This essay contains many instances of use of the term "metaphysics". I refrain from discussing my choice out of the rich and complex history of the term. I refer the interested reader to an encyclopaedia. My position will hopefully emerge in the course of the repeated use of the word in the text which follows. In a superficial sense I am thinking about the possibility of ordering and discussing unavoidable ultimate values and absolute presuppositions which direct human life in face of the lures of relativism, skepticism, nihilism, eclecticism, and such. Other words like ontology, transcendence and religion, come also to the fore in the context of metaphysics. In spite of all this, I have no quarrel with those who, like Norström (1912, pp. 74f, 159), in the course of a serious appreciation of the relation between religion and science, are critical of abusive metaphysical claims or of so called transcendental mysticism; in fact I am in accord with the conception of e.g. transcendence which has been put forth in connection with such criticism (ibid., p. 71).

² Please note the remarkable claim for an equivalence between "inside" and "biological urges" in the context of this paper's later references to Feuerbach's humanism, metaphysics, and immanentism in their relation to ethics and religion. In a way it appears that an internal "a priori ethics" is here substituted by external socially created artifacts. That would explain, in our socially coloured "Zeitgeist", the emotional and popular appeal of the "tool metaphor". For an alternative pragmatist approach that relates the "inside" to the teleology of purposeful subjects and to their activities seen as either actions or responses in social context ("system") see Ackoff & Emery (1972, chap. 2), and Churchman (1971, chap. 3).

³ For the convenience of the humanistically and socially oriented reader who is genuinely "system oriented" and collaborative, I take the liberty of using this space for sharing information about initiatives with which he can cooperate. In this way he can put his own initiatives into a "system" which takes into consideration other people's efforts (Cf. Churchman, 1968, chap. 6 on "program budgeting").

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, CPSR (P.O. Box 717, Palo Alto, CA 94302-9917, tel. +1 415-3223778, fax +1 415 3223798, E-mail draper@csli.stanford.edu) publishes the CPSR Newsletter and distributes various materials related to its area of interest. It has at the present time interest groups on privacy, crime, education, international, weapons, and workplace, the latter having introduced participatory design in the context of the Association for Computing Machinery, and being the major organizer of participatory design conferences.

⁴ The International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP Secretariat, 16 Place Longemalle, CH-1204 Geneva, Switzerland, tel. +41 22 282649, fax +41 22 812322), has a technical committee TC 8 on Information Systems with a working group WG 8.2 on The Interaction of Information Systems and the Organisation (with its newsletter OASIS), and a TC 9 on Relationship between Computers and Society, with a working group WG 9.1 on Computers and Work and WG 9.2 on Social Accountability.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM, 11 West 42nd Street, New York, NY, 10036, tel. +1 212 8697440, fax +1 212 9441318, E-mail acmhelp@acmvm.bitnet) has special interest groups (SIGs) on Computers and Society (SIGCAS), and Computer and Human Interaction (SIGCHI) that is planning the establishment of a technical interest group on participatory design (TIG-PD).

Independently upon all these initiatives there is now also an effort to establish an International Federation for a Humanistic Computing Science possibly under the auspices of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS Int. Business Office, College of Business, Box 8793, Idaho State University, Pocatello, Idaho, 83209, tel. +1 208 2363585 or -3019, fax +1 208 2364367), besides the ISSS SIGs on Informatics and Communication Systems, and Information Systems Design & Information Technology.

The International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR, Schottengasse 3, A-1010, Wien, Austria, E-mail K323390@aearn.bitnet) publishes a IFSR Newsletter which surveys various initiatives in the areas above.

[5] For the possible benefit of Swedish readers I add a quotation from Vitalis Norström (1912, p. x) who wrote in a similar context: "Emellertid behöfver en filosofisk författare i våra dagar, som framträder med en definitiv åsikt, ingalunda vara en profet för att rätt klart kunna förutse sitt arbetes yttre öde. Yngre, lyckligare släkten, hvilka mödolöst insupa ett högre vetande med själfva den moderna kulturluft, som omsveper dem, skola nog frestas att gladeligen slå i vädret de resultat, hvartill en långsam och svår mogning har ledt. Redan åsiktens fasta skick måste bortstöta dem, som älska blott sväfvande, åt alla håll öppna möjligheter. Det är nästan, som om det - visserligen mycket relativa och hofsamma - anspråket på att vara färdig innebure ett attentat mot ungdomens egen framtid. Och de äldre vilja merendels ej veta af något annat än antingen hvad de i yngre dagar emottagit af vördade lärofäder eller hvad de själva anse sig ha åstadkommit. Mot sådana utsikter ämnar jag tillgripa endast en stillsam och enslig consolatio philosophica. Men ord har jag inga för det, som ligger bakom mitt verk och som drifvit det fram."

⁶In his "Letter on Humanism", however, M. Heidegger (1978a, pp. 189-242, now most easily available in his Wegmarken) refers to Humanitas, explicitly so called, as first considered and striven for in the age of the Roman Republic. It exalted and honored Roman virtus through the "embodiment" of the paideia [philosophical education] taken over from the Greeks of the Hellenistic age. I will not pursue here Heidegger's exceedingly complex arguments beyond pointing out that he criticizes certain "humanism" because it does not set the humanitas of man high enough: "The essence of man consists in his being more than merely human, if this is represented as "being a rational creature". This implies a strong criticism of the tradition of subjectivity, which celebrates the "I think" as the font of liberty. (Ibid., pp. 210, 221, 191; my trans.).

⁷ Webster's defines ontogeny as the biological development or course of development of an individual organism. Phylogeny is the evolution of a race or genetically related group of organisms (as a species, family, or order) as distinguished from the individual organism; also the history or course of the development of an immaterial thing.

[8] Cf. Gehlen's admission (1983, pp. 434ff) of the failure of historicism in the struggle against the relativism and lack of commitment which result from the attempt to sweep-in all Weltanschauung. The Swedish reader may refer also to Norström (1912, p. vii-ix): "Historiens anspråk på att innesluta en högre verklighet än människans själ är åtminstone något, som tanken måste upptaga till grundlig pröfning. Han måste undersöka väsendet i samhälle, stat och kultur, om han ej vill afklippa sin egen logiska tråd. - Äfven om vi tro oss i de historiska sammanhangen spåra högre makter med en verklig osönderdelbar kärna, följaktligen ett realt andelif af helt annan art och grad än alla blotta anhopningar och sammanslutningar af mänskliga krafter, så aro vi emellertid icke därför berättigade att i detta andelif se en fast och oöfverstiglig skranka för den relativism, hvarmed vår tanke brottas....Men religionen är en makt, som för sig kräfver rätten att tala kunskapens sista ord och som begär att blifva vägd. Religionen har ett obetingadt enhetligt väsen - eller också är den bara inbillning, ett ord. Till pröfning af den logiska grunden för dess bestämda anspråk på en dominerande ställning inom kunskapens värld måste tanken gå till en sista och högsta uppgift....Och den högsta, i sista hand afgörande sanningen mätes ej ens med logiska mått utan pröfvas därpå, om vi kunna vara den förutan eller icke".

⁹ The work of Collingwood has been found fruitful in recent studies of the process of design of information systems (Stolterman, 1989).

[10] Concerning epistemological fractures, cf. Norström (1912, pp. 165, 168) suggesting similar conceptions in the context of the differentiation between reality and truth in natural science, possibly influenced by the spirit of thinkers like R.H. Lotze (1817-1881) and T. Lipps (1851-1914). Together with thinkers like J.L.J. Lequier (1814-1862), C. Renouvier (1815-1903), and J.G.F. Ravaisson (1813-1900), and later L. Ollé Laprune (1839-1898) and M. Blondel (1861-1949) who will be adduced in a while, they seem to represent "spiritualistic" currents of thought which often gave full attention to the problems of aesthetics in its relation to ethics and science, influencing pragmatism and displaying a pre-existential component. I mention this because I find that it is remarkable and symptomatic that such names and ideas are seldom, if ever, mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon research in development of computer systems. A contemporary name close to these traditions, G. Bachelard (1884-1962), however, recently has been adduced in the context of research on interactive information systems (Nilsson, 1989).

