Abstract
This chapter is an interpretation of Kotarbiński’s views on effectiveness, efficiency and (action-theoretically understood) economy of actions. It explores these issues under the umbrella of the Efficiency Question as a highlighted topic in the philosophy of action. It points to some inaccuracies in the elaboration of Kotarbiński’s views and then critically develops his ideas. The interpretation distinguishes effectiveness from efficiency with the use of the concept of the economy of action. This strategy shows that Kotarbińskian action theory remains relatively close to the paradigm of resource-boundedness. The last part of the chapter discusses the roles of effectiveness and efficiency by confronting the proposed account with selected contemporary views; it criticizes these views and proposes an alternative proposal concerning the function of efficiency.
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- 1.
Thanks to David Copp and Cody Gilmore who helped me to clarify my thinking about Nozick’s experiment in the context of EQ.
- 2.
I shall turn back to these issues in what follows (section “Efficiency: A Vice?”).
- 3.
It is Hilary Putnam’s concept—also often used by Richard Rorty—originally employed to characterize pragmatism (Putnam 1987: 70).
- 4.
Actually, the idea of the ‘agent’s point of view’ has already been explored in action theory in a slightly different sense, which comprises problems of inter alia alienation, identification, and commitment. Michael Bratman investigates this question at the intersection of action theory and theory of reasons for action, with reference to Bernard Williams (Bratman 2012: 81). My usage here is rather in the spirit of Putnam, but it embraces all these detailed aspects, too.
- 5.
Translation slightly altered.
- 6.
Translations of the quoted sentences are slightly changed. The Kotarbińskian three-fold division makes more sense in Polish language, since all these three dimensions can be reasonably subsumed under the heading of efficiency (in Polish sprawność). This manoeuvre is problematic in English. Following Professor Gasparski (e.g. Gasparski 1993), in the first case I change the translation and use the term efficacy. Wojtasiewicz’s translation of Treatise uses, unifyingly, efficiency. This translational problem confirms my remarks about the worries related to the interpretation of the Treatise (section “Why Has the Theory of Efficient Action Not Been Efficient? Problems with ‘The Grammar of Action ’”).
- 7.
In Wojtasiewicz’s translation: expertise.
- 8.
To avoid possible confusions, I use capability and capacity as roughly semantically inter- changeable, being aware that in some philosophical contexts (cf. so-called capability approach) it may make sense to differentiate them.
- 9.
In Wojtasiewicz’s translation—the possibility to act.
- 10.
Wojciech Gasparski calls it practicality (Gasparski 1993).
- 11.
The translation significantly adapted.
- 12.
In the case of psychological aspects of efficacy, see for example the so-called self-efficacy (Bandura 1977) or self-regulatory strategies of goal setting and goal striving (Gollwitzer and Oettingen 2012). Efficacy-related aspects of motor psychology embrace many issues; some of them are discussed in Chap. 6.
- 13.
Translation slightly altered (locomotor system instead of active organs).
- 14.
In the original Polish edition of the Treatise, here is one additional short paragraph, in which Kotarbiński uses the term wprawnie which is a hyponym for the Polish adverb for efficiently. He then etymologically relates this hyponym with the noun wprawa, which means ‘a skill gained in training’. This paragraph is lacking in the English translation.
- 15.
For example, the measure of the quality of sport scores, especially in athletics, are world records.
- 16.
Naturally, despite the Aristotelian connections, this agential property should not be interpreted morally. In this chapter, I shall be turning back to this issue.
- 17.
In this paragraph, I use my own interpretation of Krämer’s theory (Makowski 2013: 207–210).
- 18.
Translation slightly corrected.
- 19.
Although it is obvious in theory, this issue becomes interesting when we observe the evolution of team sports (such as basketball or football).
- 20.
This worry has been quickly noticed by Kotarbiński’s followers (see especially Zieleniewski 1969, Chap. 3.3.3).
- 21.
Susan Wolf says: ‘By moral saint I mean a person whose every action is as morally good as possible, a person, that is, who is as morally worthy as can be.’ (Wolf 1982: 419).
- 22.
Translation altered.
- 23.
For more on this, see the next section.
- 24.
I shall discuss this issue in more detail in the context of planned agency in Chap. 5.
- 25.
This issue will reappear in the context of automatic actions in Chap. 6.
- 26.
Notice that this claim of Kotarbiński is an implicit criticism of those accounts of praxiology proposed by his followers who developed the quantitative approach to human efficiency (Gasparski 1969).
- 27.
‘Economy, as interpreted above, is not a value belonging exclusively to economics as being the sphere where the only values used can be more or less directly expressed in terms of money. Research crowned with the discovery of a law explaining many phenomena, for instance the law of universal gravitation, will of course ‘pay’, sooner or later, in the form of technical improvements measurable in terms of money (but not necessarily will it pay the researchers themselves…). Still, such outputs of creation can be credited with quite a different value: they enlighten human minds, make human psychic structures more sublime, and… are a victory over resistant material, won in a hard struggle, and enhance the feeling of usefulness of those who gained such a victory. Now, in view of such values, an individual may act more efficiently and therefore more economically, although such behaviour defies all attempts to express such values in terms of money.’ (Kotarbiński 1965: 82, translation slightly altered).
