p.1 If we see knowing not having an essence, to be described by scientists
or philosophers, but rather as a right, by current standards, to believe, then we are well
on the way to seeing conversation as the ultimate context within which knowledge is to be understood. Rorty, 1980:
389
p.5 to those who occupy the centre [of the discipline of psychology, but appropriately any discipline],
new approaches can often seem like dangerous monsters on the prowl around outside the discipline,
intent, if allowed in, upon destroying any order so far achieved within it.
p.14-15 the construction of a narrative account, quite often distorts
what the character of the situation was in actual practice: it falsely completes what was an open and unfinalized
circumstance, whose very openness 'invited' and 'enabled' that action taken within it, as something finalized and
complete.
p.17 Different people in different positions at different moments will live in different realities.
p.18 Thus, (i) if uncertainty, vagueness, and ambiguity are real features of much of the
world in which we live; and (ii) how we 'construct' or 'specify' these features further influences the nature
of our own future lives together, then their contested nature comes as no surprise: for what is at stake, is which of a possible
plurality of future next steps should we take for the best? Whose version points towards a best future for us?
p.22 it is thought 'natural', so to speak, to think of ourselves as possessing within ourselves something
we call our 'mind' - an internal, secular organ of thought which mediates between us and the external reality surrounding
us. And furthermore, it is also 'natural' to think that as such, our minds have their own discoverable, natural principles
of operation
p.40 people mutually judge and correct both each other and themselves as to the 'fittingness' of their actions
to what they take their reality to be.
p.69 such a science, which only allows the study of rationally constructed objects, excludes imagination,
and the exclusion of imagination precludes the possibility of any genuine growth.
p.148 The most essential responsibilities for managers... can be characterized as participation in conversations
for possibilities that open new backgrounds for the conversations for action. Winograd and Flores, 1986: 151
p.148-149 a manager can be seen as a 'repairer', as someone who is able to restore a routine flow of action
that has broken down in some way, to give it an intelligible action [JLJ - or to take proactive steps to prevent things
from breaking down in the first place]
p.151 'effective managers and professionals in all walks of life, whether they be business
executives, public administrators, organizational consultants, politicians, or trade unionists, have to become skilled
in the art of "reading" the situations that they are attempting to organize or manage'
p.154 the manager... their first step is to produce a diagnostic reading... while their
second step is to make a critical evaluation... which ultimately involves... making... a judgment of the situation
at hand.
p.164 human beings... become themselves responsible for much of their own nature... to maintain
their nature they must constantly reproduce in their actions the surroundings required to sustain it. And to do this...
one must be a free individual
p.187 the Achilles heel of hermeneutical accounts: what we cannot make we can have no privileged understanding
of
