Abstract
The paper contains a conceptual proposal, its key idea being that the successful functioning of a rule embedding artifact designed to regulate a practice (not pertaining to its use) produces the same result as the successful performance of the rule-invoking non-communicative actions belonging to the practice in case.
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Notes
- 1.
See Kroes and Meijers 2006, for instance.
- 2.
For a general description of the game, see http://orderchaosonline.com/. A player cannot steal items from another player in the game. Identity thefts may of course happen, but they take place in real life, not within the game.
- 3.
The literature on the normativity of artifacts seems to focus either on the way in which the physical structure of an artifact can incorporate rules for its use, or on evaluations regarding how well does an artifact fulfill its function as an appropriate means for achieving a purpose. See, for instance, Akrich 1992; Radder 2009; Franssen 2009; Vries et al. 2013: 101–169. However, the case of rule embedding artifacts, which regulate actions not pertaining to their use, is a different one. One example given in Latour 1999: 186–190 is closer to the topic discussed here and will be presented in what follows.
- 4.
See, for instance, Dipert 1995: 119 for the idea that artifacts “lose their character or essential nature when considered only as physical objects”. Since my investigation is focused on rule embedding artifacts, I do not wish to enter into the ontological debate about the relation between artifacts and physical objects here (although I tend to agree with Kroes and Vermaaas 2008 and disagree with Thomasson (2007) and Baker (2008) for reasons that should become obvious at the end of my paper).
- 5.
These are similar to the first two conditions figuring in the analysis of speaker meaning in Grice 1957. The third condition is missing, since adding it would make speed bumps indistinguishable from signposts.
- 6.
In discussing the case of speed bumps, Latour talks about “nonhumans” being able to perform actions (see Latour 1999: 188–190). Being responsible for A seems, however, to be a necessary condition for doing A (as an intended action).
- 7.
I am not saying that someone can assume responsibility only for an action. A doctor, for instance, can assume responsibility for an event – the death of a patient – without being able to indicate any action which she assumes responsibility for. She does not have to believe that omissions are also some sort of actions in order to do that.
- 8.
See Anscombe 1963 for the idea that only for an action under a description the question whether it was intentional or not can be raised. An interesting suggestion along the same line (actions have conceptual content) can be found in Austin 1962: 19–20: “a great many of the acts which fall within the province of Ethics are not, as philosophers are too prone to assume, simply in the last resort physical movements: very many of them have the general character, in whole or part, of conventional or ritual acts […]”. In order to be the object of moral evaluations, our actions have to occur in a conventional space. If we take Austin’s conventional space to be a conceptual space and extend the remark to the province of practical reason, we get to a similar conclusion.
- 9.
It could also be noted that the existence of artifacts to be used for the protection of people and objects from burning is another condition for the existence of a “being fireproof” property. Keeping a distance of 1 mile from a fire can protect someone from being burned, but we do not call 1 mile “a fireproof distance”.
- 10.
I am reluctant to talk about “fireproof materials”, since raw materials are not directly used in practical actions, but in productive ones. For instance, I would say that asbestos is resistant to heat (which is a natural property), but not fireproof. This does suggest an analysis of the relation between natural and functional properties, but developing such an analysis would be beyond the aim of my paper.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
In fact, the intentional theorist does not need to talk about functional properties in order to specify the content of a productive intention. Dipert simply talks about “properties”, while Hilpinen 2011 replaces functional predicates by sortal terms. I suspect this is due to their interest in works of art as artifacts. Also, if we make it a necessary condition for being an artifact that the object in case satisfies a sortal, we might have to exclude some respectable artifacts like glue and whisky (the second being Hilpinen’s own example).
- 14.
Besides production, we could also include modification in our analysis, as Dipert 1993, 1995 suggests. It should also be noted that (1) is weaker than Hilpinen’s (DEP) condition (“The existence and some of the properties of an artifact depend on an author’s intention to make an object of certain kind.”).
- 15.
This condition is due to Dipert. Hilpinen 2011 also accepts it as a “plausible condition, since an F-object can presumably be a good F-object only if its potential users recognize it as such”. His critique that “recognizability should not be taken to mean general recognizability” can be answered by my distinction between the users of X and the addressees of X.
- 16.
