Dear Terry,
You risk of repeating old argumentative patterns when you post a comment that shows the danger of going off half-cocked. You may think that you are writing an insightful but unpolished post. This is not so as I see it. In the rush to send off a swift reply, you failed to read carefully what I wrote. You did not respond to or disprove my comment. You did not read what I wrote carefully, nor analyze it well enough to offer a reply. In the rush to reply, you’ve put forward a hasty argument that get what I wrote wrong. One result is a confused reply.
Your key objection seems to be that I wrote: “knowledge is a property of consciousness.” You claim that this sentence entails "a false noun-verb developments.” You must show that this is so, and why. You don’t.
I wrote a process description. A process description examines aspects of phen0mena that must be considered as processes in a relational network or matrix. To say that “knowledge is a property of consciousness” is not like saying, “this battery belongs here at the base of the power transmission unit.” I did not bolt together inanimate things. I described relations among processes.
Further, I explained why this proposition doesn’t really answer the question. Data and information may be stored and treated mechanically. They may thus be defined in a fairly crisp way. Whether that definition is right or wrong, limited or extensive, a technology or a technical system may be strictly defined. In contrast, knowledge requires fluid definitions, and these definitions must always be framed in terms of the context and application.
The context and application involve the living systems that generate knowledge.
Knowledge is a property of consciousness. Information may be stored. Knowledge must be embodied. A computer may store information. Only a human being may embody knowledge. Some higher mammals clearly embody knowledge, as do some other animals. Since they do not represent their knowledge or create information, I did not consider them.
What I wrote, explicitly, it that knowledge is a process rather than a thing. We can describe the subs-systems of the knowing process as parts of the larger and smaller systems off which they are a part. In that sense, it may sound as though I am writing about things, but only if you read the sentence out of context. I was describing a process. To write: “knowledge is a property of consciousness” is something like writing: “the perfect cutting edge of sword begins to emerge after folding and hammering the steel out 300 times. This give it the right temper, and it gives the steel properties that allow it to take a strong, durable edge. It is important to quench the blade at temperature [x] for the first 50 quenches, changing the temperature of the quench to [x-1 ... x-2 ... x-3] during there last stages, down to [y] for the final quench.” It may seem that I am describing an object, but I am describing a process. The end result of this process is to produce an object perfectly fitted for a role in another process.
This does not simply describe a sword, but a rage of issues embodied in a tradition and a culture. Catharina Blomberg takes this approach in _The Heart of the Warrior. Origins and Religious Background of the Samurai System in Feudal Japan_, describing networks of culture, ethos, ethics, behavior, and artifacts that once constituted the living and difficult to describe processes of a way of life.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Heart-Warrior-Religious-Background-1995-01-19/dp/B01FKTK8L6
https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Warrior-Origins-Religious-Background/dp/1873410131
Seen from another perspective in the system, we must describe the warriors and the traditions of the great samurai families:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Autumn-Lightning-Education-American-Samurai/dp/1570621152
https://www.amazon.com/Autumn-Lightning-Education-American-Samurai/dp/1570621152
I do not suggest that you need attend to the intricacies of samurai culture. I do assert that you must be able to understand the nature of process descriptions, and the role they play enlarger networks of behavior, culture, and knowledge to address these kinds of problems fruitfully.
There are several giant figures in learning to describe process issues — in many cases, the work models the kinds of steps that we must take; in some cases that actually describe how to to do it.
I suggest Clifford Gertz, Ruth Benedict, George Herbert Mead, John Dewey, Martha Nussbaum, Søren Kierkegaard, and Primo Levy.
How does one make an effective descriptive claim? I’d suggest reading Helen Sword’s two books with Harvard University Press. One is titled _Sylish Academic Writing_- The other is titled _Air & Light & Time & Space. How Successful Academics Write._. If you want to use the principles of neuroscience to write better, try Steven Pinker’s _The Sense of Style. The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century._.
By now, you have noticed that I did not spend much time on your arguments. That’s because you did not state a clear argument in your post. You offered a couple of hints with the promise that if I were to read your earlier paper, I’d find the answers.
As I see it, you must make your own, full argument in the text at hand. You did not do this. You said that I was wrong and tat I must read elsewhere too learn why.
Francis asked a question. I provided the sources he requested. Then I wrote an argument, a brief one.
