Abduction, Pragmatism and Design: Reflections

Abstract

Designing is to establish a new order, starting from what it is towards what should be, where this new order is expressed or materialized in an artifact (physical or virtual). In this process of change –and decision making– rational and intuitive components are involved (and dosed). How is the process addressed? What questions does the designer ask and how do he find the answers? What kind of knowledge is the knowledge of and for the design? How does the designer take the creative decisions? produces the "creative leap”? The review of the conceptual system of Charles Sanders Peirce, his pragmatism (pragmaticism) and his abductive reasoning conception, would help to reflect on essential aspects that characterize (though do not determine) design activity. Design, as a projective discipline, finds an epistemological affinity with pragmatist principles, according to which the effects of things are those that can have practical or experimental repercussions and from them, thought is mobilized towards action in the real world. Pragmatism, as a philosophy of knowledge, opens ways of understanding the design process, as well as design research and its teaching.