Recent work in metaphysics has focused on the nature of artefacts, most accounts of which assume that artefacts depend on the intentions of their individual makers. Artefacts are thus importantly different from institutional kinds, which involve collective intentions. However, recent work in social ontology has yielded renewed focus on the social dimensions of various kinds, including artefacts. As a result, some philosophers have suggested that artefacts have a distinctly social dimension that goes beyond their makers' individual intentions (...) but which stops short of the collective intentionality of institutional kinds. I aim to combine these insights into an account of artefacts that involves disjunctive conditions of mind-dependence: Artefacts can either depend on the singular intentions of their makers or they can depend on the collective acceptance of particular social groups. Whether the first or second disjunct is satisfied depends on the artefact's context of creation. I'll argue that this applies not to artefact kinds but to individual artefacts. I then consider two objections to my view based on Robinson Crusoe cases and show how my account allows us to fit artefacts into a taxonomy of social kinds. (shrink)

My dissertation explores the nature of artifacts – things like chairs, tables, and pinball machines – and addresses the question of whether there is anything essential to being an artifact and a member of a particular artifact kind. My dissertation offers new arguments against both the anti-essentialist and current essentialist proposals. Roughly put, the view is that artifacts are successful products of an intention to make something with certain features constitutive of an artifact kind. The constitutive features (...) are often functional features, but may include structural, material, aesthetic, and other features. I further explore the ways in which artifacts are mind-dependent and I argue that this dependence is disjunctive. Not only do they depend on the intentions of their makers, but they also can depend on social groups or public norms and thus artifacts have an importantly social dimension and I argue that this disjunctive account applies not to artifact kinds but to individual artifacts depending on their context of creation. (shrink)

I defend the intention-dependence of artifacts, which says that something is an artifact of kind K only if it is the successful product of an intention to make an artifact of kind K. I consider objections from two directions. First, that artifacts are often mind- and intention-dependent, but that this isn’t necessary, as shown by swamp cases. I offer various error theories for why someone would have artifact intuitions in such cases. Second, that while artifacts are (...) necessarily mind-dependent, they aren’t necessarily intention-dependent. I consider and reject three kinds of cases which purport to show this: accidental creation, automated production, and mass production. I argue that intentions are present in all of these cases, but not where we would normally expect. (shrink)

The computer is one of the most complex artifacts ever built. Given its complexity, it can be described from many different points of view. The aim of this paper is to investigate the representational structure and multifunctionality of a particular subset of computers, namely personal devices from a user-centred perspective. The paper also discusses the concept of “cognitive task”, as recently employed in some definitions of cognitive artifacts, and investigates the metaphysical properties of such artifacts. From a representational point of (...) view, the article introduces the concepts of artifactual meta-representation and of semi-transparency, two features that personal devices share with some cognitive and non-cognitive artifacts. Recognising the meta-representational nature of personal devices and of other cognitive artifacts, thus overcoming semi-transparency, is important for the understanding of why different artifacts offer us different cognitive affordances as well as different cognitive advantages. In this sense, it is not simply a theoretical achievement, but has some important practical consequences. In our highly technological world we can use different kinds of computers and artifacts for solving the same tasks, and we need to understand why some artifacts are better suited for some tasks than others. The ultimate characterisation of personal devices that emerges from this work is that of a sort of super-artifact. This special status is given to personal devices because of their distinctive features. They are in fact intrinsically multifunctional and meta-representational artifacts, with extremely variable structures. As super-artifacts, personal devices are characterised by macro-functionality and can be easily used as both cognitive artifacts and tools for other functions, depending on the kind of representations they instantiate. (shrink)

To what extent and in what sense is the being of a person a historical way of being? To what extent? Comprehensively and fundamentally. To be a person is to be a history. In what respect? In two respects, opposed but related. On the one hand, being a person is an achievement of a living individual belonging to a natural kind whose genetic endowment and possible behaviors provide the necessary conditions for that achievement. On the other hand, a human being (...) becomes the person he is within, and as one expression of, a complex network of artifacts—language, ritual, social institutions, styles of art and architecture, cosmologies and myths—that constitute a culture. A culture, of course, is itself a sedimentation of the actions of past persons; but it is, nevertheless, preexistent with respect to the development of any particular person. Great innovators may change their societies, but they have to be born into, and grow up in, some society, however radically they may come to alter, perhaps even to destroy it. Admittedly, the distinction between nature and culture is a commonplace; I am trying to introduce it here, however, not as a simple dichotomy, but as an internal relation essential in its integrity to the being of human beings. Helmuth Plessner has spoken of the natural artificiality of man: a human being is an individual member of the species homo sapiens, to whose development, even as a living thing, inherence in an artifactual medium is necessary. It is our nature to need the artificial; we come to ourselves not only as users of, but as dwellers within, a tightly woven net of artifacts. Even for his physiological development, for the achievement of reproduction, sustenance, rest, and so on, a human being needs, in general, a roof over his head, a language, theories of some kind about the way things are, at least minimal apprenticeship in a trade or calling, etc. Thus human nature, being dependent on culture, is itself historical. For a culture is an historical artifact interiorized in the life history of each of its participants, and to be one of those participants consists precisely in that process of interiorization. That is the chief lesson, for example, of Adolf Portmann’s study of the first year of life, or, as he calls it, the year of the social uterus. Our young, like those of other higher mammals, are born with their senses wide awake, yet, like the lower mammals, and unlike other higher forms, they have to hug the nest, lying recumbent, in order to assimilate, in their dependency, the structure of their immediate human community. Only in the second year of life, when they have learned to walk and to speak, will they enter on a course of what will eventually be responsible actions. In its natural as well as cultural aspect, humanity is something to be achieved, and the person is the history of that achievement. It is in this dual, yet single, sense that the being of the person is historical. (shrink)

I defend a novel view of how social kinds (e.g., money, women, permanent residents) depend on our mental states. In particular, I argue that social kinds depend on our mental states in the following sense: it is essential to them that they exist (partially) because certain mental states exist. This analysis is meant to capture the very general way in which all social kinds depend on our mental states. However, my view is that particular social kinds (...) also depend on our mental states in more specific ways—some of them causal, others metaphysical. I defend a minimal but metaphysically important notion of essence—one that takes as primary that the essential properties of a kind constitute its identity—and argue that this minimal notion of essence is all that is needed to vindicate my claim that social kinds are essentially mind-dependent. (shrink)

In the near future, our life will normally be surrounded with fairly complicated artifacts, enabled by the autonomous robot and brain–machine interface technologies. In this paper, we argue that what we call the responsibility flaw problem and the inappropriate use problem need to be overcome in order for us to benefit from complicated artifacts. In order to solve these problems, we propose an approach to endowing artifacts with an ability of socially communicating with other agents based on the artifact-as-a-half-mirror (...) metaphor. The idea is to have future artifacts behave according to the hybrid intention composed of the owner’s intention and the social rules. We outline the approach and discuss its feasibility together with preliminary work. (shrink)

This collection of 16 original articles by prominent theorists from a variety of disciplines provides an excellent insight into current thinking about artifacts. The four sections address issues concerning the metaphysics of artifacts, the nature and cognitive development of artifact concepts, and the place of artifacts in evolutionary history. The most overtly philosophical contributions are in the first two sections. Metaphysical issues addressed include the ‘mind-dependence’ of artifacts and the bearing of this on their ‘real’ existence, and the (...) distinction between natural and artifact kinds, and its implications for issues in epistemology and semantics – for example, whether there is ‘maker's knowledge’ of artifacts, and whether ‘direct’ theories of reference apply to artifact-kind terms. The papers concerned with the nature of artifact concepts – the ways in which we represent artifacts to ourselves – address how judgements of artifact identity track judgements about manifest appearance, function, and maker's intentions, and the neuroscientific basis for artifact categorization. Papers …. (shrink)

This collection of 16 original articles by prominent theorists from a variety of disciplines provides an excellent insight into current thinking about artifacts. The four sections address issues concerning the metaphysics of artifacts, the nature and cognitive development of artifact concepts, and the place of artifacts in evolutionary history. The most overtly philosophical contributions are in the first two sections. Metaphysical issues addressed include the ‘mind-dependence’ of artifacts and the bearing of this on their ‘real’ existence, and the (...) distinction between natural and artifact kinds, and its implications for issues in epistemology and semantics – for example, whether there is ‘maker's knowledge’ of artifacts, and whether ‘direct’ theories of reference apply to artifact-kind terms. The papers concerned with the nature of artifact concepts – the ways in which we represent artifacts to ourselves – address how judgements of artifact identity track judgements about manifest appearance, function, and maker's intentions, and the neuroscientific basis for artifact categorization. Papers …. (shrink)

