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Directory:Jon Awbrey/Papers/Inquiry Driven Systems : Part 4 (view source)
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====4.2.2. The Problem of Reflection====
====4.2.2. The Problem of Reflection====
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Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?
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No, Cassius, for the eye sees not itself
<p>Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?<br>
But by reflection, by some other things.
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No, Cassius, for the eye sees not itself<br>
But by reflection, by some other things.</p>
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| align="right" colspan="3" | — ''Julius Caesar'', 1.2.53–55
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The faculty of reflection is the capacity to reflect on one's own conduct. This ability is commonly agreed to be an important ingredient in all of the efforts to improve conduct that are otherwise known as "learning". In this way, one comes to the questions: (1) whether a particular form of conduct is naturally reflective in and of itself, (2) whether it can be rendered reflective through the application of appropriate means, and (3) whether an individual or an organization can become more reflective, and thus more capable of criticizing and improving its own performance. Not too surprisingly, these questions are critical to the enterprises of achieving "reflective practice" and building "learning organizations", in essence, of studying and designing "self aware" and "self organizing" systems.
The faculty of reflection is the capacity to reflect on one's own conduct. This ability is commonly agreed to be an important ingredient in all of the efforts to improve conduct that are otherwise known as "learning". In this way, one comes to the questions: (1) whether a particular form of conduct is naturally reflective in and of itself, (2) whether it can be rendered reflective through the application of appropriate means, and (3) whether an individual or an organization can become more reflective, and thus more capable of criticizing and improving its own performance. Not too surprisingly, these questions are critical to the enterprises of achieving "reflective practice" and building "learning organizations", in essence, of studying and designing "self aware" and "self organizing" systems.
The presence of this dilemma at the roots of our reflective tradition and the influence of the various answers to it, as options that fill out the background of our common reflective field — all of these features are adequately illustrated by the way that Aristotle asks the question:
The presence of this dilemma at the roots of our reflective tradition and the influence of the various answers to it, as options that fill out the background of our common reflective field — all of these features are adequately illustrated by the way that Aristotle asks the question:
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<p>One might raise the question: if the mind is a simple thing, and not liable to be acted upon, and has nothing in common with anything else, ... how will it think, if thinking is a form of being acted upon? For it is when two things have something in common that we regard one as acting and the other as acted upon. And our second problem is whether the mind itself can be an object of thought.</p>
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| align="right" | (Aristotle, ''On the Soul'', III.iv.429<sup>b</sup>24–28, p. 169)
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