The distinction between discovering what is, versus creating what yet isn’t covers over a region of action that is far more important and common than either — a region Bruno Latour called (after Étienne Souriau) called instauration, the act of discovering-creating in collaboration with the thing being brought into existence. Anyone who actually crafts real … Continue reading Instaurationalism
Once we finally recognize the degree to which truth is instaurated through our own participation in our own local and contingent patch of reality, we are faced with a decision, which is an ultimate matter of faith: We can take this recognition of truth’s being as somehow absolute, or We can take this recognition of … Continue reading Instaurationalism’s fork
Most “truth is a construct” type constructivists appear to have retained a vestigial correspondence theory of truth; that is, they take truth to be a little mental duplicate of, or model of or, in extreme cases, a substitute for, reality. Truth is true to the degree that it corresponds to reality. According to a correspondence-constructivist … Continue reading Instrumental-instaurationism?
From Latour’s Inquiry into Modes of Existence, a discussion on the concept of instauration (underlines added by me): To say that something — a scientific fact, a house, a play, an idol, a group — is “constructed,” is to say at least three different things that we must manage to get across simultaneously — and … Continue reading Instauration
If we somehow manage to stop interposing concepts between ourselves and reality — something that any meditator will tell you is easier to think about than to do — and to simply attend to the present, can we spontaneously receive what we — I — now find here in this present? Is receiving the given … Continue reading Visitations
What Zwicky and Heidegger have in common is they both see truth as a revelation of that toward which the inattentive are oblivious. We may respond to these revelations in various ways. Language and conceptualization are among the responses available to us, but non-linguistic practical or moral responses are possible as well, and sometimes necessary. … Continue reading Cabal of the unheard word
Let’s stop distorting the meaning of subjectivity by situating it within an essentially objective world. But that objective world within which we understand ourselves to be situated is produced by our subjectivity, through its own participation in reality. It is reality within which we are situated. Objectivity (and the objective truth we know about it) … Continue reading Reenworld thyself
(I’m trying to get back to publishing my ideas, even when they are far from perfect. For some reason I’ve been inclined to leave most of what I write private, but I’m going to make myself start putting things out there again. ) My immersion in the philosophical work of Jan Zwicky has given me … Continue reading Re-cranking the writing machine
I have been thinking a lot about “background philosophies”, the ideas we think with, and “foreground philosophies”, the ideas we think about. I have equated background philosophies with subjects. Whether it is a personal subject, or an academic subject, it does not matter. My thought has brought me to an understanding of subjects that on … Continue reading On the subject of subjects
It occurs to me this morning that Liz Sanders’s useful/usable/desirable framework is the heart of what could be thought of as a universal design brief. Useful: The design satisfies functional needs. Usable: The design minimizes functional obstacles. Desirable: The design is valuable beyond its function. The goal of design research is to particularize this brief. … Continue reading The universal design brief
Nick Gall and I have developed three modes of conversation: debate, dialogue and dialectic. Debate is conversing with the intention of advancing our own ideas against the other’s. This is an arguing mode of conversation. Dialogue is conversing with the intention of getting inside the other’s ideas and really understanding them so that multiple ideas … Continue reading 3D conversations
I want to lay out a basic vocabulary for my project of approaching philosophy as a design discipline. * This is a very sketchy endeavor. I’m presenting even the philosophy that justifies and encourages approaching philosophy this way as itself something I designed. This philosophy makes no claims to truth, only to being one good … Continue reading Sketchy endeavor
Let’s define faith as an configuration of intuitive faculties (which I will simply call intuitions) within a psyche. Different intuitions (again, the faculties, not their content) coordinate themselves societally, which produce a certain form of subjectivity, with its own ways of conceiving, perceiving, interpreting, inferring, responding, etc. Subjectivity can be changed if these intuition systems … Continue reading Faith as intuition system
“Depth” can mean thoroughness. If you discuss or explore a matter “in depth”, you talk about it or look into it, in all its detail, to understand how the details hang together. “Depth” can also mean foundationality, or (since I have a mild allergy to foundation metaphors) degree of structural dependence. A deep change alters … Continue reading Deep thoughts on depth
Quoted in Gabriele Tarde’s Laws of Repetition: “Scientific knowledge need not necessarily take its starting-point from the most minute hypothetical and unknown things. It begins wherever matter forms units of a like order which can be compared with and measured by one another, and wherever such units combine as units of a higher order and … Continue reading Repetition of conceptions
A note on word choice: I am experimenting with using the word “conception” in place of “concept”. A conception is a conceiving move that produces a concept. A concept can be one of any number of artifacts, all of which can be viewed as alike in that they are produced and reproduced (comprehended) by the … Continue reading Reconceiving conceptions, part 1
When people ask me what design research is, my favorite answer is “precision inspiration”. I know this might seem slightly business romantic, but my meaning is exact, clear, concrete — even a bit technical. * I’ll start by explaining what research is pragmatically, in terms of what it does. And because I’m a business guy, … Continue reading “Precision inspiration”
Yesterday, Nick freaked me out about the existence of Anne-Marie Willis’s paper “Ontological Designing”. I was so distressed about possibly being scooped, and also about the state of my current project — a distress possibly biologically amplified by an infected eyelid — that I barely slept last night. I was dreaming about this stuff. Today … Continue reading Anne-Marie Willis’s “Ontological Designing”
Over the weekend Susan pressed me for details on how an enworldment can be intentionally changed. How does enworldment design differ from Stoicism’s mental toughening-up exercises, or new age self-helpers who advise us to tell ourselves a new story? It was helpful to be forced to get concrete, and to make some contrasts with transformational … Continue reading Differentiating enworldment design
As preparation for writing my next book, tentatively titled Enworldment (A Philosophy of Design of Philosophy), I’m indexing the articles I’ve written on approaching philosophy as a design discipline. Some of the earlier articles have a blunt simplicity to them that I want to recover, at least for the introduction. I’m going to list some of … Continue reading Enworldment