Hi Idil

I set up and ran the first Prof Doc in Design in Europe, the Doctor of Design Practice (DDP) at Northumbria University in the UK. However, for all the effort it took to get it approved and running it only ran for a few years before our department closed it down. When the economy took a downturn the applicants dropped off significantly, and I was told that since Australia were having similar experiences we had to focus our efforts on Practice Led PhDs, traditional PhDs and PhD by publication, so our DDP no longer runs. One of the complaints from the majority of people who did do the DDP was that they didn't see why they had to do the taught first year, which is required of all Prof Docs at Northumbria. The Practice Led PhD suits these people a lot better as there is no taught component. Nevertheless, with the economy remaining difficult, the applications from practitioners remain low.

So I would seriously reconsider bothering with a Prof Doc in Design.

Sorry

Kev

Dr. Kev Hilton
Reader in Designing for Transformational Experiences
The Centre for Design Research
Department of Design CCE2
Northumbria University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 8ST

[log in to unmask]
0191 243 7340

http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/sd/academic/scd/research/ourpeople/1930837/
www.vimeo.com/northumbriadesignschool/gender

-----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 Idil Gaziulusoy
Sent: 10 April 2013 03:44
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: professional doctorates

Hi Dear List Members,

I am trying to develop curriculum for a professional doctorate in design. I have been searching to find good examples from US, EU and AU but so far couldn't go much further. I'd appreciate a lot if you can send me links to programs in your schools if any. Also, the link to the professional doctorate in design (which replaced doctorate of design) of Swinburne University is looping; I'm not sure if this program is still on or not. Can those in Swinburne please enlighten me about the current status of this program. 

Thank you!

Cheers,
idil

Dr. A. Idil Gaziulusoy
Faculty of Design & Creative Technologies
Faculty of Business & Law
AUT University
Private Bag 92006, Auckland
New Zealand
P +64 9 921 9999 ext 6628
F +64 9 921 9916
M +64 21 930234
http://arden.aut.ac.nz/portfolio/idil.gaziulusoy

________________________________________
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of PHD-DESIGN automatic digest system [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, 10 April 2013 11:00 a.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: PHD-DESIGN Digest - 9 Apr 2013 (#2013-103)

There are 3 messages totaling 1728 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Submission system opened : Relating Systems Thinking to Design
  2. Ideas and definitions of what is "a design" in a broad sense (2)


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Date:    Tue, 9 Apr 2013 11:53:35 +0200
From:    Birger Sevaldson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Submission system opened : Relating Systems Thinking to Design

This is to announce that a while ago the submission system for submitting abstracts has opened and it seems to be working fine. It is ready to receive you abstracts, deadline by the end of this month.

Symposium Website http://www.systemic-design.net

Emerging Contexts for Systemic Design

AHO - Oslo School of Architecture & Design                   Oslo, Norway                   9th-11th October 2013

Relating Systems Thinking and Design is a free and open symposium over two days with a preceding full day with diverse workshops and a subsequent special issue in FORMakademisk. We encourage you to submit your abstracts and to consider joining the workshops. We are interested in both work in progress and more developed contributions.
9th October: Workshops
10th - 11th October: Symposium

Call for abstracts
The emerging renaissance of systems thinking in design responds to the increasing complexity in all challenges faced by designers and transdisciplinary innovators. Our worlds have become too complex for linear and goal-driven management, resulting in hopelessly complicated social, economic, and political systems. The global demand for sustainability, democratic economies, and the emerging social arrangements for better education, employment, and development have become too complex for conventional thinking.
The interrelationship between systems thinking and design action was the theme of last years RSD seminar at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. In re-examining the relationship of systems thinking to design we believe it possible for systems thinking and design praxis to develop the foundations for new, interrelated practices. This synergistic relationship will launch a new generation of systems-oriented thinkers empowered with the creativity and perspectives of design thinking. As educators and researchers, we also seek better theoretical foundations and rigor in design thinking.
We areare interested in proposals that draw from recent case studies from fieldwork, design inquiry and research, and mixed methods in systems-oriented design.
Sociotechnical, service, and activity systems are characterized by highly complex and emergent human-system relationships, and benefit from nonlinear and creative design practices and engaged research perspectives. Design practices found effective in fields such as healthcare, governance, environmental stewardship, organizational management and social change, are of particular interest for cases and discussion in the conference.
Systemic Design has been suggested as a term for this emerging movement in design with its multiple expressions including e.g. Systems Oriented Design, Whole Systems Design, and is closely related to Dialogic Design. What binds systems related theories and practices together with design approaches may be the desire to reintroduce systems approaches with design toward a more effective integrated praxis, becoming more useful to designers (and stakeholders and clients) than evidenced by past performance. This implies the reshaping and design of systems approaches and the related practices so that they are better integrated into design processes.
We invite you to submit an abstract of maximum 1000 words within the following themes:

*New systemic practices in design
*Rethinking systems approaches from a design perspective
*Relating Design Praxis and Systems Thinking
*The role of systemic design when developing design practices in new areas
*Teaching (systemic design or), systems thinking in design. (or design in systems approaches)
*Relating systems and design theories, conceptually and pragmatically

Accepted abstracts will be asked to submit a presentation.

The best presentations will after the symposium be invited by the program committee to submit a full paper to be published in a planned special issue in the Norwegian bilingual scientific design research journal FORMakademisk. These papers will go through a blind peer review evaluation process as normal for this journal. See the journal website for details.

Symposium Website http://www.systemic-design.net

Birger Sevaldson (PhD, MNIL)
Professor at Institute of Design
Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Norway
www.birger-sevaldson.no
www.systemsorienteddesign.net
www.ocean-designresearch.net


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Date:    Tue, 9 Apr 2013 19:10:48 +0000
From:    Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Ideas and definitions of what is "a design" in a broad sense

Dear Kari-Hans,

After several days of ideas and definitions of what "a design" might be, I'd say we've explored some interesting issues and positions. There is probably no way to demonstrate that one position or the other is entirely correct. While I believe that language exemplars and two great dictionaries offer a reasonable amount of empirical evidence, charting usage is not a definitive demonstration that one position or the other is right. In that sense, there is no empirical test to demonstrate the validity of my views - neither is there any way to demonstrate that my views on the definition of the term "a design" is wrong.

That being the case, I'll end my thoughts on this thread with a few considerations on topics within the debate. In some cases, I'd propose that there are distinctions between right and wrong ideas. In other cases, I'm happy to see more evidence.

We agree on the need for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. Where we differ a bit is in the degree of expertise one might require to do such research in a fruitful way. Once again, I'll point to Don Norman's (2010) Core77 post on the way in which designers often fail to recognize the limits of their own ignorance. In a week during which I have reviewed a dozen or so journal and conference submissions while assembling an expert group for a new design project, I can say our field provides both.

With respect to evolution theory, however, I'm just going to say that I can't see how a group of designers with no foundation in biology or any of the disciplines that study evolution and no expertise in the appropriate science or mathematics can get more than metaphorical value out of this. As useful and instructive metaphor, evolution has a lot to offer. As research? You'd have to be able to do research in the field, and it seems to me that this is unlikely.

In asking for sufficient competence for transdisciplinary research, I am not calling for scientific heroes or impeccable scholarship. I am asking for competence. It's a long way from being competence to becoming a scientific hero. Most fields have tens of thousands of solid, competent researchers who do not rise to the level of hero. By and large, a PhD in biology, anthropology, or mathematics demonstrates a competent research foundation. This is not always the case in design - we work in a field where many people feel they have mastered ethnography after a two-hour workshop. That distance, and the ignorance of many designers regarding their own lack of competence, accounts for Don's provocative opening words, "I am forced to read a lot of crap" (Norman 2010: unpaged.)

Physicist Jeremy Bernstein (1993: 27) addresses the necessity of competence as a stepping stone to original scientific creativity: "All of us who have tried to work in deep science know just how hard it is to get to the frontier - just how much devoted training is involved." That involves research training for the questions at hand.

Regarding my answers to your two questions, I do argue that intentionality is one condition for design. In the use of the term design as I developed it, the concept of intention forms the core meaning of the word. If we remove the concept of intention, the process is not [the verb] design, and what follows from the process is not [the noun] design.

That, in my view, is the argument for why the result of an intentional design process is a design outcome, while the result of an unintentional process is not a design outcome.