The “nature” of an artifact is often equated with its function. Clearly, an artifactual function must be an extrinsic property. This feature of functions has important implications on the semantics of artifactual kind terms: it enables us to vindicate that artifactual kind terms have an externalist semantics. Any alleged externalist theory, indeed, must show that the referents of the considered terms share a common nature (i.e., an extrinsic property), whether we know or could possibly ever know what that nature (...) is. However, the state of the art shows that function is not enough to represent such “nature”: function does not exhaustively account for important phenomena that characterize artifacts and artifactual kinds, nor does it thoroughly define what they are. Thus, extending the scope of externalism to artifactual kind terms seems doomed to fail. Pace opposite views, it could even be argued that artifacts are a sub-class of social kinds. If so, not only social but also artifactual kind terms cannot refer externalistically, since their referents constitutively depend on human intentions and norms. Either way, externalism fails to apply to those kinds of terms. (shrink)

Much recent discussion has focused on the nature of artifacts, particularly on whether artifacts have essences. While the general consensus is that artifacts are at least intention-dependent, an equally common view is function essentialism about artifacts, the view that artifacts are essentially functional objects and that membership in an artifact kind is determined by a particular, shared function. This paper argues that function essentialism about artifacts is false. First, the two component conditions of function essentialism are given a clear (...) and precise formulation, after which counterexamples are offered to each. Second, ways to handle the counterexamples suggested by Randall Dipert and Simon Evnine are considered and rejected. Third, I then consider the prospects for restricting function essentialism to so-called technical artifacts, as Lynne Baker does, and argue that this, too, fails. This paper thereby consolidates the scattered literature on function essentialism and shows that, despite the seeming plausibility of the thesis, it should be rejected as an account of artifact essences. (shrink)

It is often noted that institutional objects and artifacts depend on human beliefs and intentions and so fail to meet the realist paradigm of mind‐independent objects. In this paper I draw out exactly in what ways the thesis of mind‐independence fails, and show that it has some surprising consequences. For the specific forms of mind‐dependence involved entail that we have certain forms of epistemic privilege with regard to our own institutional and artifactual kinds, protecting us from certain (...) possibilities of ignorance and error; they also demonstrate that not all cases of reference to these kinds can proceed along a purely causal model. As a result, realist views in ontology, epistemology, and semantics that were developed with natural scientific kinds in mind cannot fully apply to the kinds of the social and human sciences. In closing I consider some wider consequences of these results for social science and philosophy. (shrink)

Artifacts include practical items such as tables, chairs, and screwdrivers, as well as artworks such as paintings, sculptures, and musical works. Social objects include social and institutional things such as dollars, borders, states, corporations, and universities. Although we are all familiar with such entities, it is far from clear what their nature or essence consists in and whether they even have a real nature or essence. The aim of this chapter is to survey and critically examine various positions (...) on these two central philosophical issues concerning essence and artifacts, artworks, and social objects. I first consider whether the kinds 'artifact' and 'social object'—as well as kinds of artifacts and social objects—have essences. I then inquire into what these essences may be. (shrink)

It is often noted that institutional objects and artifacts depend on human beliefs and intentions and so fail to meet the realist paradigm of mind-independent objects. In this paper I draw out exactly in what ways the thesis of mind-independence fails, and show that it has some surprising consequences. For the specific forms of mind-dependence involved entail that we have certain forms of epistemic privilege with regard to our own institutional and artifactual kinds, protecting us from certain (...) possibilities of ignorance and error; they also demonstrate that not all cases of reference to these kinds can proceed along a causal model. As a result, realist views in ontology, epistemology, and semantics that were developed with natural scientific kinds in mind cannot fully apply to the everyday world. In closing I consider some wider consequences of these results for social science and philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art and Science, Facts and KnowledgeBengt Brülde (bio)Keywordsart, definitions, epistemology, facts and values, mental disorder, metaphysical realism, nominalism, physical disorder, social constructivismThe main purpose of my original article was to find out how the evaluative content of the concept of mental disorder, i.e. its "value component," should be characterized. Both Tyreman and Ross are focusing on other things, however. Tyreman seems to agree with my analysis, and his (...) primary objective is to find out whether my general analytical approach can be extended to other areas, e.g. whether it can be used to analyze the concept of physical disorder or the concept of art. It is hard to tell whether Ross agrees with my view, since her entire commentary is focused on a few assumptions I made in the beginning of the paper, mainly in passing, to make my evaluative investigation more manageable. In short, the main content of my original paper is never really challenged, and I do not think I have to revise my view on the evaluative content of the concept of mental disorder. Both commentaries give rise to questions that are interesting in their own right, however, e.g. questions about art and science, and about facts and knowledge. This gives me the opportunity to develop my views on a number of topics that I never touched upon in the original article, e.g. the purpose of defining "mental disorder," the factual component of the concept, the connection between ontological and epistemological issues, and the value-neutrality of science. I am very grateful to the editors for allowing me to give such an extensive reply.My Reply to TyremanTyreman wants to know whether the same kind of analysis given in my original paper can be applied just as usefully to other areas of health care. That is, the question is whether the same type of analytical approach can be extended to other areas where evaluative considerations seem to play a crucial part. In his commentary, Tyreman has mainly four areas in mind, namely physical disorder, art, good art, and good (competent) clinical practice. Or more specifically, the question is whether the kind of evaluative analysis I used in my original paper can help us answer the following four questions: (a) How should we define the concept of physical disorder, i.e. according to what criteria should we draw the line between physical disorders and other physical conditions? (b) How should we define the concept of art, i.e. according to what criteria should we draw the line between art and other artifacts and performances? (c) What is good art, i.e. according to what criteria should we evaluate those artifacts (etc.) that we have decided to categorize as works of art? (d) What makes a clinical performance or practice good or competent, according to what criteria should we evaluate such practices?The first two questions are conceptual, i.e. the question is how certain concepts should be [End Page 111] defined, and in what way or ways values enter the picture. The last two questions are straightforwardly evaluative, however, and it goes without saying that we have to rely on value judgments to answer these questions. This difference suggests that the conceptual analyses needed in the first two cases are somewhat different from the evaluative analyses needed in the last two cases. It is also far more likely that my analysis of mental disorder can be extended to the first two cases. After all, my approach is designed to capture the evaluative content of concepts that are not purely evaluative. (We will return to this below.)To see whether my analysis can be of any help in any of Tyreman's four cases, we need to recapitulate what it is all about. The analysis in question is specifically concerned with how the evaluative content of the concept of mental disorder should be characterized, i.e. how and to what extent we have to rely on value judgments to distinguish mental disorders from other conditions. The first part of the analysis consists in the formulation of four questions that any reasonably complete account needs to answer. These questions are: (0... (shrink)

This paper questions the widespread supposition that artifact kinds are kinds of artifacts. I will argue that this supposition rests on a one-sided diet of examples taken from inanimate physical things and the neglect of social and biological artifacts. I will argue that belonging to an artifact kind and being an artifact are independent Features: The first divides off artifacts from non-artifacts, the second rests on the distinction between instances of artifacts kinds and instances of natural (...) kinds. I claim that these two distinctions are orthogonal to each other, and besides the two canonical combinations of artificial instances of artifact kinds and non-artificial instances of natural kinds there are also non-artificial instances of artifact kinds and artificial instances of natural kinds. Moreover, as some artificial living beings are self-reproducing, some instances of an artifact kind are not themselves artifacts. Hence artifact kinds are not of necessity kinds of artifacts. (shrink)

The method of metaphysics: Metaphysics is empirical but depends not, like the sciences, on recondite experience but on close attention to aspects of everyday experience we ordinarily scarcely notice. "Real" is a broader concept than "exists" (which applies only to particulars) and also applies to phenomena, kinds, and laws, which are real, but not, of course, existent entities. But "there are real kinds, laws, etc." doesn't imply that all the kinds and laws we believe are real, are. I call my (...) approach "Innocent Realism" because--though it's certainly not naive--it requires attending to experience, so far as possible, without substantial preconceptions. There is one real world, enormously varied but also integrated. It includes physical stuff, kinds, laws, etc. and, here on earth, a vast array of human artifacts, physical, social, intellectual, and imaginative, all intimately interconnected. All this requires human mindedness (a better word than "mind" because it doesn't suggest that human mentality is an organ like the heart or the liver). Rather, it's a complex congeries of dispositions and abilities: to understand even such a relatively simple thing as what's involved in someone's believing something, we need to take account of the person's dispositions to behavior, verbal and otherwise; to the neurophysiological realizations of these dispositions; and to their connections to the world and to words in the person's linguistic community--this last requiring other people's words-world connection. "Virtual" reality is just one more computer artifact, clever, no doubt, but not metaphysically startling. It's oversold, but this is advertising hype, not serious metaphysics. (shrink)

