by  Lucian CULDA

Although the dependence of the investigation methods of the social existence upon the types of epistemologies offering landmarks to the cognitive processes (to the available and accessible ones) is intuitively plausible after people's becoming aware of the failure of positivism, this issue is still not given due attention.

The genetic epistemology has signaled that the genetic investigation manner becomes possible only by identifying the constructive character of knowledge. One can therefore realize that knowledge production also comprises processes generating the knowledgeable subject's competence as well as processes by which the acquired competence fosters new interpretations.

As Raymond Boudon [1] argued, if the research work is confined within the causal analysis methods, this impedes the understanding of the people's situation inside social organizations and processes. But the negative consequences are greater than Boudon' s characterization; they spill over all of the theoretical areas suggested by the division of the 'social', the 'economic sciences', 'judicial sciences' and 'political sciences' included. Such delimitations are indicative of some pre-interactionist epistemological stands. They comprise errors derived not only from ignoring the interactions; the very processes maintaining the perpetual change of the people's social existence and the people too are ignored, as organizations inevitably functioning in innovating ways inside some social organizations.

As the 20th century developments show, the moving apart from the causal interpretation manner is a gradual one, by successive reconsideration, and by summing up numerous discrete contributions, of epistemological and ontological nature.

A new interpretation fosters new competence, and new cognitive competence gives access to new explanatory possibilities [2]. Every time, the emergence of a new interpretation fosters the objectivization of some new information situations which produce new "objects" in man's environment; the latter is thus altered too, and also the needs exerting pressures on people and the manners in which people interact to meet them. The new existential circumstances exert pressures to further generate new epistemological competence and, through their products, new capacities to investigate the existents different from the previous, more efficient ones.

Only by discovering the constructivism of cognitive processes is it likely to grasp and explain the social constructivism which people's interactions unto meeting certain ends produce. It is by this possible to understand the connections between the cognitive processes specific to people's capacities to process information and the constructive processes inside the social organizations.

Once the capacity to grasp these connections is acquired, one can notice:

•  the "horizontal" studies limits, which ignore the "geneses";
•  the interpretation errors occurring when either "man" or "the social' is investigated separately.

What we superficially call "the social" proves to be the people's social existence. The genetic epistemology gives a key to designing psycho-social studies, as a way to provide some explanations which cannot be reached by ignoring these connections, otherwise said through either sociological or psychological studies. It has been noticed that the studies focused on the social can only be relevant when designed in such a way to identify the geneses, the constructive processes inside the social, when they insist on the fact that, in order to grasp the reasons of a social process, one needs to be familiar with all its stages, or at least with most of the possible ones, as well as with the people's degree of involvement in that process.

The aforementioned aspects make it possible to conclude: using the genetic epistemology as a starting point, a certain discontinuity in every theoretical domain studying the social becomes likely, a discontinuity triggered off by the reconstructive trait of the concept, of the way to identify the objects under study, to choose the aims, the investigation as well as the assessment methods.

To meet such requirements, the genetic epistemology is not enough. It is the latter which argues that what we will call "knowledge" proves to be a processuality, a tier of the people's social existence under permanent reconstruction. The relationship between the genetic epistemology and the theoretical approach founded by it is indicative of the need to investigate the developments of the epistemological research possibilities inside the cognitive processuality.

This generalization is justified; only in this way can one understand how and why the functions of epistemology within the cognitive processuality can increase and manifest ever more explicitly and systematically. The above mentioned performance presupposes that the epistemological studies provide the pertinent (i. e. , accurate and comprehensive) explanation to the cognitive processuality and reveal the latter's value, so that it makes possible to design the gnoseological methods specific to each mega-existence, interpreted as a unitary, self-contained object. Here I have in mind the physical mega-existence, the biotic mega-existence and the social mega-existence.

By successively differentiating, the social existence gradually produces investigation skills centered on discrete aspects of the three types of mega-existence, but it tends to the state when three main theoretical investigation skills will be defined, each centered on one of the three identified mega-existences.

Although research workers may feel they already have enough epistemological benchmarks for the investigations they are performing within the limits of the theoretical disciplines they have been trained in or by inter-disciplinary studies, the analyses I have made reveal that the possibilities to perform theoretical research will still be far from satisfactory as long as people do not explore in a pertinent manner the possibilities offered by the cognitive processuality.

As we have argued [3], the physical and biotic mega-existence investigation cannot be performed satisfactorily until the social mega-existence investigation is not able to offer a satisfactory explanation to the cognitive capacity developing inside it, and this epistemological performance becomes possible only when it also provides the proper interpretation of its own development. It is plausible that, when epistemology produces satisfactory self-awareness, the conditions will be met to interpret unitarily and accurately the three mega-existences and, as an extension of this performance, to design the comprehensive investigation strategy for each mega-existence.

The following hypothesis becomes likely: epistemology is a processuality within the cognitive processuality. It starts by performing simplistic and unilateral investigations of some discrete aspects of knowledge but, in the process, it successively alters its investigation possibilities, tending to provide the satisfactory interpretation of the cognitive processuality. The pressures to reach this standard of performance derive from the consequences of the cognitive activities' short-comings achieved within the available epistemological perspectives.

The satisfactory interpretation can only be that which also interprets the situation of epistemology inside the cognitive processuality, which reveals that the possible discontinuities in the former are sources of complex discontinuities in the latter. Only in this way can the epistemic subjects come to the awareness of the need to detach themselves from the previous epistemological interpretations.

In the context in which epistemology includes itself in the investigation area, the dependence of the explanations given to knowledge by the epistemological interpretation becomes more obvious.

Epistemology is itself cognitive processuality. It is also dependent upon the development stage of the object under investigation and on its own development, upon producing the investigation methods suitable for the object under study and on the self-assessment capacity. If the self assessment is performed in ways deriving from the cognitive capacity's stage of development, then the satisfactory self-assessment can only be performed gradually.

The alterations that may occur in the processuality called epistemology are correlated to those produced inside the cognitive one. Epistemology evolves as a component of the cognitive processuality. It is a derived consequence of the pressures caused by the cognitive activities' short-comings, but it eventually becomes that knowledge component which explores the possibilities to improve the cognitive processes, which provides ever more performing cognitive paradigms. Within this evolution process, epistemology also reaches (produces) the self-awareness and the understanding of the latter's role inside the cognitive processuality.

NOTES AND REFERENCES:

1. R. Boudon, Effets pervers et ordre social, P.U.F., 1993.

2. Lucian Culda, The Epistemological Dimension of the People's Social Existence, Licorna, Bucharest, 2000.

3. Lucian Culda, The Social Processuality, Licorna, Bucharest, 1994.