La conciliación de la vida personal, familiar y profesional

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n the previous chapter I analyzed and clarified the main elements of the the-ory of social evolution. The aim there was to provide a clear and coherent ac-count of the theory as a whole. In this chapter, I will analyze and assess the core concept of the theory of social evolution: the idea of a developmental logic of social change.

The concept of developmental logic plays a central role in Habermas’s theory of social evolution by explaining the rationalization of structures of consciousness, especially normative structures of consciousness, in the evolutionary development of societies. Moreover, the concept of developmental logic provides the critical theorist with the normative grounds to analyze the processes of social change that have given rise to contemporary social structures, and this sociohistorical analysis of the present is intended to specify the deep structures that determine particular social formations. It is thus able to locate the rationality potentials that are latent within given societies, and it locates those developments that can be considered deformed in the sense that they are irrational. An adequate understanding of Habermas’s theory of social evolution, therefore, requires a clear account of what is meant by the idea of a developmental logic of normative structures, and of the function this concept of developmental logic plays within the general theory.

There have been three general reactions to Habermas’s developmental theory of social evolution. The first type of reaction arose in the period between the publi-cation of Communipubli-cation and the Evolution of Society (1979), and The Theory of Com-municative Action (1984, 1987). In commenting on Habermas’s conception of critical theory, which at that time was presented as a reconstruction of historical materialism, these commentators often addressed directly some of the apparent problems in Habermas’s sketch of the theory of social evolution.¹These commen-tators typically acknowledged the central role played by the theory of social evolu-tion in Habermas’s critical theory. This is not surprising given the fact that during this period, Habermas’s attempts to clarify the normative foundations of critical

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theory remained explicitly within the framework and categories of historical mate-rialism. The second and third types of reaction arose after the publication of The Theory of Communicative Action. On the one hand, some commentators simply re-duced Habermas’s critical theory to the theory of communicative action itself, or to the theory of discourse ethics based on this theory.²This, to be sure, was motivated in part by Habermas’s presentation in The Theory of Communicative Action, which placed the theory of social evolution in the background, while developing the for-mal pragmatics of language-use and restricting diachronic considerations to a the-ory of modernity. These commentators effectively ignored the diachronic dimension of his critical social theory by focusing exclusively on the theories of communicative action and discourse ethics. A third set of reactions recognize the centrality of the theory of social evolution to Habermas’s conception of critical the-ory, but for various reasons do not pursue an assessment of the theory itself. Some, such as Stephen White, maintain that the theory of social evolution is simply too sketchy at this stage to admit of adequate assessment, while others consider it only superficially and consequently dismiss it as prima facie implausible.³Yet others do acknowledge, whether explicitly or implicitly, the significance of the theory of so-cial evolution in Habermas’s system, but they present only partial critiques of lim-ited aspects of it.⁴Despite these often insightful critiques, relatively little attention has been paid exclusively to the theory itself. While the criticism that the theory of social evolution is too underdeveloped to be properly assessed is valid—hence this study—only Michael Schmid has attempted to clarify and systematize it.

The general consequence of these reactions, in conjunction with the fact that Habermas has since focused on other topics, is that the current debates concern-ing Habermas’s work almost completely ignore the role of the theory of social evo-lution by focusing on the formal pragmatics of language use, or on the theory of discourse ethics. Moreover, the trajectory of Habermas’s interests in the last decade and a half, in the direction of moral and political theory, has solidified the view that Habermas has effectively abandoned the theory of social evolution. This view, however, is quite mistaken. Although in The Theory of Communicative Action Habermas was not interested in developing further the theory of social evolution, he did apply its basic categories in a critique of modernity.⁵And in a 1983 essay, Habermas confirms that “genetic structuralism in developmental psychology . . . seems promising for the analysis of social evolution and the development of world views, moral belief systems, and legal systems” (MCCA, 23). Thus, the view that Habermas has abandoned the theory of social evolution and consequently also the developmental logic thesis is unfounded.⁶Of those critics (such as Ingram, Mc-Carthy, Strydom, Honneth, and Eder) who do take the theory of social evolution seriously enough to attempt a critique, most are critical of the assertion of a recon-structable developmental logic of normative structures that is homologous to the structures of ontogenesis.

