Artifact and Tool Categorization

The aim of this chapter is to assess how two widespread types of theory on the nature of artifact kinds (i.e., functional and intentional theories) address the creation requirement, which demands an account of the appearance of genuinely new artifacts resulting from intentional creative processes. It attempts to show that both types of position do not satisfy this requirement. Functional theories that refer to a causal reproductive history cannot account for the nature of newly created artifact kinds, because artifacts belonging to these kinds do not have ancestors. Intentional theories that make the emergence of a new artifact kind dependent on the possession of a new concept of that artifact kind face a dilemma: either they have to excessively weaken the conditions for possessing a concept of an artifact kind or they need to concede that the constitution of the newly created kind cannot depend completely on such a concept. We conclude the chapter by arguing that if any account which treats artifacts as products of intentional creations cannot be separated from adopting a stance on what artifacts really are, then there are four aspects that must be taken into account for satisfactorily dealing with the ontology of artifacts.

Philosophy and Technology, 2013

This paper critically examines the forays into metaphysics of The Dual Nature of Technical Artifacts Program (henceforth, DNP). I argue that the work of DNP is a valuable contribution to the epistemology of certain aspects of artifact design and use, but that it fails to advance a persuasive metaphysic. A central problem is that DNP approaches ontology from within a functionalist framework that is mainly concerned with ascriptions and justified beliefs. Thus, the materiality of artifacts emerges only as the external conditions of realizability of function ascription. The work of DNP has a strong programmatic aspect and much of its foray into metaphysics is tentative, so the intent of my argument is partly synthetic: to sum up these issues as they are presented in the literature and highlight some recognized problems. But I also go beyond that, suggesting that these problems are foundational, arising from the very way in which DNP poses the question of artifact metaphysics. Although it sets out to incorporate objective aspects of technology, DNP places a strong focus on the intentional side of the purported matter-mind duality, bracketing off materiality in an irretrievable manner. Thus, some of the advantages of dualism are lost. I claim that DNP is dualistic, not merely based on “duality”, but that its version of dualism does not appropriately account for the material “nature” of artifacts. The paper ends by suggesting some correctives and alternatives to Dual Nature theory.

2002

The modern world is an artificial world, a world of artifacts, but modern science is a science of nature. In this book we explore Herbert Simon's idea of a science of artifacts, of artificial science. In natural science we want to find out what the world is like. Artificial science is design-oriented. Artifacts inspire us to improvements. While nature is given, artifacts are made, and our interest in them is guided by our interest in making them and making them better. In three essays we examine the idea of an artificial science, the nature of artifacts, our artificial world, and the example of history as an artificial science. We explore the role of technology in shaping our everyday lives, of engineering as world making, and the demands on such engineering to look beyond the mere functionality of technology to its larger social impact. We discuss the many varieties of artifacts, their relations to each other, and their role in defining our societies, our selves and our minds. ...

Applied Ontology 9 2014, 2014

Humans are always interested in distinguishing natural and artificial entities although there is no sharp demarcation between the two categories. Surprisingly, things do not improve when the second type of entities is restricted to the arguably more constrained realm of physical technical artifacts. This paper helps to clarify the relationship between natural entities and technical artifacts by developing a conceptual landscape within which to analyze these notions. The framework is developed by studying three definitions of technical artifact which arise from different perspectives. All these perspectives share two intuitions: that technical artifacts are physical objects that exist by human intervention; and that technical artifacts are entities to be contrasted to natural entities. Yet the perspectives are different in the way they spell out these intuitions: the relevant human intervention may range from intentional selection to intentional production; and the contrast between technical artifacts and natural entities may be introduced by a constitution relation or by defining properties that set technical artifacts apart. The three perspectives are compared and their similarities and dissimilarities are explored with the help of ontological analysis.

2009

In this work, I investigate the ability to conceptualize artifacts, an ability that appears to be unique to human beings. To this effect, I lay out a number of requirements for an account of artefact conceptualization: we need to explain how people judge whether an item is an artifact or not; how they distinguish artifacts from natural items; why and how they recognise artefacts by their functions; why and how they conceptualise artifacts in terms of intentionality; and how our cognitive apparatus makes possible all of these apparently universal, but unique human capabilities. Before examining how do human beings approach artifacts perceptually and conceptually, I need to refute skepticism regarding general investigations concerning artifacts. Therefore, I start by arguing against anthropologist-philosopher Dan Sperber, who claims that the class of artifacts is insufficiently homogeneous to warrant such a general investigation. Sperber’s criticisms turn out to be partially founded, ...

Journal of Memory and …, 1999

We argue that it is important to distinguish between categorization as object recognition and as naming because the relation between the two may not be as straightforward as has often been assumed. We present data from speakers of English, Chinese, and Spanish that support this contention. Speakers of the three languages show substantially different patterns of naming for a set of 60 common containers, but they see the similarities among the objects in much the same way. The observed patterns of naming therefore cannot arise only from the similarities that speakers of the three languages see among the objects. We also offer suggestions about how complexity in naming may arise, and the data provide some evidence consistent with these suggestions. Exploring how artifacts are named vs "known" may provide new insights into artifact categorization.

2007

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1989

Two experiments investigated the role of three types of features (physical characteristics, functions, and chromosomal~molecular structure) in determining membership in natural kind and artifact categories. In the first, subjects decided if an object ' 'X'" would still be an "X" if it were different in one type of feature. A significant interaction was found between word type and change type, with the effects of chromosomal~molecular changes significantly greater for natural kinds than for artifacts, and the effects of functional changes significantly greater for artifacts than natural kinds. In the second experiment, subjects judged whether something would be an "'X'" if it were unlike instances of "X" in two of the above types of features, but like instances of "X" in one. There was again a significant interaction, with the effects of chromosomal~molecular features significantly greater for natural kinds than for artifacts, and the effects of functional changes significantly greater for artifacts than for natural kinds. These results suggest that chromosomal~molecular features define membership in natural kind categories and functional features define membership in artifact categories. The implications of these findings for the meaning of "defining features" are also discussed.

Grazer Philosophische Studien

Putnam and others have argued that semantic externalism extends to artifactual kind words such as “pencil” or “doorstop”. I first show that, even with natural kinds, externalism applies (at best) to words for ground level kinds. The issue then arises of which categories of artifacts should be identified as kinds in the relevant, restricted sense. I argue that, though there are natural taxonomies of artifactual categories at least some of which have well-defined ground levels, even words for such kinds do not appear to have externalist semantics, as they do not support ignorance or error arguments. Some think that membership to any kind is determined by objective features. Against this, I argue that the makers’ productive intentions are often crucial in selecting which pattern of features counts as constitutive of a kind. Though externalists may insist that membership to a kind is ultimately determined by sharing objective features, the resulting version of externalism can hardly be ...