by  Lucian CULDA

1. Ontological fundamentals of epistemologies.

2. Scientific research difficulties in the absence of a satisfactory explanation to the social existence.

It is the social existence which ultimately denies not only the products of knowledge; also the ways of acquiring knowledge are submitted to assessment. As already stated,[1] the causal interpretations prove unsatisfactory as they induce deforming simplifications, and the other types of interpretation make it possible to overcome partially the causal investigation short-comings. The interactionist, genetic and systemic analyses unfold possible investigations which transcend the causal analyses, but such investigations focus on some of the types of processes involved in maintaining the people's social existence, and do not enable the latter's being investigated in an overall, unitary manner. In order to overcome this, the emergence of a framework theory is mandatory, focused on the social ontos, which can be used to guide the epistemological research exploring the cognitive capacities' reconstruction needs.

1. Ontological fundamentals of epistemologies

If one takes into account the historical dimension of the issue, one can conclude: although the social existence is an ever denser organization, with more and more diverse connections among its components, the fragmentary investigations are still prevailing. They have become possible as people have not been able to design comprehensive theoretical investigations, in which the available semantic skills have resulted in ontologies in philosophical ways and discrete interpretations of various types of social organizations and processes. Such interpretations have fostered and maintained "objects for us", to use Kant's words, that have been adopted by numerous research workers as areas of reference. Out of them the study objects have been contoured, which have gradually developed into ever more numerous scientific disciplines, but these interpretations, together with applied studies, have contributed to producing the social mega-existence and ever more proper interpretations of the latter's unitary character.

The theories worked out inside the scientific disciplines investigate discrete aspects of an object in itself, into variants depending on prevailing interpretations provided by the "objects for us", perceived as reference areas for the scientific research.

The interpretations comprised by "the objects for us" being inevitably unsatisfactory as long as they do not derive from several heterogeneous cognitive activities, they cannot guide in a satisfactory manner the theoretical research work, but the investigations gradually identify the latter's limits and errors; by this successive reconstructions of the reference areas become likely, as well as their likelihood to the "objects in themselves".

The short-comings of the interpretation capacities producing and maintaining the interpretations - or "reference areas" of the research workers - also become the short-comings of the scientific disciplines adopting them as framework-interpretations. In order that the scientific research may be of the causal type (searching to identify "legal frameworks" in the study objects), it is therefore necessary that the reference areas comprise interpretations which justify the attempts to identify the "laws"; in case the framework-interpretations comprise interpretations maintaining the objects under study are organizations, the research workers endeavor to produce models for the latter, hypotheses affirming the existence of some "systems", pronounce on the latter's "structure", on the "functional" or "dysfunctional" nature of some of the identified processes.

Such alterations of the "objects for us" reveal not only that people do not satisfactorily interpret the "object in itself", but also that the unsatisfactory interpretations do not stand the test of time, and tend to be replaced by other interpretations, which pronounce on some previously ignored traits of the of the objects on themselves.

2. Scientific research difficulties in the absence of a satisfactory explanation to the social existence

Whereas, at an early stage, the scientific analysis is centered on discrete aspects of the social existence, the situation can be explained by the still diffuse and dispersed character of the social organizations, as well as by the short-comings of the available analysis methods. The initial investigation possibilities cannot help being limited; it is the latter that the activities with different aims make possible. Thus, it is the causal manner which, in the first stage of the verbal processing, prevails over the analytical interpretations, as it derives from the visual analyzer's possibilities to provide data on successions; the interpretation of the latter as causality relations is a vague way of information processing provided by the bio-processors, which is to be sanctioned after thousands of years by the emergence of logic, as an attempt to introduce differentiation and coherence in the careless ways of attributing causality relations.

