intentionality, causality and functionalism

8/6/2019 Intentionality, Causality and Functionalism

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Sociedade Brasileira de Sociologia

IV National Congress of Sociology

Rio de Janeiro, June 1-2, 1989

Round table on SOCIAL THEORY: NEW CHALLENGES

INTENTIONALITY, CAUSALITY AND THE VICISSITUDES

OF FUNCTIONALISM

Fábio Wanderley Reis

I intend to address briefly the problem of intentionality and causality at the

level of social and political phenomena. The focus I have chosen to deal with this

theme would allow me to adopt "the vicissitudes of functionalism" as a kind of

subtitle for this presentation.

A good starting point is the perverse oscillation between two contrasting

models of explanation of social phenomena that was pointed out in a book by Robert

Nozick a few years ago ( Anarchy, State, and Utopia). On the one hand, whenever the

observation of phenomena suggests, at face level, the occurrence of mechanisms of

the "invisible hand" kind (i.e., of causal mechanisms, insofar as they do not involve

or produce the realization of the explicit goals of anybody), proper explanation

appears as consisting of showing that, "actually", we do have the operation of the

interests or objectives of some actor or set of actors -- that is to say, proper

explanation would consist in replacing invisible-hand mechanisms by some

mechanism of the "hidden hand" variety, or by the goals of some (typically sinister or

conspiratorial) individual or group of individuals, who manipulate things and make

them what they are. On the other hand, whenever the apparent level of phenomena

suggests the successful operation of actors in search of their explicit goals, in which

the observed processes fit by this aspect of intentionality a hidden-hand model,

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proper explanation appears, on the contrary, as consisting in showing that "actually"

actors are irrelevant (Napoleon is irrelevant, if Napoleon did not exist someone else

would show up...) and that mechanisms of objective social causation provide the

"real" explanation.

The difficulty thus pointed out emerges in a very clear way in the current

debate on the "rational choice" approach -- or, to take other of its many names, game

theory, "public choice" in the field of political science, or the "analytical marxism"

discussed yesterday in this meeting. This approach has become a growth industry in

recent years, and some of the ramifications of the questions raised in the debate on it

are of great practical interest. After all, the question of whether it is possible to act

intentionally at the level of society and thus to control social processes and

eventually to achieve goals that may be seen as corresponding to shared or collective

goals of some sort is a crucial one -- however problematical the issue of the way in

which such collective goals relate to particular or strictly individual interests, which

is an important ramification of the initial question.

The practical importance of the general problem can be appreciated if it is

related, for instance, to the question of how to build a stable democracy in this

country -- or of how to act so as eventually to consolidate, if possible in not too

distant a future, the democratic arrangement sought by the constitution we have just

seen promulgated. From a different angle, an interesting side to the general problem

emerges in connection with the question of functionalism in the social sciences. So,

functionalism as an approach clearly brings together the two faces of the

methodological debate on intentionality and causality. The functional model of

explanation contains a clear teleological element, just as it contains an element

related to the idea of a "system" in operation which points in the direction of

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"objective causality". We thus have, with functionalism, a sort of "objective

teleology", a fusion between the two contrasting points of view, which seems to me

to provide the explanation for the ever recurring interest the approach tends to arise.

Again and again we see someone declare that functionalism is fundamentally flawed,

or even that it is dead and buried -- but there it comes again. And these recurrent

deaths and rebirths sometimes reveal some highly ironic shades.

Thus, if we ponder the current debate on functionalism in the social sciences in

the perspective of fifteen or twenty years ago, one feature of this debate seems rather

surprising, for it reveals a complete reversal of the positions held by some of the

main contenders. Twenty years ago, functionalism was the hallmark of "academic"

social science, whereas Marxist social science used insistently to attack

functionalism and denounce the functionalist character of the dominant or established

branches of sociology and political science. What we currently have, however, is that

that branch of social science which would deserve to be called "academic"

("established" around the increasingly diffused rational choice approach, with its

many ramifications) is the one to attack functionalism, whereas Marxists, or at least

some sectors that might be seen as more "conventionally" Marxists, resort to

functionalism as a defense against the assault from rational choice quarters and lay

an affirmative claim to it, as is the case with Gerald Cohen in Britain. There are, thus,

some rather intriguing features to the debate. And I think its interest has to do with

the articulation between the dimensions of intentionality and causality.

