tim, kari-hans, and more,
thanks tim, for the careful discussion of dennett. i agree, it is dangerously misleading to impute intentions to things, especially products of nature, without knowing the intentions of their makers. even articulated intentions often are incomplete (hidden intentions) or (deliberatively) misleading.
darwin's mechanism has no place for intentionality. mutation is random. the fact that current species have survived can hardly be attributed to intentionality. nobody van predict what happens next but it is not too difficult to say what cannot happen.
i also agree that we should be focusing on professional design in contemporary society, the particular role it plays in the creation of material/social culture, especially their accountability to those affected.
to me, there are two borderline considerations:
first. besides darwin's theory, there is spencer's misreading of darwin as "survival of the fittest". it shifts to an evaluative function that nature cannot enact: who is the fittest, or who is more fit than another. (darwin's nature selects only the unfit). this function is often provided by culture or societal conditions: those well off can protect themselves better than those who have little. i wear glasses. if i could not have afforded them, i would have most likely been dead by now. one could say that such evaluative functions are collectively designed and institutionalized in currently preferred practices of living.
second, in my semantic turn, i devoted a chapter on the ecology of artifacts, describing their cooperation, competition, reproduction and selective elimination. superficially, one might read it as describing a process without intentionality. however, i made clear, i hope, that the ecological processes we can observe, cannot be explained by the properties of the interacting artifacts, but by the meanings that a multitude of users attribute to them when putting them in place, living with them, and retiring them as they see fit. i suppose this process could be described as a collective design process.
however, professional designers, in my view, have to propose changes that take account of the world of others in which their proposals enter and initiate all kinds of socio-technical processes. this means being familiar with what happens to their design, who considers it of benefit, is enabled, and who is harmed by it, on the short and long run.
these are big tasks for design research to tackle and to translate into individual design decisions.
klaus
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tim Smithers
Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2013 2:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Ideas and definitions of what is "a design" in a broad sense
Dear Kari-Hans,
I would like to raise some concerns about your appeal to Dennett, and his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), as support for the good sense you see in the idea of treating biological evolution as a (non-intentional) designer: as a creator of designs, as you would put it, if I understand you correctly.
Daniel Dennett is, as I assume you know, a well established and widely respected philosopher. A powerful one, in many people's eyes. He has been active, in a supportive way--as opposed to the more usual critical way--in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life (AL). He is thus appreciated by non-philosophers working in these two areas, who have benefitted from and used his philosophising, including me. I have done work in both AI and AL. And I know and have engaged with Daniel Dennett in these (professional) contexts.
Dennett is not, however, an authority on designing, nor on what is a design, and what you can reasonably say when you call something a design. Nor is he a philosopher of design.
So, presenting him as a good "supporting reference" for your views, is, I would say, a poor move. If you need support for your position, I think you need it from people who are recognised authorities in relevant areas--well established design researchers, design thinkers and practitioners, and, perhaps, real philosophers of design.
For me, quoting from Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, makes things worse, a lot worse. Of all Dennett's books, this one more than any display's his tendency towards an arrogant and bullying treatment of other people's work and ideas. This book generated much controversy and heated debate, especially between Dennett and Stephen Jay Gould--who Dennett somewhat viciously attacks in this book.
This all happed more than a decade ago, and was a long and detailed debate, but for a useful concluding summary of the positions, this New York Review of Books exchange is a good place to start
'Darwinian Fundamentalism': An Exchange AUGUST 14, 1997 Daniel C. Dennett, reply by Stephen Jay Gould <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/aug/14/darwinian-fundamentalism-an-exchange/?pagination=false>
To help with some background and context, I think this next piece by Gould, also from the New York Review of Books, published in June 1997, shortly before the above, helps to show that Gould was in no way anti-Darwin. Indeed, I, like many people, saw Gould as one of the most thoughtful and eloquent explainers and defenders of Darwin's idea. Gould, like Darwin, just didn't think that adaptation by selection of the fittest accounts for all the variety we see in the biological world. A position that has been and is shared by others in evolutionary biology. In other words, Dennett held the more restricted and dogmatic position in this debate--and still does, as far as I know. Gould died in 2002. But do have a read of this.
