Chapter 6. Towards a new orientation

6.1 Cognition and being in the world

p 71

... cognition viewed not as activity in some mental realm, but as a pattern of behavior that is relevant to the functioning of the person or organism in its world.

6.2 Knowledge and representation

6.3 Pre-understanding and background

6.4 Language and action

6.5 Breakdown and the ontology of design

p 77-78

About 'problem solving'
Breakdown: the interrupted moment of our habitual, standard, comfortable 'being-in-the-world'. Breakdowns serve an extremely important function, revealing to us the nature of our practices and equipment, making them 'present-to-hand' to us, perhaps for the first time.
[see: the concept of "declaration" in Giraudoux]

p 78

A design constitutes an interpretation of breakdown and a committed attempt to anticipate future breakdowns.

p 78

Because of what Heidegger calls our 'thrownness', we are largely forgetful of the social dimension of understanding and the commitment it entails. It is only when a breakdown occurs that we become aware of the fact that 'things' in our world exist not as the result of individual acts of cognition but through our active participation in a domain of discourse and mutual concern.
[see Sartre: "etre-en-situation", "engagement"] [Communication seen as commitment instead of as transmission of information.
Object-orientation itself as a breakdown revealing structures of our understanding?]
Part I, 5. Language, listening, and commitment, 7. Computers and representation
Marc Girod