Philosophy and Theorizing 1 Scanning, surveying, collecting, selecting, listing, mentioning of potentially relevant information and data and probably, significant facts. Do (some aspects of) philosophy resembles theorizing? Is a question that requires to be dealt with in a certain context and against a particular, explicit background so as not to be misleading. Is there an object such as philosophy? Is there and object such as theorizing? Is the object philosophy or theorizing a notion (somewhere in my head so that I might refer to it, correctly or misleadingly, as an idea in my ‘mind’?) Or, are they also, in some cases, things outside in the external world? Can we be conscious of these cases? And if we can experience them how can we explain this, for example as qualia, a phenomenal experience? How do we arrive at the semantics of these questions from the experience and perception of the things (by integrated, complex processes such as discrimination, integration of information, focus attention on them and reporting them)? What are the mechanics of performing those processes or creation of those states? How and why do those processes give rise to experience? Will it assist us if we view it from, at least, two perspectives, from different points of view, for example as subjective (mental?) and objective (physical)? The former might refer to processes such as reasoning, knowledge, attention, memory, judgement, evaluation, decision making, comprehension, understanding, etc. Other words that we can include here are acquire knowledge, thinking, experience, cognitive, intellect, deduction, induction, abduction, and other modes of reasoning such as intuition, verbal discourse vs intuitive, (the capacity for) making sense of something, apply logic, verify facts, justify practices, belief. Are these things embodied cognition rather than extended cognition? Can all of them be included under the umbrella terms of consciousness (as a state of cognition) and a quality of awareness of being aware (by the ‘mind’)? Are human beings then mere skin encapsulated egos? Embodied egos that can employ, or act by, extended cognition when our minds are extended in an instrumental manner by tools – as individuals (persons) or as teams ‘minds’ collectively (as people)? Even the encapsulated egos might, even sufficiently or normally socialized, exist as an employ shared mental models. The latter might consist of shared knowledge, information or data and also acquired sets of skills for performing tasks so that encapsulated egos (individuals in the communicative reality of the cognitive society) can interact and communicate with others in a fluid or problematic manner as individual performs and/or members of groups. These individuals contribute information (information dumping or brain contribution or dumping of intersubjective relevant data). This will probably occur in a dynamic manner that could affect the situation they are involved in the constitution of (for example as police officer or arrested criminal, two lovers, teacher and student, parent and child, etc). We can imagine endless varieties by this contribution to the situation or context. These contributions, if we were to develop a theory will be called the data that need to be ordered. Are there any constraints, conditions, limits, limitations to such situations? What are they? Can they be identified and classified or categorized? And can our tools for classification themselves be ordered and simplified? Can we generalize about the data we decide to include so that we can order it. We can for example express an hypothesis about the data as some kind of guiding principle – which aspects of the data to identify, which relations between the data, and other questions to be expressed in the form of a hypothesis concerning the data (and its ‘behaviour’ in certain situations, circumstances or contexts). We can do this in words, express it as logical propositions, mathematical formula, statistics, graphs, diagrams, and other forms of representations, etc. The (alternative) ways in which we classify, depict and order the data might themselves vary and thereby identify different patterns in or aspects of the data. A useful notion here is that of Boundary critique (BC). It is the concept in critical systems thinking, according to Ulrich (2002) that states that "both the meaning and the validity of professional propositions always depend on boundary judgments as to what 'facts' (observation) and 'norms' (valuation standards) are to be considered relevant" or not.[1] Boundary critique is a general systems thinking principle similar to concepts as multiple perspectives, and interconnectedness. Boundary critique according to Cabrera (2006) is "in a way identical to distinction making as both processes cause one to demarcate between what is in and what is out of a particular construct. Boundary 1 critique may also allude to how one must be explicit (e.g., critical) of these boundary decisions. Distinction making, on the other hand, is autonomic—one constantly makes distinctions all of the time."[2] Boundary critique is based on Churchman's (1970) [3] argument, "that what is to be included or excluded for any analysis of a situation is a vital consideration".[4] According to Kagan et al. (2004) "Something that appears to be relevant to overall project improvement given a narrowly defined boundary, may not be seen as relevant at all if the boundaries are pushed out. Thus, he argues, as much information as possible should be 'swept in' to the definition of the intervention".[4] This argumentation was extended by Werner Ulrich in the 1980s. According to Kagan et al. (2004) he "offered a detailed challenge to the idea that the boundaries of any system are given and linked to "social reality". They are social or personal constructs that define the limits of knowledge relevant to any particular analysis. From this position, pushing out the boundaries of an analysis, in the context of human systems, also involves pushing the boundaries of who may be considered a decision maker".[4] In the practice of boundary critique, according to Ulrich (2000)[5] different kind of boundaries can be set based on different questions: Self-reflective boundary relating to the question "What are my boundary judgements?". Dialogical boundary relating to the question "Can we agree on our boundary judgements?". Controversial boundary relating to the question "Don't you claim too much?". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_critique Werner Ulrich (2002). "Boundary Critique". in: The Informed Student Guide to Management Science, ed. by H.G. Daellenbach and Robert L. Flood, London: Thomson Learning, 2002, p. 41f. Derek Cabrera (2006). "Boundary Critique: A Minimal Concept Theory of Systems Thinking". ISSS research paper. C. West Churchman (1970). Operations research as a profession. Management Science, 17, B37-53. Carolyn Kagan, Sue Caton, Amisha Amin and Amna Choudry (2005). "Boundary critique' community psychology and citizen participation" Paper delivered to European Community Psychology Conference, Berlin, September 2004. Werner Ulrich(2000). "Reflective Practice in the Civil Society: The contribution of critically systemic thinking". in: Reflective Practice;;, 1, (2) 247-268 Three other properties to remember when we depict and classify the data we decide to include are – Theories should stipulate the order in which one variable or event might affect another variable or event Theories should include a narrative or description that depicts why one variable or event might affect another variable or event These narratives should refer to processes or mechanisms that might not be observable or conspicuous. Kaplan, A. (1964). The conduct of inquiry. New York: Harper && Row. Merton, R. K. (1967). On theoretical sociology. New York: Free Press. Sutton, R. I., && Staw, B. M. (1995). What theory is not. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40, 371-384. The author, and see the comments, have a lot to say about aspects of boundaries and their role in thinking here http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/01/19/boundary-condition-thinking/ The author Venkatesh Rao suggests that one can easily separate the three building blocks or dynamics, constraints and boundary conditions by mathematic or non-mathematical models by asking these three types of questions. Historians are a great example. The best historians tend to have an intuitive grasp of this approach to building models using these three building blocks. Here is how you can sort these three kinds of pieces out in your own thinking. It involves asking a set of questions when you begin to think about a complicated problem. 2 1. What are the patterns of change here? What happens when I do various things? What’s the simplest explanation here? (dynamics) 2. What can I not change, where are the limits? What can break if things get extreme? (constraints) 3. What are the raw numbers and facts that I need to actually do some detective work to get at, and cannot simply infer from what I already know? (boundary conditions). The commentaries made comments especially on the third one. I wish to distinguish between internal and external boundaries or limits at all stages of thinking and theorizing. The external conditions will often be explicit and what we will recognize more easily or be aware of, while some of the internal ones will be more implicit and not so obvious. The latter will include things such as attitudes towards the problem area, norms we follow, the limits to our knowledge and information