# How Real Are Artefacts and Artefact Kinds?  ## Metadata - Author: [[E. J. Lowe]] - Full Title: How Real Are Artefacts and Artefact Kinds? - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The text discusses the challenges in defining the existence and identity conditions for various artifact kinds, particularly machines. It highlights how some artifacts have specific, mind-independent laws governing their activity, ensuring their persistence conditions are clear. The author aims to strike a balance between denying the reality of artifacts and avoiding an overly complex ontology. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/168947889 - Source File: How Real Are Artefacts and Artefact Kinds? E.J. Lowe .pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > A problematic feature of many such concepts – for example, the concepts *table*, *ship*, *bridge*, *typewriter*, *automobile*, and *computer* – is that they may not seem to be supplied with well-defined or well-grounded *persistence conditions* for the particulars supposedly falling under them. By contrast, where *natu- ral* kinds are concerned, natural *laws* governing those kinds seem to determine the persistence conditions of their instances. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwqbd0q28qwwwb42mvb6sfk)) > [Quine (](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/168947889/#bookmark10)1969): ‘No entity without identity’. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwqftz6dn0bgpmdewaspmjg)) > A bare particular, if there could be such a thing, would be a con- crete individual – a particular entity existing in space and time – which was capable of ‘supporting’ and in that sense *having* properties, but with no restriction whatever on the range of properties that it could, at different times, support and hence with no restriction whatever on its *persistence conditions*. On this view, the ‘same’ bare particular might support, at one time, all the properties that one would normally associate with, say, a *tiger*, but at another time all the properties that one would normally associate with an *electron*. However, I would urge that, with the notion of a particular so absolutely *Protean*, whose identity over time is consequently so com- pletely unconstrained, we lose all grip on the idea that it is genuinely something with an *identity* at all. And, without an *identity*, it simply isn’t clear that we can seriously suppose that we really have an *entity*. Once again, as Quine so succinctly put it, ‘No entity without identity’. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwqmnqjrtkxw299wd4en7yf)) > Here, by implication, I am distinguishing between *categories* and *kinds*[. How exactly to draw this distinction is a matter of some controversy](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/168947889/#bookmark12) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwqp42mxydet05yf36c2e0p)) > What I shall call the *sortal persistence conditions* of an individual object clearly *depend upon its kind*. These are the conditions that are necessary and sufficient for its persistence *as an instance of the kind*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwqrhq4qz323ttcd2ydsdac)) > The term ‘artefact’ certainly seems to denote an ontological category – a *medium-level* one, much like ‘geological formation’ and ‘living organism’. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwqspg1yrtzk7prhf5wy4t0)) > Some of these putative kinds seem, moreover, to be sub-kinds of higher kinds, just as frog is a sub-kind of amphibian and monkey is a sub-kind of mammal. For instance, it seems natural to say that ships and automobiles are both sub-kinds of transport. Now, it might be thought that, by the same token, automobiles and computers, say, are both sub-kinds of machine. I agree that this sounds perfectly correct, as far as it goes, but I would nonetheless resist saying that ‘machine’ denotes a high-level artefact kind. I think it is more plausible to say that it denotes a subcategory of artefact ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwqtws360myerk2z87c0qkp)) > Now, what *grounds* the distinctive existence and identity conditions governing the members of different kinds – where, by such conditions, I mean those necessary and sufficient for the *existence* of any given member of the kind and for the *identity or distinctness* of any two such members? Here we are immediately confronted with the fact that *natural* kinds – such as the kinds *monkey* and *mountain* – are presumably wholly *mind-independent*, whereas artefact kinds are plausibly not. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwqvpt8fh7vhh262vmydvpp)) > The existence and identity conditions of the members of artefact kinds plausibly carry reference to human or other intelligent *artificers* and *utilizers* of them: the people who make and use artefacts for certain purposes, or to serve certain functions. Without the *inten- tions* of such people, it seems, there could *be* no artefacts. However, this fact doesn’t render artefacts mind-dependent in the way, for example, that *fictional characters* plainly are: artefacts don’t exist only because they are *believed* or *imagined* to exist. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwqwbr0bxgzbvk2qxg7nb7f)) > The key point, it seems, is that artefacts are only *causally* mind- dependent, not *constitutively* mind-dependent. An artefact could survive the demise of all intelligent life, but no artefact could *come into existence* without intelligent life existing, since only intelligent beings can create artefacts. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwqx6g72s20zf10tv7k186h)) > Before proceeding further, I want to question what I shall call *conceptualist realism* [as a general account of sortal existence and identity conditions (for a fuller critique, see Lowe](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/168947889/#bookmark6) 2008). This is the view that *K*s exist – where ‘*K*’ is any *sortal* or *kind* term – just so long as we or other intelligent beings have a coherent *concept* of *K*s, whose application conditions turn out to be *satisfied by the world*[.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/168947889/#bookmark14) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwqymcg1krhys2k00eqyw6z)) > I don’t think that this view can be correct as a *general* account, on pain of global antirealism. This is because it seems that we can speak non-vacuously of a sortal concept’s being ‘satisfied by the world’ only if some *things* in the world have properties and stand in relations demanded by the application conditions of the sortal concept in question. (I shall consider the consequences of denying this in a moment.) But that presupposes that *the things in question* have existence and identity conditions too, which need to be explained and grounded in turn. > For instance, a conceptualist realist might say that the application conditions of the concept of a table are such that for a *table* to exist is just for some pieces of wood or metal to be *thus-and-so configured* – broadly speaking, in such a way as to provide a stable means of horizontal support for medium-sized material objects – and that it is similarly a conceptual truth that the table *persists* just so long as this configuration or arrangement of its material parts continues to obtain (allowing, no doubt, for some gradual replacement of a few individual parts over time, should the table occasionally need to be repaired). But what, now, about the existence and identity conditions of those material parts themselves – the pieces of wood or metal? If we try to tell exactly the same story about them too, then we shall obviously have set out upon a regress which either has no terminus or else is terminated by entities whose existence and identity conditions cannot be accounted for in the same way, in terms of certain of our concepts being ‘satisfied by the world’. If the latter, then the account is not, after all, perfectly general. If the former, then no *account* has really been given, because the crucial question has been permanently deferred. On the other hand, should the conceptualist realist try instead to appeal to some notion of a sortal concept’s ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwr1v9vc51k5b586sf8a442)) > Some metaphysicians invoke, as a species of *filter* on overindulgent ontologies of sorts or kinds, some version of the ‘Eleatic principle’ or ‘Alexander’s dictum’, according to which kinds are real only if their instances or members have *independent causal powers*[. Trenton Merricks (](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/168947889/#bookmark11)2001), for instance, dismisses the reality of *baseballs* and other such composite nonconscious objects for this reason, maintaining that they have no such powers. According to him, everything that a baseball supposedly *does*, causally – such as break a window – is really done by certain *material particles arranged baseball-wise ‘acting in concert’*. This, however, is surely too austere a doctrine, if indeed it really works at all as a way of reducing our ontological commitments. (I make this qualification because I have serious doubts as to whether talk of ‘particles arranged baseball-wise acting in concert’ can really be understood other than merely as a circumlocution for talking about *baseballs acting*[: see further Lowe](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/168947889/#bookmark8) 2003.) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwr50dktdd0jkvpz83y6m96)) > In the case of natural kinds, we can appeal to *natural laws* as providing the grounds of the existence and identity conditions of their respective members. For instance, there are laws governing the persistence of *monkeys*, telling us how they are generated, develop, and ultimately die – laws that are significantly different from those governing, say, *mackerel* (a kind of fish) or *mosquitos* (a kind of insect). Such developmental laws are not, of course, comparable to the exceptionless laws of fundamental physics: they are, in the current jargon, *ceteris paribus* laws – but they are, nevertheless, empirically well-confirmed generalizations concerning particular biological species, correctly informing us, for instance, how tadpoles normally develop into mature frogs. That such laws are very probably susceptible to explanation in terms of more fundamental laws, say of genetics and ultimately of physics, is no threat to their status as laws. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwr6wmc46wwpfkpartfe366)) > It is true that a moun- tain can be naturally transformed into an *island*, just by becoming surrounded by water: but that, very arguably, is just a reason for saying that an island simply *is* a mountain that is surrounded by water, rather than a geological formation of a quite different kind. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwr7czgpjahbhmxw8mtqnjg)) > Now, with *artefact* kinds, such matters of persistence and identity undoubtedly appear to be much more problematic, as we have already remarked. Can a *table* ‘morph’ into a *chair*? It seems so – in fact, it can do so very easily. Indeed, whether a table has done so may on occasion apparently lie simply ‘in the eye of the beholder’ or, at least, of the *user*. A table can certainly be *used as* a chair – or as a *stool*, if one prefers, on the grounds that a chair must have a back. Does that *make* it a chair? If so, has it then ceased to be a *table* ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwr86vqp5csc0s54c4yhqq8)) > Why exactly, though, might these considerations be thought to present a threat to the *reality* of artefacts and artefact kinds? As I indicated earlier, the answer is really very simple. It is because existence and identity conditions determine the answers to questions concerning the *cardinality* of a domain of entities – and if such ques- tions *don’t* have determinate answers with respect to a certain domain, then the reality of that domain is immediately open to dispute. To quote Quine once more: ‘No entity without identity’. If there is no *fact of the matter* as to whether, say, a certain table has *ceased* to exist and been *replaced* by a chair, or has *become* a chair, perhaps while *remaining* a table, then it simply isn’t clear whether we are dealing here with just *one* thing or with *two*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwr9ssn5mqftk0y584e9hpt)) > It is surely true to say that a kind and its members have to *earn their keep* to deserve a place in our ontology. But I think that, in the case of *natural* kinds, at least, we can pinpoint what it is that enables them to do this, without resorting to the austerity of the position described earlier. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ja7x9y40nd86eet07rpahx7e)) > Are there any principled constraints *at all* that can be applied to restrict such possibilities, comparable to those that operate in the domain of natural kinds? It is perhaps worth noting here that abandoning *sortal essentialism* for artefacts does not really promise to help us very much in resolving this difficulty. In the case of *living organisms*, for instance, a denial of sortal essentialism, with the consequent admis- sion of the metaphysical possibility of an individual organism’s surviving a radical metamorphosis from, say, being a *frog* to being a *dog*, still leaves us with a firm grip on the *identity* conditions of individual organisms, which in all cases seem to turn on the equivalence relation of *sameness of individual life* [– the relation that John Locke (](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/168947889/#bookmark2)1975 [[1690]: II, XXVII, 4) famously regarded as providing a criterion for the identity over time of living things (for discussion, see Lowe](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/168947889/#bookmark3) 2009, pp. 107–110). But it is far from clear that there is any single comparable equivalence relation that can be appealed to in the case of all individual *artefacts*, to underpin *their* identity conditions in a uniform way, without regard to any artefactual sort or kind to which they might be deemed to belong. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwrc4mkbxxr04dqa20tdt96)) > This is the category of *machines*, one paradigm example being that of an *engine* or *motor*. Another equally good example is that of a mechanical *clock*. Why are these different and special in this respect? My answer is that the members of such machine kinds all seem to embody a distinctive *unifying principle of activity* which is constrained by *sortal-specific laws*. The laws in question are, moreover, distinctively laws of *engineering*, not mere laws of ‘natural science’ or ‘physics’, in the entirely indis- criminate sense in which the latter concern the behaviour of physical systems quite generally, at all scales of size and mass from that of fundamental particles upwards. (A simple example of such an engineering law would be the principle explaining the action of a *centrifugal governor* in a steam engine. An even simpler and more familiar example would be the law of the *pendulum*. In each case, the law in question concerns a certain type of potential *machine component* and helps to explain how it can perform its characteristic role in any machine in which it is incorporated as a working part.) But in another and broader sense, of course, these sortal-specific engineering laws are still undoubtedly *natural* laws, where such laws are to be contrasted, for instance, with mere human customs or conventions, and have an objective foundation in mind-independent reality. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwrf9e232wxaarmn48brek9)) > A Martian, visiting Earth after all human life had been extinguished, could surely recognize in a working piston engine an object that *does something*, by its own very nature – for example, *the pistons turn the crankshaft*, *the valves regulate the pressure in the pistons*, and so on ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwrgb2ge37e5jwfmgsvnpyp)) - Note: a lot rests on this claim, I think. > By contrast, a table or a hammer, it seems, *does nothing at all* by its own very nature: it is only configured in a way that makes it apt for *us* to use, so that *we* can do something *with it*. In this case, *we alone are the doers*, not the table or hammer. Of course, we *can* also ‘use’ an engine in this sense – for instance, we can use it to help us to transport heavy goods, by employing it to drive a wheeled vehicle. But that is only because of what the engine *itself* is capable of doing, by its own nature – namely, *driving the wheels of the vehicle*. The key point is that the engine *has* a ‘nature’, which is governed by natural law. Tables and hammers are, of course, *subject to* natural laws: if a table is dropped from a height, it will fall, being subject > to the law of gravity. But tables and hammers are not, it seems, *subjects of* natural law: there are no laws governing what *they* do – for they do *nothing* of themselves, by their own nature, and in that sense *have* no ‘nature’. To explain a table’s fall, no reference to the fact that it is a *table* is needed, since the fall is entirely explained in terms of the nature of the material parts of the table (their weight, shape, air resis- tance, and so forth). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwrhmdhynnwme3m563kgcsx)) > There is no special science of tables or hammers, comparable to the science of engineering that applies to machines, and no corresponding special-science laws, comparable to the laws of engineering. > Should we say, then, that machines constitute a *natural kind*, or at least divide into various different natural kinds, such as *piston engines* and *pendulum clocks*? No, I think not, because they are not *generated* – brought into being – by mind- independent nature, only by intelligent beings, who design and manufacture them. Nonetheless, they do have a real ‘nature’ of their own, because their creators endow them with a unifying principle of activity that is governed by mind-independent laws of action, specific to their sort or kind: *engineering laws*. Such a ‘principle of activity’ is analogous to the sort of *life principle* that unifies the activity of any living organism, coordinating the activities of all its parts in order to preserve the structure and activity of the organism as a whole ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwrk5sftd0ywfscmd4qj6tq)) > One mark of a being that genuinely has such a real, unified ‘nature’ is the fact that we can meaningfully talk about the *malfunctioning* of one of its parts: this happens when a part ceases to work in a way that is conducive to the characteristic activity of the whole. Thus, just as organisms can suffer from *diseases*, so machines can suffer from *breakdowns*. A knife or ham- mer can of course be *broken*, but this is not like the ‘breakdown’ of a machine, which involves a critical impediment to its characteristic way of working. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwrks9pgbq7z82c9fj4c788)) > Of course, this then raises the question of how sharp the machine/utensil distinc- tion can credibly be said to be. To which I reply that, while there may indeed be borderline cases, so too are there between living and nonliving things, and that we should not allow the existence of borderline cases to undermine our belief in real distinctions ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwwrpb06gw5z404mwgtwq1vt)) > no philosopher who is a realist about organisms should be an antirealist about machines. In both cases, it appears that we have a full enough account, in mind-independent terms, of the grounds of their existence and identity conditions to counter the con- cerns about cardinality that feed the antirealist’s doubts. But not so in the case of *utensils*, it seems. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ja7y6w32r4vdj5ndzm4tp2xn))