There has been a lot of discussion recently regarding abstract artifacts and how such entities (e.g., fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, and mythological planets like Vulcan), if they indeed exist, could possibly be our creations. One interesting aspect of some of these debates concerns the extent to which creative intentions play a role in the creation of artifacts generally, both abstract and concrete. I here address the creation of concrete artifacts in particular. I ultimately defend (...) a Brock-inspired, heterodox view on which creative intentions are not at all necessary for the creation of concrete artifacts. A concrete artifact is just a hunk of matter having a certain configuration owing to human activity and, given that configuration, is disposed to participate in other human activities. (shrink)

Expanding on the results of previous contributions I advance several hypotheses on the interaction of physical and semiotic processes, both in organisms and in human artifacts. I then proceed to employ these ideas to formulate a general account of evolutionary processes in terms of concrete generalization, where, in analogy with conceptual generalization, novel creations retain antecedent features as special or restricted cases. I argue the following theses: 1) the main point of intersection of physical and semiotic causation is (...) the process of regulation; 2) The broadest form of regulation is a course of actions known as modulation ; 3) Modulation is a universal means of conveyance by which a form is lifted from one supporting vehicle and re-embodied into another replica. These considerations suggest viewing biological evolution as a complex generalization of semiotic evolution. Biological reproduction is then regarded as a complex generalization of sign replication. The latter is a relatively simple affair: the embodied form is external and largely independent of its indifferent supporting medium. Biological reproduction, on the contrary, is an extremely complex dynamical process in which the embodied type is duplicated from within the medium, through the subsidiary internal replication of molecular genetic records. These ideas are developed and illustrated through comparisons between the evolution of organisms and that of human artifacts. (shrink)

Abstract artifacts such as musical works and fictional entities are human creations; they are intentional products of our actions and activities. One line of argument against abstract artifacts is that abstract objects are not the kind of objects that can be created. This is so, it is argued, because abstract objects are causally inert. Since creation requires being caused to exist, abstract objects cannot be created. One common way to refute this argument is to reject the causal inefficacy (...) of abstracta. I argue that creationists should rather reject the principle that creation requires causation. Creation, in my view, is a non-causal relation that can be explained using an appropriate notion of ontological dependence. The existence and the creation of abstract artifacts depend on certain individuals with appropriate intentions, along with events of a certain kind that include but are not limited to creations of certain concrete objects. (shrink)

In recent years, some prominent legal philosophers have argued both that law (as a legal system) is a certain kind of abstract artifact and that we can elucidate its nature by elucidating its artifactual properties (e.g., authorship, functionality, etc). In this chapter, I present an objection to their arguments and show that law is not an abstract artifact, but rather a composite, concrete entity. I do so by arguing that law is an institutional practice, the purpose of which is (...) for legal organisations to produce legal artifacts (e.g., laws, legal judgements, international treaties, etc) through the performance of legal activities. Based on this, I next provide an ontological analysis of these artifacts by elaborating on the conditions for their creation and maintenance. By distinguishing law as an institutional practice from legal artifacts as institutional objects created by legal organisations, I intend to advance a more precise ontological account of legal phenomena. (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)

We trace how cognition arises beyond the skin. Experimental work on insight problem solving is used to examine how external artifacts can be used to reach the goal of assembling a `cheap necklace'. Instead of asking how insight occurs `in the head', our participants in Experiment 1 can either draw solution attempts or manipulate real objects . Even though performance with real chain links is significantly more successful than on paper, access to objects does not make this insight problem (...) simple: objects themselves do not shape cognition. This challenges extended mind views. While failure often results from the inappropriate application of hill-climbing, material artifacts can trigger solutions. In Experiment 2, we used `open link' conditions of the concretized problem to prompt participants to act . Solutions arrived via insight, serendipity, or trial-and-error. By investigating how objects are used, we show that they do more than supplement neural events. Rather, participants monitor and anticipate the effects of action within an organism-environment system. By analogy, language too draws on experience of monitoring real-time effects as bodily dynamics play out in a normative and cultural world. In engaging with public language, it is likely that verbal patterns function by constraining anticipatory cognitive processes. (shrink)

We trace how cognition arises beyond the skin. Experimental work on insight problem solving is used to examine how external artifacts can be used to reach the goal of assembling a ‘cheap necklace’. Instead of asking how insight occurs ‘in the head’, our participants in Experiment 1 can either draw solution attempts or manipulate real objects. Even though performance with real chain links is significantly more successful than on paper, access to objects does not make this insight problem simple: (...) objects themselves do not shape cognition. This challenges extended mind views. While failure often results from the inappropriate application of hill-climbing, material artifacts can trigger solutions. In Experiment 2, we used ‘open link’ conditions of the concretized problem to prompt participants to act. Solutions arrived via insight, serendipity, or trial-and-error. By investigating how objects are used, we show that they do more than supplement neural events. Rather, participants monitor and anticipate the effects of action within an organism-environment system. By analogy, language too draws on experience of monitoring real-time effects as bodily dynamics play out in a normative and cultural world. In engaging with public language, it is likely that verbal patterns function by constraining anticipatory cognitive processes. (shrink)

This paper examines a concrete political controversy in order to shed light on a broad philosophical issue. The controversy is with regard to who owns cultural antiquities ? the nations (often in the developing world) on whose soil they originated, or the museums of developed nations that have, through a variety of means, come into possession of them. Despite their opposing views, both sides accept the claim that ownership can be derived from prior facts about cultural identity. Moreover, when (...) their claims are articulated, each side?s arguments shed contrasting light on a broader question of property: are some things intrinsically common; that is, do some things have properties that undermine claims of private ownership? Following the logic inherent in arguments made on both sides, this paper defends an affirmative answer to these questions, and, in so doing, suggests that we need to broaden our perspective on publics goods generally. (shrink)

