Dear colleagues,

This is an amazing problem to discuss. I always want to channel the 
discussion by area of competency. In this regard, this is not a 
design research discussion, this a philosophy of science discussion. 
I would ask you for forgiveness. Please do not get angry at me.

There are major misunderstandings and myths that are propagated now. 
I would like to help. I also am aware that I use some of the terms a 
bit loose, and some of them I use only in a particular way. So, I 
would ask you to interpret my  text not word by word, but in the 
context of its general spirit.

The world is at a epistemological crossroad. Of course, it is at a 
cultural crossroad as well. This spurs the emergence of relativism 
and leads to deconstructivist thinking. By itself, Deconstruction is 
a new step in the development of intellectuality. I am following 
deconstructivist developments in the last three decades.

However, there are also side effects. Deconstruction is a very 
complex way of thinking. Many people abuse its principles, language, 
and intellectual practices. Because of this, many people abuse 
deconstructivist thinking. They pick from it only what they can 
understand and what suits their ideology and social interests.

I came from a dialectical materialist environment and evolved to 
idealist positions. I have experience both with materialist and 
idealist philosophies, and the ensuing ontological, epistemological, 
and methodological thinking. That is why I see the world as if coming 
from another planet. Some people see what they see. I can see what I 
have seen and what I see now. That makes a big difference.

The problem with some extreme idealistic statements is that people do 
not realize what they have picked and what they have assimilated, and 
what they defend. This happens because of lack of in-depth 
philosophical preparation, socioeconomic interests, and an aggressive 
strive to create a professional niche for survival.

See the world. It exists in spite of you and despite of you. It is 
material (in the materialist sense). It is objective. You can't 
change it much, even if you want. You can't save it. However, what 
you know about the world is yours, it is SUBJECTIVE! So, for you the 
world exists only through your own subjectively selected knowledge 
about it. I say subjectively selected. Knowledge should not be 
subjective, otherwise, it would not represent the world. But it is 
not possible to clear knowledge and truth from subjectivity. I 
introduced here the concept of truth. There is no time to talk about 
it now. All truth is relative. We can strive for ultimate truth 
without ever achieving it.

Some people say that because there is no absolute truth, everything 
has its own right to be truthful. They say, because we can not clear 
knowledge from subjectivity, let's make it the way we like it. These 
are logical mistakes, that serve personal ideologies and defend 
personal and social interests.

Science is a social institution. It produces knowledge. (Some people 
think that science is only Positivism and can not accept anything 
else. Others think that science is Positivism and do not accept 
science as a legitimate endeavor because Positivism is not the 
paradigm of their choice.) However, there are many other social 
institutions that produce knowledge. Religion is one of them. If you 
want to be scientists, you might wish to work within the framework of 
science as an institution, according to its norms and standards. 
Otherwise, you can become a priest and produce knowledge according to 
the ways of religion. (By the way, I come from an old family of 
priests. My father remembers how as a small child he got drunk with 
communion wine left unattended by his grandfather. [He thought it is juice.])

There is a big difference between the concept of social construction 
(of knowledge) and the concept of fiction. There is a very complex 
interplay of objectivity and subjectivity here, at societal and 
personal levels. Socially constructed knowledge is not fiction and is 
not subjective. It exist objectively in the intellectual realm of 
society. Competing scholarly knowledge systems are also objective by 
themselves as long as they are codified and accepted as conventions.

If knowledge is socially constructed, it can be treated as an 
objective reality as long as the humankind has agreed on this 
construction. However, it is a reality and objectively existing in 
the intellectual realm. If your own personal constructions of 
knowledge do not fit in the societal constructions, we say that your 
knowledge is subjectively biased, subjective, not true, etc. The 
social construction of knowledge implies some kind of negotiation of 
individual and subjective knowledge, to the point when it is codified 
and institutionalized as scientific knowledge. Once knowledge is 
institutionalized, it is accepted by society as "true." After a 
century society will find out that it was actually an illusion. (See 
the Flogiston controversy.) This doesn't mean that everybody in the 
world can put forward what ever ideas they have in their head. In 
science, there is an institutionlized process of proposing ideas, 
defending them, and accepting them.

Literature also produced knowledge. However, this is not scientific 
knowledge. On the other hand, what is important for us, is that 
literary texts can serve as empirical material for producing 
scientific knowledge. The same for paintings and other forms of fine 
arts. They by themselves do not constitute scientific knowledge, but 
can become empirical material for producing scientific knowledge. By 
the way, literature and art do not strive for truth in presentation. 
Their social function is to develop and promote particular ideas, 
values, norms, etc. To achieve this purpose, society allows them to 
deform objective reality as much as they want in order to promulgate 
their points. Absolute realist art is not valued for almost a 
century. No body things about truth in art. Art is not about truth. 
It is about humanitarian ideas.

Thank you for attention,

Lubomir

At 01:27 AM 1/22/2008, Ken Friedman wrote:
>Dear Teena,
>
>To me, the claim that "all writing is fiction" leads to an infinite 
>regress. If all writing is fiction, then why is Foucauld's take on 
>power relations any more reasonable or reliable than that of Simone 
>de Beauvoir or Herman Melville?
>
>If all writing is fiction, then why would we wish to bother with any 
>account whatsoever? Why would any account be more useful or 
>illuminating than any other?
>
>If all writing is fiction, why would a post-structuralist account be 
>more useful than an empiricist account or a cognitive account?
>
>When we ask for an account of what people witness, hear, say, or 
>experience, we ask for integrity and reliability, not "validity." 
>This is not a matter of "proof." It is a matter of asking the author 
>to describe what is said, a responsible account of what others say.
>
>To argue that "all writing is fiction" is to that that we have no 
>responsibility to the voices of those whose stories we recount. When 
>we recount the voices of other speakers, the words that we report 
>demand responsible reporting. This is not "proof," but responsibility.
>
>Yours,
>
>Ken
>
>--
>
>Teena Clerke wrote:
>
>(1)
>
>my intention was to provide an opening for discussion about design 
>research epistemology without introducing the construct of 'gender', 
>but by removing the actual bodies themselves. I saw this as a 
>poststructuralist way to ask a question about possibilities. I 
>wanted to see what people imagined design research might look like 
>if either men or women were removed from its practice. This asks for 
>an entirely different kind of imagining other than the binary of 
>men/women. In a Foucauldian sense, power and knowledge are 
>interrelated within the social relations between people and are 
>(re)produced within discourses. So, I thought if you take out the 
>bodies, what kind of discursive imagining would ensue?
>
>(2)
>
>Fiona talks about her embodied experiences in design research, 
>sitting through meetings and listening to the various ways in design 
>is perceived in a large faculty. I am curious to hear of others' 
>personal experiences, and particularly welcome those not based on 
>'proof'. In this call, I do not wish to debate 'validity' because 
>from my epistemological position, all writing is fiction.
>
>--
>
>Ken Friedman
>Professor
>
>Dean, Swinburne Design
>Swinburne University of Technology
>Melbourne, Australia

Lubomir Popov, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Interior Design Program
School of Family and Consumer Sciences
309 Johnston Hall
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403-0059
phone: (419) 372-7935
fax: (419) 372-7854
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