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AN EXERCISE IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY
The assumption current in all modern legal systems [is] that intent to do wrong is necessary for the commission of a crime...[However], politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.
Hannah Arendt
How can we trust that we get the information we need to make intelligent decisions? How can we know what is the right information to look for? How can we remain sensitive to and retrieve the information we lost when we went looking for the information we got?
Margaret Wheatley
Instead of moral philosophy starting from a notion of the human subject as a sovereign agent for whom free choice is the essential condition...a different kind of moral philosophy would be centered on the conditions of self-knowledge.
Mary Douglas
In “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” Hannah Arendt (1971) restates her primary conclusion from studying Adolf Eichmann’s trial. Despite “the monstrosity of the deeds” in which he played a leading role, Eichmann was “neither monstrous nor demonic.” He instead demonstrated a “curious, quite authentic inability to think.”
Arendt’s verdict of the banality of evil is hard to swallow, especially for many of those intimately familiar with the Holocaust. But the late Hannah Arendt is worth listening to and here is what she asks:
The question that imposed itself was: Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining and reflecting upon whatever happens to come to pass, regardless of specific content and quite independent of results, could this activity be of such a nature that it “conditions” men against evil-doing? (1971, 418)1
Has Arendt unearthed an anomaly given our conventional representations of the relationships between moral agency, intent, and cognition? If she has, then what, precisely, is entailed by “the activity of thinking as such”? And to what, if any, end(s)?
ANOMALIES
The representation that defines the problem space is the problem solver’s “way of looking at” the problem and also specifies the form of solutions. Choosing a representation that is right for a problem can improve spectacularly the efficiency of the solution-finding process. The choice of problem representation is...a creative act.
Hubert Dreyfus
Hannah Arendt opens her analysis with a crucial distinction.
We owe to Kant the distinction between thinking and knowing, between reason, the urge to think and to understand, and the intellect, which desires and is capable of certain, verifiable knowledge. (422)“Truth” pertains to knowledge whereas “meaning” pertains to thinking. Knowledge exists and
operates within “problem spaces”; thinking exists and operates within the interstices of problem spaces, interstices created by two or more “representations.” Put another way, knowledge is learning or acquiring skills whereas thinking is “unlearning” or “letting go” (Varela et al., 1991).
Arendt, repeatedly emphasizing that the activity of thinking as such “does not serve knowledge and is not guided by practical purposes” (424), turns to Socrates (her exemplar). “The first thing that strikes us in Plato’s Socratic dialogues is that they are all aporetic. The argument either leads nowhere or it goes around in circles” (428). Not only does such thinking require taking “time out” but, more ominously, it is “out of order.” Moreover, “not only is this faculty for the ordinary course of affairs ‘good for nothing’ while its results remain uncertain and unverifiable, but it also is somehow self-destructive...the business of thinking is like the veil of Penelope: it undoes every morning what it had finished the night before” (425).
So who can justify taking “time out” for a such an inefficient and ineffective activity in today’s busy (business) world? And who wants to be “out of order” if such thinking risks getting you labeled a troublemaker, fired, or terminally quarantined? Worst of all, why engage in anything that is both “good for nothing” and “somehow self-destructive”?
Perhaps we are not asking the right questions. Perhaps the activity of thinking as such begins to make more sense if we wish to change “the representation that defines the problem space.” Or if, in Wheatley’s words, we are attempting to “retrieve the information we lost when we went looking for the information we got.” Or if, as Arendt puts it, we wish to “unfreeze as it were, what language, the medium of thinking, has frozen into thought” (433). Or if, in more conventional terms, we wish to “think outside the box,” “box” being a metaphor for “context” which is the ground of meaning.
Wilfred Campbell Smith offers us a box--a context--to ponder. It is an especially interesting box for it denies its own existence and, as a direct consequence, the potential value of the activity of thinking as such.
As is often remarked, reason has descended from a consideration of ends to a concern merely with means. Reason...is in this curtailed outlook seen as some-thing that serves us: an instrument to be used, in our pursuit of whatever personal interests we may happen or may choose to have. Thus modern culture, in the phrase of Jacques Ellul, has become the striving by ever more "rational" means after ever more irrational ends. (Smith, 1988)
To the degree that the “box” of Instrumental Reason infuses our modern times, conventional representations of moral agency confront a second anomaly which Arendt termed “the Rule of Nobody.” Langdon Winner (1977) offers us the general architecture of Nobody:
In classical ethics a person is excused from blame for a misdeed if sufficient extenuating circumstances can be shown to exist...What is interesting about the new ethical context offered by highly complex systems is that their very architecture constitutes vast webs of extenuating circumstances. Seemingly valid excuses can be manufactured wholesale for anyone situated in the network. Thus, the very notion of moral agency begins to dissolve.
Joseph Weizenbaum (1988) offers us a more concrete and Kafkaesque characterization of Nobody:
Computer personnel believe in certain fairy tales. These include: 1) Computers are merely tools; 2) People control computers rather than the reverse...[S]everal
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questions should be asked about any computer system. These include: 1) Who controls it? 2) Who designed it? 3) Who said they wanted the system? 4) Who has authority over it? When the final question of who is held accountable for its operation is asked, the answer is no one.
But how, exactly, are we to represent the Rule of Nobody? What does Its problem space look like? Surely it is something more than an anthropomorphized “rational actor”? But as Argyris and Schön note, there is something “paradoxical [that] organizational learning is not merely individual learning, yet organizations learn only through the experience and actions of individuals” (1978, p.9). Similarly, in How Institutions Think (1986), Mary Douglas--again, “paradoxically”--titles her first chapter “Institutions Cannot Have Minds of Their Own.” And yet another decade later, Metzger and Dalton (1996) document the continuing controversy—and confusion—over what it means to hold organizations morally accountable for “their” actions.
Perhaps we are not asking the right questions. After all, paradoxes, (ethical) dilemmas, and other forms of deep confusion cannot be resolved within their own frames of reference. So what if, in Douglas’ words, we were to alter our representations of moral philosophy from assuming “free choice is the essential condition” to centering on “conditions of self-knowledge”? Would realizing the latter challenge the Rule of Nobody? Would it lessen the chances of our tacit compliance--our “intent by default”--in evil yet banal acts?
