Dear Kari-Hans,
I thank you for taking the time to prepare your detailed
response to my previous reply! I've been constructing this
one over the last few days, so there is some overlap in places
with Ken's response. Also, having seen your reply to Ken's
post, please don't feel you need to respond to this, unless
you particularly want to. Like you, I'm feeling we've just
about done with this topic for the moment.
So, here is my last go on this, albeit a (very) long one ...
but at least I've cut off the tail, so it's like Keith's dog,
as Ken has urged.
It is not, I think, just a matter of a difference between us,
as you suggest. I find the way you use the words "design" and
"designed," and how you understand how I use the word
"designing" very confused and confusing.
Wait! It's me who finds confusion in what you write, and it's
me who is confused by reading what you write. This does not
mean that I think you are confused and confusing. Quite the
contrary, I think you are probably not confused in what you
think. I have no reason to think you are. But our
conversation about what you think and what I think is somewhat
broken by my inability to see clarity in what you write.
*MetaComment 1*: I've said before here, if you want to write
only what you mean, you need to write in words nobody else
can understand. Just as I don't have control over how you
read and understand my words, you don't have control over how
I read and understand your's. So, it is important, I think,
not to fall into the trap of supposing that any confusions I
find in your words, must also exist in your mind. This is
certainly not necessarily the case. Imputing confusion,
error, or bad intention in another because you find
confusion, or read error and bad intent in the words he or
she wrote, is disrespectful and poor professional practice,
in my view. The real job to be done is to try to explain
what confusions or errors or bad intentions you find, where,
and why. It is, however, usually not a trivial job to do
this explaining, as we're about to see.
So, in the following I'm going to attempt to point out where,
why, and how I find what you write confused and confusing; in
some of what you write, not all of it. It's going to get
detailed and picky, and it will not make for smooth reading,
but that's how it is.
Your point 1
I didn't change Dennett's words in the quotation you used. I
modified them. I did this to try to make clear how I read
Dennett's words.
You say, of my modifying Dennett's "design" 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?
No! I didn't do it to emphasise anything like this. As I
just said, I modified Dennett's words in an attempt to make
clearer how I read his words, not to introduce some emphasis.
Emphasis, if that's what you want to add, is added using
different typographical conventions: a * either side of the
word to be emphasised; or an _ at the _start_ and _end_ of the
words to be emphasised ... things like this.
To Design.
I don't use the root verb form, "to design." I much prefer to
use the gerund form--adding "-ing" to the root verb form--to
turn it in to a noun, which I then use to name the activities
and processes we collectively agree to identify and call
instances and examples of designing, and sometimes also
disagree to name them so, of course. ... Sorry, but I don't
think Ken's dog did any designing, but that's another tale, or
should that be tail? Does Ken's dog have a tail, or is it
tale? You see, talking of dogs and designing is all VERY
confusing. Keith! You're good at words, and your dog doesn't
have a tale, I mean a tail, to get in the way. Can you help?
Seriously, to use the root verb form, "to design," suggests to
me, too strongly, that we know well what we're talking about:
the root form is essentially assertive. Whereas to name
something does not, to me, suggest that we necessarily know or
understand it much, nor well, and perhaps hardly at all; just
enough to identify it, and even then we might be mistaken in
this identification. It's the same for people. I can name
you, but I wouldn't say I know you well. And, for most of us,
we don't know nor understand well most of the things and stuff
we can name in the world, and Universe. Designing is one of
these things, for me. Professional designing, in particular.
I can name it, and mostly get the naming right, but I can't
say I understand it, nowhere near as well as I think we need
to, at least.
To hit, to jump, to speak, ... are all unproblematic, I
trust, but to design? What is this? Investigating a
phenomenon that we take to occur in a reliable and repeated
form, because that is how it seems to us under
observation--the human activities and processes we call
designing, for example--is not best pursued by first defining
what this activity is; by defining what to-design is. All the
attempts to define to-design here and elsewhere,
notwithstanding!
