Andy - What an interesting continuation of this thread! I appreciate the
reference to the obscure Johnson-Laird, which shows us how his thinking has
changed from the more structural formulations in 1983's Mental Models.
However, when we cross over "creative" reasoning with reasoning for
"complexity," I wonder if we're dealing with different kinds of abduction?
Didn't this whole thread start with an assumption of dealing with high
degrees of complexity, if not true wicked problems? Even if nuclear power
facilities are "also complicated" they are complex in that no single person
can hold understanding of the system, and multiple experts may have blind
spots where interactions between subsystems are not understood.
So in wickedness, the first step of PJ-L's reasoning "fails to yield a
solution" would fail the wickedness test. Rittel's points included "no
stopping rules, no ultimate test, no definite formulation." These apply to
many collective social and policy problems.
The intent of collaborative problem solving is not to enhance creative
"outlier" formulations, which only help push one's personal creative genius
to new insights, as if you were the only problem solver. Collective
abduction requires that stakeholders co-create and test their understanding
with one another. A kind of geometric relationship is expressed among
problem-holders or co-designers when synthesizing collaboratively. So I
wonder to what extent the individual abductive concepts hold in the
collective deliberative situation? (My refs on this would include Beer's
Syntegrity and Warfield's ISM).
Best, Peter
OCADU, Strategic Foresight and Innovation
http://designforcare.com
http://designdialogues.com
Terry - I don't see abduction as a dead end at all, rather a jumping off
point for explaining and articulating the process of design synthesis. I
urge you to read the Kolko material if you haven't already. He also draws
upon Philip Johnson-Laird, whose work deals a great deal with how humans
think and reason. Here's the specific quote from Kolko about it:
> Johnson-Laird has argued contradictorily that, in the context of
generative and creative problem solving, the insight is developed not in a
"flash" at all. Instead, a four step process leads to an insight, which only
seems to appear instantly:
>
> The current problem solving strategy fails to yield a solution, given the
existing constraints.
>
> There is a tacit consideration of the new constraints in the strategy.
>
> The constraints are relaxed (or changed) in a new way, thus broadening the
problem space and allowing for further consideration.
>
> Many changes in constraints lead nowhere, but, with perseverance, a change
may be made that leads at once to a solution of the problem.
The reference to this is here: Philip Johnson-Laird, "The Shape of
Problems." in The Shape of Reason: Essays in Honour of Paolo Legrenzi, by V
Girotto, edited by V Girotto, 3-26. (Psychology Press, 2005).
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