Abstract
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.
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Notes
Zvolenszky (2016) defends the idea that we are not only capable of creating abstract artifacts, but reinforces Friedell’s notion that this may happen inadvertently; in fact, she argues that inadvertent creation of abstracta is ubiquitous and unsurprising.
That is, let us assume for present purposes that mereological nihilism of the sort defended by van Inwagen (1990) is wrong.
Thus, I am here not interested in human-produced events nor states of affairs, if those are concrete. And even if mereological universalism (i.e., composition is utterly unrestricted) is true, I am not concerned with the object that is composed of my computer, Jupiter’s largest moon, and Socrates’ right big toe. Two excellent overviews of artifacts and attendant issues exist: Hilpinen (2011) and Preston (2019).
I will hereafter use “artifact” to mean concrete artifact, unless otherwise specified.
To borrow an example from Preston (2019), a cosmic ray striking a sheet of scrap metal, turning it red with the white lettering “S-T-O-P,” has not, on Baker’s view, created any artifact at all, let alone a stop sign.
ICP stands for Intended Creation by Pretense.
What should be said about genetically (or otherwise humanly) modified plants or animals? What about ordinary cases of childbirth? It is tempting to restrict the view to disallow any living organisms from counting as artifacts. A restriction of this sort seems ad hoc to me, though. Rather, I think that living organisms may count as artifacts, but in most cases will just be tokens of no ordinary artifact kind. It’s just not the case that there exists any particular established practice (akin to lamp-resting) that similarly configured things, other human offspring (say), are suited to partake in. This is preferable to asserting, in an unprincipled way, that it is metaphysically impossible for humans to create tables (e.g.) via childbirth. We could easily imagine dystopian scenarios where human offspring are role-fillers of this sort.
A few related points: If an artifact is of an ordinary kind, it is of a kind determined by actual human practices. But, as discussed in the previous footnote, it is possible to have artifact tokens of no ordinary artifact kind whatsoever. Whenever there is a human-produced configuration, there is an artifact, but there may never be any actual practice that gets established that that configuration is suited to participate in (objects that we might call blank artifacts). There may, however, be alien (i.e., merely possible) established human practices that such a configuration is suited to participate in. (Which is to say, there may be alien artifact kinds.) Similarly, there may be configurations in merely possible worlds that are suitable for supporting lamps, etc., and some of these will be artifacts in those worlds. But now consider such an entity existing in a world that is devoid of table-y practices. Is that nonactual object nonetheless a table? One might think that since the modal case here is analogous to the temporal case discussed in the body above, the answer is “yes.” And I think that any realist about mere possibilia can justify a short “yes” answer. The realist’s fully-developed, longer answer, however, will depend on her ontology of possibilia. For instance, if she embraces a possibilism of the Lewisean Genuine Modal Realism variety, then there is no reason to deny the configuration in question the status of table. On such a modal view, merely possible configurations are concreta, hence they are the sorts of objects that can be suitable to participate in lamp-resting practices of the kind found in our world (and various others). The analogy with the temporal case will indeed hold. But if she embraces an actualism of the Plantingean Ersatz Realism variety, then she ultimately ought to deny the merely possible configuration in question the status of table. On this sort of modal view, such entities ultimately turn out to be abstracta. Even if she were to then go against the Plantingean orthodoxy and count these as artifacts, they would not be suitable to participate in our table-y practices; it’s impossible to rest a lamp on an abstractum.
What I really mean by “humans” is persons. Non-homo sapien creatures relevantly similar to us could create (artifacts, some of which are) tables. Why aren’t beaver dams artifacts? The answer is that beavers are not relevantly similar to us qua intelligence level and repository of artifact concepts. Beaver dams are created by beavers and indexed to beaver uses (“By Beavers for Beavers!”). Beavers create dams, and perhaps even intentionally, but they do not know what dams are for in the same way that humans do. But intelligent Venutians could create various kinds of artifacts because the configurations their activity would bring about could become suitable for Venutian practices. Some artifacts produced by Venutians could be genuine tables in virtue of their Venutian use matching our homo sapien use and their intelligence level and conceptual repository being on a par with ours.
This is what Hilpinen (2011) calls “residue.” My view also counts what Hilpinen (2011) calls “naturefacts”: naturally occurring objects intentionally modified to serve some purpose. “Modification,” I assume, means configuration alteration by humans, so if modification has occurred, an artifact has been created. That does not entail, however, that an artifact of any particular ordinary kind has been created.
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Goodman, J. On Inadvertently Made Tables: a Brockean Theory of Concrete Artifacts. Acta Anal 36, 1–9 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-020-00438-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-020-00438-w