Chapter 1: An Introduction: The ‘Semantic Sting’ Argument Describes Dworkin’s theory as concerning the conditions of legal validity. “A legal system is a system of norms. Validity is a logical property of norms in a way akin to that in which truth is a logical property of propositions. A statement about the law is true if and only if the norm it purports to describe is a valid legal norm…It follows that there must be certain conditions which render certain norms, (...) but not others, legally valid. Hence it also follows that there can be two types of disagreement over the truth or falsehood of propositions about the law. People can disagree over the question ‘What are the conditions of legal validity?’, in which case their disagreement is a theoretical one. Or they can agree on the conditions of validity, and disagree as to whether or not those conditions actually obtain in a given case or not.” Argues that the best way to interpret Dworkin’s ‘semantic-sting argument’ is as a general argument against conventionalism in legal positivism. Summarizes the outcome of Dworkin’s argument as follows: “[I]f Dworkin is right about the legal reasoning of lawyers and judges, conventionalism would be self-defeating: if lawyers and judges recognize as legally binding not only those norms which are uncontroversially identifiable under the Rule of Recognition, that is, if what they recognize as binding is not only source-based law, then conventionalism turns out to be false on its own terms. In other words, either law is not what lawyers and judges think that it is, in which case law is not a matter of conventions, or – if it is what lawyers and judges think – conventionalism is false, as they do not see the law as purely a matter of conventions.” Dworkin’s theory, then, is a new conception of jurisprudence aiming to present itself as a rival to conventionalism. The book will be concerned with re-examining positivism in light of the interpretative challenge. Chapter 2: Meaning and Interpretation “[R]oughly, interpretation can be defined as an understanding or explanation of the meaning of an object.” Interpretation in this narrow sense is distinct from a less formal and broader use of interpretation that makes it equivalent to explanation. “Hence also, only those objects which are capable of bearing some meaning qualify as objects of interpretation.” [Why shouldn’t we think of interpretation as object-identification? This seems to be closer to what Dworkin has in mind.] Thus, a consideration of the philosophical work on meaning is appropriate. First, a consideration of Davidson on interpretation. The thesis is that Davidson’s “radical interpretation” can only account for sentence meaning and not for linguistic interpretation in general. Davidson cannot account for the non-rule-governed aspects of communication. “Semantics, as opposed to interpretation, concerns those aspects of communication which are rule or convention governed…but such rules are normally unavailable as reasons or justifications for an interpretation. On the contrary, interpretation is usually required because the issue is not determined by rules or conventions.” Interpretation, rather, is parasitic with understanding the meaning of an expression and not equivalent with it. As Dummett notes, any reflection on the meanings of words assumes prior knowledge of ordinary meanings. “This leads to the conclusion that understanding or explaining the meaning of an expression and interpreting it, are two conceptually separate things. It also indicates that seman ics can only be employed, if at all, to elucidate the concept of interpretation by way of contrast: interpretation concerns those aspects of communication which are under-determined by semantic rules or conventions.” Pragmatics, the study of problems posed by discrepancies between utterer’s meaning and sentence meaning, would seem to be closer to inquiry into interpretation. Both are concerned with understanding how meaning is possible where conventional rules leave off. Contemporary pragmatics, moreover, recognizes the logically indeterminate character of communicative inferences beyond conventional meaning and that the contextual conditions that account for the possibility cannot be realized in the semantic structure of the sentence. However, different criteria of success may be at work in pragmatics than interpretation. Pragmatics is concerned with how communication is achieved and thus the criteria of success would be grasping a speaker’s intentions. Many think, however, that communication is unimportant in certain spheres of communication, e.g. artistic interpretation, and that in these cases the aim of interpretation is not to uncover the actual artist’s intentions. What kind of meaning is interpretation aimed at then? It cannot be the meaning the object has for the interpreter. “Interpretation purports to be a statement about the object interpreted, not about the subject who offers the interpretation…it is crucial to remember that not everything we say about a work of art, or any other text, amounts to an interpretation of it. Only those aspects of a text which can shed light on its meaning form part of the text’s interpretation. What the text means for someone rarely entails anything about what the text means.” [This is puzzling to some extent for it remains somewhat ambiguous what it means to talk of subject-independent meaning.] Interpretive meaning attribution is, rather, counterfactual. “In general, I will suggest that the answer to this question consists in the fact that meaning is assigned by a counterfactual statement. Given that x is the meaning attributed to, for instance a text T, and x is not the literal meaning of T, nor is it the meaning of T intended by its author, then the attribution of meaning x to T can only be understood as the contention that on the basis of certain assumptions a certain fictitious or stipulated speaker would have meant x by expressing T.” Thus, on this account, interpretation, when it does not concern an actual speaker, turns out to be a kind of counterfactual intention attribution. Twofold point: “First, that interpretation is essentially a matter of attributing intentions, that is, in the pragmatics sense of ‘meaning’, namely, meaning that such-and-such by an act or expression. At the same time, interpretations need not be based on the intentions of actual authors; the meaning of an act or expression is understandable in terms of counterfactual intentions.” [Are we really restricted to understanding the coherence and integrity of meaning in such a way? Presumably the author is a kind of device for organizing meaning, much like Dworkin’s integrity, but need it take that format?] The logic of interpretation is typically reducible to intention attribution. [What role does the counterfactual author play in structuring meaning?] The criteria of interpretive success will depend upon the object, whether it is the real author or the counterfactual author. If the former, success will depend upon the retrieval of the author’s actual intentions. “Likewise, if the author is characterized in terms of some ideal representative of a certain genre, for instance, the presumptions which are taken to determine this c aracterization would provide the criteria of success for the particular interpretation offered.” [The criteria of success would seem, then, to be the principles, ideals, etc. that we attribute to the counterfactual author. These attributed qualities would be doing all the work – is the attribution of intention to the hypothetical author, then, really necessary at all?] [Does this account presuppose a weird dichotomy between what an object is and what it means? This dichotomy is different, if present at all, in Dworkin.] Chapter 3: Dworkin’s Theory of Interpretation and the Nature of Jurisprudence Three main insights of Dworkin’s theory of interpretation: “First, that interpretation strives to present its object in its best possible light. Second, that interpretation is essentially genre-dependent. And third, that there are certain constraints that determine the limits of possible interpretations of a given object.” Why the best light? Dworkin doesn’t really address this question in depth but claims that otherwise we are left with no way of justifying and choosing an interpretation or we are left with the author’s intention model, which we should reject. [Marmor doesn’t seem clear on what precisely it means to present something in its best light – seems to conflate it with most appealing light which, I take it, is different than what Dworkin has in mind.] “Dworkin is quite right to maintain that without having some views about the values inherent in the genre to which the text is taken to belong, no interpretation can take off the ground. The values we associate with the genre partly, but crucially, determine what would make sense to say about the text, what are the kinds of meaning we could ascribe to it.” There is no necessity for an interpretation to present an object in its best light with regards to the genre it is taken to be part of. Interpretations “could simply strive to present it in a certain light, perhaps better than some, worse than others, but in a way which highlights an aspect of the meaning of the text which may be worth paying attention to for some reason or another.” [What kind of reasons would count in choosing to present it in one light rather than another?] There is simply zero grounds for Dworkin’s assertion that we have no reason to pay attention to an interpretation that does not present it in its best light. Take a psychoanalytic interpretation of Hamlet, for example – not the best light, but a legitimate one. [This seems related to the next criticism – clearly Dworkin would have to loosen his insistence on the best, though not to detriment.] Moreover, especially with regards to art, it doesn’t appear possible to make an all things considered judgment about the best interpretation given the incommensurability of different values that are taken to inhere in a given genre. [Dworkin can respond here that we may have different available interpretations that could be justified with respect to the relevant value. Moreover, a lack of common denominator does not prevent any comparison whatsoever.] Constructive interpretation concerns social practices constituted by norms – it imposes a purpose or value rendering intelligible the normative character of the practice. There is a separate aspect of constructive interpretation that maintains that elements of the practice are sensitive to the point of the practice. It is important to note that different social practices will institutionalize themselves in different ways – thus, different practices will establish varying conditions on how the practice can be altered. The position of the positivists is that evaluative judgments concerning what the law should be are insufficient for determining what the law is given the nature of law’s institutionalization.&nb p; [This would seem to reside on a certain conception of law, i.e. an interpretation about where the value of law lies.] “[T]his being one of the main points of dispute between Dworkin and his positivist opponents, Dworkin cannot at this initial state presume law to be sensitive to its value in the manner that other, non-institutional practices might be, without incurring the charge of having assumed the very point at issue.” The upshot for Dworkin is that any explanation of a social practice such as law requires the same kind of reasoning as participation in that practice. This will be called the hermeneutic thesis. We can try to reconstruct a justification for this view based on the necessity of shared background assumptions – but this will not do since Dworkin’s claim is stronger: it contends that participants’ and theorists’ must “adopt one and the same normative point of view.” [The sense of normative here is unclear. It is true, though, that shared background assumptions do not imply viewing the law as valuable in any particular way, or at least it does not imply this in any strong sense.] Dworkin makes two distinct points with the hermeneutic thesis: “First, that the explanation of a social practice, like law or the arts, is essentially interpretative, and as such, necessarily value laden. Second, that the interpretation of such social practices, which Dworkin calls ‘argumentative’, is unique in the sense that the practice itself is an evaluative enterprise, and that therefore the interpreter of such a practice must form an evaluative judgment of her own about those values which are inherent in the practice that she purports to interpret.” [As stated, the first thesis is terribly ambiguous – for Dworkin, it clear implies a commitment to constructive interpretation. For Marmor, who accepts it, it is totally unclear what commitment he intends to make. He seems to mean simply that we have criteria for success concerning what