I am starting a class on online course creation this month. The class is project-based, centering around the design and implementation of an actual online course. My class project will be an initiation into the enworldment of service design. By enworldment, I mean the practical-experiential manifestation of an understanding, which causes a person to approach, … Continue reading Service design initiation
Faith is not the same as doctrine. Faith is a way of believing: faith is subject. Doctrine is what is believed: doctrine is object. Faith is not the degree of certainty in a belief. Faith is not quantitative. Faith is the quality of belief, the particular way a belief is conceived. If a doctrine is … Continue reading Faith, doctrine and sheer bullshit
There is a plurality of ways to be a pluralist, and pluralism is prepared to accept the pragmatic consequences of this truth by acknowledging that apparent contradictions to any given truth, even the truth of pluralism, does not imply falsehood. Pseudopluralism believes that its view on pluralism is the only valid form of pluralism, and … Continue reading Sermon on the Distributed God
The more radical changes a person has undergone, the less that person will take seriously the claims others make of having reached a final conclusive truth. Every radical change of understanding re-presents the world in light of a new truth. These truths seem conclusive and final. This characteristic of apparent finality, however, is not in … Continue reading You are normal and ok
Love, love is a verb Love is a doing word Fearless on my breath — Massive Attack, “Teardrop” And being is a gerund, a verbal noun formed from the verb be. A being is one who does existence. I think I prefer the use of the word “enworldment” to the pluralist use of “world” for … Continue reading Being of worlds
Some faiths are open-ended. Such a faith is aware that it animates only one way of being — and produces only one way of understanding being (and of responding to being). This way of understanding receives truth, as given, in its one particular way (and responds to being in its one particular way) — but … Continue reading Pluralism and open faith
When thinking about philosophy many people make a fundamental category mistake: They think a philosophy is a system of claims, and that acquiring knowledge of the claims is understanding the philosophy. In doing so, they mistake the philosophy for its content. But learning a philosophy is learning how to do that philosophy, or even better, … Continue reading The Philosophical Click
It requires artifice to live in one world, as one person, among persons. The explicated world, the participatory world, the valued world — these three worlds do not necessarily coincide, harmonize or integrate. Through our own effort, we work to draw these worlds together into a coherent everything. And we accomplish this through selection, suppression, … Continue reading De-cisions
Givenness is the spontaneous, pre-reflective experiencing of something as something. We tend to think of givens as foundational points of departure. However, as history testifies, at least some givens can be changed, to potentially profound effect. The effect of such changes is inconceivable prior to the change, because the scope of conceivability itself is what … Continue reading Transformability of givenness
For an enworldment to become culturally relevant, its praxis must not only be good from the inside but it must also be compelling (beautiful, sublime, fascinating) from the outside. “Inside”: for those who understand and participate in the enworldment, existence becomes manifestly good. “Outside”: for those who experience only the enworldment’s manifestations — its words, … Continue reading Promises of new worlds
Ronald Dworkin’s essay “Liberalism” from the essay collection Public and Private Morality has, so far, been a revelation on the order of Mouffe’s Democratic Paradox. This passage captures a proposed key difference between liberalism and conservatism, both of which, Dworkin acknowledges, desire a conception of liberty, but different conceptions. I think he nails the essential … Continue reading Ronald Dworkin’s “Liberalism”
Sunday, Susan and I got to attend a lec-dem by the great Carnatic vocalist T. M. Krishna. We were especially excited that he was accompanied by violinist, Akkarai Subhalakshmi. I was most excited about the musical performance part of the event, but it turns out the lecture part might have more lasting impact. His lecture … Continue reading T. M. Krishna!
Here is where I am right now: I want to integrate polycentric design practice (design for multiple interacting participants in a defined social system) with my philosophical project, which reconceives philosophy as a genre of design — a genre of polycentric design. This integration of practice and theory yields a polycentric design praxis. This polycentric … Continue reading Polycentric design praxis
Based on my understanding of David Cooper’s characterization of Existentialism, I believe two of my strong convictions may be somewhat heterodox within Existentialism. First, Existentialism should never seek to be a norm. I do not believe many members of the public ought to pursue the Existentialist ideal. Rather, I think most should play their public … Continue reading Contrarian thoughts on the public
Q: Philosophy : Worldview :: Praxis : _____________ A: Philosophy : Worldview :: Praxis : Enworldment
Any experienced, philosophically-sensitive designer who reads the passage below will recognize how indebted design praxis is to Existentialist thought: When we combine Heidegger’s explanation of the shift to the perspective of presence-at-hand with Sartre’s functionalist account of emotions, we obtain as a bonus an interesting explanation of our tendency to pit reason against passion. Examination … Continue reading Designerly exnihilism
The outline below is from Janus: A Summing Up. 1. The holon 1.1 The organism in its structural aspect is not an aggregation of elementary parts, and in its functional aspects not a chain of elementary units of behaviour. 1.2 The organism is to be regarded as a multi-levelled hierarchy of semi-autonomous sub-wholes, branching into … Continue reading Arthur Koestler – “Some General Properties Of Self-Regulating Open Hierarchic Order”
All design praxis is guided by a glorious hybrid of existentialist and pragmatist ideas, interbred and naturally selected for maximum effectiveness. This is true for monocentric design disciplines (UX, CX, and all the other X-disciplines, where designers focus on the experience of a single person encountering a designed thing) — and it even more true … Continue reading Design activism
We apprehend that something is, but we may not comprehend what it is. “Apprehending that” establishes something’s existence. “Comprehending what” establishes its conceptual relations within our understanding. Sometimes (often, in fact) we apprehend something, but we cannot immediately comprehend it. We either ignore it as irrelevant, gloss over it, or are forced to figure out … Continue reading Second verse, same as the first
I was talking with a friend about my suspicion that understandings empiricism as based primarily on perception rather than on interaction has distorted not only our epistemology, but our ontology of knowing. This perception-centricity is at the heart of what we think knowing is, how we think knowing works, and what we hope knowing might … Continue reading Participatory empiricism