Dear Tim,
[...also Ken, FYI examples of the use of the word "design" in the quotes in the end.]
Thank you very much for engaging in this discussion with this effort!
1) You describe what I am doing as
> treating biological evolution as a (non-intentional) designer: as a creator of designs
and you refer to "designing" a lot in your post. You even change Dennett's words in the quotations: when he talks about "design" you change it to "design[ing]". I assume that you do it because you want to emphasize a stance that design can not take place without a designer?
If so, that is something where I differ from you; I am not looking for the "intelligent and intentional designer" from behind the scenes, nor do I want to give the impression that something like that should be found. I think that design can emerge in a different kind of process, e.g. evolution, and to me, it does not make a lot of sense to talk about such a design process as "a designer", except in some special rhetorical and metaphorical sense perhaps ("Mother Nature designed x" when one really means "the design of x emerged in a process of evolution"). Hence, unless I missed something, I think that changing "design" into "designing" is confusing and misleading in this discussion.
2) When I refer to Dennett, I am not relying on his authority as a recognized expert in design or making any claims about his status among the design community.
But I am bringing him in as someone who is (in spite of the critiques you mention - more about them later) an expert in evolution (one among many others, of course) and specifically as someone who has written prominently about the idea that evolution creates designs, in design terminology, to support my argument that it is a worthwhile train of thought and that I am not the only one thinking that way.
I am especially very happy that he has chosen to write about evolution and emergence using design terminology as opposed to something else, because it makes in many ways more sense than using other words (which, however, is too large a discussion and thus out of scope to explain here). For me, Dennett is a great and profound design thinker (among many others) that every designer should read, and I believe this book will one day become a classic also for design scholars.
3) You write about Dennett's idea of the Principle of Accumulation of 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.
I would think it odd that Dennett, who developed the whole concept of design stance (Dennett 1971) and referred to evolution many times in that seminal article, would apply design stance to his discussion about evolution almost 25 years later unknowingly; it seems to me he is conscious of what he does. He even explains the idea of design stance and applies it explicitly in this book.
He is not claiming that Darwin said these things about design or would have presented this principle in this way. But he presents the principle and gives credit for it to Darwin, because Darwin presented its fundamentals in some other way. One can of course be cynical and think of that as a stratagem to try to give his own idea some extra significance with Darwin's name, but I see it differently, and for me this detail makes no difference. I think the idea to present it in this fashion is very illuminating and useful, the principle in itself is very significant, in fact a key factor in evolutionary processes that deserves this kind of highlighting, and it would be hard to ignore Darwin's contributions in identifying the mechanisms that make it so. Hence, I think Dennett's attribution is not wrong.
4) Darwin does not use the word "design" to refer to what evolution produces in e.g. The Origin of Species, he talks about form. However, the evolutionists (S J Gould, J Maynard Smith, S Pinker) that engaged in that debate (which you refer to) around this book, do use the word design. In spite of their critiques and differences, which are in my opinion irrelevant concerning the topic of our discussion, they all agree with Dennett in that evolution creates design. (I will enclose below several quotations that demonstrate this.)
5) You discuss how Dennett talks about design:
> 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.
The way I read this is that he is talking about R&D, and about how it is needed when evolution produces designs, and not about designing, as you say, "in any sense of designing that we have and use today", where "we" appears to be (i assume) some design community. He is talking about the emergence of design in a way that is novel to the design community, but with which the evolutionary community seems to be comfortable with (see the quotes below).
You and Dennett think differently. You think that design has to be designed, but Dennett believes it can also emerge, and so did Darwin, even though he used different vocabulary, and so do I. Darwin, Dennett and I all agree that the design created by evolution is something that we could easily believe to be created by an intelligent designer, because it shows such sophistication and fitness to purposes etc.
Dennett wants to show us more concretely how this happens with this book, and it is very reasonable for him to use the design terminology to do that - it would not be possible to make that connection with any other terminology.
So I do not agree with your critique. Dennett is not claiming that this is all that design is, he is not making a claim about "the theory of design", he is not extending our understanding of "designing", as the act of intentional designers. His book is not about that, and I do not see why it should be connected to that. He is extending our understanding of what "design" can be, as a phenomenon, as a process, and as what "a design" can be, and how "design" accumulates, and I welcome that as an enormously important contribution to design literature..