The primary aim of this paper is to provide a plausible fictional creationist explanation of when and how a fictional object comes into existence without a successful creative intention, focusing on the problem posed by Stuart Brock’s nominalist author scenario. I first present some intuitions about parallel scenarios for fictional objects and concrete artifacts as data to be explained. Then I provide a sufficient condition for the existence of artifacts that can explain both cases. An important upshot (...) of this is that there is an overlooked way to bring artifacts into existence that should merit serious consideration, and this leads to a version of the mind-dependence, but not the intention-dependence, view of artifacts. (shrink)

Realism about types is the view that types are abstract and repeatable objects. Although type realists seem to agree that types, unlike properties, are objects in their own right, they argue that there is a metaphysically intimate tie between the existence conditions of types and properties. In particular, most type realists believe that types are, in a certain sense, determined by the properties that underlie them. I argue that this is a mistake, especially for those type realists who believe that (...) social and cultural types such as works of music and fiction or words are artifacts. I offer an alternative version of type realism where social and cultural types are dependent objects that should be understood in analogy with concrete artifacts. (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)

Creationism is the conjunction of the following theses: (i) fictional individuals (e.g. Sherlock Holmes) actually exist; (ii) fictional names (e.g., 'Holmes') are at least sometimes genuinely referential; (iii) fictional individuals are the creations of the authors who first wrote (or spoke, etc.) about them. CA Creationism is the conjunction of (i) - (iii) and the following thesis: (iv) fictional individuals are contingently existing abstracta; they are non-concrete artifacts of our world and various other possible worlds. TakashiYagisawa has recently (...) provided a number of arguments designed to show that Creationism is unjustified. I here critically examine three of his challenges to CA Creationism. I argue that each fails to undermine this version of Creationism. (shrink)

In _Form, Matter, Substance_, Kathrin Koslicki defends a hylomorphic analysis of concrete particular objects (e.g., living organisms). The Aristotelian doctrine of hylomorphism holds that those entities that fall under it are compounds of matter (hulē) and form (morphē or eidos). Koslicki argues that a hylomorphic analysis of concrete particular objects is well-equipped to compete with alternative approaches when measured against a wide range of criteria of success. A successful application of the doctrine of hylomorphism to the special case (...) of concrete particular objects, however, hinges on how hylomorphists conceive of the matter composing a concrete particular object, its form, and the hylomorphic relations which hold between a matter-form compound, its matter and its form. Through the detailed answers to these questions Koslicki develops in this book, matter-form compounds, despite their metaphysical complexity, emerge as occupying the privileged ontological status traditionally associated with substances, due in particular to their high degree of unity. (shrink)

The recognition that models and simulations play a central role in the epistemology of science is about fifteen years old. Although models had long been discussed as possible foundational units in the logical analysis of scientific knowledge, the philosophical study of modelling as a distinct epistemic practice really got going in the wake of the Models as Mediators anthology edited by Margaret Morrison and Mary Morgan. In spite of the broad agreement that in fact much of science is model-based, however, (...) there is still little agreement on pretty much anything else. What are models? Are they representations or fictions, abstract entities or concrete artifacts? Which functions do they play? Can they explain.. (shrink)

Like science, engineering engages in analysis and synthesis. But whereas scientists tend to break matter down to its most basic building blocks, engineers ultimately aim to assemble myriad components into a complex system. Because the components are heterogeneous, engineers must integrate knowledge in many areas, and multidisciplinary teamwork is common practice. Like science, engineering covers both the general and the particular. But whereas scientists tend to design particular experiments for discovering general laws of nature, engineers tend to formulate general principles (...) for designing particular artifacts. Modern engineering has developed general theories about large types of artificial systems, notably information, control, and computation theories. These engineering theories are most effective for designing concrete artifacts, yet their abstract theorem-proof format is closer to pure mathematics than the format of physical theories, which are closer to applied mathematics. The apparent paradox accentuates the engineering emphasis on creating things rather than discovering phenomena already existent. (shrink)

Much recent discussion has focused on the nature of artifacts, particularly on whether they have essences. While it is often held that artifacts are intention-dependent and necessarily have functions, it is equally commonly held, though far less discussed, that artifacts are the result of physical modification of some material objects. This paper argues that the physical modification condition on artifacts is false. First, it formulates the physical modification condition perspicuously for the first time. Second, it offers (...) counterexamples to this condition, both concrete and abstract. Third, it considers, and rejects, two responses to these counterexamples, one which appeals to the distinction between being a K and being used as a K and another which argues that the counterexamples are merely of functional, not artifactual, kinds. Finally, it considers, and rejects, a more general objection that appropriation makes artifact creation too easy. As a consequence, artifacts can be created by appropriating pre-existing objects and it sketches some success conditions for such appropriation. (shrink)

In several papers, Petr Koťátko defends an “ontologically modest account of fictional characters”. Consider a position (which I have been defending) that is anything but ontologically restrained: positing fictional characters like Andrei Bolkonsky in War and Peace as abstract artifacts. I will argue, first, that such a position turns out to offer a nice fit with Petr Koťátko’s proposal about narrative fiction, one that fares better than an alternative pretense-based theory that doesn’t posit Bolkonsky as existing in any sense. (...) Second, I will explore a recent challenge by Jeffrey Goodman—which I will call the inadvertent creation challenge—that is originally posed for those who hold that fictional characters and mythical objects alike are abstract artifacts. The crux of the challenge is this: if we think that astronomers like Le Verrier, in mistakenly hypothesizing the planet Vulcan, inadvertently create an abstract artifact, then the inadvertent creation” element turns out to be inescapable yet theoretically unattractive. Third, based on considerations about actually existing concrete objects being featured in fictional works (as Napoleon is in War and Peace), I argue that regardless of where one stands on mythical objects, admitting fictional characters as abstract artifacts is enough to give rise to the inadvertent creation challenge; yet this very set of considerations serves to undermine the challenge, indicating that inadvertent creation is not nearly as worrisome after all as Goodman is suggesting. Taking fictional characters (and mythical objects) to be abstract artifacts therefore remains a viable option. -/- . (shrink)