You asked my opinion on this. I gave references for evidence to support my views. This is my argument, though, and not someone else's argument, so I don't have references to demonstrate that others concur. I know my own arguments, and I know the arguments for intentionality, but I don't have a collection of arguments against your view on this. Perhaps they exist, perhaps they don't but finding them or finding that they are absent would take a literature review. I think that I offered a sound argument for my views on this, and I've given serious thought to these issues. I don't have the time for a literature review to see if anyone else agrees with me.

The consistency I'm proposing is not simply the quality of intentionality. I'm also arguing that "a design" is the outcome of the design process. It makes no sense for me to argue that the verb design requires intention, while "a design" may arise in some other way. Consistency here is more than a consistency of labels and terms. It is a consistency of conceptual content and a relationship between the verb form and the noun form of the same word.

It is indeed my view that design arises from intention. Some forms of design go back millions of years. If you want to speak of design as the production of human or pre-human industry, industrial design or product design began over two and a half million years ago when homo habilis manufactured the first rough tools. In this sense, human beings were designing before we began to walk upright. This takes place well within evolutionary time, not before. This is a bit to the side of this thread, so I'll invite those who want to read more on this to see the article "Design Science and Design Education" (Friedman 1997 [2013 reprint]) at URL:

http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman

But I did not describe Jacob's activities as a non-human designer in evolutionary terms. It was an example to show a case of intentional design without a human actor. This case of a dog engaging in design activities is contemporary, well within current evolutionary time by an animal whose ancestors co-evolved with human beings. While Jacob's social behavior as a dog involved interacting with human beings, it is not the case that he simply observed and imitated my wife's example. Lacking fingers and opposable thumbs, a dog cannot pick berries as a human being does. Rather, Jacob had to observe, learn, form concepts, link concepts together, and then adapt human actions to the tools available to him. He saw my wife, but he did not simply follow her example.

One issues raises a serious question. If you argue that design started in the Big Bang, you are placing design at the origins of everything in the universe. To me, that suggests the position that design is everything.

I'd also have to disagree about the word structure. Structures have functions in the sense that they act in specific ways according to their properties they embody. They do not need to be labeled as "designs" to incorporate functionality of some kind. In this sense, of course, a black hole or an amoeba may possess functions without having been designed by intention. In many cases, the word system would also work - for example, the Solar system is a system that functions, but it is not a design.

Slipping back and forth across usages of the word design makes it difficult to engage in dialogue about this. Your discussion of the parrot is a case in point. For example, I agree that human beings can learn and share our learning across generations. This capacity to describe that enables us to share what we can both agree to label with the noun "designs." Then, you shift into a slippery use of words in a way that shifts the concept of the noun design into the realm of the unintentional. This is a problematic usage.

This slippage shows up in your reply to Kari:

"But I think that it is beneficial for all designers to develop a more comprehensive view of life and all of the designs in the world, and have a broader view of their own role in the grand scheme of design."

To say that it is beneficial for designers to develop a more comprehensive view of life would be a statement that most of us agree with, entailing - as it does, sustainability, ethics, and other important issues. A problem arises when this reasonable suggestion is linked to the phrase, "and all the designs in the world." "All the designs in the world" is especially problematic if you apply the term "designs" to all structures arising since the Big Bang,

Another issue in your reply to Kari confuses categories:

"I also agree that if 'everything is design', it becomes more complicated to sort out what it means, but then we have to careful about what filter we apply to separating the design from the non-design, and I happen to think that the pair of intention and specialization are not the best criteria for doing that."

Intention and intentionality distinguish design from that which is not design. No one has suggested that specialization does this. A dog can design, even though a dog is not a specialist designer. Many kinds of human acts qualify as design in the definitions I gave, even though they are not specialized and often not professional activities.

No one in the thread has called for specialization to distinguish design acts from acts that are not design acts. The same holds true of design outcomes.

You raised the question of specialization in response to my call for competence with respect to the skills one needs to work with certain kinds of problems. I'm not calling for specialization, though, either as a demarcation for design or as a boundary condition for what designers deal with. I'm simply saying that if a designer wants to work in certain kinds of fields, he or she will need the skills that form the basis for working in those fields.

The odd thing about the way you seem to move back and forth across the ways you use the term design is clear in one comment you make to Tim, where you distinguish between the metaphorical and plain uses of the verb "design":

"I am not looking for the 'intelligent and intentional designer' from behind the scenes, nor do I want to give the impression that something like that should be found. I think that design can emerge in a different kind of process, e.g. evolution, and to me, it does not make a lot of sense to talk about such a design process as 'a designer', except in some special rhetorical and metaphorical sense perhaps ('Mother Nature designed x' when one really means 'the design of x emerged in a process of evolution')."

But even here, there is some confusion. You have been talking about "design" as a noun, but the sentence "the design of x emerged in a process of evolution" uses the word "design" as a verb. To speak of emergent designs as a noun, the sentence would have to be "the design x emerged in a process of evolution" or "the design for x emerged in a process of evolution." This is further confused because you do say that you are writing about a design process, so perhaps you are speaking about both an emergent process and emergent design outcomes.

While I acknowledge that many kinds of things arise through many kinds of processes, I don't accept that those processes constitute design without an intentional actor. I can see the value of using a metaphor, but I can't see the value of treating a metaphor as a literal, plain language description.

With respect to Tim's comments, Tim appreciates Daniel Dennett's expertise in cognition, and his contributions to artificial intelligence and artificial life. He disputes Dennett's expertise in evolution.

It seems to me that what Tim is saying is that Dennett is a philosopher commenting on evolution, in contrast with Stephen Jay Gould who was a working expert in evolution as a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and zoologist. There were those who debated Gould from a position of expert working knowledge and engagement in evolution theory. Tim is stating that Dennett, for all his many virtues, was not one of these.

In essence, Tim is challenging your reading of Dennett. You may in some sense be reading Dennett as Dennett wishes to be read, and for this reason Tim is also challenging what he believes to be a misunderstanding of Darwinian evolution by Dennett and by you.

The quotes you present to suggest that evolutionists use the term "design" as you do are indeed suggestive. What is not clear to me is that these authors intend the term as you do. In many of these quotes, I see terms used for the suggestive, metaphorical richness of language, and not the plain language meaning you propose.

If you want to read Gould's summary of evolution theory, he developed the views of a lifetime in his 1400-page magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Gould 2002).

Two paragraphs nicely summarize the last few issues in the debate.

Tim wrote, "So, my question remains, given that we may reasonably adopt a Design Stance towards anything and everything in the Universe, what does looking at all these things and seeing them as if they are realisations of designs, do for a better understanding of intentional professional designing?"

Tim is arguing that the design stance can reasonably be applied to a great many processes and entities as an analytical and conceptual tool, but not as a practical description. He is asking what value there is in using a conceptual, analytical tool as - mistakenly, in his view - a practical description.

You reply, "...designers can design better if they understand the designs that exist in the world and the processes that create them, whatever they may be. At the moment, many aspects of design that is taking place in the world are not recognized as such by designers, and this is a shortcoming."

I'd say that designers can - in many instances - design better if they understand systems and structures in the world and the processes that create them. If they misunderstand or confuse the processes that create these systems and structures, they will have a poor understanding of the world. The failure to develop the appropriate skills means that designers will be using what they see in the world around them in a metaphorical or inspirational sense. This may make them better and more interesting designers - or it may not. Without the skills appropriate to genuine analytical understanding, they will not be able to deploy their understanding to "get to the frontier" as Bernstein (1993: 27) describes original scientific creativity. This also applies to original design creativity that draws in on science in a robust and resilient way.

One may become an original designer who uses science effectively for original design without becoming an original scientist. To do this, however, one must be competent in understanding science. This does not require heroic efforts. It does require the plain, dogged application of effort and intelligence across time.

This requires what Stephen Jay Gould and other scientists would call objectivity - an understanding of science that reflects the structures and processes of the world around us. This only requires heroic expertise when you are the first Pasteur or the first Einstein to work a field. It always requires competence. It doesn't mean adopting ideas and issues without thinking, but it requires deep thought and a continual willingness to test, review, and recast ideas:

"Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny - and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do)" (Gould 1998: 18).

It seems to me that your position on some of these issues is mistaken, but there is not enough evidence in this debate to decide the case of your position or mine with certainty.