*MetaComment 2*: I call this use of the root verb form in
design research, in honor of Dennett, the RVF Stance: to look
at and consider what we are interested in and investigating,
as if it is something we know and understand well. It's a
stance that displays a certain degree of arrogance. So it's a
stance that I think is hardly ever appropriate in any kind of
research, design research included.
Design
Yes. I know. You're probably wanting to butt in here to say,
you don't use this root verb form, you--I'm imagining--want to
tell me that you use the word "design" as a noun, just as I
say I use the word "designing," as a noun.
OK, but as a noun for what, exactly? This is what I don't
have clear when reading your words. So this is part of what I
find confusing, and where I see confusion in what you write.
The word "design," as a noun, can be used, and is used, to
name two different things in designing: (1) the design
process, the doing of the designing, as I prefer to call it;
and, (2) the outcome of designing, the blue-print, to use an
old term that will, I think, do here to help illustrate the
difference.
Now, I'm sure you probably think that in all you write, the
use of the noun design is perfectly clear, unconfused, and
unconfusing. Fine! But that does not necessarily make it so
for another reader, not for me, at least. Why, because you, I
think, like Dennett, have a tendency to use the noun "design"
in a third way, a way you, like Dennett, don't acknowledge,
and in a way I wonder if even you are aware of. Let me see if
I can explain.
I don't use the word design like you do. I only use the word
design when referring to "a design" or "the design," to talk
about the "blue-print" that designing results in. In other
words, I always use the noun form with an article on the
front--definite or indefinite. For me, a design or the design
is what results from some designing: it's a usual outcome of a
design process. A design, or the design is what is then used
to realise the designed object or thing, or whatever: a design
or the design--the blue-print--is used to guide the making or
fabricating of the thing that was designed by the designing.
Now! Again, I ask you to read carefully here. I say a design
is the outcome of some designing. Or I say the design is the
outcome of the designing. And I say that the design we get
from this designing is *not* the same thing as the thing
designed (emphasis intended!). To get the thing that has been
designed we must first read and follow *the* design--the
blue-print--and make the thing. If we do this well, each time
we do it we get an instance of the thing designed by the
designing. So, in summary, designing results in a design, a
blue-print, that is used to make the thing that was designed,
the designed object, stuff, system, service, or whatever.
You, like Dennett, it seems to me, also use the noun "design"
to refer to the thing made following the blue-print: the you
call the designed object the design too. You say, I'm
imagining, "look at the butterfly, isn't it a nice design!"
Worse, you, like Dennett, slide easily from one meaning to the
other--from referring to the blue-print to referring to the
thing made from the blue-print, and back, as if these two
completely different things are the same, and so can be called
the same way, using the same noun. The butterfly is a design
and a butterfly, both at the same time for you, and Dennett.
This is not how the Design Stance is supposed to work, but it
is a trap set by it that many seem to fall into, including
Professor Dennett.
You wrote, for example, in your first (4 April) reply to me
"I am interested specifically in how to describe designs
that have emerged without an intentional designer, and in
considering designs that may be less clearly definable and
with fuzzy boundaries. I want to be inclusive rather than
restrictive. I think that it is useful in many situations
to think about intentionally designed designs and emergent
or unintentionally produced designs in the same way,
because they all have their effects and consequences in the
world, regardless of where they came from."
I responded to this before, but allow me, if you will, to have
another go. Where or what are these "unintentionally produced
designs" exactly? The blue-prints, I mean. Where are they
all? From what you say, there should be loads more of these
emergent or unintentional designs--blue-prints--than there are
designs--blue-prints--of all the things that have been
designed with intention. And how, exactly do they, these
mysterious blue-prints, ".... have their effects and
consequences in the world"?
The only way I can make any sense of this is to conflate the
designs--the blue-prints--with the objects realised by
following these designs--following the blue-prints. By
saying, for example, the blue-print for the gearbox is the
gearbox, or, as I think you're doing, the gearbox object is
the blue-print--the design. Or, the butterfly is the design,
an unintentional emergent one. It isn't, and, in my view it
is a mistake to think this, or to suggest it. Objects,
things, living things included, are not designs, they are not
blue-prints. Some of these things, but not the living ones,
may have been made from a design, but the rest haven't been.
