I'm with Johann on this one.
Pure math is a form of philosophy because it deals with purely conceptual
entities.
Scientists don't argue about whether 1+1 is really 2, even though they all
know about the axiomatic contexts (bases, etc.) and many of them have at
least a sense of the philosophical aspects of the arguments for and against
addition.
For us designerly folks, though, it's pretty much within our context that
1+1 will always be 2 - until someone comes up with some other way of doing
things that leads to reliably better results. (I can't really see that
happening any time soon.)

A bigger question, for me, is this whole 'knowledge' thing. What is it?
Again, the philosophers can't agree. "Justified true belief" seems ok, but
it isn't for all kinds of reasons. And the question of whether we "know"
something or not can cause all kinds of distractions and arguments.

That's why I prefer to reserve "knowledge" for things that are only given
by fiat, like my name, or that '1' represents the integer quantity greater
than 0 and less than 2 (again, modulo the axiomatic context). Everything
else is a belief. But not all beliefs are equal. We can judge the validity
of beliefs by the evidence in favour of, and against, any given claim. We
can thus put our beliefs in a rank ordering from best (i.e., most robust
with respect to evidence) to worst. This moves a discussion away from
whether some claim is necessarily true for an agent, and towards an
external body of "stuff" (the evidence). By keeping a discussion pointed
away, as it were, from the participants, one is less likely to end up
arguing about the agents rather than the arguments they make and the
evidence they use.

We have to be very careful about evidence nonetheless. For instance, the
way information is presented can alter our beliefs, even if the content of
the information is the same. I would recommend Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast
and Slow" for that. He shows very clearly not only how unreliable the human
mind is, but also how, with the right tools and training, one can improve
how we think and the actions we take as a result.

And if we take almost everything as a belief rather than knowledge, we're
(presumably) more motivated to check the evidence every time we want to
apply a belief to a situation (which connects back to Johann's remark about
always asking experts when starting a new project for key information).

As for objectivity, again I prefer to stick to definitions that are
relevant to my work. I don't mean to minimize the work philosophers; it's a
matter of context. I found a nice definition that works for me: "Objective
knowledge consists of things that can be observed or reproduced, or is made
up of hard facts that come from consensus built over time" (
http://classroom.synonym.com/examples-objective-knowledge-23431.html) You
have to kind of filter out the "knowledge" aspects of the definition, but I
hope you see what I mean. I think the reproducibility aspect is perhaps the
most important part of it, and is something that, in my experience, isn't
considered often enough when discussing it.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents.

\V/_  /fas

*Prof. Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.*
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/
ORCID: 0000-0002-3689-5112 <http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3689-5112>
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

On 3 February 2017 at 00:13, Johann van der Merwe <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> To Jeremy & Stanislav
> Can we stick to what designers (for this is a list for designers) can work
> with?
>
> 1+1 = 2 will always be the norm, something to believe in, despite what
> Russell or anyone else might have proven or not proven. And, for the people
> we design for, this is not 'ideal knowledge', but practical knowledge.
> This same type of 'objective' knowledge of materials can be taught to
> design students, until proof surfaces of something else: certain plastics
> melt at such-and-such a degree Celsius, and can be used for extrusion,
> while other plastics cannot (at least not yet). And whether you prefer
> doing your drawings by hand or using a computer programme, your sketches
> for the new product design you're working on has to be millimeter perfect,
> or else it will be a failure in production. Objective knowledge applied.
>
> For all practical circumstances this is so-called 'objective' knowledge,
> which you take at face value (for now), but you never forget to ask (the
> experts) again each time a new project calls for using plastic & extrusion
> (somewhat of an exaggeration, since you really have to keep up with your
> reading for news of plastics research).
>
> For all practical reasons.
>
> For all other reasons to do with design practice and design research
> 'objective' knowledge does not exist (as Protagoras said), and subjective
> knowledge, while being taken into account, is examined closely and compared
> to other 'subjective' inputs. And then the 'real' knowledge of any set of
> circumstances emerge - a hybrid usually, some thing that Michel Callon and
> Bruno Latour experienced first hand using Actor Network Theory. Knowledge
> in terms of design knowing is always a hybrid, for the simple reason that
> we design for a group of people (are supposed to), and as always people
> have conflicting wants and narratives. Who do you listen to? To the
> emerging context.
>
> This is the type of discussion that I would like to see around the
> objective / subjective 'talking' point.
> Johann
>
> On 3 February 2017 at 05:57, Stanislav Roudavski <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > 1+1=2
> >
> > Objective? :) It took Russel and Whitehead 300+ pages to 'almost' prove
> > this in Principia Mathematica, not talking about the later objections
> > (Gödel).
> >
> >
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>
>
> --
> Dr. Johann van der Merwe
> Independent Design Researcher
>
>
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