When such critiques are examined, however, it becomes apparent that the critics have failed to do two things. First, they typically do not reconstruct with suf-ficient care Habermas’s theory of social evolution, the relation between his theory

of social evolution and his general critical social theory, and the role played by the concept of developmental logic in his theory of social evolution. Because they are based on misunderstandings of the theory, these critiques miss their mark. In the two previous chapters I have attempted to address this problem by clarifying and making plausible the theory of social evolution and its relation to critical theory.

Second, when such critics do acknowledge the significance of the theory of social evolution and its relation to critical social theory, they often fail to analyze the de-velopmental logic thesis with sufficient care. The result is that their critiques rely only on a somewhat superficial understanding of the developmental logic thesis, as well as the homology arguments given in its support. Therefore, it is of considerable importance to formulate an adequate understanding of Habermas’s thesis concern-ing the developmental logic of normative structures.

The Concept of Developmental Logic

In order to understand the developmental theory of social evolution it is es-sential first to have a firm grasp of the concept of a development logic. In this sec-tion I will analyze the concept and assess its applicability to social theory. Since the concept is borrowed from Piaget, it will be useful to first look at the concept as it is used in developmental psychology. The first task, then, will be to explicate the concept as it is understood in the discipline of developmental psychology.⁷This will be followed by an analysis and assessment of the social-theoretic conception of developmental logic.

The Psychological-Theoretic Conception

This section is intended to provide only a sketch of Piaget’s theory for the analysis of the psychological-theoretic conception of developmental logic. Since the intention is to provide a general map to orient our analysis, this introductory sketch is not intended to be comprehensive; this is especially true given the richness, com-plexity, and staggering volume of Piaget’s work in developmental psychology.⁸

The overarching interest that fundamentally orients all of Piaget’s work re-lates to questions of epistemology. Traditional epistemologies, he holds, are too static; that is, they do not possess a historical dimension. An adequate account of epistemology, that is, one that is “genetic,” must link both structuralist and constructivist explanatory approaches. Such a genetic epistemology conceives of knowledge as predetermined neither in the subject nor in the properties of the object, but as involving “an aspect of novel elaboration.”⁹Thus, genetic episte-mology in this sense is naturalistic, but it is not positivist; it focuses on the ac-tivity of the subject, but it is not idealist; and it conceives of the object as a limiting condition of knowledge.¹⁰According to Piaget, knowledge is the result of a process of increasing differentiation between subject and object, where the differentiation is accomplished by means of the active construction of cognitive structures.

Piaget is especially concerned with “the theoretical and experimental inves-tigation of the qualitative development of intellectual structures,” where the in-tellectual structures are those intermediaries constructed by the subject to make sense of its environment.¹¹Piaget’s attention is focused specifically on the struc-tures of cognitive development, where structure is to be distinguished from both function and content.¹²“Content” refers to the “raw uninterpreted data” of be-havior. In contrast, “function” refers to the essential and invariant properties of intellectual activity as such: “Intellectual content will vary enormously from age to age in ontogenetic development, yet the general functional properties of the adaptational process remain the same.”¹³ Piaget identifies organization and adaptation as the two properties of intellectual functioning. Organization refers to the fact that all intellectual functioning is highly structured in the sense that it always involves the coordination between discrete actions, and the coordination of actions with multiple concepts and their meanings. Piaget views intellectual functioning in a holistic way, viewing intellectual organizations as totalities. The cognitive structures that organize our conscious experience are not composed of an ad hoc conglomeration of skills; rather, they form a coherent whole. Thus, my various cognitions about such things as conservation of matter, momentum, the permanence of objects, and so forth, all fit together to form a coherent whole, regardless of the stage of development I am at. The second of the invariant in-tellectual functions, adaptation, involves two processes: assimilation and accom-modation. Very briefly, assimilation is the process by which the organism integrates the environment into the organism’s previously established categories, and accommodation is the process by which the organism adapts its categories to the environment.¹⁴Adaptation refers to the balanced assimilation and accom-modation of the environment by the organism. Note that organization and adaptation are complementary. Cognitive organization presupposes prior actions (adaptations) that organize a given intellectual structure, and adaptation presup-poses an intellectual structure (organization) that is either accommodated to the environment, or assimilates that same environment (or both).

