Dear Keith and all.
Thanks to Keith for an explanation better than I could have written. As
Keith wrote, much of this is 1st year philosophy. The only difference is
addressing the implications which is not normally done.
The main 'purpose' is to bring together the technical and 'cultural'
aspects of design into a single body of theory.
To do that, I found it's necessary to be aware that:
1. Emotions as perceived by people are primarily social constructs and
distinct from the internal and external experiences
2. Individuals confuse the interpretation of what they perceive inside
themselves with these social constructs of concepts that we have called
'emotions' to the point at which they believe the concepts of emotions are
more real than the real experiences and consequently the real experiences
occur as sub-conscious perceptions. This presents a problem in going to the
root of the theories because the discussions and literature about emotion
in design and psychology follow that path
3. Technology designers use these real but subconscious emotional and
feeling perceptions as much as 'cultural' designers and in the same way.
They also have the same presumptions about the concepts of emotions being
'real'.
4. A primary difference between technological and cultural designers is the
domain information content they process.
5. Separating the issues and clarifying differences between concepts and
real experiences allows one to reduce the amount of broad-brush hand-waving
analyses that cover up a lack of information and understanding,
particularly in relation to issues such as creativity, intuition, emotion
and feelings in design thinking.
That is the easy part.
The real problem, however, is that thinking and feeling are also social
constructs - not real either. They suffer the same problem. This digs deeper
into clarifying the issues. It also points to need to rework much of the
literature that assumes human internal experiences is sufficiently well
categorised into two socially invented concept boxes of thinking and feeling
- when we as humans in fact function differently.
Before I get the same kind of flack as over pointing out emotions are
socially constructed concepts, let me explain.
As humans we have the ability to perceive some activities inside ourselves,
including some way to envisage and experience situations internally. This
occurs as a *seamless mix* of images, memories, representations and our
responses to them. Note the seamless nature of this.
As a matter of simplification, many years ago some started to separate the
information aspects from the affective aspects. This in part, was due to
the observation that one could have affective responses to events that one
hadn't consciously perceived. In that sense, affect was the primary category
and what was left is what we now call 'thought' and thinking.
To put it straight. This ideas of thought and emotion are simplifying
concepts. They are not real nor do they accurately represent the existence
of what happens inside humans. The concepts of 'thought/thinking and
emotion/feeling are simplistic socially-defined concepts to enable some kind
of communication. In other words, we do NOT have thoughts. We have some
internal experiences, that part of which we simplify and baggage up to
restrict our perception of it and then put it into a socially and
theoretically-defined conceptual box that we call a 'thought'. Same with a
feeling. What actuslly happens inside ourselves is more complex, richer and
involves a seamless mix of representational and affective perception. The
fact that we see this in terms of thoughts and feelings is simply
well-conditioned social training that limits awareness and perception.
If you doubt this, it is obvious in the literature that it is necessary to
address that 'thoughts' have affective valence, and on the other hand all
of what we call emotions are conceptually perceived and explained via
'thoughts'. If they overlap so much, how come they are seen as distinct?
In theory-terms, perhaps the most obvious evidence that our ideas about
thought and emotion are socially constructed is that there are longer
established alternative conceptualisations of the same phenomena in the
literature of other cultures. A problem of course is in translation, the
translators, limited by the concepts available this recent western culture,
are forced to shoehorn the explanations from elsewhere into this limited
western psychological picture. Nonetheless, you can see at least five
different alternative explanation of role of what we have conceptualised as
thought and feeling in this short analysis from Stanford
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concept-emotion-india /
It seems to be useful to realise the current western paradigm of thinking
about our internal activities (psychology etc) is relatively short term and
relatively unsophisticated compared to earlier developments in some other
cultures. I suggest part of the mess and weakness of design theory has
been lack of attention to these deeper issues and going beyond the
assumptions that have led to what are fairly superficial theories of what we
have called creativity, emotional response, intuition and design cognition.
If theorising about design as a human activity deeply depends on better
understanding of these issues then it seems obvious to identify erroneous
assumptions about them and look further afield for foundations for better
explanations.
Trained self experiment is possible. With some long term intensive training
on self awareness, in the same way as other learning of perceptive
expertise, one can gain a better ability at watching these layers of
experience processes that is over and above the usual. This in the same way
that a wine taster or music expert can perceive more than those untrained.
It leaves one with the same problem of proof as the wine taster - 'whaddya
mean it has a hint of strawberry over diesel fumes, it tastes to me like
any other red wine. . .'.
If you want to read more, I first published on these issues in 1996 and
then mainly around 1999-2003 in the International Journal of Design
Computing and other refereed publications. Preprints of the papers are on my
website at www.love.com.au (my simple definition of design was also first
published in 1996). Some relevant papers are:
Love, T. (2010). Can you feel it? Yes we can! Human Limitations in Design
Theory (invited plenary). Paper presented at the CEPHAD 2010 conference.
Love, T.( 2009). Counter-intuitive Design Thinking: Implications for Design
Education, Research and Practice. Cumulus 38South Conference, Melbourne (pdf
160Kb) . [online proceedings -
http://ocs.sfu.ca/cumulus/index.php/cumulus09/swinrmit/paper/view/432/24]
Love, T.( 2009). Counter-intuitive Design Thinking: Implications for Design
Education, Research and Practice. Cumulus 38South Conference, Melbourne (pdf
160Kb) . [online proceedings -
http://ocs.sfu.ca/cumulus/index.php/cumulus09/swinrmit/paper/view/432/24]
Love, T. (2009) Design and Emotion: Time for a New Direction?. IASDR
Conference 2009: Design / Rigor & Relevance, Seoul: International
Association of Societies of Design Research and the Korean Society for
Design [pdf 57Kb].