In a series of papers (two of them in previous ESA Proceedings), I have been defending a fictional artifactualist position according to which fictional characters (like Prince Bolkonsky in Tolstoy’s War and Peace are non-concrete, human created objects (which are commonly labeled abstract artifacts). In this paper, I aim to bring together from my previous work two lines of defending fictional artifactualism: that (for the fictional artifactualist) making room for (i) authorial creation and for (ii) inadvertent authorial creation (...) are tenable moves. Indeed, instances of authorial creation (intentional or inadvertent) are what we expect if we accept Saul Kripke’s general view about what determines the reference of proper names, and this view’s consequences for fictional names. Fictional artifactualism emerges as our best choice if we want to admit fictional characters in our ontology and are sympathetic to Kripke’s general view about proper name reference. Fictional artifactualists having taken these two conditions on board need not worry about these features of their view: that authors sometimes create fictional characters and sometimes do so inadvertently. (shrink)

My goal is to reflect on the phenomenon of inadvertent creation and argue that—various objections to the contrary—it doesn’t undermine the view that fictional characters are abstract artifacts. My starting point is a recent challenge by Jeffrey Goodman that is originally posed for those who hold that fictional characters and mythical objects alike are abstract artifacts. The challenge: if we think that astronomers like Le Verrier, in mistakenly hypothesizing the planet Vulcan, inadvertently created an abstract artifact, then the (...) “inadvertent creation” element turns out to be inescapable yet theoretically unattractive. Based on considerations about actually existing concrete objects featured in fictional works (as Napoleon is in Tolstoy’s War and Peace), I argue that independently of one’s stand on mythical objects, admitting fictional characters as abstract artifacts is enough to give rise to the challenge at hand; yet this very point serves to undermine the challenge, indicating that inadvertent creation is not nearly as worrisome as Goodman suggests. Indeed, the inadvertent creation phenomenon’s generality extends far beyond objects of fiction and myth, and I will use this observation to counter a further objection. Taking fictional characters (and mythical objects) to be abstract artifacts therefore remains a viable option. (shrink)

Abstract creationism about fictional characters is the view that fictional characters are abstract objects that authors create. I defend this view against criticisms from Stuart Brock that hitherto have not been adequately countered. The discussion sheds light on how the number of fictional characters depends on authorial intention. I conclude also that we should change how we think intentions are connected to artifacts more generally, both abstract and concrete.

I explain a tension between musical creationism (the view that musical works are abstract artifacts) and the view that there is no vague existence. I then suggest ways to reconcile these views. My central conclusion is that, although some versions of musical creationism imply vague existence, others do not. I discuss versions of musical creationism held by Jerrold Levinson, Simon Evnine, and Kit Fine. I also present two new versions. I close by considering whether the tension is merely an (...) instance of a general problem raised by artifacts, both abstract and concrete. I argue that on at least one defensible account of music the tension is especially problematic for abstracta. I focus on musical works, but much of the paper straightforwardly applies to other kinds of abstract artifacts. (shrink)

Tool use rivals language as an important domain of cognitive phenomena, and so as a source of insight into the nature of cognition in general. But the favoured current definition of tool use is inadequate because it does not carve the phenomena of interest at the joints. Heidegger's notion of equipment provides a more adequate theoretical framework. But Heidegger's account leads directly to a non-individualist view of the nature of cognition. Thus non-individualism is supported by concrete considerations about the (...) nature of tools and tool use. (shrink)

This inaugural lecture, delivered on 17 November 2021 at the University of Neuchâtel, addresses the question: Are material objects analyzable into more basic constituents and, if so, what are they? It might appear that this question is more appropriately settled by empirical means as utilized in the natural sciences. For example, we learn from physics and chemistry that water is composed of H2O-molecules and that hydrogen and oxygen atoms themselves are composed of smaller parts, such as protons, which are in (...) turn composed of yet smaller parts, such as quarks, and so on. While the question at the center of this lecture might thus appear to fall more appropriately into the empirical domain of natural science, I argue that metaphysics in fact has an important role to play in determining how best to answer the question before us. More concretely, I propose that the Aristotelian doctrine of hylomorphism, when appropriately interpreted, provides the best metaphysical answer to the question of whether and how material objects are analyzable into more basic constituents. Hylomorphism holds that those entities to which this doctrine applies are, in some sense, compounds of matter (“hylē”) and form (“morphē” or “eidos”). Thus, the title of this lecture, “Form, Matter, Substance”, refers to the claim that lies at the center of the doctrine of hylomorphism, as applied to the domain of material objects, namely that sensible substances are the result of combining matter and form in the right sort of way; or, for short, “form + matter = substance”. I begin in Section II by providing some historical background which brings out Aristotle’s motivations for proposing the doctrine of hylomorphism in the context of his analysis of change. Section III turns to some of the main features of the contemporary hylomorphic theory I have defended especially in Koslicki (2008) and Koslicki (2018). Section IV discusses some challenging questions concerning artifacts which arise for both hylomorphic and other approaches to the metaphysics of concrete particular objects. Section V concludes by summarizing why, as contemporary metaphysicians, we should prefer a hylomorphic theory over its competitors as an analysis of concrete particular objects that is compatible with our current scientific understanding of the world. (shrink)

