Dear Gustavo and others,

related to Dennet’s idea of intentional systems is that of Cognitive Systems Engineering 
(CSE) (Hollnagel & Woods, 2005), which is a perhaps more practically oriented for those 
of us who are interested in developing tools and methods for design work.

CSE studies natural and artificial cognitive systems and how they perform in their 
physical and social environments. Much of the work focuses on the analysis, modelling, 
design and evaluation of Joint Cognitive Systems (JCS), that is, a human-machine 
ensemble. CSE does not view the performance of a JCS as simply emergent, but rather 
as something with properties to study and form in its own.

A cognitive system is a system that can control what it does (e.g.. humans, living 
organisms, organisations, some machines). A JCS is a system that consists of at least 
two sub-systems out of which at least one is a cognitive system. Designers-with-their-
computer-systems definitely form a JCS. We may also want to draw the system border a 
bit wider to include their organisations, physical tools, and procedures. All depending on 
why we do the analysis. The point is that none of these components work in isolation. 

The dependability between (sub-) systems need to be considered when discussing 
automation in design work. What invariably happens when design software is put to use is 
that the system complexity of the entire design work (technological systems, 
organisations and humans included) increases. The system complexity, in turn, leads to 
increased task complexity for the designers, even though we may see decreased 
complexity at specific parts of the process. For the designer this increased complexity 
have a couple of consequences: (1) The increased efficiency that come with the design 
software, bring the joint system closer to its limits for safe performance. This means that 
design failures will happen; some small and some more severe. (2) The designer will be 
more dependent on the technology. If it fails, consequences will propagate far beyond the 
direct work environment. This means that designers will need to engage in not only 
operating the design software, but also in design, implementation, management and 
maintenance of it. This may in fact reduce some of the supposedly increased efficiency. 

Now to the main point of this posting: When talking about people (designers) and their 
machines (design software) engaged in joint performance, it may be useful for analysis, 
modelling, design or evaluation to distinguish between the people and the machine, but in 
reality they perform and act as one functional system in a physical and and social 
environment.

References:

Hollnagel, E. & Woods, D. D. (2005). Joint Cognitive Systems: Foundations of Cognitive 
Systems Engineering. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press / Taylor & Francis.

Best regards;

// Mattias
--
Mattias Arvola, Ph.D. 
Sr. lecturer in Interaction Design. 
Linköping University and Södertörn University. 
www.arvola.se 





On Sat, 22 Aug 2009 13:08:24 -0500, Gustavo Casillas <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>What about the notion of intentional systems proposed by Daniel Dennet?
>