(/(M 'OMMUNICATION, CULTURE AND DESIGN: PRAXIOLOGICAL-SYSTEMIC APPROACH WOJCIECHGASPARSKI INTRODUCTION PRAXIOLOGY AND THE SYSTEM OF SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

(/(M 'OMMUNICATION, CULTURE AND DESIGN: PRAXIOLOGICAL-SYSTEMIC APPROACH WOJCIECHGASPARSKI INTRODUCTION Communication between us is always relative, indirect, and uncertain. JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET The problem of communication has been studied by many disciplines for many years. Namely by philosphy (e. g. Bunge'), cybernetics (Wiener 2 and his followers), sociology (see: Szacki 3 ), semiotics (Eco 4 ), semantics (e. g. Tondl 5 ), science of science (see: Mirski and Sadovsky 6 ), psychology (e. g. Lindsay and Norman 7 ), and of course engineering, just to mention the most important ones. Nevertheless the exhausting and satisfactory systemic model of the phenomenon has not been developed yet. The literature offers subsystemic or non-systemic, sometimes declared as systemic, models instead. In this paper we are going to limit ourselves to the review of the interrelations between communication, culture and design. The approach that will be used is called praxiological-systemic because it is based on the praxiology of Tadeusz Kotarbinski 8 and the system of social philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset. 9 PRAXIOLOGY AND THE SYSTEM OF SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY Praxiology and social philosophy are surprisingly close to one another. This is probably because Kotarbinski and Ortega y Gasset were members of the same generation. In all probability their intellectual mentalities were framed by the same or similar reading lists. Both were involved not only with philosophy but also with languages. Ortega y Gasset was also a writer while Kotarbinski was partial to poetry. Both tended to study the philosophy of technology. Praxiology was connected to by Alfred V. Espinas, the author of «Les Origines WOJCIECH GASPARSKI Chief of the Science and Praxiologic Department of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Polish Academy of Science. Theorist on design, he has published, among others, the following hooks: Design Methodology: an Outline. 1981. and Praxiological Studies. 1983. 1. Bunge. M., «Ontology II: A World ot'systems», in Treatise on Basic Philosophy, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, vol. IV, 1979. pp. 180-181; «Epistemology and Methodology I: Exploring the World», in Treatise on Basic Philosophy, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, vol. V. 1983, pp. 95-125. 2. Wiener, N.. Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1948. 3. Szacki, J., The History of Sociological Thought (in Polish), Polish Scientific Publ.. Warsaw, "l983, pp. 587, 591-592. 598-599. 613-654. 4. Eco. \J.,A Theory of Semiotics. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1976. 5. Tondl, L., Problems of Semantics. D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1981. 6. Mirski, E. M., Sadovsky, W. N., Communication in Contemporary Science (in Russian), Progress Publ.. Moscow, 1976. 7. Lindsay, P. H., Norman, D. A., Human Information Processing: An Introduction to Psychology, Academic Press, London, 1972. 8. Kotarbinski, T, Praxiology: An Introduction to the Sciences of Efficient Action, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1965. 9. Ortega y Gasset, J., El hombre y la gente, Madrid, 1969 (quoted after the Polish translation: Rebelión of the Mass and Other Sociological Writtings, Polish Scientific Publ., Warsaw, 1982). Temes de Disseny, M/5, pp. 201-204

de la Technologic».' It was Espinas after whom Kotarbinski labelled his general practice as «praxiology», and very similarly, Ortega y Gasset was familiar with the essay of the French sociologist presenting his meditations on technology, although he never used the term «praxiology» in his works. Kotarbinski and Ortega y Gasset differ in their philosophical linkings. The former was related to the Lvov- Warsaw philosophy school founded by Kazimierz Twardowski, a professor of the Lvov University, and pupil of F. Brentano. The latter was a neo-kantian and a phenomenologist, especially in the late period of his philosophical activity. Kotarbinski's philosophy was analytical, he sympathized with positivism and was against the negligence of evolutionism as regards the methodology of the humanities. Kotarbinski's praxiology and Ortega's social philosophy alike were oriented towards studying human action. According to Ortega y Gasset action is the destiny of human beings. The Spaniard identified three phases of human existence: (1) alteration: a man feels himself as a waif abandoned among other things; (2) vita contemplativa or bios theoretikós or ensimismamiento: a man retreats from reality to his heart of hearts in order to produce ideas of things that will help him to dominate the world; (3) vita activa or praxis', man returns to reality to act on the basis of a plan he made beforehand. It seems that the idea of the circularity of the phases should be assumed for any of the practical situations of human being. This reminds us of a conception of Kotarbinski's compulsory situations, i. e. situations in which one's refraining from action/alteration not only preserves bad circumstances creating situations, but also worsens the conditions of the subject of the situation. Therefore man is forced to rethink the situation, to formulate a plan on how to overcome it, and finally to act according to the designed way. Kotarbinski believed in progress claiming that compulsory situations and the efforts to overcome were the motor of progress. A similar attitude is suggested by Ortega y Gasset's idea, although he declared himself not to be a progressivist. «Culture he wrote in his study has always been the utilisation of difficulties.»" A CONCEPT OF AN ACTION Action is the influence of man over the environment of material things and other people, which is guided by a plan designed by him during previous thinking or reflection.» 