Robustness is often presented as a guideline for distinguishing the true or real from mere appearances or artifacts. Most of recent discussions of robustness have focused on the kind of derivational robustness analysis introduced by Levins, while the related but distinct idea of robustness as multiple accessibility, defended by Wimsatt, has received less attention. In this paper, I argue that the latter kind of robustness, when properly understood, can provide justification for ontological commitments. The idea is that we are (...) justified in believing that things studied by science are real insofar as we have robust evidence for them. I develop and analyze this idea in detail, and based on concrete examples show that it plays an important role in science. Finally, I demonstrate how robustness can be used to clarify the debate on scientific realism and to formulate new arguments. (shrink)

"Biophilia" is the term coined by Edward O. Wilson to describe what he believes is humanity's innate affinity for the natural world. In his landmark book Biophilia, he examined how our tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes might be a biologically based need, integral to our development as individuals and as a species. That idea has caught the imagination of diverse thinkers. The Biophilia Hypothesis brings together the views of some of the most creative scientists of our time, (...) each attempting to amplify and refine the concept of biophilia. The variety of perspectives -- psychological, biological, cultural, symbolic, and aesthetic -- frame the theoretical issues by presenting empirical evidence that supports or refutes the hypothesis. Numerous examples illustrate the idea that biophilia and its converse, biophobia, have a genetic component: fear, and even full-blown phobias of snakes and spiders are quick to develop with very little negative reinforcement, while more threatening modern artifacts -- knives, guns, automobiles -- rarely elicit such a response people find trees that are climbable and have a broad, umbrella-like canopy more attractive than trees without these characteristics people would rather look at water, green vegetation, or flowers than built structures of glass and concrete The biophilia hypothesis, if substantiated, provides a powerful argument for the conservation of biological diversity. More important, it implies serious consequences for our well-being as society becomes further estranged from the natural world. Relentless environmental destruction could have a significant impact on our quality of life, not just materially but psychologically and even spiritually. (shrink)

The theory of technological mediation aims to take technological artifacts seriously, recognizing the constitutive role they play in how we experience the world, act in it, and how we are constituted as (moral) subjects. Its quest for a compatible ethics has led it to Foucault’s “care of the self,” i.e., a transformation of the self by oneself through self-discipline. In this regard, technologies have been interpreted as power structures to which one can relate through Foucaultian “technologies of the self” (...) or ascetic practices. However, this leaves unexplored how concrete technologies can actuallysupportthe process of self-care. This paper explores this possibility by examining one such technology: a gamified To-Do list app. Doing so, it first shows that despite the apparent straightforwardness of gamification, confrontation and shame play an important role in how the app motivates me to do better. Second, inspired by Ihde’s schema of human-technology relations, it presents different ways in which the app may confront me with myself. Subsequently, it accounts for the motivation and shame that this technologically mediated confrontation with myself invokes through a Levinasian account of ethical subjectivity. In so doing, it also shows how Levinas’ phenomenology implies a responsibility for self-care and how nonhuman, technological others may still call me to responsibility. It concludes with a reflection on the role of gamification in technologically mediated subjectivation and some implications for design. (shrink)

In the world there are concrete particulars that exhibit the kind of substantial unity that allows them to be called substances or “natural individuals”, as opposed to artifacts or mere conglomerates. Persons, animals, and possibly the most fundamental physical simples are all natural individuals. What gives these entities the ontological status of a substantial unity? Arguments from the philosophy of mind and arguments from general metaphysics show that physical properties alone cannot account for substantial unity. The ultimate intrinsic (...) properties of natural individuals resemble phenomenal mental properties rather than any other kind of known properties. Pan(proto-)psychism is thus supported by systematically related arguments from different areas of philosophical inquiry. A certain amount of skepticism regarding the full nature of absolutely intrinsic properties is nevertheless well-advised. (shrink)

This paper considers two issues raised by the claim that fictional characters are abstract artifacts. First, given that artifacts normally have functions, what is the function of a fictional character? Second, given that, in experiencing works of fictions, we usually treat fictional characters as concrete individuals, how can such a phenomenology fit with an ontology according to which fictional characters are abstract artifacts? I will indirectly address the second issue by directly addressing the first one. For (...) this purpose, I will rely on the notion of a mental file. I will argue that the function of fictional characters is the generation of mental files of a special kind. I will show that our experience of fictional characters as concrete individuals depends on the kind of mental files that are generated by fictional characters as abstract artifacts. I will conclude that an appreciator of a work of fiction can open two files about a certain fictional character; one about the character as an individual in the fictional world, and the other about the character as an abstract artifact in the actual world. In this sense, our relation to a fictional character is characterized by a duality of files or ‘twofileness’. (shrink)

Community acceptance still remains a challenge for wind energy projects. The most popular explanation for local opposition, the Not in My Backyard effect, has received fierce criticism in the past decade. Critics argue that opposition is not merely a matter of selfishness or ignorance, but that moral, ecological and aesthetic values play an important role. In order to better take such values into account, a more bottom-up, participatory decision process is usually proposed. Research on this topic focusses on either stakeholder (...) motivations/attitudes, or their behavior during project implementation. This paper proposes a third research focus, namely the ‘objects’ which elicit certain behavioral responses and attitudes—the wind turbine and parks. More concretely, this paper explores Value Sensitive Design as way to arrive at wind turbines and parks that better embed or reflect key values. After a critical discussion of the notion of acceptance versus acceptability and support, the paper discusses existing literature on ecology and aesthetics in relation to wind turbine/park design, which could serve as ‘building blocks’ of a more integral VSD approach of the topic. It also discusses the challenge of demarcating wind park projects as VSD projects. A further challenge is that VSD has been applied mainly at the level of technical artifacts, whereas wind parks can best be conceptualized as socio-technical system. This new application would therefore expand the current practice of VSD, and may as a consequence also lead to interesting new insights for the VSD community. The paper concludes that such an outcome-oriented approach of wind turbines and park is worth exploring further, as a supplement to rather than a replacement of the process-oriented approach that is promoted by the current literature on community acceptance of wind parks. (shrink)