¹¹ One such fracture is represented by the rise of labor union participation in systems development in Sweden in the sixties. I proposed the consideration of the "deviants" in a dissertation (Ivanov, 1972, chaps. 4-5, pp. 4.33 ff, summarized in Ivanov, 1986, pp. 47ff, and in Ivanov, 1987). The basic model was adapted by P. Ehn (1973) and used as the original frame of the model for negotiations based on union involvement in information systems development. This model was in turn later referenced by L. Mathiassen (1982, 2nd ed., p. 137, fig 6.7) where no mention is made to my work probably because of the fact that such reference was dropped in further uses of Ehn's work in their making more explicit the "resource" dimension (Ehn & Sandberg, 1979, p. 34, fig. 2.1; Ehn, 1988, pp. 271ff, and esp. 316ff.). I objected, however, that the explication or determination of resources throws us, pradoxically and recursively into the need of having an "information system" for such a purpose. My original semi-metaphorical concept of quality of information (systems) incorporates also the basic idea of (co) constructiveness as it appears in later developments of (co) constructive systems development (Forsgren, 1988, p. 177, in the 4th strategy of "computer application").

¹² Cf. Norström (1912, p. 15) quoting the not yet profane concept of "self-determination" as found in Rudolph Eucken (German writer and philosopher, 1846-1926, belonging to the current of thought which reacted to positivism resulting in part in phenomenology): "Den religiösa friden röjer sitt oberoende af det yttre läget inte bara i sin hållfasthet gentemot förminskningen eller frånvaro af den lycka, som är rotfäst i yttre omständigheter, utan än mer i sin tydliga benägenhet att härdas och växa under olycksslag. I denna mening betecknas den med rätta såsom ej varande af 'denna världen'. Den framträder tvärtom i eminent grad såsom motståndskraft mot världsomgifningen eller rentaf som världsöfverlägsenhet. Därför tillkommer den religiösa friden hvad Eucken så ofta tillägger sitt 'Geistleben', nämligen bestämningen 'Beisichselbstein'. Jag öfversätter här detta krångliga tyska ord med 'själfbestämdhet'".

¹³ Please compare with the suggestion, in the later section on linguistic humanism, that the denial of the possibility of depicting reality is consistent with a Lockean view of language, and with positivistic metaphysics. Note also E.Mach's concept of ego (an "I" who should be properly contrasted to the "I" of M. Scheler) as a "pragmatic" auxiliary concept, an aggregate of sensations which is organized by functional dependencies. This leads my thoughts to what has been called the "logical socialism" of C.S. Peirce, on the basis of his conception of "I" as being the result of a "logical mistake" (Peirce, 1990, pp. 14f, 31n, 37ff., esp. from the essay on "Questions concerning certain faculties claimed for man" published in 1868). The subject of the evolutionary construction by the the endless community is not the individual. He is, rather, a potentially endless semiotic and language community. From here we go further towards G.H. Mead's (1863-1931) sophisticated "symbolic interactionism" which, by the way, has been criticized for ignoring the influence of genetic (and I would add other) factors in the formation of personality. I will return to this theme later on in this paper, in the context of the postmodern "Nietzschean" destruction of the human personality.

The unwilligness, in the context of late constructivistic approaches, to go to such philosophical or conceptual roots is even more difficult to justify in a pragmatic perspective since philosophical pragmatism programmatically encourages philosophizing as an integral part of daily concrete contexts or human activities, and disapproves the isolation of advanced philosophical discussions to only certain milieus or certain classes of professionals, like philosophers. It is in this light that I must apologize to the reader for "diving" deep in certain matters. They will appear even more abstruse against the background of postmodern "rhetorical" oversimplifications with their load of overselling "easy promises". Compare with later notes on aestheticism and on the phenomenon of ("intellectual") seduction.

¹⁴ Please note, for the purpose of later discussions, the reference to the roots of our biological organism. This should be compared to the earlier motives given in Kuutti's account of activity theory, rejecting humanity as control of own behavior "from the inside", on the basis of biological urges.

[15] The metaphysical or transcendental aspects of language can be traced, of course, in the pre-existentialist and pre-hermeneutic critique of the Kantian view of language, as found in the work of J.G. Hamann and W. von Humboldt. Cf. a later note on this in the section on linguistic humanism.

¹⁶ It the terms of such instrumentalism or "organistic naturalism" this pragmatic constructionism emphasizes the temporal and precarious character of experience, and is inspired by biological evolutionism. The computer application, like a collective "intelligence" which is analog to an individual consciousness according to G.H. Mead's symbolic interactionism, is envisaged as emerging through a natural and evolutionary refinement of basic vital functions, as if starting from an "incubator". Starting from a problematic situation and directed by an idea which is, rather, an operational prevision of desirable results, the process goes through a sort of continuous experiment or reality test. This test involves people who avowedly wish to collaborate in such an experiment. Both the ideas and the conscious subjects get constituted in the course of this process. Dewey elaborated an open moral conceptions that does not accept rigid and preconstituted values. The ethical aspect of the relation between ends and means does not consist of striving for certain ends rather than for others, but in potentiating indefinitely the "method" or the control of the situations in physical, psychophysical, spiritual, and social terms. In this way ethics is supposed to get also integrated with aesthetics since art is envisaged as an active appreciation of those formal and qualitative aspects that characterize every real situation.

Also Dewey-inspired seems to be the modern educational consultancy dogma of "learning by doing", which is often interpreted as a priority of action and of practice over theory and knowledge in the sense that the latter is supposed to be verified by the former which, in turn, would be verified by sheer statements uttered by the "client king". In this perspective, client-centered or user-driven systems development might be seen as a new Platonism or new Hobbesianism where the philosopher-king and the monarch proper are substituted by the client so long as the finances and the power of the decision-maker or leader are not adventured. The consultancy dogma of learning by doing can be profitably used for discrediting research work which can be accused of being "pure", i.e. not paid or endorsed by any visible constituency. It would be enough to utter the standard "constructive" requirement that any researcher should put forward a constructive positive alternative "doing something" instead of just talking, where doing something is anything that any client or leader claims, or is claimed, to stand for. It is obvious that such an attitude, in spite of all lip service to the "social", will see no meaning in the Bible's apocriphal Ecclesiasticus (38.24ff), regarding "Man in Society", esp. "A scholar's wisdom..." (corresponding to some of the elaborations in Max Scheler's essay Arbeit und Weltanschauung, to which I return in a later note).

Compare, finally, Schinz's sharp criticism (Schinz, 1909) of Dewey's, in comparison with William James' pragmatism.

¹⁷ This touches upon the historical controversies about the pragmatic concept of truth. Please see the references to the issue of truth, further on in this paper. Compare also the following: "The social conditions under which man today conquers nature make possible not man's conquest of himself, but the conquest of man by other men. Instead of universalizing, these social conditions particularize; and in politics this results in squabbles over who shall conquer whom. Man's destiny becomes synonymous with narrowing his allegiances, and in its highest political reaches results in allegiance to nothing but power itself. Since no agreement as to ends was initially possible, it should occasion no surprise that no general end was achieved" (Simpson, 1951).

[18] For a Hegelian-pragmatist rectification of Kant's shortcomings in matters of language, see Churchman, 1971, esp. pp. 123, 125, 145, 171, 175. A more detailed, in depth treatment requires an appreciation of how in Kant the intersubjective and communicative relation is left at the margin of the description of man, where what is most emphasized is the solipsism of reason. This is reflected in the Kantian exclusion of language from the constitutive realm of reason. Language is left at the level of pure empirical knowledge, out of his transcendental philosophy. This is one of the original insights of the theory of language of the great humanist W. von Humboldt (see esp. A. Carrano's introduction in Humboldt, 1989, pp. 15, 44, including his reference to J.G. Hamann's metacritique of Kant in his essay Metakritik über den Purismus der Vernunft, reprinted in Simon, 1967, pp. 221-227). What is particularly interesting in our context here, in this "prehistory" of existentialism and modern hermeneutics, is the ever present connection to metaphysical, theological and religious matters.

