Dear Terry
I didn't think I was suggesting alternatives to "delusion". Rather, I thought I was adding to the scope of the issues. By all means talk about the specifics of the process of delusion. And, I forgot to mention elusion as well.
We must remember that the origin of these terms is "ludere" = play.
In this sense, delusion is the result of someone or something deluding us - that is, playing with us. The pejorative sense, that I was urging against, is the one that you seem attracted to: that is, people have the capacity to play with themselves without knowing that they are doing so. Yes, this is an issue in all research and yes, all researchers must establish processes to deal with this reality.
Perhaps we might usefully distinguish between active and passive forms of delusion. It might also help if the status of the play was indicated. The spider might seek to delude the prey into thinking he is a part of a tree branch.
I nearly ran over a teenager this morning, in the rain. It was my first case of iPod delusion. The girl was deluded into thinking she was in a private sensory world where music was the guide and pleasure was the journey. Even when I attempted to disabuse her of her self-delusion, by blowing my horn, she failed to stop playing with herself and join the outside world of cars and death.
Lucky one of us was playing the game of reality bites.
cheers
keith
>>> Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> 12/01/10 1:14 AM >>>
Hi Keith,
Thanks for your message.
The term' delusion' seems to be exactly the right word for the approach I'm
exploring . It focuses the way of viewing design activities onto the role
of individuals physiology, which is the area from which occur the challenges
to existing approaches to design theory, practice and education.
The alternatives as you suggest, illusion, allusion, collusion and similar
terms, divert the attention onto the object and theories about objects. This
is unhelpful. Focusing on objects and object-related language issues -
anything other than the physiological - is what resulted in the body of
existing design theory that appears to be problematic when physiological
issues are taken into account. It would be unlikely that reverting back to
those earlier methodological positions would provide the means to identify
the problems with theory developed from them that are easily identified from
the physiological perspective relating to self-delusion. Trying to soften or
dodge the implications by avoiding including self-delusion and instead
diverting into the less challenging 'illusion', 'allusion' and 'collusion'
would seem to be unhelpful.
Also, I'm puzzled as to why one would avoid including self-delusion in
design theory. It's a common human attribute that is an obvious aspect of
any serious attempt to describe cognition, creativity and design thinking.
The implication may be that there emerges a need to rethink and
reconceptualise existing design theory and rethink some traditional aspects
of design education. Is that a problem? Both design theory and design
education are commonly seen as less well developed than they might be and
some improvement might help?
Best wishes from the west,
Terence
==
Dr Terence Love FDRS,AMIMechE, MISI
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks, Western Australia 6030
Mob: 0434 975 848
Fax: +61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask]
===
Dear Terry
While I can agree that there are problems associated with all forms of
research, and, while I can agree that certain kinds of research that involve
high levels of subjectivity are especially open to issues of evidence, I'm
not sure we need to be so provocative in outlining the issues.
That is, "delusion" is both a technical term and a highly charged pejorative
term, in English. And, along with the simple cases of delusion brought about
by subjective approaches, we need to also add "illusion", "allusion" and
"collusion".
As the American poet, William Carlo Williams urged: "no ideas but in
things". English based cultures have moved towards imagistic understandings
of object relations such that the sedimentations and adumbrations (Husserl)
of things we meet in the world are collected together as languages of
negotiated images. That is, we have established a visual culture that is a
system of knowledge that folds delusions / allusions / collusions into lumps
of dough that we might turn into bread.
So, one might spend time dealing with the issues arising from such languages
of the visual (sensory) rather than simply attacking the sometimes sloppy
uses of aesthetics. The problems of subjectivity are problems that design
can address and should address even if this requires sophisticated
arguments.
cheers
keith russell
OZ Newcastle
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