Hi Ken,
Here we go. Same ontological issue as definition of design - different hats.
We already have a word for the process of 'having a swim'. It is 'swimming'. The idea of 'a swim' is a nominalisation, just as using the rhetoric trick of attacking a single point in an argument rather than addressing the main issues might be called 'doing "a Ken"'.
In the above sense, 'a Ken' has much the same ontological properties as 'a swim' . You can see it as 'the name of a process' but that doesn't seem to make much ontological sense. It makes more ontological sense to see that version of 'a self', 'a swim' or 'a Ken' as the name of an abstraction representing a pseudo-reality.
In many ways, ontologically, this is similar to seeing objects in a mirror. The objects 'as seen in the mirror' are best seen ontologically as abstractions of a pseudo-reality rather than real objects. One doesn't usually think of images of objects in a mirror as being real things behind the mirror glass. Or do you? Usually they are seen as a pseudo-reality.
These are pretty crucial points in trying to sort out these issues in design theory relating to exactly how the processes associated with 'self' is connected to exacly how we generate novel ideas or make judgements about partial design possibilities . I'm not sure the level of detail we are using is even now deep enough. What is obvious, however, is that these theory issues can't be sorted out at less level of conceptual detail. You can see this in the way the existing design theory literature is incapable of addressing these issues using ways of thinking that are too broad brush to produce theory that has predictive power.
Best wishes,
Terry
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Dr Terence Love FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
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www.loveservices.com.au
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-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: 13 March 2013 09:53
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: Re: The self issue
Dear Terry,
Without going into the whole shebang -- I'll post later -- I want to say that in the effort to be scientifically accurate, you sometimes seem to get wrapped up in what seem, at least to me, to be odd and inaccurate concepts.
"A swim" is not a "pseudo-real entity." The term "a swim" does not refer to a thing that one can collect and return with, but it refers, rather, to a process. The process exists as long as one is swimming and no longer. If, however, one documents the process as, for example, the Olympic swimming events or Burt Lancaster's movie The Swimmer, then one can show "a swim." What you can't do is to collect or keep the swim itself when the process is finished.
The swim itself is very real, not pseudo-real.
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