A Brief Introduction to Critical Systems Heuristics

1. Basic Terms
1. Critical Systems Heuristics
  1. framework for reflective practice
  2. based on practical philosophy and systems thinking
  3. Heuristics
    1. Find or discover
    2. Question and argumentation tools
  4. Critical
    1. Does not yield any single right answer
    2. Understanding
2. Boundary judgments
  1. determine which empirical observations and value considerations count as relevant and which others are left out
  2. Boundary category
    1. Form of boundary judgments
    2. Requieres empirical and normative content
3. Claims
  1. Assertions or suggestions to which we attach some relevance
4. Merit
  1. Pragmatic criterion
  2. What difference does it make in practice?
  3. Who will benefit and who not?
5. Reference System
  1. Gives meaning to a particular claim and conditions its validity
2. Boundary critique
1. A systematic effort of handling boundary judgments critically
2. Main forms
  1. Aim at handling boundary judgments self-critically
  2. Use boundary judgments for critical purposes against those who may not handle them so self-critically
3. Importand to understand boundary judgements
4. Needed to talk about any aspect of a situation or an issue
  1. What criteria of success we associate with it?
  2. What consequences we anticipate it ot have?
  3. Whose concerns we assume to be affected?
5. 3. Procces of Boundary Critique
  1. Tasks
    1. Identify the sources of selectivity that condition a claim
      1. surfacing the underpinning boundary judgments
    2. Examine these boundary judgments regarding their practical and ethical implications
    3. Find options for determining the reference system that conditions a claim
      1. Giving alternative answers to some of the boundary questions
    4. Seek some mutual understanding with all the skateholders cocnerned
    5. When some of the parties handle their own boundary judgment uncritically, it may become necessary to challenge their claims through the emancipatory use of boundary critique
  2. No kind of theory of methodology whatsoever could calim to know the "right" answer to boundary issues
  3. Should be understood and practised as a reflective attitude
  4. Advantages
    1. Does not depend on learning another problem-solving methodology
    2. Good enough to understand the role that boundary judgments play
  5. Disadvantages
    1. It is not a self-contained approach
  6. methodological core principle
    1. Systemic traingulation
      1. Eternal triange
        Observations
        Facts
        Boundary judgments
        System
        Evaluations
        Values
4. The conceptual Framework of CHS
1. Boundary Category
  1. 4 basic boundary issues
    1. Each of which leads to 3 types of boundary problems
      1. Major kind of skateholder
        Are effectively or potentially affected
      2. Major kind of concern
        Associate with the skateholder in question
      3. Main kind of difficulty
        Arise with regard to the concerns in questions
      4. Translate into BOUNDARY QUESTIONS
        Prescriptive mode
        What should be the case...?
        Ask each question with both "is" and "ought"
        Descriptive model
        What is the case...?
    2. Motivation
      1. Where does a sense of purposefulness and value come from?
    3. Power
      1. Who is in control of what is going on and is needed for success?
    4. Knowledge
      1. What experience and expertise support the claim?
    5. Legitimacy
      1. Where does legitimacy lie?
    6. Four basic applications
      1. Ideal Mapping
        What is our vision?
        Clarify the normative basis from which we assess a claim
        To develop some shared motiviation and understanding
      2. Evaluation
        Whar is our assessment of the situation?
        Evaluate the merits of a clain without any illusion of objectivity
        Clarify the question Where do we stand?
      3. Reframing
        What other context might be relevant?
        Dealing with situations of uncertainity
        Develop a better understanding of its selectivity and of possible ways to do more justice to the concerns of all skateholders
      4. Challenge
        Don't you clain too much?
        Can make apparent the way in which these claims rely on tacit boundary assumptions for which there are options
        A basis for dealing with situations in which an asymmetry of argumentative chances.
  2. Normative selectivity
    1. Ideal mapping
      1. Valeu that we think ought to inform the proposal
  3. Empirical Selectivity
    1. Actual mapping
      1. Value which actually are at work in a proposal

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A Brief Introduction to Critical Systems Heuristics

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	Created by msanchezbuergo about 9 years ago