A phenomenology of effective problem-solving
“In theory it’s impossible. It’s only possible in practice.”
~Kevin Kelly
A point of leverage which people seem to keep forgetting is individual competence.
Individual competence is able to achieve in practice what in theory appears impossible, because competence transcends explicit rules.
So now imagine you could enable education that would elevate transparent skill levels of all team members. What impact would that then have on the outcome of a given project.
Attributing incompetence to “laziness” or “stupidity” or other similars is not helpful. This is not a repudiation of psychometric testing or the big5 character traits. The reason it’s not helpful is because it doesn’t give any access to improving competence. So how to think about incompetence in a way that makes you more competent?
The world
The connection between humans and the world is not primarily mediated by perception or cognition, but rather it is primarily mediated via #skill. This is an important insight not just for philosophers, because it implies the world we each get to live in is a function of our #competence. There is an important sense in which skills are a “silent” language — that is a say a structural language by means of which our bodies articulate the world in the form of “know-how”.
The problem
Effective problem solving typically involves the process of iterative re-specification of what the problem actually is, in a cycle with low-cost experiments to determine whether that way of defining the problem tends to give rise to more of what we want or less of what we want.
In what follows I attempt an initial sketch of a phenomenology of effective problem-solving and the motivation for developing one. I propose two conjectures which are summarised towards the end of the article.
The hermeneutic circle of interpreting the experience of solving a problem crucially includes action in the world. Acting in the world is what connects the hermeneutic circle up to include the world in which an agent is operating. I interpret my experience of an attempt to solve one of my problems so as to cast light on how to re-define my problem so that my next attempt at solving it provides an experience of greater accomplishment.
Much of the cycle of going round the hermenuetic circle performantly is non-representational; when I am learning how to do things, my representational understanding of what I learnt is typically the last thing to occur. Representational understanding of my new skill follows the acquisition of the skill rather than preceding it. This is the case even in the domain of cognitive skills. How then is it possible to learn new things? Essentially this occurs from trying to do them; that is to say: experimentation.
So when Yoda said “Do or do not, there is no try”, he was only partly right! The less cryptic version of the point is that each “do” is an experiment, an interaction with the world, and one that yields a load of sub-cognitive information (phenomena) about the nature of the world in which the agent is operating. As such it might be said to be a “trial”, one of a series of tries, rather than just one try. Without actually taking some action (without there being a “do”) you can’t do the experiment, so yes: “do or do not”. But it is precisely this process of an ongoing series of low-cost low-risk trials (or “tries”) that provides the agent with the necessary sub-cognitive phenomenal raw experience that is needed to acquire the new requisite skill that is being sought for.
I don’t mean to overstate the case here. I probably have provisional representational understandings of a new skill that is under development prior to learning that skill. The point is that this provisional understanding is essentially an experiment that has not been carried out yet. The understanding that follows the acquisition of a new skill is an understanding based on my own experience. An understanding that precedes the acquisition of the skill has more the function of a conjecture. As such we might want to say that this whole article is a conjecture.
The Cycle of Re-definition
This refers to the cycle of re-defining the problem specification, and rapidly trialing possible solutions with minimum cost within a framework of using these trials to re-define the specification of the problem. A problem whose specification is deliberately kept open-ended is closely akin to a “wicked problem”. We can apply the cycle of re-definition to the process of problem-solving itself.
How can I interpret my previous attempts at solving my problem so as to provide myself with an optimally powerful re-definition of my problem? By exploring the space of possible ways of interpreting previous failures and successes. One way of doing this is to use a cognitive-mapping tool, such as thortspace.
Re-definition
Donald Norman is the design guru who worked for Apple and author of “The Design of Everyday Things”. Norman’s approach to solving problems is re-definition. This approach has become a standard.
“Getting the specification of the thing to be defined is one of the most difficult parts of design, so much so that the Human Centred Design principle is to avoid specifying the problem as long as possible, but instead to iterate upon repeated approximations.”
~ From “The Design of Everyday Things”, Donald A. Norman
Problem-solving theory vs. the practice of solving problems
There are endless resources available in respect of the theory of how to solve problems. But the practice of solving problems requires know-how and experience, as much or more than it requires information and knowledge. Typically the problems that are causing us trouble are ones that we do not have experience of solving. That’s why they are not getting solved.
Know-how vs. Know-that
“Know-how” is embedded knowledge. It makes up the fabric of the our living and acting and what Hubert Dreyfus calls our “Skillful Coping”.
Know-how is all the stuff you know how to do without necessarily having a reliable articulation of it (although you may also have this).
