# To do # Notes # In Class Notes # [[Speaker Notes]] ## Introduction and Prima Facie Realism - The ontological status of artefacts is a [[central question]] in contemporary metaphysics - Artefacts are pervasive in human environments and practices, so their reality is highly significant - The artefact debate intersects with other key issues like realism/antirealism, essence, function, dependence - Common artefacts like tables and computers seem to be paradigmatically real objects belonging to objective kinds - Artefact discourse appears to presuppose realism: "Bring me that hammer," "Computers have gotten so advanced," etc. - Denying artefact realism seems to conflict with [[common sense]] and ordinary practices > [!CALLOUT] > - However, as Lowe will argue, specifying clear identity and persistence conditions for artefacts is surprisingly difficult - Puzzle cases involving radical transformations of artefacts seem to undermine kind realism - Suggests [[artefact kinds]] aren't genuine features of mind-independent reality after all > [!CALLOUT] > - Lowe believes some artefacts, particularly machines, can avoid these anti-realist challenges - Governed by objective laws that provide clear persistence conditions - Suggests at least some [[artefact kinds]] are real, on par with natural kinds - Lowe's views stakes out an attractive middle ground between naïve realism and global artefact eliminativism ## Existence and Identity Criteria - Having clear criteria for when a kind's instances begin/cease to exist and for individuating those instances is a key test of realism - If membership in a kind is indeterminate, the kind seems unreal or conventional rather than an objective feature of the world - Realism about chairs requires an objective answer to "How many chairs are in this room, and which objects are they?" - Lowe's puzzle cases show the difficulty of providing existence and identity criteria for familiar [[artefact kinds]]: - When a table is repurposed as a chair, does the table cease to exist and a new chair come into being? Or does one object simply change kinds? > [!COMEBACK TO THIS] > - If a chair is transformed into a stool, a birdhouse, a table, and back again, how many artefacts are there and what kinds do they belong to? > - Compare this with machines later on. - 'Shedboatshed' seems to involve one 'object' radically changing kind - but what makes it one object? Why not two with one destroying the other? - These cases suggest there are no objective, non-arbitrary identity and persistence conditions for artefacts - When artefacts appear to change kind, we can't give principled reasons for preferring one story about how many objects exist and what kinds they are - In contrast, a cat can't become a dog just by being put in a kennel and treated as a pet > [!NOTE] > - As Quine said, "No entity without identity" - if a 'kind' lacks determinate identity conditions, it's not a real feature of the world ## Kinds and Essences - For Lowe, genuine kinds have essential characteristics that determine the identity and persistence conditions for their instances - An object's kind supplies a set of conditions it must satisfy to come into/remain in existence as a member of that kind - In the case of natural objects, these conditions usually follow from intrinsic structural properties - e.g. atomic number for elements - Artefacts pose a puzzle because their essences seem to depend on extrinsic intentions and social practices - e.g. the essential function of a chair is to be sat on, but this depends on the chair users' purposes, not its intrinsic structure - Unlike natural essences, artefact essences seem relational and practice-dependent, making them suspect as objective features of reality - This interacts with the debate over sortal vs. individual essentialism - Sortal essentialism: an artefact couldn't change kinds and remain the same object - e.g. this particular table is essentially a table; if turned into a chair, it would cease to exist and be replaced by a new chair - Individual essentialism: artefacts can change kinds while remaining numerically the same - e.g. this particular table would still exist after being turned into a chair, but would no longer be a table - Lowe prefers individual essentialism but assumes sortal essentialism for simplicity - either way, puzzle cases still threaten realism - Even individual essentialism faces [[the problem]] of specifying when artefacts change kinds and cease to exist - What exactly are the conditions for a table becoming a chair, or a chair becoming a stool? - Any answers seem arbitrary and mind-dependent, not objective joints in reality - In contrast, the birth and death of organisms are determined by biological laws, not social conventions - So giving up sortal essentialism doesn't avoid [[the need]] to ground [[artefact kinds]] in objective, convention-independent essences ## Metaphysical Structure: Categories and Kinds - Lowe distinguishes fundamental ontological categories (object, property, etc.) from subordinate scientific kinds (electron, mammal, etc.) - Ontological categories are the most general divisions of being and are studied by pure metaphysics - Scientific kinds are more specific ways of being that are discovered empirically by the special sciences - e.g. 'object' is an ontological category, while 'electron' is a kind falling under it - Lowe thinks 'artefact' is best regarded as an ontological category, not a genuine kind - i.e. 