Klaus et al, see embedded comments.

Klaus Krippendorff wrote:
> short reply to fil:
> 
> nature doesn't have variables, doesn't know variables, isn't governed by
> variables.  nature does what it does.  variables are descriptive devices,
> especially useful in mathematical formulations.  they are features of
> language not of an undescribed nature.

I'm not sure about this.  As far as I understand it, the brain 
partitions its perceptions along things we might call attributes.  One 
part of the brain recognises shape; another recognises motion; yet 
another recognises colour.  I see a correspondence between these things 
and the variables (admittedly only models of the things themselves) that 
we use to describe them.  If this is so, then I can easily see how we 
would 'naturally' tend to partition our perceptions into variables.

Insofar as the brain is a part of nature, then this partitioning also 
seems natural to me.  Granted, we don't know what the thing is that we 
perceive as (whatever).  On the other hand, we only have our (imperfect) 
perceptions to go on.

> 
> you speak of ideas as if they were entities that are divorced from their
> embodiments in someone and unobservable in its effects by someone else.
> designers may have ideas or whatever you want to call them.  unless they
> become visible or noticeable by others, we cannot know them, use them, or
> talk about them.  under these conditions they can have no effect.  a
> designer's idea must be communicated in the form of drawings, explanations,
> or behavior, for example by creating something new, doing something better,
> in any case making a difference.

That's not what I meant.  I'm having an idea right now.  It has no 
existence without me to have it.  I'm not expressing it at all, but it's 
still there.  Trying to express it doesn't involve giving someone the 
idea itself, but some model of it.  And people might not understand my 
idea because I can't find the language to express in terms they can 
understand what I understand about the idea.  And even if they 
understand the idea fully, they might not be able to confirm to me in 
language *I* understand, that they understand.

Wouldn't you agree with this?

And yet, the act of trying - successfully or not - to communicate that 
idea forces me to think in different ways about that idea.  At least 
that's what I experience myself.  Your mileage may vary.

> 
> as an adult, you most likely are unaware, as everybody else, of how your
> behavior as a child got organized around what your parents told you to do,
> the kinds of toys they gave you to play with, what they encouraged you to
> say and how.  much of this took place before you had an experience of that
> you were thinking, that there was a language that you were speaking.  what
> you say now of how you use language is said after you grew up in language
> and learned what to be aware of when using language (and by implication what
> you may not be aware of when using language but other people, other cultures
> may well highlight).

Sure.  And this process continues right into adulthood, I'd say.  And 
I'd even admit that perceptions are 'triggers' for ideas.  It might even 
be that without perceptions, ideas cannot form, though I can't imagine a 
way of testing that.

Still, once the idea is there as a mental entity of some sort, I can 
work with it in a number of ways that don't necessarily involve other 
agents/people/actors/whatever - just whatever my own mind can assemble 
from its own experiences (which are of course based in part on 
experiences I've had with other people).

> 
> i am not denying individual creativity in the use of language (and design).
> but the causality you express:  thinking first and then encountering
> problems of expression speaks the ideology of western idealism, not the way
> we have grown up to be who we claim we are.
> 
> klaus
> 

I don't mean to imply any particular causality here.  Indeed, perhaps a 
ring or spiral or loop might be a better metaphor.  I'm not sure there 
is a starting point.

Cheers.
Fil
-- 
Prof. Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University                         Tel: 416/979-5000 x7749
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