The PHILOSOPHICA raison d’être and technology portfolio

In the previous edition of PHILOSOPHICA RUMINATIONS, we traced the origins of the concept of technology and examined how its role has evolved over time. We explored the influence that technology yields at various levels of the pyramidal chain of “human existence, investigation and agency”. In addition, we considered the inadequacy of cognitive research and experimental psychology in understanding the “states of mind”. We reflected on the domains that require investigation in order to get a measure of the future roles of technology, namely “states of mind”, “mental representation”, “epistemology and justified true belief”, “introspective techniques”, “collective intentionality”, “intrinsic motivation” and the “philosophy of measurement” (https://nirsanconnect.com/09/05/2019/philosophica-ruminations/role-of-technology-in-understanding-the-human-mind/). In this edition, we discuss the role of our five proprietary technologies that are hosted on the NIRSAN PHILOSOPHICA® platform.

The NIRSAN PHILOSOPHICA® technology platform hosts our proprietary technologies that help us conduct research and deliver these to our customers in ways that are unique to us. These technologies address varied elements of the research exercise and draw from doxastic and epistemological aspects of philosophy. VERITAS AD PRETIUM® ensures that “true and truthlike propositions” are leveraged by the research for the aim of creating value in business; DAEMQUALIA® assists the research participation in discovering propositions about self through introspective techniques; DOXASTORG℠ supports the research in comprehending organisation wide doxastic states; E5 AESTHETIK® enables the creation of a conducive problem solving environment during the research exercise; IMROMEASURE® guides the measurement philosophy and methodology in research.

• ■ VERITAS AD PRETIUM® (“from truth to value” ): The notion of truth is held in high esteem in business. Value creation requires the infusion of truth about the state of affairs. CEOs and business leaders need a “near accurate” view of topics such as collective performance, competitive manoeuvres, and employee motivation. A “true view” is a quintessential requirement in strategic and tactical decision making. And yet, deciphering and deploying “truth” in business is neither a given, nor easy. Our proprietary delivery technology VERITAS AD PRETIUM® leverages arguments, constructs and techniques from philosophy more broadly, and epistemology specifically, to guide our customers from “truth” to “value creation”. VERITAS AD PRETIUM® conceives this journey along five segments with the objective of changing mindsets and catalysing action: “defining truth and truthlikeness”, “conceiving the truth”, “conversations on truth”, “extracting the truth” and “applying the truth”.
• ■ DAEMQUALIA® (“self-knowledge through introspection” ): Organised inquiry is the essence of research, and is aptly described as “making sense of the world through intelligible theories”. Mysterianism suggests that the world is not intelligible, but we could have intelligible theories to understand the world. The consciousness of the individual is the prime mover of the enterprise of organised inquiry, and therefore, needs to be understood and guided during this enterprise. DAEMQUALIA® is our proprietary delivery technology that works with the individual’s consciousness during the organised inquiry of research. It deals with two domains of inquiry: first, related to the immediate environment; and second, related to everything else. For the immediate environment, DAEMQUALIA® draws on principles of phenomenology, psychophysics, and structuralism in psychology. For inquiry beyond the immediate environment, it draws on the principles of reflective thinking, theoretical reasoning and practical reasoning.
• ■ DOXASTORG℠ (“the mind of the organisation” ): Collective intentionality is the power of minds to be jointly directed at objects, matters of fact, states of affairs, goals or values. In the context of an organisation, it manifests in various modes including shared intention, joint attention, shared beliefs, collective acceptances and shared evaluative attitudes. Organised inquiry through research in business and institutions perforce needs to transcend individual consciousness and investigate collective intentionality. DOXASTORG℠ is our proprietary delivery technology that adopts a non-summative and non-reductionist view of collective intentionality and accepts its independent ontological status. It analyses collective intentionality in its three parts: content, mode and subject. DOXASTORG℠ analyses doxastic attitudes of collectives within organisations pertaining to beliefs, and extending to states that are similar to beliefs, such as thoughts, judgments, opinions, desires and wishes.
• ■ E5 AESTHETIK® (“the problem solving environment” ): The event of problem resolution consists in the availability of the triad: the ‘problem’, the ‘problem resolution agent’, and the ‘problem resolution environment’. Our proprietary E5 AESTHETIK® technology takes the conception of ‘problem resolution environment’ much beyond the limited concept of ‘problem resolution methods and techniques’. Our technology disaggregates this environment into its constituents based on interactions between agent and environment. Five elements emerge: the agent’s ‘engaging’ with the problem and the environment; the ‘enriching’ of the problem with multiple perspectives, the ‘energising’ of the agent through motivation; the ‘empowering’ of the agent in order to move from ‘reason to act’ to ‘taking action’; and ‘enabling’ of the agent through nurturing. E5 AESTHETIK® leverages the problem resolution environment in the research setting to enhance the quality of insights.
• ■ IMROMEASURE® (“the philosophy of measurement” ): Measurement is an integral part of running a business or an institution. It is also an integral part of conducting research of any type. The philosophy of measurement has been enriched over the past few centuries, not in small measure by the development of mathematical theories and the natural sciences. The consequent epistemology of measurement has great import for derivations and the making of meaning in business. Our proprietary delivery technology IMROMEASURE® takes inspiration from the different strands of measurement philosophy, and applies these tenets and constructs to the design of our research products. IMROMEASURE® aligns more with “model-based views of measurement”, and adopts targeted principles from the “mathematical”, “realist”, “operationism” and “information-theoretic” views. IMROMEASURE® is then our own conception of “measurement”, and drives research design, analytics design and implications development.

In the next edition of PHILOSOPHICA RUMINATIONS, we begin our journey to comprehend the individual technologies on the platform. We start by exploring the domain of “epistemology”, “justified true belief” and “truthlikeness”. We examine how VERITAS AD PRETIUM® enables our research exercise to leverage “truth” and ‘truthlike propositions” to achieve value creation in business.