By referring to the things that arise from natural processes
like Darwinian evolution, as designs, which is what I think
you are doing, knowingly or not, and what Dennett does too,
is, in my view a category mistake, and a serious one. I'll
come back to this latter. And, as I say, this is not how the
Design Stance is supposed to work. Adopting the design stance
means picking an object or thing, including a living thing,
looking at it well, and then reading--interpreting--what you
see as if it is a design description--a blue-print. Doing
this does not turn the chosen and viewed object into a
design--into a blue-print. But, you can easily slide in to
ways of talking, and writing, and thus thinking, that do
confound these two different things. It's gearbox objects and
butterfly living things that and effects and consequences on
the world, not the design of them--not the blue-print for
them--which, in the case of the butterfly, never exists. And,
if the design--the blue-print--never exists, it wasn't
designed, intentionally or unintentionally. If the blue-print
doesn't exist in some form or other, and play the role of the
blue print--the instructions for how to build the thing--then
the thing was not designed, and the design didn't emerge.
Darwinian evolution gives rise to the living things we see in
our world because of the genotype-to-phenotype construction
and development process that is at it's heart, not because
Darwinian evolution is a design process.
Designer
Notice, I have not used the word "designer" any where here.
Deliberately not! So, when I use the word designing I am not
saying anything about who or what is doing this designing. I
do believe, firmly, that designing is only made to happen by
knowledge using agents engaged in an identifiably goal
oriented activity, where knowledge here means (after Newell) a
capacity for rational action. So, for an agent to do some
designing it must have the needed kinds of knowledge. It is
the goal oriented-ness that gives this designing an
intentional quality. This is why I think that designing is an
intentional process, as do others here.
So, yes for designing to happen we do need a suitably and
sufficiently capable agent or set of agents. If you want to
call these designers, that's OK, but in this conversation I've
not been doing this.
To go on, here is how I read your words above
I assume that you do it because you want to emphasize a
stance that design[ing] can not take place without a designer?
No! It's still no! I didn't modify Dennett's words to
emphasise a stance that design can not take place without a
designer. It doesn't take a stance for this fact to be true,
as far as I am concerned. For something to have been
designed, some designing must have taken place, and if some
designing took place, some (sufficiently knowledgeable) agent
or agents did the designing. This is, I would say, a Dennett
type Physical Stance prediction: if we find something that we
know or can certainly tell was designed--in other words it's
something made following a design--a blue-print--then
somewhere sometime some designing occurred, and when it did,
some agent or agents did that designing. It cannot be any
other way, as far as I am concerned, because we don't see it
as being any other way in all the instances and examples of
designing we know of. It's well supported empirical
observation, so well supported that we take it as a working
fact in our investigations of designing.
The Design Stance
Here is how Dennett introduces and describes the Intentional
Stance, the top level of his system of three stances
"The intentional stance is the strategy of interpreting the
behavior of an entity (person, animal, artifact, whatever)
by treating it as if it were a rational agent who governed
its ‘choice’ of ‘action’ by a ‘consideration’ of its
‘beliefs’ and ‘desires.’ The scare-quotes around all these
terms draw attention to the fact that some of their
standard connotations may be set aside in the interests of
exploiting their central features: their role in practical
reasoning, and hence in the prediction of the behavior of
practical reasoners."
--- from Dennett (2009), pp 1.
And here is how he introduces and describes the Physical
Stance, the bottom level stance
"The distinctive features of the intentional stance can
best be seen by contrasting it with two more basic stances
or strategies of prediction, the physical stance, and the
design stance. The physical stance is simply the standard
laborious method of the physical sciences, in which we use
whatever we know about the laws of physics and the physical
constitution of the things in question to devise our
prediction. When I predict that a stone released from my
hand will fall to the ground, I am using the physical
stance. In general, for things that are neither alive nor
artifacts, the physical stance is the only available
strategy, though there are important exceptions, as we
shall see. Every physical thing, whether designed or alive
or not, is subject to the laws of physics and hence behaves
in ways that in principle can be explained and predicted
from the physical stance. If the thing I release from my
hand is an alarm clock or a goldfish, I make the same
prediction about its downward trajectory, on the same
basis. Predicting the more interesting behaviors of alarm
clocks and goldfish from the physical stance is seldom
practical."
