 25.
If we browse through the titles which I have listed at the beginning (Preface), we will get a set of examples for this strategy. It is also present in the works of praxiologists (see e.g. Gasparski 1983b: 81).
- 26.
I defend the view that the standards of natural languages in practical philosophy should be accepted as long as we do not have reasons not to do so: they are a default option in action theory. This view is a departure from the Kotarbińskian ambitions to improve natural language (see sections “Why Has the Theory of Efficient Action Not Been Efficient? Problems with ‘The Grammar of Action’”, “Kotarbiński’s Conception of Efficiency: A Critical Analysis” and “Efficiency and Economy”).
- 27.
In Wojtasiewicz’s translation: ‘non-effective’.
- 28.
This chapter contains also a separate heading of the activization of an agent, which should be understood as an autonomous norm. Kotarbiński treats it as subsidiary, to some extent, to other norms, but it does not mean that it is normatively or ontologically negligible. I shall turn back briefly to this issue in the next chapter.
- 29.
After Von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944), this absence can be perceived as a serious vice of Kotarbiński’s account.
- 30.
What is historically understandable, Kotarbiński, in some places of his works, refers to various aspects of the matter of the planned economy. In this sense, the Marxist ideology left an imprint on his practical philosophy. But this does not mean that praxiology has been an attempt at offering a theoretical grounding of the Soviet understanding of economy and society. It seems that the exactly opposite thought has made Ludwig von Mises avoid the Polish approach to praxiology. See his thoughts on the socialist society (Mises 1945: Chap. XXV).
The relation between the Soviet science and Kotarbiński’s philosophy becomes more explicit when we realize that Kotarbiński needed to defend his ontological doctrine (especially, the conception of reism) from the criticism of dialectic materialism, which, as we know, has been an official world-view of Marxism (see Woleński 1985: 216–219). I discuss Kotarbiński’s ontology in the next section.
- 31.
Wojtasiewicz’s translation is generally good; the fact that he was not a philosopher—he was a linguist and a sinologist (sic!)—partially explains why his translations are sometimes surprising.
- 32.
By using this term, I refer to Putnam and his well-known comparison between Leśniewski’s and Carnap’s approach to ontology (‘world a la Carnap and ‘Same’ world a la Polish logician’) (Putnam 1987: 18–19). Putnam says that Leśniewski’s description of the world is ‘partisan’ in comparison to the ‘neutral’ description offered by Carnap. Pace neutralism, I think that there is a deeper analogy between Leśniewski’s ontology and Carnap’s, on the one hand, and the Kotarbińskian language of action and the language widely accepted in practical philosophy, on the other. Nevertheless, although it is a fascinating topic, I shall not discuss it here.
- 33.
Here is Carnap: ‘Tadeusz Kotarbinski’s ideas were related to our physicalism. He maintained conceptions which he called “reism” and “pansomatism”, i.e., the conception that all names are names of things and that all objects are material things’ (Carnap 1963: 31).
- 34.
- 35.
- 36.
Naturally, we can express propositional attitudes without that-clauses, but for the sake of simplicity I do not discuss this issue here. It is enough to know that other forms of expressing propositional attitudes also fall under the method of reistic translation, so they do not pose difficulties to the argument I offer.
- 37.
Similar criticism has been proposed by Tadeusz Ciecierski (2013: 168–169).
- 38.
In his discussion of reism, Woleński seems to hesitate on whether reism preserves intentionality or not. On the one hand, he suggests that there is no apparent reason to think that it cannot embrace intentionality, since Kotarbinski cultivated his philosophical connections with Brentano and Twardowski, and intentionality is the key theme in these authors. On the other hand, he stresses that reism was ‘revisionist’ (Woleński 1985: 226). I take the revisionist ambitions of reism, together with its approach to propositional attitudes, as harmful for the picture of intentionality. As a result, I interpret reism as offering a distorted view of intentionality.
- 39.
In English translation of the Treatise, we usually find ‘agent’, so the concretistic language is not visible in this case. Still, we can interpret the original term in its semantic context.
- 40.
One might reply: reism cannot be related to conceptual fecundity, because it is devised to eliminate redundant entities. I believe that the opposite is more correct: to eliminate something one needs to name it. And only those names which occur to be apparent can be eliminated.
- 41.
‘The agent’s point of view’ is an idea proposed by Hilary Putnam (discussed also by many others). I shall turn back to it later (Chap. 3).
- 42.
Translation slightly altered.
- 43.
Naturally, on the opposite camp we can find valuable criticisms of this approach.
- 44.
I do not know of any study that investigates such support more explicitly than Pacherie’s (2008). Nonetheless, it is plain that the phenomenology of action uses the informal conceptual apparatus of BDI, and that it proposes a phenomenologically sound, partial embedding of BDI. In this sense, the support is bilateral, or, as Pacherie says, action is ‘both conceptually and empirically motivated’ (Pacherie 2008: 181).
- 45.
There is a research in neuroscience that questions such a primary role of intentions in human agency (cf. Uithol et al. 2014). Neural data, they claim, do not support the idea that discrete mental states (as intentions) cause and control agency. Causation and control are dynamic processes, so we should revise our conception of intentional action and search for other conceptual apparatuses that capture them better. But notice that the acceptance of the highlighted role of intentions does not obligate us to causalism (more on this in Chap. 6). Also, the virtues of folk psychology inherited by BDI and the phenomenology of action are not overridden by the neuropsychological data. Of course, what I suggest does not mean that neuroscience is useless in the philosophy of action—quite the opposite.
- 46.
For an excellent discussion of this issue, see Di Nucci (2014: Chap. 3).
- 47.
Some authors claim that folk-psychological intentionality attribution requires thinking in terms of BDI (see e.g. Malle 2010). Nevertheless, I suppose that cases of automated actions show that this is a bit more complex problem. This is an issue for future studies. I shall have something to say about this in Chap. 6.
- 48.
On the basis of Pacherie’s great account of a complex ‘intentional cascade’ (Pacherie 2008) we can see how such a web may look like. I shall briefly return to Pacherie’s proposal in Chap. 6.
- 49.
Even such a general claim—namely: doing things for reasons implies a relation between beliefs, desires and intentions—is implicitly a stance concerning how to conceive the idea of reasons in general. I shall turn back to this issue in Chap. 4.
- 50.
The terminology itself is subject to dispute (see e.g. Lenman 2011).
- 51.
Michael Smith takes both types of reasons as completely different (Smith 1994: 96). Here I am on the side of the others (e.g. Garrard and McNaughton 1998: 48; Heuer 2004: 45) who see the possibility where these two can be identical.
- 52.
To avoid possible confusions—which may appear especially if the reader is a theorist of law or a Kantian—let me note that in this book I do not distinguish norms, rules and standards. However important these distinctions are, they are out of the scope of this study.
- 53.
This is not reserved only for action theory. In his classic book The Foundations of Statistics, Leonard Savage used the dictum ‘look before you leap’ as a metaphor of a principle in the theory subjective utility (Savage 1972: 16–17).
- 54.
This methodological issue has been studied in many disciplines (as economics, decision theory or set theory). For a good discussion of it, see for example Szaniawski (1974) and Sen (1997).
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Makowski, P.T. (2017). The Virtues and Vices of Kotarbiński’s Praxiology. In: Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s Action Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40051-8_2
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-40050-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-40051-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)