counts as a successful explanation.] Mamor denies the second thesis. “What Dworkin seems to ignore here is that there is a crucial difference between forming a view about the values which are manifest in a social practice, like law, and actually having evaluative judgments about them.” [The problem, however, it that it is a contentious matter what values are part of the law – a theorist’s account of what values are constitutive of a particular legal system must rely on the kind of arguments which participants rely on. Of course, a theorist might simply note a debate about values and attempt to remain agnostic, but this will fail to be a full theoretical account of what law is!] Dworkin’s thesis seems to depend exclusively on his account of constructive interpretation. [This seems exactly right.] Chapter 4: Coherence, Holism, and Interpretation: The Epistemic Foundation of Dworkin’s Legal Theory Begins with discussion of Rawls’ reflective equilibrium. Sums up dual criticism as follows: “[T]he assumption that intuitions are independently true and the converse one, that their truth depends on fitting a coherent scheme, both seem to yield paradoxical results.” Dworkin, in his article “The Original Position”, claims that Rawls cannot commit himself to ethical realism. “[T]he natural model presupposes some form of ethical realism, while the constructive model does not. One important difficulty arising from an attempt to apply the natural model to Rawls is, that under the natural model, any theory which dopes not account for an intuition, at least for one which is held firmly, cannot be wholly satisfactory, just as scientific theory which does not account for certain observational data it is supposed to cover, would not be satisfactory in a familiar way.” Rawls, rather, is committed to a constructivist view of morality. Moreover, the reason we value coherence epistemically in moral theory is that it itself is a value of political morality – fairness requires consistency and publicity in the application of moral standards. Marmor notes the following problem with such a view: “[I]f coherence is justified, as it is here, with reference to certain moral values, that is, a specific conception of fairness, then we face the following problem: the presupposed values of fairness must themselves be based upon intuitive convictions, in which case the question of their truth cannot be ignored. If they are taken to be true…we are driven back to the perplexities of the natural model.” Discusses, helpfully, the Fish/Dworkin debate. The upshot is that Dworkin’s interpretive model is best off if it commits itself to a Quineian holism. However, this undermines his distinction between internal and external skepticism since holism must deny that moral judgments constitute a closed system. [This analysis seems exactly right.] Endorses Simmonds view that Dworkin’s theory does not meet the requirements of complexity he identifies as necessary to avoid vicious circularity in interpretive judgments of fit and identity. Coherence is doing the work through and through and therefore the interpretive theory of law is circular. [Will require further investigation, though it is unclear how coherence is doing any work in the pre-interpretive stage. At this stage, the judgments, if interpretive, seem to be derived from different sources. In any case, using coherence as a value seems to be highly suspect.] Why doesn’t Dworkin just reject Fish’s assumptions: because of his jurisprudence. “If legal texts can have a meaning that is not entirely dependent on a process of interpretation, then it is at least sometimes the case that the law can simply be understood, and applied, without the mediation of interpretation. And if that is the case, then the argument from interpretation against legal positivism collapses. It is no longer the case that every conclusion about what the law is, depends on evaluative considerations about what it ought to be.” Chapter 5: Semantics, Realism, and Natural Law Assessment of Michael Moore’s legal realism and its implications. [The final criticisms of Moore are not decisive.] Chapter 6: Constructive Identification and Razian Authority A consideration of Dworkin’s denial that the communication model of interpretation is appropriate for legal interpretation. Marmor argues that intentions do play a crucial role in the identification of legal norms in a way that is incompatible with Dworkin’s “coherence thesis”. Marmor takes Dworkin to be committed to the constructive identification thesis: that the identification of something as part of the legal, artistic, etc. genre can be done sufficiently by evaluative considerations. “Here, one must maintain that evaluative considerations are sufficient to determine whether something is a legal norm or a work of art”. [Fit, however, constrains possible evaluative considerations – thus evaluative considerations are not sufficient in themselves.] “Now the crucial point here is this: if you maintain the possibility of constructive identification in art, you must assume that works of art can be identified as such on the basis of certain features they happen to possess, features which contain no reference to any particular intention to create a work of art…unless we take intentions into account, how can we discriminate between the concept of an aesthetic artifact and the con ept of a work of art?” [It is unclear, and I think false, that constructive interpretation of anything requires identifying something irrespective of an artificers intentions. Those intentions may be relevant, dependent upon the genre under which we are trying to classify the object. Nothing, seemingly, about constructive interpretation in general excludes this possibility.] Marmor’s point is that it turns out to be impossible to identify art as art without reference to an artist’s intentions – especially given the state of contemporary art. [It is notable that Marmor’s response to counterexample implicitly depends upon a fully developed theory of aesthetics. His cursory comments on the matter of identifying art seem insufficient to say the least.] The rest of the chapter considers the incompatibility of Raz’s account of authority with constructive interpretation. The incompatibilities mentioned do not move beyond what Raz identifies in his article “Authority, Law and Morality”, but a defense of this notion of authority is defended in several [inconclusive] respects. [Raz and Marmor want to separate identification from content. This is not clearly a defensible separation.] Chapter 7: No Easy Cases? Chapter defends notion that there is a distinction between easy and hard cases in the positivist sense. Takes a Hartian approach and ultimately defends the distinction by associating it Wittgenstein’s conception of rule following. The point is that one need to look the purpose of rule in order to understand what the rule requires. Chapter 8: Legislative Intent and the Authority of Law Examines the following doctrine concerning the role of legislative intent in adjudication: “[F]irst, it would hold that laws, at least in certain cases, are enacted with relatively specific intentions, and that this is a matter of fact which is discernible through an ordinary fact-finding procedure. Second, that in certain cases the presence of such a fact, namely, that the law was enacted with a certain intention, provides judges with a reason to decide the legal dispute in accordance with the relevant legislative intent.” [It is important that for Marmor, interpretive strategies are only appropriate in hard cases. However, we should wonder what grounds positivism can offer for deciding a hard case in any manner which is not the morally best manner according to the judgment of the judge. There are no legal grounds, by definition, in hard cases and so what justificatory strategy would endorse any judicial decision except for the morally best one?] We can ascribe intentions to a legislative body, when this is possible at all, by taking the shared intentions of the majority, rather than some group intention, to be the significant intentions. Moreover, we should expect a good deal of consensus about intentions for otherwise it is hard to explain how legislative bodies are able to produce so much legislation. Discussion of kinds of intentions concludes as follows: “I have distinguished between three main types of intention that are potentially relevant from the legal point of view. Apart from the intentions that are manifest in the language of the law itself, legislators typically have further intentions in enacting a given law, and sometimes they would have certain intentions bearing on its proper application. I have also suggested that some of these further intentions may be essentially non-avowable, in which case they are rendered initially irrelevant. Finally, I have pointed out that considerations of consistency require that the legislator’s application intentions be taken into account only if, and to the extent that, they are in accord with his further intentions.” The manner in which intentionalism is to be justif ed relies on the distinction, Marmor maintains, between expert and mere collective action authority. “The point I wanted to make is strictly conditional: if, and only if, a certain law is justified on the basis of the expertise branch of the normal justification thesis, would it make sense to defer to the legislature’s intentions in the interpretation of the law, that is, to the extent that there is, in fact,; such an intention and it can clarify something that needs clarification.” Insofar as a legislature can be considered an expert on the matter requiring adjudication and interpretation should the body’s intention be taken into account. Chapter 9: Constitutional Interpretation Begins by laying out general necessary features of a constitution. Then Marmor moves on to consider general questions of constitutional legitimacy. First, he considers what grounds might be offered for the legitimacy of a constitution at all. He notes that the central question is what permits a single generation to bind future generations. He then examines four arguments to avoid this problem. The first is based on the moral legitimacy of the constitution; Marmor rejects this solution for the [truly dubious] reason that the constitution would make no practical difference because it would not supply reasons in addition to those provided by morality [but, presumably, the point is that these legally valid rules would be institutionally enshrined]. The second is based on the moral authority of the framers and Marmor rightly rejects this on the basis of the idealization of the framers it requires and less rightly on the basis that there cannot be moral authorities. Third is the “argument from interpretation” which claims that “as long as the particular content of the constitution is determined by its interpretation, and the authoritative interpretation at any time correctly instantiates the values which ought to be upheld in the community, the constitution would be morally legitimate”. The fourth is Raz’s which argues that a constitution is valid so long as its constraints are morally permissible because conventions of this type might aid the continuity of the legal system, i.e. it is important to have a convention of this type and the constitution is a kind of this type. Marmor appears to endorse these two approaches and concludes: “The conditions for the legitimacy of a constitution must comprise the following conditions. First, the values and principles enshrined in it must be morally permissible…Second, when certain choices are made in particular cases, they would be legitimate if they are either morally underdetermined, or else, morally correct…It follows from this that both arguments must assume that at least in those areas in which the constitution would make a moral difference, it can be interpreted to make the difference that it should, that is, according to the true moral principles that should apply to the particular case...the moral legitimacy of constitutions very much dependent on the practices of their interpretation. In other words, a great deal of the burden of moral legitimacy is shifted by these arguments to the application of the constitution, thus assuming that the constitution is legitimate only if the courts are likely to apply the constitution in a morally desirable way.” [This implies that the only significant value constitutions have is in providing a conventional practice where some such practice is required.] Moves on to argue that courts typically rely, and rightly so, on moral considerations when deciding constitutional issues because typically, in cases of the kind that reach the supreme or constitutional court, there is no law on the case. Much of this relies on his earlier discussion about the nature of interpretation in the law – that legal interpretation is always a matter of cha ging the law. (shrink)