Here we can define successful production by combining Hilpinen’s conditions (SUC) (“An object is an artifact made by an author only if it satisfies some sortal description included in the author’s productive intention.”) and (ACC) (“An object is an artifact made by an author only if the author accepts it as satisfying some sortal description included in his productive intention.”): X’s production was successful IFF either X has F, or the author(s) of X accept that X has F.
- 17.
Suppose I automatically fold an origami bird while talking on the phone and leave it on a table. Someone else takes it and uses it as a bookmark. The origami bird was not produced with the intention to be used in a certain way and it is not used according to the way in which it is regularly used (as a decoration). Proper intentions (at least as psychological states) seem to be missing from this picture, but my origami bird would still be an artifact (here “my” does not mean that I am the author of the origami bird, but only that I am the cause of its existence).
- 18.
See Wittgenstein 1953: §§201–2.
- 19.
- 20.
This functional approach to artifacts can be traced back to Skolimowski (1966) and Heidegger (1927), Chap. 3, recent representatives being involved in the Dual nature of Artifacts research project (Kroes and Meijers 2006; also: http://www.dualnature.tudelft.nl/). This last claim is disputable, since Kroes and Meijers invoke Dipert and talk about intentions, although they do not seem to consider intentions as psychological states, so I tend to agree with Vaesen 2011 in this respect. For other representative positions for the functional approach, see Houkes 2006; Vermaas 2006; Vermas and Houkes 2006; Preston 2009. The distinction between intentional and functional approaches to artifacts was suggested to me by Verbeek and Vermaas 2009 (although they put Dipert in a distinct category).
- 21.
We do not want to say that artifacts are like words in all respects, of course. The distinction could be made by pointing out that artifacts are only used in relation to perception and action (and perhaps they can be also involved, in a sense, in practical reasoning, in a different way from the one in which words are involved in practical reasoning).
- 22.
On the Linux operation system, for instance, a bash script would be executed (by the cron daemon) by including the following line in the crontab file:
00 22 * * * /usr/bin/somedirectory/script.sh
and it would look like this:
#!/bin/bash
if [[ `whoami` == "razvan" ]]; then
halt
fi
- 23.
The distinction between rules of action and rules of criticism comes from Sellars 1969. The form of a rule of action is familiar: “If one is in C, one ought to do A” (Sellars 1969: 507; C stands for the particular circumstances under which the rule applies). An example of a rule of criticism is “Clock chimes ought to strike on the quarter hour” (Sellars 1969: 508).
- 24.
I consider ‘refraining from A’ as designating an action.
- 25.
- 26.
My own arguments for this claim can be found in Ştefanov 2004.
- 27.
I take this suggestion from Anscombe 1963.
- 28.
- 29.
See Searle 2007, for instance.
- 30.
It could also be noted that in the speed bumps example the artifact does not simply reduce the speed of the car. A driver could maintain a high speed when encountering a speed bump, at the risk of damaging her car suspensions. The opponent could of course reply that in this case speed bumps should not be considered “proper rule embedding artifacts”.
- 31.
I have tried to give support to this idea in Ştefanov 2013.
- 32.
To these could be added actions implied (i. e. necessary conditions in a routine) by your action of washing your hands (opening the bathroom door, turning on the water etc.).
- 33.
Someone could be taught to play Hashiwokakero (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashiwokakero) only through such actions. It would be at least awkward to say that the rules of the game were communicated to such a learner.
- 34.
A rule embedding artifact can, of course, incorporate some rules pertaining to its proper utilization as well. The addressees of these constitutive rules are its users (the people who place bumper speeds on roads, for instance), which are not the addressees of the regulative rules which the artifact embeds. The distinction between constitutive and regulative rules comes from Searle 1965, although its source can be traced back to Austin 1962.
- 35.
To this one could add that unless we have a convenient way to naturalize concepts like ‘responsibility’ and ‘justification’, talking about rule embedding artifacts in a naturalist vocabulary would prevent us from asking questions like ‘Who is to assume responsibility for the production and use of rule embedding artifacts?’ or ‘How should we justify the rules to be embedded in some artifacts?’.
- 36.
One could of course wonder what should be said about an artifact the practical use of which produces an entirely now practice. I think that such a case would fall outside the scope of what I have called ‘rule embedding artifacts’ here, since the artifact in question could only embed rules for its own use.
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Ştefanov, G. (2015). On Rule Embedding Artifacts. In: Pȃrvu, I., Sandu, G., Toader, I. (eds) Romanian Studies in Philosophy of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 313. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16655-1_5
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