On some of these issues, we're not talking facts, but about position or interpretation of facts. I think there are also facts here where you do seem to be mistaken, but those mistakes do not prohibit anyone from speaking of "unintentional designs." Nevertheless, I see no value served by the confusion to which this gives rise.

I look forward to reading what you publish on these issues. For now, thanks for a lively and intelligent dialogue.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design> Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman

Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China

--

References

Bernstein, Jeremy. 1993. Cranks, Quarks and the Cosmos. New York: Basic Books.

Friedman, Ken. 1997. "Design Science and Design Education." The Challenge of Complexity. Peter McGrory, editor. Helsinki: University of Art and Design Helsinki UIAH, 54-72. Reprint available at URL:
http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Accessed 2013 April 9.

Gould, Stephen Jay. 1998. "Capturing the Center<http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_10_107/ai_53378966>." Natural History, Vol. 107 (December 1998), p. 18.

Gould, Stephen Jay. 2002. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Norman, Donald. 2010. "Why Design Education Must Change. Core77. 26 November, 2010. URL:
http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/why_design_education_must_change_17993.asp
Accessed 2013 April 9.

--

[1] Kari-Hans Kommonen wrote:

-snip-

As a designer and researcher working in a design university, I can and do appreciate the specialist designers' special role in the world, and within the phenomenon of design. As I see it, based on this background and this kind of knowledge, design research is uniquely equipped to possibly develop very interesting and useful understanding about design that takes place also outside of the boundaries of this specialist group and its cultures.

However, I have found that the ways of defining "what design is" (especially to restrict it to intentional and specialist design activities and their results) tend to erect walls in the wrong places, thus making it hard for design researchers to operate outside of their local turf, and to be able to usefully utilize the knowledge they have about design, and consequently, this means they are constrained in the capacity of their work to engage the challenges of the rest of the world. These boundaries, helpful as they are for defining a disciplinary area where certain characteristics of certain phenomena are known to apply, can become a handicap for the development of wider knowledge and expertise, if they are taken as boundaries that restrict the applicability of some wider phenomena only to that disciplinary area.

[Similar but in a way opposite reasons operate on the other side: people who are not familiar with the field of design may avoid using the word "design" in their work, not only because they do not think that it could be used, but because they may not want to step outside of the vocabulary of their own field, and risk having arguments with design oriented people, unless they are absolutely convinced that this is exactly the word to be employed. Thus its absence from e.g. evolution-related scholarship is in my opinion not a very conclusive argument against its applicability.]

I think that these restrictions (intention, specialism) are harmful in many cases and should not be applied universally without some reasonable justification, but it is very useful to hear the arguments for why they should be upheld.

I also enjoyed very much your description of Jacob's design activities, thanks for sharing that!

Here is another story about animal tool use:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/11/parrot-in-captivity-manufactures-tools-something-not-seen-in-the-wild/

In this example a parrot apparently exercises problem solving skills and intentionally prepares a tool that matches and solves the problem. So apparently animals do design, to some extent. One crucial difference between humans and other animals in their design is that humans have an efficient way to preserve the design they are able to generate through language and efficient transgenerational teaching and learning, and to build on it in the future, thus evolving and accumulating cultural design much faster than other species. You see, here I am using the word "design" to denote a resource, something that can be accumulated, much in the same way as Dennett.

I appreciate the description you give of all the kinds of things someone needs to wade through if one wants to learn about evolution. This is the same problem in all transdisciplinary research, and an efficient cause for making it so rare. However, I think we should not expect some current day scientific hero to emerge and take charge and show the way with appropriate authority, incontestable expertise in all these areas you mention, and a record of years of impeccable scholarship in this kind of a novel topic, before we venture to explore such directions. Instead, after some people start moving in some direction, with some early efforts and modest, maybe even not so well founded beginnings, it is possible that some interest is sparked, inspiration sets in, and a community of people can emerge who are able to turn a weak sprout into an interesting and meaningful field of study that attracts others, who can help to make the studies more comprehensive. Definitely, and unfortunately, the academic system does not encourage anyone to pursue these kinds of uncertain and messy directions.

About the two questions:

1) I think I understood what you say here, but I may have gotten it wrong, if so, please bear with me....

But in your response to question about why intentionality is a prerequisite for something to be considered design, I did not really see a clear explanation for a "why" this should be the case. You talk about something I agree with: that (according to dictionary definitions and discussions by Herbert Simon etc) people think that intentional design is "design"; but you do not explain the opposite: why unintentional design should not be called (or awarded the status of) design (and should be called something else instead). It is this latter part that I do not see a reason for. Even though many people do not think about it or do it, why is it a bad idea for someone do it? Would you have any references for good arguments about that?

You continue that terms should be used consistently, and there I agree. But we disagree on what creates consistency. We seem to both think that some kind of similarity in qualities and avoidance of differences is important for consistency, but we return back to question 1 - you think the key quality to follow is intention, while I think that things such as structure, functionality and consequence should be followed.

It seems to be that your stance means that design was born with the intention to design, and before that there was no design? And as you describe design by Jacob, you seem to think that this happened already sometime before human beings entered the evolutionary stage? Or do you think that Jacob's ability and intention to design was dependent on his ability to observe your wife's activities and to learn from a design presented by her as an example?

Compared to yours, my stance is that design started in the Big Bang (we don't know what was before that...), and was amplified and accelerated in various steps on the way, but definitely so when intention stepped in as a way to guide design work and selection.

In your response to 2) you propose "structure" as a word to be used in place of "design" to discuss the outcomes of what I call non-intentional design processes. I think the word structure describes one important aspect of designs, but lacks e.g. the dimension and qualities of function, so I find "design" much more useful.

-snip-

[2] Kari-Hans Kommonen wrote:

-snip-

But I think that it is beneficial for all designers to develop a more comprehensive view of life and all of the designs in the world, and have a broader view of their own role in the grand scheme of design.

I also agree that if "everything is design", it becomes more complicated to sort out what it means, but then we have to careful about what filter we apply to separating the design from the non-design, and I happen to think that the pair of intention and specialization are not the best criteria for doing that.

-snip-

[3] Tim Smithers wrote:

-snip-

I would like to raise some concerns about your appeal to Dennett, and his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), as support for the good sense you see in the idea of treating biological evolution as a (non-intentional) designer: as a creator of designs, as you would put it, if I understand you correctly.

Daniel Dennett is, as I assume you know, a well established and widely respected philosopher. A powerful one, in many people's eyes. He has been active, in a supportive way-as opposed to the more usual critical way -- in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life (AL). He is thus appreciated by non-philosophers working in these two areas, who have benefitted from and used his philosophising, including me. I have done work in both AI and AL. And I know and have engaged with Daniel Dennett in these (professional) contexts.

Dennett is not, however, an authority on designing, nor on what is a design, and what you can reasonably say when you call something a design. Nor is he a philosopher of design. So, presenting him as a good "supporting reference" for your views, is, I would say, a poor move. If you need support for your position, I think you need it from people who are recognised authorities in relevant areas -- well established design researchers, design thinkers and practitioners, and, perhaps, real philosophers of design.

For me, quoting from Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, makes things worse, a lot worse. Of all Dennett's books, this one more than any displays his tendency towards an arrogant and bullying treatment of other people's work and ideas. This book generated much controversy and heated debate, especially between Dennett and Stephen Jay Gould -- who Dennett somewhat viciously attacks in this book.

This all happed more than a decade ago, and was a long and detailed debate, but for a useful concluding summary of the positions, this New York Review of Books exchange is a good place to start

'Darwinian Fundamentalism': An Exchange AUGUST 14, 1997 Daniel C. Dennett, reply by Stephen Jay Gould

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/aug/14/darwinian-fundamentalism-an-exchange

To help with some background and context, I think this next piece by Gould, also from the New York Review of Books, published in June 1997, shortly before the above, helps to show that Gould was in no way anti-Darwin. Indeed, I, like many people, saw Gould as one of the most thoughtful and eloquent explainers and defenders of Darwin's idea. Gould, like Darwin, just didn't think that adaptation by selection of the fittest accounts for all the variety we see in the biological world. A position that has been and is shared by others in evolutionary biology. In other words, Dennett held the more restricted and dogmatic position in this debate-and still does, as far as I know. Gould died in 2002. But do have a read of this.

Darwinian Fundamentalism JUNE 12, 1997 Stephen Jay Gould

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jun/12/darwinian-fundamentalism

Allow me, if you will, to illustrate why I think Dennett's thinking is wrong on designing and what a design is, with just one example, taken from your quotation.

