This Friday in the Research Tent at 5pm CET, we’re hosting an interview between @Asimong and myself on the topic of Ontological Commoning.
Ontological Commoning is a key area of Simon’s own research, and he defines it as “the process and practice of finding common ground between different perspectives on a complex situation; finding ways to make sense of each other’s conceptual models, without erasing differences, but generating a wider perspective within which individual perspectives can be inter-related”.
I’m really interested to hear more from Simon about this approach, and how to can help both to help us zero in on common ground both within our own ‘Second Renaissance’ community, and across the broader ecosystem of ideas that we’re situated within.
As usual we’ll devote around half the session to the interview itself, leaving the remainder for breakout rooms and/or group reflections.
Pity that I missed this one @Asimong, but now that I’ve listened to it - I’ve got a lot of questions
In a way, this touches on some of what I’m trying to eloquate, but needs some “commoning”
My main takeaway from this presentation is the idea that conceptual agreements require shared experience. Such shared experience is easier to acquire in small groups who focus efforts in that direction. Story sharing is one such technique, allowing group members to at least vicariously and imaginatively participate in each other’s experiences. By way of application to 2R, it seems that any given small group might experiment in ontological commoning by exploring what relational practices are needed to agree on a common framework for some purpose or another.
I would agree that establishing common relational practices is a fine idea, where possible.
Common frameworks? Again, if common ground can be reached in terms of a conceptual framework for particular purposes, great. I guess what I’m trying to point to is the kind of situation where people have identity invested in particular stories or belief systems, and so it wouldn’t be so easy to agree common conceptual frameworks.
What then? The core of what I’m proposing is around the challenge of helping people arrive at common ground, not so much for domain-level tasks, but for interrelating different work through a higher-level conceptual framework for communication and seeing how the different concepts map together.
Also, it would be great to have your contributions around what the preconditions might be for these experiments to be (a) needed and (b) possible. I’ll try posting something about my current view of the methodology-in-development.
I don’t mind - either or both. What I’d be aiming for is progressing this past the notion of commoning to think deeply about what problem we’re trying to solve and what will be the effects of “commoning done right”. Just to build an enquiry around it, if you’re happy with the idea.