Jonas, W., & Love, T. (2004). Interview with Terence Love. In W. Jonas
(Ed.), Mind the Gap! On knowing and not-knowing in design. (pp. 149-163).
Bremen: University of the Arts.
Love, T. (2003). Design and Sense: Implications of Damasio's Neurological
Findings for Design Theory. Proceedings of Science and Technology of Design,
Senses and Sensibility in Technology - Linking Tradition to Innovation
through Design 25-26 September 2003, Lisbon, Portugal.
Love, T. (2001). Concepts and Affects in Computational and Cognitive Models
of Designing. In J. S. Gero & M. L. Maher (Eds.), Computational and
Cognitive Models of Creative Design (pp. 3-23). Sydney: University of
Sydney.
Love, T. (2002). Constructing a coherent cross-disciplinary body of theory
about designing and designs: some philosophical issues. International
Journal of Design Studies, 23(3), 345-361.
Love, T. (2002). Beyond Emotions in Designing & Designs: Epistemological &
Practical Issues. Paper presented at the Design & Emotion '02 Conference,
Loughborough, UK
Love, T. (2001). Strategic Management of Knowledge for Designers:
Meta-Theoretical Hierarchy as a Foundation for Knowledge Management Tools.
In J. Gero & K. Hori (Eds.), Strategic Knowledge and Concept Formation (pp.
3-16). Sydney: Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition, University of
Sydney.
Love, T. (2000). Philosophy of Design: a Meta-theoretical Structure for
Design Theory. Design Studies, 21(3), 293-313.
Love, T. (2000). Computerising Affective Design Cognition. International
Journal of Design Computing, 2.
Love, T. (2000). Educating those involved in changing human futures: a more
coherent programme for design education. In C. Swann & E. Young (Eds.),
Re-inventing Design Education in the University (pp. 242-248). Perth: School
of Design, Curtin University of Technology.
Love, T. (1999). Values Role in Computer Assisted Designing. International
Journal of Design Computing, 1.
Love, T. (1998). Social, environmental and ethical factors in engineering
design theory: a post positivist approach. Unpublished PhD thesis,
University of Western Australia, Perth.
Love, T. (1996). Social, environmental and ethical factors: their
implications for design theory. In M. A. Groves & S. Wong (Eds.), Design for
People (pp. 199-206). Perth: Edith Cowan University.
Best wishes ,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
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--
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Keith Russell
Sent: Thursday, 6 February 2014 6:21 AM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design
Subject: Re: Engineering and Culture -conflicts?
Dear Mike,
Passed the first year philosophy distinctions being made, and beyond Terry¹s
use of a weasel word such as ³essence², the issue for me is: ³what insights
do we gain when we make this distinction?². And, by extension:
³what insights does Terry gain when he makes his distinctions²; and, ³what
insights does Don gain when he makes his distinctions²?
That is, if we distinguish between the observable body responses and the
account of affects (emotions) that people might make in a causal account (we
observed that they blushed - they said they felt embarrassed), what is the
new knowledge or awareness that we have gained and then, what are we able to
do with this new knowledge or awareness?
My PhD, for example, spends much time offering theoretical accounts of the
affects that we structure in our engagements with literary objects. I argue
that the affects (emotions) that we cultivate with these objects are
cultural and historical and psychological etc. I have to presume that the
texts (objects) are received within a knowing cultural structure. I do NOT
presume or care whether there is an ACTUAL relationship such that ³I cried
when the heroine died because I felt sad². Feeling sad is one way of
structuring the reader¹s relationship with this textual event. The fact that
the reader might claim ³ownership² of this emotion seems natural to many
people, but it really is insignificant in my experiment. Hegel helps here
when he complains (somewhere - I don¹t have a source beyond my memory for
this) that the problem with people¹s experiences with art is that they
cuddle their emotions (³I like this painting²).
Taking this ³objective² approach to distinctions, we can allow ourselves to
formulate experiments that then might produce useful outcomes.
Whether we need to philosophically PROVE in some kind of ABSOLUTE way the
TRUTH of our claims is another issue.
Science does not move forward by avoiding distinctions nor does it advance
by whipping itself nightly with sets of irritant distinctions that have no
operational significance. They landed on the moon with an account of Pi to
4 decimal places. This was accurate enough to do the job. Philosophically it
did not answer the problem of root 2.
From my perspective, Terry wants to make distinctions that are useful to
him. I often find his distinctions to be useful to my work. Sometimes Terry
seems to proceed as if he is justifying his approach by recourse to some
TRUTH in his approach that overpowers the distinctions that other people
bother to make that are useful to them. Sometimes he seems to be arguing for
consistency in the approaches of other people, which is a good thing to ask
for and other times he seems to be simply pointing out that there is a lack
of an ABSOLUTE in the account that others give. I take from Terry the dose
of CORRECTIVE logic that I need and I resist the tempting but tart apples in
the bowl.
So says a student of Plato this Thursday.
Cheers
keith
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