Dennett, takes a Design Stance on what Darwinian Evolution gives rise to: individual living things that can each be identified as an instance of particular species. He sees and treats the instances of living things as if they are realisations of designs, and then talks of these designs. This involves re-seeing each one as an abstract description of what it is, and not of what it actually is; an individual instances of a living thing of same species. (Note, by the way, that Dennett is not clear if what he means by the design here, is the species design, or the individual animal design. They would not be identical. I take it that he means the species design, since it's hard to make much sense of what he writes if you don't. But the unclarity remains.)

As Ken, said, Jukka, at the end of his post, identifies the importance and widespread use of this Design Stance idea, when he said

"All in all, it is an old research strategy in natural sciences to look at systems as if they were well-designed, and then use design aesthetics like simplicity or elegance to guide hypotheses of what and why."

Seeing and treating things as if they are designs, and not the things they actually are -- is useful, very useful, and a valid way to develop ideas and understandings, if done well.

But, taking a Design Stance, seeing and treating something as if it is the outcome of some designing, does not make that something a design, nor make it an outcome of any kind of designing. Adopting a Design Stance is an observer choice that changes nothing of the thing so observed. A thing is a thing, and only and no more than the thing, and only a realisation of a design if it has in fact resulted from some designing and subsequent realisation following well the design.

Things go wrong when we have what Dennett does, here in your quote: take, apparently unknowingly, a Design Stance, and then go on to make some very silly and wrong claims and statements, such as

"... Darwin had hit upon what we might call the Principle of Accumulation of Design."

No such a notion, expressed in any shape or form, appears anywhere in Darwin's writings -- and there is a lot of it. But almost all of it now available on the web, so you may check this assertion of mine. Or ask some authorities on Darwin and his works. This Dennett notion of the Principle of Accumulation of Design, is a product of his Design Stance-but not a good one, I happen to think, and not a part of Darwin's thinking or developments. Darwin didn't adopt a Design Stance in his work. I'm not even sure it has been invented then. Perhaps someone here can help with this question of design history.

Dennett, to give him some credit, does -- in the next sentence from your quote -- gives away his Design Stance by saying

"Things in the world (such as watches and organisms and who knows what else) may be seen as products embodying a certain amount of Design[ing] ..."

But, he then continues, in the same sentence, to commit the Design Stance over claim that you seem to want to make

"... and one way or another, that Design[ing] had to have been created by a process of R and D."

Where here, "R and D," for Dennett, equates to designing, at least in this quote, but I think it carries the same meaning elsewhere too.

So, in one sentence we have Dennett, in this case, slipping unnoticed by him, and probably unnoticed by many of his readers, from a thing that may be seen as a design to being necessarily designed, R and D'd, to use his exact term. This is not a reasonable step to take, I think, because it simply is not true: nothing in the biology of this world has been designed, not in any sense of designing that we have and use today. Saying that these things have been designed, because you like the idea thinking they have been, is not a reasonable way to extend our current notions of what designing is. Understanding what designing is, requires good and extensive empirical study. Understanding what designing can be requires the development of good explanatory theory or theories.

To end, let me restate my position in this discussion. An agent, like Dennett, or you, or me, or anybody else, can freely and reasonable chose to adopt a Design Stance so as to view a thing as a design -- to "read" the object, or animal, as a presentation of the design it is a particular realization of. (Which is quite a sophisticated way of viewing things in the world, so it's not just any old agent that is able to do this.)

What, in my view, is not reasonable, is to then say that the thing so viewed is a design and that it was thus designed.

So, my question remains, given that we may reasonably adopt a Design Stance towards anything and everything in the Universe, what does looking at all these things and seeing them as if they are realisations of designs, do for a better understanding of intentional professional designing?

-snip-

[4] Kari-Hans Kommonen wrote:

(Primarily to Tim, but also to Ken)

-snip-

Thank you very much for engaging in this discussion with this effort!

1) You describe what I am doing as

"treating biological evolution as a (non-intentional) designer: as a creator of designs"

and you refer to "designing" a lot in your post. You even change Dennett's words in the quotations: when he talks about "design" you change it to "design[ing]". I assume that you do it because you want to emphasize a stance that design can not take place without a designer?

If so, that is something where I differ from you; I am not looking for the "intelligent and intentional designer" from behind the scenes, nor do I want to give the impression that something like that should be found. I think that design can emerge in a different kind of process, e.g. evolution, and to me, it does not make a lot of sense to talk about such a design process as "a designer", except in some special rhetorical and metaphorical sense perhaps ("Mother Nature designed x" when one really means "the design of x emerged in a process of evolution"). Hence, unless I missed something, I think that changing "design" into "designing" is confusing and misleading in this discussion.

2) When I refer to Dennett, I am not relying on his authority as a recognized expert in design or making any claims about his status among the design community.

But I am bringing him in as someone who is (in spite of the critiques you mention - more about them later) an expert in evolution (one among many others, of course) and specifically as someone who has written prominently about the idea that evolution creates designs, in design terminology, to support my argument that it is a worthwhile train of thought and that I am not the only one thinking that way.

I am especially very happy that he has chosen to write about evolution and emergence using design terminology as opposed to something else, because it makes in many ways more sense than using other words (which, however, is too large a discussion and thus out of scope to explain here). For me, Dennett is a great and profound design thinker (among many others) that every designer should read, and I believe this book will one day become a classic also for design scholars.

3) You write about Dennett's idea of the Principle of Accumulation of Design:

"Things go wrong when we have what Dennett does, here in your quote: take, apparently unknowingly, a Design Stance, and then go on to make some very silly and wrong claims and statements, such as '...  Darwin had hit upon what we might call the Principle of Accumulation of Design.' No such a notion, expressed in any shape or form, appears anywhere in Darwin's writings--and there is a lot of it.  But almost all of it now available on the web, so you may check this assertion of mine.  Or ask some authorities on Darwin and his works.  This Dennett notion of the Principle of Accumulation of Design, is a product of his Design Stance -- but not a good one, I happen to think, and not a part of Darwin's thinking or developments."

I would think it odd that Dennett, who developed the whole concept of design stance (Dennett 1971) and referred to evolution many times in that seminal article, would apply design stance to his discussion about evolution almost 25 years later unknowingly; it seems to me he is conscious of what he does. He even explains the idea of design stance and applies it explicitly in this book.

He is not claiming that Darwin said these things about design or would have presented this principle in this way. But he presents the principle and gives credit for it to Darwin, because Darwin presented its fundamentals in some other way. One can of course be cynical and think of that as a stratagem to try to give his own idea some extra significance with Darwin's name, but I see it differently, and for me this detail makes no difference. I think the idea to present it in this fashion is very illuminating and useful, the principle in itself is very significant, in fact a key factor in evolutionary processes that deserves this kind of highlighting, and it would be hard to ignore Darwin's contributions in identifying the mechanisms that make it so. Hence, I think Dennett's attribution is not wrong.

4) Darwin does not use the word "design" to refer to what evolution produces in e.g. The Origin of Species, he talks about form. However, the evolutionists (S J Gould, J Maynard Smith, S Pinker) that engaged in that debate (which you refer to) around this book, do use the word design. In spite of their critiques and differences, which are in my opinion irrelevant concerning the topic of our discussion, they all agree with Dennett in that evolution creates design. (I will enclose below several quotations that demonstrate this.)

5) You discuss how Dennett talks about design:

"So, in one sentence we have Dennett, in this case, slipping unnoticed by him, and probably unnoticed by many of his readers, from a thing that may be seen as a design to being necessarily designed, R and D'd, to use his exact term.  This is not a reasonable step to take, I think, because it simply is not true: nothing in the biology of this world has been designed, not in any sense of designing that we have and use today.  Saying that these things have been designed, because you like the idea thinking they have been, is not a reasonable way to extend our current notions of what designing is. Understanding what designing is, requires good and extensive empirical study.  Understanding what designing can be requires the development of good explanatory theory or theories."

The way I read this is that he is talking about R&D, and about how it is needed when evolution produces designs, and not about designing, as you say, "in any sense of designing that we have and use today", where "we" appears to be (i assume) some design community. He is talking about the emergence of design in a way that is novel to the design community, but with which the evolutionary community seems to be comfortable with (see the quotes below).

