Logic of Practice

Inspired by formal (v. Wright, Pörn, Sylvan) and informal (Bourdieu, Rescher) considerations about the logic of action and practice, the project aims at making available the conceptual basics for the construction of social reality (human existence, Nørreklit 2008).

The guiding idea of the project is that social reality has to be understood as a result of the integrated efforts of human agents to bestow meaning upon human existence. Inspired by Aristotle's 3-partite understanding of knowledge, the concept of meaning has in this connection to be understood in a comprehensive way referring both to epistemic, poietic (technical-artistic), and practical (social: political, moral) meaning of human activities. The integrating concept of this broad understanding of meaning is the concept of value. The logic of practice is thus coupled with a value-semantics comprising truth values, utility/instrumental values, esthetical/experience values, and moral values.

Another guiding theme of the project is that action and practice are dynamic and situated (spatial and temporal located) entities. Practice is here understood as an integrated system of actions with a history ongoing in and emerging from dynamic practice fields (Bourdieu) of different objective (capital) and subjective (habitus) kinds of action powers. In other words the logic of practice has to be construed as a dynamic logic of power-trigged change.