6) As to your final question:
> 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?
As I mentioned in an earlier message, designers can design better if they understand the designs that exist in the world and the processes that create them, whatever they may be. At the moment, many aspects of design that is taking place in the world are not recognized as such by designers, and this is a shortcoming.
However, it is not my intention and goal to begin evangelizing this philosophy here any further at this point. I will write more about it later when I am ready to do so, and will let you (the list) know. This time I simply posted some questions regarding the concept of "a design" to hear some opinions and maybe get some links and references, and I am very happy because I received a very interesting discussion and many important and useful arguments and sources!
Of course, it would be great to find some soulmates, so for those reading the list who find these thoughts interesting, please let me know e.g. with an off list message.
---
And finally, here are the quotes (from the particular debate you pointed out) that in my opinion show that in spite of their different opinions about the book and Dennett and his thoughts, these quite distinguished evolution specialists all think that it is legitimate to talk about evolution as a process that creates "design" or "designs". (None say anything at all about "designing"):
John Maynard Smith:
"It is therefore a pleasure to meet a philosopher who understands what Darwinism is about, and approves of it. ... The essence of Darwin’s dangerous idea is that adaptations can arise by natural selection, without need of intelligence: that is, they can be the products of an algorithmic process. Dennett repeatedly uses the analogy of “cranes” and “skyhooks.” These are both devices for lifting things—in evolution, for generating increasingly complex designs—but of very different kinds. ... Dennett’s view of evolution, then, is one of cranes building cranes building cranes, each new crane arising by an essentially mindless process of selection. I fully agree with this view."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1995/nov/30/genes-memes-minds
Stephen Jay Gould:
"The very phenomena that traditional views cite as proof of benevolence and intentional order—the good design of organisms and the harmony of ecosystems—arise by Darwin’s process of natural selection only as side consequences of a singular causal principle of apparently opposite meaning: organisms struggling for themselves alone. (Good design becomes one pathway to reproductive success, while the harmony of ecosystems records a competitive balance among victors.)"
"[M]ay I state for the record that I (along with all other Darwinian pluralists) do not deny either the existence and central importance of adaptation, or the production of adaptation by natural selection. Yes, eyes are for seeing and feet are for moving. And, yes again, I know of no scientific mechanism other than natural selection with the proven power to build structures of such eminently workable design."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jun/12/darwinian-fundamentalism
Steven Pinker:
”First, adaptive design must be a product of natural selection. Complex organs like eyes have many precise parts in exacting arrangements, and the odds are astronomically stacked against their having arisen fortuitously from random genetic drift or as a byproduct of something else. Second, the brain, like the eyes and the feet, shows signs of good design. The adaptive problems it solves, such as perceiving depth and color, grasping, walking, reasoning, communicating, avoiding hazards, recognizing people and their mental states, and juggling competing demands in real time are among the most challenging engineering tasks ever stated, far beyond the capacity of foreseeable computers and robots. Put the premises together—complex design comes from natural selection, and the brain shows signs of complex design—and we conclude that much of the brain should be explained by natural selection.”
”[M]ost researchers aren’t trying to explain the entire “complex and various world.” Many of them are trying to explain “complexity in organic design”—the remarkable natural engineering behind the ability of creatures to fly, swim, move, see, and think. Now, complex design should yield to one “narrowly construed cause”—Gould knows of no scientific mechanism other than natural selection with the proven power to build it, remember? Those blinkered, narrow, rigid, miserly, uncompromising ultra-panselectionists whom Gould attacks are simply explaining complex design in terms of its only known cause.”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/oct/09/evolutionary-psychology-an-exchange
Darwin, C. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. [2d ed.]
Available at: http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F376&viewtype=text&pageseq=1
Dennett, D. C. “Intentional Systems.” The Journal of Philosophy 68, no. 4 (February 25, 1971): 87–106. doi:10.2307/2025382.
Cheers, Kari-Hans
------------------
Kari-Hans Kommonen
Director, Arki research group
Media Lab, Dept of Media
Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture
mail: PO Box 31000, FI-00076 AALTO
visit: Hämeentie 135 C, 00560 HELSINKI, Finland
email: [log in to unmask]
mobile: +358 405010729
in Japan: +81 80-2396-2896
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