Hi Jinan,
Thank you for your message to PhD design.
As always I'm intrigued by what you write and agree with you in many ways.
It feels you are right that thinking and understanding is possible without
words, and awareness is the primary tool for being, and responding from
being.
I'd like to pose three other aspects of the situation that seem useful to
bring in:
1. That understanding and comprehension isn't necessary or helpful in some
situations.
2. That many situations are beyond human understanding and comprehension
undertaken through being
3. That some representational methods can enable us to go beyond these
limitations of understanding and being.
The implications of these three can be explored in many different ways. A
starting point is to accept that being as a human is limited in every
aspect.
We cannot do many physical things: we are bounded in our physicality. We are
limited in what we can perceive. Our ability to feel or use emotions or
intuition is limited to a small amount of what we and our senses perceive.
That is a only a small taste of what could be perceived.
In other words, our ability to understand and comprehend 'everything' is
limited. This is different to, but just as true as, the fact that we are
limited in different ways when we try to understand with words or reasoning.
There are certain classes of experience that we can understand and
comprehend much better without words.
It seems to me, these are experiences characterised by being readily
perceivable through the senses, close to us in time and space and with
causal relationships that are obvious. These direct 'in the moment' real
situations can have an unbelievable richness. The full depth of this
richness can be perceived and felt via awareness yet cannot be understood
or comprehended through words.
Completely different are experiences that are primarily understood through
words. Mostly, these are what in general are classified under 'culture'.
That is, they are the result of socially-constructed knowing.
Our connection with these 'experiences' is via the senses and our
interaction with them is through conscious and subconscious ideas shaped by
socially-based interactions (including, e.g. languaging, maths, reading,
rituals, remote measuring, reasoning, art, poetry, customs and practices and
culturally-established ways of conceptualising). These also can have
incredible richness. This richness cannot be perceived directly. Our
perception of these 'experiences' is a at least one remove. Rather, it might
be better expressed that our experience is of the culturally-based
representations of these culturally-created 'experiences'.
Different again, are experiences that one might think of as the 'shadow of
the whip' or the 'copper shavings on the metalworkers floor'
These are situations that we cannot not perceive or comprehend in whole. We
simply do not have the capacities. Instead, we perceive their traces. On
one hand they are the very small and very large from subatomic to cosmic. On
the other hand, they are the everyday events that are too complex to
understand directly without words and too complex to comprehend via
socially-based representational structures such as physics, social sciences,
business theories, art analysis and the like.
Instead, there is another measure that is more useful: that of predicting
the behaviours of outcomes. In many cases, predicting the behaviours of
outcomes is more important and is compromised by attempts at comprehension
or understanding.
A further problem occurs problem occurs when it is assumed 'comprehension
and understanding' is the same as 'being able to predict the behaviours of
outcomes'. They are ontologically different.
These are other dimensions of engineering and culture.
Thank you again for your post.
Best wishes ,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask]
--
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jinan K B
Sent: Tuesday, 18 February 2014 7:46 AM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design
Subject: Re: Engineering and Culture -conflicts?
Reasoning short circuits comprehension.
Reasoning is part of behavioral change that has happened due to dependence
on 'knowledge'. What is known can only be understood using reasoning. Among
the literate cultures language becomes the cognitive source or source of
'knowledge'.
My study of almost 25 years has been on the difference in 'BEING'
between the literates and non literates. Non literates should be re named as
sense literates and literates the text literates.
The fundamental difference between these two are that among literates
reasoning is the frame work with which intuition is used and non literates
use intuition as the frame work and reasoning becomes an integral aspect.
The alienation of modern man is precisely due to the fragmentation of mind
and body caused by conscious reasoning. Reasoning is an embodied aspect of
being. The child in the womb follows an internal logic, develop itself
autonomously responding to mother's activities.
Among non literate communities the child is left free to understand the
world. Modernity treats 'freedom' as something that can be given or taken
away where as among non literates freedom is an existential reality. Like a
dog on the street or a tree it grows in autonomy, responding to the context,
making sense of what the world is about.
Autonomy is not same as individuality. Individuality is the corrupted form
of autonomy. Individuality is driven by conscious or fragmented reasoning.
In order to understand cognition it needs to be studied the way digestive
system has been studied. The moment we shift this to its total phenomenon or
we study as cognitive system we are able to see how the source influences
what is understood. we need to explore comprehension the way we studied
digestive system. Looking at all aspects related to food and digestion- from
why we eat, what we eat, how we eat, when we eat, how it changes with age,
how does the body regulate out likes and dislikes, how does the mind
interfere in the likes and dislikes of the body, what happens after we eat,
what gets eliminated, what gets ingested, what transformation takes place
and what we become in terms of not only physical health but also mental
health and so on.
So cognitive inputs also needs to be studied in depth in this manner and
looking at how cognitive input effects the body. We need to ask the same
questions.
Among non literates the process begins with observation and this by and by
leads to understanding. The unknown can only be observed with open ness.
Infact designers unlike people from other professions tend to use this as
designers have to 'observe'.
It is interesting that the subject is 'engineering and culture conflicts'.
Infact this is so accurate to describe lierates and non literates if we
change this a little and re write as 'engineered minds and cultured minds'.
What we are experiencing in the modern world is nothing but engineering the
mind of people. This is natural outcome of the modern beingness which is to
plan and control.
At this juncture it will be interesting to do a study on the three paradigms
which are experiential, literate and digital. One can see the structure and
nature of the cognitive source in the structure and nature of human beings
that fall in to the respective paradigms. The structure of language- linear,
sequential, fragmented is the structure of the literate minds.
The integral nature of the real world is totally missing in the digital
world even though it is being claimed as new orality. The two are worlds
apart.
See the video of Prof Iain Mcgrilchrist The Divided Brain and the Making of
the Western World.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUHxC4wiWk&noredirect=1
Jinan
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