The current work by Jürgen Habermas is also worth a mention in this context.

If we take, for instance, The Theory of Communicative Action, certainly Habermas's

opus magnum, we will find there the important distinction between "lifeworld" and

"system". "Lifeworld" has to do with the orientations of action, that is, a clearly

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intentional dimension of action (eveng though this aspect of Habermas's thought

certainly involves many important shades if confronted with the usual way to

understand intentionality within the rational choice approach, for in Habermas the

intentional element of the lifeworld includes in a salient way the observance of

norms, instead of what one might describe as the "merely" instrumental search for

goals -- it would be possible to enter a quite complicated discussion with regard to

this point). As to "system", we would be dealing here with the consequences of

action, or with that aspect in which objective causation is at play and which would be

supposedly more liable to a methodological treatment of an empirical-analytic nature

-- and of a functional nature. In effect, Habermas seeks quite explicitly to recover a

functional type of analysis in accordance with the "objective" logic proper to the

"system" dimension of social reality, though he stresses the limits of this analysis and

the irreducibly communicative aspects of action, which are supposed to require a

different approach.

Now, so that I can state, starting from this, a couple of ideas I want to present

to you it is convenient to take as a reference point a text by Adam Przeworski,

"Micro-foundations of Pacts in Latin America". It is an unpublished text, which until

now has had only limited circulation. Przeworski deals in it with the same basic

methodological questions previously indicated, which he relates to the theme of the

setting up of constitutional pacts in the countries of Latin America. Of course, this is

a possible way to phrase the problem we are presently facing in the countries in

which there supposedly occurs, like in Brazil, a transition to democracy: how to

establish social pacts that may turn out to be effective and to represent a real point of

departure for stable democratic forms. From the point of view of our discussion, one

aspect to be emphasized is that a constitutional pact is, in principle, perhaps the most

exemplary case of intentionality in the political life of a society. The deliberations

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connected with the establishment of a new constitution or of a new constitutional

pact clearly represent a case or circumstance in which society as such thinks upon

itself, decides how it is going to organize itself, how some important aspects of the

interaction among its members are going to be regulated, and so on. Thus, we are

supposedly dealing here with a moment of reflection or, in a somewhat redundant

phrase, of self-reflection.

Nevertheless, the main interest that Przeworski's text seems to me to have from

the point of view of our discussion has to do with the fact that, as a consequence of

his adherence to a certain way to conceive of the problem of intentionality that is

characteristic of the most conventional or orthodox version of the rational choice

approach, Przeworski is led even to define the constitutional pact in terms of the

operation of mechanisms which turn out to be but the mechanisms of the market.

Such mechanisms, which he calls “self-enforcing”, correspond to the idea of mutual

adjustment among many disperse agents -- an adjustment that is supposed to take

place spontaneously, without the interference of a coordinating agent such as the

state and without the need for the agentes to establish any explicit bargain. Actually,

the attempt explicitly to achieve "el consenso democrático" is even denounced as

betraying "a non-democratic intellectual legacy" which, to some extent, would be

proper to Latin America -- and to which is opposed the idea that "the quintessence of

democracy is that there is no one to enforce it". So, we have the curious combination

of a radical conception of democracy with the claim to ground the eventual

establishment of democracy in an element of realism, which has to do with the

adjustments among more or less short-sighted interests and their instrumental

promotion that the orthodox rational-choice approach tends to emphasize.

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From the point of view of the problems we are most concerned with, however,

note that there is a still more curious pirouette, where we have a dramatic and even

caricatural illustration of the oscillation between "hidden hand" and "invisible hand":

starting by posing a problem that involves in a central and inevitable way the idea of

intentionality -- of the intentional hand, whether hidden or ostensive --, Przeworski

ends up with such a formulation of the problem that the operation of intentionality

and the deliberate manipulation in which it would necessarily translate itself appear

as only being capable of success if they somehow shift into the operation of

mechanisms of invisible hand and of objective causality. This is accomplished,

furthermore, in the name of an approach (rational choice) whose claim is precisely to

stress the role of the intentional and rational agent against that of merely causal

mechanisms in sociology and in the social sciences in general...

