# The Philosophy of Design  ## Metadata - Author: [[Glenn Parsons]] - Full Title: The Philosophy of Design - Category: #books - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Document Tags: [[favorite]] - Summary: The text discusses the philosophical aspects of design, contrasting it with art and exploring its role in various contexts. Modernist perspectives on design, its relationship with functionality, aesthetics, and expression, as well as the epistemological challenges in defining and evaluating good design are highlighted. The text emphasizes the importance of considering design's impact on human life and society. - Source File: The Philosophy of Design by Glenn Parsons (2015).epub ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights >  ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpas6mm28qw0e8fqpf66cty)) > Note that, when applied to the juicer case mentioned above, this yields the correct result: the juicer, it turns out, fails as a solution, but its failure would not be immediately obvious in the way that the failure of the time machine is. Hence it counts as design. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxxhe6m0pm9qysxtz5c0s2yj)) > Why are planning problems “wicked problems”? Rittel and Webber identify ten features of wicked problems, features that make them particularly intractable to rational solution. Some of these features point toward the epistemological problem that we discussed earlier. For example, they note that, in many cases, testing potential solutions to a planning problem is hard or impossible: planners are often unable to carry out adequate trial-and-error tests of their plans, for example. They also observe that each planning problem is unique, making it hard to see how a planner could develop the expertise needed to address new cases. These features, as we've seen, are a part of what makes Design problems epistemologically problematic. But Rittel and Webber's notion of the wicked problem goes beyond these factors to posit a more fundamental difficulty: for wicked problems, they claim, “the problem can't be defined until the solution has been found.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hzby2kb9na8jtghbmvzv619c)) > It is sometimes asserted that “design problems in general are examples of what Rittel and Webber called ‘wicked problems’” (Vincente et al*.* 1997; Cross 2011, 147) or that, in Design, “wickedness is the norm” (Coyne 2005; see also Buchanan 1992). On this view, it is not only large-scale problems of public policy, such as the ones discussed by Rittel and Webber, that are wicked or ill defined, but all Design problems, down to mundane examples like laying out a factory control room, or designing a new piece of furniture. But is this really so? What reasons can be given for thinking that *all* Design problems are ill defined? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hzby3zh52nwrqeet0xgzdzkm)) > One way to do this might be to argue as follows. Some Designers just seem able to examine a problem and come up with ideas that “work.” But this is not surprising, since creativity is inherently a somewhat mysterious capacity. There are many other professions in which some people are more creative than others, and who knows how they get their ideas? Perhaps psychology will eventually succeed in determining why certain people are more creative than others, and when they do we will have a better handle on what makes for a great Designer. But, given that creativity is still relatively poorly understood, we should not be ashamed to say that some people simply have the “gift” of being great at Design, any more than we are ashamed to say that some people simply have the gift of being better at having mathematical insights, or writing poetry. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hzc0vg6jzwqz1dk2ptvze582)) > In line with this, it is of course true that much product testing on new Design prototypes is carried out by corporations before they actually go into mass production. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hzc0xgs37t4bn5skb16x5cdn)) > One suggestion might be to consider again the case of scientific hypotheses. As mentioned above, scientific hypotheses are formulated in a context of discovery, not of justification, and so need not be known to be true, or even probable. But, on the other hand, scientific hypotheses are also not *completely* random guesses: scientists strive to come up with “good guesses” that at least fit the known facts. Unfortunately, however, this analogy does not help the Designer, since the features that make for a good scientific hypothesis – one that “fits the known facts” – are not applicable to the products of Design. For example, good scientific hypotheses have high explanatory power: a hypothesis that can explain various empirical data is viewed as superior to one that leaves such data mysterious.[18](#c2-note-0018) Design products, not being representations but objects for practical use, cannot be assessed in these terms. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hzc0z073qp5mg8g98fhe835q)) > Consider riding a bicycle, or playing the violin. Most people who can do these things cannot really explain why the things they do “work,” yet they undeniably do. Philosophers capture this idea by drawing a distinction between two kinds of knowledge: *knowing that* and *knowing how* (Ryle 1946). One knows that a combustion engine works in such and such a way, but one knows how to play the violin. > Design has often been characterized as involving knowing how, rather than knowing that. This view is developed in detail in the work of Donald Schön (1983). Schön develops this idea in response to a view that he calls “Technical Rationality.” According to this view, Design “consists in instrumental problem solving made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and technique” (1983, 21). Something like this view underlies the epistemological problem we have posed for Design, which insists that Designers need empirical knowledge that grounds the feasibility of their plans. Schön thought that we should reject Technical Rationality, and instead conceive of Design, not on the model of scientific knowledge, but as a form of know-how, or, as he puts it, “knowing in action” (1983, 49). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hzc10zj4wbafeg15s9khps1y)) > experience with one type of problem does not make us capable of resolving a different kind of problem, just as making a single attempt to play ten different musical instruments does not produce the ability to play an eleventh. Here it is relevant to consider the range of different problem types tackled by many of the “great names” in Design. Raymond Loewy, for example, produced designs for corporate logos, soda bottles, automobiles, diesel trains, airplanes, refrigerators, battleships, teapots and a space station (Loewy 1988). If Loewy indeed produced these by virtue of his know-how, it remains mysterious how he, or anyone else, could acquire this capacity across such a wide and varied range of problems. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hzc13w3wfmp8q9vkhxtx74d6)) > So how, they ask, is Design then possible? Their answer is that Designers proceed, and can only proceed, by employing what they call “prestructures.” The prestructure “acts as a kind of plan for finding a route through problem material that would otherwise appear undifferentiated and amorphous” (9). “The notion of prestructuring,” they write, “is necessary to any conceptualization of design” (7; see also Hillier and Leaman 1974). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hzc15p89xpqfy4z1kg0tkbxr)) > Being a good engineer is not merely a matter of knowing the relevant laws of physics, of course. But deploying the laws of physics in formulating designs is certainly necessary for being a good engineer, and the fact that he deploys these laws allows him to have a degree of confidence in his solutions. The engineer can be sure that his bridge will stand up to its load, for example, because he can use the laws of physics to make the appropriate calculations. So the question for Design is: are there any analogous general principles that apply to Design problems, principles that could underwrite a set of generally applicable Design tactics? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hzc1amshf6qq8wd04j5s46xh)) > If I buy a chair and use it, not for sitting, but to display some books in my living room, or to hang the next day's clothes on before I go to bed, aren't these things the “function” of that artefact ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hrd41x58gjnd4txhvxn63zsv)) > The notion can be characterized in different ways: firstly, a proper function is not accidental. The cellphone in your front pocket might deflect a bullet and save your life, but, even if does, that is not its proper function. Secondly, a proper function is not something merely imposed on an object, as when one uses a cellphone as a paperweight. A third way of characterizing proper functions, which is more positive, if metaphorical, is as “belonging to the thing itself”: thus we might say that allowing communication is the function that actually belongs to the phone itself, whereas holding down paper does not. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hrd4cxvzqzqzsdmwdjnht5nd)) > Originally designed as smoking aids, pipe cleaners are now a material for children's crafts. Similar cases are legion: cellophane, which today has the proper function of covering food, was invented as a tablecloth; Viagra, the famous treatment for erectile dysfunction, was originally designed as a heart medication, and so on. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hrd4waapfsdx9tkvay43acab)) > An Intentionalist might respond to these counter-examples, however, by shifting to a theory employing not the intentions of the *Designer* of the artefact, but those of the *user* ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hrd4y3wsm7s25a33rh00xapv)) > If she wishes to provide such an account, then, she must specify a particular *kind* of intention that is sufficient for giving something a proper function, whomever should happen to have it. For example, one might suggest that intentions bestow proper functions on artefacts only when they are sufficiently creative, or involve modifying the structure of the object in some interesting way. This could allow us to explain why using a chair as a clothes rack or a doorstop does not give it those proper functions ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hrd54frzr5bnpkdbzmg5bdmk)) > are odd intentions, to be sure, but they would hardly be subject to “social disapproval” in any meaningful sense. Moreover, it is not clear that all proper functions require social approval: consider sex toys. In conservative cultures, sex toys face enormous social disapproval. Yet that fact does not make it the case that those artefacts merely “function as” sex toys: rather, they *are* sex toys. This suggests that social approval and disapproval is really irrelevant to the proper/non-proper function distinction ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hrd57x1p49am4npkg2wb73sk)) > This reinterpretation, however, represents a fundamental shift away from the Intentionalist theory of proper function: no longer is it human plans, intentions or attitudes that determine an artefact's proper function. Instead, something further is required: an actual established kind of use of the artefact type in question. With this move we leave the Intentionalist approach behind, and adopt a distinct theory of proper function, one appealing to an item's history. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8pwnfrr9phkvcrbj88tc9sv)) > One could say that using a frying pan for cooking and using a shovel for digging are socially accepted, whereas using a frying pan as a weapon and a shovel as a garden stake are not, if we understand “social acceptance” to mean something more like “already established as a common practice.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8pkxth9kr3er0msy0mdzer2)) > *Meta-ethics* is the branch of philosophy that attempts to understand, in a very general way, the nature of ethics itself. Questions in this field include: What is a moral norm? and What is the basis for moral judgement? (Miller 2003). *Normative ethics*, while not attempting to address these very fundamental questions, attempts to spell out the most general principles or frameworks for ethical decision-making. One such principle, widely debated in normative ethics, is the Utilitarian principle that actions are morally right when they contribute to human happiness (Mill [1861] 1979). Finally, *applied* or *practical ethics* seeks to understand particular moral problems and determine whether particular actions (abortion, or euthanasia, for example) are morally permissible or not. Overlap between ethics and Design typically falls in the last category: the ethical issue around producing handguns, for example, is not a meta-ethical one, nor an issue of normative ethics, concerning a general moral principle or framework, but an issue of the ethical status of a particular action – producing handguns. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvp9kdqq0a26tnj30enxf2xm)) > Technological determinism is the idea that the development of technology is not controlled by human thought and decision-making: rather, it is the other way around. The development of technology has a “life of its own,” and once technologies are in place they shape the nature of society and its decisions. On this view, although humans may debate about the merits of new technologies, and whether they should be pursued, this is ultimately beside the point, as whatever can be made, given current scientific and technical knowledge, eventually will be made. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvp9pdaj6q32s6cp4441z8mn)) > A narrow focus on safety standards also obscures a major complicating factor in the applied ethics of Design, which is that safety is far from the only relevant ethical value. Others include freedom, availability, consumer choice, privacy and environmental sustainability (as in the above example of the copier button). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvp9v4twxe89abct7tqh5yvw)) > Thus, if Modernism is to vindicate even the more modest version of its claim, it must distinguish between those functions that are valid and those that are unnecessary: the most obvious way to do this would be to appeal to the conceptual distinction between *wants* and *needs*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvp9xv8meejtgqmqhdn4r2y1)) > The very distinction between want and need, however, is contested. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvp9yx1gqsmzavk074pe07zp)) > As Harry Frankfurt puts the idea: “when something is needed it must … be possible to specify what it is needed for” (1984, 3). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpa1h4y5w7y9pdb8ww71kd5)) > The skeptical view of needs as no more than intense desires, which was sketched in the previous section, is important to consider. If it is true, then it seems to throw into doubt the thesis that we can reduce consumption by Designing for needs. One problem for this skeptical view has already been noted – the fact that we sometimes want to say that a person needs something even though she doesn't want it at all (“She needs to change her attitude”; “He needs to learn some manners”). These needs, at least, cannot be reduced to desires. However, as we have already seen, wants, like needs, can be construed as necessary for the attainment of some higher end that *is desired*. Thus perhaps the skeptic can say that, in the above cases, a need is something that, given her desires, the person in question *would want*, if she understood her situation rationally. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpa4jbmpm8jt4ay1v46e794)) > In broaching the distinction between true and false needs, writers on Design and consumerism have sometimes appealed to the *origin* of needs as the crucial factor. Victor Papanek, for instance, writes that “the economic, spiritual, technological, and intellectual needs of a human being are usually more difficult and less profitable to satisfy than the carefully engineered and manipulated ‘wants’ inculcated by fad and fashion” (1971, 11).[6](#c7-note-0006) Might we not say that false needs are needs that we would fail to recognize, were it not for the influence of some external force, such as advertising? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpa6c9g67p010rm0nwary36)) > without which … it is not possible to live, as for instance breathing and nourishment are necessary for an animal, because it is incapable of existing without them: and anything without which it is not possible for good to exist or come to be, or for bad to be discarded or got rid of, as for instance, drinking medicine is necessary so as not to be ill, and sailing to Aegina so as to get money. > (1015a20) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpa7tar91826d2kqaj1stbk)) > The core of Aristotle's account is that needs are those things required for us to achieve things of value (things that are good, or worthwhile). Returning to our earlier example, both the person who needs education and the person who needs a third convertible are trying to achieve some higher aim, and both may have been influenced by some external force, but only the former seeks something necessary to achieve something of value. The person who wants the third convertible cannot say that, without it, “good will fail to come to exist,” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpa9c4c7d27vpx3vf89e5tz)) > If this account of needs provides a response to the skeptical view, however, it also puts a great deal of weight on the Designer's value judgements about the ways in which we should live. If the Designer is to Design, as the Modernist view would hold, only for need, not only has she to sort out ethical values relevant to what she makes, as we discussed in section 7.1 above, but the very decision to make at all implicates her in some kind of conceptualization of the way we ought to live. Thus we are brought back to the lingering idea of the Designer as a sort of seer or philosopher, whose task is not merely to make things or solve problems, but to guide society in some larger way.[8](#c7-note-0008) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpa9z94953abtcphzv9417d)) > Colin Campbell, for example, argues that to declare some needs as true and others false is “simply to express a prejudice in favor of one specific conception of the good life,” and “will almost certainly lead to the endorsing of traditionalistic, Puritanical and in all probability authoritarian, attitudes” (2010, 283). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpaab1c97qd6k1yep0ef4fd)) > 7.4    Does Design Alter the Moral Landscape? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpad7240w21ca7g999x8c69)) > It is no surprise to learn that technical systems of various kinds are deeply interwoven in the conditions of modern politics … But to go beyond this obvious fact and to, at first glance, completely mistaken. We all know that people have politics; things do not. To discover either virtues or evils in aggregates of steel, plastic, transistors, integrated circuits, chemicals and the like seems just plain wrong, a way of mystifying human artifice and of avoiding the true sources, the human sources of freedom and oppression, justice and injustice. > (1980, 20) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpad43nxrak706pnwe70edx)) > On this common view, it is conceded that a bit of technology might have political effects. Internet search engines, for example, might be used to gather information on users in a way that corrodes their right to privacy. But, in this case, the common view holds that it would be misleading to say that the technological artefact – the search engine – is unjust. Rather, the injustice is located in a human action – namely, the misuse of that artefact by particular human agents. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpadmzjb8rr7a35tcpfg2n9)) > To locate the ethical responsibility only in the decisions of the human agents, Winner argued, misses the fact that certain technologies, in and of themselves, can direct and shape those decisions. Winner offered the example of the highway overpasses built in New York City in the 1950s by Robert Moses. Apparently, these were deliberately built too low for buses to pass underneath, thereby preventing the poorer Black New Yorkers, who did not own cars, from reaching certain areas. In this case, Winner argued, there is a political aspect to the artefact itself. If we focus only on the actions of human agents, on what people in a society do, we fail to account for the ways those actions are shaped, often subtly, by the material environment. For example, if we looked for racism only in the actions of New Yorkers, we would miss the segregation that is quietly being carried out by the overpasses. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpaee478r3cdeb2mhfy4c2g)) > The sociologist Bruno Latour, for example, argued that an adequate understanding of morality must include, as well as human agents, non-human agents such as artefacts. “We have been able to delegate to nonhumans … values, duties, and ethics,” he writes; “It is because of this morality that we, humans, behave so ethically, no matter how weak and wicked we feel we are” (1992, 232). Latour emphasizes the many, often unnoticed, ways in which artefacts “act” in ways that allow us to behave ethically. The speed bump, for example, plays a crucial role in getting drivers to obey the laws and drive safely. Latour insists that, in order to fully understand ethics, we must eliminate the human/non-human distinction and incorporate non-human moral agents into our moral framework. Echoing the views of Winner and Latour, the philosopher Peter-Paul Verbeek maintains, “The conclusion seems justified that artefacts have morality: technologies play an active role in moral action and decision-making” (2008, 93). Verbeek refers to this phenomenon of “the moral agency of technological artefacts” as “material morality.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpafxn35cpnt711hnpc5r2m)) > Traditionally, philosophers have reserved the title of “moral agent” for a very specific sort of being: creatures capable of rational deliberation and free, intentional choice. As it stands, this means that only human beings count as moral agents (notice also that the requirement of rational deliberation rules out even humans who are children and others incapable of rational deliberation, such as the insane). Further, moral agency, on the traditional view, is intimately linked to moral responsibility. If one acts out of moral agency, then one is responsible for one's action, and can be subjected to praise or blame accordingly. However, we do not typically punish artefacts for “wrongdoing.” So it would be a major conceptual shift were we to do this, as the material morality thesis apparently suggests. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpah1t7wagygyg1rzenyq3d)) > In support of the notion of material morality, it might be pointed out that our ethical framework has undergone major revolution in the past. For example, at various times and places, women and slaves were regarded as unworthy of moral consideration. Furthermore, and more recently, there has been an expansion in moral concern to include non-human animals, and even non-sentient parts of the environment. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpah8k6q3cjmgfvm690zysn)) > However, as Verbeek points out, this debate about sentient computers is one that we can set aside in a general discussion of material morality (2011, 50). For a sentient computer would be an artefact of a very specific and sophisticated kind, able to behave in ways analogous, or even superior, to a human being. But the question of whether artefacts have moral agency is one raised about much more mundane artefacts: overpasses, speed bumps and the like. So the question we need to focus on is whether attributing moral agency to *these artefacts* would be problematic. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpatn6er8yp8604nvgbj974)) > One obvious objection to this view is that although such artefacts have effects, they do not really “act,” since they cannot form intentions to do anything. Since moral agency requires that the agent perform actions intentionally, or on purpose (having some goal in mind), artefacts of this type cannot be moral agents. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpav2v7mgrms3g632x8cs8y)) > Against this, one might object that “intentionality,” in the context of discussions of moral agency, means much more than merely “directing a course of action.” It means directing *one's own* course of action toward some goal or end. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpava8k62aar8v88qdmg947)) > In response to this sort of objection, Floridi and Sanders (2004) argue that the concept of moral agency can be coherently separated from the notion of moral responsibility.[11](#c7-note-0011) In support of this, they point to cases involving dogs and children. We often praise or blame these creatures when they carry out an action that we deem good or bad (“bad dog”), although we recognize that they are not morally responsible for their actions. This seems to show that we have a concept of moral agency – being the source of a morally good or bad action – that does not require moral responsibility. In a similar way, we might say things such as “these speed bumps are good” and “those overpasses are evil,” although we do not hold them morally responsible in the way we hold people morally responsible. > This reply to the objection, however, only points to a deeper flaw with the moral agency thesis, even in its more modest formulations. If artefacts are not subject to moral responsibility, then what will be the upshot of turning the focus of our ethical analysis toward them? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpaw0wzwggrhx2ay49agfmj)) > Do people kill people, or do guns kill people? Verbeek insists that this traditional question is misguided, for “agency should not be located exclusively in either the gun or the person shooting, but in the assembly of both” (2011, 64). But exactly what is gained by assigning part of the moral agency to the gun? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpawej0npn67hs511g8kggt)) > As an analogy, it is useful to consider the relationship between artefacts and athletics. It is indisputable that artefacts influence human athletic performance, in numerous ways: improvements in bike design improve cycling speed, better shoes improve running times, and so on. One might argue that, through Designing this technology, we have “delegated” athletic performance to these artefacts, in the sense that significant portions of particular athletic achievements can be attributed to these artefacts.[12](#c7-note-0012) Nonetheless, no one would argue that we should extend the concept of “athlete” to shoes and bikes, or say that an athlete is not really a human being, but a human being and his bicycle. The reason for this is that, although artefacts shape the context of athletic performance in multiple ways, we are primarily interested not in this, but in human performance itself. In the case of morality, as our primary interest lies in human decision-making, not in the influence of artefacts on it, we have legitimate reason to exclude artefacts from the category of moral agency. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvpaxg0kd6krmjy53cpsrsm3)) ## New highlights added September 25, 2025 at 2:02 PM > So, on this view, a function is not a proper function if it is not part of a socially approved way of using the artefact in question. Thus, using a frying pan as a weapon would not count as a proper function of that kind of artefact, since using it in this way is part of a use plan that lacks social approval. Using it for cooking, on the other hand, is a part of a use plan that is “accepted within a certain community.” “In this way,” Houkes and Vermaas write, “our philosophy of artefacts accommodates the proper–accidental desideratum” for theories of artefact function (2010, 93). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k5zyz14va9p7tpc4gqtjxn6g))