¹⁹ This was, of course, realized long ago in the hermeneutic tradition which is revived today: "Language is symbolic action, through which we search for meaning in the world. There is no simple one-for-one mapping in the world. Words are symbols and meanings are always multiple and ambiguous. Meanings are found through our lived experience of being in the world... The search for meaning is a continuous search that is never completely or finally realized. Meaning is always in doubt and needs to be reaccomplished. It is always about to slip from our grasp. - It is through dialogue that we accomplish and reaccomplish meaning, and thus bring order to the social world. Through dialogue we name objects and give them significance. Our norms of social interaction and our basis for defining social reality are constituted by language practice. It is through dialogue that the symbolic order of our shared social world is made real. Through dialogue we tell each other what is important and why... Designing an information system is a moral problem because it puts one party, the system designer, in a position of imposing an order on the world of another" (Boland, 1987, p. 366 and 376, my emphasis). Observe how the the depiction of physical and social reality, as well as of the ethical reality of "what is important and why" is made dependent on a presumed satisfactory degree of temporary consensus. This was also the main point of my dissertation in a pragmatic spirit, where, however, the error or quality of information representing a "degree of social doubt" was made central to the constructive usability of the problematic consensual depiction or construction (Ivanov, 1972, chaps. 4 and 5). Which "order of the world" anybody should try to impose on himself and others is, of course, one main delicate problem that is addressed in this essay beyond any superficial reference to consensus.

Cf. activity theory's emphasis on the marxist epistemology and its theory of reflection, according to which the material world outside us is reflected in our consciousness (Kuutti, 1991, p. 11). This reflection is not a passive mirroring but an active process in a real, cultural-historical situation, and thus the knowledge produced in not absolute but only relatively objective. The three aspects affecting the knowledge perceived are: the objective properties of the object of interest, the earlier knowledge collected by the subject and the practical activity within which the perception is taking place.

It seems obvious to me that depiction and construction overlap in part each other. Heidegger notes (1978, p. 247f) that the greatness and superiority of natural science during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries rests in the fact that all scientists were philosophers. They understood that there are no mere facts, but that a fact is only what it is in the light of the fundamental conception, and always depends upon how far that conception reaches. I see that one difference between what is considered depiction or construction may depend upon our attitude to the meaning of consensus and other metaphysical or ontological presuppositions including the existence of a predefined "object". Another complex conception of the relation between depiction and construction was developed in the currents of thought represented by Norström (1912, pp. 90f, 156f, 169, 178ff ), where this relation is also discussed in terms of the problem of historical reconstructions (pp. 140ff). In particular: "Consciousness does not only perceive the factual images, but soon it also starts to react to them with a spontaneous creation of images, the impulse of which is found in itself, and by which science culminates. Science appears here as an inner driving force of consciousness, and truth appears as its own inner nature....At this point, form has freed itself from given contents, and it produces images which are appreciably different from the more immediate images of objects, constructed images, but certainly constructed under a rigorous influence of the experience and originated from a knowledge work which means direct and legitimate prolongation of the objective perception and depiction" (ibid. pp. 136f, my trans.). Compare with Heidegger's rendering of the object-thing according to pre-Kantian metaphysics (1962, p.142, my trans., not included in the English excerpt, 1978, "Modern science, metaphysics and mathematics"): A proposition is true if it is adequate to the thing. The definition of truth as adequacy, however, is not valid only for the proposition as related to the thing, but also for the things, since they, having being created, must be referred to the design of a creating spirit to whom they conform. So considered, truth is the conformity of things to their essence conceived by God."

In Norström's further references to personality and individuality (p. 70f), to the limits of intellectualism and need of acknowledging irrationality (p. 172, 197ff), to psychic activity and energy (231, 256), there seem to be an intuition of the imminent developements of analytical depth psychology (in the path of the philosopher E. von Hartmann) and of the Jungian conception of the process of "individuation". The autonomy or "self-determination" of inner life in terms of thought, will and feeling is expressed through science, morals and religion which put limits to relativism (ibid., pp. 98f, 172).

²⁰ This has been clearly note by B. Dahlbom (1990).

²¹ "Adamic" stands for a view of the nature of language, and also an epistemological doctrine. "It held that languages even now, in spite of their multiplicity and seeming chaos, contain elements of the original perfect language created by Adam when he named the animals in his prelapsarian state. In the Adamic doctrine the relation between signifier and signified is not arbitrary; the linguistic sign is not double but unitary. Still retaining the divine nature of their common origin, languages were in fundamental accord with nature, indeed they were themselves divine and natural, not human and conventional. This was an essentialist and innatist doctrine, and it agreed with the double-conformity expectation of ordinary speakers. Languages were a better avenue to the true knowledge of nature than mere self-help of man's deceiving senses and imperfect reason" (ibid., p. 25). Compare the reliance of certain methods of systems development upon an ideal speech situation or constructive collaboration which to me seem to work as ingredients of an implicit social theology, the divinity of language being replaced by the perfect community.

²² Also where there is no insensitivity to matters of power, politics, and emotions, they may happen to get bowdlerized by means of encasement in the boxes of smart taxonomies. In the tradition of critical social theory, for instance, the approach to requirements specification is conceived in terms of not less than nine "effectiveness measures". They arise from a prior taxonomy of three "object systems" classes - technology, language, and organization, and four "action type classes" - instrumental, strategic, communicative and discursive (Lyytinen, Klein and Hirschheim, 1991, p. 50ff). After such a mind-blowing "Aristotelian" exercise it will be very hard for the critical social theorist to sense, for instance, the political import of different kinds of truths relabeled "criteria of validity claims" such as clarity, truthfulness, correctness and appropriateness, or correspondence of depiction, sincerity, intelligibility, correctness (ibid. pp. 46, 53). Even less will the reader know the import and meaning of wishful counterfactual thinking on discursive action in organizations, such as "eliminating the distorting effects of hierarchy", "introducing checks and balances against subconscious bias and self-deception", or " reduce defensiveness and other psychological barriers to free inquiry" (ibid, p. 53). This mess is probably what prompts some optimistic researcher to try to gather everything under the "umbrella" of "conversation killing vs. conversation pushing" or "presuppositions for constructiveness" (Nordström, T., 1990).

In the phenomenological tradition there is an acknowledgement of the political and emotional bias of the taken-for-granted "interpretive structures" that hide the forms of legitimation and the modes of domination in our society". Unfortunately, however, in spite of the complaint that "in-formation becomes a constant awaiting future research efforts" such complaints does not lead further than to "but that is not an argument we will pursue here, even though it deserves, and is beginning to receive, careful attention" (Boland, 1987, p. 364). "The duality of power relationships that follows from the necessity of dialogue by organized actors" is then summarized in that "The dynamics of power are dialectic and found in human interaction. Power does not emanate from some location, but like meaning, is produced and reproduced through action and sense-making dialogue" (ibid., p. 373). This conveys me the feeling of a sort of divinized metaphysics that ultimately refers everything to the ultimate ontology and god of "Human interaction".

[23] My translation of "Problemet, d.v.s. uppgiften, är att klargöra verkligheten genom sanningen, medan sanningen aflägsnar sig från verkligheten". For a development of the relation between truth and reality please see Norström (ibid.) passim, esp. pp. 114, 136, 156-8, 162-5. The issue is obviously connected to the definition or construction of the "object" (cf. the "entity" in computer science), and to the concept of "limit" (cf. "recursivity" in computer science) which also constitutes the limit between pragmatism and relativistic skepticism (ibid, pp. 172, 194-7, 241f). The problematic relation between truth and reality, or construction and depiction, including the danger of skepticism implicit in an evolutionary constructive sweeping-in process of inquiry, has been well focused also in the historical criticism of classical pragmatism (Pratt, 1909, pp. 49ff, 66, 179, 209, 236f).

²⁴ Cf. the endless universal dialogue envisaged in the phenomenological and hermeneutic tradition (Boland, 1987, p. 366) which can also be conceived as an endless promiscuous "running after each person's phenomenal reality", an idea which I have identified and developed to some extent in another context, of "creativity" (Ivanov, 1990b).

²⁵"Passionate and skeptical, enjoying himself with the means without worrying about the ends, perceiving that there is nothing but different points of view, that each one of them contradicts the other, and that we can with some skill have them all on the same object, the essayist looks for peace, rest and happiness with the conviction that he will never find them; and "for escaping the respectable people's uneasiness that is born of a disproportion between the object that they dream and that which they attain" he locates his happiness in the vain experiences that he sets up, not in the results that they seemed to promise....

Against the unsophisticated who took their conscience seriously, and who believed that they found in their personal experience of duty the sure confirmation of the infinite price they attach to their being, against their actions and their sacrifices, the objection is raised, in the name of a fuller experience and of a more open science, that all absolute certainty is born of partial ignorance and of a flaw of intelligence, that all practical lack of flexibility is the mark of lack of delicate feelings or of alert awareness. If one it to assert with assurance any reality, to pose resolutely the moral problem, he must have a degree of inexperience and a simple-mindedness of which well-bred minds make fun of as of the awkwardness of peasants; the urbanity of their understanding lives on pleasant fictions, lies and truths all together: everything is light and charming, since it is all empty; the emancipation of the aesthete seems to be complete." (My trans.)