Cognitive structures (which are Piaget’s primary interest) mediate between the invariant functions and the variable contents: “They are the organizational properties of intelligence.”¹⁵Moreover, they are the consequence of intellectual functioning, and they are inferred by abstracting from the overt behavior of sub-jects. The change of these structures, that is, their development, is determined by the process of adaptation discussed above. Piaget conceives of this development of cognitive structures as occurring in stages. This feature of Piaget’s work is perhaps the most relevant to the present study, because the conception of developmental stages of intellectual activity underlies the concept of developmental logic. Al-though we will analyze this concept further below, it would be worthwhile to men-tion here some of its key elements. First of all, the development of intellectual activity must be sufficiently heterogeneous to warrant a description of stages. In other words, the behavioral changes of ontogenesis must readily appear to divide

into relatively discrete stages, or the attribution of developmental stages would be arbitrary.¹⁶Moreover, the stages of cognitive development are invariantly ordered, meaning that any individual must, insofar as development does occur, pass through the sequence of stages in an invariant order. For example, given posited stages 1, 2, and 3, stage 2 cannot be reached without first going through stage 1, and stage 3 cannot be reached without first passing through both stages 1 and 2 (and only in that order). Another feature of developmental stages is their hierar-chical ordering. Higher stages in the sequence are said to be more developed pre-cisely because they incorporate each lower stage into themselves. Each qualitative stage must also form an integrated whole; that is, “[O]nce structural properties reach an equilibrium . . ., they characteristically show a high degree of interde-pendence, as though they formed part [of the] processes within a strong total sys-tem.”¹⁷This property Piaget refers to as the structure d’ensemble. To be sure, stages do not appear in a state of full equilibrium; they also pass through transitional pe-riods of “preparation” and “achievement.” Nevertheless, once equilibrium is reached, an integrated whole can be discerned. The notion of periods of disequi-librium is not ad hoc, however, since “the concept of intellectual development as a movement from structural disequilibrium to structural equilibrium, repeating it-self at ever higher levels of functioning, is a central concept for Piaget.”¹⁸Piaget’s interest in the deep structures of intellectual development further requires an ac-count of behavioral variations. In other words, a genetic-structuralist theory of de-velopment will need to explain how observed variations in behavior are possible (Piaget deals with this with the concept of décalage).

The result of this theory of genetic epistemology as applied to ontogenesis is an empirically grounded description of the stages of cognitive development. Ac-cording to Piaget, the developing child advances through four basic levels of cog-nitive activity, the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete-operational, and formal-operational. At each level the child’s intellectual capacities are fundamen-tally organized by the structural properties of the given level, and each level is fur-ther differentiated into stages of preparation and stabilization.

In the initial stage of the sensorimotor level there is virtually no subjective distinction between the subject and the object. The infant is not conscious of it-self, and it does not differentiate between data received from internal sources and that received from external sources.¹⁹The actions of the child are radically egocentric, since all action is centered on the infant; that is, it is direct and un-mediated by complex intellectual activity, and the egocentrism of its actions is completely unconscious.²⁰Moreover, the actions of the infant involve no dis-tinctions between the subjective and the objective. At the age of approximately eighteen to twenty-four months the infant makes a transition to a new stage of the sensorimotor level. At this stage basic semiotic functions and representative intelligence appear.²¹Individual actions begin to be coordinated by the subject into schemas, and this coordination of actions leads to an initial differentiation of subject and object, that is, of the thing performing the actions and that which

is acted upon. Thus, with this initial subjective differentiation of subject and ob-ject, and the achievement of a rudimentary degree of self-awareness, a process of decentering occurs: the radical egocentrism of the initial stage is replaced by a more general egocentrism of action schemas. These schemas are simply regular behavioral reactions to certain stimuli, for example, the infant’s sucking anything placed in or near its mouth, kicking anything within reach, grasping things within reach, and so on. From this point on, subject and object become increas-ingly differentiated. This process has two aspects: an increasincreas-ingly complex coor-dination of subjective actions; and an increasingly sophisticated understanding by the subject of the causal relations between objects.