Such possibilities confront at least two obstacles; one is philosophical, the other practical. First, there is very little in Western epistemology that permits one to conclude that “’Know Thyself’ is the most essential of all conditions for meaningful and responsible engagement when thinking about the future” (Michael, 1985). Second, if “Know Thyself” were a reasonably straightforward business, most of us would be saints.
A MODEST EXERCISE
Simone Weil said that morality was a matter of attention not of will. We need a new vocabulary of attention.
Iris Murdoch
We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot
We shall first describe, then “explore” the phenomenon of organizational distortions of information. The exploration is our primary concern. Information distortion --an often lethal variant of the Rule of Nobody--provides the vehicle. The point of the exploration is to develop a “new vocabulary of attention.”
Describing It2
Most of us first encountered the phenomenon of organizational distortions of information when, as kids, we played that game where what you whisper to the person next to you is nearly unrecognizable by the time it circles back to you. As adults, all of us are caught up in variations of this game to varying degrees.
The insidious and sometimes catastrophic consequences of organizational distortions of information have been the subject of extensive inquiry. This is especially so due to the distressing
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frequency with which well-intended, competent leaders and managers continue to make fatal mistakes which upon hindsight seem to be obvious errors.
Examples abound. The more notorious include the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the “march of folly” into the Vietnam War, the space shuttle disaster, the Hubble Telescope foul up. Less catastrophic variations occur regularly in both public and private sectors.
Consider a banal example. Someone in your outfit informs you that unfavorable information has been omitted in a report evaluating a new product line. Succumbing to an urge to be ethical, you determine to find out who is responsible.
But how are we to represent this “problematic situation”? For that is what it is. Like “problems,” almost everyone agrees something has gone wrong. Unlike problems, it is by no means clear, agreed upon, or both, how and why things have gone wrong.
Exploring It
Since explorers don’t know where they are going until after they’ve been where they’ve gone, we shall deliberately try to resist seeking solutions to the problematic situation of information distortions. This is because seeking understanding is a qualitatively different strategy from seeking solutions. And seeking understanding is at the heart of the activity of thinking as such.
In seeking to understand what is entailed by seeking to understand, we shall honor T.S. Eliot’s admonition by exploring a specific sequence of boxes or representations. This particular sequence requires us take less and less as given--by anybody in general and by Nobody in particular--thereby expanding our understandings of individual moral response-abilities. Yet, “paradoxically,” such explorations also threaten to peel away those layers of insulation that protect us from exercising individual moral response-abilities.
This essentially means that Hannah Arendt re-presents for us the primary paradox of the world’s great monotheistic religions—the coexistence of good and evil. To her lasting credit, she (re)introduces us to crucial relationships between cognition, intention, and morality.
Figure 1 is my attempt to honor Arendt’s fundamental insight. It is a map for exploring individual moral response-abilities based on expanding our “vocabulary of attention.“
Figure 1 Objective Subjective “Outside-In” + “Inside-Out” “Actor” “Author”
Systemic II IIISynthetic Hard Systems Soft SystemsHolistic Functionalist Causality Intentionalist Causality
Darwin Durkheim +Reductionist I IVAnalytic Individual Rational Choice MindfulnessAtomistic Mechanistic Causality Con-science
Descartes Dante
As we circle through the above quadrants, we will repeatedly ask:
1: Who is making decisions (who is distorting information)? 2: How is this being done (what are the processes of information distortion)?3: Why or on what basis (what are the reasons or purposes fueling these processes)?
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4: So what does each re-presentation reveal in terms of individual moral response-abilities?The “+” signs mean we’ll try to transcend either/or traps--e.g., “Systems thinking is the fusion of analysis and synthesis” (Ackoff, 1993). And the arrows (“”) mean that we don’t “end up” in any Quadrant. Indeed, if we end up anywhere, it will be where we began.
QUADRANT I: NOBODY IS SOMEBODY
The characteristic way of management that we have taught...is to take a complex system, divide it into parts, and then try to manage each part as well as possible. And if that's done, the system as a whole will behave well... [to be continued in Quadrant II]. Russell Ackoff
Our first representation or box (Quadrant I) is that of the “the rational actor.”3 Economic analysis, political theory, and most modern moral theories, for example, inhabit this quadrant. René Descartes is its leading philosopher and Isaac Newton its principal architect. Its root metaphor is the machine. Mechanistic causality structures this problem space, hence the form of solutions.
The below schematic, a humorous if all-too-familiar representation of organizational distortions of information, serves to illustrate essential presuppositions of Quadrant I or what Ackoff terms “machine-age” thinking. In this problem space, somebody or something causes--conspires to, should be blamed for--the untoward effects of organized distortions of information.
Figure 2
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Quadrant I representations remain many (most?) people’s favored way of explaining “What happened?” This is especially so in turbulent times such as ours when conspiracy theories, scapegoating, and other virulent blame games flourish.
Key Questions
So, who is making the key decisions? How is this done? On what basis or for what purposes? And given this genre of representations, what does it mean to be a morally responsible person? The answers are familiar to a fault.
Some “entity with attributes”--an individual or anthropomorphized organization--is responsible. It makes little difference whether the individual is being rational or irrational, emotional or unemotional, satisficing or maximizing. The point is that (only) individuals make decisions.
And how are such decisions made? What are the mechanisms or decision processes? “General Linear Reality.”4 Subject-verb-object: I choose this, unmoved movers, solitary wills. On the other side of the same coin, this-does-that: the “concussion” metaphor for causal relationships, independent and dependent variables, regression analyses, “fishbone” causal maps.
On what (moral) basis? To what end(s) or for what purpose(s)? Maximizing or satisficing personal utility or more specific “preferences” or “values”; living out suppressed childhood needs; responding to stimuli; enhancing self-esteem. The point is that nothing transcends the rational actor.
Therefore, what does it mean to be morally responsible? That depends on the context. In the context of Quadrant I it means “be rational”--think through the likely consequences of alternative choices, avoid getting emotional, weight alternatives by (“good”) values or principles. The larger point is that cognitive processes are goal oriented; thinking functions as problem solving.5 Thus moral reasoning is a “skill.”