You and Dennett think differently. You think that design has to be designed, but Dennett believes it can also emerge, and so did Darwin, even though he used different vocabulary, and so do I. Darwin, Dennett and I all agree that the design created by evolution is something that we could easily believe to be created by an intelligent designer, because it shows such sophistication and fitness to purposes etc.

Dennett wants to show us more concretely how this happens with this book, and it is very reasonable for him to use the design terminology to do that - it would not be possible to make that connection with any other terminology.

So I do not agree with your critique. Dennett is not claiming that this is all that design is, he is not making a claim about "the theory of design", he is not extending our understanding of "designing", as the act of intentional designers. His book is not about that, and I do not see why it should be connected to that. He is extending our understanding of what "design" can be, as a phenomenon, as a process, and as what "a design" can be, and how "design" accumulates, and I welcome that as an enormously important contribution to design literature..

6) As to your final question:

"So, my question remains, given that we may reasonably adopt a Design Stance towards anything and everything in the Universe, what does looking at all these things and seeing them as if they are realisations of designs, do for a better understanding of intentional professional designing?"

As I mentioned in an earlier message, designers can design better if they understand the designs that exist in the world and the processes that create them, whatever they may be. At the moment, many aspects of design that is taking place in the world are not recognized as such by designers, and this is a shortcoming.

However, it is not my intention and goal to begin evangelizing this philosophy here any further at this point. I will write more about it later when I am ready to do so, and will let you (the list) know. This time I simply posted some questions regarding the concept of "a design" to hear some opinions and maybe get some links and references, and I am very happy because I received a very interesting discussion and many important and useful arguments and sources!

-snip-

And finally, here are the quotes (from the particular debate you pointed out) that in my opinion show that in spite of their different opinions about the book and Dennett and his thoughts, these quite distinguished evolution specialists all think that it is legitimate to talk about evolution as a process that creates "design" or "designs". (None say anything at all about "designing"):

-snip-






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------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 9 Apr 2013 22:16:03 +0000
From:    Kommonen Kari-Hans <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Ideas and definitions of what is "a design" in a broad sense

Dear Ken, and all,

I do not seek to demonstrate that anyone is right or wrong with their own positions. I asked some questions to get some idea of how some members of the community see some things, and I got good responses and interesting discussion that will help me enormously in developing and positioning my own arguments in the future, so I am very happy and grateful for everyone for their input.

Although I do not agree with everything you write, the discussion is of great value for my work. There are many points that could be discussed further, but I believe it is better to do in some other instance when I can better explain where I am coming from more thoroughly.

Thank you very much for a very thorough response and everyone for a fruitful discussion!

Cheers, Kari-Hans

---

On Apr 9, 2013, at 10:10 PM, Ken Friedman wrote:

