On Aug 15, 2009, at 6:21 PM, Ken Friedman wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> In this evolving thread, I have enjoyed many posts. Without getting to
> “mind” or any deeper issue, I tend to agree with Keith and Johann
> that human
> beings design.
>
> If I were to be more precise, I would argue that only a knowing
> agent can
> design.

I disagree, mainly because I think that agency is a term loaded with
many conceptual frames that in all likelihood are only narratives
which help us understand others, and perhaps may even be fictitious
narratives.

I agree with Herbert Simon's definition, it need not require any
'agency', design is a process, which things that exist, engage in, to
change state of existence X to state of existence Y. What
transitions that change of state are actions in the world.

> Once again, I am going to define design using Herbert Simon’s (1982:
> 129, 1998: 112) definition of design as the process by which we
> “[devise]
> courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred
> ones.” Without accepting all of Simon’s views on design, it is a
> useful to
> define design as the process we use to change existing situations into
> preferred situations.
>
> Since this involves intentionality, it therefore involves agency. That
> brings design to an issue of sentience or knowing agents, that is,
> creatures
> that can – or can be said to – 1) think or know, 2) possess will or
> the
> ability to intend, and 3) act on their intentions.

I don't think it involves intentionality, I tend to think that
intention and intentionality, which refer to some state of the brain/
mind/nous are much like 'will'... they are concepts that solve a
particular theoretical problem of the middle ages or modernity, but
alas don't exist. What we mean when we say x intends, is merely to
say that person will act or person will not act according to what he
knows and desires, there is no special faculty of intention that
separates persons from non-persons, etc. In short, i don't think
intention or intentionality exists as anything other than shorthand
for knowing our own desires and realizing them in the world. And
really, that is all we need, we don't need 'intend' anymore than we
need 'will', except as literary constructs. To design then, does not
require to intend, it merely requires knowledge/thought/desire+action
which is equivalent to planning+action.

One of the issues of 'intend/intention' of course is that we cannot
know it, we can only posit it and tell stories about it... the stories
all are predicated on actions in the world, person did x, so we infer
intention y. however, we don't know if there is any real relations
between the two and if we sit back and discard the narratives and
metanarratives that structure our understanding of the relationship, I
think you'll find that there is no necessary relation outside of
stories we tell, because in the end, it is very difficult to tell the
story of the state of someone's mind based on a state 'intention' that
likely never existed.

so do dogs design? yes. can non-humans design, yes. can machines
design? yes. you merely need the capacity for having a plan, and
making it real in the world through action. some would say that
something has to create said plan, and that might be the case, but
then again human's don't create all plans, some they discover in
nature, and others are free-floating signifiers/codes in our culture
that we pluck out and use in reference to that culture.

So we can turn back to the dog examples and say... what really
happened if we do not infer 'intention' because intention doesn't
really exist... and at least i find, that the dog saw a plan, modeled
a plan, and acted on a plan because it had a desire. And when you
tell me it had intentions, i'd say.. show me, and when you tell me
that you have intentions, i'd say show me. And in either case, when
presented with skepticism toward the existence of the concept, I think
one has to fold one's cards because there doesn't seem to be anything
as best as I can tell, and believe me, like many of you... I've had
students, peers, etc. all claim intentions, usually good ones:)
Usually after the fact of a poorly reasoned, otherwise perhaps
unjustifiable action.

Which then brings us back to the question of agency... agency has
nothing to do with intention, and agency is merely the ability to act
in the world. Most things have agency, likely more things than some
people are comfortable with, for instance, the concept 'intent' has
acted in the world through humans and other beings to perpetuate
itself as an analytic tool in a system of tools, or technologies that
we use in sensemaking activities. Is it the best tool, perhaps not,
is it real, sure it is real in the sense that it exists as a concept
and can act, does it have any relationship to the state of the mind
that it claims... perhaps metaphorically, but not in any real sense of
saying that 'a person intends to do x, then does not do x' which is
merely saying, 'i have a set of accepted stories about people, and in
that set of stories, i use the world intend to mean that a person
knows he or she should perform some act and desires said act, yet may
or may not do so' however, you don't know the person knows, nor the
person's desires beyond anything they say, and even then they may be
misrepresenting their knowledge or desires for other purposes. What
you have in the end though... is merely the persons actions... which
exist in/as a system of relations, which exist. You can posit all
kinds of other things in the world and tell stories about them though
and perhaps they'll enter into the analysis or not. So... while
intention may play a part in a descriptive narrative, it is shorthand,
but in agency all you can really see is what people do, what machines
do, what animals do, what nature does, what ecologies do, systems and
relations do, what exists.

Not everything that exists has agency, granted, but it is surprising
as to what does when you take a much stronger sense of skepticism
toward traditional descriptions and start treating things in the world
symmetrically.









jeremy hunsinger
Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
Virginia Tech
Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research,
School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu
)

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