Contemporary Engineering and the Metaphysics of Artefacts

Houkes, WN Wybo; Vermaas, Pieter E.

doi:10.5840/monist200992323

Cited by 22 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…This program aimed at addressing a number of philosophical issues about artifacts, and for doing so the concept of technical function and the activities of the design and use of physical objects were analyzed in terms of use plans, see Houkes and Vermaas (2010). In related work on the metaphysics of artifacts (Houkes & Vermaas, 2009a, 2014, the notion of make plan was introduced for describing manufacturing and production. These descriptions of design, use, manufacturing, and production by means of use plans and make plans are to some extent rational reconstructions, adding detail to the descriptions that may remain implicit in more common descriptions of design, use, etc.…”

Section: Technical Artifacts In Philosophy Of Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Technical artifacts: An integrated perspective

et al. 2014

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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.

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Section: Technical Artifacts In Philosophy Of Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Technical artifacts: An integrated perspective

et al. 2014

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“…Minimally, it needs to be supplemented with a theory of production and a theory of artefacts, as we also remarked in response to Reydon. Our use-plan approach can be extended to such a theory (Houkes and Vermaas 2009). Within these confines, we claim two comparative merits for our theory: a first, evaluative and a second, descriptive one.…”

Section: To Mieke Boonmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Here, Reydon follows many philosophers in conflating designing with making or producing (Houkes and Vermaas 2009). On our reconstruction, designing involves constructing and communicating a use plan, which might involve only manipulations of naturally occurring items such as sticks and stones.…”

Section: To Thomas Reydonmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ICE-theory of technical functions

et al. 2012

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Because this is the first contribution to the book symposium on Technical Functions, I want to give the readers a general idea of the nature of the book. The aim of the book is normative rather than descriptive:This choice means that we approach both artefacts and the actions in which they play a role largely from a normative rather than a descriptive perspective. We do not offer a theory about how people actually use or design artefacts, or how they in fact describe them in functional terms; instead we seek to provide

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“…Technical artefacts are regularly understood as entities that are made by agents like human beings, which implies that artefacts are entities that come into existence when they are intentionally physically modified by those agents (e.g., Dipert 1993;Houkes and Vermaas 2009b;Hilpinen 1992Hilpinen , 1993 on a strict interpretation). Prehistoric pieces of flint and modern submarines are on this first approach instances of technical artefacts.…”

Section: Instruments and Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pebbles that are used as paperweights, and tree trunks that fell over streams and are used for crossing those streams, are then technical artefacts as well. These pebbles and tree trunks are often chosen as a starting point for philosophical analyses of technical artefacts or of technology, and such analyses sometimes remain on that level; an approach that may be somewhat limited from an engineering or contemporary everyday point of view (Houkes and Vermaas 2009b). Dipert's (1993) analysis of artefacts provides a more sophisticated and encompassing conceptual framework, giving a characterisation in which artefacts are defined in a stricter manner and contrasted to other types of more liberal 'technical' entities.…”

Section: Instruments and Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The design stance and its artefacts

et al. 2011

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In this paper we disambiguate the design stance as proposed by Daniel C. Dennett, focusing on its application to technical artefacts. Analysing Dennett's work and developing his approach towards interpreting entities, we show that there are two ways of spelling out the design stance, one that presuppose also adopting Dennett's intentional stance for describing a designing agent, and a second that does not. We argue against taking one of these ways as giving the correct formulation of the design stance in Dennett's approach, but propose to replace Dennett's original design stance by two design stances: an intentional designer stance that incorporates the intentional stance, and a teleological design stance that does not. Our arguments focus on descriptions of technical artefacts: drawing on research in engineering, cognitive psychology and archaeology we show that both design stances are used for describing technical artefacts. A first consequence of this disambiguation is that a design stance, (2013) 190:1131-1152 in terms of interpretative assumptions and in terms of the pragmatic considerations for adopting it, stops to be a stance that comes hierarchically between the physical stance and the intentional stance. A second consequence is that a new distinction can be made between types of entities in Dennett's approach. We call entities to which the intentional designer stance is applied tools and entities to which the teleological design stance is applied instruments, leading to a differentiated understanding of, in particular, technical artefacts.

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Contemporary Engineering and the Metaphysics of Artefacts

Cited by 22 publications

References 18 publications

Technical artifacts: An integrated perspective

Technical artifacts: An integrated perspective

The ICE-theory of technical functions

The design stance and its artefacts

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