Title: Ontologically shaping a designed future: design education as revelation

Authors: Johann Van Der Merwe

Addresses: Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town 8000, South Africa

Abstract: Using ontological pragmatics, and by learning that what they conserve in the present (making choices) leads to the new innovative future, students can teach themselves how to deal with the uncertainty of our modern world. An argument for Maturana|s method of changing semantic questions into structural ones is discussed, as well as Latour|s notion of reassembling the social. An ethics of negotiation is argued next, and thus we need to rethink our own selves, including issues of sustainable ethics, very much along the lines suggested by Whitbeck, who believes that, for engineering, a design process analogy can help moral decision-making to escape the rational foundationalist approach.

Keywords: association; design education; design research; sustainable ethics; learning process; ontological phenomenology; restructuring; ontology; design process; moral decision making.

DOI: 10.1504/JDR.2008.024198

Journal of Design Research, 2008 Vol.7 No.3, pp.317 - 330

Published online: 28 Mar 2009 *

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