Please note the reference to the "aesthete" on occasion of a later note about aestheticism. Please note also the conception that what is central to information systems theory and practice is not particular ethical purposes (committing to individual action), but rather client centered debate, conversation, collaboration, communication or discourse seen as tools of ethical discourse. Ethics becomes equivalent to the process of formulating conflicts of interests. Once more, then, "enjoying ourselves with the means without worrying about the ends"? In our context we are certainly many of us, computing scientists, enjoying information technology. Cf. also the subtle criticism of the reactionary strenghtening of "support" activities in science, starting with what eventually would become artificial intelligence and expert support systems (Churchman, 1971, p. 15f).

[26] Natorp's opposition to pragmatism (as referred to by Norström, 1912, p. 190) does not need to concern us here. It may be properly evaluated by the criticism which has been directed against Cohen and Natorp themselves (ibid., pp. 119, 156f, 160, 188ff, 208).

²⁷ Certain authors (like Ehn, 1988, pp. 50ff, 478; or Mathiassen & Munk-Madsen, 1986) apparently dispose of mathematics and logic either by simple reference to either Cartesian rationalism or to symbol manipulation. (Nevertheless "symbol manipulation" is not just symbol manipulation, as reminded recently by Sällström, 1991.) In the criticism that is formulated in the phenomenological and hermeneutic tradition, for example, mathematics or mathematical logic seems to be inadvertently reduced to "bits of information" (Boland, 1987, p. 365). The critique is that these bits are erroneously regarded as the "primary building blocks" of the physical and social world, denying - once more - the importance of an intentional human community based on interpersonal dialogue and search for meaning. This, seems to me, is a too short summary of the purposes and of the historical importance of mathematics. The reasons for its possible eventual bankruptcy could enlighten the search for alternative. In a similar vein, "valid knowledge about the domain of intervention (the object system)" is hailed, in an unclear connection with the "concern for integrity and completeness checks" in the context of "entity-relationship" models (Lyytinen, Klein, & Hirschheim, 1991, p. 56). If this is the only or main concern for mathematics and logic in systems development according to the tradition of critical social theory, I dare to say that it seems to be clearly insufficient, especially in view of the ambitions of integrating mathematical logical machines with social action.

R. Keil-Slawik (1991), however, seems to represent a start in making justice to the complexities of formal science at the interface of social - if not human - science in the context of systems development. Nevertheless this is done apparently in the key of a foundationally empirical (and ethnosociological, in the spirit of A. Leroi-Gourhan) view of mathematics (symbol manipulation) which excludes e.g. psychological humanism, in spite of sympathetic references to feelings and intuitions. Psychology is reduced to a gestalt-structuralism in terms of conscious cognitivism, something which could barely happen if the whole implications of "symbol" were considered, as in analytical psychology and, in particular, in Jungian aesthetics (Philipson, 1963). The approach eventually resorts to the dogma of "progress" as a function of the crucial problem of "the right balance between flexibility and stability". The question is supposed to be generally answered by "the ethical imperative of H. von Foerster": "Act always so as to increase the number of choices" (ibid., p. 87). In spite of this (cf. the my earlier section on constructivism, and reference to von Foerster in the later section on humanism and Christianity) I think that Keil-Slawik's approach is a good and welcomed example of the type of research that I have envisaged and been looking for in the draft of a working report which I have been working on since june 1988: "A mathematical-information perspective: Steps of a research program about the meaning of computerization" (available from the author). In such contexts it is convenient to note that ethnosociology, as anthropology, displays historically a pluralistic and relativistic bias due to its focusing on "different cultures", in contrast to the Christian idealism of an universal "civilization" (cf. "Culture" in The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, 1967).

[28] Cf. the appreciably deeper treatment of similar thoughts by Norström (1912, pp. 67-71), in a spirit which seem to be very close to pragmatism.

²⁹ The search for an ethical reference platform of such claims for universal claims can be also seen as closely related to the counterfactuality of critical social theory in the guise of the theory of communicative action.

[30] See the further development of this issue in the earlier referenced Norström (1912, pp. 67-71).

³¹ Cf. Berti, 1987, p. 71ff; Buttiglione, 1982, pp. 88ff; Wojtyla, 1980, p. 81f; Niebuhr, 1986, p. 142ff. Consider: "Modern liberal protestantism is inclined to equate law and love by its efforts to comprehend all law within the love commandment. It does not deny the higher dimensions of love which express themselves in sacrifice, forgiveness, individual sympathy, and universal love, but it regards them as simple possibilities and thereby obscures the tensions between love and law, both on the subjective and the objective side... On the other hand, love means a perfect accord between duty and inclination [sense of obligation] in such a way that duty is not felt as duty and 'we love the things that thou commandest'. This second aspect of love is disregarded in Kant's interpretation of love, for instance. For him, the sense of obligation in its most universal and least specific form is identical with the law of love" (Niebuhr, 1986, pp. 143f).

³² Compare: "As psychiatry takes on the characteristics of a new religion or antireligion, a 'protestant' conception of the priestly function has grown up in opposition to the 'catholic' conception. The 'protestants' have translated psychiatric theory into the vernacular, in order to make it more accessible to their constituents. They have introduced innovations in psychiatric ritual, like Carl Rogers' 'client-centered psychiatry', with the intention of diminishing the magisterial authority of the psychiatrist. They have condemned the arrogance of psychiatric priesthood, not because they object to the therapeutic conceptions of reality, but because they wish to diffuse them more widely than ever, rooting them in popular understanding and daily practice" (Lasch, 1977, p. 135f). This suggests also problematic aspects of the infatuation of the phenomenological approach to information with endless dialogues, and with the presumed priority of practice.

³³ Concerning this issue, which I suspect of containing a fundamental ethical flaw of pragmatism, not the least in its connections to the concepts of "human interest" and "client", see also Pratt (1909, pp. 22, 25f, 39, 196, and esp. 186f.

³⁴ Compare Webster's definition of aestheticism as the doctrine that the principles of beauty are basic and the other principles (as of the good or the right) are derived from them. Beauty can, in turn, be defined either in terms of e.g. (1) approaching the ideal in form, proportion, arrangement, grace, colour, or sound, or (2) calling forth great spiritual, intellectual, and aesthetic appreciation, or (3) attractiveness or impressiveness through the expression or suggestion of fitness, order, regularity, rhythm, cogency. I think that it makes a great difference what one conceptualizes as aesthetic in this context. "Calling forth great spiritual appreciation" in combination with the proposed synonym of beautiful - lovely - leads to spiritual love, and to what or Whom man should love or feel as beautiful. We reach, then, far from those superficial variants of pragmatic aestheticism that are connected to superficial conceptions of "ideals", where "the ideal car" stands at the same level as the ideal ethical action under certain circumstances and, further,"the ideal truth" or "the ideal information system". See also a later the earlier note on Blondel and his critique of aestheticist perspectivism, as well as a later note on constructivist "seduction". Cf. further the discussion of Max Scheler's phenomenology and its well intentioned but misplaced reaction to Kant's ethics by means on an enhancement of the "ideal Ought", at the expense of the "normative Ought" (Wojtyla, 1980, p. 113).

³⁵ Cf. the discussion of truth, elsewhere in this paper. The phenomenological approach to information, for example, criticizes the scientistic dream of disembodied mind, of a perfect " true" timeless context-free and ideal future, of a single, stable, immutable meaning without an actor, without history, without a future; it denies also the concept of perfectability itself (Boland, 1987, pp. 370f, 375f). It also denounces the misuse of the idea of a "world of perfect information" that must be outside history as having been instrumental to the removal of the human actor from the stage.

In spite of all empathy I feel for the struggle against scientism I cannot but wonder about phenomenology's difficulty in relating such dreams to obvious theological matters which have been discussed for hundreds of years and might easily offer some kind of understanding for the quest for the absolute - including "plain" truth. To take only one example, "disembodiment" is a classical theological issue (Rousselle, 1983). When God is denied, such quest might easily take the road of "divine" or "queenly" mathematics, the "queen of sciences". As an alternative to such dreams and to "hope", phenomenology apparently only offers avowedly inconclusive endless dialogues and "face-to-face interactions" that nobody dares to relate to biblical love, let be that such interaction are supposed to call forth the "sacred" trinity of dialogue, interpretation and an individual's search for meaning (Boland, 1987, p. 377). Besides the obvious breakdown of human interaction as evidenced by the present status of the family, even the faces are getting lost in the maze of expensive computer networks and conferencing systems. A computerized mathematical quest for the absolute is surely alluring for many people in such a setting, and this may give meaning to a lot of "anthropological" observations of computer users (Turkle, 1984).

