Synesis means together-being, and it means it in at least three senses: It means the together-being of the object of experience. This object may be a perceived thing or a conceived idea. It means the together-being of the first-person singular subject of experience. The I integrates each new experience with existing understanding. It means the … Continue reading Threefold synesis
The Greek word synesis – literally, “togethering” – means understanding. In synesis many forms of bringing together are brought together: bringing together one’s own various intuitions, which bring together various perceptions and ideas into understandings, which are then brought together with the rest of one’s understandings in a general understanding of everything. And once something … Continue reading Synesis and intellectual conscience
Learning is never just a passive transmission of truths from one mind to another. Learning is an integration of new knowledge into an existing body of knowledge. All this knowledge, old and new, is held together with intuitive knowing — pre-verbal relating, responding or feeling — of various kinds. This intuitive holding-together is what is … Continue reading Synesis and perplexity
Given the emotional connotations of the word “empathy” and my suspicion that few people have actually had firsthand experiences with empathy outside of mere emotional understanding, I am going to re-adopt the term synesis. Synesis is a greek word for understanding, and it literally means togetherness. It is a capacity to take-together otherwise chaotic data … Continue reading Synesis
To understand another culture it is necessary for an ethnographic investigator to suspend or temporarily suppress their own reflexive cultural judgments, at least long enough to get a sense of how life looks and feels from within the other culture’s lifeworld. If the investigator carries their own convictions and habitual judgments into the investigation, they … Continue reading Synesis
By coming to ever-deepening, ever-expanding agreement with others about the world we share, we come to know one another, the world and ourselves. The self, the other and the world deepens and expands with the sharing. * I saw my profession in a clearer light this morning. * My trajectory has been toward anthropology and … Continue reading Synesis
Synesis is twofold: 1) seeing something coherently as together, and 2) seeing together with others in shared vison. Collectivists neglect the former, and individualists neglect the later. * (Bill) Clinton Democrats and Rockwell Libertarians tend toward individualism. Rove Republicans and Objectivist Libertarians tend toward collectivism. Obama Democrats appear to be transcending individualism and collectivism and … Continue reading Synesis and politics
“They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord; then they went back to their house at Ramah. Elkanah knew his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her. In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son.” – 1 Samuel 1 * Synesis is the Greek word for understanding. It means, literally, “together”. … Continue reading Synesis
Synesis is a word I have needed for a long time. I’ve groped toward this concept with an unusual use of sympathy (contrasted with empathy, a related form of truth, but one that is constructed, objective and removed) and an invented word seeing-with. Synesis represents another dimension of reality, the recognition that behind the face … Continue reading Synesis
I’ve returned to an old line of thought this morning, thinking about synesis, “together-being”. In particular I’m focusing on one line from a post from last year, “Threefold Synesis”, where I expanded the sense of being from the initial two, to three, the first being: “…the together-being of the object of experience. This object may … Continue reading Language of reception
I sent off for three plates yesterday. The ultra-thick Crane’s Lettra I ordered is supposed to arrive day after tomorrow. I have studio time scheduled for the week after Christmas. My first priority is the Jacob’s Ladder reference sheet. Another piece is the (extremely cool-looking) circular Sefirot (Iggulim), which depicts the ray of Divine Light … Continue reading Ten, no more, no less
Common sense is constituted of gestalts. It is shared gestalts that transmit being across scales. If I experience some entity (of whatever kind), with my conceptual mind, participating body, and feeling viscera, as a unity, I become a unity in experiencing it fully. In experiencing the entity’s objective unity as real, I experience my own … Continue reading On the subject of gestalts
Ethnomethodologically speaking, a nonconformist is a human breaching experiment. Breaching experiments violate the tacit rules of the social game. When those rules are violated players no longer know how to move around. Perplexity ensures. Nonconformists inspire perplexity, anxiety and hostility. * If we understand personalities to form and sustain itself through ethnomethods, and if we … Continue reading Nonconformism
Conceptive understanding is a matter of presequence: given some particular fact, to what questions can it be understood to be an answer? This is hermeneutic meaning. Synthetic understanding is a matter of consequence: given some particular fact, what facts follow, logically and or causally? This is pragmatic meaning. But “what follows” is determined by (enabled … Continue reading Enceptive-synthetic
Myriad ways to experience the world are possible, and these ways of seeing the world correspond with particular orderings of intuitive activity. * Can you perceive this dancer to be spinning clockwise and then to be spinning counter-clockwise? Can you feel what kind of effort you are making? There may be inner-chatter associated with your … Continue reading The Click
Susan and I have been debating what wisdom is. We each felt the other’s view was incomplete. I thought her conception was overlapping too much with prudence; she thought mine reduced wisdom with mere open-mindedness. (Actually, she was right.) As we turned the question and viewed it from multiple angles, it became clear, as is … Continue reading Methodic wisdom
I largely rewrote the synesse entry in my Designerly virtues article. “Designerly virtues” is one of the most important things I’ve written this year, and it will be the kernel of Second Natural. One other note: I think Design Instrumentalism is an updated form of existentialism — a pragmatic existentialism that uses design methods. The new … Continue reading Synesse revision
In my decades of design work, collaborating with a wide variety of people from all kinds of disciplinary backgrounds, personalities and workstyles, I’ve noticed that the attitudes most helpful for doing good design work are often reversals of conventional virtues. I’ve developed a habit of humorously flouting these common virtues and valorizing their opposites. Over … Continue reading Designerly virtues
Working in design research, empathy is one of our primary tools. Reflective practitioners quickly learn where they and their teammates have strengths and weaknesses using empathy to produce understanding. Continuing this week’s trend of identifying distinctions and creating categories, here’s a list of skills associated with what is commonly called “empathy” and what I prefer … Continue reading Facets of empathy
Introduction What philosophy is What designers do: empathy (as opposed to art which is sympathetic) creation of useful, usable and desirable things Practical use of philosophy for design Truth as reality interface (a useful, usable and desirable philosophy.) Anatomy of this book: ontology, epistemology, ethic. Ontology Ontology = inquiring into being = asking “in what … Continue reading Outline