Iris Murdoch summarizes Quadrant I’s ideal type.
[W]e derive from Kant, and also Hobbes and Bentham through John Stuart Mill, a picture of the individual as a free rational will...He is morally speaking monarch of all he surveys and totally responsible for his actions. Nothing transcends him. His moral language is a practical pointer, the instrument of his choices, the indication of his preferences. His inner life is resolved into his acts and choices, and his beliefs, which are also acts, since a belief can only be identified through its expression. His moral arguments are references to empirical facts backed up by decisions. The
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only moral word which he requires is "good" (or "right"), the word which expresses decision. His rationality expresses itself in awareness of the facts, whether about the world or about himself. The virtue which is fundamental to him is sincerity. (Murdoch, Against Dryness: A Polemical Sketch )
None of this should come as a surprise. We have been explaining and justifying things more or less within Quadrant I’s “problem space” for at least three hundred years.6 And so it should also come as no surprise that while the considerable research on organizational distortions of information has contributed to our understandings of this phenomenon, there has been a marked tendency for managers--as well as consultants and academics--to focus on isolated factors and not on the broader organizational contexts that foster these behaviors. This, of course, “every schoolboy knows....”7
QUADRANT II: NOBODY IS THE SYSTEM
[cont’d from Quad I]...and that's absolutely false because it's possible to improve the performance of each part taken separately and destroy the system at the same time.
Russell Ackoff
In our official [and flawed] theories of causation we typically suppose that all causal relations must be between discrete events ordered sequentially in time.
John Serle
Information distortions need not be solely attributed to “causes” such as the malicious intent or hidden agendas of individuals and groups. Such factors clearly can and do exacerbate information distortions, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient to account for all sorts of moral lapses including monstrous deeds.
Quadrant II expands our vocabulary of attention by re-presenting organizational distortions of information as systemic distortions. Here, the root metaphor is biological--the adapting organism. Systems behave as if guided by “invisible hands,” as if they have purposes or “attractors” of their own. Functionalist causality structures this problem space, hence the form of solutions. This means that micromotives cannot be inferred from macrobehaviors and vice versa--patterns of interactions “emerge” which cannot be fully explained by examining “parts.” Such patterns feature feedback loops or circular causality. In this domain, Darwin remains dominant.
Sound functionalist explanations have a demonstrated and growing relevance in our modern times. Major accomplishments include explaining the mechanisms of our immune system (Cziko, 1995), the intriguing possibility of understanding consciousness as an emergent reality (Serle, 1995), and the distinct likelihood that the vast majority of organizational problems are systemic in nature.8
Be careful
Moving from Quadrant I to Quadrant II requires care and rigor; thinking “holistically” is not as easy as many seem to believe. William O’Brien is blunt: “We are absolutely illiterate in subjects that require us to understand systems and interrelationships” (Senge, 1994, p.14). So it should come as no surprise that a large number of sloppy and often self-serving functionalist explanations have proliferated over the years.9 At best, these explain “the system” as if it functions like a big individual--
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Quadrant I explanations decked out in Quadrant II buzzwords. At worst, they equate what is with what ought to be--e.g., the “fit” survive and if you don’t survive you’re not “fit.”
In stark contrast, rigorously linking the apparent disjunctions between individual intentions (micromotives) and institutional or behavioral patterns (macrobehaviors) is typically revelatory--the “aha!” of discovering “the pattern than connects.” For example, the significance of MacGregor’s famous Theory X and Theory Y hinges on shifting our attention from “entities with attributes” to “interacts”—from the ontological presuppositions of Quadrant I problem spaces to those of Quadrant II. It hinges on shifting our attention from comparing and contrasting assumptions about what workers are “really” like, to the dynamics of the self-fulfilling prophecy, a robust and ubiquitous pattern of interactions ranging from ruined children, businesses, and marriages, to ruinous arms races.
Re-presenting Information Distortions 10
To get a feel for the reality of Quadrant II explanations, take “time out” to work through the following re-presentation as follows:
Start by reading any statement, then move along the arrow to the next statement; If you move forward, label the arrow "therefore," if you move backward, label the arrow "because"; Work your way around the entire diagram, moving forward and backward until you've gone through as many feedback loops as you can find.
Figure 3
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Now put yourself in the several positions of a typical organization. How are you likely to respond to questions aimed at finding out who is responsible or to blame for distorting the assessment of that new product line? Table 1 predicts what you are likely to say. Do you disagree?
Table 1
Person in System
Questions Addressedto Person
Answer to Questionby Person Addressed
Higher Level Manager
Why didn’t you consider the unfavorable information your staff produced?
I’m not familiar with the information that you’re talking about. I can assure you that my decisions were based on the best information available to me.
Mid-Level Manager
Why didn’t you pass the unfavorable information up to your superiors?
I can’t pass everything up to them. Based on the information available to me, it seems appropriate to have this information reevaluated and checked over.
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Project Professional
Why wasn’t the unfavorable information checked out and sent back up to your superiors?
That wasn’t my job. I had other tasks to do and deadlines to meet.
Troublemaker Why didn’t you follow up on the information that you presented?
I only worked on part of the project. I don’t know how my particular information was used after I turned it in. I did my job. Even if I had all the information, which I didn’t, there was no way that I could stop this project.
Higher Level Manager
Why was the source of unfavorable information (the troublemaker) removed from the project?
I hardly know the person. A lot of people have worked on this project. I must, of course, make decisions to keep this organization running, but there has been no “plot” to suppress people! On the contrary, my decisions have been objectively based on the available information and the recommendations of my staff.
Mid-Level Manager
Why was the source of unfavorable information removed from the project?
I don’t like your implications! I’ve got tasks to complete and deadliness to meet with limited resources. I can’t let everybody do “their own thing”; we’d never finish anything. I base my recommendations and assignments on the best available information!
Project Professional
Why was the source of unfavorable information removed from the project?
I’m not sure about the details because I don’t work with him. I guess that it had something to do with a reorganization or a new assignment. He is a bright person, somewhat of an eccentric, but I’ve got nothing personal against him.
Troublemaker Why were you removed from the project?