We can think of know-how as skills. Skills are transparent to the agent — the greater the level of skill the more transparent it is. The sphere about this distinction is here. Think, for example, of the way the skill of driving a manual-gear car recedes into the background as a person becomes a competent driver. Competent drivers are not having to think explicitly about the operation of the clutch or the gear-stick.
The skills of an agent function against the background on an “equipmental whole” — a set of inter-operative tools that go to make up the world inside which the particular skill-set can be operative.
What is given to us primarily is the unity of an equipmental whole, a unity which constantly varies in range, expanding or contracting, and that is expressly visible to us for the most part only in excerpts. The view in which the equipmental contexture stands at first, completely unobtrusive and unthought, is the view and sight of practical circumspection, of our practical everyday orientation. “Unthought” means that the equipmental whole is not thematically apprehended for deliberate thinking; instead in circumspection we find our bearings with regard to the equipmental whole.
~ From “Basic Problems of Phenomenology”, Martin Heidegger
[More discussion of Heidegger’s Phenomenology is here.]
Thinking is habitual and transparent
Thinking is a kind of know-how, not a kind of know-that. Hence thinking is habitual and transparent (just like any other kind of know-how). We don’t think, “it thinks”. The sphere about thinking is here.
“My Problems” vs. Problems-in-General
“My problems” are imbued with 1st person significance. There is a 1st person narrative that accompanies my consideration of “my problems”. My problems typically occur as worrying, causes of stress or tension, frustration and upset.
Problems-in-general mostly occur within a 3rd person perspective inside which they occur as “interesting”.
“My problems” are thereby phenomenologically different than problems-in-general. What is needed is a “Phenomenology of Problem Solving” vs. a theory of problem solving: what is it like being someone who has this problem and what is it like being someone who solves it; What is the experience of being someone who has this problem and what is the experience of being someone who solves it.
We can conjecture that phenomenologically a problem can be viewed as a lack of a particular set of skills, or the lack of a particular set of tools; and that a problem is solved by acquiring the skills and tools necessary to deal with it skillfully.
The insight required for this process to be graceful is itself a skill. In particular it is a skill that enables us to repeatedly re-design and re-frame the specification of a problem in the light of reflection upon a series of low-cost trials.
Summary
Persistent and difficult problems are often thought to be a consequence of character traits of the people involved and the circumstances in which they are acting. The solution to problems are then defined as explicit plans and strategies. Typical problem solving methodologies follow a process of:
- stating the problem
- brain-storming solutions
- drawing up a plan
- implementing the plan
- evaluating the results
In this sketch I have attempted to re-define problem-solving on the basis of two (or more) conjectures:
- Skills are embodied phenomena that are transparent to the people who have them and cannot ultimately be stated in explicit rules. Solving my current persistent problems requires the acquisition of new skills and corresponding tools. Once I have acquired such skills, I still won’t necessarily be able to explicitly articulate how I was able to solve my problem (even though it is no longer a problem).
- The fundamental skill involved in effective problem solving in general is that of re-definition; being able to re-define what my problem actually is in such a way that my next set of attempts to solve it result in experiences of greater accomplishment. This skill is a function of the interpretive process of reflecting on my past successes and failures that have arisen in attempting to solve the problem.
- Conceptual understanding happens after the fact and is largely irrelevant in respect of a person’s competence.
Consequently the approach I have outlined, instead of building forwards from the statement of a problem, tries to dig back down into the ground from where the problem arose; so as to repeatedly re-interpret the problem from deeper and still deeper perspectives; perspectives which might allow the problem to be more and more fully articulated as what it most significantly and fundamentally is. This process of clarification and illumination naturally and effortlessly gives rise to a more and more satisfying experience of my attempts to transcend, include and resolve the problem.
Japanese: We Japanese do not think it strange if a dialogue leaves undefined what is really intended, or even restores it back to the keeping of the undefinable.
Heidegger: That is part, I believe, or every dialogue that has turned out well between thinking beings. As if of its own accord, it can take care that that undefinable something, not only does not slip away, but displays its gathering force ever more luminously in the course of the dialogue.~ From “On The Way to Language”, Martin Heidegger
So what?
Pick 2 significant and 2 insignificant problems or pick a current political crisis or an organisational crisis you are dealing with.
- How has the current statement of what the problem is been determined?
- How have (and how could) the previous attempts to solve the problem be interpreted?
- How does the answer to question 2 shape the current statement of what the problem is?
- What cheap experiments would enable a revised determination (and interpretation) of what the statement of the problem is?
- What skills are missing?
- What cheap experiments would make the missing skills more obvious?
- What cheap experiments would enable the acquisition of the missing skills?
A follow up to this article: “thinking-in-the-world” as a source of effective action, is here:
And this article is a bit philosophically oriented, but there’s a useful section in the middle about breaking skills down in to subskills:
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