terry,
i don't think you got what i was driving at.
i didn't mention subjectivism, and especially not in opposition to
positivism, an opposition that seems to be yours.
i was objecting to your proposal to regard "one's sense of self as an
illusion and irrelevant" as opposed to what you seem to celebrate:
"explanations to our (human) behaviors, perceptions and thoughts are more
reliably found in studying our beings as primarily animal organisms:"
in expressing such a preference with the additional claim that this would be
a new thing, you seem to have no appreciation of the fact that humans live
in language, which is the starting point of my explorations, including of
design.
klaus
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Terence
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 11:54 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Beyong positivism and subjectivism: (Was : long post: still
defining design)
Klaus,
I think you misunderstand me or perhaps didn't read the rest of my email.
The new approaches I pointed to are very different from positivism.
Viewing human behaviour as if and only as if humans are primarily animals,
and at the same time viewing what we as humans take central (our sense that
we each exist as an individual) is an illusory incidental artefact of our
animal existence and response to our developmental environmental contexts,
is very different from the attempt at objectivism of positivism. Instead,
these perspectives regard human sense of self as real and exisiting (at
least in the illusions of individuals), shaping behaviours but not central
to understanding why behaviours occur. Instead, they assume that the
explanations to our behaviours, perceptions and thoughts are more reliably
found in studying our beings as primarily animal organisms.
As I said, this perspective is not new. Patanjali discusses it in detail in
2nd Century BCE in his sutras on yoga. More recently, it underpins many
texts used in the study of design. Postman's 'Amusing Ourselves to Death'
and the work of Larry Law and other situationists spring to mind as does
some of the work by Richard Coyne whilst at Sydney. More recently still, the
position appears regularly in articles in New Scientist, partucularly in
relation to evolutionary biological explanations of behaviour.
Time to move on from the positivism vs. subjectivist debate and draw on new
findings about human existence that go beyond placing subjective experience
central to the picture.
Best regards,
Terry
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