Re: Self-Sealing Thought LO1433

JOHN N. WARFIELD (jwarfiel@osf1.gmu.edu)
Tue, 30 May 1995 14:02:37 -0400 (EDT)

Replying to LO1396 --

On Sat, 27 May 1995 jack@his.com wrote:

> I'd like to ask you to
> share with all of us the distinctions you refer to in LO1362, viz.:
>
> "working in answer space, working in issue space, working in problem
> space"
>
> Despite my intuitive understanding of what is meant here, it would be
> helpful to me to understand what you or your friend meant, especially by
> "answer space".

Jack, I will try to expound on the concepts you mention. As usual, this
will be a roundabout discussion.

Reference: "An Emendation of R. G. Collingwood's Doctrine of Absolute
Presuppositions", Kenneth Laine Ketner, Graduate Studies, Texas Tech
University, Texas Tech Press, No. 4, 1973.

Collingwood is or was a British philosopher. He stated "Whenever anybody
states a thought in words, there are a great many more thoughts in his
mind than there are expressed in his statement. Among these there are
some which stand in a peculiar relation to the thought he has stated;
they are not merely its context, they are its presuppositions."

One of the bright spots in The Fifth Discipline is Peter Senge's recount
of how Royal Dutch Shell was revitalized, largely because of ultimate
acceptance of top management of the idea that it is very important (a) to
surface your assumptions and then (b) subject them to review by your
associates.

In my own work I have distinguished suppositions from presuppositions
(when you have two words in the same area, why not allow yourself to use
them both, with some distinctions?), by defining suppositions as those
assumptions that one is capable of articulating; while presuppositions
are those that are in the subconscious, yet are driving behavior.

Collingwood argued that"Every question involves a presupposition".
Carrying this argument further, roughly speaking, for each such
presupposition, there may be a presupposed question, etc. Here is a guy
anticipating the AI people's concept of chains, forward chaining, and
backward chaining (though I would suspect yyq

AT THIS POINT MY ORIGINAL MESSAGE COMPOSITION WAS INTERRUPTED AS THE
MAINTENANCE PEOPLE TOOK OVER, AND SHUT DOWN THE SYSTEM. NOW I AM
RESUMING THIS ON TUESDAY, May 30, with somewhat less inspiration, due to
jury duty earlier today.

In any case, to try to get to the point, "answer space" is the
superficial (surface) domain where people start coming up with answers as
soon as they claim to recognize a problem. As H. A. Simon said,
organizations usually don't look for either problems or solutions
systematically, and as soon as they envisage a problem, they "satisfice",
which means they run with the first thing that looks promising. This is
close to what is implied by working in answer space. Chris Argyris had a
different spin on the same idea, talking about double-loop problems, in
which orgs keep trying the some old tired approach over and over again,
trying to brute-force a solution to something that they haven't bothered
to define.

In my "can you top this?" mode, I discussed a model with four loops,
subsuming Argyris' two loops, in my book A SCIENCE OF GENERIC DESIGN.

Turning to "problem space", I have outlawed this term from my vocabulary,
but having recalled it from storage, I can explain a few reasons for
outlawing it,e.g.:

o A "problem" is a personal construct, not a shared thing, and not a
tangible thing, capable of being packaged and shipped,

o Ackoff's concept of a "mess" as a "system of problems" is relevant here

o A system of problems cries out for structuring to see how problems are
interdependent, a la the "problematique" dealt with in the above-mentioned
work and its compatriot, A HANDBOOK OF INTERACTIVE MANAGEMENT.

o All of the foregoing is closely related to "underconceptualization",
which I take to be the primary descriptor of why things get so mucked up.
And underconceptualization stems from too narrow a base of knowledge
and/or experience, as almost always occurs with single-manager-dominated
complex situations.

o I stole John Dewey's concept of the "problematic situation" as my
substitute for the "problem"; and make the "complex situation" the basic
context for analysis and/or design

o There really are situations where it's appropriate to discuss "the
problem", but being institutionally challenged, I have decided to show no
interest in such matters.

--
JOHN WARFIELD
Jwarfield@osf1.gmu.edu