- 28.
Of course, in terms of linguistics, these terms do not remain in these relations. I introduce this terminology for heuristic reasons and to slightly exaggerate what has been stressed earlier in Chap. 2—that in action theory, the standards of natural language can be neglected only if one has good enough reasons to do so. This view is much weaker from the revisionary one that Kotarbiński defended.
- 29.
Surely, the details of such a support are language-dependent, but on the example of the Polish (Slavic) and English (Germanic) languages we may stipulate that these distinctions are general enough to consider them as a support for theoretical insights.
- 30.
This statement is to a large extent in accordance with what has been claimed by the critics of Kotarbiński—especially, with Zieleniewski’s ‘the concept of efficiency in the general meaning’ (Zieleniewski 1969, Chap. 3.3.3.).
- 31.
Herbert Simon, for example, says: ‘The criterion of efficiency dictates that choice of alternatives which produces the largest result for the given application of resources’ (Simon 1947: 179). This strategy actually narrows down the concept of efficiency to its productive dimension. In this sense, it is similar to my strategy of narrowing down the idea of economy.
- 32.
On the basis of the intentional classifications of the concepts which build efficacy and efficiency, one might propose a taxonomy in which efficiency plays its vital role. Such a taxonomy would be a desideratum for formal reasons, but I shall not introduce it here.
- 33.
To be more binding, these remarks would require a discussion of the issue of intentionality, which is also important for authorship and the agent’s point of view. Here I simplify this question.
- 34.
As I have said earlier in this chapter, what I call here the descriptive and normative dimension of agential effectiveness in the context of the idea of authorship refers, in both those cases, to a certain standard of an agent’s functioning, which allows to, for example evaluate negatively all these cases of human actions that do not meet it. Despite this feature, both these dimensions should be distinguished (see also Caton 2014).
- 35.
This is the reason why the term bounded rationality is now often replaced by the broader term resource-bounded agents.
- 36.
This is my formalization of Kotarbiński’s ‘one shall interfere as little as possible with the course of events, one shall attain her goal with the minimum of intervention possible, and in the optimum case—without intervention at all’ (Kotarbiński 1965: 97—translation altered).
- 37.
The main difference is that Kotarbiński’s view is a response to physical limitations, while Simon’s ‘satisficing’ is typically about mental bounds in making computationally optimal decisions. There are also other important analogies between these two proposals. See also the next chapter.
- 38.
I say ‘roughly’ due to the conceptual reticence of Setiya’s argument.
- 39.
The Williams-like claim that desires can be anything that belongs to an agent’s motivational set (Setiya 2005: 338) is understood in accordance with the Williams-like account of the reasons for action (Williams 1980): practical reason is not morally neutral and there is no reason to act on one’s nasty desires (as Julius King does in the novel). Notwithstanding the palpable plausibility of the claim that pursuing nasty ends is morally blameworthy, we should notice that the Williams-like view on practical reason seems to support the claim that efficiency is a vice. The issue of the reasons for action and practical rationality will be the subject of the next chapter.
- 40.
I shall briefly discuss this concept in the conclusion of this chapter.
- 41.
Setiya does not say this explicitly, but this claim seems to be the consequence of his claim that efficiency is a defect of character. Notice that the disposition itself to consider vicious goals on a par with morally positive ones does not have to be automatically considered as something morally blameworthy. I shall not discuss this issue further. However, it is important to notice that such a claim strongly depends on the picture of practical reason behind it.
- 42.
This issue is part of the idea of diachronic agency (see Chap. 5).
- 43.
Bittner has changed his mind in his later book (Bittner 2001). The views offered in both his books are peculiar for several reasons. Here I only stress that the view defended in What Reason Demands is unique in the sense that his idea of prudence has been construed as entirely excluded from the sphere of moral considerations. I discuss his views in detail in my book (Makowski 2013, Chap. IV) I shall briefly turn back to his proposal in the next chapter.
- 44.
This is actually a tricky problem. On the one hand, diachronically rational agents stay constant over time as agents who enter into intersubjective relations (this allows to address them certain obligations), but on the other hand, their identity may change solely because they—according to the view discussed—construe themselves by engaging in temporarily extended projects. A comprehensive solution to this worry would require showing in detail the difference in these two senses of retaining or changing identity as agent.
- 45.
Certainly, in this section I have not explored other interesting perspectives concerning the role of efficiency. For example, the evolutionary perspective. The approach I introduced in this section seems to be compatible with the evolutionary explanations, but this is beyond the concern of this chapter.
- 46.
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Makowski, P.T. (2017). Effectiveness and Efficiency: The Praxiological Sense of Actions. In: Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s Action Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40051-8_3
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