Nevertheless I’ll continue, I’m really worried about not having a foundation it’s just fluff and noise.
I think I may have found a way.
So the question was how to differentiate between cooperative action and adversarial action, if social action is action that uses another human being (as a human being) as means to an end, then I asked, what differntiates between cooperative action and adversarial.
What leads me to an answer is fear. But fear isn’t present in any way that I understand praxeology. All we have is preference which is directional. Toward an outcome or away from an outcome. I need diagrams here.
Logically, V is the value function of our actor, X1 happens with no action, X2 happens with action A, so if V(x1) < V(x2) then A. Meaning that if our actor values x2 more than he values x1 then he will perform action A.
Ok, so let’s examine what happens when I point a gun at you, and ask for an action B. There’s an implied action C that I’m going to perform if you don’t perform action C, which is shoot you (action D).
So what I’ve done is present you with two alternatives, and the third one which was removed by my gun is the key. Current reality is X1, if I shoot you is X2, and if you do what I want is X3. The form of the hierarchy of value from the point of view of the person threatened is, V(X2) < V(X3) < V(x1), otherwise you would have chosen to perform the action anyway.
Meaning that the form of a threat or adversarial action is to present a necessary outcome that is less preferred to the wished for action, but more specifically that the necessary outcome is causally linked to an action of the man pointing the gun. This is all perception based btw, thus the idea of a bluff, or misdirection. I think the source of the adversarial relation is the causal link of the future event to the actions of a specific actor.
Again pointing a gun at a person only works because of the social nature of the act. I am assuming knowledge, categories, and logic in the mind of the other person. Secondly, I’m presenting a future state of reality that I assume he will find less preferable to the current reality (he’s alive and uninjured). Thirdly, I’m asking for an action by him that I want and which will remove the threat of harm. Again, the adversarial nature is the fact that the future I’m making him aware of is one that would be caused by me.
I think that’s a semi-formal definition of a threat.
I don’t think this is necessarily a conflict, but at least we can classify threats on a larger scale as taking their form from this form.
The inverse of this situation is if the future presented to the other person is instead one prefers to current reality if they do act. That would be a cooperative interaction.
So, adversarial, presentation of a future worse than current expectation if action X isn’t performed. Cooperative, presentation of a future preferred to the expected future if action X is performed. Exchange is mutually beneficial. Extortion is singly beneficial, even thought the giving of money was made preferable to dealing with the future the threatened action was performed. One party is better off.
All forms of social action also intend to change the way in which the target of action, acts. It may be through education, or argumentation, or through presenting cooperative action, win-win or win-lose (in the mind) is the way I would think of cooperative vs. adversarial.
What does lose-lose look like? No one tries to create lose-lose, but individually each of us would seek to avoid avoid lose-lose. or lose-win. Thus lose-lose is an accident, in other words an unforseen outcome. Where lose-lose occurs or lose-win occurs, man would seek to create knowledge and theory and technology to avoid these situation, just as he would create technology to allow win-lose or win-win social action.