My assignment was completed and I was assigned to another project. I don’t think that anybody was deliberately out to get me. My new job is less of a hassle.
Key Questions
So who, precisely, is making the decisions to distort information? How, exactly, is this being done? On what basis or for what purposes? And, therefore, what are the implications for being a morally response-able individual?
First, note that Nobody is a system of feedback loops, a pattern of reinforcing individual behaviors which has a life of its own largely irrespective of the particular individuals involved. There is no unmoved mover here, no anthropomorphized organization, no homunculus. Nor is there some sort of blank slate upon which Nature, experience, or “market forces” write.
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Note that Nobody’s decision processes are not so much composed of “entities with attributes” as of “interacts,” in this case, balancing feedback loops. Also note that if a picture is worth a thousand words, then computer graphics are almost always mandatory in representing dynamic (non-linear) systems. As a case in point, the variable “resources-tend-to-be-allocated-to-tasks-and-people-that-produce-favorable-information” occurs in twelve separate loops, any one of which includes up to eight variables.
What is it that “attracts” Nobody such that organizational information distortions are such a ubiquitous phenomenon? Even without the help of computer software programs, it is pretty obvious that Nobody is strongly attracted to certainty and to consensus. This comes as no surprise, for generating consensus and certainty is precisely the great strength of hierarchical systems--especially in times of rapid changes. Paradoxically, generating consensus and certainty is precisely the great weakness of hierarchical systems--especially in times of rapid changes.11
And how does such systems thinking increase our vocabulary of attention? What does individual (moral) response-ability entail in Quadrant II? Between the either/or extremes of “your life is your own fault” and “the system is to blame” is the and or the fusion of Quadrants I and II. The late W. Edwards Deming put it as well as anyone: “It is management’s job to optimize the system.” This, of course, requires seeking out those leverage points which keep Nobody from misbehaving. In stark contrast, “partial” remedies such as replacing middle management, do not qualify as a systemic leverage points in coping with organizational distortions of information.
We could profitably spend the rest of our lives in Quadrant II’s problem space, modeling various situations and trying out existing models for good fits. By eliminating a balancing loop here, adding a reinforcing loop there, managing a time delay elsewhere, we could simulate which actions are more likely to reduce information distortions, which are likely to fizzle out with little if any impact, which are likely to generate even bigger problems. Yes, but
What about the paradox that Nobody’s attraction to certainty and consensus is both a blessing and a curse? Perhaps we could finesse this paradox by transforming Nobody’s attractor--by changing the “box,” “story,” or “representation” within which Nobody is making decisions. Meg Wheatley offers a Quadrant III remedy:
When a meaning attractor is in place in an organization, employees can be trusted to move freely, drawn in many directions by their energy and creativity. There is no need to insist, through regimentation or supervision, that any two individuals act in precisely the same way...We believe that little else is required except the cohering presence of a purpose, which gives people the capacity for self-reference (Wheatley, 1992, p. 136).
(Note, incidentally, that this is a good description of a cult.)This should be easy. Consultants speak blithely of changing corporate “cultures,”
“transforming” management, “empowering” workers, building “teams,” and otherwise ”zapping” everybody in sight and in “one minute.” But perhaps we should take time out to mull over Deming’s admonition that “profound knowledge must come from outside the system” which, in fact, is another way of characterizing the activity of thinking as such.
What kind of systems inhabit Quadrant III? In this domain, our individual and collective minds are now part and parcel of the very realities we seek to understand; we explicitly confront for the first time that what we observe necessarily interacts with our observations: “We are not outside the story we tell: each of us is a part of the story” (Michael, 1985, p. 101). This both complicates and simplifies matters as it always has.
QUADRANT III: NOBODY IS THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
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A central thesis then begins to emerge: man is in his actions and practices, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal...But the key question for men is not about their own authorship, I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’
Alasdair MacIntyre
First the people are tempted out of their niches by new possibilities of exercising or evading control. Then they make new kinds of institutions, and the institutions make new labels, and the labels make new kinds of people.
Mary Douglas
Quadrant III adds the realities of “stories”—contexts with meaning. Its root metaphor is culture—more precisely, theater. Intentionalist causality structures this problem space, hence the form of solutions. Quadrant III’s patron saint is Emile Durkheim.12
In Quadrant III, systemic distortions of information are systemic distortions of meanings. They include such problematic plays as management versus labor, right wing versus left wing, pro-choice versus pro-life, men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Culture wars, especially religious wars, are the most lethal form of systemic distortions of meanings.
Be careful
If Quadrant III is to truly increase our “vocabulary of attention”—hence our response-abilities, then we must guard against several temptations. For one, we must not simply extend Quadrant II by adding “ideas” as variables in non-linear systems. We cannot merely reiterate that “ideas have consequences” or that “mythologies build civilizations.” On the other hand, we must avoid omitting Quadrant II even though combining Quadrants I and III offers us the comforting and thoroughly modern fiction that we write our own scripts.13 Third, we should avoid relapsing into variations of C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” thesis—the either/or of objectivism or subjectivism. Instead, we should expand our vocabulary of attention to include interactions of the subjective and objective.
Our starting point in Quadrant III is therefore radical, relative to our previous Quadrants. There is not, cannot be, and ought not to be such a thing as “The” system.
Consider, as an example, how four blind men—an economist, a sociologist, a cultural anthropologist, and a political scientist—would diagnose organizational distortions of information. Would their stories of elephants--“the” system--differ significantly?
And would it matter if some were to abandon incrementalism for radicalism? What would happen if some were to renounce the “center” (the securities of consensus and certainty afforded by hierarchical organizations) for the “edge” (the excitement of risk-taking entrepreneurs)? Would their worlds, in fact, change?14
And what if some of us were to switch our affections from Pollyanna to Cassandra? Would information, knowledge, and even understanding further rotate as if viewed through a kaleidoscope? If “the map is not the territory,” yet if we must view elephants, organizations, and ourselves through lenses, then we must (somehow) make choices. Explicitly or by default. This is as true of the “hard” sciences” as it is of the “softer” (social) sciences, though with a crucial caveat.15 The ways physicists view rocks and stars have few if any effects on the rocks and stars themselves. In stark contrast, the ways we (choose to) view ourselves have sometimes glorious, sometimes trivial, sometimes monstrous effects on how we treat one another and ourselves. Thus crucial complications emerge--“ideal types” are transformed and understandings of moral agency change--when you add conscious minds to our representations of Nobody.