> Dear Kari-Hans,
>
> After several days of ideas and definitions of what "a design" might be, I'd say we've explored some interesting issues and positions. There is probably no way to demonstrate that one position or the other is entirely correct. While I believe that language exemplars and two great dictionaries offer a reasonable amount of empirical evidence, charting usage is not a definitive demonstration that one position or the other is right. In that sense, there is no empirical test to demonstrate the validity of my views - neither is there any way to demonstrate that my views on the definition of the term "a design" is wrong.
>
> That being the case, I'll end my thoughts on this thread with a few considerations on topics within the debate. In some cases, I'd propose that there are distinctions between right and wrong ideas. In other cases, I'm happy to see more evidence.
>
> We agree on the need for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. Where we differ a bit is in the degree of expertise one might require to do such research in a fruitful way. Once again, I'll point to Don Norman's (2010) Core77 post on the way in which designers often fail to recognize the limits of their own ignorance. In a week during which I have reviewed a dozen or so journal and conference submissions while assembling an expert group for a new design project, I can say our field provides both.
>
> With respect to evolution theory, however, I'm just going to say that I can't see how a group of designers with no foundation in biology or any of the disciplines that study evolution and no expertise in the appropriate science or mathematics can get more than metaphorical value out of this. As useful and instructive metaphor, evolution has a lot to offer. As research? You'd have to be able to do research in the field, and it seems to me that this is unlikely.
>
> In asking for sufficient competence for transdisciplinary research, I am not calling for scientific heroes or impeccable scholarship. I am asking for competence. It's a long way from being competence to becoming a scientific hero. Most fields have tens of thousands of solid, competent researchers who do not rise to the level of hero. By and large, a PhD in biology, anthropology, or mathematics demonstrates a competent research foundation. This is not always the case in design - we work in a field where many people feel they have mastered ethnography after a two-hour workshop. That distance, and the ignorance of many designers regarding their own lack of competence, accounts for Don's provocative opening words, "I am forced to read a lot of crap" (Norman 2010: unpaged.)
>
> Physicist Jeremy Bernstein (1993: 27) addresses the necessity of competence as a stepping stone to original scientific creativity: "All of us who have tried to work in deep science know just how hard it is to get to the frontier - just how much devoted training is involved." That involves research training for the questions at hand.
>
> Regarding my answers to your two questions, I do argue that intentionality is one condition for design. In the use of the term design as I developed it, the concept of intention forms the core meaning of the word. If we remove the concept of intention, the process is not [the verb] design, and what follows from the process is not [the noun] design.
>
> That, in my view, is the argument for why the result of an intentional design process is a design outcome, while the result of an unintentional process is not a design outcome.
>
> You asked my opinion on this. I gave references for evidence to support my views. This is my argument, though, and not someone else's argument, so I don't have references to demonstrate that others concur. I know my own arguments, and I know the arguments for intentionality, but I don't have a collection of arguments against your view on this. Perhaps they exist, perhaps they don't but finding them or finding that they are absent would take a literature review. I think that I offered a sound argument for my views on this, and I've given serious thought to these issues. I don't have the time for a literature review to see if anyone else agrees with me.
>
> The consistency I'm proposing is not simply the quality of intentionality. I'm also arguing that "a design" is the outcome of the design process. It makes no sense for me to argue that the verb design requires intention, while "a design" may arise in some other way. Consistency here is more than a consistency of labels and terms. It is a consistency of conceptual content and a relationship between the verb form and the noun form of the same word.
>
> It is indeed my view that design arises from intention. Some forms of design go back millions of years. If you want to speak of design as the production of human or pre-human industry, industrial design or product design began over two and a half million years ago when homo habilis manufactured the first rough tools. In this sense, human beings were designing before we began to walk upright. This takes place well within evolutionary time, not before. This is a bit to the side of this thread, so I'll invite those who want to read more on this to see the article "Design Science and Design Education" (Friedman 1997 [2013 reprint]) at URL:
>
> http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
>
> But I did not describe Jacob's activities as a non-human designer in evolutionary terms. It was an example to show a case of intentional design without a human actor. This case of a dog engaging in design activities is contemporary, well within current evolutionary time by an animal whose ancestors co-evolved with human beings. While Jacob's social behavior as a dog involved interacting with human beings, it is not the case that he simply observed and imitated my wife's example. Lacking fingers and opposable thumbs, a dog cannot pick berries as a human being does. Rather, Jacob had to observe, learn, form concepts, link concepts together, and then adapt human actions to the tools available to him. He saw my wife, but he did not simply follow her example.
>
> One issues raises a serious question. If you argue that design started in the Big Bang, you are placing design at the origins of everything in the universe. To me, that suggests the position that design is everything.
>
> I'd also have to disagree about the word structure. Structures have functions in the sense that they act in specific ways according to their properties they embody. They do not need to be labeled as "designs" to incorporate functionality of some kind. In this sense, of course, a black hole or an amoeba may possess functions without having been designed by intention. In many cases, the word system would also work - for example, the Solar system is a system that functions, but it is not a design.
>
> Slipping back and forth across usages of the word design makes it difficult to engage in dialogue about this. Your discussion of the parrot is a case in point. For example, I agree that human beings can learn and share our learning across generations. This capacity to describe that enables us to share what we can both agree to label with the noun "designs." Then, you shift into a slippery use of words in a way that shifts the concept of the noun design into the realm of the unintentional. This is a problematic usage.
>
> This slippage shows up in your reply to Kari:
>
> "But I think that it is beneficial for all designers to develop a more comprehensive view of life and all of the designs in the world, and have a broader view of their own role in the grand scheme of design."
>
> To say that it is beneficial for designers to develop a more comprehensive view of life would be a statement that most of us agree with, entailing - as it does, sustainability, ethics, and other important issues. A problem arises when this reasonable suggestion is linked to the phrase, "and all the designs in the world." "All the designs in the world" is especially problematic if you apply the term "designs" to all structures arising since the Big Bang,
>
> Another issue in your reply to Kari confuses categories:
>
> "I also agree that if 'everything is design', it becomes more complicated to sort out what it means, but then we have to careful about what filter we apply to separating the design from the non-design, and I happen to think that the pair of intention and specialization are not the best criteria for doing that."
>
> Intention and intentionality distinguish design from that which is not design. No one has suggested that specialization does this. A dog can design, even though a dog is not a specialist designer. Many kinds of human acts qualify as design in the definitions I gave, even though they are not specialized and often not professional activities.
>
> No one in the thread has called for specialization to distinguish design acts from acts that are not design acts. The same holds true of design outcomes.
>
> You raised the question of specialization in response to my call for competence with respect to the skills one needs to work with certain kinds of problems. I'm not calling for specialization, though, either as a demarcation for design or as a boundary condition for what designers deal with. I'm simply saying that if a designer wants to work in certain kinds of fields, he or she will need the skills that form the basis for working in those fields.
>
> The odd thing about the way you seem to move back and forth across the ways you use the term design is clear in one comment you make to Tim, where you distinguish between the metaphorical and plain uses of the verb "design":
>
> "I am not looking for the 'intelligent and intentional designer' from behind the scenes, nor do I want to give the impression that something like that should be found. I think that design can emerge in a different kind of process, e.g. evolution, and to me, it does not make a lot of sense to talk about such a design process as 'a designer', except in some special rhetorical and metaphorical sense perhaps ('Mother Nature designed x' when one really means 'the design of x emerged in a process of evolution')."
>
> But even here, there is some confusion. You have been talking about "design" as a noun, but the sentence "the design of x emerged in a process of evolution" uses the word "design" as a verb. To speak of emergent designs as a noun, the sentence would have to be "the design x emerged in a process of evolution" or "the design for x emerged in a process of evolution." This is further confused because you do say that you are writing about a design process, so perhaps you are speaking about both an emergent process and emergent design outcomes.
>
> While I acknowledge that many kinds of things arise through many kinds of processes, I don't accept that those processes constitute design without an intentional actor. I can see the value of using a metaphor, but I can't see the value of treating a metaphor as a literal, plain language description.
>
> With respect to Tim's comments, Tim appreciates Daniel Dennett's expertise in cognition, and his contributions to artificial intelligence and artificial life. He disputes Dennett's expertise in evolution.
>
> It seems to me that what Tim is saying is that Dennett is a philosopher commenting on evolution, in contrast with Stephen Jay Gould who was a working expert in evolution as a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and zoologist. There were those who debated Gould from a position of expert working knowledge and engagement in evolution theory. Tim is stating that Dennett, for all his many virtues, was not one of these.
>
> In essence, Tim is challenging your reading of Dennett. You may in some sense be reading Dennett as Dennett wishes to be read, and for this reason Tim is also challenging what he believes to be a misunderstanding of Darwinian evolution by Dennett and by you.
>
> The quotes you present to suggest that evolutionists use the term "design" as you do are indeed suggestive. What is not clear to me is that these authors intend the term as you do. In many of these quotes, I see terms used for the suggestive, metaphorical richness of language, and not the plain language meaning you propose.
>
> If you want to read Gould's summary of evolution theory, he developed the views of a lifetime in his 1400-page magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Gould 2002).
>
> Two paragraphs nicely summarize the last few issues in the debate.
>
> Tim wrote, "So, my question remains, given that we may reasonably adopt a Design Stance towards anything and everything in the Universe, what does looking at all these things and seeing them as if they are realisations of designs, do for a better understanding of intentional professional designing?"
>
> Tim is arguing that the design stance can reasonably be applied to a great many processes and entities as an analytical and conceptual tool, but not as a practical description. He is asking what value there is in using a conceptual, analytical tool as - mistakenly, in his view - a practical description.
>
> You reply, "...designers can design better if they understand the designs that exist in the world and the processes that create them, whatever they may be. At the moment, many aspects of design that is taking place in the world are not recognized as such by designers, and this is a shortcoming."
>
