Dear Ben,
Thanks for your post. What you wrote jogs a couple of thoughts and I'd welcome your comments.
The first is that issues you raise seem to reflect a biological determinist perspective on the relation between brain and action. I think most people working in this area are very conscious that except in rare cases the biological substrates don't have a deterministic relationship to human action or thought. The relationship is much more complex and includes loops that involve individuals' sense of self and world (and memories). This indicates they are shaped by both physiology and meaning. Our analysis of both is 'at a distance'. On the physiology side, it's hard to relate physiology to human processes that result in action because of the lack of determinacy, and on the 'meaning' side, we can't trust our perceptions or models of underderstanding because of self-delusions at individual or group levels. Seems to me, the value of language is it gives an objective world reference structure that there exists some level of agreement - at least on definitions of words. Its unclear to me though how much this work on language can be adequately linked to human internal meaning and to descriptions of how the physiological substrates actualise our feelings, emotions, thoughts, understanding and actions.
The second relates to the activity of designers in which they operate without understanding. One suggestion proposed in a recent New Scientist is that creativity (and by implication, that aspect of design activity) is what we do when we don't know what to do. A fair bit of the literature on design describes this way designers operate in situations marked by lack of understanding. Watching myself and others suggests that often this also involves working with a shortage of 'meaning' as well. I'm not sure that language is the universal medium in these situations - unless its definition is stretched to mean all and any representation. I'm also aware that some of us don't use visual representations in design thinking, particualrly when designing things that don't have form or where the form is secondary. This suggests that understanding and meaning issues aren't that central to understanding design thinking.
Thoughts?
Best wishes,
Terry

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Matthews
Sent: 16/09/2005 7:34 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Language or pictures in design thinking? Physical evidence -From Chuck


Hi all,
I've been reading with interest the discussion following Terry's post
regarding the Slotnick et al. paper. There is, I think, another
perspective to add to the points raised so far.
I think we get ourselves into conceptual trouble when we attempt to
equate or locate the 'meaning' of something, anything, with an object.
While correspondence theories of meaning (among which are various
attempts to connect language to the world, or 'meaning' directly to an
author's intentions, etc.) are still tremendously popular, they also
remain highly problematic. Apologies in advance—I've been on similar
bandwagons before, but there continue to be opportunities to ride them.
:-)
When we look closely at how language functions, e.g. how it is used,
(as opposed to theorising about its nature, or presuming that it simply
and straightforwardly 'maps onto' the world), it becomes easier to see
that the 'meaning' of something is closely related to the notion of
'understanding' something—in Wittgenstein's terminology, 'meaning' and
'understanding' have an 'internal' relation. This is not his a priori
theoretical stipulation, but the end result of a logico-grammatical
analysis of the use of the words 'meaning' and 'understanding'. For
example, to be able to give an explanation (or demonstration) of the
meaning of something is also to demonstrate one's understanding of it.
To be unable to do so is fatal to such a demonstration. One cannot be
said to have understood something which one is unable to explain the
meaning of.
The danger comes, I think, in attempting to posit for 'meaning'
something else than the demonstrative (social) practices that accompany
it, and from which the word has the public sense that it does. When we
create an 'entity' (e.g. some immaterial cognitive 'thing', be it a
symbol or visual representation) that we take to be something's
'meaning', we begin to use words (like 'meaning') that have ordinary
intelligibility in rather extraordinary ways. No one, for instance, can
point to a 'thing' 'in one's head' (even if we can get MRI maps of
neural activity) to demonstrate anything about the meaning of a word.
Any such demonstration is primordially and intimately tied to a whole
body of social practices, among which is linguistic competence itself
(a competence that is begged by any 'demonstration').
There is still plenty of mileage to be had out of Wittgenstein's
refutation of the private language argument.
Of course, there remains much to be learned about brain activity.
However, it is far too premature to attempt to map the neuronal
activity we can measure onto phenomena we have ordinary experience of
and a natural vocabulary for (like, for instance, 'recognition',
'interpretation', etc. This is just as true of things of interest to
this list, such as 'design thinking' or 'skill'). Like so many of the
terms we have for our ordinary experience of the world, these aren't
words that circumscribe natural (e.g. neuronal) phenomena. These are
words that do much else than describe mental 'events' we have never had
the technology (e.g. prior to the advent of MRI) to investigate. The
point is that 'describing neuronal activity' is something these words
do not in fact do. Instead, they are words that, on inspection, have
fluidity and flexibility in their many different uses.
Cheers,
Ben

Ben Matthews
Assistant Professor
Mads Clausen Institute for Product Innovation
University of Southern Denmark