But there is another aspect concerning this text by Przeworski which is of great

interest for what I intend to propose. I refer to the fact that, in the characterization

made by him of different situations where we would have the operation of self-

enforcing mechanisms, we learn that such mechanisms can be, so to speak, both of a

"good" and of a "bad" nature. Thus, open conflict is seen as one case of self-

enforcing mechanisms at play, for mutual adjustments would lead conflict to prosper

and last, perhaps to amplify; but a dynamics leading to a democratic "institutional

compromise" can also present this self-enforcing characteristic, and we have just

seen that, for Przeworski, this is necessarily the case of an authentic -- or

authentically democratic -- constitutional pact. A third case or possibility presented

as having the same characteristic is the one exemplified by the tug-of-war situation

of praetorian oscillation between populism and militarism which marks the general

framework of political instability in several Latin-American countries. Although

Przeworski does not state the issue in these terms, what we have here is, of course,

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the idea underlying the distinction between a "virtuous circle" (case of the dynamics

leading to institutional compromise) and a "vicious circle" (cases of praetorian

instability and of the conflict which feeds itself), which are both characterized by the

occurrence of a mechanism of positive feedback in which a certain tendency

reinforces itself.

Having that in mind, let us recall the ferocious criticism of functionalism that

has been repeatedly stated in recent years by Jon Elster, one of the champions of the

rational choice approach. In several texts (for instance, in Ulysses and the Sirens)

Elster has characterized the model of functional explanation as involving the

occurrence of two elements. In the first place, the model would have an essential

feature in pointing to the production of effects which are both unintended and

beneficial. Thus, real functional explanation would resort to the Mertonian idea of

the "latent" function (otherwise, that is, if we had Merton's "manifest" functions, we

would be at the level of intentionality and of rational choice itself, not of

functionalism), which is seen, moreover, as producing beneficial effects. Secondly,

there is the assumption of the operation of a feedback loop through which the

function maintains the institution (or structure, behavior-pattern etc.) that produces it

in a certain collectivity. It is the existence or the working of a mechanism of this

type, in which an institution or item of whatever kind is produced by its beneficial

effects, that introduces the teleological element through which functional explanation

differentiates itself from merely causal explanation -- just as the "latent", as opposed

to "manifest", character of the function differentiates functional explanation from

intentional explanation as such. An important point of the criticism addressed by

Elster to functionalism concerns the fact that this feedback mechanism is very often

merely assumed to exist and work: typically, those who resort to the functional

model of explanation do not feel the need to provide the corresponding evidence.

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One question emerges at this point: how does the conception of functional

explanation described by Elster relate to Przeworski's idea of the situation

characterized by the operation of self-enforcing mechanisms? Let us observe that, in

the cases discussed by Przeworski, both those conditions in which we have the

virtuous circle and those corresponding to the vicious circle involve the occurrence

of a positive feedback mechanism, that is to say, of a mechanism of such a nature

that information concerning the production of a certain effect reverts upon the agent

so as to intensify its propensity to act in the way in which the effect is produced.

Now, it is of the utmost interest in the context of our discussion to contrast the case

of positive feedback to the case of negative feedback, which involves the idea of

something that works in opposition to an initial movement and which neutralizes that

movement. In other words: the idea of the negative feedback is first of all that, once a

disturbance is introduced in the state of equilibrium of a given system, corrective

mechanisms are put to work so as to neutralize the disturbance and keep or restore

the equilibrium of the system.

Clearly, we have here a likely factor of confusion in the fact that we are

speaking about two levels on which a certain idea of "positive" versus "negative" is

at play, to wit, the level of positive and negative feedbacks and the one of "positive"

(beneficial) and "negative" (noxious) effects corresponding to the distinction between

the virtuous circle and the vicious circle -- both beneficial and noxious effects being

cases of positive feedback. Once the confusion is avoided, an important observation

is that the literature on functionalism unequivocally tends to emphasize the idea of

the negative feedback, that is, the operation of mechanisms that are supposed to

concur to the maintenance of a given system. The view of the state as "functional"

for capitalist domination is an example that may be seen as adequate even from the

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point of view of some of the political references contained in our discussion. The

basic idea is that the state works so as to promote the interests of capitalists and help

maintain the capitalist system, countering any disturbance or threat that may involve

the risk of revolutionizing the latter: there would be negative feedback mechanisms

whose operation would have to do, according to certain views, with the very essence

of the state in capitalist societies. However that may be, the most common outlook

with regard to the use of the functionalist model of explanation in the social sciences

is that the "positive" or beneficial character of the function somehow brings about the

feedback which is "appropriate" to the maintenance of the institution that produces it

-- and there is the tendency to presume that the appropriate feedback will be of the

negative variety, in which any disturbances to the equilibrium of the system are

counteracted.