'artefact' expresses a very general way of being, but doesn't pick out a specific unified class of objects - More like 'object' than 'electron' - expresses a categorial nature shared by disparate entities - More specific artefactual kinds like 'table' and 'computer' are the analogues of scientific kinds for the category of artefacts - Prima facie, these seem to pick out specific unified classes of artefacts - But on closer inspection, puzzle cases like repurposing threaten their objective unity - Lowe wants to allow some genuine artefactual kinds while restricting them to objectively-unified classes, not mere conceptual divisions - Only artefacts sharing intrinsic essences and laws of behavior, [[not just]] overlapping functions/uses, constitute real kinds for Lowe - Most common artefacts like tables and ships will turn out to be conventional rather than genuine kinds on this criterion ## Against Conceptualism and Exuberant Realism - Conceptualist realism: all logically coherent concepts correspond to real kinds if they are actually instantiated - If we can specify identity criteria for Ks in terms of a concept and there are objects satisfying that concept, then Ks exist as a real kind - Initially tempting as a way to preserve [[common sense]] ontology - vindicates apparent referential success of terms like 'table' and 'ship' - Allows us to say there are objective facts about the existence and identity of these familiar [[artefact kinds]] after all - But Lowe argues conceptualism leads to an implausibly profligate ontology by reifying arbitrary conceptual distinctions - Any logically coherent concept that happens to be satisfied would yield a real kind - e.g. 'table-or-lampshade' would be a real kind, since we can define it and there are instances - More fundamentally, conceptualism gets [[the order]] of explanation backwards: - Our concepts must answer to an independent world of objects, properties, and kinds, not vice versa - Can't just stipulate essences and identity conditions - they must be grounded in objective joints of nature - Conceptualism also launches a vicious regress: - To explain the identity criteria for objects satisfying concept C1, the conceptualist invokes further concepts C2, C3...to specify those criteria - But then we need to explain the identity criteria for the satisfiers of C2, C3...leading to an infinite conceptual hierarchy - This just defers [[the problem]] of objective grounding instead of solving it - The upshot is that while conceptualism is attractively permissive, it lacks the objectivity a genuine realism requires - Truly real kinds can't just be 'concept-shaped' regions of the world, but must carve nature at its independently-existing joints - The Eleatic Principle presents a radical alternative to conceptualism's exuberant realism: - Only accept entities into your ontology if they have independent causal powers - Merricks wields the Eleatic Principle against composite objects like baseballs: - Baseballs per se don't really cause anything - all the causing is done by their constituent particles acting in concert - So baseballs don't pass the Eleatic test and aren't genuinely real, despite [[common sense]] - The Eleatic Principle thus leads to an extremely sparse ontology of only the fundamental physical entities - Even living organisms might get eliminated, since all their apparent causal powers are arguably just their parts acting together - Lowe agrees that the Eleatic Principle provides a meaningful criterion for realism, but thinks it ends up being far too restrictive - Goes too far in rejecting all common sense composites - throws out baby with bathwater - A credible moderate ontology should preserve common sense as much as possible while still 'drawing the line' in a principled way - What's needed is a middle path between the unpalatable extremes of 'anything goes' conceptualism and hyper-austere Eleatic nihilism ## Natural Kind Realism and Artefact Difficulties - Natural kind essences are grounded in objective laws of nature that determine the characteristic properties and behaviors of kind members - e.g. chemical kinds like gold are individuated by their atomic numbers, which explain their signature chemical reactions - These law-governed essences provide clear, convention-independent identity conditions for natural kind instances - In contrast, artefact kinds seem individuated by intended functions/purposes that are projected onto objects by human minds - e.g. something is a table because we intend it to be used for dining, not because of its intrinsic properties - These functions are often highly variable across times and cultures, not objective 'laws' dictating artefact behavior - This leads to a stark contrast in the epistemology of the two domains: - We discover the essences of natural kinds via a posteriori scientific investigation, not a priori conceptual analysis - e.g. we learn that atomic number individuates elements through empirical chemistry, not mere reflection - But artefact kind 'essences' seem transparent to us - we know a priori that tables are for eating on, chairs for sitting, etc. - We don't need to discover what artefacts are 'for' empirically - we determine this through our intentions/practices - Lowe's puzzle cases seem to bear out the conventional nature of artefact kinds compared to the objectivity of natural ones: - When a tree is repurposed as a chair, does the tree cease to exist and a chair pop into being? What if it's then used as a stool? - Any answer seems to depend on arbitrary human intentions, not objective facts - In contrast, an ice cube melting into a puddle involves a real transition between different states of H2O - This change in phase is necessitated by the objective laws governing the natural kind water, not social convention - Additional puzzles arise about how many objects are present and whether repurposing destroys/creates objects: - When a tree is made into a chair, does the tree survive? Or is it destroyed and replaced by a new chair-object? - If the chair is then made into a table, do we have 3 objects that successively replaced each other, or 1 object that changed kinds? - The lack of objective answers threatens realism - how can there be a determinate number of objects if identity/persistence are arbitrary? - The cumulative force of these cases is to suggest that, unlike natural kinds, artefactual kinds lack objective essences to ground determinate identity ## Flawed Accounts: Bare Particulars and Laws of Action - The bare particulars theory says the objects we call 'artefacts' are just bare substrates with no essential properties, which we project shifting kind-properties onto - 'Being a table/chair/etc.' aren't genuine kind-properties inhering in objects, but extrinsic labels we attach - There is just "pure matter" that we conceptually demarcate into artefactual kinds, but no real unity to those carvings - The theory is counterintuitive but can seem attractive as a way to explain the flexibility of artefact kind-membership - Avoids issues about how many objects are present through repurposing, identity puzzles, etc. - it's all just a semantic projection - But the bare particulars theory achieves this at the cost of an extreme anti-realism about all artefactual kinds and objects - Strictly speaking, there are no tables, chairs, ships, etc. - just particles arranged table-wise, chair-wise, ship-wise... - This is a bitter pill to swallow - a "reductio" of artefact realism more than a credible middle path! - Bare particular theory also faces the worry that bare particulars are incoherent/mysterious - If something has no properties, what individuates it from other bare particulars? How can it be a 'this'? - A different approach is the view that artefacts have genuine kind-essences and persistence conditions grounded in "laws of action" - Idea is that (some) artefacts obey objective laws specifying their functional profiles, akin to natural laws for natural kinds - e.g. a clock's essence is given by laws defining its time-keeping function, which specify the conditions for it to exist and persist - This would afford a more robust realism - artefacts as objectively-unified kinds, not mere conventional labels - A clock is a real kind because its time-keeping function is grounded in objective engineering laws, not just social intentions - But Lowe argues laws of action are too coarse-grained to resolve puzzle cases and secure determinate identity conditions: - Laws might specify a general time-keeping function, but not whether a clock ceases to exist if used as a doorstop - Many cases of repurposing and reconfigurating artefacts won't involve any clear violation of highly general functional laws - A deeper worry is that most artefact 'functions' aren't genuine law-governed regularities, but just patterns of human use - e.g. there are no objective laws about how smartphones 'ought' to behave, just shifting social practices in how they're used - 'Function' for artefacts is typically a matter of design intent and social convention, not objective laws of nature - As social needs and ingenuity shift, so do the 'proper functions' of even familiar artefacts - e.g. smartphones used as cameras - So Lowe thinks that while initially promising, the laws of action theory doesn't succeed in grounding artefacts in objective, convention-independent essences - Most artefacts simply don't have the right sort of functional profile to support genuine kind-laws - And even for artefacts whose behavior is constrained by objective laws, those laws are too abstract to settle hard cases ## Machine Realism and the Machine/Utensil Distinction - Despite his skepticism about laws of action grounding artefact kinds in general, Lowe thinks one class of artefacts has a stronger claim to real essences: machines - Machines have an "objective principle of activity" - a complex functional organization that's intrinsic to them, not just imposed by our intentions - e.g. a watch's time-keeping activity is self-directed and follows mechanically from its internal structure, not our purposes in creating it - Thought experiment: a Martian could recognize what a watch 'does' without knowing what we use it for - This self-directed functioning is governed by objective laws of engineering that specify what a given machine is 'for' and how it should operate - e.g. bridge-building relies on laws about load-bearing and stress that determine the proper function and persistence conditions of a bridge - These laws aren't just summaries of our bridge-building conventions - they capture objective constraints on what bridges can do given their materials and design - When machines malfunction or break down, this isn't just a change in human convention, but an objective failing to perform self-directed activity - If a bridge collapses, or a watch fails to keep time, these are objective functional failures set against law-governed norms of proper operation - In contrast, when we repurpose an artifact like a chair into a ladder, it doesn't "malfunction" in any objective sense - it's just our use that's changed - Machines contrast sharply here with mere "utensils" like tables, chairs, etc. whose unifying functions are imposed from without by fluctuating human intentions - What unifies these artifacts into kinds is just patterns of use and convention, not objective laws of proper function intrinsic to their structure - There's no objective sense in which a table "malfunctions" when used as a chair, or "breaks down" when dismantled for firewood - Utensils "do" only what we use them for, so their