Building on Alfred Schütz’s work, this essay conceptually scrutinizes virtual worlds with an aim to clarify what is at stake with the virtualization of the late modern society. The diffusion of technological artifacts, devices of communication and the Internet in particular, have transformed the life-world of essentially everyone. In the past few years our everyday life, including its livelihoods, has seen a proliferation of activities within virtual worlds, such as games and virtual social networks. We can now live and (...) experience actively in different virtual realms, as compared to being mere passive receivers in the era of television and radio. This has direct implications for what is inherently relevant for people and, in consequence, we have to take such transformation into account also in conceptual terms. This article makes a major contribution to the conceptual understanding of phenomenological sociology that due to the virtualization, we can no more equate the paramount reality as the zone of primary relevance. The paramount reality as conceived as the sensorily perceivable, physical world of concrete objects is increasingly far from being equated to that part of the world within our reach which we can immediately observe and also at least partially dominate, that is, the zone of primary relevance. It is furthermore argued that the ongoing virtualization of societies urges us to conceive of virtual worlds as transforming the chief finite province of meaning, that of the world of working, instead of seeing virtual worlds merely as other sub-universes of reality. (shrink)

Explication is the conceptual cornerstone of Carnap’s approach to the methodology of scientific analysis. From a philosophical point of view, it gives rise to a number of questions that need to be addressed, but which do not seem to have been fully addressed by Carnap himself. This paper reconsiders Carnapian explication by comparing it to a different approach: the ‘formalisms as cognitive tools’ conception. The comparison allows us to discuss a number of aspects of the Carnapian methodology, as well as (...) issues pertaining to formalization in general. We start by introducing Carnap’s conception of explication, arguing that there is a tension between his proposed criteria of fruitfulness and similarity; we also argue that his further desideratum of exactness is less crucial than might appear at first. We then bring in the general idea of formalisms as cognitive tools, mainly by discussing the reliability of so-called statistical prediction rules, i.e. simple algorithms used to make predictions across a range of areas. SPRs allow for a concrete instantiation of Carnap’s fruitfulness desideratum, which is arguably the most important desideratum for him. Finally, we elaborate on what we call the ‘paradox of adequate formalization’, which for the Carnapian corresponds to the tension between similarity and fruitfulness. We conclude by noting that formalization is an inherently paradoxical enterprise in general, but one worth engaging in given the ‘cognitive boost’ it affords as a tool for discovery. (shrink)

This article isolates ten prepositions, which constitute the undercurrent paradigm of contemporary discourse of health disease and medicine. Discussion of the interrelationship between those prepositions leads to a systematic refutation of this paradigm. An alternative set is being forwarded. The key notions of the existing paradigm are that health is the natural condition of humankind and that disease is a deviance from that nature. Natural things are harmonious and healthy while human made artifacts are coercive interference with natural balance. (...) It is suggested that the current paradigm is influenced by the world of finances and by instrumental reason. The alternative model suggests that human nature cannot be delineated. Humans fashion their own selves and nature by artificial means, medicine among them. The article discusses the implications of the paradigm adapted in various scholarly and popular debates such as the use of sex hormones for contraception, the care of the elderly, holistic medicine and distributive justice in health care. Medicine is not an isolated or a privileged realm. There is no unique entitlement to health care. It is always part of a broader agenda of social values and institutions. A open view of human societies, values and practices as they are situated within concrete material conditions is the platform required for an integrative and creative discourse of health care. (shrink)

Fiora Salis compares the fictional and the artifactual views of models. She argues that both accounts contain several deep insights concerning the nature of scientific models but they also face some difficult challenges. She then puts forward an account of the ontology of models intended to incorporate the benefits of both views avoiding their main difficulties. Her key idea is that models are human-made artifacts that are akin to literary works of fiction. In this view, models are complex objects (...) that are constituted by a model description and the model content generated within a game of make-believe. As per the fiction view, model descriptions are construed as props in a game of make-believe, where props are concrete objects that prescribe certain imaginings. As per the artifactual view, model descriptions are construed as concrete representational tools that enable and constrain a scientist’s cognitive processes and provide intersubjective epistemic access to their imaginings. (shrink)

In this reply I further defend my claim that the transcendental should always remain a primary concern for philosophy of technology as a philosophical enterprise, contra the empirical turn’s rejection of it. Yet, instead of emphasizing the non-technological conditions of technology, as ‘classic’ thinkers of technology such as Heidegger did, it should recognize technology itself as the transcendental operator par excellence. Starting from Heidegger’s ontological understanding of transcendence I show that while technical artifacts may indeed always conform to a (...) certain horizon of understanding, they also constitute this horizon in specific ways. Following Stiegler I show that concrete technologies (technology with a small ‘t’) are not just empirical effects of an overarching movement of transcendence (Technology with a capital ‘T’) but are originally constitutive of it. In response to Romele’s critique that the social, language, images, imaginaries, symbols, etc. are also transcendentals, I argue that all these phenomena are always already conditioned by technical milieus. As for Besmer’s contention that I offer a reductive interpretation of postphenomenology’s notion of multistability, I argue that there are decisive systemic and organological limits to multistability offered by technical artefacts and that all variation in use and implementation is always constrained by inherent technical tendencies and processes of concretization. Agreeing with Besmer that the transcendental and the empirical should be understood not oppositional but compositional I argue that technology may be that which constantly ‘mediates’ between the two. (shrink)