If we take a closer look at the problem, however, we can see that the logic

involved in functional explanation is quite compatible with the idea of the positive

feedback mechanism, whether we think of this logic in terms of the classical

discussion by Carl Hempel or in terms of Elster's characterization presented above.

In the case of Hempel's discussion of the logic of functional analysis, the issue is if

(or to what extent) functional explanation can be seen as genuine explanation; in

Elster's case, the issue is rather what it is that makes functional explanation

functional, or brings to the latter its specificity as a supposedly special type of

explanation. At any rate, it is undeniable that the model of functional explanation

also fits very well the idea of the positive feedback mechanism: if it is legitimate to

admit that the beneficial effect of an institution concurs in a decisive way to maintain

the latter, or even to produce it, then it is also patently legitimate to admit that the

same effect will concur to maintain or produce a certain set of interrelated elements

which articulate themselves with one another in a way that is favorable to the

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existence of that institution, in accordance with the pattern of the virtuous circle. If

we admit that the assumed functionality of the state regarding the capitalist system

can be taken as an explanation for its existence and operation under capitalism, it is

obviously also possible to claim to be able to explain in functional terms whatever

else may favor the existence of the state and of the features it exhibits under

capitalism -- and whatever else may help reinforce those features in an automatic

way. Actually, there is even a clear element of tautology or redundancy in this

statement.

But if one gets to this point, it is imperative to take another step and ask: what

about the vicious circle? If we are forced to admit that the logic of functional analysis

is compatible not only with the negative feedback, but also with the positive

feedback of the "virtuous" type, or with the "virtuous circle", why should it not also

be compatible with the "vicious circle"? The logic involved in the dynamics of

processes characterized by both types of positive feedback is evidently the same in

crucial respects. A decisive remark in this context is that, of course, the evaluation of

the character of a certain item, behavior pattern or institution as being either

beneficial or noxious no doubt depends on the point of view that one is willing to

adopt. Take, for instance, the tug-of-war characteristic of perverse oscillation

between militarism and unstable populism which is shown by the Brazilian and

Latin-American protracted praetorian condition and which is described by Adam

Przeworski himself as an example of a self-enforcing situation. It seems quite clear

that, if this characteristic can be seen as disfunctional from the point of view of a

democratic goal supposedly shared by certain actors (or supposedly promoted by

certain "parts" of the system in its complexity), it can certainly also be seen as

functional from the point of view of other actors, other interests, other goals.

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What consequences should one extract from that? One important consequence

seems to me to corroborate in certain respects the methodological position that has

been sustained by Elster -- although it also brings about an important correction to

him, to be stated below. Thus, I think one has to agree that, in the case of the social

sciences, the problem of explanation turns around the tension (and the occasional

articulation) between the intentional and the causal levels -- with emphasis on the

insight that, in a sociologically relevant sense, the causal is itself the consequence, to

a large extent, of a complex process of strategic (and hence intentional) interaction

among multiple actors, either individuals or collectivities of various scales in the

very process of constituting themselves as actors and affirming their interests and

goals. We would thus have a general conception in which the "Durkheimian",

objective and opaque feature of society would be linked in a theoretically and

methodologically more proficuous way to the level of intentional actions. In terms of

some categories that have been employed by Elster, Boudon and others, it would be

possible to speak of the level of a "supra-intentional" causality in which we would

have regularities or "sociological laws" in correspondence with the composition or

aggregation of actions undertaken at the "micro" level (in the limit, the strictly

individual level); in opposition to it we would have the level of a "sub-intentional"

causality that would be, in a way, pre-sociological or a-sociological. Those specific

aspects previously discussed in connection with the functional model of explanation

can be related to this: the fact that the "beneficial" or "noxious" character of a certain

institution or pattern of behavior turns out to be irrelevant from the point of view of

the general logic at play would have to do with this aggregation or composition effect

taking place among multiple and disperse intentional actions; perceptions of positive

or negative (beneficial or noxious) consequences of behavior on the part of

uncoordinated actors would lead to actions fitting such perceptions, and these

actions, at the aggregate level, would produce both vicious circles ("unfavorable"

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processes) and virtuous circles ("favorable" processes), as well as situations of

equilibrium liable to being treated in terms of the notion of negative feedbacks.