12 According to praxiology an action is both the purposeful and conscious behaviour of a man, carried on by him according to his will. The purposes of actions are states of things thought by a man as worthy to aim at. It is easy to notice that aims understood in such a way are in fact actualisations of a superior purpose, identified above as man's influence over the environment. Any action except for the simplest needs preparation that will make it possible or easier. 1-1 According to Ortega y Gasset, «one's action is not an accidental collision with things and other people around him or her: it would be behaviour of a lower than human level, i. e. an alteration». 14 A systemic interpretation of an action should be founded on the basis of Bunge's definition of a system as an ordered triple made up of composition, environment and structure. 15 According to this an action is an ordered septuple of: agent of action (A), resources (R), tools (T) for action's composition. environment (E) and goal (G), criteria of evaluation (K), method (M) for action's structure : a = <A, R. T, E, G, K, M>. 16 The conceptual preparation of and for an action is designing 17 or planning. 18 Designing and planning, although natural, are understood now as a way of externalized professional thinking. Both thinking and acting are important for man's survival but should be balanced. Overestimated thinking creates «cultural bigotry» while overestimated action creates voluntaristic «pure action». 19 Balanced culture needs communication for better understanding man and his society, and for the preparation by him or her of sound plans and designs in order to perform relevant actions. COMMUNICATION STRATA: FROM ACTION AS COMMUNICATION TO COMMUNICATION FOR ACTIONS «Communication is an essential ingredient of social behaviour in all gregarious animals», writes Mario Bunge in the «Exploring the World» volume of his Treatise on Basic Philosophy. 20 What is communication or, more precisely, a communicative process? It is «the passage of a signal (not necessarily a sign) from a source (through a transmitter, along a channel) to a destination», as Umberto Eco defines the concept, adding the most important comment to the definition: «every act of communication (except for the stimulation process, for instance) to or 10. Espinas, A. V, «Les Origines de la Technologic», Revue Philosophique, Paris, 1890. 11. Ortega y Gasset, J., ibid. 12. Id., ibid. 13. Gasparski, W., «On Praxiology of Preparatory Actions», Int. J. of General Systems, vol. XIII, n 4, 1987a, pp. 346-347. 14. Ortega y Gasset, J., ibid. 15. Bunge, M.. ibid., pp. 5-8. 16. Gasparski, W., «Praxiology», in Systems and Control Encyclopaedia: Theory. Technology. Applications. Pergamon Press, Oxford, 19876, p. 3852. 17. Gasparski, W., Understanding Design: The Praxiological Systemic Perspective. Intersystem Publ., Seaside. CA, 1984. 18. Nadler, G., The Planning and Design Approach. Wiley, New York, 1981. 19. Ortega y Gasset, J., ibid. 20. Bunge, M., ibid., 1983, p. 97.

between human beings or any other intelligent biological or mechanical apparatus presupposes a signification system as its necessary condition.» 2 ' Even when not being gregarious, I (or you), though I am considered a member of the family of gregarious animals, receive signals from the world I live in. This world is a system consisting of something that is important for me, oipragmata. The world of circumstances, or practical situations, 22 is a wide pragmatic or practical reality. All kinds of colours, lights and shadows, sounds, voices and noise, hardness and softness are signals according to which we run our life. 23 Are those signals only stimuli or elements of the lowest stratum of communication, communication between my surroundings and me? Your surroundings and you? If I happen to be an element of your surroundings or you rrappen to be an element of mine you are for me a system of actions and I am a system of actions for you, actions each of us expects from the other or is afraid of or both. This is because each of us takes it for granted that the other is formally, constitutively, perilous. It does not necessarily mean, however, that your actions are suspected to be bad; they may even be good, but dangerous for me. In order to feel sure about your actions I try to examine, to experiment with you. In order to do this I start approaching you carefully. You have the same problem with me and do the same. Both of us start to perform actions that are essentially useless in the common understanding of the term. They are performed to test and communicate attitudes and intentions of one of us toward the other. The actions that make up the procedure of welcoming are a good example of such communication. 24 This is the second stratum of social communication. And this is real communication, not just signals. This is because a signification system is attached to the system of the language of actions 25 in a given culture. This is why «me» written on a blackboard means something abstract, or nothing at all, while the shouted «me!» is very concrete. The signification system inbuilt in actions is of an etymological nature. Customs and habits are the etymology of actions. «Words have their etymology wrote Ortega y Gasset not because they are words but because they are habits.» 