Research seeking a scientific foundation for the theory of art appreciation has raised controversies at the intersection of the social and cognitive sciences. Though equally relevant to a scientific inquiry into art appreciation, psychological and historical approaches to art developed independently and lack a common core of theoretical principles. Historicists argue that psychological and brain sciences ignore the fact that artworks are artifacts produced and appreciated in the context of unique historical situations and artistic intentions. After revealing flaws in (...) the psychological approach, we introduce a psycho-historical framework for the science of art appreciation. This framework demonstrates that a science of art appreciation must investigate how appreciators process causal and historical information to classify and explain their psychological responses to art. Expanding on research about the cognition of artifacts, we identify three modes of appreciation: basic exposure to an artwork, the artistic design stance, and artistic understanding. The artistic design stance, a requisite for artistic understanding, is an attitude whereby appreciators develop their sensitivity to art-historical contexts by means of inquiries into the making, authorship, and functions of artworks. We defend and illustrate the psycho-historical framework with an analysis of existing studies on art appreciation in empirical aesthetics. Finally, we argue that the fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure can be amended to meet the requirements of the framework. We conclude that scientists can tackle fundamental questions about the nature and appreciation of art within the psycho-historical framework. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.1 (2003) 22-36 [Access article in PDF] Art or Nature?Aristotle, Restoration Ecology, and Flowforms Trish Glazebrook He to whom nature begins to reveal her open secrets will feel an irresistible yearning for her most worthy interpreter: Art. 1Aristotle believed strongly in a distinction between artifact (technê) and nature (physis). He intended by "technê" more than is generally understood by the contemporary term "art," for (...) he meant anything produced by human intention. For example, for Aristotle medicine was technê in that the doctor produces health. The key point in distinguishing art from nature for him was that things in nature grow and develop on the basis of an internal principle of change, whereas artistic production requires an outside agent. There are some complications with the Aristotelian account: are the spider's web and the bird's nest art or nature? Aristotle can respond to this problem easily enough by arguing that spiders and birds create on the basis of instinct, while reason is requisite for artistic production. Yet some art may not meet this definition: artists may not always have a full conception of the work to be produced prior to its execution. Creativity can be emergent rather than intentional during the productive process, and may arise, for example, from the artist's interaction with the chosen material. [End Page 22]Despite these objections to the Aristotelian distinction, however, his analysis of the differences between art and nature can be usefully applied to recent debates in restoration ecology in order to argue that the human capacity to restore nature does not justify its destruction. Nature cannot be "faked," that is, recreated through art. Furthermore, the Aristotelian analysis has been influential historically by providing a conceptual basis for the technological domination of nature, as if nature were nothing more than matter upon which form can be imposed. Yet there are alternative possibilities in Aristotle's account that ecologically-minded art can bring to fruition. I will use Aristotle's analysis to suggest a potential resolution of the "faking nature" debate, and accordingly to show how contemporary, ecologically-minded art can promote an ideology of production that works with rather than against nature.Robert Elliot argues that restoration ecology does not justify environmental destruction, because faked nature (that is, nature re-created by human artifice) is not as valuable as the original. 2 I will call this claim, which is based on the idea that restoration is analogous to artistic production, "the Elliot view." I will first assess the Elliot view, and give reasons why I sympathize with his conclusions, yet find his arguments unconvincing. Second, I will present Aristotle's distinction between nature and art, with emphasis on his arguments that nature is goal-directed, in order to give content to the claim that nature has intrinsic value. Third, I will look at restoration policies and practices in the oil industry in Alberta, Canada, to establish a praxical notion of restoration, and to support Elliot's claim that nature cannot be faked. I have chosen oilfield restoration as a working example for the sake of the general methodological principle that praxes without reflections are blind, while reflections that transcend the lifeworld are empty; and specifically because Alberta leads the industry in restoration standards and practices. Finally, I will use Flowforms to argue that ecologically-minded art can demonstrate how production of artifacts need not affirm a logic of domination, but rather can open a space for an alternative conception of the human relation to nature. The Elliot View Elliot's view depends on distinguishing nature from art, and attributing a greater value to the natural. On what basis should we accept this value-hierarchy? The reasons Elliot gives are less than convincing. Ultimately his arguments rest on two points: that copies are not as good as [End Page 23] originals; and that even if an ecosystem's value could be fully restored, the value lost in the time between despoilation and restoration is irrecoverable. He simply finds "naturalness" to be more valuable than artifice. But he is not alone in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.1 (2003) 22-36 [Access article in PDF] Art or Nature?Aristotle, Restoration Ecology, and Flowforms Trish Glazebrook He to whom nature begins to reveal her open secrets will feel an irresistible yearning for her most worthy interpreter: Art. 1Aristotle believed strongly in a distinction between artifact (technê) and nature (physis). He intended by "technê" more than is generally understood by the contemporary term "art," for (...) he meant anything produced by human intention. For example, for Aristotle medicine was technê in that the doctor produces health. The key point in distinguishing art from nature for him was that things in nature grow and develop on the basis of an internal principle of change, whereas artistic production requires an outside agent. There are some complications with the Aristotelian account: are the spider's web and the bird's nest art or nature? Aristotle can respond to this problem easily enough by arguing that spiders and birds create on the basis of instinct, while reason is requisite for artistic production. Yet some art may not meet this definition: artists may not always have a full conception of the work to be produced prior to its execution. Creativity can be emergent rather than intentional during the productive process, and may arise, for example, from the artist's interaction with the chosen material. [End Page 22]Despite these objections to the Aristotelian distinction, however, his analysis of the differences between art and nature can be usefully applied to recent debates in restoration ecology in order to argue that the human capacity to restore nature does not justify its destruction. Nature cannot be "faked," that is, recreated through art. Furthermore, the Aristotelian analysis has been influential historically by providing a conceptual basis for the technological domination of nature, as if nature were nothing more than matter upon which form can be imposed. Yet there are alternative possibilities in Aristotle's account that ecologically-minded art can bring to fruition. I will use Aristotle's analysis to suggest a potential resolution of the "faking nature" debate, and accordingly to show how contemporary, ecologically-minded art can promote an ideology of production that works with rather than against nature.Robert Elliot argues that restoration ecology does not justify environmental destruction, because faked nature (that is, nature re-created by human artifice) is not as valuable as the original. 2 I will call this claim, which is based on the idea that restoration is analogous to artistic production, "the Elliot view." I will first assess the Elliot view, and give reasons why I sympathize with his conclusions, yet find his arguments unconvincing. Second, I will present Aristotle's distinction between nature and art, with emphasis on his arguments that nature is goal-directed, in order to give content to the claim that nature has intrinsic value. Third, I will look at restoration policies and practices in the oil industry in Alberta, Canada, to establish a praxical notion of restoration, and to support Elliot's claim that nature cannot be faked. I have chosen oilfield restoration as a working example for the sake of the general methodological principle that praxes without reflections are blind, while reflections that transcend the lifeworld are empty; and specifically because Alberta leads the industry in restoration standards and practices. Finally, I will use Flowforms to argue that ecologically-minded art can demonstrate how production of artifacts need not affirm a logic of domination, but rather can open a space for an alternative conception of the human relation to nature. The Elliot View Elliot's view depends on distinguishing nature from art, and attributing a greater value to the natural. On what basis should we accept this value-hierarchy? The reasons Elliot gives are less than convincing. Ultimately his arguments rest on two points: that copies are not as good as [End Page 23] originals; and that even if an ecosystem's value could be fully restored, the value lost in the time between despoilation and restoration is irrecoverable. He simply finds "naturalness" to be more valuable than artifice. But he is not alone in... (shrink)