> I'd say that designers can - in many instances - design better if they understand systems and structures in the world and the processes that create them. If they misunderstand or confuse the processes that create these systems and structures, they will have a poor understanding of the world. The failure to develop the appropriate skills means that designers will be using what they see in the world around them in a metaphorical or inspirational sense. This may make them better and more interesting designers - or it may not. Without the skills appropriate to genuine analytical understanding, they will not be able to deploy their understanding to "get to the frontier" as Bernstein (1993: 27) describes original scientific creativity. This also applies to original design creativity that draws in on science in a robust and resilient way.
>
> One may become an original designer who uses science effectively for original design without becoming an original scientist. To do this, however, one must be competent in understanding science. This does not require heroic efforts. It does require the plain, dogged application of effort and intelligence across time.
>
> This requires what Stephen Jay Gould and other scientists would call objectivity - an understanding of science that reflects the structures and processes of the world around us. This only requires heroic expertise when you are the first Pasteur or the first Einstein to work a field. It always requires competence. It doesn't mean adopting ideas and issues without thinking, but it requires deep thought and a continual willingness to test, review, and recast ideas:
>
> "Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny - and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do)" (Gould 1998: 18).
>
> It seems to me that your position on some of these issues is mistaken, but there is not enough evidence in this debate to decide the case of your position or mine with certainty.
>
> On some of these issues, we're not talking facts, but about position or interpretation of facts. I think there are also facts here where you do seem to be mistaken, but those mistakes do not prohibit anyone from speaking of "unintentional designs." Nevertheless, I see no value served by the confusion to which this gives rise.
>
> I look forward to reading what you publish on these issues. For now, thanks for a lively and intelligent dialogue.
>
> Yours,
>
> Ken
>
> Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design> Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman
>
> Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China
>
> --
>
> References
>
> Bernstein, Jeremy. 1993. Cranks, Quarks and the Cosmos. New York: Basic Books.
>
> Friedman, Ken. 1997. "Design Science and Design Education." The Challenge of Complexity. Peter McGrory, editor. Helsinki: University of Art and Design Helsinki UIAH, 54-72. Reprint available at URL:
> http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
> Accessed 2013 April 9.
>
> Gould, Stephen Jay. 1998. "Capturing the Center<http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_10_107/ai_53378966>." Natural History, Vol. 107 (December 1998), p. 18.
>
> Gould, Stephen Jay. 2002. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
>
> Norman, Donald. 2010. "Why Design Education Must Change. Core77. 26 November, 2010. URL:
> http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/why_design_education_must_change_17993.asp
> Accessed 2013 April 9.
>
> --
>
> [1] Kari-Hans Kommonen wrote:
>
> -snip-
>
> As a designer and researcher working in a design university, I can and do appreciate the specialist designers' special role in the world, and within the phenomenon of design. As I see it, based on this background and this kind of knowledge, design research is uniquely equipped to possibly develop very interesting and useful understanding about design that takes place also outside of the boundaries of this specialist group and its cultures.
>
> However, I have found that the ways of defining "what design is" (especially to restrict it to intentional and specialist design activities and their results) tend to erect walls in the wrong places, thus making it hard for design researchers to operate outside of their local turf, and to be able to usefully utilize the knowledge they have about design, and consequently, this means they are constrained in the capacity of their work to engage the challenges of the rest of the world. These boundaries, helpful as they are for defining a disciplinary area where certain characteristics of certain phenomena are known to apply, can become a handicap for the development of wider knowledge and expertise, if they are taken as boundaries that restrict the applicability of some wider phenomena only to that disciplinary area.
>
> [Similar but in a way opposite reasons operate on the other side: people who are not familiar with the field of design may avoid using the word "design" in their work, not only because they do not think that it could be used, but because they may not want to step outside of the vocabulary of their own field, and risk having arguments with design oriented people, unless they are absolutely convinced that this is exactly the word to be employed. Thus its absence from e.g. evolution-related scholarship is in my opinion not a very conclusive argument against its applicability.]
>
> I think that these restrictions (intention, specialism) are harmful in many cases and should not be applied universally without some reasonable justification, but it is very useful to hear the arguments for why they should be upheld.
>
> I also enjoyed very much your description of Jacob's design activities, thanks for sharing that!
>
> Here is another story about animal tool use:
>
> http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/11/parrot-in-captivity-manufactures-tools-something-not-seen-in-the-wild/
>
> In this example a parrot apparently exercises problem solving skills and intentionally prepares a tool that matches and solves the problem. So apparently animals do design, to some extent. One crucial difference between humans and other animals in their design is that humans have an efficient way to preserve the design they are able to generate through language and efficient transgenerational teaching and learning, and to build on it in the future, thus evolving and accumulating cultural design much faster than other species. You see, here I am using the word "design" to denote a resource, something that can be accumulated, much in the same way as Dennett.
>
> I appreciate the description you give of all the kinds of things someone needs to wade through if one wants to learn about evolution. This is the same problem in all transdisciplinary research, and an efficient cause for making it so rare. However, I think we should not expect some current day scientific hero to emerge and take charge and show the way with appropriate authority, incontestable expertise in all these areas you mention, and a record of years of impeccable scholarship in this kind of a novel topic, before we venture to explore such directions. Instead, after some people start moving in some direction, with some early efforts and modest, maybe even not so well founded beginnings, it is possible that some interest is sparked, inspiration sets in, and a community of people can emerge who are able to turn a weak sprout into an interesting and meaningful field of study that attracts others, who can help to make the studies more comprehensive. Definitely, and unfortunately, the academic system does not encourage anyone to pursue these kinds of uncertain and messy directions.
>
> About the two questions:
>
> 1) I think I understood what you say here, but I may have gotten it wrong, if so, please bear with me....
>
> But in your response to question about why intentionality is a prerequisite for something to be considered design, I did not really see a clear explanation for a "why" this should be the case. You talk about something I agree with: that (according to dictionary definitions and discussions by Herbert Simon etc) people think that intentional design is "design"; but you do not explain the opposite: why unintentional design should not be called (or awarded the status of) design (and should be called something else instead). It is this latter part that I do not see a reason for. Even though many people do not think about it or do it, why is it a bad idea for someone do it? Would you have any references for good arguments about that?
>
> You continue that terms should be used consistently, and there I agree. But we disagree on what creates consistency. We seem to both think that some kind of similarity in qualities and avoidance of differences is important for consistency, but we return back to question 1 - you think the key quality to follow is intention, while I think that things such as structure, functionality and consequence should be followed.
>
> It seems to be that your stance means that design was born with the intention to design, and before that there was no design? And as you describe design by Jacob, you seem to think that this happened already sometime before human beings entered the evolutionary stage? Or do you think that Jacob's ability and intention to design was dependent on his ability to observe your wife's activities and to learn from a design presented by her as an example?
>
> Compared to yours, my stance is that design started in the Big Bang (we don't know what was before that...), and was amplified and accelerated in various steps on the way, but definitely so when intention stepped in as a way to guide design work and selection.
>
> In your response to 2) you propose "structure" as a word to be used in place of "design" to discuss the outcomes of what I call non-intentional design processes. I think the word structure describes one important aspect of designs, but lacks e.g. the dimension and qualities of function, so I find "design" much more useful.
>
> -snip-
>
> [2] Kari-Hans Kommonen wrote:
>
> -snip-
>
> But I think that it is beneficial for all designers to develop a more comprehensive view of life and all of the designs in the world, and have a broader view of their own role in the grand scheme of design.
>
> I also agree that if "everything is design", it becomes more complicated to sort out what it means, but then we have to careful about what filter we apply to separating the design from the non-design, and I happen to think that the pair of intention and specialization are not the best criteria for doing that.
>
> -snip-
>
> [3] Tim Smithers wrote:
>
> -snip-
>
> I would like to raise some concerns about your appeal to Dennett, and his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), as support for the good sense you see in the idea of treating biological evolution as a (non-intentional) designer: as a creator of designs, as you would put it, if I understand you correctly.
>
> Daniel Dennett is, as I assume you know, a well established and widely respected philosopher. A powerful one, in many people's eyes. He has been active, in a supportive way-as opposed to the more usual critical way -- in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life (AL). He is thus appreciated by non-philosophers working in these two areas, who have benefitted from and used his philosophising, including me. I have done work in both AI and AL. And I know and have engaged with Daniel Dennett in these (professional) contexts.
>
> Dennett is not, however, an authority on designing, nor on what is a design, and what you can reasonably say when you call something a design. Nor is he a philosopher of design. So, presenting him as a good "supporting reference" for your views, is, I would say, a poor move. If you need support for your position, I think you need it from people who are recognised authorities in relevant areas -- well established design researchers, design thinkers and practitioners, and, perhaps, real philosophers of design.
>
> For me, quoting from Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, makes things worse, a lot worse. Of all Dennett's books, this one more than any displays his tendency towards an arrogant and bullying treatment of other people's work and ideas. This book generated much controversy and heated debate, especially between Dennett and Stephen Jay Gould -- who Dennett somewhat viciously attacks in this book.
>
> This all happed more than a decade ago, and was a long and detailed debate, but for a useful concluding summary of the positions, this New York Review of Books exchange is a good place to start
>
> 'Darwinian Fundamentalism': An Exchange AUGUST 14, 1997 Daniel C. Dennett, reply by Stephen Jay Gould
>
> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/aug/14/darwinian-fundamentalism-an-exchange
>
> To help with some background and context, I think this next piece by Gould, also from the New York Review of Books, published in June 1997, shortly before the above, helps to show that Gould was in no way anti-Darwin. Indeed, I, like many people, saw Gould as one of the most thoughtful and eloquent explainers and defenders of Darwin's idea. Gould, like Darwin, just didn't think that adaptation by selection of the fittest accounts for all the variety we see in the biological world. A position that has been and is shared by others in evolutionary biology. In other words, Dennett held the more restricted and dogmatic position in this debate-and still does, as far as I know. Gould died in 2002. But do have a read of this.
>
> Darwinian Fundamentalism JUNE 12, 1997 Stephen Jay Gould
>
> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jun/12/darwinian-fundamentalism
>
> Allow me, if you will, to illustrate why I think Dennett's thinking is wrong on designing and what a design is, with just one example, taken from your quotation.
>
