The Epistemological Fork in the Road - An Image Metaphor
Unless we choose not to, we inherit Kant's insight that we constitute rather
than perceive reality, "that all sense data are filtered through our neural
apparatus and reassembled therein to provide us with a picture that we call
reality but which in fact is only a chimera, a fiction that emerges from our
conceptualizing and categorizing mind." (from Irvin D. Yalom, The
Schopenhauer Cure)
I know that many on our list still hold on to the belief that conceptions
such as cause, effect, time and space really exist out there in the world
and are the names that we give them. They sincerely believe in objectivity
and that language "cuts reality at the joints." (Richard Rorty) This path
and its variations lives on in some programs that try to hold design theory
and research to the fire of a kind of radical empiricism and/or
neo-Skinnerian behaviorism, a stance that tends to deny or at best diminish
the central role of neurological filtering, conceiving, categorizing,
evaluating, judging and choosing in design. This road when taken to
extremes, ignores, shuns and shuts down what it disparages as the filtering,
conceiving "subjective" altogether.
Epistemologically, the post-Kantian fork is necessarily an axiological
highway. Signposts warm that there is no God's-eye view of theory. AI can't
negotiate the curves of metaphor. Facts may not be forever true but they
can be very reliable and dependable. Newtonian calculations can and do
provide workable approximations, at least at human scales. Designers who
take this path can expect to have to deal with (in some manner) such things
as human interests, motivations, preferences, needs, wants, desires,
intentions, goals, objectives - however they might be named, conceived or
characterized - in order to change "existing" situations into preferred
ones. Criticism on this fork might be considered theory in reverse for
those intimately engaged in the making. But for those at a greater distance
meaning would be something that is personally, socially and culturally
constituted as outlined in communication theory, not something that can be
decoded.
Perhaps knowledge in design theory and design research cannot be so simply
split into two such radically different epistemological paths. And
faculties do tend to be zoos of belief and theoretical perspective. But if
I were a graduate student looking for a place to do my Ph. D level design
research, and I was aware of the great divide between Analytical and
Continental philosophy in the past century (and expected that an aftermath
of true believers was still around), I would be choosing a school and
faculty dissertation advisors very carefully.
Epistemologically speaking, that is.
Regards to all,
Jerry
--
Jerry Diethelm
Architect - Landscape Architect
Planning & Urban Design Consultant
Prof. Emeritus of Landscape Architecture
and Community Service € University of Oregon
2652 Agate St., Eugene, OR 97403
€ e-mail: [log in to unmask]
€ web: http://www.uoregon.edu/~diethelm
€ 541-686-0585 home/work 541-346-1441 UO
€ 541-206-2947 work/cell
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