I would also recommend Stephen Toulmin's book Return to Reason 2001
Harvard University Press Cambridge (MASS).
"Reason" in a design argument can read very much like "The question was
- and still is - how a balance between rigidity and openness, between a
discipline's core values and the varied situations to which it applies,
is struck and maintained" (p.42).
This is also in agreement with Giddens (Modernity and Self-Identity,
1991:54): "A person's identity is not to be found in behaviour, nor -
important though this is - in the reactions of others, but in the
capacity to keep a particular narrative going."
Can anyone see the similarity between the developing identity of a
discipline (e.g., a contingently "opportunistic" one such as 'design')
and the developing identity of a person?
Both the individual and the discipline needs to keep a particular
narrative going, and in design that narrative can, to a large extent, be
the same one for both.
The use of argument both personal and professional should then question
exactly how and why this narrative is constructed and maintained (and
"kept going" does not really mean maintained in original form ...)
I agree with Mercier and Sperber (thanks Don), that "skilled arguers ...
are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views" ...
in design, though, whose views are we arguing for?
A skilled design arguer: whose views will be represented in the
constructed and persuasive (rhetorical, as in the sense of "saying
well") argument; will the argument demonstrate a balance between
research rigour and situational openness, and will the narrative be
'readable' and acceptable to the final target audience?
Johann
Johann van der Merwe
HOD: Research, History & Theory of Design
Faculty of Informatics and Design
Cape Peninsula University of Technology
South Africa
>>> Kari Kuutti <[log in to unmask]> 06/22/11 8:39 PM >>>
With respect to argumentation,
I believe that for the English-speaking audience the standard
reference on practical reasoning is Stephen Toulmin's The Uses of
Argument, originally 1958, umpteenth edition 2003 (Cambridge UP)
still in print. In it Toulmin discusses about the difference between
logic and practical reasoning, and explains how to construct an
argument in ordinary language so that it will accepted by the
audience you try to address -- which is what actually matters, I
think.
Toulmin's book was dubbed as "anti-logic" and scathingly criticized
by (already forgotten) logicans of that time who could not understand
or accept the motivation of studying ordinary use of language. I
think that the (totally misplaced) criticism was one of reasons why
Toulmin left England for US -- ones gain, another's loss.
A good textbook based on Toulmin's ideas is Booth, Colomb & Williams:
The Craft of Research, U Chigago Press 2008 (3rd edition).
I gave last week a short talk based on the Booth et al. book to a
bunch of doctoral students in design in a summer school, and most of
them seemed quite surprised (and delighted, sharp as they were) that
it is possible and even desirable to work with the argument of a
thesis at an architectural level, so to say. So maybe some more
emphasis on this area in doctoral education would not be a bad idea.
best regards,
--Kari Kuutti
Oulu, Finland
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