Preface ...
... to respond to Richard Buchanan's complaint of
extremism (B7Nov). I am sorry if anybody understood my
earlier post (S7Nov) to be promoting one view on thinking
and acting to the exclusion of all others. This was not my
intention.
The Importance of Being ...
... to respond to Mary Kay Johnsen's question (J7Nov). My
view of thinking and acting (as not being separable) has a
lot to do with the nature of being, and it has been
strongly influenced by work that has been published in
four books. They are (in the order in which I read them):
1. Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores, 1986. Understanding
Computers and Cognition: A new foundation for design,
Norwood, NJ: Ablex Pub and Co.
2. Humberto R Maturana and Francisco J Varela, 1988. The
Tree of Knowledge: The biological roots of human
understanding, Boston, MA: New Science Library, Shambhala
Publications Inc.
3. Lucy A Suchman, 1987. Plans and Situated Actions: The
problem of human machine communication, Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.
4. Francisco J Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch,
1991. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human
Experience, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
All these books, in their own particular ways, bring out
the essential and necessarily embodied and situated nature
of human thinking (cognition) and action in ordinary
every-day being.
Winograd and Flores base much of their critique of
classical representationalist
thinking---cognition=manipulation of (mental)
representations---on the works Heidegger, Gadammer, Searle,
and other Hermeneutical philosophers. In particular, they
draw heavily on Hiedegger's notion of "being-in-the-world"
(Dasein); a notion that rejects, as a starting point, the
subject/object separation found in most Western
philosophies. What is important here, as Winograd Flores
say, and why they are attracted to Heidegger's work, is
that Heidegger was concerned to understand ordinary
every-day behaviour, not the expert or specialist
behaviour that most academics seems to concern themselves
with, believing that these are somehow more representative
of 'true' or 'real' thinking and acting.
Winograd and Flores also draw on the work of the
biologist Maturana. They argue, rightly, I think, that
there is an essential similarity between Heidegger's
notion of being and Maturana's notion of "structural
coupling" between living systems and their environments.
Neither Heidegger or Maturana accepts the existence of
'things' that are the bearers of properties independently
of interpretation. They both argue that you cannot talk
coherently of an 'external' world, but only of
interpretations, Maturana describes the nervous system as
closed (ie, not as an input/output system) and argues
against the appropriateness of terms like 'perception' and
'information'. Heidegger begins with his
being-in-the-world, observing that the present-at-hand
objects emerge from a more fundamental state of being in
which readiness-to-hand does not distinguish objects or
properties.
When it came out Wingrad and Flores' book attracted a lot
of criticism and made many converts. It now seems rather
less well known, as I see few people refer or point to it
these days. It remains, however, I think, one of the most
important books concerned with the design of computer
systems and computer-based applications.
The Maturana and Varela (M&V) book, The Tree of Knowledge,
sets out their theory of autopoietic unities---a theory
(originally) of single living cells---and use this to
develop a theory of cognition. The idea of structural
coupling is central to the functioning of autopoietic
unities. An autopoietic unity or autopoietic organisation
is formed from a combination of components all of which
are involved and only involved in the production of the
same components. Autopoietic unities are self-producing.
All autopoietic unities must be embedded in and must
interact with an environment, from which they obtain the
basic materials and energy of their production. In this
necessary interaction, the structure of the environment
only triggers structural changes in the autopoietic unity,
it does not specify them, and vice versa for the
environment. The result is a history of mutual congurent
structural changes as long as the autopoietic unity and
its containing environment do not disintegrate: there will
be, as M&V put it, "a structural coupling" between the
autopoeitc unity and its environment. For them, the being
and the doing of an autopoeitic unity are inseparable, and
this is their specific mode of organisation. In the The
Tree of Knowledge, M&V raise this theory of living cells
to a theory of human cognition, so that cognition itself
becomes a mode of organisation of an autopoietic cognitive
unity.
The Tree of Knowledge too was received with quite a lot of
criticism, both for and against, when it first came out,
but again, it seems to be a book that has been left
behind. Again, I think this is a pity. It is not an
easy book to read, but it does seriously challenge widely
accepted Western dogmas about what cognition is and its
separate existence from acting on an external world that
comes already categorised into objects.
