I got curious about how many times on this site I’ve repeated my favorite Wittgenstein quote “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about.’” The answer is: a lot. Too many times I’ve called this quote my favorite definition of philosophy, or my favorite articulation of philosophy’s purpose. But this is … Continue reading Please don’t disassemble my philosophy
I just found a post from a baker’s dozen years ago that does a good job of articulating my views on radical creativity, perplexity and philosophy. Confusingly, I called it “pro-lifer” probably a pun on being a lifer in the professional world. It is a bad title. But the post itself is good. I want … Continue reading A case for business philosophy
I am designing a vocabulary for discussing how understanding works, with special emphasis on the relationship between existing understandings, failures of understanding, (also known as perplexities), and extremely novel understandings (also known as epiphanies). All my subjects of interest — design, philosophy and religion — are urgently concerned with epiphanies. But each is concerned with … Continue reading Conceptive vocabulary
DISCLAIMER: This post is a big mess (which is why it’s been hidden from November 2020 until today March 31, 2021), but it’s got a lot of good, useful stuff in it, so I’m making it public. ================= In the winter of 2002, I developed a new life-changing habit. I began waking up early in … Continue reading Design Pragmatism
Ludwig Wittgenstein gave me my best conception of philosophy when he said “the structure of a philosophical problem is ‘here I do not know how to move around.’”
Some people love design research for purely functional reasons: it helps designers do a much better job. Others just love the process itself, finding the conversations intrinsically pleasant and interesting. These reasons matter to me, too, to some extent, but they never quite leave the range of liking and cross over into loving. Here are … Continue reading Reasons to love design research
A person who is too busy, too stressed or too knowing — or all at once — cannot hear anything outside their immediate understanding. In other words, they cannot philosophize, and will not permit philosophy to happen in their presence. Their world is a world of expertise. I define philosophy as Wittgenstein did: “the structure … Continue reading Expertise versus philosophy
Philosophy as noun (“a philosophy”) and philosophy as verb (“doing philosophy”) are not the same. The activity of philosophy should not be sequestered pondering. Philosophy should be part of other activities — especially activities whose aim is innovation, where established effective methods of thinking do not yet exist. I accept Wittgenstein’s characterization of philosophy: “A … Continue reading Plan for a talk
One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from Wittgenstein: “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about.’ ” I love it for two reasons. First, it shows how philosophy is not an archaic style of theoretical speculation that has been supplanted by science. Philosophy is a perpetual discovery of new scientific … Continue reading Innovation
In his instant-classic The Lean Startup, Eric Ries restores some crucial components of the Scientific Method to innovation processes, long-neglected by “scientific” management. Among his most important restorations is the the experimental practices that are the heart of scientific discovery. This is enormously important: without experiment, the creative dimension of science is lost and “scientific … Continue reading Scientific Method vs Lean Startup
For expertise the unknown means “I still haven’t figured out the answer to this problem.” Expertise lacks the answer, but what the question is and how it will produce an answer is not in question. For philosophy the unknown means “I still haven’t figured out how to think about this problem.” Philosophy lacks not only … Continue reading “I don’t know my way about”
For me, there are two modes of philosophy left, a sort of philosophical alpha and omega of starting thought and finishing it (in the sense of finishing furniture): Wittgenstein’s formulation, “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’.” This I see as philosophy proper: thought seeking footing in chaos. The design … Continue reading What’s left of philosophy for me
“A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about.’” — Wittgenstein “The free intellect copies human life, but it considers this life to be something good and seems to be quite satisfied with it. That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in … Continue reading Innovation and the free intellect
I have mixed feelings about Bruce Nussbaum’s “Design Thinking Is A Failed Experiment. So What’s Next?” On one hand, I agree with every word of it. For instance, this statement is dead-on: “Companies were comfortable and welcoming to Design Thinking because it was packaged as a process.” Design thinking more or less had to bow … Continue reading Answering Bruce Nussbaum
We will re-engineer something a thousand times before we will re-think it. * We never have time to think, because we have so much to do. We have so much to do, because we never take time to think. * We refuse to think about what we find difficult to think about. Q: What makes … Continue reading “I don’t know my way about.”
There comes a point when how you think imposes tangible limits on what you can think. A problem is recognized — felt — but when you try to think it out, you arrive at the edge of thinkability. You cannot resolve this problem with the intellectual moves that ordinarily work to resolve your everyday problems. … Continue reading Pro-lifer
When a problem obviously exists, but clarity to articulate it is lacking, no amount of effort in solving the problem will produce a solution. It only produces more unclarity. But this does not stop us. We create tons of alternative clarity to distract us. We execute clearly defined processes in clearly defined plans. We produce … Continue reading Philosophy in business
Mere competence cannot surpass mediocrity, no matter how perfectly it achieves its goals. This is because mediocrity conceives of excellence in negative terms: as an absence of flaws. Excellence, however, is a positive matter, and it consists in the presence of something valuable. * The frank display of flaws can be a way to flaunt … Continue reading Tweaking our way to greatness
When chaos is experienced, a failure of reason has already occurred. In chaos we encounter realities our reason is not equipped to order and make sense of. This is the experience of perplexity, where we relive the horror of birth. The only people in the world perverse enough to find meaning in such meaninglessness are … Continue reading Useless (or worse)
Behind every explicit thought is tacit know-how: knowing how to think this thought. How do we learn to think a thought? Through confrontation with thoughts we do not yet know how to think. What does this confrontation feel like? Anxiety. It is the anxiety of an alien poem. What do we do with this anxiety? … Continue reading Avoidance, invalidation, and vivisection