Ben Sweeting

Open peer commentary on the article “Heterarchical Reflexive Conversational Teaching and Learning as a Vehicle for Ethical Engineering Curriculum Design” by Philip Baron. Upshot: Baron locates the decolonisation of the curriculum within the classroom, repurposing radically constructivist approaches to teaching and learning and giving them a sense of social and political urgency. The inclusion of students’ worldviews in the curriculum is best thought of as the beginning of a process rather than an end in itself. This leads beyond the pedagogic focus of Baron’s article, raising questions about the status of professional knowledge and whose terms equality is offered on.

In this chapter I review the intimate relationship between cybernetics and design, drawing on the work of Ranulph GlanvilleGlanville, Ranulph and Gordon PaskPask, Gordon. The significance of each of these fields for the other follows from the mutualismMutualism between them, such that cybernetics can be understood in terms of design as well as vice versa. The full value of this can be seen in the assistance they offer each other in building support from within. Design may serve as an example for how cybernetics can be practiced cybernetically, i.e. in accordance with its own insights and principles. In turn, cybernetics may help design understand itself in its own terms, in contrast to the way that it can become distorted by theories imported from elsewhere. Moreover, this mutualismMutualism connects design research to the vast array of topics with which cybernetics is concerned. Recalling its origins as a transdisciplinaryTransdisciplinarity project, cybernetics may help mediate diverse concerns within design, while also enabling cybernetic processes in other fields to be explored through the insights and methods of design research.

While the relationship between ethics and design is usually thought of in terms of the application of the former to the latter, it is not as if ethics is a settled body of theory that can authoritatively guide design practice. Depending which theories or ideas we refer to we receive different guidance as to what to do. Indeed, design may have as much to contribute to ethical theory as vice versa. This essay builds connections between design and ethics, looking to the similarities of structure between wicked problems in design and those dilemmas that are of central concern in normative ethical theory. Understanding design and ethics in mutual terms, ethical questions in design need not be understood in terms of external limitations or trade offs between competing priorities. Moreover, the way designers cope with the ethical challenges presented by wicked problems may inform how we approach complex ethical challenges in other contexts, including some of those that arise within ethical discourse itself.

In this paper I speak directly to the subject matter of this conference: to its theme of flourishing, and to the subject areas of systems thinking and design that this conference series as a whole seeks to bring together. The conference theme of flourishing is a direct reference to ethics, and in particular the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. There has been a revival of interest in this in recent decades under the heading of virtue ethics. Aristotle defined the good as that at which all things aim, and so in terms of goals and purpose. He described the goal of human life in terms eudemonia, which is usually translated as either human flourishing or the good life. There is a clear connection between this conception of ethics in terms of purpose and both design and systems. Design is an explicitly purposeful activity, which can be understood as the attempt to devise “courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones”. Purpose is of central concern for how we understand systems, most explicitly in cybernetics. The aim of this paper is to make explicit some of the deep interconnections between these three areas in terms of the theme of purpose, and to suggest areas of common concern where they might lend support to each other. In order to do this within the scope of this paper, I focus on a specific point of reference in each of the three areas: to Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, Dalibor Vesely’s account of architecture, and to the debate around Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow’s proto-cybernetic paper.

In designing architecture we put forward ways in which to live, enabling particularpatterns of living while limiting other possibilities. In this sense architecture has anormative function and can be compared to the way that ethical theories and moralcodes purport to guide us on how to live. Given this, I suggest that ethical reflectionabout how we design—and in particular about how we constitute the relationshipbetween designers and those they design for—can be used to help formulate ethicalquestions regarding how we speak and reason about ethics itself. Recognising Heinz vonFoerster’s criticisms of moral codes as an instance of this, I use the example of designingarchitecture to challenge and extend von Foerster’s position, suggesting the recursiveapplication of ethics to its own discourse.

Context: The design of academic conferences, in which settings ideas are shared and created, is, we suggest, of more than passing interest in constructivism, where epistemology is considered in terms of knowing rather than knowledge. Problem: The passivity and predominantly one-way structure of the typical paper presentation format of academic conferences has a number of serious limitations from a constructivist perspective. These limits are both practical and epistemological. While alternative formats abound, there is nevertheless increasing pressure reinforcing this format due to delegates’ funding typically being linked to reading a paper. Method: In this special issue, authors reflect on conferences that they have organised and participated in that have used alternative formats, such as conversational structures or other constructivist inspired approaches, in whole or in part. We review and contextualize their contributions, understanding them in terms of their connections to constructivism and to each other. Results: While this issue is of relevance across disciplinary boundaries, contributions focus on two fields: that of cybernetics/systems, and that of design. We identify the way that conference organization is of particular importance to these fields, being in self-reflexive relationship to them: the environment of a design conference is something that we design; while a conference regarding systems or cybernetics is itself an instance of the sorts of process with which these fields are concerned. Implications: Building on this self-reflexivity and, also, the close connection of design and cybernetics/systems to constructivism, we suggest that conference organization is an area in which constructivism may itself be understood in terms of practice rather than theory (and so knowledge. This in turn helps connect ideas in constructivism with pragmatic fields, such as knowledge management, and recent discussions in this journal regarding second-order science. Constructivist content: As a setting for the creation of new ideas, the design of conferences is of importance where we understand epistemology in constructivist terms as a process of knowing. Moreover, the particular fields drawn on - design and cybernetics/systems - have close connections to constructivism, as can be seen, for instance, in the work of Ranulph Glanville, on which we draw here

