Thank you for your response, John.

No, I'm not worried "that we may encroach upon the sanctity of philosophy
in considering PhD in the light of design (research)."

Neither do I call for the 'viva' as "a mode of military inquisition in
which the rigor of one's book had to be 'defended' against parrying and
invasive questioning by senior academicians."

These are inaccurate metaphors for what I am saying.

Before answering, I took a moment to visit your design futures site [server
down] and your IDEAbase. We seem to agree on many issues of pedagogy and we
seem to agree on some (but not all) issues of design and philosophy. Where
we seem to disagree in the nature of aspects and attributes of the Ph.D.
degree program.

You ask, in relation to the viva, "Why do we have to accept this pedagogy?"

In a sense, you've made the same point that I proposed.

The viva is not part of the pedagogical process. It is the examination
process after the pedagogical work is done, after the research is finished,
and after the thesis is complete.

The viva is part of a licensing process. And it is a last point of quality
control during which the university assures itself that the doctor-to-be
has done his own her own work, that he or she understands what is written,
and that he or she has accomplished what the thesis sets out to do.

The role of the Ph.D. is complex in relation to philosophy. The larger,
generative act of philosophizing is in great part unfixed. It is in a state
of continual evolution. The Ph.D., in contrast, involves a philosophical
undertaking that is further and more narrowly embodied as an act of
research. This involves not merely the logic of discovery to which you
point, but the logic of justification. The Ph.D. is awarded for the
demonstration of discovery and justification both. It is not awarded for
generation and discovery without justification. There may be some form of
doctorate for that, but it should not be called the Ph.D.

This debate began on April 6. I feel from the nature of your arguments that
you've missed some of the dense and articulate discussion along the way.
Several of the issues you raise have been addressed clearly. Before we go
around on them again, I'd like to see how the arguments you raise differ
from the same arguments in their prior forms.

Where it comes to pedagogy, I suspect we share common ideas. If you read my
notes on the need for rich advising, support, and good dialogue with
supervisors, a strong and well-supported corps of student colleagues,
you'll find that I'm proposing a far richer and much more supportive
environment than the doctoral environment in many UK programs for
practice-based research. What I'm proposing also offers far more dialogue
and support than is generally offered to most candidates for the Ph.D. by
research.

When the work is done, the viva is a different process. As one senior
British professor and examiner put it to me in Milan, "If the thesis and
the work are solid, the viva tends to be easy-going and celebratory. If the
work is dicey or questionable, then it's my job to probe and discover
whether the candidate knows his material and understands what it means."

The purpose of a Ph.D. is not to "celebrate" design but to understand it
and contribute to it. The celebration of knowledge takes place during the
work. The celebration ceremony takes place after the viva. The viva itself
has a different role.

Adorno may well have said that art calls for philosophy and philosophy
calls for art, but the Ph.D. is not the complete process of philosophizing.
Adorno himself illustrated this approach by the way he did philosophy. He
never sought to exemplify it with incomplete Ph.D. programs. Having known a
few of Adorno's students, I'd say he viewed the Ph.D. much as I do.
Moreover, he viewed the larger role of philosophy in a broader way than he
saw the specific acts involved in earning a Ph.D. There is no contradiction
between those points.

The research doctorate may involve the creative and situated act of
designing, but it is not itself restricted to the creative and situated act
of designing. That would be another kind of doctorate.

The Ph.D. is a kind of doctorate that - for at last one moment in time -
requires that we fix the unfixable and hold it fast. Unless this is done,
there is no way for the field as a whole to consider or query the body of
research that a candidate presents.

If you have read my papers on philosophy of design, you'll see that I agree
with you that the technical developments that are reshaping our era have
brought about changes in philosophy. I wouldn't say that data co-creates
itself as knowledge or wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom both require
existential agency. Knowledge and wisdom are embodied in a human being. So
far, data systems and information systems lack agency, and therefore lack
the capacity for knowledge. Even so, the technology of our time is indeed
giving rise to new kinds of philosophy in which sophia and techne merge.

The Ph.D. may even find a way to represent this knowledge. But to do so,
this knowledge must be represented in a way that makes it accessible to
others beyond the circle of professional colleagues, beyond the college,
beyond the fortunate few who welcome the new-minted philosopher when the
viva draws to a close.

Design and philosophy may well be celebrated and evaluated in an
unrepeatable and subjective way. The Ph.D. cannot.

What you cal for here and in some of the papers on IDEAbase is a partial
return to the craft tradition. If that is so, why not award a craft
doctorate?

The issue that puzzles me time after time in this debate is the fact that
those arguing some of these points refuse to accept any other kind of
doctorate than a Ph.D. as an acceptable degree. Instead of allowing that
the Ph.D. is one kind of doctorate, they insist that the Ph.D. be conflated
with the professional doctorate. I don't know why this is so, but it has
been argued before and answered before.

If you have missed the past six weeks of debate, I've archived them in MS
Word. I'll be happy to supply copies in MS Word 98 for Macintosh or as .doc
files. Just send me an email and I'll send them back as attachments. [If
someone else has missed the debate, the offer is also extended to him or
her. As they say on television, however, this offer is valid for a limited
time only. I'll supply archives on request from 18:00 GMT on Weds 2000 May
25 through 24:00 GMT Thursday 2000 May 26. After Thursday, those who have
missed the debate are free to use the Mailbase archive to construct their
own files.]

If you haven't missed the debate, I'd be interested to know why you insist
on awarding a Ph.D. for an act of professional practice, even reflective
professional practice, without allowing the larger body of the field to
participate in the act of inquiry. This has always been the major
distinction between the Ph.D. and the professional doctorates. Doctors of
medicine and law do not write a thesis. Their knowledge is reviewed, and as
practicing knowledge, it is "be celebrated and evaluated in an unrepeatable
and subjective way."

Doctors of philosophy do write a thesis. It is true for us all that "It's
not what you know, but how you can conduct yourself that makes a good
designer." Nevertheless, it is what we know that is the basis of measuring
a Ph.D. The degree is awarded not only for what we know, but also for our
ability to structure, clarify, and articulate our knowledge.



Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management

+47 22.98.51.07 Direct line
+47 22.98.51.11 Telefax

Home office:

+46 (46) 53.245 Telephone
+46 (46) 53.345 Telefax

email: [log in to unmask]




%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%