³⁶ Cf. the reference to the importance of "style" and "awareness of style" in the context of a curriculum in design of computer artifacts, which is later problematized in its submission to "sincerity" (Ehn, 1988, pp. 222, 479). Compare with the earlier note on "aestheticism" and, before that, with the note on critical social theory's approach to requirement specification in terms of nine effectiveness measures with "sincerity" being one of the corresponding "criteria of validity claims". Are we talking about the same or different types of sincerity? I can imagine somebody sacrificing his life - like a hero or a martyr - for truth, but not for one among nine criteria of validity claims.

³⁷ Concerning rougher conceptions of pragmatism and their misuses, which could also concern the pragmatic misuse of the computer itself, compare the following (Schinz, 1909, pp. 229f): "Or, ce n'est pas seulment un signe de superficialité que de croire naïvement à la possibilité d'appliquer dans la vie n'importe quelle vérité scientifique et philosophique; c'est positivement un danger. De fait, c'est le fanatisme avec tous ses maux, avec ses cruautés et ses stupidités; car précisement le fanatisme consiste à appliquer aveuglement un principe, sans tenir compte des circonstances qui, soit y imposent des restrictions, soit même en rendent toute application mauvaise. La science ainsi mise à contribution est un fléau social. Et ce fléau sévit fortement dans la patrie de William James... Nous constatons simplement qu'il y a, à côté des masses et au-dessous d'une petite élite de vrais savants, une classe nombreuse de pseudo-savants, dirigée du reste par quelques universitaires et formée surtout de régents. Ces personnes, lors du grand réveil scientifique aux États-Unis il y a une vingtaine d'années, et, pour être de la fête, abandonnèrent temporairement leurs postes pour venir boire à la source empoisonné et s'ingénièrent à appliquer les nouvelles philosophiques et scientifiques à tort et à travers; et, trouvant des masses encore moins préparées qu'elles à assimiler ces idées, elles réussirent trop souvent, dans leur enthousiasme égaré, à jeter dans la circulation des principes impossibles".

³⁸ This statement is apparently related to modern conceptions of the theodicy, like in F. Schelling's in his "Philosophische Untersuchungen über das wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die Damit zusammenhängenden Gegestände" (in 1974/1810, pp. 77-140), in C.G. Jung's "Answer to Job" (Jung, 1953-1979, CW 11, pp. 355-470, [[section]] 553ff), and in the excellent didactic treatment of "the meaning of suffering" (Reichmann, 1988).

³⁹ Cf. Schinz (1909, p. 238): "Mais encore un coup le pragmatisme, comme méthode et comme système philosophique, ne commence que quand vous cessez de distinguer la philosophie et la vie (ou si on veut la morale) et il semble bien que c'est cette distinction qui importe à [William] James avant toutes choses. Nous sommes certain qu'il défendrait cette partie de ses théories jusqu'au bout. Nous ne le sommes pas autant qu'il insisterait très fortement pour défendre cette idée fort différente que le pragmatisme est la verité philosophique. Dans le chapitre qu'il a consacré à la définition de la vérité, le terme de vérité absolute se encontre à plusieurs reprises. Peu importe ce qu'il entend exactement par lá, ce doit être autre chose que la vérité pragmatique".

⁴⁰ Cf. "The process of constructing the social world is a process of language and communication... The search for meaning is a continuous search that is never completely or finally realized. Meaning is always in doubt and needs to be reaccomplished. It is always about to slip from our grasp." (Boland, 1987, p. 366). This recalls the earlier note about Peirce's denial of the reality of the "I" and of the individual, who is supposed to be enabled or constructed by means of the semiotic language habits. Peirce has little to say about human communication, and in this respect his thought is completed by J. Royce's and K-O Apel's emphasis on the community of interpretation and communication, as well as by G.H. Mead's semiotic conversation, regarded as being the basis for the constitution of the individual (Peirce, 1990, p. 31n). Cf. with the coming text and note about the postmodern constructive destruction of the human individual.

⁴¹ Compare for instance: "The function of perspective is to subject things to the 'I', which in ordering comprehends them; and it is a further indication that 'will' - the claim to command the world - is absent from the Classical make-up that its painting denies the perspective background" (Spengler, 1981-1983/1918, vol. 1, p. 310n, see further "perspective" in the index). See also the criticism of C.S. Lewis (1942, at the end of letter #27) of the misuse of the "historical perspective" with the effect of relativizing any important statement which would commit to ethical action. For a further development of the implications of perspective and constructiveness, see also Norström (1912), pp. 89ff, 178, 180, 249, 258, 263. Please note that certain important things or "in-sights", as when looking for a church or monument while walking in the streets of a city, can only be apprehended from the "right" perspective.

⁴² Cf. the earlier mentioned approach to social action: "We say 'social' rather than 'human' action in order to emphasize that all human behaviour is influenced by socially determined constraints" (Lyytinen, Klein, and Hirschheim, 1991, p. 43). Apparently it does not occur to the authors that some readers could think "dialectically" also the other way round, i.e. that it is important to emphasize that the abstraction that we call social behaviour is influenced, and must be influenced, by human (not to mention divine, revelatory or other) constraints. It is furthermore unclear what behaviour of any interest could be labeled as exclusively human, without being at the same time also social, at least in the sense of having to be observed by somebody who always can, in principle, be affected by the observation. So much for social theology and its dogmatic presuppositions.

⁴³ This last quotation seems also to summarize certain Scandinavian discussions about the "humanistic perspective". With an outright reference to John Rawls (Dahlbom, 1987, p. 46) the humanistic perspective is envisaged as emphasizing that humans themselves are responsible for their lives, and that the state should give them possibilities and help them to live as they wish. This seems to me to be a quaint idea which recalls the unrecognized best issues of classical liberalism (von Humboldt, 1903, as considered by Ivanov, 1986, p.89f). In an essay about humanistic perspectives on the computerization of governmental social services (Dahlbom, 1991) after a brilliant cursory review of many different kinds of computing systems, methods for systems development, and conceptions of humanism, the matter is again reduced to the relations between the citizen and the state. God, the Church, and the romantic movement are dismissed in a few lines, a sad Anglo-Saxon destiny for, say, Friedrich Schelling's humanistic message. If I got it right the resulting message is mainly a plead for a traditional tool perspective on the computer, and a smart interactive human-computer interface which fosters a sort of Habermasian discourse based on rationality, rather than emotionality.

⁴⁴ This time aspect is a tricky question, especially considering that a "dead" client may be a bad client. Please consider the following quotation from an article about USA's national health insurance problems, reading it as I myself read the bible. "For decades the private insurers have fanned the crisis by blithely reimbursing the fees of greedy practitioners and expansionary hospitals. Then, as costs rise, the private insurers seek to shed the poorest and the sickest customers, who get priced out or summarily dropped. For some companies, a serious and costly illness is a good enough reason to cancel a policy. Others refuse to insure anybody who might be gay and hence, actuarially speaking, might get AIDS. - So over the years, government has moved in to pick up the rejects: first the elderly, then the extremely poor. Since the rejects are of course the most expensive to insure, government is soon faced with a budget nightmare. Draconian cost-control measures follow. But because government can only attempt to control the costs of its own programs, the providers of care simply shift their costs onto the bills of privately insured patients. Faced with ever rising costs, the private insurers become more determined to shed the poorest and the sickiest...and so the cycle goes. - The technical term for this kind of arrangement is lemon socialism: the private sector gets the profitable share of the market, and the public sector gets what's left" (Ehrenreich, 1990).

The question, for you, is to whom (less important), and when you should shed which clients that you find to be unprofitable, since your dictum must be to make the right client satisfied in the short and long run.