The design of academic conferences, in which settings ideas are shared and created, is, we suggest, of more than passing interest in constructivism, where epistemology is considered in terms of knowing rather than knowledge. The passivity and predominantly one-way structure of the typical paper presentation format of academic conferences has a number of serious limitations from a constructivist perspective, which are both practical and epistemological. While alternative formats abound, there is nevertheless increasing pressure reinforcing this format due to delegates’ funding typically being linked to reading a paper. In this special issue, authors reflect on conferences that they have organized and participated in that have used alternative formats, such as conversational structures or other constructivist inspired approaches, in whole or in part. While issues raised are of relevance across disciplinary boundaries, contributions focus on two fields, that of cybernetics / systems, and that of design, in which the organisation of conferences is of particular concern: the environment of a design conference is something that we design; while a conference regarding systems or cybernetics is itself an instance of the sorts of process with which these disciplines are concerned. As well as contributing to conference design, discussions in this issue also reflect back on constructivism itself. Conference organization is an area in which constructivism may itself be understood in terms of practice rather than theory. This in turn helps connect ideas in constructivism with pragmatic fields, such as knowledge management, and recent discussions in this journal regarding second-order science

One of the major themes of Ranulph Glanville's work has been the intimate connection between cybernetics and design, the two principle disciplines that he has worked in and contributed to. In this paper I review the significance of the analogy that he proposes between the two and its connection to his concerns with, firstly, the cybernetic practice of cybernetics and, secondly, the relation between cybernetics and ethics. I propose that by putting the cybernetics-design analogy together with the idea that in cybernetics epistemological and ethical questions coincide, we can understand design as not just a form of cybernetic practice but also one in which ethical questions are implicit.

This paper explores a potential relation between architecture and ethics intrinsic to design processes when understood in terms of dialogue or conversation. We draw on separate but related research interests: one focused on the design process, especially the significance of drawing, and the other on the ethics of designing for the public realm, with reference to Bakhtinian dialogism. Our investigation concentrates on two aspects of the design process both of which can be thought of in terms of conversation – first, the relation between architect and Other, and second, the act of drawing. Through this, we support the idea that in design the ethical and the aesthetic cannot be meaningfully separated from one another. Instead, their relation must be understood as a dialogue in and of itself, as well as part of the dialogue between all participants in the design process

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore ways in which cybernetics leads to distinctive ways of acting. Design/methodology/approach – Paralleling von Foerster’s argument that it makes more sense to speak of the cybernetics of epistemology than the epistemology of cybernetics, the author argues that cybernetics is not one form of practice amongst others but an account of what it is to practice, understood as where we relate how we act to how we understand so that each informs the other. The author explores the potential difference that adopting this understanding of practice makes in practice and show its significance by establishing connections between the eponymous cybernetic example of steering and questions regarding teleology in ethics. Findings – While all practice is cybernetic in the sense of involving a relationship between understanding and acting, the relationship between cybernetics and practice is not a neutral one. Understanding practice in cybernetic terms enables us to pursue goods internal to the practice, which, in turn, makes a difference to how we act. Practical implications – The author argues that how we understand the relation between our understanding and our acting leads to significant differences of action in practice. Originality/value – The author argues that cybernetics has non-neutral, and ethically significant, consequences in practice that are beyond the application of cybernetics to practice or the advantages of adopting explicitly conversational ways of acting

The relationship between ethics and design is most usually thought of in terms of applied ethics. There are, however, difficulties with this: for instance, conventional ethical stances such as deontology or consequentialism depend on procedures that are inapplicable in the sorts of complex situations which designers commonly face. In any case, it is not as if ethics is a settled body of theory that can act as an authority with which to guide practice. Depending on which theories we refer to, we receive different, and often directly conflicting, guidance. Paralleling the idea that design has its own epistemological foundations, rather than needing to import ideas from science, I propose an alternative way to think of the relation between design and ethics, looking to the ethical questioning implicit in what designers do, and the similarities between those situations which they encounter as a matter of course and those questions with which normative ethics is both most concerned and confused. I suggest that we might reason about ethical questions in design in design’s own terms and, also, that rather than apply ethical theory to design we explore what design can contribute to ethics, inverting the more usual hierarchy.

Context: The relationship between design and science has shifted over recent decades. One bridge between the two is cybernetics, which offers perspectives on both in terms of their practice. From around 1980 onwards, drawing on ideas from cybernetics, Glanville has suggested that rather than apply science to design, it makes more sense to understand science as a form of design activity, reversing the more usual hierarchy between the two. I return to review this argument here, in the context of recent discussions in this journal regarding second-order science has tended to be associated with theory. As a result, SOC is perceived as separate to the more tangible aspects of earlier cybernetics in a way that obscures both the continuity between the two and also current opportunities for developing the field. Method: I review Glanville’s understanding of design, and particularly his account of scientific research as a design-like activity, placing this within the context of the shifting relation between science and design during the development of SOC, with reference to the work of Rittel and Feyerabend. Through this, I summarise significant parallels and overlaps between SOC and the contemporary concerns of design research. Results: I suggest that we can see design research not just as a field influenced by cybernetics but as a form of SOC practice even where cybernetics is not explicitly referenced. Implications: Given this, design research offers much to cybernetics as an important example of SOC that is both outward looking and practice based. As such, it bridges the gap between SOC and the more tangible legacy of earlier cybernetics, while also suggesting connections to contemporary concerns in this journal with SOS in terms of researching research. Constructivist content: By suggesting that we see design research as an example of SOC, I develop connections between constructivism and practice.