At approximately three to four years of age the child enters the preopera-tional level of cognitive activity. Action schemas combined with basic semiotic skills allow the child to construct representative schemas that are then utilized more effectively to coordinate actions.²²Moreover, these action schemas become interiorized in the form of representations or concepts, and action itself is first subjectively viewed as a mediator between the subject and object. The process of decentering is extended to concepts at the next stage of development, which is achieved at roughly five to six years of age. This decentering of concepts or con-ceptualized actions is connected to the discovery of certain objective relationships to things that are interiorized in the form of relations of dependent variables, or functions.²³These “constituent functions,” as Piaget calls them, are only semilogi-cal. That is, they remain closely connected to action schemas, and are not re-versible as are operations. While at this stage the child discovers these constituent functions and can reliably differentiate between individual and class, there is as yet no conception of conservation and no capacity for inferential thought.

The level of concrete operations is achieved between the ages of approxi-mately seven and eight. The key characteristic of this level of development is the achievement of the reversibility of operations. The child no longer makes correc-tions to action schemas after the fact, but now errors are anticipated. Anticipation and retrospection are fused with action schemas. This fusion of anticipation and retrospection implies a closure of the system of thought on itself, and this implies that the internal relationships of the system acquire a necessity. At this level the concepts of transitivity and conservation make their appearance, but the form/content distinction is not yet made.²⁴

At the age of nine to ten years, concrete operations are stabilized. The child’s conception of space is elaborated, and the conceptualization of causation increases.

As concrete operations are elaborated, however, certain “lacunae” appear, and these lead to the development of the next level of cognitive structures.

The final level of formal operations is achieved at approximately eleven to twelve years of age. The key property of this level is that operations are freed from their time dependence; they become hypothetical. Knowledge at this level can be said to transcend reality, since it dispenses with the concrete as an intermediary.²⁵ The consequence is the development of propositional logic and of operations ap-plied to operations, or as Piaget says, “sets of all subsets.”²⁶

Formal Properties

While Piaget’s theory consists of both functional (organization and adapta-tion) and formal (developmental logic) aspects, our interest in this chapter is con-fined to just its formal aspects (that is, developmental logic). The functional aspects of development are not relevant here because with reference to social theory the functional aspects would be analogous to other elements of the theory of social evo-lution, such as the distinction between cognitive-technical and moral-practical ra-tionalization processes. It should be noted that the psychological-theoretic conception of developmental logic is not a matter of settled science. That is, the conclusions in the literature concerning the various aspects of this concept are var-ied, and there is no strong consensus within the discipline of developmental psy-chology as a whole about its proper understanding. Moreover, within the various analyses that can be found in the literature, the authors typically emphasize the un-derdetermination of the concept by the empirical data. Nevertheless, while there still may be much debate concerning the proper characterization of the concept of

While Piaget’s theory consists of both functional (organization and adapta-tion) and formal (developmental logic) aspects, our interest in this chapter is con-fined to just its formal aspects (that is, developmental logic). The functional aspects of development are not relevant here because with reference to social theory the functional aspects would be analogous to other elements of the theory of social evo-lution, such as the distinction between cognitive-technical and moral-practical ra-tionalization processes. It should be noted that the psychological-theoretic conception of developmental logic is not a matter of settled science. That is, the conclusions in the literature concerning the various aspects of this concept are var-ied, and there is no strong consensus within the discipline of developmental psy-chology as a whole about its proper understanding. Moreover, within the various analyses that can be found in the literature, the authors typically emphasize the un-derdetermination of the concept by the empirical data. Nevertheless, while there still may be much debate concerning the proper characterization of the concept of

In document LA SITUACION LABORAL DE LA MUJER EN EL MEDIO URBANO 2013 (página 58-61)