Darwinian Fundamentalism
JUNE 12, 1997
Stephen Jay Gould
<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jun/12/darwinian-fundamentalism/?pagination=false>
Allow me, if you will, to illustrate why I think Dennett's thinking is wrong on designing and what a design is, with just one example, taken from your quotation.
Dennett, takes a Design Stance on what Darwinian Evolution gives rise to: individual living things that can each be identified as an instance of particular species. He sees and treats the instances of living things as if they are realisations of designs, and then talks of these designs.
This involves re-seeing each one as an abstract description of what it is, and not of what it actually is; an individual instances of a living thing of same species. (Note, by the way, that Dennett is not clear if what he means by the design here, is the species design, or the individual animal design.
They would not be identical. I take it that he means the species design, since it's hard to make much sense of what he writes if you don't. But the unclarity remains.)
As Ken, said, Jukka, at the end of his post, identifies the importance and widespread use of this Design Stance idea, when he said
"All in all, it is an old research strategy in natural
sciences to look at systems as if they were well-designed,
and then use design aesthetics like simplicity or elegance
to guide hypotheses of what and why."
Seeing and treating things as if they are designs, and not the things they actually are--is useful, very useful, and a valid way to develop ideas and understandings, if done well.
But, taking a Design Stance, seeing and treating something as if it is the outcome of some designing, does not make that something a design, nor make it an outcome of any kind of designing. Adopting a Design Stance is an observer choice that changes nothing of the thing so observed. A thing is a thing, and only and no more than the thing, and only a realisation of a design if it has in fact resulted from some designing and subsequent realisation following well the design.
Things go wrong when we have what Dennett does, here in your
quote: take, apparently unknowingly, a Design Stance, and then go on to make some very silly and wrong claims and statements, such as
"... Darwin had hit upon what we might call the Principle
of Accumulation of Design."
No such a notion, expressed in any shape or form, appears anywhere in Darwin's writings--and there is a lot of it. But almost all of it now available on the web, so you may check this assertion of mine. Or ask some authorities on Darwin and his works. This Dennett notion of the Principle of Accumulation of Design, is a product of his Design Stance--but not a good one, I happen to think, and not a part of Darwin's thinking or developments. Darwin didn't adopt a Design Stance in his work. I'm not even sure it has been invented then.
Perhaps someone here can help with this question of design history.
Dennett, to give him some credit, does--in the next sentence from your quote--gives away his Design Stance by saying
"Things in the world (such as watches and organisms and who
knows what else) may be seen as products embodying a
certain amount of Design[ing] ..."
But, he then continues, in the same sentence, to commit the Design Stance over claim that you seem to want to make
"... and one way or another, that Design[ing] had to have
been created by a process of R and D."
Where here, "R and D," for Dennett, equates to designing, at least in this quote, but I think it carries the same meaning elsewhere too.
So, in one sentence we have Dennett, in this case, slipping unnoticed by him, and probably unnoticed by many of his readers, from a thing that may be seen as a design to being necessarily designed, R and D'd, to use his exact term. This is not a reasonable step to take, I think, because it simply is not true: nothing in the biology of this world has been designed, not in any sense of designing that we have and use today. Saying that these things have been designed, because you like the idea thinking they have been, is not a reasonable way to extend our current notions of what designing is.
Understanding what designing is, requires good and extensive empirical study. Understanding what designing can be requires the development of good explanatory theory or theories.
To end, let me restate my position in this discussion. An agent, like Dennett, or you, or me, or anybody else, can freely and reasonable chose to adopt a Design Stance so as to view a thing as a design--to "read" the object, or animal, as a presentation of the design it is a particular realisation of. (Which is quite a sophisticated way of viewing things in the world, so it's not just any old agent that is able to do
this.)
What, in my view, is not reasonable, is to then say that the thing so viewed is a design and that it was thus designed.
So, my question remains, given that we may reasonably adopt a Design Stance towards anything and everything in the Universe, what does looking at all these things and seeing them as if they are realisations of designs, do for a better understanding of intentional professional designing?
Best regards,
Tim
====================================================
On Apr 5, 2013, at 16:58 , Kommonen Kari-Hans wrote:
> Dear Ken,
>
> Thanks for a thoughtful post!
<snip>
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