Then, I offered resources to support my view — and I offered the resources that would allow people to get up to speed. External sources cannot replace the author’s argument. You confuse the two, and you provided links to your own conference papers as sources. That is, you 1) fail to state the specific claims you assert in describing my view as mistaken, and 2) you do not bother to show which rebuttal appears at what point in four long papers. The lack of a clear point in the thread means that these papers don’t support a statement you have made here, on the list. The careless way you cite the papers means that we must read the papers in full by way of attempting to infer the points you should have state clearly.
Francois asked a clear question. I answered. To clarify my position I offered a short, self-contained argument. Then I provided key broad sources for multiple views in two widely cited reference works, along with several responsible scientists doing first-rate work on this issues.
Antonio Damasio is an important thinker in these fields, but you are not giving a serious account of Damasio’s ideas. To do that, you must take the time to tell us what he writes — and you must provide appropriate sources that allow us to see whether Damasio’s account is what you say it is. Otherwise, it’s like those kids on the cricket field who settle an argument by shouting, “Well my uncle saw Don Bradman play, and my uncle says I should swing like this!”
Since I’m not really sure what you wrote here, I’m not trying to reply.
I am simply restating the brief sentence that you claim “has problems epistemologically as a derivative of a false noun-verb development.” The sentence is a process description. If there are epistemological problems, or problems that “derive” from “false noun-verb development” please show the problems.
Aa I wrote, I was not making a complete argument in my response to Francois. I made a few short arguments. These were complete as far as they went, but that wasn’t very far. What I also did was to provide sources and resources for people who want to read up on the problem of knowledge.
A stack of five conference papers hosted elsewhere don’t convince me in the absence of an argument here. You don’t even bother to tell us what Antonio Damasio writes though careful cited quotes or carefully cite paraphrases. You jumble up your own precis from memory.
It is my view that one should not put together a careless and peremptory critique. If you are going to understand the nature and process of knowledge, we require care. It’s not as though the PhD-Design list will suffer if we must wait two or three days for a careful post that states what you intend. As it is, I don’t know if what you wrote is what you intended to write, but you simply wrote up other, better ideas in a clumsy way. Or, perhaps, what you wrote is what you did intend to write. If so, it really is wrong, and if it is not wrote, it is clumsy and imprecise.
This all began with a brief sentence, the statement that “knowledge is a property of consciousness.” You claim that my brief statement “has problems epistemologically as a derivative of a false noun-verb development.” From there, you wander off to a great many poorly-sourced and confusing claims.
Please start by explaining, precisely, why my brief statement “has problems epistemologically as a derivative of a false noun-verb development.”
If we are going to discuss knowledge, the topic requires us to take ourselves and each other seriously enough to give it our best effort.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
—
Terry Love wrote:
—snip—
Great posts. Thanks.
I'd like to suggest there is a different and better way of understanding this that is more use to designs and design researchers and [provides the basis for better theory on this in most areas of design theory and research. I would like to preface what follows that I am under time pressure. I appreciaite that Ken like posts to be well polished but my time is limited this morning and I'm hoping only that the gist of the analysis is included in a way that is unambiguous.
Ken wrote in this thread that,
'Knowledge is a property of consciousness'
This can be considered incorrect on many fronts. For a start it has problems epistemologically as a derivative of a false noun-verb development. Consciousness doesn't exist as an object - in the same way that 'a swim' doesn’t exist as an object . Hence there are problems even having the proposition that knowledge is a property of consciousness.
That is, however, a bit of a distraction.
There is a completely different way of understanding 'knowing' from the ways that we know a lot more physiologically now. That shapes how we can view 'knowing' very differently - pretty well to the point that you can say that knowledge doesn't exist - ever.
I'll precis Damasio and give the simplest version of the analysis and reasoning,
The 'activity of knowing' is the physiological sensing of (usually unconsciously represented) dynamic physiological stat triggered by the conscious or subconscious awareness of a neural map representing a chunk of information, and then comparing that triggered dynamic physiological state with reference physiological states.
If the triggered dynamic physiological state compares favourably with the dynamic reference physiological states, then this leads to an additional dynamic physiological state (and its associated neural maps) that is the sensation that one 'knows'. In the case of some information also may result in an addition longer term neural mapping (a memory) that one 'knows' - often referred to as one 'understands' that information.
It’s a process, and in this there is no 'knowledge' as an object.
