Abstract
Debates in the metaphysics of artefacts typically start from the observation that technical artefacts result from intentional production and then focus immediately on the issue whether this ‘mind-dependence’ undermines claims that artefacts exist or come in natural or real kinds. We aim to add sophistication to debates on the latter issue by approaching it through an analysis of contemporary engineering and in continuity with discussions in the metaphysics of science. We first reconstruct which productive activities are involved in contemporary artefact production. From this reconstruction, we derive two general classification systems for artefacts – which we call the ‘instrument’ and ‘product’ systems. Then, we adopt from discussions in the metaphysics of science three conditions for classifications to correspond to natural kinds. For each of these three conditions, we discuss which conception or aspect of mind-independence it embodies and to what extent our two classification systems meet it. We conclude that the instrument system is mind-dependent in all ways and the product system only in some. Finally, we identify two options for finding natural classifications of artefacts and develop the second as one that establishes continuity between the metaphysics of science and engineering. This second option leads to a classification system that can correspond to natural kinds and that incorporates the product classes of technical artefacts extensionally.
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Notes
- 1.
Throughout the chapter, ‘item’ refers to objects and processes, which may or may not be human-made; ‘class’ or ‘type’ refers to a grouping of items, which may or may not constitute a kind.
- 2.
Basalla (1988).
- 3.
- 4.
Brown (2000) describes how divisions of labour in productive activities emerged in nineteenth-century engineering in the USA and UK.
- 5.
This point is elaborated in more detail in Houkes and Vermaas (2009).
- 6.
Following Bird and Tobin (2008), we distinguish kind naturalism (the view that some classifications are natural) from kind realism (the view that natural kinds exist independently of their members or instances).
- 7.
- 8.
Houkes and Vermaas (2010).
- 9.
Houkes and Vermaas (2009). There, we called manufacturing designing simply ‘manufacturing’; we changed our terminology in this chapter since, in engineering, manufacturing typically refers to both the planning of making and the making itself.
- 10.
The explicit distinction of separate activities in the production process and the coordination of the resulting division of labour in organisations may be a relatively recent phenomenon (Brown 2000). Engineering definitions of designing typically single out what we have called product designing, yet broader definitions that include use-plan designing can be found (e.g. Hubka and Eder 1988; Roozenburg and Eekels 1995; Brown and Blessing 2005). Manufacturing designing and making are in engineering clearly separated from (product) designing, although (product) designing may include the making of prototypes (Cross 2006, pp. 15–16). This separation is, for instance, described by Visser (2006, p. 160): ‘[t]he implementation (realization, manufacturing, fabrication, construction) of an artifact based on the specifications that result from the design, is […] a different task from design, assigned to different professionals’. And Chang (1990, p. 39) takes (product) designing as a process that ends with ‘a concept [for a physical entity that functionally satisfies a design requirement] expressed in a communicable media’ and manufacturing as a means to realise that concept. Moreover, practices like concurrent engineering show that our conceptual distinction is reflected in an actual division of labour: it is generally acknowledged in engineering that this division of labour has led to new problems, requiring communication and adjustments of the activities by all agents involved.
- 11.
Interactions with items include physical manipulations (e.g. pressing, turning), remote causal interactions (e.g. accelerating space probes by means of Jupiter’s gravitational field) and observations (e.g. watching traffic lights).
- 12.
One might want to restrict use plans for an item x to those plans that feature prominent or salient interactions with x. This would prevent standard ways of cooking vegetables from being characterised as use plans for fresh water and ways of cracking nuts as use plans for the nuts as well as the nutcracker. There is no hard and fast rule for determining in general which interactions are sufficiently ‘salient’: a variety of considerations, such as institutionalisation and regularity of use, come into play when one answers, for an item x, the question “What do you use this for?” or fails to provide a definitive answer, as in the case of fresh water.
- 13.
- 14.
Vermaas (2006).
- 15.
In line with the considerations in n. 12 above, one might want to restrict goal and plan classes to those items that are most ‘saliently’ interacted with for the purpose or when executing the plan. This would prevent candle wax from being classified as a candle wax remover and the handlebar of a bicycle as a means of transportation.
- 16.
The example of flatirons used as doorstoppers may be discarded by some as due to recycled or ‘improper’ use; flatirons may in this vein be taken as only contained in the goal class of ‘wrinkle removers’. The other examples are therefore chosen in a way that only proper use is considered.
- 17.
The make-plan analysis determines the focus of the arguments: a domesticated plant or animal may be called a ‘product’ if breeding it may be reconstructed as making – so, if there is a constructed and communicated make plan for the plant or animal. Genetic engineering of organisms can be reconstructed as such, and so can carrying out a deliberate breeding scheme; merely selecting plants or animals for desired properties cannot.
- 18.
Other conditions for natural classifications offered in the literature, but not considered here, include the following: that natural kinds support inductions or even laws of nature (Bird and Tobin 2008), that natural kinds form a kind (ibid.), that kind membership is unique (De Sousa 1984), that use of natural kinds is significant to the development of human knowledge (Hacking 1991) and that natural kinds are associated with real essences (Ellis 2001).
- 19.
We would like to thank Maarten Franssen and Thomas Reydon for suggesting some of these ways of meeting the Distinctness condition.
- 20.
Our focus on natural kinds identified in physics, chemistry and biology should not be taken as expression of a view that other disciplines, such as the behavioural, cognitive and social sciences, do not identify natural kinds.
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Acknowledgments
Our thanks go to Maarten Franssen, Peter Kroes and Thomas Reydon for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. Research by Wybo Houkes and research by Pieter Vermaas were supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
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Appendix: Action-Theoretical Descriptions
Appendix: Action-Theoretical Descriptions
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Houkes, W., Vermaas, P.E. (2014). On What Is Made: Instruments, Products and Natural Kinds of Artefacts. In: Franssen, M., Kroes, P., Reydon, T.A.C., Vermaas, P.E. (eds) Artefact Kinds. Synthese Library, vol 365. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00801-1_10
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