Dear friends, Terry,

I have a few problems with your post:

You wrote: "In view of the above, design researchers and designers are particularly at risk of deluding themselves".



Why? Why, more than lion tamers or fugu cooks?



Then you wrote: "Many of these delusions of designers and design researchers are easy to demonstrate by external observation. Some commonly held delusions in design areas have led to extensive messes in design theory and practice."



Can real observation of designers and design researchers be pursued? Isn't "external observation" a delusion itself?

What about the messes? Can you give some examples? Are you sure that those messes are due to self-delusion?



Then: "Self-delusions about physical phenomena led to design failures and the need to recognise these delusions to improve design practice." This is true about engineering and Medicine, but general to all Design practice?"



And: "This article illustrates how understanding the role of self-delusion shows we are able to see how several broad areas and traditions of design theory and practice may be fundamentally in error."

Sorry, Terry. It does not illustrate. It simply argues about it.



So we arrive to the loops: "My experiences so far are that testing such beliefs shows they are mistaken and are self-delusions. These self delusions, erroneous beliefs and faulty design outcomes are easy to test and indicate that individuals typically have completely erroneous understanding of the behaviours of complex situations with two or more feedback loops and are unable to predict the outcomes of their designs."

How can you test the self-delusions and erroneous beliefs? And even if you could they are not of the same kind of faulty design outcomes. I mean design outcomes may be tested from different perspectives -- economic, effectiveness, etc. But can we, apart from you, trust if the evaluators of design outcomes are not self-deluded?

For ages that we know that designers do NOT predict the outcomes, they prophesize the outcomes and that's the beauty of it. It all comes to make a good prophecy and prophets are by definition self-deluded.



Further away you state: "In general, the line of reasoning is that by observing or interacting with objects we have new thoughts and feelings and hence this must be because of knowledge containing in the objects being 'transferred' or received by us."



No it's not! In general, the line of reasoning is that there is no such thing as observing and interacting with objects. What we have, in fact, is a cultural system in which knowledge, among other things, may be generated 'from' objects.



You move forward and postulate that: "The human knowledge relationship between knowledge and objects can be seen as a one way function with similar properties and characteristics to a 'one way hash' in cryptography." Yes it can but normally it isn't. You just decided it. The beauty of "the human knowledge relationship between knowledge and objects" is that it can be seen in as many ways as you can see humans, knowledge, objects and their relations.



And you propose a test: "The delusion of self-perception of receiving knowledge embedded in objects is again easy to test by external observations. One example is to test whether the individual's understandings are correct and consistent with others in ways that are not simply explained by prior knowledge."

Here you confuse 'knowledge' with 'new knowledge'. Plus, there is no way of explaining knowledge without using prior knowledge, in any condition. Except what Baumgarten tried to explain in Aestetica: That sometimes you know unexplainably. The test you propose is designed to fail in order to fit in your argument.



But when you say: "Certainly we can infer meanings to artistically created artefacts. Are these meanings specific to the objects or are they simply the consequence of prior false and true 'knowledge' and experiences." Of course that "these" meanings are specific to the objects because -- regardless of "prior true or false knowledge" - they only exist -- by definition of the situation -- in face of the object.



Well that was a long post. I'll be back to this.

Thanks Martin for the mention.



Tomorrow is national holiday that commemorates the independence of Portugal from Spain in 1640 after 40 years of united crowns. Just the day before FIFA announcement of the results for organizing the world cup in 2018 in which we applied together.



Best,



Regards,

Eduardo



On 30-11-2010 17:44, Hodge Robin wrote:
> Colleagues
>
> It does seem to me that those that reside within 'practice led' research are frowned upon and are the poor cousins of the mighty theorists.
>
> Thank God for those in practice for without them there is very little to write about.
>
> Martin Salisbury's comments are apt and I thank him for them, would that there were more like him.
>
>
> Robin
>
>
>
> PR Hodge MA, BA (Hons), PG Dip (Media), FAETC, MIDI
> Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
> Faculty Head of Collaborative Courses
> Programme Director Master of Design and Communication
>
> TEL: ext 75572
>
> Foyle Arts
> University of Ulster at Magee
> L/derry
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design on behalf of Terence Love
> Sent: Tue 30/11/2010 15:24
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Practice, research, puddings and delusions. Not such a long post
>
> Dear Martin,
> Thank you for your message.
> You wrote,
> '..practice led research will continue to grow, evolve and contribute to
> knowledge...'
> Please could you say more about this knowledge.
> I'm particular I'm wondering how you test that the knowledge is valid.
> Especially, I'm wondering how you prove that it is not the result of
> self-delusion by the researcher or design practitioner.
> On a second point, I can see, as you wrote,  that individuals have thoughts
> and emotions directly from observing impressionist paintings and these are
> associated directly with the paintings rather than being due solely to words
> about the paintings. I'm wondering about how you teach - do you just point
> and nothing else, so the students receive the knowledge directly from the
> paintings? Please can you say more about this.
> Best regards,
> Terry
>