Dear DP and Claudia,

What I miss in DP's model is an indication what
research is about. If we take 'research as a
multi-agent process', do we then have a
multi-agent process, or do we have - of necessity
- the research process structured as a
multi-agent process? Can we expect some kind of
pre-defined result of either process? What would
such results be? Is it (only) a self-organising
collective?

I was stimulated to make this comment by
Claudia's claim that 'there is "no immaculate
perception." That may be the case (it may even be
trivial, given Claudia's and Nietzsche's
(immaculate?) perception that people differ in
what they observe, and even differ from what
other animals appear to observe). Anyway, I can't
think of any other serious scientist or
philosopher of scientist who would deny a general
lack of immaculateness.

What seems most common among the latter two
groups is that they try to 'immaculatise'. For
example, the average of a series of observations
on the position of a star (if we are able to
observe the same star) tends to be taken as a
more 'immaculate' observation on that position
than any single observation. There obviously are
other 'operations' on observations that appear to
'immaculatise' the latter (even dialogue may
help).

What Nietzsche doubted, in other words, is not
that perception is immaculate (he did agree with
Plato's shadow analogy), but that there may be
immaculatisations that guarantee immaculate
perceptions. He painted Enlightenment as making
the latter claim.

Leaving that claim and that doubt aside for the
moment, and accepting that there are operations
that appear to 'immaculatise' (even if
rudimentary as in the case of IQs), Claudia's
comment suggested the question: to what extent
does 'research as a multi-agent process'
constitute an operation that will or might indeed
immaculatise some kind of perceptions (without
necessarily achieving immaculateness) - and in
that sense exemplify (some kind of) research?

Yours,

Gerard



>DP,
>
>Interesting model of research practice. I would
>also add--although it's missing from most
>actual research practice--skepticism, doubt,
>and proactive attempts at disconfirming what we
>think is happening (it is almost as easy to keep
>believing that all swans are white when black
>swans are rare and secretive as when they don't
>exist). Although its focus was more on human
>cognitive exploration, the Grobstein article in
>your first issue made this point very well.
>
>I see the conceptual distinction you're making
>between observing and intervening: I would argue
>though that, empirically, observation is far
>from passive: we are, to begin with, the ones
>making the decisions about what data to collect,
>which phenomena to observe (it is easy to keep
>believing that all swans are white when our
>budgets only allow us the resources to collect
>data about white swans). And, as Nietzsche put
>it, there is "no immaculate perception."
>--claudia
>
>
>On Monday, January 2, 2006, at 06:41 PM,
>Research_Practice@yahoogroups.com wrote:
>
>> 1. Talking about Research
>> From: dpdash@...
>>
>>
>> Dear Friends,
>>
>> I present a rough model to talk about a variety of research practice:
>>
>> --
>> Taking research as a multi-agent process:
>>
>> Each agent can "tune" itself on a continuum:
>> very passive (observing) <--> very active (intervening)
>>
>> When all participating agent are "tuned" at the very passive
>> (or observing) end, we get only observations.
>>
>> In a certain type of world, the observations crystallise and
>> we get classical scientific objects.
>>
>> If that does not happen, the agents tune themselves "up":
>> towards a little interpretation and evaluation.
>>
>> Some interpretations get preferred and the process may "lock in."
>>
>> Given the lock-in, the agents come "down" to observations again (e.g.,
>> widows become visible inside a culture)
>>
>> If that kind of lock-in does not happen, the agents tune
> > themselves up again: towards choice, diversity, etc.
>>
>> This calls for "coordination."
>>
>> If effective coordination happens, then the collective forgets
>> the differences and gets on with whatever is interesting.
>>
>> If the coordination does not happen, the agents tune themselves
>> "up" once again: towards mentoring, educating, enabling,
>> empowering, etc.
>>
>> This calls for self-observation and facilitation.
>>
>> If this happens effectively, we get self-observing collectives
>> (or self-organising collectives)
>>
>> Otherwise, the agents tune up again...
>> --
>>
>> Does it make sense? I welcome your comments.
>>
>> DP
>
>--