The view that social kinds (e.g., money, migrant, marriage) are mind-dependent is a prominent one in the social ontology literature. However, in addition to the claim that social kinds are mind-dependent, it is often asserted that social kinds are not real because they are mind-dependent. Call this view social kind anti-realism. To defend their view, social kind anti-realists must accomplish two tasks. First, they must identify a dependence relation that obtains between (...) social kinds and our mental states. Call this the Dependence Task. Second, they must show that social kinds are not real because they are mind-dependent. Call this the Anti-Realist Task. In this paper, I consider several different ways of defining the relation that is supposed to obtain between social kinds and our mental states. With respect to each relation, I argue that either it fails to accomplish the Dependence Task, or it fails to accomplish the Anti-Realist Task. As such, anyone who wishes to defend social kind anti-realism must provide an alternative explanation of how social kinds depend on our mental states in a way that impugns their reality. In the absence of such an explanation, there is no reason to endorse social kind anti-realism. (shrink)

Currently, there is not yet a full-fledged philosophical sub-discipline devoted to artifacts. In order to establish such a general philosophical discourse on artifacts, two topics are of special importance: artifact functionality and artifact categorization. Both are central to the question of what artifacts are in general and in particular. This introduction first presents the current state of the art in the debates on functions, both in general and in the domain of artifacts in particular. It then unfolds the (...) three debates relevant for artifact kinds, namely the ontological, epistemological and semantic debates on artifact categorization, and presents the most important theory options currently under scrutiny in these fields. It proceeds by introducing the contributions in this special issue on the functions and kinds of art works and other artifacts, and discusses possible perspectives for a general philosophy of artifacts. (shrink)

The term “emotional practices” is gaining currency in the historical study of emotions. This essay discusses the theoretical and methodological implications of this concept. A definition of emotion informed by practice theory promises to bridge persistent dichotomies with which historians of emotion grapple, such as body and mind, structure and agency, as well as expression and experience. Practice theory emphasizes the importance of habituation and social context and is thus consistent with, and could enrich, psychological models of situated, (...) distributed, and embodied cognition and their approaches to the study of emotion.It is suggested here that practices not only generate emotions, but that emotions themselves can be viewed as a practical engagement with the world. Conceiving of emotions as practices means understanding them as emerging from bodily dispositions conditioned by a social context, which always has cultural and historical specificity. Emotion-as-practice is bound up with and dependent on “emotional practices,” defined here as practices involving the self , language, material artifacts, the environment, and other people. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus, the essay emphasizes that the body is not a static, timeless, universal foundation that produces ahistorical emotional arousal, but is itself socially situated, adaptive, trained, plastic, and thus historical. Four kinds of emotional practices that make use of the capacities of a body trained by specific social settings and power relations are sketched out—mobilizing, naming, communicating, and regulating emotion—as are consequences for method in historical research. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel theory of artifact functions, drawing from persistence-based accounts of social functions, according to which the function of an artifact consists in those of its effects that contribute to the persistence of its kind. First, the paper argues that artifact functions have an underacknowledged “interventionist task”: functional ascriptions have implications for the ways that users have reason to use technologies, and how they have reason to intervene when technologies have undesired effects. Then, (...) it argues that the ways that users have reason to use technologies and intervene are informed by the present persistence conditions of artifact kinds. It is therefore useful to incorporate these persistence conditions into the artifacts’ functions. By focusing on the social and political embedding of artifacts, the theory also allows for fruitful connections between the theory of artifacts, the political philosophy of technology, and the literature on functions in the philosophy of social science. (shrink)

Could some social kinds be natural kinds? In this paper, I argue that there are three kinds of social kinds: 1) social kinds whose existence does not depend on human beings having any beliefs or other propositional attitudes towards them ; 2) social kinds whose existence depends in part on specific attitudes that human beings have towards them, though attitudes need not be manifested towards their particular instances ; 3) social kinds whose existence and that (...) of their instances depend in part on specific attitudes that human beings have towards them . Although all three kinds of social kinds are mind-dependent, this does not make them ontologically subjective or preclude them from being natural kinds. Rather, what prevents the third kind of social kinds from being natural kinds is that their properties are conventionally rather than causally linked. (shrink)

Realism about musical works is often tied to some type of Platonism. Nominalism, which posits that musical works exist and that they are concrete objects, goes with ontological realism much less often than Platonism: there is a long tradition which holds human-created objects (artifacts) to be mind-dependent. Musical Platonism leads to the well-known paradox of the impossibility of creating abstract objects, and so it has been suggested that only some form of nominalism becoming dominant in the ontology of art (...) could cause a great change in the field and open up new possibilities. This paper aims to develop a new metaontological view starting from the widely accepted claim that musical works are created. It contends that musical works must be concrete and created objects of some sort, but, nevertheless, they are mind-independent, and we should take the revisionary methodological stance. Although musical works are artifacts, what people think about them does not determine what musical works are. Musical works are similar to natural objects in the following sense: semantic externalism applies to the term ‘musical work’ because, firstly, they possess a shared nature, and, secondly, we can be mistaken about what they are. (shrink)

Philosophical questions about the arts go naturally with other kinds of questions about them. Art is sometimes said to be an historical concept. But where in our cultural and biological history did art begin? If art is related to play and imagination, do we find any signs of these things in our nonhuman relatives? Sometimes the other questions look like ones the philosopher of art has to answer. Anyone who thinks that interpretation in the arts is an activity that leaves (...) the intentions of the author behind needs to explain how and why this differs so fundamentally from ordinary conversational interpretation, where the only decent models we have are ones that depend crucially on the recovery of intention. Anyone who thinks that imaginative literature has anything to tell us about time had better have a position on how earlier and later relate to past and future. Anyone who thinks that empathy plays a role in literary engagement had better have a psychologically plausible account of what empathy is. Philosophical questions about the arts also go naturally with other kinds of philosophical questions: we can't think constructively about representation in art without thinking about representation; text, meaning, reference and existence get similarly drawn into the conversation. Some ideas that philosophers of art deal with emerge from other disciplines. In literary theory an enormous amount of attention has been lavished on tracing the sources of unreliability in narrative. Is the result adequate to the details of the particular works we call unreliable? Contemporary film theory is generally hostile to the fiction/documentary distinction. Are there in fact any grounds for this? This book of thirteen connected essays examines questions of all these kinds. It ranges from the semantics of proper names, through the pragmatics of literary and filmic interpretation, to the aesthetic function of stone age implements. Some of the essays have not been published before; some that have are here substantially revised. (shrink)

This is the first philosophical study of artifacts that is book length. In it Randall Dipert develops a theory of what artifacts are and applies it extensively to one of the most complex and intriguing kind of artifacts, art works. He presents his own account of what agents, intentions, and actions are, then uses these notions to clarify what it is for an agent to "make" something. From this starting point, he develops a full theory of artifacts and other artificial (...) things - and, especially, a theory of art works and performances of art works as artifacts. He proposes a theory of nature and of the value of nature as what is essentially nonartificial. Two chapters are devoted to value considerations: merit in artifacts generally, and the evaluation of art works and performance art as artifacts or intentional gestures. Believing that a developed theory of action and philosophy of mind is necessary for a developed aesthetics and philosophy of art, Dipert relies on classical and contemporary research on agency, actions, and intentions, and on the intentionalist theory of mental objects of Brentano and Meinong. Dipert considers artifacts to be physical entities, but he also includes in the definition thoughts, utterances, and performances. This vast category encompasses everyday household objects and tools, streets and edifices, as well as communicative and artistic artifacts. Especially with regard to artistic artifacts, Dipert proposes a theory of expression and communication as actions and extensively discusses the problems of interpreting and recognizing actions, artifacts, and art works. (shrink)