26 A man is an etymological creature, he concluded. The next higher stratum of communication is communication through language. It is obvious that there has been a need of communication in man, since he was becoming human, much higher than the needs characteristic of all other animals. The need was so pressing because the animal that would shortly become a human being had «enormously much to talk about». There was something in him that did not occur in other animals, namely the rise of his «internal world» which called forexternalization, for expression. (...) the animal who eventually turned out to be man had to originate thanks to the extraordinary development and overabundance of a primary function which was imagination. (...) Internal richness, alien to other animals, gave life to the community and an entirely new character to the existing type of communication between human beings, for the question was not only to generate and receive signals relating to the situation in the environment, but also to manifest the inward life which called for tentative interpretation. 27 This gave birth to the higher stratum of communication linguistic communication. The process of language discovery is a never ending process; therefore we, or at least some of us, are involved in creating still higher, more sophisticated, strata of communication. This is because our knowledge of life related to other people as well as to ourselves is an open knowledge, never fixed, and with fuzzy boundaries. 28 COMMUNICATION FOR DESIGN AND DESIGN FOR COMMUNICATION Both Kotarbinski and Ortega y Gasset understood man as a technologist. For technology is a specifically human composition. Thanks to his ability to reach inside of himself, to ensimismarse, man became a planner, a designer of his ideas on how to change the world according to his desires and will. He communicates with himself when processing relevant knowledge, and having designed his plan he goes back to reality to impose it on the external world, thus humanizing reality. This requires communication with others. Both are types of communication: communication for designing and for performing the designs. Since design-making is a conceptual preparation of and/or actions, it is of an informational nature and is based on different kinds of communication performed in language (in the general sense of the word) through appropriate means which altogether create a system. The better the system is, the more relevant the plans and/or designs for action aje. So not only is communication needed for design but also a conceptual preparation, i. e. design is needed for communication. Planning and designing as well as decision-making, programming, and other actions of a similar nature are 21. Eco, V.,ibid., pp. 8-9. 22. Gasparski, W.. ibid., 1987o, pp. 349-350. 23. Ortega y Gasset, J., ibid. 24. Id., ibid. 25. Nowakowska, M., Language of Motivation and Language of Actions. Mouton, The Hague, 1973. 26. Ortega y Gasset, J., ibid. 27. Id., ibid. 28. \d.,ibid.

in their very praxiological character the pre-actions. 29 More so the abovementioned actions are pre-actions of a specific type. They are actions over other actions, therefore like language and meta-language are differentiated by logicians praxiologists differentiate them from actions and call them meta-actions. Meta-actions concern processing not just other actions but also mappings of the actions, i. e. their models which are retrospective or prospective (designs). The substance of meta-actions is information, and such actions are: the acquisition of knowledge (identification and interpretation), knowledge utilisation in planning and designing processes, and knowledge transfer in the processes of permanent education. The technical means of processing information are the response to the «communication and design» challenge. CONCLUDING REMARKS It is necessary to remember that communication as well as designing are not just value free technologies to impose what we want over the world. They are also, or even predominantly, social activities dependent on the culture they serve. The fate of culture and man's destiny depend upon whether he in his heart of hearts is aware that only uncertainty is certain. 30 What is needed is not just a culture for survival. Changes in the existing culture are needed. It is not easy to make changes in a given culture but, on the other hand, as it has already been said, a culture is an art of taking advantage of difficulties. The difficulties we face are: the scarcity of resources, the poluted environment, dirty technologies, and an ocean of unfulfilled human needs. 31 This is why so many men of intellect from different countries exhort to act toward creating a new culture: Valaskakis, 32 Peccei, 33 Kostopoulos. 34 These people call this culture a system design culture. 35 This is why communication between individuals as well as global communication is so important. 36 29. Gasparski, W., ibid, 1987o. 30. Ortega y Gasset, J., ibid. 31. McHale, J., McHale, M.C., Basic Human Needs: A Framework for Action, Transaction Books, New Brunswick, N. J., 1978. 32. Valaskakis, K... Sindell, P. S., Smith, J. G., Fitzpatrick-Martin, I., The Conserver Society: A Workable Alternative for the Future, Sindell Research Ltd., Montreal, 1979. 33. Peccei, A., Cento pagine per I'avvenire, A. Mondadori Ed., Milan, 1981. 34. Kostopoulos, T, People of Knowledge become Revolutionaries: A Manifesto of Nomocracy, Nomocratia, Stockholm, 1989. 35. Gasparski, W.. ibid, 1989, pp. 191-209. 36. This paper has been prepared at the invitation of Dr. Rafael Rodriguez Delgado, Founder and Vice-President of the Sociedad Española de Sistemas Generales (SESGE), to be presented at the International Congress on Systems and Communication Media for Development, Madrid, 20-24 November, 1989.