Abstract
Artefacts can influence our actions in several ways. They can be instruments, enabling and facilitating actions, where their presence affects the number and quality of the options for action available to us. They can also influence our actions in a morally more salient way, where their presence changes the likelihood that we will actually perform certain actions. Both kinds of influences are closely related, yet accounts of how they work have been developed largely independently, within different conceptual frameworks and for different purposes. In this paper I account for both kinds of influences within a single framework. Specifically, I develop a descriptive account of how the presence of artefacts affects what we actually do, which is based on a framework commonly used for normative investigations into how the presence of artefacts affects what we can do. This account describes the influence of artefacts on what we actually do in terms of the way facts about those artefacts alter our reasons for action. In developing this account, I will build on Dancy’s (2000a) account of practical reasoning. I will compare my account with two alternatives, those of Latour and Verbeek, and show how my account suggests a specification of their respective key concepts of prescription and invitation. Furthermore, I argue that my account helps us in analysing why the presence of artefacts sometimes fails to influence our actions, contrary to designer expectations or intentions.
Highlights
When it comes to affecting human actions, it seems artefacts can play two roles
Having gone into Dancy’s account of practical reasons, I will examine how facts about artefacts alter our reasons for action when those artefacts prescribe and invite actions in Sections 3 and 4
In this paper I have developed a descriptive account of how the presence of artefacts affects what we do, which is based on a framework commonly used for normative investigations into how the presence of artefacts affects what we can do
Summary
When it comes to affecting human actions, it seems artefacts can play two roles. In their first role they can enable or facilitate human actions. Speed bumps can be said to prescribe slowing down to the oncoming driver, while SUVs seem to invite reckless driving Philosophers who investigate this role tend do so for descriptive purposes, to come to general yet revealing analyses of the different ways in which the presence of artefacts changes how we relate to the world, for example, how we see the world (Ihde 1990) and act in it (Verbeek 2005), and how the presence of artefacts shapes scientific practice (Latour 1987), politics (Winner 1986), or societies (Akrich 1992).
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