⁴⁵ In order to understand this you must read goodwilled scholars as I read the bible. Compare, for instance, what one such scholar writes about fantasy (Boland, 1987, p. 367f). "One face of fantasy gives us an image that is an inventive, creative leap. It brings coherence to disparate events, makes the world sensible, and provides theories to guide inquiry. This is the side of fantasy we refer to as productive imagination...generating hypotheses, interpreting data and designing experiments... The other face of fantasy gives us images that are simply mistaken. They are not only unreal but also false and not suited for guiding serious thought. The images produced by this face of fantasy are the works of fools... No useful insights come from this face of fantasy, only delusion, unfounded speculation and error. In the world of commerce, almost all advertising displays this second face of fantasy. - The first, productive fact of fantasy gives insight by anticipating an understandable pattern that can be applied to the world or to our experience. It is the source of paradigms. The second, purely fanciful face gives us images that may have great appeal but are misguided, unsound and potentially dangerous as a basis for action. Both faces of fantasy yield powerful images that can mobilize others to follow as true believers. Whether a fantasy has a truth value in that results in productive, humanly satisfying outcomes, or whether a fantasy is false in that results in destructive, humanly unsatisfying outcomes is always problematic. But this is all the more reason to be relentless in our criticism of the taken-for-granted fantasies that guide information system research and information system design".

As you must understand, dear apprentice, the most delicate part of the story is the last sentence, and therefore most of our efforts must be concentrated in suffocating all criticism. This must we do on the basis of our claim that it originates from the illusion that there is truth and falsity, and that it kills creativity and good ideas, where goodness is a matter of perspective. It is not an accident that one of the most powerful stimulants of the fantasy of our users in participatory user-driven systems development is the software of computer games like Dungeons and Dragons! (Mitroff, 1984) How you should neutralize criticism is, then, a most important issue to which I will return soon, in the next section of this chapter.

⁴⁶ Please consider the postmodern use of metaphors, simple words which elicit ultimate cosmic images of e.g. co-power and co-laborative democratic communion with the gods or - equivalently - with the whole mankind starting with the "small is beautiful" of cooperative groups. In the context of a study of the dinosaur as an icon in "science as kitsch" is has been remarked that "A simple-mindedness often accompanies the [dinosaur's] use as a metaphor, a sense that this charged image says everything about a subject, that no other explanations are necessary. This is where a dinosaur itself becomes a stereotype, being used a substitute for thought" (Montgomery, 1991, p. 26). This, of course, recalls the function of the archetypes according to analytical psychology, where our own archetype of the devil has its own place of honor.

[47] Remember that this strategy is reported to have worked quite successfully against the labor unions in the context of development of computer systems, until the appearance of the "collective resources" approach.

[48] From this point of view it would have been better to substitute "she" for all the "he" which appear in my letters. In this way you would gain the special sympathy and support of all women, and emancipated men alike, who do not understand the meaning of biblical patriarchate but understand that you stand on their side in the struggle for the construction of a better and more equal world.

[49] You must, for instance, prevent that your client notices the way in which new technology and its terminology fortunately (for us) has displaced their attention from the "old" knowledge (cf. Ivanov, 1988).

[50] In particular, you may learn how to sabotage your boss if you read the literature about how executives build effective working relationships, as I read the bible. See e.g. Gabarro & Kotter (1979).

⁵¹ In the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition it has been observed that the fantasy that "information is power" inflates the role of the system designer; this fantasy is a flattery to the designers of information systems because it creates a one-sided image of a one-way relationship (Boland, 1987, p. 373). "Flattery and inflation", it seems to me, are "Mephistophelian" concepts. I believe that this inflation is not dissolved in e.g. the constructive tradition by relabeling the designer as facilitator, or such. Compare later with the reference to the Nietzschean "will-to-power".

Critical social theorists have addressed, also abstractly, similar phenomena in terms of "strategic action in the language context", and "discursive action in the organization context" (Lyytinen, Klein, and Hirschheim, 1991, pp. 52f). They refer to struggles among different "emancipated" groups within the organization (which obviously are identified by presumedly emancipated and emancipating observers), persuasive propaganda, fund raising as in political campaigns, use of information systems "as a lie" in order to further one's interests, and, further, the earlier mentioned distorting effects of hierarchy, subconscious bias and self-deception, and defensiveness and other psychological barriers to free inquiry. My contribution typifies and concretizes behavior which apparently reaches across these various categories, linking them to the ethical question.

A couple of other contributions that, to my knowledge, describe similar emotional, if not vicious, behaviour are by Gibson & Ludl (1988), and Mathiassen & Andersen (1985) concerning use of information systems "as a lie", mentioned above. The existence of lies presupposes, of course, that truth is not naïvely perspectivistic.

⁵² This idea corresponds to critical social theory's providing "the widest possible debate of all important issues" which presumedly coincides with the facilitating of "agreement and better mutual understanding" by means of the introduction of new concepts, distinctions and meaning (Lyytinen, Klein, & Hirschheim, 1991, pp.52f). The phenomenological correspondent is the search for meaning within the context of doubt in "a continuous search that is never completely or finally realized" (Boland, 1987, p. 366). Both these approaches, however, do not emphasize conflict and "maximum possible disagreement". I myself incorporated this idea of conflict and consideration of deviant outsiders (representing the maximum possible disagreement) in the concept of quality of information (and systems), in the spirit of the dialectical pragmatism of the "sweeping-in" process (Ivanov, 1972, chap. 4; Ivanov, 1987; cf. Churchman, 1971, p. 197ff). This was supplemented by a follow-up of the construction process in terms of the "criterion of measurable error" in order to check whether anything at all is being constructed, i.e. whether there is some kind of progress, and not only process. In this sense I identified the problem of "how a marginal group, a kind of repressed peripheral group, could also inject its own purposes within a planning process for a better future" akin to the problem of "methodology choice in a coercive context" (Nodoushani, 1991, p. 17; Mansell, 1991).

Cf. K-O Apel's struggle with this question in conjunction with his reticence in taking the step over to theological discussion: "We should certainly not underestimate the practical significance of the pure mechanism of convention (qua agreement) as a criterion of democratic freedom. Nevertheless, I believe that our problem is masked rather than clarified by recourse to the possibility of 'conventions'" (1980, pp. 238ff, 278). So much for the problem of "agreement" in relation to the humanistic ethics of constructivism. Compare with the next chapter on humanism and Christianity.

In a sympathetic evaluation of Max Scheler's phenomenology Wojtyla (1980, pp. 114ff, 122ff, my trans.) criticizes Scheler's conception of moral life as consisting of the emotional experience of moral value. It corresponds to a "systematic removal of any manifestation of the real duty and of obligation from ethics, a removal of any kind of order, and even of advice... Everyone has his own personal world of values with a specific hierarchy, his own a priori. Nevertheless the existence must be affirmed of a systems of values that are characteristic of certain ages or certain social groups, which have their own hierarchy or relations of 'superiority' and of 'inferiority' within what Scheler calls ethos...The ethos is not subject to variations, but is subject to a development. Scheler does not admit some constant and 'finite' world of objective values, but he imposes to us to take into account a certain perspective, in which gradually the values open themselves to man as 'material' of the moral life. He emphasizes that the fullness of these values cannot be comprehended in the experience of one only man, not even one only historical epoch". Wojtyla observes: "We see, however, that it is not so much a question of comprehending all the values, but rather of grasping possibly in the most exact way the hierarchical relations among them. This is what the affirmation of the Christian ethos consists of, which is difficult to miss in Scheler's work".

The kind of morality which is most often - if not only - mentioned by socialist Marxist researchers is "work morality". Therefore I profit of this occasion in order to call the reader's attention upon Max Scheler's treatment of work morality and engagement (or responsibility, motivation, commitment, competence) in the essay Arbeit und Weltanschauung, originally published in 1920, now in his collected works Gesammelte Werke, vol. 6, also translated in a collection of his essays (1988, pp. 217-239). It refers also to an earlier essay, Arbeit und Ethik, now found in his G.W., vol. 1.

[53] Cf. the apparently related pragmatic understanding of truth, possibly in accord with W. James: "Truth, conceived as objectivity, is self-determined power to life, and the striving will to life is just the phenomenon of such a power. Objectivity is therefore one side of truth, which is based on certitude, not the other way round". This, however, presupposes that the general will to life is not conceived collectivistically. "Ultimately it must appear in the transcendental light of a living total unity, a higher nature which works itself forth and through the many wills, a superhuman content which equates truth with power and makes it 'exactable', as the Stoic term formulated it". (Norström, 1912, p. 172f, my trans.)

