Hi Terry,
Thanks for your reply. Your point that design argumentation is "primarily (and perhaps purely) to solve a pedagogical problem" is worth thinking about and I haven’t yet made up my mind on my standpoint. I think your point touches on a larger question. What is the value of knowledge?
On the one hand it seems to make sense that the knowledge produced by research is valuable when it is useful. For example, imagine a situation where the knowledge produced by some design research work is codified in a software tool that makes a difference to designers’ professional work. We might say that the software tool is valuable when it reliably prompts the designers to more regularly produce good designs.
But is it true that a thing is more valuable when it is produced by a reliable production procedure?
Take the analogy of a cup of coffee*. I’m not convinced that a cup of coffee which is produced by a reliable coffee machine—i.e., one that regularly produces good cups of coffee—is of more value than an equally good cup of coffee that is produced by an unreliable coffee machine.
This is my third post in this thread so I will opt out of the rest of the conversation.
Best,
Luke
*Pritchard, Duncan, Turri, John and Carter, J. Adam, "The Value of Knowledge", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/knowledge-value/>.
Luke Feast, Ph.D. | Industrial Design | Senior Lecturer | Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies | Auckland University of Technology | New Zealand | Email [log in to unmask] | +64 9 921 9999 ext 6017
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|