To give concrete meaning to the phrase "Art for Life's Sake," Jenkins assumes that "the general purpose that animates all of man's activities and artifacts is adaptation to the environment and satisfaction of the conditions of life." A phenomenological survey of human experience reveals three basic modes of viewing or adapting to the world--the affective, the cognitive, and the aesthetic. Each is intertwined with the others, and all three are necessary if man is to adapt to his environment; (...) but as one or another mode dominates experience, attention is focused on the self, the relatedness of entities, and the particular entities themselves. The view of art that emerges is a reformulation of the imitation theory; skillfully and systematically applied to the persistent facts of aesthetic life, it offers solid, common-sense illumination of traditionally obscure problems.--D. W. S. (shrink)

How do archaeologists make effective use of physical traces and material culture as repositories of evidence? Material Evidence is a collection of 19 essays that take a resolutely case-based approach to this question, exploring key instances of exemplary practice, instructive failures, and innovative developments in the use of archaeological data as evidence. The goal is to bring to the surface the wisdom of practice, teasing out norms of archaeological reasoning from evidence. -/- Archaeologists make compelling use of an enormously diverse (...) range of material evidence, from garbage dumps to monuments, from finely crafted artifacts rich with cultural significance to the inadvertent transformation of landscapes over the long term. Each contributor to Material Evidence identifies a particular type of evidence with which they grapple and considers, with reference to concrete examples, how archaeologists construct evidential claims, critically assess them, and bring them to bear on pivotal questions about the cultural past. -/- Historians, cultural anthropologists, philosophers, and science studies scholars are increasingly interested in working with material "things" as objects of inquiry and as evidence – and they acknowledge on all sides just how challenging this is. One of the central messages of the book is that close analysis of archaeological best practice can yield constructive guidelines for practice that have much to offer practitioners within archaeology and well beyond. (shrink)

Introduction: Christian faith and technological artifacts -- Pt. I. The attempt to claim Christ's dominion. Martin Heidegger on technology as a form of life -- George Grant and the technological ideal -- Michel Foucault and the habits of technology -- Pt. II. Seeking Christ's concrete claim. Advent and the renewal of the senses -- Technology for good and evil -- Political reconciliation in the community of worship -- Worship, Sabbath, and work -- Being reconciled with creation's material form (...) -- Conclusion: An ethos of dwelling in the house of the Lord. (shrink)

Poised on the cusp between phenomenology and materiality, media institute a theoretical oscillation that promises to displace the empirical-transcendental divide that has structured western meditation on thinking, including the thinking of technics. Because media give the infrastructure conditioning thought without ceasing to be empirical, they form the basis for a complex hermeneutics that cannot avoid the task of accounting for its unthematizable infrastructural condition. Tracing the oscillation constitutive of such a hermeneutics as it serves variously to constitute media theory in (...) the work of critics from McLuhan to Kittler, from Leroi-Gourhan to Stiegler, my interrogation ultimately conceptualizes the medium as an environment for life:by giving concrete form to ‘epiphylogenesis’, concrete media find their most ‘originary’ function not as artifacts but via their participation in human technogenesis. (shrink)

The pivotal role of the relation part-of in the description of living organisms is widely acknowledged. Organisms are open systems, which means that in contradistinction to mechanical artifacts they are characterized by a continuous flow and exchange of matter. A closer analysis of the spatial relations in biological organisms reveals that the decision as to whether a given particular is part-of a second particular or whether it is only contained-in the second particular is often controversial. We here propose a (...) rule-based approach which allows us to decide on the basis of well-defined criteria which of the two relations holds between two anatomical objects, given that one spatially includes the other. We discuss the advantages and limitations of this approach, using concrete examples from human anatomy. (shrink)

This volume explores, from a variety of perspectives, the political theory of the man who is arguably the greatest English political thinker. It is the first substantial collection of new, critical essays on Thomas Hobbes by leading scholars in over a decade. Hobbes’s writings stirred debate in his own lifetime, for two centuries thereafter, and continue to do so in ours. They emerged in a period of intense political turmoil—a time of civil war and regicide, of puritanical rule and royal (...) restoration. “They were motivated,” Dietz argues, “by concrete political problems and a practical concern, namely, to secure political order, absolute sovereignty, and civil peace.” The contributors emphasize and answer a series of expressly political questions that, to date, have not been fully addressed in the Hobbes literature. They contend that Hobbes’s writings are not mere static artifacts of a particular historical milieu, but rather rich sources of a variety of interpretations and criticisms that spur discussion and debate in their turn. (shrink)