A standard requirement on natural kinds is that they be mind independent. However, many kinds in the human and social sciences, even the natural sciences, depend on human thought. This article suggests that the mind independence requirement on natural kinds be replaced with the requirement that natural kind classifications be defeasible. The defeasibility requirement does not require that natural kinds be mind independent, so it does not exclude mind dependent scientific kinds from being natural kinds. (...) Furthermore, the defeasibility requirement captures the idea that natural kind classifications are tools for investigating the empirical world. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the nature of artifacts by looking at them as essentially connected with art in the broad sense of τέχvη or ars. After discussing the natural and the artificial in the light of Aristotle’s definition of nature in Physics II.1, I discuss artifacts using Aristotle’s definition of art in Nicomachean Ethics VI.4. This approach to artifacts is able to include not only paintings, poems, and plays but also found works of art, for there are some arts, (...) such as navigation, whose making consists in finding rather than physical alteration. In addition to accommodating all the different sorts of artifacts that are produced by human making, approaching artifacts in this way implies that being an artifact does not distinguish any one kind of being. Rather, all artifacts essentially result from and thus relate to human making understood as action directed at something apart from the maker. (shrink)

We have a rough idea of what artifacts are: artifacts are objects made to serve a certain purpose. However, there is no consensus on how to specify this definition. Essentialists argue that objects are grouped into artifact kinds by sharing non-trivial artifact essences, while anti-essentialists argue that there is no such essence to be found. However, the prominent essentialist and anti-essentialist accounts suffer from extensional and definitional problems. I argue that the problems current essentialist and anti-essentialist accounts face (...) mainly stem from the assumption of artifact concept monism. According to artifact concept monism, there is only a single way to group objects into artifact kinds. To remedy the problems that stem from artifact concept monism, this paper offers an alternative framework by drawing parallels from the debates on species concept pluralism and art concept pluralism. (shrink)

Researchers in the biological and biomedical sciences, particularly those working in laboratories, use a variety of artifacts to help them perform their cognitive tasks. This paper analyses the relationship between researchers and cognitive artifacts in terms of integration. It first distinguishes different categories of cognitive artifacts used in biological practice on the basis of their informational properties. This results in a novel classification of scientific instruments, conducive to an analysis of the cognitive interactions between researchers and artifacts. It then uses (...) a multidimensional framework in line with complementarity-based extended and distributed cognition theory to conceptualize how deeply instruments in different informational categories are integrated into the cognitive systems of their users. The paper concludes that the degree of integration depends on various factors, including the amount of informational malleability, the intensity and kind of information flow between agent and artifact, the trustworthiness of the information, the procedural and informational transparency, and the degree of individualisation. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the nature of artifacts by looking at them as essentially connected with art in the broad sense of τέχvη or ars. After discussing the natural and the artificial in the light of Aristotle’s definition of nature in Physics II.1, I discuss artifacts using Aristotle’s definition of art in Nicomachean Ethics VI.4. This approach to artifacts is able to include not only paintings, poems, and plays but also found works of art, for there are some arts, (...) such as navigation, whose making consists in finding rather than physical alteration. In addition to accommodating all the different sorts of artifacts that are produced by human making, approaching artifacts in this way implies that being an artifact does not distinguish any one kind of being. Rather, all artifacts essentially result from and thus relate to human making understood as action directed at something apart from the maker. (shrink)

Works of art are usually meant to elicit psychological effects from their audiences whereas paradigmatic technical artifacts such as hammers or cars are rather meant to produce physical effects when used. This suggests that works of art and technical artifacts are sharply different entities. However, recent developments in the cognitive sciences and the philosophy of technology have individuated special artifacts, namely cognitive and affective artifacts, which also generate psychological effects. In particular, affective artifacts, which have the capacity to alter the (...) affective condition of agents, seem to share crucial features with works of art. Can we subsume works of art under that kind? I will argue that we cannot. Still, comparing art with affective artifacts will help us to clarify the relationship between art and technology, and to introduce a new category, namely the experiential artifact, which can properly encompass works of art. (shrink)

Attempting art: an essay on intention-dependenceIt is a truism among philosophers that art is intention-dependent—that is to say, art-making is an activity that depends in some way on the maker's intentions. Not much thought has been given to just what this entails, however. For instance, most philosophers of art assume that intention-dependence entails concept-dependence—i.e. possessing a concept of art is necessary for art-making, so that what prospective artists must intend is to make art. And yet, a mounting body of anthropological (...) and art-historical evidence and philosophical argument suggests that not only is such a criterion unsatisfied by most of the art-historical canon, but it also rests on a false premise: concepts of 'art' are not shared between cultures, nor even in the same culture across time. My dissertation aims to rectify this error by first exploring what our commitment to art's intention-dependence actually entails, and then showing that, properly understood, intention-dependence sets a number of important constraints on theories of art with respect to explanatory desiderata such as the success- and failure-conditions of art-attempts, the cross-cultural identification of art, and the reference of 'art' and art-kind terms. I begin by situating art's intention-dependence in the philosophical literature on intentional action, arguing that, properly conceived, intention-dependence is a weak criterion which can be satisfied either directly or indirectly. It therefore does not necessarily entail concept-dependence. I then use this distinction to motivate a new treatment of the success- and failure-conditions for art-attempts, arguing that the extant model's emphasis on compliance with 'the manner intended' is far too restrictive to capture actual artistic practices. I go on to show that Ruth Millikan's model of linguistic conventions supplies an independently plausible explanation of art's concept-independent origins in terms of the development of a system of indirectly intention-dependent conventions called an 'artworld'. I argue that this account of artworld development supplies us with the tools we need to distinguish art-kinds from other artifactual kinds. Finally, I turn my attention to methodological issues, arguing that even though 'art' is a social kind with its roots in arbitrary and historically-contingent networks of conventions, the philosophy of art is not merely an exercise in bare conceptual analysis. In fact, there is now a great deal of evidence to show that the ways we think about 'art' are inconsistent, incomplete, imperialistic, and largely unprincipled. Yet I argue that this does not mean that the artworld data have no bearing on theories of art. Instead, I argue that our best reflective understanding of our artworld practices sets the constraints on the reference of 'art' and art-kind terms. I argue that we have no privileged epistemic access to the ontology of social kinds; our only privilege lies in our ability to determine the proper subject of our inquiries. (shrink)

It is a truism that humans are social animals. Thus, it is no surprise that we understand the world, each other, and ourselves in terms of social kinds such as money and marriage, war and women, capitalists and cartels, races, recessions, and refugees. Social kinds condition our expectations, inform our preferences, and guide our behavior. Despite the prevalence and importance of social kinds, philosophy has historically devoted relatively little attention to them. With few exceptions, philosophers have (...) given pride of place to the kinds studied by the natural sciences, especially physics. However, philosophical interest in social kinds is growing in recent years. I critically examine answers to a cluster of related questions concerning the metaphysics of social kinds. Are social kinds natural kinds? Do social kinds have essences? Are social kinds mind dependent? Are social kinds real? (shrink)

Julian Dodd has characterized the default position in metaphysics as meta-ontologically realist: the answers to first-order ontological questions are thought to be entirely independent of the things we say and think about the entities at issue. Consequently, folk ontologies are liable to substantial error. But while this epistemic humility is commendable where the ontology of natural kinds is concerned, it seems misplaced with respect to social kinds since their ontology is dependent upon the human social world. Using art (...) and art-kinds as paradigmatic examples of social kinds, I argue that meta-ontological realism sets conditions that are too strict to apply to social kinds. Nevertheless, I argue that we should not be too quick to embrace the conclusion that our folk theories of social kinds cannot err substantially. By modelling the reference of social kind-terms on that of natural kind-terms, it becomes clear that in both cases, our sole epistemic privilege lies in our ability to pinpoint the subject of our inquiries. (shrink)

A central theme in social epistemology is that there are important and underappreciated phenomena involving social epistemic dependence—that is, epistemic dependence on other persons and on features of the broader social environment. Epistemologies that are inconsistent with this kind of dependence are labeled “individualist” and epistemologies that accommodate it are labeled “anti-individualist.” But how should the relevant notion of social epistemic dependence be understood? One important criterion for an adequate account is that it plausibly sorts epistemologies (...) into the “individualist” and “anti-individualist” categories. For example, standard reductionism about testimonial justification and knowledge should count as individualist, and many trust theories should count as anti-individualist. This paper argues that several accounts of social epistemic dependence in the literature fail to pass this simple sorting test. An alternative account that does is proposed. (shrink)

