The fact that the use we can make of objects is quite independent of the previous history of these objects will, however, not easily be dismissed. Nor will the fact that
 |
| Fig. 1 The relations between the sets of natural objects, of artificial object, of objects designed for a purpose x, and of objects used for a purpose x |
the representation that is an artificial object’s birth certificate, so to speak, cannot be guaranteed to hold true forever. In other words, a dual nature can be ascribed to technical artifacts, but this duality is rather that they involve intentionality in two different ways: they are made for a purpose (by someone) and they serve a purpose (someone’s purpose). In ‘fully’ describing what an object is for, both aspects have to be taken into account. This is not a problem for the group of ‘typical’ artifacts, objects that are (successfully) used for the purpose for which they were designed. Problems arise when an object is designed for a purpose but is not used, or not even fit to be used, for this purpose, or when an object is used for a purpose, or fit to be used thus, but was not designed for this purpose.
There is an interesting relation between this ‘dual intentional nature’ and the difficulty of finding a comprehensive definition of the notion of function for technical artifacts and biological organs and traits. Desiderata for such a definition are that it should be able to grant a function to a completely new artifact (an ‘is being used for’ aspect) as well as to a malfunctioning artifact (an ‘has been made for’ aspect). There is a connection, although the connection is not as straightforward as might seem at first glance, between, on the one hand, the ‘is used for’ aspect and what are called system functions, and, on the other hand, between the ‘has been made for’ aspect and etiological functions or proper functions. I will not, however, elaborate this point here.18 I have, until now, deliberately avoided the word ‘function’ so as not to complicate the issues central to this chapter with the philosophical conundrum of giving an adequate account of this term.19
Given that the ‘is being or can be used for’ and ‘has been designed and made for’ sides of artifacts can be distinguished as in principle independent aspects, what would it mean to claim that they must both be taken into account in a description of artifacts? Must an adequate description of any artifact take them both into account at the same time? One may wonder why, for an object that is being used for a purpose, the historical side matters at all. Why are we not satisfied with claiming that when an object is put to a use, the purpose it is being used for is what it is for, and that any prior use that has been made of it is irrelevant? Obviously, an artifact’s history is highly relevant for finding out for what purposes an artifact can be used. The designer of an artifact knows at least one way the artifact can be used, and the object’s history as a designed artifact tells the user that it has this usefulness.20 Concerning the question what the artifact is for, however, it is unclear why the original designer should be given the right to determine this. If anyone puts a particular object, be it an artifact or a natural object, to use, this person becomes in a sense the designer of a system figuring the object. He or she discerns certain properties in the object - most probably on the original designer’s instruction, but that is not relevant for the point at issue, since it need not necessarily go like that -and then makes use of these properties to realize a particular outcome.
4 The Metaphysics of Artifacts
If this view is adopted, it seems that what an object is for becomes a very flippant sort of thing. A bottle that I use temporarily as the support for a stick at the top of which I am fastening something, changes from being for containing liquids to being for holding a stick upright and then back again to being for containing liquids. If we think of an artifact as something that definitely is for something, as a defining property, this seems unacceptable. However, we do accept it in the case of natural objects that we use for a purpose. This stone was not for anything, it is now for cracking a nut, and it will again be not for anything in a few minutes time. I may want to crack another nut in a moment, but I can pick up any other available stone for this, in complete disregard of the first stone’s ephemeral existence as a nutcracker. Similarly I could pick another bottle for the next stick. Indeed, as far as the purpose of holding a stick upright is concerned, it does not matter whether the bottles are artifacts and in that sense already ‘for something’. They are chosen because they have the right physical properties, just as the stones have the right physical properties for the job of cracking a nut. If bottles grew on trees, that would be just as fine: and indeed, in some countries bottles, i.e., things having the right properties for containing liquids and for keeping sticks upright, do grow on trees. How much do we gain by claiming that bottles - our bottles, made of glass or plastic -essentially are for containing liquids and that gourds essentially are natural objects that, accidentally, can be used for containing liquids?
This capricious metaphysics is a problem only if we interpret the ‘being for something’ of artifacts as the being something, essentially, similar to the way certain objects are stones or electrons, and consider particular artifacts as being screwdrivers, drills, and so forth, essentially. But must we? To maintain that we must is at odds with the character of the intentional idiom. The universal terms occurring in this idiom do not figure in strict, exceptionless laws, comparable to the laws of nature, that determine whether or not we have cut the intentional realm ‘at the joints’. Natural-kind terms refer to objects that all share certain properties, which serve to define them and that figure in the laws to which each and every representative of the kind answers. This is not so for artifacts. Whatever we would take as the defining characteristic of a particular artifact kind or functional kind, it would be the case that certain objects, even artificial objects, would fit the description that we do not consider as such, and that objects that we consider as specimens of the artifact kind do not posses the defining characteristic. For newly designed specimens of a specific artifact kind, the defining characteristics must sometimes be reinterpreted. The status of a Phillips screwdriver as a screwdriver is not contested, but a Phillips screwdrivers does not drive traditional screws, and a traditional screwdriver drives, with difficulty, only some crosshead screws. This simple example shows that the conditions in which an artifact is meant to show a specific physical behavior are, in a sense, part of its characteristics.
For the technologically sophisticated artifacts of modern culture, the claim that certain objects that we do not consider as specimens of such artifacts would still fit their defining description is, of course, highly theoretical. It is difficult to imagine an object that has the capacity to function as a television set or a satellite while not being designed as a television set or a satellite. However, this does not imply that it is possible to delineate the kinds of television sets or satellites similarly to the way natural kinds are delineated. Hardly any other object would react in the same way as a current television set does to the physical input for which these television sets are designed, but future television sets may operate quite differently in connection with related changes in future broadcasting methods.
18
The source text for system functions is Cummins (1975); the most comprehensive etiological theory of function is Millikan (1984), in which the notion of proper function is defined as a technical term.
19
See, for an introduction into the difficulties of defining function, in particular focusing on artifact function, Preston (1998) and Vermaas and Houkes (2003).