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Key QuestionsWho makes decisions, how, and on what basis? In a nutshell, our (shared) stories are the decisions. As “representations,” they determine our “problem spaces.”
The most important aspect of political discourse is not the appraisal of alternative solutions to our problems, but the definition of the problems themselves. This simple truth is easy to miss because what we see when we look at politics is a series of particular problems and possible remedies...But in the background--disguised, unarticulated--are the myth-based morality tales that determine when we declare a fact to be a problem, how policy choices are characterized, how the debate is framed (Reich, 1987, pp. 5-6).
The mechanism? Acting out our scripts, thereby maintaining the stories which we then reenact. More precisely, Tools “R” Us, as we shall soon see.
On what basis? Paraphrasing the late Ernest Becker, “Man is the only creature who must create his own meanings. But to believe in them, to have faith in what he has created, they must be carefully staged. There must be a supporting cast and a play worth playing.”
What does moral response-ability entail? Managing meanings (read managing the “culture”). It is managing organizations such that they are “Built to Last” (Collins and Porras, 1994). Response-ability may also entail “Creating Common Ground” (King, 1995). (We postpone managing the manager until Quadrant IV.) As W. Edwards Deming put it:
The most important things in an organization cannot be measured. They include enthusiasm, joy, love of learning, commitment, and loyalty. Organizations prosper and have deep wells to draw from when these attributes are highly valued. Although they cannot be measured, they can be managed--we can do something to promote and support them. Fine, you say, but surely this stuff is old hat by now. We urgently disagree. Consider some of
the implications of re-presenting Nobody based on the dynamics of intentionalist causality.First, all representations themselves necessarily embody purpose, intent, values. The
following observation is absolutely crucial to understanding the realities of Quadrant III.
[The later Wittgenstein] argued that the analysis of everyday situations into facts and rules (which is where most traditional philosophers and AI researchers think theory must begin) is itself only meaningful in some context and for some purpose. Thus, the elements chosen already reflect the goals and purposes for which they are carved out. (Dreyfus, 1988, p.26, emphasis added).
It is in this precise sense that there can be no such thing as “value-free” measures, concepts, models, or theories. Not even immaculate perception is possible in principle; even at this rudimentary level, our brains construct from preselected data the perceptions which it then leads us to think that we perceive.
Second, our “representations-cum-intentions” do not only exist in our heads. Most are embodied—instantiated, built in, institutionalized, concretized ”out there”--as language, methods of inquiry, and the very large array of other tools including our various organizations. (The term “organization” comes from the Greek “organum” which means “tool.”) Yet it is evidently still news to point out that
Organizational design may be a mirror image of our cognitions. Therefore, to redesign the organization, we need to redesign the way we think...Our
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organizational arrangements are a projection of our mental patterns, whether or not we know it (Keidel, 1994, p. 17).
Third, while “our organizational arrangements” and other tools are projections of our cognitions, our tools, in turn, project their “scripts” back onto our cognitions. By then reenacting our tools, we reproduce them.
The tool as symbol in all these respects thus transcends its role as a practical means towards certain ends...It must therefore inevitably enter into the individual’s imaginative calculus that constantly constructs his world (Weizenbaum, 1976, p. 18).
Checkland and Scholes underscore this key point and a means of re-presenting Nobody which does not exist in the problem spaces of Quadrants I or II.
What is being argued is that we perceive the world through the filter of--or using the framework of--the ideas internal to us; but that the source of many (most?) of those ideas is the perceived world outside. (1990, p.20)
Figure 4 combines the above insights, explicating the seeming paradox of “How Institutions Think.” Only in Quadrant III can Nobody be understood as a social construction of reality. This domain, properly understood, is where the fusion of the “subjective” and the “objective” occurs.
Figure 4
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The dynamics seem simple enough: 1) we make a tool with the intended objective of achieving certain results based on some particular mental model at the time; 2) in symbolizing a now-objectified mental model, the tool-as-script then projects it back to us whenever we see it or use it; 3) we then map this reinforced "mental model" back onto whatever we think is going on out-there.
In this circling process, our tools "tell us" what representations to use. They thereby "specify" the form of solutions for us, and, in so doing, they "inform us" what is of value. By then reenacting what they tell us, we reproduce them. (King, 1994, pp. 251-2)
Note the key difference between Quadrant II and Quadrant III representations. Quadrant II representations--what Checkland and Scholes identify as “systems engineering”--are “predicated on the fact that the need and hence the relevant need-meeting system, can be taken as given. Systems engineering looks at ‘how to do it’ when ‘what to do’ is already defined” (Checkland and Scholes, 1990, p. 17). In contrast, Quadrant III representations presuppose that “what to do” or the intention is not already defined. Except, of course, by default.
We could profitably spend the rest of our lives in Quadrant III, sifting through historical evidences to discover when, where, and why certainty and consensus emerged as Nobody’s paramount concerns. We could deconstruct our preferred constructions of the present and past to uncover how Nobody’s obsession interactively evolved to become instantiated in top-down power structures and a widespread faith in prediction and, in particular, control.16 We could further examine the various “tools” through which Nobody reproduces itself, ranging from the ways we organize ourselves in industry, in politics, and in school, dominant methods of inquiry including curricular organization, to numerous other unexamined habits. We could debate the socio-cultural architectures needed to change Nobody’s mind--e.g., an organization’s “culture”--to resemble, say, something like the ideal type of what Habermas terms a “speech community” or, for that matter, the Nazi SS, an Amish community, an ultra right wing Militia, a Communist cell. Which raises an absolutely critical issue.
Yes, butIs “relativism” or “incommensurability” the inescapable offspring of Quadrant III? Consider the
implications of Donald Michael’s argument in “With Both Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air.”