As already argued [2], the numerous situations which transcend the causal-type processes are at the origin of differentiation and definition of other ways of analysis, such as the "interactionist" ones. But neither the causal analysis, nor the interactionist one can explain the social existence, as both the causal and interactionist research procedures orient the investigations towards discrete aspects, which they inquire as if the latter did not belong to an organization. The social existence, as an organization, is not inquired [3]. It starts to be explored only when the systemic investigations become possible, but in ways which cannot foster the satisfactory interpretation of the social mega-existence, in course of development itself.

The systemic paradigm cannot represent the epistemological framework for the satisfactory interpretation of the social existence, as it does not set standards to correctly (and comprehensively) identify and define the reference area. Under epistemological circumstances similar to those specific to the systemic paradigms, any organization can become the object of the systemic analysis, and the relations to other organizations are simplistically considered "input" and "output". The functional encompassing relations among organizations are considered only accidentally. For instance, any organization within the nations can therefore be inquired discretely, overlooking the consequences of the latter's belonging to a certain nation. Some people consider the comprehensive approach of the social 'existents' is neither possible not necessary. The situation I am referring to is described as follows:

"As a fundamental investigation on the meaning of the Being and Becoming, ontology (and/or metaphysics) is, alongside the other branches or traditional disciplines of philosophy …, currently in quest of a new legitimacy, a justification of a new kind of its claims to grasp and turn to good account the whole area of the being. In the first half of the 20th century, the research on the basic structures of existence, of the reason of being was denounced by a whole range of thinkers as pseudo-knowledge, lacking strict testing and evaluation criteria and standards. Blocked from the traditional metaphysics' essentialist, reductionist and fundamentalist perspectives, the question related to the constitution or architecture of existence should be resumed in a new way, 're-contextualized', so that the progress of the ontological investigation can become possible again."[4]

This situation occurs after the ontology of the social has materialized, as summarized in The Fundamental forms of Social Thought [5], in three forms of analysis. The explanation of the social as a body, a mechanism and a process has been attempted at. As already realized, the reductionist approaches, be they mechanicist or biologist, cannot be satisfactory. Werner Stark argues that the analysis of the social as a process is also improper, insofar as it separates the social processes from the cultural ones; what nevertheless provides unity to the social existence is differentiated.

Under the aforementioned circumstances, the definition of the objects under theoretical inquiry has remained conjectural, being mainly dominated by tradition, by the ways in which the "scientific disciplines" have gradually differentiated from one another. But the ontological reconsiderations being consequences and expressions of the possibilities to approach the previous interpretations in a critical manner, research workers are gradually rejecting the first interpretation ways by reconsideration paving the way satisfactory interpretation.

The maximum generality consequences are: the results of different theoretical research work performed at the intermediate stages have not proven sufficient (or relevant) to provide the unitary interpretation of the social existence, and the applicative research cannot provide the expected consequences. The short-comings derive from overlooking that kind of processes and connections which transcend the definitions made by the theoretical disciplines within which theoreticians define the objects under study.

Theoreticians cannot remain insensitive to this situation; they try to overcome it by making options, be they approximate, as to the social ontic. For instance, we can mention the attitude taken by Alain Touraine. Resenting the lack of interpreting "society", he remarks:

"The society has vanished. The situations and conducts have become strange worlds to one another. On the one hand, we talk only about economies in growth or in crisis and about international strategies; on the other, people react only to the lived, personal experience, to the invention of a culture. Nothing interposes … between existence and man, or almost nothing."[6]

The quoted author considers it useful to adopt as premise of the studies he performs a supposition about the social. He asserts he interprets "society as a system capable of providing and transforming its guidelines and ways of action."[7] The epistemologist thus notes the epistemological approaches cannot be satisfactory either, in case they refer to discrete aspects, and not to the possibility to grasp the social existence, in its unity and becoming.

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.

4. Ilie Pârvu, The Architecture of Existence, Humanitas, Bucharest, 1990, p. 7.

5. Werner Stark, The Fundamental Forms of Social Thought, 1963.

6. Alain Touraine, La societe invisible, Ed. Seuil, Paris, 1977, p. 7.

7. Ibidem, p. 6.