--- from Dennett (2009), pp 2.
Note his "laborious method of the physical sciences" remark.
A little arrogance, do I detect? Let's ignore it.
Dennett then goes on to introduce and explain the Design
Stance, the level just below the Intentional Stance
"Alarm clocks, being designed objects ... are also
amenable to a fancier style of prediction---prediction from
the design stance. Suppose I categorize a novel object as
an alarm clock: I can quickly reason that if I depress a
few buttons just so, then some hours later the alarm clock
will make a loud noise. I don’t need to work out the
specific physical laws that explain this marvelous
regularity; I simply assume that it has a particular
design---the design we call an alarm clock---and that it
will function properly, as designed."
--- from Dennett (2009), pp 2.
I have chosen to quote Dennett from his 2009 chapter because
it is, as far as I know, some of his most recent
(re)statements of his Intentional Stance ideas. So, I think, we
can take it they are good versions that have benefitted from
many previous years of being set down by Dennett, and read,
understood and misunderstood by others. They are well
polished and refined versions, we might say.
Now, let me add some indicators of how I read these words, and
where I think Dennett gets sloppy, and starts to slip and
slide, badly.
"Alarm clocks, being designed objects [TS: OK, we agree,
alarm clocks are indeed objects, each made from some
particular alarm clock design, but not all alarm clocks are
made from the same alarm clock design, and this, as we will
see, matters]
... are also amenable to a fancier style of
prediction---prediction from the design stance. Suppose I
categorize a novel object as an alarm clock [TS: by which
Dennett means recognise and name the object he has as an
alarm clock, in this case. But wait, novel in what way?
Novel to him? To all of us? It can't be so novel for him
to not recognise it as an alarm clock, right? Confusing?
Yes, I think so. Confused? It looks like it to me.]:
I can quickly reason that if I depress a few buttons just
so, then some hours later the alarm clock will make a loud
noise. [TS: Yes, granting that he, you, me, whoever know
enough about the designs of alarm clocks, and that we have
identified well the correct alarm clock design in this
case--there isn't just one alarm clock design, remember.]
I don’t need to work out the specific physical laws that
explain this marvelous regularity; I simply assume that it
has a particular design [TS: and assume he has correctly
chosen the alarm clock design used to make the alarm clock
he happens to have.]
---the design we call an alarm clock [There it is! We
don't call the design an alarm clock, we call it the alarm
clock design, so as to not mistake it for an actual alarm
clock object, made using the alarm clock design.]
---and that it will function properly, as designed. [TS: A
final big assumption, granting that we can assume that
Dennett is using the correct alarm clock design to predict
the behaviour of the alarm clock (object) he has, he
further assumes that the alarm clock (object) was well made
from the design, and so works according to the design, or
at least still does. OK, so it's perfect world here. This
is philosophy, not real designing and making. All the
same, the Design Stance only works if this assumption is
true, so it'd be better to make this clear, so that
potential users are made well aware of the assumptions
about designing and the making of the designed objects
involved.]"
Let me repeat this point. How well the Design Stance works,
as a way to predict the behaviour of the thing you are
concerned with, and thus, how well you will really get to
understand it, depends crucially on how well made the object
has been made from the design--the blue-print--for the object
you presume exists and that it was made from.
If there is any error in, or uncertainty about, how well the
alarm clock has been made, with respect to the alarm clock
design used to make it, any use of the Design Stance becomes
hazardous, perhaps seriously useless, at least to make
predictions with. To see nice qualities in it's form, it s
not so important that it was made well. Though is the form is
the result of some inaccurate fabrication process, then it may
be difficult to see how to describe and replicate the form.