More importantly for design theory and design research, the above explanation provides the basis for understanding how illusion and delusion happen to the point that many design theories actually don't make any sense. For designers and users, I've pointed many times to one aspect of this that such delusions can happen in situations with 2 or more feedback loops (see below).
Damasio gives the details of the above analyses in his classic texts from the 1990s. I wrote a brief precis of Damasio's findings for designers in 2003 (see below).
References
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. Available
http://www.love.com.au/docs/2003/Damasio.htm
)
Also
http://www.love.com.au/docs/2010/Des-guide-gap-2feedbackloop.pdf
http://www.love.com.au/docs/2010/CEPHAD-feeling-delusion.pdf
Love, T. (2009). Complicated and Complex Crime Prevention and the 2 Feedback Loop Law. In T. Cooper, P. Cozens, K. Dorst, P. Henry & T. Love (Eds.), Proceedings of iDOC'09 'What's Up Doc' International Design Out Crime Conference. Perth: Design Out Crime Research Centre. Available
http://www.love.com.au/docs/2009/idoc09-tl.htm
)
Best regards,
Terry
==
Dr Terence Love
MICA, PMACM, MAISA, FDRS, AMIMechE
Director
Design Out Crime & CPTED Centre
Perth, Western Australia
[log in to unmask]
www.designoutcrime.org
+61 (0)4 3497 5848
==
ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
—snip—
Prior posts included in Terry’s post:
—snip—
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Thursday, 26 October 2017 6:01 AM
To: PhD-Design <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Knowledge
Dear Francois and All,
This discussion began back in July. I have been lurking and reading since then. At one point, I was so annoyed that I quietly unsubscribed. I returned again to find myself equally annoyed.
My annoyance comes from two facts. The first is that people are not bothering to read carefully what others write. Consider your last post to David Sless, for example. David did not write that artifacts *are* metaphors. He wrote that we use metaphors in our accounts of things, including our accounts of artifacts.
The other problem is that folks are not using words carefully or clearly. With the exception of Luke Feast and Klaus Krippendorff, people have been using the same words in several different ways — especially the words information, know, knowing, and knowledge — without distinguishing between and among the different meanings that they employ when they use those words. I am sympathetic to some of the statements about the idea of knowledge, but only Luke and Klaus have written carefully using the word knowledge in a precise way, making their meaning clear. I also appreciated Eduardo Corte-Real’s careful clarification on differences between languages.
Francois’s recent call for help is the first post that seemed genuinely sensible to me. That is, he is asking what the word “knowledge” means in English. I am attaching a .pdf with definitions of the terms “information,” “know,” and “knowledge” from a number of dictionaries. I harvested these definitions back in 2002. Since the versions of the English language documented in the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary haven’t changed much over the past decade and a half, I have not gone back to harvest another set of definitions. Reformatting from web to MS Word to .pdf takes time, so I hope that you will forgive the long, dense blocks of text. Even without reformatting, this runs 38 pages of 12-point type.
The point is that it begins to answer your question.
It doesn’t really answer the question, though. Data and information may be stored and treated mechanically. They may thus be subject to a fairly crisp definition. Whether that definition is right or wrong, limited or extensive, a technology or a technical system may be strictly defined. In contrast, knowledge requires fluid definitions, and these definitions must always be framed in terms of the context and application.
Knowledge is a property of consciousness. Information may be stored. Knowledge must be embodied. A computer may store information. Only a human being may embody knowledge. Some higher mammals clearly embody knowledge, as do some other animals. Since they do not represent their knowledge or create information, I will not consider them.
When a knowing being seeks to transmit knowledge by representing it in external form, the knowledge leaves the state of knowledge to become information. It is in essence reconstituted as knowledge when another being takes the information into his or her person to embody it, giving it substance through agency.
Philosophers and scientists have been wrestling with the problem of knowledge for many years. This wrestling has become increasingly sophisticated and fruitful during the past century. Some of the most distinguished – including the chemist Michael Polanyi have written extensively on knowledge. While I appreciated Luke’s post mentioning Polanyi, I don’t see Polanyi’s views as representing an anti-intellectualist position. (To be clear, Luke did not say that Polanyi represents an anti-intellectualist position — he simply quoted one proposition from one of Polanyi’s books that is often repeated in isolation by those who represent an anti-intellectualist position.) Those who do not think carefully limit themselves to this proposition and a few others.