"Im Rahmen der technikphilosophischen, ethnologischen wie auch medien- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Debatte über die Handlungsmacht der Dinge ist es zu einer Konjunktur von Ontologien gekommen, die jedoch das traditionelle Konzept der Ontologie dekonstruiert bzw. verschiebt. Der Beitrag folgt dieser Verschiebung der Ontologie, die Medien und mediale Artefakte nicht mehr als Substanzen denkt, sondern als Verkettungen von Praktiken und Operationen, die diese Medien-Dinge allererst generieren. Nach ›operativen Ontologien‹ zu fragen bedeutet, nach den konkreten ontischen Operationen zu fragen, die allererst ontologische Unterscheidungen hervorbringen (...) – z. B. zwischen Form und Materie, Bild und Gegenstand, Ding und Prozess, Figur und Grund. Diese ontischen Operationen bilden den Kern dessen, was man Kulturtechniken nennt. Anhand von beispielhaften Hybridobjekten aus dem Bereich der material culture des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit zeigt der Beitrag, wie dies konkret zu verstehen ist. The debate on the agency of objects, lead by philosophy, ethnology as well as cultural and media studies, has triggered a boom of ontologies, deconstructing the traditional concept of ontology. The contribution follows this shift of ontology, which no longer conceives of the media and media artifacts as substances, but as concatenations of practices and operations that are generated by media objects in the first place. To ask for ‘operational ontologies’ means to ask for the concrete ontical operations which first of all produce onto- logical distinctions – e. g. between form and matter, image and object, thing and process, figure and background. These ontical operations form the core of what we call cultural techniques. The contribution illustrates and explains this thesis with reference to hybrid objects from the material culture of the late Middle Ages and Early Modernity. ". (shrink)

The ontological issues at stake given the theory of loop quantum gravity include the status of spacetime, the nature and reality of spin-networks, the relationship of classical spacetime to issues of causation and the status of the abstract-concrete distinction. I this paper I argue that, while spacetime seems to disappear, the spirit of substantival spacetime lives on under certain interpretations of the theory. Moreover, in order for there to be physical spin-networks, and not merely mathematical artifacts, I argue (...) that we must interpret the theory as including a substantival background manifold. This latter result is important for any project which interprets spacetime as an emergent structure from physical spin-networks. (shrink)

This paper shows that direct-object perceptual verbs, such as "hear", "smell", "taste", "feel", and "see", share a collection of distinctive semantic behaviors with depictive verbs, among which are "draw'', "paint", "sketch", and "sculpt". What explains these behaviors in the case of depictives is that they are causative verbs, and have lexical decompositions that involve the creation of concrete artistic artifacts, such as pictures, paintings, and sculptures. For instance, "draw a dog" means "draw a picture of a dog", where (...) the latter occurrence of "draw" denotes a creative activity. While perceptual verbs are not obviously causatives, they have analogous decompositions involving noun phrases that denote modality-specific sense-objects, such as a sounds, smells, flavors, touches, and sights. Thus, "hear a trumpet" means "hear the sound of a trumpet", and the same holds, mutatis mutandis, for verbs denoting the other sensory modes. If we take this analogy at face value, our perceptual reports will commit us to a form of the sense-datum theory of perception. While the analogy can be resisted, resistance requires taking on unexpected commitments. (shrink)

The historic material culture produced by American Cold War nuclear weapons testing includes objects of scientific inquiry that can be generally categorized as being either ephemeral or enduring. Objects deemed to be ephemeral were of a less substantial nature, being impermanent and expendable in a nuclear test, while enduring objects were by nature more durable and long-lasting. Although all of these objects were ultimately subject to disappearance, the processes by which they were transformed, degraded, or destroyed prior to their disappearing (...) differ. Drawing principally upon archaeological theory, this paper proposes a functional dichotomy for categorizing and studying the historical trajectories of nuclear weapons testing technoscience artifacts. In examining the transformation patterns of steel towers and concrete blockhouses in particular, it explores an associated loss of scientific method that accompanies a science object's disappearance. (shrink)

This investigation provides an in-depth exploration of the dialectics of action and technology in the works of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, both in terms of the concrete use contexts of technological artifacts and the entanglement between individual agents and their sociotechnical surroundings. Furthermore, it briefly outlines some potentials of Sartre’s thoughts for debates in contemporary philosophy of technology. Throughout his works, Sartre approaches human action from different yet dialectically interrelated perspectives that are always accompanied by and developed in (...) relation to reflections about technology. Against the background of a complementary conception of human action that is derived from Sartre’s major works, the implementation of matter in the course of action primarily represents an instrumentalization. Things are thus always disclosed as implement things due to the practical character of human existence. Although things do not prescribe action, the material characteristics and properties of these things render them more useful for attaining some and more adverse for attaining other ends. Despite the ontological freedom of human beings, their position in societal forms of organization, to which Sartre refers to as practical ensembles, delimits their choice of means and necessitates them to satisfy their needs and desires with the limited means available. In this way, la force des choses arises, not as a result of the characteristics of technology but as an outcome of sociality and politics. (shrink)

Wynn shows that intentionally standardized artifacts (handaxes) provide evidence of the ability to conceptualize form (symmetry). However, such conceptual ability is not sufficient for the actual production of these forms. Stone knapping is a concrete skill that is acquired in the real world. Appreciation of its perceptual-motor foundations and the broader issues surrounding skill acquisition may lead to further important insights into human cognitive evolution.