15
In this regard a fundamental insight for me has been--there are many pasts. Alternative choices of events, time periods, interpretations and intentions provide unnumbered ways to link past events to a present. And there are unnumbered ways of putting together the present, i.e. what is ‘really’ happening and what is ‘really’ important. Since the present is always constructed out of a presumed past, I have learned that thoughts about the future derive from preferred constructions of the present and the past. These constructions are preferred because they are deemed ‘fitting’ in that they seem, according to the prevailing social construction of reality and its cultural norms, to be sensible, familiar, logical, authoritative, or otherwise acceptable because one has participated in their creation. (Michael, 1985, p.96)
So, even if we have managed to transcend objectivism-versus-subjectivism in Quadrant III, what are we to do about the far more problematic prospect of objectivism versus relativism?17 How are we to live with both feet firmly planted in mid-air?
Do we back up to Quadrant II and its selectionist logic declaring, in effect, that “might makes right” and “right makes might” are equivalent in the longer run? Are we to gamble that in the longer run bad “memes” will be selected out of our cultural meme pools of stories? 18 If so, are we willing to grant the processes of “creative destruction” --the invisible hand of selectionist logic--the slack to experiment with “random mutations” such as holocausts and other less monstrous deeds?
On the other hand, sticking with objectivism-versus-relativism is risky. Arendt quotes from Yeats’ soul numbing prophecy (The Second Coming):
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.
Yet if “Tools ‘R’ Us,” how are we to think outside the boxes that are both in-our-heads and out-there? Varela et al. (1991) point out that both cognitive science and Western phenomenology have proven incapable of transcending such self-referential circles. Indeed, what does it mean for thought to reflect upon itself? As Krishnamurti (1994) pointed out, “That, Sir, is a very good question.”
These are hardly academic issues. Yeats’ commentary on modern times bears a frightening resemblance to the conditions engulfing Descartes during the horrific Thirty Years War which ravaged Europe killing off, for example, one third of Germany’s population. “God,” it seems, was on nearly everybody’s side.
So where are (were) “the best” to stand? What is the ground of their “conviction”? Is it possible to re-present objectivism versus relativism such that we stand a chance of transcending such lethal distortions of meanings? Donald Michael notes some necessary conditions.
Emotions are critical to what happens—both those emotions driving creativity and reason, aspiration, power, greed and the will to control; and those emotions struggling with the existential questions of being human....
We are not outside the story we tell: each of us is part of the story. Each must be a quester after existential meaning, vulnerable, uncertain, and ethically concerned about what happens to our thoughts about the future since, if they are used, they will affect the future we are telling stories about.
The Delphic injunction, “Know thyself,” is the most essential of all conditions for meaningful and responsible engagement when thinking about the future, for finding one’s way among the claims, distortions, feelings and fantasies that each of us harbors in our unconscious. (1985, pp. 100-101)
16
It is time to enter Quadrant IV with Socrates. After going temporarily insane -- engaging others in those “aporetic” dialogues--he retires into his house to consult with his Daimon. “[He] must go home where he will be alone, in solitude, to meet the other fellow” (444). The “other fellow”? As Hannah Arendt points out, the word “conscience” means “to know with and by myself” (418). Thus, “For Socrates, this two-in-one meant simply that if you want to think you must see to it that the two who carry on the thinking dialogue be in good shape, that the partners be friends” (442). Perhaps conscience is the by-product of practicing the Golden Rule inwardly?
QUADRANT IV: I AM NOBODY
But wretched Man is still in arms for Fear.From fear to fear, successively betrayed---By making risks to give a cause for fear(Feeling safe with causes, and from birth afraid)
William Empson
[W]e can develop a way to select the right mind, not the mind we would usually choose. In more traditional terms, this yields an internal stability, detachment from the different minds within, and an increase in ability to select the right one.
Robert Ornstein
Quadrant IV adds the reality of inner dialogue, an emergent property of self-consciousness. Its root metaphor is the wilderness, a somewhat frightening, sacred, and empty place where one “makes up one’s mind.”
“Mindfulness”--“the keystone of emotional intelligence” (Goleman, 1995, p.43)-- structures this problem space, hence the form of solutions. It is here where thought reflects upon itself, where, in Arendt’s words, “a two-in-one soundless dialogue” takes place between myself and me.
A number of people could rightfully lay claim to this quadrant, Dante and Dostoevsky being obvious choices. We opt for Antonio Damasio--a world renowned scientist—because he has recently opened a doorway to ancient truths in the context of modern science. And that matters—the rigor and the accountability of science.
It is thus even more surprising and novel that the absence of emotion and feeling is no less damaging, no less capable of compromising the rationality that makes us distinctively human...Emotion and feeling ...assist us with the daunting task of predicting an uncertain future and planning our actions accordingly (Damasio, 1994, pp.vii,viii).
But who, precisely, is managing whose emotions-mind(s)? Who is doing the thinking? How is it done? And, above all, as it turns out, for what purpose?
Be careful
Doesn’t the journey of “the hero with a thousand faces” (Joseph Campbell, (1949) reduce to NLP-ing ourselves to Unlimited Power in Seven Steps with or without the special help of Angels? And is this why few if any (business) ethics texts make mention of--let alone pursue--the conditions entailed by the ancient injunction “Know Thyself”?
17
In stark contrast, our ancient wisdom traditions warn us that “know thyself” is an often frightening and perilous journey, where the temptations for self-deception abound. Take a moment to review some of the very best. Ponder the opening cantos of Dante’s Divine Comedy; reflect upon the nature of the obstacles facing Christian in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress; test the state of your soul with those three crucial questions which Dostoevsky lays out in his tale of “The Grand Inquisitor.”
