Dear Terry
I was trying to compose a response to your earlier mail about the separation of the subjective from design theorizing but the development of this discussion proceeded so quickly that before I could put in my two cents worth in elaboration I discovered some of the points raised by other put across ideas better than my own, and related topics were pulled in! Then again, this is a common experience.
However, it seems to me you are to design theory what Descartes was to philosophy. Or perhaps what Popper is to science. I suppose what you pursue - a rigorous epistemology for design theory is a worthwhile and respectable project. But if theorizing is to find a balanced development, even in design theory, then some experimentation and pushing of boundaries is needed, and sometimes even what is meant by "epistemology" needs to be contested. So perhaps the first thing to be said is that if your project is to be encouraged, then also critical work defending different epistemological paradigms ought also to be welcomed, to the extent that they are promising. I have been revisiting a few things Cartesian and I was intruiged to read John Deely suggesting that Descartes sent all of us astray! I am still trying to read Deely to understand why. Again, more loosely, we've read Hayek worrying about Cartesian constructivism. Both offer a very different epistemology - or ways of knowing - and so I suppose the question is, as we work towards a design theory, we can be committed to a particular form of epistemology, but at the same time, we may also want to avoid that kind of Cartesianism which determines how things be shown; we want to be open to occasionally acquiesce to the manner which things can show of themselves, and the latter may not quite fit with what to us is a defensible epistemology. So research in design and research in epistemologies go hand in hand, and we need not always frame design thinking by prioritizing a settled epistemology; sometimes, thinking, and thinkg about design means that we have something rather messy which our dominant epistemologies cannot receive, and which therefore saturates our theoretical capacities, and the way forward is not necessarily to condemn the phenomenon, but really to struggle to calibrate our epistemological assumptions - this latter I would imagine takes time, and is really difficult. Now remember I have no idea what you mean by epistemology - and perhaps if I did we might actually be on the same page! Even if that be the case, I would not say design theory is a mess - I would say that design theorizing has different epistemological foundations, some of which I agree with, others less, and that this confusion is an opportunity for me to help sort out any muddle. If things were so clear cut, then what's the point? Isn't it the aporia that draw us in, and calls us? The mess, if it must to described that way, is what excites us, isn't it? This is a happy fault - or else we are all out of business!
Now back to this thing about subjectivity, you would rather displace the subjective in your development of design theory. I suppose that has a place - suppose you are designing some medical instrument, then what really works had better give guidance. But it seems to me rather counter intuitive to impose this criteria on all of designing, and on a theory of design which covers the design of other things which seem to me precisely to require some measure of the subjective, or tastes or personal preferences: cars, buildings, even household goods - many of these aesthetic and playful. So on this count the need to disregard the subjective is not self-evidently compelling to me. I notice you speak of a "useful" design theory. Perhaps this is where you are coming from - a design theory which gives us something "useful" for guiding production perhaps. I am just guessing. But then this begs the question what a design theory is for? Simon wanted to design theory so that people could come together and have a chat over coffee. Is that also a good reason? What other reasons are there for developing a theory? What about a general theory? Perhaps there may not be such a thing as an "essence" to design? What about a focal theory? Must all theorizing terminate in some usefulness for mass production or somesuch? Is usefulness that most important criteria for thinking how to proceed with arriving at a theory of something? Even if so, then useful for what? Furthermore, just because there are some subjective states that arise in thinking (that arise from the thinking subject), does not mean we should disregard them as arbitrary, or non-objective (that is how I take you to mean the word). So there are lots of other questions that need to be answered. But I am playing the devil's advocate. Like you I have reservations about preferences which seem to me rather whimsical - I have rather in mind principles of ethics which I think are reasons rather than feelings, and which I think are objective in your sense of the word. I find more favorable a theory of design which focuses on (practical) reasons's deliverances, rather than feelings (here I disagree with Simon's Humean anthropology). But I do suspect that sometimes people speak of feelings but some objective principles are what they mean and may have been muddled up by the discourse. Also, sometimes if we pay attention to reason, they might lead us to feelings; for instance I remember Simon speaking of style, which is a kind of preferential manner of moving forward on a design, having exhausted what reason can tell us, and when these reasons point out incommensurable possibilities. So my own account of designing may not quite easily set feelings or preferences aside. In fact I think there is room for accounting and recording the eutrapelian, the playful in design - would that ever be called objective? Perhaps a paper is needed here?
Finally I was thinking about photography again and someone pointed out that photography is about pointing. I am not sure if that is all that photography is. A photograph points. But photography is the activity which sometimes ends up with a photograph. Photography is much more than that. Reducing photography to pointing seems to me too quick, too simplistic. What about deleting? Deciding not to point? Deciding what to point. What about shooting wide open so that only something and not others come into focus? Why bw, monochrome rather than color? Hence making decisions so that the photograph points in a certain way, or results is some desired semiosis - I think there's designing involved. Photography includes that kind of choosing, shaping of the photograph, which is a sign vehicle. There are choices that are being made within those framelines. We can encourage the semiosis in this way or that, pointing to these significates rather than those. To borrow Don, I suspect the photographer pays attention to and exploits the perceived affordances of the picture. An example - an image of atrocity - when it lost its critical power, because of the obsession with the aesthetic, and the technical, to the point where the misery was beautified, Benjamin suggested adding a caption. The photograph, with the caption - to put or not to put, to highlight once more its affordance for critical consciousness raising, and how? - these seem to me to be designerly acts.
Jude
National Institute of Education (Singapore) http://www.nie.edu.sg
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