⁵⁴ Boland (1987, p.371) notes that "Hermeneutics has its origin in the search for reliable methods to interprete religious texts, especially the Bible. In biblical interpretation, we are presented with a text whose author, culture and language are alien to us, yet we believe the text has an important meaning and we are willing to work hard to understand it. Gadamer...helps us see the problem of hermeneutics in biblical interpretation is one that applies to our everyday life". It seems to me remarkable that this thought is not extended to covering in which way the Bible itself, within or without hermeneutic interpretation, applies to our everyday life, including development and use of information systems. That could disclose some of the shortcomings of a hermeneutics which has not been able to incorporate biblical teachings. Cf. an earlier note on the ethics of the phenomenology of Max Scheler.

[55] Cf. also Guillaumin, 1987, and Poupard et al., 1987.

⁵⁶ Cf. the following sample of Webster's definitions. Positive: opposed in character or effect to anything construed as negative; marked by acceptance or approval: indicating agreement or affirmation. [Please refer to my earlier note about conventionalism.] Positivism: A theory that law is restricted to man-made statute law without ethical or ideological content as distinguished from natural law or moral law. Constructive: inferred - often used in law of an act or condition assumed from other acts or conditions which are considered by inference or by public policy as amounting to or involving the act or condition assumed; helpful toward further development: promoting improvement or advance. Constructivism: an anti-illusionistic style of stage setting that employs practical but nonrealistic arrangements of steps, platforms, and scaffolding for acting areas and that is held to form a mise en scène appropriate to an age of technological progress.

Cf. further the earlier note on aestheticism in the chapter about the political and religious dimension, and the work of J. Hilton who, in analogy to the social interactionism of K. Burke, tries to apply theatre theory to the understanding of human problem solving in the context of computer use and artificial intelligence (Hilton, 1988; 1987, p. l56).

⁵⁷ Cf. the earlier reference to the reality of depiction as related to conventionalist constructivism. Webster's defines immanentism - which I find typical of much constructivism - as a theory of knowledge, including its limits and validity, according to which the relation of the world to the mind of an individual is one of immanence. Immanence, contrasted with transcendence, means being in the mind or being experientially given - being within the limits of possible experience - including the indwelling presence of God in the world. For concretion at the frontiers of immanentism, consider the following poem of Stuart D. Klipper at the photo exhibition Portents in the North: Radiation in Lapland, 1987 at Västerbottens Museum in Umeå, in spring 1991: "This is the only world there is. This is where we are and this is all we have. This is all we can ever know. This is where we are placed and this is where we gain our stature. - It is here we make our passage; it is here we find sanctity. Here we embrace despair and bliss. In this world we gain our redemption. It is the sole source of our nurture and sustenance. - From this world we derive the only words by which we can know and paraphrase ourselves. - Nature is not just what God made; it is our very mirror of identity. It is the grand text of all our stories. - Pollutants do not just poison our world. They deny us its solace, its beauty, and truth. These toxicities will not only inflict, infect and pillage nature, ultimately, they will grossly diminish our nature itself".

A similar immanentism - it seems to me - is revealed by Boland (1987, p. 375) in spite of his assurance of having no quarrel with neoplatonism, by his apparent difficulty to grasp the possible transcendental or religious motives that impel people in general, and systems developers in particular, to search for the world of perfect information outside history, and for knowledge of "perfect forms, which transcend human interaction and exist apart from any specific historical moment". Cf. the process by which ultimately the mind strives for the ideal of "pure logic" described by Norström (1912, p.138), apparently analog to the process of gradual societal computerization. The meaning of the ultimate degradation of such processes may be traced back to Kant's mistake in stopping at the logical function, i.e. at thinking, when he in his logic stated the presuppositions of knowledge. Thinking, then, is left floating aloof, free from anything psychological and free from all subjectivism. The resulting formalism endangers the transcendental nerve of critical thinking (ibid., pp. 184ff).

A clear critique of immanentism (an immanentism which is also implicit in Habermas' theory of social action) is referred - paradoxically in still "profane" terms - by Toulmin, 1982, pp. 271f, in the context of ethical questions raised by ecological systems thinking. Cf. also "The various forms of immanentism are nothing but the absolutization of one particular aspect of experience, that is, the reduction of the totality of experience to one of its aspects, assumed as foundation of the whole, while transcendence is the negation of such absolutization, and is equivalent to asserting the dependence of the totality of experience upon one transcendental Absolute" (Berti, 1987, p. 204, my trans.). Regarding the passage from immanentism to transcendentalism, as opposed to what I equate with the limitation to the apparent infinite recursivity of sweeping-in processes, see Norström (1912, pp. 70f).

For a clear criticism of classical pragmatism's inability to grasp transcendence and metaphysics, tending to reduce them to the skepticism of a coarse experiential "phenomenological" immanence or to a biological view of morality, see Pratt (1909, pp. 196ff, esp. 208f). "On such an epistemology the discussion of the old problems of religion becomes essentially a silly waste of time and gray matter, which might better be spent in tilling the soil and nourishing our psychophysical organism. 'The Infinite, the Eternal, the All-good - these are names empty of all real meaning, idle fancies for minds that will dream or idly speculate instead of seeking to know and to make better the only real world there is, the world of experience. This world admits no reference to a superhuman reality. We are thus left with reality that is fragmentary only, with experience that is made up of flying, ever changing moments, with thought that never wins final truth, with temporal processes and no eternal to justify and give them meaning; with finite progress and no goal finally won; with a better and no best as the ultimate standard of value judgements. For the satisfaction of ethical and religious ideals and aspirations we must look to our possibly better selves. Our idealized selves are our gods; and the cry after the Divine, the Eternal, the Complete in knowledge and goodness, must be satisfied with that fragment of truth and goodness which is all that our finite lives can possess in their best estate'" (ibid., pp. 209f, including a quotation from Russell "Objective idealism and revised empiricism: Discussion", Phil. Rev., Vol. XV, p. 633). Further: "When you ask what is meant by knowledge pragmatism answers by telling you how you feel when you have it. The possibility of transcendence being thus dogmatically denied, error too becomes, in the long run, merely the way you feel. It is, therefore, quite possible for you and me to hold diametrically opposite views on the same subject and both be said to know, provided we are both satisfied and remain satisfied with our respective opinions. Each man thus becomes for himself the measure of all things, and each man has knowledge provided his experience continues to feel satisfactory. And yet the pragmatist is certain that on this question he is in possession of knowledge and you are not, no matter how you feel about it" (ibid., pp. 245f.) Please compare with my earlier chapter about "cooperative work" and the earlier note with the quotation by M. Blondel about the relativism of perspectivism vis-à-vis action understood in the broad sense of the term.

⁵⁸ Cf. the previously adduced excerpt from Boland (1987, p. 377) who also identifies human dignity with the upholding of human community: "The only information systems designs which are morally acceptable are those which put a primary emphasis on improving the possibilities for face-to-face interaction within the organization - those which take dialogue, interpretation and an individual's search for meaning as sacred". This seems to confirm something common, a sort of immanent negation of Christianity, in both marxism and phenomenology or hermeneutics.

⁵⁹ One of the last expression of such thinking in information systems is the earlier observed "very strong idea" of activity theory "That humans can control their own behaviour - not 'from the inside', on the basis of biological urges, but 'from the outside', using and creating artifacts" (Kuutti, 1991, p. 3). It is obvious that the "inside" of man is presumed to consist only of "biological urges", and that the external god is represented by the social and historical reality embodied in the artifacts. In this perspective it must be hard for man to distantiate himself from the presumed godly essence of the computer artifact which tends to be perceived as a godly "Rorschah inkblot" (Turkle, 1980).

⁶⁰ At the limit between power and Christian love for thy neighbour, see the reflections on the fantasy of power ("a one-sided image of a one-way relationship") seen as a flattery to the ego of the designers of information systems, opposed to "the duality of power relationships that follows from the necessity of dialogue by organizational actors" (Boland, 1987, p. 373).

⁶¹ Cf. also "science as kitsch" (Montgomery, 1991), and this paper's chapter on "cooperative work". Since one of the originators of autopoietic constructivism has been charged (a more complex ad-hominem) of performing acts of "seduction" on its audience as a rhetorical strategy in his seminars (Ravn & Söderqvist, 1988), it may be useful to acknowledge the following reflections on seduction as expressed by a well known analytical psychologist: "The fundamental difference between seduction and relationship consists of the fact that the latter is based on renouncing the totality of the rapport, and therefore mainly on the acceptance of the separation and the realistic acknowledgement of the other.... Seduction...is based on an illusion, on the creation of a 'fetisch', illusion which, however, has an own subjective reality" (Carotenuto, 1987, p. 48, my trans.).

