Design, Use, and the Physical and Intentional Aspects of Technical Artifacts

It has been argued that technical artifacts are a special category of objects that require a combination of the physical and intentional ‘descriptions of the world’. In this chapter, I question this point of view. Any object can figure in the intentional actions of some person, for example as being used for a purpose. A more interesting question is whether there is a unique most adequate way of intentionally describing a technical artifact as what it is for, or, in other words, to what extent the character of an object as a particular sort of technical artifact is fixed. In this contribution I argue against the view that it is fixed. What an artifact is for generally depends both on what it was designed for and on what it is being used for. A consequence of this view is that the metaphysical status of technical artifacts, in the form of a precise answer to the question what sort of artifact it is, or whether it is or is not an artifact of some particular kind, is vague or indeterminate in cases where its use does not match its design. This, however, is precisely the sort of metaphysical vagueness that pervades the intentional conceptualization, as can be illustrated by arguments from the writings of Parfit and Davidson.