OK. In our very extensively designed, engineered, and built
world, most, by far, of the objects and things we surround
ourselves with are both designed well and built well from
their designs--their blue-prints. So, we're used to things
behaving in ways we would predict from a (sufficient)
knowledge and understanding of the designs used to make them.
But Darwinian evolution, even as Dennett show us he
understands it in his Darwin's Dangerous Idea book, is not
like this, and necessarily not like this!
To make any sense of Dennett's use of the Design Stance for
understanding living things, and, evolved living things, in
particular, you need, I think, to take it that the design, the
blue-print, for a particular living thing is its genotype (the
genetic code, as we sometimes call it). The living thing is
then the object, the thing, made according to this
blue-print, this design. This is the only way I can give
sense to Dennett's Principle of Accumulation of Design, for
example. But it is a wrong way to understand the relationship
between the genetic code of a living thing and the fully
formed living thing. The genetic code is not a blue-print.
Nothing like it. It's a set of construction instructions and
on-off instructions--put very simply. Getting from the
genetic code to the fully formed living thing, which of course
needs plenty else besides, is better understood as a kind of
crafting, not as a building from a blue-print.
There are more problems. The genotype of any particular
living thing is neither nicely ordered and structured, as real
designs are--blue-prints--nor is it made without error or
variation, and nor is the individual built from it without
error or variation. Indeed, the way neo-Darwinian evolution
is understood to work today, we know that it is a very untidy,
disordered, error-prone business. Not one that can safely
sustain the good application of a Design Stance as a way to
understand the living things it gives rise to. And, not the
kind of business that gives rise to things we can fairly call
designed things. Not without arbitrarily stretching the
meaning of what designing is, and what something that has been
built from a design is. But that, as we see, doesn't stop
Dennett doing precisely this. Sliding, hardly noticed from
alarm clocks--which I agree are objects built from designs--to
talking about living things via such grotesque assertions as
"The key to understanding Darwin's contribution is granting
the premise of the Argument from Design. ..." The argument
that says, 'cos living things look like they are built from
designs, these designs must have been made by a designer: a
God designer--the Creationist version. Or, in Dennett's more
God hidden version, 'cos living things look like they were
designed they can properly be thought of, and about, as having
been designed, as a way towards understanding them. But
Dennett doesn't bother with complications like designing
results in a design which can then be used to make the thing.
He just says from the designing we get the design.
I my eyes, this Dennett version is just as Creationist, and,
in my humble opinion, just as wrong as the full blooded
out-in-the-open Creationists version.
So, yes, I'm with Stephen Jay Gould on this one! And, happy
to be so.
To get a good idea of how Stephen Jay Gould understands
Darwinian evolution, in most of the forms and varieties it has
been presented and re-presented over the years, I suggest you
might read at least the first part of his last book: The
Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002), Cambridge MA: Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press. And I see Ken has
recommended this too. (An, by the way, this first part of the
book is an example of a remarkable good exegesis on Darwinian
evolution and how it has been and is understood.)
To end, and for completeness, I'll respond to your other
points.
Your Point 2
Dennett is no more an authority on Darwinian Evolution than he
is on Designing and Design Research: he is not an expert on
evolution. So, wheeling him in to support your case neither
impresses me nor moves me from my position. Dennett, as I
indicated before, is a recognised and respected authority on
the philosophy of cognition and related things. I consider
him to be such. He has made important contributions to the
Cognitive Sciences, AI and AL (Artificial Life), as I
mentioned before. Contributions that I recognise and value.
And I say this despite the fact that I don't happen to believe
that Dennett's Intentional Stance offers us a way towards a
fully naturalised understanding and explanation of cognition.
But I'm not going to go into that here.
Your point 3
Dennett didn't invent the Design Stance, as Jukka pointed out.
Dennett gave it a name, his name, the Design Stance, or the
design stance, if you really want me to be precise.
People have been using the Design Stance for a long time. I
don't know when it was first used, nor by whom. Probably it
didn't have a unique origin. Dennett does, however, use the
Design Stance, as named by him, in a way that not many others
had done before him. He used it in examples about predicting
behaviour, rather than, again as Jukka commented, to use
design aesthetics like simplicity or elegance to guide
hypotheses of what and why.