Lucy Suchman's book was yet another book that caused a
stir when it first came out. This is also a book concerned
with the design of computer-based systems. In it Suchman
argues, and presents evidence, that systems designed and
implemented on the "planning model" confuse plans with
situated actions, where the "planning model" is her term
for the classical idea that we first plan (think) and then
act (out the plan). (In an appendix to this message I
re-quote the quote that Suchman opens her book with, to
illustrate the difference between planning and situated
action. It's hard to improve on this quote.)
Suchman's book presents an unusually careful and detailed
analysis of the way people interact (communicate) with
artifacts, and with computers in particular. Once again,
I believe that everything she says remains relevant and
important today. Although the idea of situatedness has
now entered our way of thinking about acting, we still
have not taken on the full sense in which Lucy Suchman
means 'situated action', which she uses to mean a way of
being (involving thinkiing/acting) in communication with
artifacts.
The last of my four books, by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch,
presents arguments based upon M&V's earlier work
(including the Tree of Knowledge) and on Buddhist
philosophy, to present a view of cognition as embodied
action. In this view, cognition has no foundation beyond
its history of embodiment, a view that contrasts and
contradicts the Western objectivist view of cognition.
Although the idea of embodiment being important to
cognition and to begin and agent had been introduced and
argued for before, by these authors and others, this book
served to mark out the embodied cognition movement as an
important alternative, and competing theory, in the
cognitive sciences.
So, what I want to say by all this is that my view that
thinking and acting cannot be separated, is based upon the
works of others that draw heavily on existing philosophy,
chiefly Hermenuetic philosophy, the biology and cognitive
theory of Maturana, and for a general humanistic concern
for what ordinary every-day being in the world is really
like.
And what has all this got to do with designing? Well, I
think, it is the widespread failure of designers and
design researchers to develop an understanding of what the
nature is of ordinary every-day being in the world that
results in so many poor designs: products, places, and
services that are difficult and inconvenient to use, and
often imposible to use by people with some kind of
disability. How bad this is, and how little importance we
(as designers and consumers) still seem to place on this,
is well illustrated in yet another favourite book of mine:
Donald Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things", which was
first published (as "The Psychology of Everyday Things")
in 1988, and which advocated User-Centered Design.
Tim Smithers
CEIT, Donostia / San Sebastián
Appendix -- Planning and situated action
The preface to Suchman's boook opens with the following
quote from Berreman (1966):
"Thomas Gladwin (1964) has written a brilliant article
contrasting the method by which Trukese navigate the open
sea, with that by which Europeans navigate. He points out
that the European navigator begins with a plan---a
course---which he has charted according to certain
universal principles, and he carries out his voyage by
relating his every move to that plan. His effort
throughout his voyage is directed to remaining "on
course." If unexpected events occur, he must first alter
the plan, then respond accordingly. The Trukese navigator
beings with an objective rather than a plan. He sets off
toward the objective and responds to conditions as they
arise in an ad hoc fashion. He utilizes information
provided by the wind, the waves, the tide and current, the
fauna, the stars, the clouds, the sound of the water on
the side of the boat, and he steers accordingly. His
effort is directed to doing whatever is necessary to reach
the objective. If asked, he can point to his objective at
any moment, but he cannot describe his course."
---Berreman (1966), p. 347.
References
(Berreman, 1966) Berreman, G, 1966. Anemic and emetic
analyses in social anthroplogy. American Anthropologist,
68(2)1:346--54.
(B7Nov) Buchanan, phd-design list post [Tue, 7 Nov 2000
10:33:48, Subject: Re: Thinking and acting ...]
(Gladwin, 1964) Gladwin, T, 1964. Culture and logical
process. In W Goodenough (ed.), Explorations in Cultural
Anthropology: Essays Presented to George Peter Murdock,
New York: McGraw-Hill.
(J7Nov) Johnsen, phd-design list post [Tue, 07 Nov 2000
15:47:26, Subject: thought/action]
(S7Nov) Smithers, phd-design list post [Tue, 07 Nov 2000
10:12:40, Subject: Thinking and acting ...]
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