Iris Murdoch comments on the stark contrast.19
We live in a scientific and anti-metaphysical age...whose chief feature, in my view, is that we have been left with far too shallow and flimsy an idea of human per-sonality. With the addition of some modern psychology he is seen as capable of self-knowledge by methods agreeable to science and common sense. So we have the modern man, as he appears in many recent works on ethics and I believe also
1
Endnotes? Subsequent citations from Arendt (1971) merely note the page number.2 See Larson and King (1996)3 The epistemological counterpart to the ontological premise of atomic individualism is the “detached observer” which is the supposed ideal type for modern science. See Polanyi (1958) for decisive objections.4 See Abbott’s (1988, 1990) outstanding analyses of “general linear reality.” 5 See Dreyfus and Dreyfus’ (1986) critique of dominant understandings of thinking in general and the absence of either theoretical or empirical evidence that “problem solving” is a dominant mode.6 MacIntyre (1981) makes perhaps the strongest case that Quadrant I’s origins were the “failed project” of the Enlightenment.7 The intended sarcasm mimics Gregory Bateson’s (1979, Part II).8 "I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to proportions something like this: 94% belong to the system (responsibility of management) 6% special," (Deming, 1986, p. 315).9 For examples and critiques see Clifford Geertz (1973, esp. Ch. 8, “Ideology As a Cultural System”) and Mary Douglas (1986, esp. Ch. 3, “How Latent Groups Survive”).10 My colleague, David Bella (1987), developed this model based on stories of frustrations told to him by scientists in environmental studies. An interesting aside is that during the investigations into the 1986 space shuttle disaster, David sent Figure 3 and Table 1 to one of the investigative team members, the late Nobel Laureate and physicist Richard Feynman who responded, “Perfect predictor” for what he had witnessed during his own investigations. 11 Nobody’s obsession with certainty and consensus is by no means news. For example, these two dimensions frame Douglas and Wildavsky’s analysis of Risk and Culture (1982) and King’s (1993) analysis of nuclear power issues in America. Others will recognize Nobody’s obsession as a cybernetic representation of Oliver Williamson’s (1975) seminal theorizing on forms of organizations. Within his “organizational failures framework,” Nobody is attracted to minimum transaction costs given 1) (all-too-human) conditions of bounded rationality and opportunism interacting with 2) environmental factors of complexity and small numbers. Others focus on tracing Nobody’s obsession much farther back in time, e.g., Smith (1979) and MacIntyre (1981, esp. Ch.8).12 See Mary Douglas’ (1986) argument on the neglected significance of Durkheim. 13 On this particular issue, see Murdoch’s (1992) and MacIntyre’s (1981) critiques of Sartre.14 See Douglas and Wildavsky’s elaboration of this point in their outstanding Risk andCulture (1981).15 Michael Polanyi (1958) and Richard Bernstein (1983) are perhaps two of the best in comparing and contrasting the “hard” and “soft” sciences.
18
to a large extent in the popular consciousness. (Murdoch, Against Dryness: A Polemical Sketch)
There is a second (biological) challenge to “Know Thyself,” shades of the ancient Buddhist doctrine of “split selves.”
The mind is a squadron of simpletons. It is not unified, it is not rational, it is not well designed--or designed at all...The mind evolved great breadth, but it is shallow, for it performs quick and dirty sketches of the world. This rough-and-ready perception of reality enabled our ancestors to survive better [and for millions of years]. The mind did not evolve to know the world or to know ourselves. (Ornstein,1991, pp. 2-3; bracketed comment added)
There is yet another challenge. Language, the medium of thinking, yet language whose “words (concepts, sentences, definitions, doctrines), whose ‘weakness’ and inflexibility Plato denounces so splendidly in the Seventh Letter” (433-434).
Key Questions
So who, precisely, is making the decision to distort information? One of our minds. How, exactly, do such distortions occur? What are the mechanisms? Cognitive-emotional heuristics.
Simply speaking, there has never been, nor will there ever be enough time to be truly rational. Rationality is one component of the mind, but it is used rarely, and in a very limited area. Rationality is impossible anyway. There isn’t time for the mind to go through the luxurious exercises of examining alternatives.....
Mental processes, I have come to believe, are not organized around thought or reason but around emotional ideals: how we feel we want something to be...The relationship between emotional drives and reason is like the relationship between an entrepreneur and her lawyers. The entrepreneur knows what she wants to do and employs the lawyers to tell her how. (Ornstein, 1991, pp.3, 95)
On what basis or for what purposes do our emotions defer to Nobody? The need for certainty and consensus? That makes eminent sense: we simply can’t spend much if any of the time required to reinvent our very many wheels. In particular,
[T]hinking inevitably has a destructive, undermining effect on all established criteria, values, measurements for good and evil, in short on those customs and values of conduct we treat of in morals and ethics (434).
But there’s a hitch. Dostoevsky, moraliste par excellence, describes it:
16 On the issue of “control,” see Huston Smith: 1979, "Excluded Knowledge: A Critique of the Modern Western Mind Set, Teachers College Record 80 (February 1979): 419-45.17 See Bernstein (1983) for the argument that “Beyond Objectivism and Relativism” is the major (philosophical) challenge facing us these days. 18 I’m referring to Dawkins’ hypothesis that the cultural counterpart of a “gene” is a “meme,” and that selectionist mechanisms may work for mind (“culture”) as they do for body. See Gary Cziko’s (1995) chapter on this dimension of the “second Darwinian revolution.” 19 Stephen Covey (1989) offers a similar critique in contrasting the “personality ethic” with the “character ethic.”
19
So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute...This craving for community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of worship they’ve slain each other with the sword. (Part II, Book V, Ch.5, “The Grand Inquisitor; first emphasis added)
For a more “banal” variation of the Grand Inquisitor’s point, review Stanley Milgram’s (1974) experiments to see what it takes to shock a fellow human being nearly to death. Contrary to all predictions (a frightening finding), it takes very little indeed. Consider the nature of the prompts given to you by the “authority figure” which results in your shocking the “student” to the max (450 volts).
When, in response to your concerns, the authority figure says, “I will take responsibility if anything happens to the student,” a large majority of us go all the way, despite the student’s shouts of discomfort, despite entreaties to “let me out of here, let me out of here, I can’t stand the pain!” and despite a then deathly silence. No other prompt by the authority figure--e.g., “the experiment requires that you continue,” “you must go on, you have no other choice”--none comes close to “I’ll take responsibility.”
In stark contrast, when a third party sits next to us and insists on asking such questions as, “Why are we hurting this person?” the results are spectacular.
Now ponder the logic of the first prompt in view of Arendt’s observation that“The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their mind to be either bad or good” (438). Now ponder the logic of the second prompt in view of her observation that the activity of thinking as such, “the two-in-one soundless dialogue, actualizes the difference within our identity as given in consciousness and thereby results in conscience as its by-product”(446).