> Dennett, takes a Design Stance on what Darwinian Evolution gives rise to: individual living things that can each be identified as an instance of particular species. He sees and treats the instances of living things as if they are realisations of designs, and then talks of these designs. This involves re-seeing each one as an abstract description of what it is, and not of what it actually is; an individual instances of a living thing of same species. (Note, by the way, that Dennett is not clear if what he means by the design here, is the species design, or the individual animal design. They would not be identical. I take it that he means the species design, since it's hard to make much sense of what he writes if you don't. But the unclarity remains.)
>
> As Ken, said, Jukka, at the end of his post, identifies the importance and widespread use of this Design Stance idea, when he said
>
> "All in all, it is an old research strategy in natural sciences to look at systems as if they were well-designed, and then use design aesthetics like simplicity or elegance to guide hypotheses of what and why."
>
> Seeing and treating things as if they are designs, and not the things they actually are -- is useful, very useful, and a valid way to develop ideas and understandings, if done well.
>
> But, taking a Design Stance, seeing and treating something as if it is the outcome of some designing, does not make that something a design, nor make it an outcome of any kind of designing. Adopting a Design Stance is an observer choice that changes nothing of the thing so observed. A thing is a thing, and only and no more than the thing, and only a realisation of a design if it has in fact resulted from some designing and subsequent realisation following well the design.
>
> Things go wrong when we have what Dennett does, here in your quote: take, apparently unknowingly, a Design Stance, and then go on to make some very silly and wrong claims and statements, such as
>
> "... Darwin had hit upon what we might call the Principle of Accumulation of Design."
>
> No such a notion, expressed in any shape or form, appears anywhere in Darwin's writings -- and there is a lot of it. But almost all of it now available on the web, so you may check this assertion of mine. Or ask some authorities on Darwin and his works. This Dennett notion of the Principle of Accumulation of Design, is a product of his Design Stance-but not a good one, I happen to think, and not a part of Darwin's thinking or developments. Darwin didn't adopt a Design Stance in his work. I'm not even sure it has been invented then. Perhaps someone here can help with this question of design history.
>
> Dennett, to give him some credit, does -- in the next sentence from your quote -- gives away his Design Stance by saying
>
> "Things in the world (such as watches and organisms and who knows what else) may be seen as products embodying a certain amount of Design[ing] ..."
>
> But, he then continues, in the same sentence, to commit the Design Stance over claim that you seem to want to make
>
> "... and one way or another, that Design[ing] had to have been created by a process of R and D."
>
> Where here, "R and D," for Dennett, equates to designing, at least in this quote, but I think it carries the same meaning elsewhere too.
>
> So, in one sentence we have Dennett, in this case, slipping unnoticed by him, and probably unnoticed by many of his readers, from a thing that may be seen as a design to being necessarily designed, R and D'd, to use his exact term. This is not a reasonable step to take, I think, because it simply is not true: nothing in the biology of this world has been designed, not in any sense of designing that we have and use today. Saying that these things have been designed, because you like the idea thinking they have been, is not a reasonable way to extend our current notions of what designing is. Understanding what designing is, requires good and extensive empirical study. Understanding what designing can be requires the development of good explanatory theory or theories.
>
> To end, let me restate my position in this discussion. An agent, like Dennett, or you, or me, or anybody else, can freely and reasonable chose to adopt a Design Stance so as to view a thing as a design -- to "read" the object, or animal, as a presentation of the design it is a particular realization of. (Which is quite a sophisticated way of viewing things in the world, so it's not just any old agent that is able to do this.)
>
> What, in my view, is not reasonable, is to then say that the thing so viewed is a design and that it was thus designed.
>
> So, my question remains, given that we may reasonably adopt a Design Stance towards anything and everything in the Universe, what does looking at all these things and seeing them as if they are realisations of designs, do for a better understanding of intentional professional designing?
>
> -snip-
>
> [4] Kari-Hans Kommonen wrote:
>
> (Primarily to Tim, but also to Ken)
>
> -snip-
>
> Thank you very much for engaging in this discussion with this effort!
>
> 1) You describe what I am doing as
>
> "treating biological evolution as a (non-intentional) designer: as a creator of designs"
>
> and you refer to "designing" a lot in your post. You even change Dennett's words in the quotations: when he talks about "design" you change it to "design[ing]". I assume that you do it because you want to emphasize a stance that design can not take place without a designer?
>
> If so, that is something where I differ from you; I am not looking for the "intelligent and intentional designer" from behind the scenes, nor do I want to give the impression that something like that should be found. I think that design can emerge in a different kind of process, e.g. evolution, and to me, it does not make a lot of sense to talk about such a design process as "a designer", except in some special rhetorical and metaphorical sense perhaps ("Mother Nature designed x" when one really means "the design of x emerged in a process of evolution"). Hence, unless I missed something, I think that changing "design" into "designing" is confusing and misleading in this discussion.
>
> 2) When I refer to Dennett, I am not relying on his authority as a recognized expert in design or making any claims about his status among the design community.
>
> But I am bringing him in as someone who is (in spite of the critiques you mention - more about them later) an expert in evolution (one among many others, of course) and specifically as someone who has written prominently about the idea that evolution creates designs, in design terminology, to support my argument that it is a worthwhile train of thought and that I am not the only one thinking that way.
>
> I am especially very happy that he has chosen to write about evolution and emergence using design terminology as opposed to something else, because it makes in many ways more sense than using other words (which, however, is too large a discussion and thus out of scope to explain here). For me, Dennett is a great and profound design thinker (among many others) that every designer should read, and I believe this book will one day become a classic also for design scholars.
>
> 3) You write about Dennett's idea of the Principle of Accumulation of Design:
>
> "Things go wrong when we have what Dennett does, here in your quote: take, apparently unknowingly, a Design Stance, and then go on to make some very silly and wrong claims and statements, such as '...  Darwin had hit upon what we might call the Principle of Accumulation of Design.' No such a notion, expressed in any shape or form, appears anywhere in Darwin's writings--and there is a lot of it.  But almost all of it now available on the web, so you may check this assertion of mine.  Or ask some authorities on Darwin and his works.  This Dennett notion of the Principle of Accumulation of Design, is a product of his Design Stance -- but not a good one, I happen to think, and not a part of Darwin's thinking or developments."
>
> I would think it odd that Dennett, who developed the whole concept of design stance (Dennett 1971) and referred to evolution many times in that seminal article, would apply design stance to his discussion about evolution almost 25 years later unknowingly; it seems to me he is conscious of what he does. He even explains the idea of design stance and applies it explicitly in this book.
>
> He is not claiming that Darwin said these things about design or would have presented this principle in this way. But he presents the principle and gives credit for it to Darwin, because Darwin presented its fundamentals in some other way. One can of course be cynical and think of that as a stratagem to try to give his own idea some extra significance with Darwin's name, but I see it differently, and for me this detail makes no difference. I think the idea to present it in this fashion is very illuminating and useful, the principle in itself is very significant, in fact a key factor in evolutionary processes that deserves this kind of highlighting, and it would be hard to ignore Darwin's contributions in identifying the mechanisms that make it so. Hence, I think Dennett's attribution is not wrong.
>
> 4) Darwin does not use the word "design" to refer to what evolution produces in e.g. The Origin of Species, he talks about form. However, the evolutionists (S J Gould, J Maynard Smith, S Pinker) that engaged in that debate (which you refer to) around this book, do use the word design. In spite of their critiques and differences, which are in my opinion irrelevant concerning the topic of our discussion, they all agree with Dennett in that evolution creates design. (I will enclose below several quotations that demonstrate this.)
>
> 5) You discuss how Dennett talks about design:
>
> "So, in one sentence we have Dennett, in this case, slipping unnoticed by him, and probably unnoticed by many of his readers, from a thing that may be seen as a design to being necessarily designed, R and D'd, to use his exact term.  This is not a reasonable step to take, I think, because it simply is not true: nothing in the biology of this world has been designed, not in any sense of designing that we have and use today.  Saying that these things have been designed, because you like the idea thinking they have been, is not a reasonable way to extend our current notions of what designing is. Understanding what designing is, requires good and extensive empirical study.  Understanding what designing can be requires the development of good explanatory theory or theories."
>
> The way I read this is that he is talking about R&D, and about how it is needed when evolution produces designs, and not about designing, as you say, "in any sense of designing that we have and use today", where "we" appears to be (i assume) some design community. He is talking about the emergence of design in a way that is novel to the design community, but with which the evolutionary community seems to be comfortable with (see the quotes below).
>
> You and Dennett think differently. You think that design has to be designed, but Dennett believes it can also emerge, and so did Darwin, even though he used different vocabulary, and so do I. Darwin, Dennett and I all agree that the design created by evolution is something that we could easily believe to be created by an intelligent designer, because it shows such sophistication and fitness to purposes etc.
>
> Dennett wants to show us more concretely how this happens with this book, and it is very reasonable for him to use the design terminology to do that - it would not be possible to make that connection with any other terminology.
>
> So I do not agree with your critique. Dennett is not claiming that this is all that design is, he is not making a claim about "the theory of design", he is not extending our understanding of "designing", as the act of intentional designers. His book is not about that, and I do not see why it should be connected to that. He is extending our understanding of what "design" can be, as a phenomenon, as a process, and as what "a design" can be, and how "design" accumulates, and I welcome that as an enormously important contribution to design literature..
>
> 6) As to your final question:
>
> "So, my question remains, given that we may reasonably adopt a Design Stance towards anything and everything in the Universe, what does looking at all these things and seeing them as if they are realisations of designs, do for a better understanding of intentional professional designing?"
>
> As I mentioned in an earlier message, designers can design better if they understand the designs that exist in the world and the processes that create them, whatever they may be. At the moment, many aspects of design that is taking place in the world are not recognized as such by designers, and this is a shortcoming.
>
> However, it is not my intention and goal to begin evangelizing this philosophy here any further at this point. I will write more about it later when I am ready to do so, and will let you (the list) know. This time I simply posted some questions regarding the concept of "a design" to hear some opinions and maybe get some links and references, and I am very happy because I received a very interesting discussion and many important and useful arguments and sources!
>
> -snip-
>
> And finally, here are the quotes (from the particular debate you pointed out) that in my opinion show that in spite of their different opinions about the book and Dennett and his thoughts, these quite distinguished evolution specialists all think that it is legitimate to talk about evolution as a process that creates "design" or "designs". (None say anything at all about "designing"):
>
> -snip-
>
>
>
>
>
>
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