For the sake of brevity, I state in terms of a list of items and somewhat

elliptically certain ideas that unfold in connection with the above perspective.

1. The logic involved is always the logic of collective action, of the

aggregation or composition of multiple and disperse intentionalities. This

aggregation results in the production of "supra-intentionality", which can

occasionally take the specific form of "contradictions" or "counter-finalities" (Sartre,

Elster), just as it can take the form of the "virtuous circle" or of the "mere"

functionality of the "corrective" negative feedback.

2. Therefore, resorting to intentionality is inevitable and indispensable: to

grasp the logic at play in any given situation always involves dealing with

intentionality. In a ramification I deem very important, that leads us to Jean Piaget

and to the idea of the operational character of logic...

3. The problem with functionalism does not lie in the recourse to intentionality

(or in the assumption of the search for beneficial effects), but rather, as several

writers have emphasized, in the misterious form that the use of the corresponding

procedures tends to acquire, with the "intentions without a subject" and especially the

assumption of a global collective intentionality at the level of society whose precise

operation one feels dispensed to show. The challenge is how to face in a lucid and

appropriately sophisticated way the empirical implications of the problem of the

emergence or constitution of the (collective) subjects or actors to whom

intentionality is to be ascribed.

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4. The rational choice approach that has recently been thriving has an

important merit in this regard, to wit, the emphasis laid on what there is of

problematical in the formation of collective subjects. Yet, in its more orthodox

version it reveals a double defficiency: (a) a lack of sensitivity toward the

"sociological" and "institutionalized" dimension of society, which is linked to the

claim to deduce society starting from the mere assumption of a "state of nature"

peopled by nothing else than calculating individuals, or from the sheer realm of

strategy; and (b) the tendency, which Przeworski's pirouette pointed out above

clearly illustrates, to deemphasize the possibility a reflexive intentionality (and hence

of a superior form of rationality) in favor of a short-sighted and immediatist search

for interests or objectives which is somehow thought to fit better the idea of a self-

regulating market in operation. Actually, this tendency turns out to be incongruous as

regards the very emphasis on rationality that is supposed to be the basic trait of the

rational choice approach.

5. As to functionalism and the seemingly irresistible attraction exerted by some

of its central assumptions (which is currently illustrated again by the functionalist

claim on the part of respectable Marxist scholars), I propose it is necessary to

recognize the legitimacy of the attempt to grasp the logic that presides in a

comprehensive way over the dynamic of a given collectivity, that is to say, of

speaking in terms of a social system. In other words, the denunciation of the

mistifying postures that often occur in connection with the question of collective

subjects, or with methodological collectivism, should not result in the sheer

prohibition to resort to guiding assumptions linked to the idea of a tendency to "self-

regulation" on the social level. The use of the idea of social system and related

assumptions can certainly be made in an adequate way if a perspective distinguished

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by sensitivity toward the intentional character of actions at the "micro" level and

toward strategic interaction is combined with attention to the sociological level as a

level that is always "given" (or with an "ontology" that is sociological from the

beginning): we would be dealing here with the study of the ways in which the

complex interaction among "subjects" of various scales in the very process of

constituting themselves as such and of facing one another turns out to permit certain

"intentionalities" (projects, goals, interests...) to prevail in making up or moulding (in

a more or less precarious or successful, more or less coercive or normatively

convergent way) a comprehensive collective subject -- as well as the "systemic" logic

that will regulate it. An important illustration is provided by a theme that has

received a sophisticated and persuasive treatment in the hands of such authors as

Claus Offe and Adam Przeworski himself: the conception of the structural

dependence of society and the state on capital in the capitalist system, in which are

plausibly connected the level of strategic interaction among certain interest nuclei, on

the one hand, and, on the other, the level of the functionality displayed by various

institutions, policies and patterns of behavior from the point of view of the

preservation or transformation of the system.

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