On Dialogue
The emergent phenomenon of self-consciousness provides the potential for inner dialogue. The activity of thinking realizes this potential with conscience as a by-product.
So how does one conduct inner dialogues? And why does conscience arise as a by-product of dialogue?
Unfortunately, “The trouble is that few thinkers ever told us what made them think and even fewer have cared to describe and examine their thinking experience” (427). Indeed, “the whole history of philosophy, which tells us so much about the objects of thought [tells us] so little about the process of thinking itself”(424-5).
Although she notes that thinking as such is a form of “meditation,” Arendt perhaps overlooks someone who spent his whole life teaching and exemplifying the activity of thinking as such. Given his seminal influence on such people as David Bohm and the late Joseph Campbell, it is worth listening carefully to Krishnamurti’s account of inner dialogue. Note, in particular, his emphasis on the crucial significance of emptying one’s mind of motive--i.e., intention: anybody’s in general and Nobody’s in particular.
Do watch yourself. Don’t look at me or anyone else; watch yourself. That is, when you say, “I really don’t know,” “What has taken place?” your mind is not actively thinking about how to find out. Say, for instance, I really don’t know, which means I have no hope of finding it, I have no conclusion, I have no motive. This is very important. When I say I don’t know, in that is implied having no motive whatsoever. Because motive gives a direction, and then I have lost it. So I must be very, very clear and terribly honest in myself to say I really don’t know. (J. Krishnamurti, 1994)
20
We have arrived at the crux of what it means to be morally response-able in Quadrant IV. Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch underscore the significance of Hannah Arendt’s and Krishnamurti’s conception of the activity of thinking as such as being without object or motive or intention.
Contemplative traditions from around the world agree that if one thinks the point of meditative practice is to develop special skills and make oneself into a religious, philosophical, or meditative virtuoso, then one is engaging in self-deception and is actually going in the opposite direction. In particular, the practices involved in the development of mindfulness/awareness are virtually never described as the training of meditative virtuosity...but rather as the letting go of habits of mindlessness, as an unlearning rather than a learning. This unlearning may take training and effort, but it is a different sense of effort from the acquiring of something new...The importance of the distinction between skill and letting go should become increasingly apparent as we continue our story” (1991, p. 29).
Their “story” is that cognitive science, Western phenomenology, and Eastern (Buddhist) mindfulness/awareness can and ought to be integrated. It is about filling an increasingly worrisome vacuum in Western science. Note their response to the seeming contradiction of using reflection as a mode of learning:
This question brings us to the methodological heart of the interaction between mindfulness/awareness meditation, phenomenology, and cognitive science. What we are suggesting is a change in the nature of reflection from an abstract, disembodied activity to an embodied (mindful), open-ended reflection. By embodied, we mean reflection in which body and mind have been brought together. What this formulation intends to convey is that reflection is not just on experience, but reflection is a form of experience itself--and that reflective form of experience can be performed with mindfulness/awareness. When reflection is done in that way, it can cut the chain of habitual thought patterns and preconceptions such that it can be an open-ended reflection, open to possibilities other than those contained in one’s current representations of the life space. (1991, p. 27)
Cutting habitual thought patterns and preconceptions? Developing such a capacity seems of the utmost significance for the foreseeable future. Reasons range from thinking more creativity and holistically on the job,20 to creating and using a “sacred place” for yourself,21 to developing the “ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And this indeed may prevent catastrophes, at least for myself, in the rare moments when the chips are down” (446).
21
EpilogueThe assumption current in all modern legal systems [is] that intent to do wrong is necessary for the commission of a crime...[However], politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.
Hannah Arendt
[However, our world today is far] different than the world for which the mind evolved. We’d better have a good idea of the possible change points of the mind, to know how we take information from the world, in which bits, what is hard-wired, and what can be changed.
Ornstein (1991, p. 166)
Hard systems, soft systems, and our minds/emotions make decisions for us. Increasing our “vocabularies of attention” to include the dynamics of these problem spaces and the ways intentions and values are embedded in them, expands our understandings of moral response-abilities. We thereby stand a chance of making the world a better place for our children. The alternatives are frightening and they are wrong.
There are some obvious obstacles. Managing hard systems still poses real challenges in view of the linear methods of inquiry and reductionist ways of organizing which continue to suffuse management thinking and practice.
Managing “soft systems” and managing our various selves/emotions hinges on conducting real dialogue--outer and inner, respectively.22 The motivation driving dialogue is the desire to understand, not the desire to know and to control. This is the key distinction, the one which Arendt points to at the very outset of her inquiry into the “banality of evil.” This is because the desire to know and to control necessarily takes too much as given, by anyone in general and by Nobody in particular.
So how are we to take Arendt’s final claim that the activity of thinking as such should be reserved for “the rare moments when the chips are down”? Since information distortions run the gamut from you and yourself, to business failures, to holocausts, such “moments” are, in fact, fairly common these days. It seems to me that Arendt’s central insight therefore gains even greater force and relevance.
21 Joseph Campbell is worth quoting on this point: Moyers: Where are the sacred places today?Campbell: They don’t exist....Moyers: What does it mean to have a sacred place?Campbell: This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a
certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t now who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen....But our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great, you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you. (1988, p. 92)
22
William O’Brien, former CEO of the Hanover Insurance Company makes the point in the context of business failures:
“The third attribute that [winning] twenty-first-century companies will need is [dialogue]. This is the single greatest learning tool in your organization—more important than computers or sophisticated research...We have so many defense mechanisms that impede communications that we are absolutely terrible....” (Senge et al., 1994, p. 14).
O’Brien’s observation seems so -- banal? Indeed it is. But only in the precise sense in which
Hannah Arendt has expanded our vocabulary of attention concerning the relationships between
thinking, intent, and individual moral response-ability.
23
22 “[Theoretical physicist, David] Bohm, identifies three basic conditions that are necessary for dialogue:1. all participants must ‘suspend’ their assumptions, literally to hold them ‘as if suspended before us’;2. all participants must regard one another as colleagues:3. there must a ‘facilitator’ who ‘holds the context’ of dialogue” (Senge, 1990, p. 243).
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