So, Dennett doesn't have any "I invented it so I should know
how to use it and say when and if I am" rights to this idea.
And, let's be clear, Darwin did not present the fundamentals
of the Argument by Design, that Dennett tell us is the way we
need to appreciate Darwin's idea. This is just Dennett being
grotesque.
Your point 4
I don't agree. The writings of Stephen Jay Gould, Maynard
Smith, and Pinker cannot not all be show to agree with--to
align with--thee writings of Dennett. Dennett is not the
authority here to be agreed, or aligned with, or disagreed
with. And, the differences between these people's writings,
especially between Gould and Maynard Smith and Dennett,
certainly do matter in this discussion, in my view. More on
this below.
Your point 5
You say
"You [that's me] 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."
Here we go. That "design" there, in "... that design has to
be designed...," is that a noun for the process, or is it a
noun for the blue-print outcome of the designing, or, the third
version, the thing that is made from the blue-print? You tell
me.
If I rewrote this phrase as
"You [that's me] think that designing has to be designed,
..."
would you say it's saying the same thing?
If you think it does, then it doesn't say what I think. I
don't think designing has to be designed. Though I do think
the notion of designing designing is interesting.
If I rewrote it as
"You [that's me] think that _a_ design has to be designed,
..."
would you say it's saying the same thing to you?
If you think it does, then it does say what I think. I do
think that designs--blue-prints--are necessarily and only the
outcome of some designing.
Next. You say
"Dennett believes it can also emerge ..."
What does the "it" refer to here? Design? And is this
"design" the noun for the design process, designing, as I call
it, or is it the noun for a design--a blue-print? Again, you
tell me. I can't tell.
Then you say
"... and so did Darwin, even though he used different
vocabulary, ..."
Would you like to substantiate this claim? It goes completely
against all understandings of what Darwin thought and wrote
about his ideas on evolution that I am aware of. His first
book, On the Origin of Species, is a careful setting out and
explanation for why and how living things are not designed.
Or perhaps I, together with lots of other people, are
thoroughly confused by Darwin's writing, but just don't know
it.
Then you say
"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."
This is an assertion with no supporting evidence.
Furthermore, I would say attempting to support such a claim is
not good research. Indeed, I think it would be silly. Darwin
is long dead. How can you, or anybody, know if Darwin agrees
with you and Dennett? What you might do is, via some suitable
analysis and well reasoned argument, show that some text(s) of
Darwin can be read as being well aligned with some text(s) of
Dennett, and with how you would put the same issue(s). This
may well be useful, but to see this, we need the selected
texts plus your analysis and argument. Bold, and somewhat
incredible claims don't do this. Speaking for the minds of
others, especially others long dead, and not personally known
to you, is dangerous arrogance, and somewhat disrespectful.
You may speak of the texts they left you to read and
understand in the way you decide, but not, I think, for them
and how they are or were minded.
Your point 6
You say
"... designers can design better if they understand the
designs that exist in the world and the processes that
create them, whatever they may be."
Can they? And the evidence for this is what? Can you point
to some design research that in some way supports the
hypothesis that when designers know more about "the designs
that exit in the world [but which have not been designed by
designers]," they produce better designs? Seriously! Can you
point to some work that shows this. I'd like to see it, and
see how it was done.
Your last point
I'm sorry but I ignored all your quotations. I don't like
engaging in quotation fights: you throw some carefully selected
quotations at me; I catch them, screw them up a bit and throw
them back, together with one or two of my own selection; then
you do the same; then me, and so on. This can sometimes be
fun. Occasionally it may be useful. But mostly it's
unproductive and tends to generate unwanted heat.
Done!
This is not the kind of post I think is best for PhD-Design,
very occasionally, perhaps, but I do not think I will do
something like this again for a while. I'm also getting a bit
old for marathons.
Best regards,
Tim
References
Daniel C Dennett, 2009. Intentional Systems Theory, in Brian
P McLaughlin (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind,
Oxford University Press, Chapter 19, pp 339--350.
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