The discussion has been interesting,
but I think that it has been distorted in an unproductive way. I do not know anything about neurophysiology, so don't know if they think themselves that they are studying "humans". In any case, their research object is most probably limited by body skin. Now it seems that this idea has become used as given in the philosophically oriented side of discussion as well. And if we take the "skin is the limit of human" as a starting point for a philosophical discussion, then we easily slip back into worn grooves of mind-body, soul-world dichotomies and whatever, continuing just those fruitless debates.
There is an alternative (as suggested a while ago): let's take seriously the idea that our material and communicative environments are fundamental and constitutive for our development as human beings. If we accept that, we have to recognize, that there is no treshold where that role of our environment stops; they continue to be fundamental and constitutive through our life. Our biological body is limited by skin, but not our human body; it goes as far as our artifactual and communicative "feelers" reach. We are only fully humans when acting and communicating in our material and communicative lifeworld, like me sending this message using material computer and networks to contribute the ongoing discussion.
If we take a person out of the lifeworld and study him or her in a laboratory, we are no more studying a full human but something less. How much the results will tell about real life is a research question of its own.
The good point of this way of thinking is that this "full human" acting in his or her material and communicative lifeworld is exactly what design is interested in. And the situation can be relatively easily been studied by making changes in the environment (by the means of design) and looking what happens. We even have two levels of ambitiousness to select from: Design Research 1.0 that aims to improve the artifacts themselves and the design methods; and Design Research 2.0 that aims to understand the "full human" better – design research as "clinical anthropology", if you allow the joke.
The liberating aspect of this perspective is that we do not need any big advances in theory to start with; we need only plausible hypothesis that can be used to set up empirical experiments, to be refuted or refined. Theories will eventually follow. If neurophysiology can offer useful hypothesis, the better. But they do not carry any more authority than hypothesis developed by some other means; what works is true.
best regards,
--Kari Kuutti
Univ. Oulu, Finland
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|