Polanyi stated his full view of knowledge in the 1958 masterpiece, Personal Knowledge.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Personal-Knowledge-Towards-Post-critical-Philosophy/dp/041515149X
https://www.amazon.com/Personal-Knowledge-Towards-Post-Critical-Philosophy/dp/0226672883
What Polanyi says about tacit knowledge is true, but this truncated claim is often stated outside Polanyi’s own philosophical system. People in the arts tend to know and use only one of Polanyi's books, The Tacit Dimension, rather than drawing on his major philosophical work, Personal Knowledge. Michael Polanyi’s philosophical approach can be deployed effectively, but not if we reduce his work to one concept, tacit knowledge, and treat that one concept out of the context of his larger reflections on knowledge.
Polanyi was a deep thinker, and an important scientist — far more important than most people realize. Polanyi was a physical chemist who made fundamental contributions to science. Many felt that he would have won the Nobel Prize if he had remained in science. Two of his students did win the Nobel Prize in chemistry, and so did his son. Polanyi himself moved into the social sciences, making deep contributions to economics, as well as to philosophy.
It is problematic to take Polanyi's work on tacit knowledge out of the context of Polanyi’s overall work by using the single phrase “tacit knowledge” as though “tacit knowledge” is how any group of human beings knows things. We all use tacit knowledge. This does not mean that we rely only on tacit knowledge. (That’s what I think that Luke was getting at.) All human beings possess and use tacit knowledge. Even though we know more than we can say, we cannot unambiguously communicate more than we can say.
It is difficult to understand what knowledge “is” without careful study, deep reflection, and great care in defining the meanings of the words we use. I place the word “is” in quotation marks to state that this verb is merely a placeholder for a lengthy discussion I will not attempt to make here.
The point of this post is first, to answer Francois’s request for help with definitions. Second, it is to argue that no definition of knowledge is sufficient or adequate outside a larger contextual consideration. Luke and Klaus hinted at that context, and so did David. Johann van der Merwe only barely hinted at it — while I thought his post was interesting and intelligent, dictionary definitions of knowledge pointedly do not equal “understanding, comprehension, mastery.” Johann was making a short restatement of his reading of the dictionary. It takes several dozen pages in the OED and Merriam-Webster’s to define knowledge. That is far more than three words.
You can’t stop with the dictionary definitions. Dictionaries describe usage and meaning in different times. To frame the meanings of the words “know” and “knowledge” requires deeper consideration. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy offer serious articles. The discussion of knowledge appears in several articles. Both encyclopedias have excellent search engines, so searching for the word “knowledge” will lead the careful reader to half a dozen useful articles in each case.
https://plato.stanford.edu
http://www.iep.utm.edu
Despite my occasional irritation, the thread has served a useful purpose. It prompted me to read Polanyi again. I have most of his books — but I haven’t read Personal Knowledge since 1976, and it is time to read it again. Those who are interested in Polanyi’s work will also find Mary Jo Nye’s _Michael Polanyi and His Generation: Origins of the Social Construction of Science_ useful, along with the excellent biographies on Polanyi by Mark Mitchell titled _Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing_, and by William Taussig Scott and Martin Moleski titled _Michael Polanyi: Scientist and Philosopher_. The theologian and philosopher Drusilla Scott has also written two excellent books, _Everyman Revived. The Common Sense of Michael Polanyi._ and _Michael Polanyi_.
Those who are interested in reading more about Polanyi’s work might also look into the online journal of The Polanyi Society
http://polanyisociety.org
One reason that I find Michael Polanyi especially relevant is that he did not primarily write for an audience of professional philosophers. Instead, he attempted to think deeply on the question of knowledge in a way that sheds light on the world of everyday experience — the world we deal with when we engage in design to serve human beings.
But if you don’t want to think about Polanyi’s ideas, no need. What is necessary is to get up to speed for a serious conversation on knowledge by at least reading the articles available free in two major peer reviewed web encyclopedias, the SEP and the IEP. And that leads meet the second point I got out of this thread.
If we are to draw real value from a list such as this, it is vital that we take the time to read the material we are talking about — both what we post to each other, and the literature of the ideas we discuss and describe. Is there any point in discussing knowledge on a design research list? Perhaps — or perhaps not. Speaking for myself, I think this is a worthy topic for any research list, and a necessary topic for anyone involved in university-level education. If we are going to discuss knowledge, the topic requires us to take ourselves and each other seriously enough to give it our best effort.
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL:
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia
http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
—snip—
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