A Brief Introduction to Critical Systems Heuristics

A Brief Introduction to Critical Systems Heuristics

1. 1. Basic Terms

   • Critical Systems Heuristics
     • framework for reflective practice
     • based on practical philosophy and systems thinking
     • Heuristics
       • Find or discover
       • Question and argumentation tools
     • Critical
       • Does not yield any single right answer
       • Understanding
   • Boundary judgments
     • determine which empirical observations and value considerations count as relevant and which others are left out
     • Boundary category
       • Form of boundary judgments
       • Requieres empirical and normative content
   • Claims
     • Assertions or suggestions to which we attach some relevance
   • Merit
     • Pragmatic criterion
     • What difference does it make in practice?
     • Who will benefit and who not?
   • Reference System
     • Gives meaning to a particular claim and conditions its validity

2. 2. Boundary critique

   • A systematic effort of handling boundary judgments critically
   • Main forms
     • Aim at handling boundary judgments self-critically
     • Use boundary judgments for critical purposes against those who may not handle them so self-critically
   • Importand to understand boundary judgements
   • Needed to talk about any aspect of a situation or an issue
     • What criteria of success we associate with it?
     • What consequences we anticipate it ot have?
     • Whose concerns we assume to be affected?
   • 3. Procces of Boundary Critique
     • Tasks
       • Identify the sources of selectivity that condition a claim
         • surfacing the underpinning boundary judgments
       • Examine these boundary judgments regarding their practical and ethical implications
       • Find options for determining the reference system that conditions a claim
         • Giving alternative answers to some of the boundary questions
       • Seek some mutual understanding with all the skateholders cocnerned
       • 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
     • No kind of theory of methodology whatsoever could calim to know the "right" answer to boundary issues
     • Should be understood and practised as a reflective attitude
     • Advantages
       • Does not depend on learning another problem-solving methodology
       • Good enough to understand the role that boundary judgments play
     • Disadvantages
       • It is not a self-contained approach
     • methodological core principle
       • Systemic traingulation
         • Eternal triange
           • Observations
             • Facts
           • Boundary judgments
             • System
           • Evaluations
             • Values

3. 4. The conceptual Framework of CHS

   • Boundary Category
     • 4 basic boundary issues
       • Each of which leads to 3 types of boundary problems
         • Major kind of skateholder
           • Are effectively or potentially affected
         • Major kind of concern
           • Associate with the skateholder in question
         • Main kind of difficulty
           • Arise with regard to the concerns in questions
         • 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...?
       • Motivation
         • Where does a sense of purposefulness and value come from?
       • Power
         • Who is in control of what is going on and is needed for success?
       • Knowledge
         • What experience and expertise support the claim?
       • Legitimacy
         • Where does legitimacy lie?
       • Four basic applications
         • Ideal Mapping
           • What is our vision?
             • Clarify the normative basis from which we assess a claim
             • To develop some shared motiviation and understanding
         • 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?
         • 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
         • 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.
     • Normative selectivity
       • Ideal mapping
         • Valeu that we think ought to inform the proposal
     • Empirical Selectivity
       • Actual mapping
         • Value which actually are at work in a proposal