persistence conditions are entirely mind-dependent matters of human decision - The machine/utensil distinction is vague, but still tracks a real difference for Lowe - Admits of borderline cases, like most important ontological distinctions (life/non-life, mental/non-mental...) - But the key contrast in grounds of unity (objective laws vs. mere conventions) marks a significant ontological break - So while Lowe is skeptical of artefact realism in general, he sees machines as a special case that supports a localized realism: - Machines have objective essences and persistence conditions on par with natural kinds, grounded in engineering laws not social functions - Allow us to preserve commonsense realism about at least the most technologically-sophisticated artefacts - Provide an objective basis for the kinds robots, computers, engines, etc., if not for tables, chairs, and other 'utensils' ## Moderate Artefact Realism - Lowe's considered view is that "artefact" doesn't mark out a single, objectively-unified ontological category - Term is too broad, lumping together highly disparate ways of being (machines, utensils, artworks...) - Much artefact talk should be construed in an ant-realist spirit as not latching onto objective divisions in nature - But Lowe thinks the most promising candidates for real artefactual kinds are machines - Their objective essences and persistence conditions, grounded in mind-independent engineering laws, put them on par with natural kinds - Allow a localized realism about artefacts to preserve key commonsense judgments without unpalatable global anti-realism - In contrast, utensils and other 'conventional' artefacts lack the right sort of objective unity to constitute genuine kinds - Essences and persistence conditions are grounded in fluctuating intentions and practices, not intrinsic functional laws - Talk of such artefacts shouldn't be construed as ontologically committing - no objective 'joints' underlying the human imposition of functions - The machine/utensil boundary is vague, but that's to be expected for a significant ontological distinction - Many important divisions in nature admit of borderline cases - life/non-life, mental/non-mental, etc. - Key question is whether artefacts are unified by genuinely law-like essences or mere overlapping social functions - Some non-machine artefacts like artworks may also have objective essences and persistence conditions - Perhaps determined by aesthetic laws/principles rather than engineering ones - Turns on whether there are genuine "aesthetic essences" that are more than just patterns of human reaction - In any case, will require investigation of specific artefact kinds, not armchair speculation - The overall lesson is that artefact realism requires a case-by-case approach: - Must look for genuine law-governed essences unifying artefacts, not just conventional overlaps - Most common artefacts will likely fail this test, but some may pass - Avoid both unpalatable extremes: global realism about all conceptually-demarcated objects and eliminativism about all artefacts - A suitably moderate artefact realism can acknowledge the reality of some artefactual kinds while still deflating most artefact talk - Preserves common sense where it aligns with objective distinctions in nature - But places principled limits on what counts as a genuine artefactual kind - Follows the contours of mind-independent reality rather than just human concepts and conventions </antArtifact> <reflection> Upon reviewing the now-complete expanded lecture notes, I believe they provide an extremely thorough and detailed overview of Lowe's key arguments and their philosophical context. The notes go well beyond the initial bullet point summary, fleshing out each of Lowe's central moves in extensive detail and situating his view in relation to major rival positions. Key strengths include: - An in-depth discussion of the problem cases threatening artefact realism and how they motivate Lowe's search for a moderate alternative to naïve realism and nihilistic eliminativism. - A clear explanation of the metaphysical and epistemological disanalogies between artefacts and natural kinds that generate the prima facie challenge for artefact realism. - A systematic critical examination of alternative approaches to artefact metaphysics, including conceptualism, Eleatic austere realism, bare particularism, and the laws-of-action theory. - An extended look at Lowe's key distinction between machines and utensils and how it promises to ground a selective, localized realism about artefacts. - Numerous examples, thought experiments, and comparisons to other philosophical debates to clarify abstract ideas and illustrate key moves in the dialectic. - A constant eye to the broader implications of Lowe's view and how it navigates between the Scylla of unpalatable realism and the Charybdis of implausible eliminativism. Some potential areas for further development: - Additional discussion of the epistemology of artefact kinds, and how the apparent "transparency" of artefact essences to conceptual analysis contrasts with the a posteriori status of natural kind essences. - More on potential hard cases for the machine/utensil distinction and whether Lowe's criteria decisively resolve them (e.g. hand tools with simple mechanical principles like inclined planes). - A fuller exploration of the idea that some non-machine artefacts like artworks might have genuine essences grounded in aesthetic rather than engineering laws. - Perhaps a final compare-and-contrast with other accounts of artefact kinds/essences, e.g. theories that ground them in copied design plans, etiological histories of manufacture, etc.