There is broad agreement among social researchers and social ontologists that the project of dividing humans into social kinds should be guided by at least two methodological commitments. First, a commitment to what best serves moral and political interests, and second, a commitment to describing accurately the causal structures of social reality. However, researchers have not sufficiently analyzed how these two commitments interact and constrain one another. In the absence of that analysis, several confusions have set (...) in, threatening to undermine shared goals for the responsible modeling of social kinds of humans. This essay first explains the source and substance of these confusions. Then, by distinguishing different value-laden investigative questions into the classification of social kinds of humans, it sets out specific relations of dependence and constraint between empirically-driven investigations and value-driven investigations into social kinds of humans. The result is a more detailed and fruitful framework for thinking about the classification of social kinds that respects both normative interests and mind-independent causal regularities. (shrink)

There is increasing interest in artifacts among philosophers. The leading edge is the metaphysics of artifacts and artifact kinds. However, an important question has been neglected. What is the ontological status of the category ‘artifact’ itself? Dan Sperber (2007) argues against its theoretical integrity for the purposes of naturalistic social sciences. In Section 2, I lay out Sperber’s argument, which is based on the observed continuum between natural objects and artifacts. I also review the implicit support for (...) this continuum argument in the philosophical literature on artifacts. In Section 3, I diagnose the fatal weakness affecting continuum-based arguments about categories. They fail to take into account recent thinking about classification in philosophy of science, which has been forced to accommodate continua in biology. In Section 4, I focus specifically on the species problem in philosophy of biology, and on pluralism about species concepts as a response to it. I then identify an analogous artifact problem, and argue that pluralism about artifact concepts is an appropriate and defensible response here as well. Finally, in Section 5, I show that just as species pluralism leads to skepticism about the species category, so artifact pluralism leads to skepticism about the artifact category. I thus arrive at Sperber’s conclusion by an alternate route that does not run afoul of the weakness affecting continuum-based arguments about categories. (shrink)

How do-or how should-we parse the world into kinds of things? Going back at least to Plato, most philosophers have done so with respect to some notion or other of natural kinds. And many analyses of natural kinds have been essentialistic-that is defining those kinds with respect to universals, or some set of intrinsic properties, or necessary and sufficient conditions. And there's a long-standing dispute between thinkers who regard scientific categories as natural kinds with essential properties fixed by nature-those that (...) "cut nature at its joints"-and thinkers who maintain that our classifications and categories have no essence and instead merely reflect human interests and values. A typical example of the former would be "having a mass of 1.7 × 10-27," and examples of the latter would be the categories of "ADHD," "race," or "child abuse." Khalidi aims for an epistemic, naturalistic, non-essentialist, account of natural kinds, one which comfortably embraces not only the usual candidates favored by essentialists (e.g., elementary particles, chemical elements, biological species), but also categories in the social and behavioral sciences. Drawing on cases from many scientific fields, from fluid mechanics and polymer science to virology and psychiatry, Khalidi argues that "natural kinds are investigative or epistemic kinds, in the sense that they are the categories revealed by our systematic attempts to gain knowledge of nature" (p. 43). Moreover, he claims that natural kinds can be "fuzzy" (i.e. have indefinite boundaries), satisfy epistemic virtues to varying degrees, and be mind-dependent in a way that doesn't detract from their reality or objectivity. Although the book is pitched for a sophisticated and philosophically informed audience (and, needless to say, too complex to be adequately summarized in a brief notice such as this), it's clearly written, nuanced, compellingly argued, and worth the effort for JSE readers curious about the unavoidable metaphysical dimensions of doing science of any kind. (shrink)

The general question (G) How do we categorize artifacts? can be subject to three different readings: an ontological, an epistemic and a semantic one. According to the ontological reading, asking (G) is equivalent to asking in virtue of what properties, if any, a certain artifact is an instance of some artifact kind: (O) What is it for an artifact a to belong to kind K? According to the epistemic reading, when we ask (G) we are investigating what (...) properties of the object we exploit in order to decide whether a certain artifact belongs to a certain kind. (G) thus becomes: (E) How can we know that artifact a belongs to kind K? Finally, (G) can also be read as a question concerning the semantics of artifact kind terms. The semantic reading of (G) is: (S) What kind of reference do artifact kind terms have, if any? In this editorial we expand on the different answers to (O), (E) and (S) that are given in the selected literature on the topic. The result should give us an overall picture of the possible answers to (G). (shrink)

This study addresses the issue of artifact kinds from a psychological and cognitive perspective. The primary interest of the investigation lies in understanding how artifacts are categorized and what are the properties people rely on for their identification. According to a classical philosophical definition artifacts form an autonomous class of instances including all and only those objects that do not exist in nature, but are artificial, in the sense that they are made by an artĭfex. This definition suggests that (...) artifacts are classified primarily on the basis of the recognition of their artificial nature. Nevertheless, many psychological and cognitive studies maintain that artifacts are categorized mainly on the basis of the recognition of the function they have been made to accomplish. Since tools are also categorized primarily on the basis of their function, this would imply that artifacts and tools are represented in the same way. In the study participants categorized a set of objects (denoted by words) once as tools and once as artifacts. Results show that reaction times (RTs) are faster in the artifact categorization condition than in the tool categorization condition. This pattern indicates that artifacts and tools are not represented in the same way and that the identification of the members of each class is carried out in the basis of different criteria. (shrink)

Artworks have authors. According to Christy Mag Uidhir, this simple assumption has significant consequences for the ontology of artworks. One such consequence is that artworks cannot be identified with abstract entities: if there are works of art, they are concrete entities. Therefore, one cannot create an abstract work of art. Mag Uidhir presents a novel challenge against abstract creationism, the view that certain kinds of art objects are abstract artifacts. This article has two aims. First, it provides a defense of (...) abstract creationism against Mag Uidhir’s arguments. Second, it argues that creation, even in the case of concrete artifacts, is never purely causal: to create an artifact is to bring about the conditions on which the created object ontologically depends. I conclude that a properly developed account of creation provides a better understanding of the question of how one comes to create an artifact, be it abstract or concrete. (shrink)

The paper discusses artworks and artefacts considered as both cultural heritage and meaningful tokens for personal self-identity. The arguments come mostly from phenomenological understanding of self-identity and art, but the terminological toolkit comes mostly from the Extended Mind Thesis. While many museologists and theorists of culture argue that objects presented in a particular social context can shape group identity, I believe in taking this question to a lower, personal level. In this paper, I argue that we build our (...) self-identity partially by anchoring our memories with significant art and heritage objects. I state that artworks, mediated by cultural context immersion of museums and galleries, serve as self-identity extensions. Since I find both selfidentity and art structured as sets of cultural meanings wrapped in material scaffoldings, I draw a relation between those two, showing the crucial meaning of material cultural objects for the formation of our self-identity. (shrink)

Artifacts are ubiquitous and influential in our world, but their nature and existence are controversial. Several theories have been proposed to explain the ontology of artifacts. Drawing on Popper's theory of three worlds, this paper suggests a metaphysics for artifacts along the line of a critical rationalist (CR) approach. This theory distinguishes between three realms of reality: the physical world (World 1), the mental world (World 2), and the world of objective knowledge (World 3). The paper argues that artifacts have (...) different ontological components that correspond to these three realms, and that each component is real and causal. The paper shows how this perspective can account for the intentional and functional aspects of artifacts, as well as their dependence on plans that influence different realms of reality. The paper explains how this pluralistic ontology, compared to the rival theories, enables one to explain the relevant ontological problems of artifacts. The paper also explores how this proposal can lead to a research program encompassing a broader range of technologies, such as social artifacts. In sum, the paper suggests that Popper's three worlds theory provides a rich and comprehensive framework for understanding the metaphysics of artifacts. (shrink)

This article looks at some of the metaphysical properties of cognitive artefacts. It first identifies and demarcates the target domain by conceptualizing this class of artefacts as a functional kind. Building on the work of Beth Preston, a pluralist notion of functional kind is developed, one that includes artefacts with proper functions and system functions. Those with proper functions have a history of cultural selection, whereas those with system functions are improvised uses of initially non-cognitive artefacts. Having identified the target (...) domain, it then briefly looks at the multiple usability of physical structures and the multiple realizability of cognitive function. Further developing insights from the “dual nature of artefacts thesis”, the article ends with conceptualizing the structure–function relations of cognitive artefacts. More specifically, it unpacks the relation between physical structure, representational structure, information, and cognitive function. (shrink)