This article investigates the types of intentionality involved in human–technology relations. It aims to augment Don Ihde’s analysis of the relations between human beings and technological artifacts, by analyzing a number of concrete examples at the limits of Ihde’s analysis. The article distinguishes and analyzes three types of “cyborg intentionality,” which all involve specific blends of the human and the technological. Technologically mediated intentionality occurs when human intentionality takes place “through” technological artifacts; hybrid intentionality occurs when the (...) technological actually merges with the human; and composite intentionality is the addition of human intentionality and the intentionality of technological artifacts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 20-39 [Access article in PDF] Anderson and the Novel Jonathan Culler 1 Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism has, in the past decade, become a classic of the humanities and social sciences. Any theoretically savvy discussion of nations or of societies of any sort must cite it for its fundamental insight that nations and, as Anderson points out, "all communities (...) larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined" [6]. In retrospect, it seems obvious that nationality, nationness, and nationalism "are cultural artifacts of a particular kind" [4], but this had previously been obscured by intellectuals' sense that nationalism was above all an atavistic passion, an often noxious prejudice of the unenlightened. Imagined Communities both argued that we had better seek to understand it, since "nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time" [3], and gave us a constructivist way of thinking about the phenomenon of nationalism, which becomes more interesting and intellectually more acceptable when we ask how it is created, what discursive, imaginative activities bring particular nationalisms into being and give them their distinctive form. When nationalism was vulgar passion provoked by empirically occurring nations, it was vulnerable to the objection implicitly or explicitly mounted against it: why should I feel more affinity with people who happen to inhabit the country I live in than with others, more like-minded, who happen to have been born in other nations? Anderson neatly turned the tables on us by taking this as a serious question. Why indeed do we feel such affinities? How to explain the fact that people are more willing to make great sacrifices for others of the same nation whom they have never met (and whom they might dislike if they did) than for worthy and unfortunate people elsewhere?Read today, the introduction to Imagined Communities has the rightness and efficiency of a classic ("why hadn't anyone realized this before?"), as it guides us into the paradoxes of the modern world of nationalism: nations are objectively recent but subjectively antique, even eternal; nations may be messianic, but no nation's citizens imagine that everyone should eventually join their nation. Already here Anderson displays what I take to be the key to his appeal to the nonspecialist: his ability concretely to show us the strangeness of the familiar by judicious comparisons. Try to imagine a "Tomb of the Unknown Marxist or a Cenotaph for fallen Liberals," he suggests. But a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier does not seem risible. Why? "Many different nations have such tombs without feeling any need to specify the nationality of their absent occupants. What else could they be but Germans, American, Argentinians...?" [10]. We are in a sentence or two brought to appreciate the necessity of accounting for a social and cultural phenomenon that comparison and humor highlight.The second edition of Imagined Communities demonstrates, in a compelling if serendipitous way, just how much we need Anderson to provide such insights, as it takes up what he and his readers had failed to notice in the first edition. There he had quoted Ernest Renan remarking "in his suavely backhanded way," "Or l'essence d'une nation est que tous les individus aient beaucoup de choses en commun, et aussi que tous [End Page 20] aient oubliés bien des choses [in fact the essence of a nation is that all the individuals have many things in common and also that they have all forgotten many things]," with a footnote continuing the quotation: "tout citoyen français doit avoir oublié la Saint-Barthélemy, les massacres du Midi au XIIIe siècle [every French citizen must have forgotten Saint Bartholomew's, the Provence massacres in the thirteenth century]" [6]. In the preface to the second edition Anderson notes, "I had quoted Renan without the slightest understanding of what he had actually said: I had taken as something easily ironical what was in fact utterly bizarre" [xiv]. He calls this a "humiliating recognition" [xiv], which led him to write... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Christian Ethics in a Technological Age by Brian BrockDavid W. GillChristian Ethics in a Technological Age Brian Brock Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010. 408 pp. $34.00Brian Brock is a lecturer in moral and practical theology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and the author of Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Christian Ethics in Scripture (Eerdmans, 2007). Christian Ethics in a Technological [End Page 188] (...) Age was originally Brock’s doctoral thesis at King’s College, London. Brock begins by highlighting and finding wanting the modern practice of “technology assessment” as epitomized in the establishment of the US Office of Technology Assessment in 1972. We live in a world, a milieu, of ever-multiplying new technologies and technological artifacts. “Technology assessment” attempts to evaluate their impacts as thoroughly as possible through scientific, managerial methods. Costs and benefits, benefits and harms, short-term and long-term, near and distant effects: how can we measure what we know and extrapolate to what we need to know?In part 1 Brock engages in some detail the thinking of Martin Heidegger, George Grant, and Michel Foucault on technology. Although Heidegger and Foucault in particular are not ultimate authorities for Brock, his chapters on their work provide a helpful philosophical critique of the inadequacies of today’s narrow managerial approaches to technological assessment. The real problems lie much deeper: in the ways technology reflects and restructures our whole way of thinking about life, materiality, subjects and objects, and means and ends.Having used Heidegger, Grant, and Foucault to unmask the complex reality of technology in the modern era, Brock turns in part 2 to Augustine, Karl Barth, and Bernd Wannenwetsch to try to build a Christian theological ethics of technology and work that will, in the end, provide a richer texture for our interactions with the questions raised by new technologies. In briefest terms, he argues that our questions and judgments about technology should arise within the church gathered for worship rather than within the management team gathered for measurement of effects. It could be said that in the former it is God who questions technology whereas in the latter technology and its servants constitute an implicit challenge to God and the world external to themselves.Brock’s study will be of particular interest to students of his primary six sources: Heidegger, Grant, Foucault, Augustine, Barth, and Wannenwetsch, whose ideas and quotations dominate the pages of this book. Without any doubt Christian Ethics in a Technological Age is a significant work that deserves careful consideration in graduate seminars and among specialists in the field; nonetheless, I have three criticisms. First, the work would have been much stronger if it demonstrated awareness and understanding of the work of Jacques Ellul, Carl Mitcham, Albert Borgmann, and other leading thinkers in this arena. Second, Brock’s writing style (long, complex Germanic sentence structures, eccentric vocabulary choices such as the recurrent use of “purchase”) gets in the way of successful communication—especially with the very managers and technologists he presumably would like to influence. Third, while sympathizing with his rejection of managerial formulas for analysis, some much more concrete and practical counsel on the implications of his position would have been [End Page 189] helpful. How do trust and trustworthiness get reestablished? How does a worshipping congregation hear God’s guidance about its particular engagements with technologies? We have some eloquent statements of the concepts but little by way of illustration or example.David W. GillGordon-Conwell Theological SeminaryCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)