Please compare with this paper's discussion of constructivism's apparent denial of explicit metaphysical presuppositions which, then, seem to be substituted by this seductive illusion. Compare also seduction with the concept of delight, used in Webster's definitions of beautiful: delight is etymologically related with "to allure", that is, to influence, sway, entice. Seduction is then akin to the luring oversimplifications of vulgar rhetorics, the dazzling fascination of user-friendly technical gadgetry, the policy of easy promises and soft money for ends which escape possible evaluations, the moving horizon of promised results that keeps the illuding image forever young. All this is made possible and self-righteous for all involved parties, sincerely convinced as they are of their noble motives, as a consequence of the avoidance of the painful maze of relations between aesthetics, ethics and religion. In the terms of a donjuanistic metaphor, all participating - if not affected - parties, men and women alike, until further notice "satisfy their needs" (or, rather, their wants), even if their children and the taxpayers don't. It is a matter of confusion concerning the role of emotions in ethics, the disregard of the human will as one of the functions of emotional life, leading to a deformation of the ethical experience itself, and the desintegration of ethics into logic versus psychology (Wojtyla, 1980, pp. 72ff). Please refer also to the earlier note on aestheticism.

Concerning aestheticism, seduction and illusion, see also Ehn (1988, pp. 471ff) with his final conclusion (really, "epilogue" with "postmodern reflections") regarding "work-oriented design of computer artifacts". (Please note that "artifact" is the correlate of the concept of "construction" surveyed earlier in this paper.) He seems to recommend that we should revisit Bauhaus functionality which suggests a "semiotic play with signs", and develop our "stylistic competence to design postmodern playfulness". But we should do so in a spirit of "lost innocence", i.e. a consciousness of the failure of Enlightenment's rationality, liberalism and communism. Yet, in spite of lost innocence, we should paradoxically keep faithful to the "emancipatory ideal" inherited from the Enlightenment and represented today by the trade unions, a belief in progress, work, and democratic rationality. In a never ending emancipatory process, aware of our lost innocence, we should try to rebuild a Utopia, a dream of different, but peacefully coexisting (conventional?) language games mediated by a democratic rationality.

To this I feel seriously tempted to add "Amen", in the original and legitimate sense of the word. This evokes in me, in the best case, the "heroic mood" of the "religious" belief in the profane trinitarian god of "production - science - cooperation" (Churchman, 1971, pp. 201ff). In an intermediate case it evokes the liberal irony which was surveyed in an earlier chapter of this essay. In the worst case it evokes the un-acknowledged, unconscious self-deception and delusion which follows a seductive illusion.

What seems to be at stake here is the unresolved historical conflict between various conceptions of aesthetics and of socialism, in particular the relation between the Arts & Crafts movement in the spirit of John Ruskin (1819-1900) and William Morris (1834-1896), and Functionalism. The Swedish reader may appreciate a part of this conflict as represented by the debate on Ellen Key's "beauty's Gospel". A cursory reference to this debate (Landquist, 1909, pp. 89-98) was followed by a more rigorous formulation of the criticism directed against the sociologistic aestheticism of the modernism which assumed ethical effects of beauty and art (Norström, 1912, pp. 19ff). This kind of aestheticism could be represented by e.g. the French philosopher Jean-Marie Guyau (1854-1888). Such influences may unconsciously be affecting current attempts at work-oriented design of computer artifacts. The trouble is that in these attempts scanty - if any - references are made to ethics, and then only under the labels of "work morality" and "sincerity" (Ehn, 1988, pp. 477, 479). The "good" or "bad" of design seems to be interpreted in some vague aesthetic sense (ibid., pp. 218ff) or in the sense of Marxist humanism mentioned in this essay. The apparent clash between liberalism and Marxism, both under the aegis of utilitarianism, has not been really addressed in a superficial conception of an aesthetics which has simply passed from modernism to postmodernism.

⁶² Concerning the most important concept of truth, refer to the earlier note about the "mind-blowing" Aristotelian exercise of creating nine "effectiveness measures" that arise from a prior taxonomy of three "object systems" classes - technology, language, and organization, and four "action type classes" - instrumental, strategic, communicative and discursive (Lyytinen, Klein and Hirschheim, 1991, p. 46, 53). This blows up in turn also the concept of truth into different kinds of truths that are relabeled "criteria of validity claims" such as clarity, truthfulness, correctness and appropriateness, or correspondence of depiction, sincerity, intelligibility, correctness (ibid. pp. 46, 53). This blowing up of the concept of truth may have, emotionally, the same effect as the postmodern Nietzschean blow up: an uncommitting constructionism and a relativistic activism. This may be the price we have to pay for not having been able to unravel the relation between truth and value. "The essence of spiritual life based on reason is truth, and especially the truth concerning everything which constitutes the object of will; and since we know that everything which constitutes the object of will is some kind of good, that essence shall therefore be the truth about the good" (Wojtyla, 1980, p. 122; cf. Norström, 1912, on the relations between thinking, willing, and feeling, pp. 97f, 110, 131f, 139f, and esp. 169-173). I will stop here in my notes because of the difficulty of the matter as related to the purpose and space of this essay. I wish, however, to emphasize my conviction that religious aspects of ethics and practical philosophy are central to the research on information systems since they deal with what we should do and how we should do it. In this sense I may be questioning one implicit dogma of research in computing science: that we should do things, and we should do them with computers and in collaboration with as many kind people as possible, before we know what we should do.

⁶³ In referring to Vattimo, Nodoushani (1991, pp. 15, 18) notes that the postmodern conception of history relies upon a theory of myth in which "myth seems to point toward an overcoming of the opposition between rationalism and irrationalism (through a weakening of the notion of truth) to open a new possibility for thought". He then ends with the recommendation, that instead of Habermasian critical theory, the late development of systems theory which goes under the name of Liberating Systems Theory needs to become more friendly with Adornoian "negative dialectic": "That is, by opening up to the Postmodern concept of history, myth and history will give us a new understanding of teleology and the unit of theory and praxis which is far superior to the Modernist belief in science and history". If the original critical theorists still tried to connect to Freud's psychoanalysis I have been looking instead for a psychological connection of myth to religion. This is done in Jungian analytical psychology, which also point out the dangerous Nietzschean mind-blowing capabilities of the flirting with myths. For all Nodoushani's references to Jung and Jungians (and, for that matter, to second order cyberneticians like von Foerster) it seems to me very problematic to grasp his thought up to the end. How will postmodernists and future liberating system practitioners with interest in neither psychology nor religion deal with myths, without loosing their minds and their souls?

Anglo-Saxon postmodern "poststructuralists" (Barnaby & d'Acierno, 1990) have been reported (Bak, 1991), to attempt in vain to "deconstruct" and "redefine" Jungian thought. Redefinition, in fact, implies (re) construction. Reconstructive deconstructionists themselves claim that thought structures cannot exist without "conventional" arbitrary constructive axioms: "pure" science as well as pure construction is impossible, and all knowledge must be necessarily semi-metaphorical, like Jung's own thought. What is obviously disregarded, when talking about conventional arbitrariness, is Jung's struggles with matters of ethics and religion, including analyses like the one of "Answer to Job".

Cf. Benhabib (1989, p. 26f) and his reference to "principles of universal moral respect and reciprocity" and to the "frontier where moral theory flows into a larger theory of value" versus the dispute about "whether moral theory since Kant has been an accomplice in the process of the disintegration of personality and the fragmentation of value which are said to be our general condition today".

⁶⁴ Please consider the ethical implications of a social action research which, like activity theory, asserts that "the object of interest must be consciously changed in order to gain theoretical knowledge and to achieve some generalization" (Kuutti, 1991, p. 12). Refer to - earlier in the text - to C.S. Lewis' criticism of the belief that changes can be decided and evaluated on the basis of the "ethical vacuum" of absent dogmas and absent metaphysics, or on the basis of an amputated Christian ethics which is itself continuously changed with no hierarchies of stability. If knowledge is not envisaged as positively linear and cumulative, the question arises of where lies the responsibility for consequences of social manipulative actions that by definition must be performed without knowledge in order to elicit the knowledge that might have justified them. I feel we are far even from the nuances of the wisdom of traditional research (Campbell, 1988 ).