Abstract
This chapter introduces the reader to the main difficulties that artefacts pose for ontology. Due to the possibilities of disassembly and reassembly, it is problematic to come up with clear identity conditions for artefacts. Due to the possibility of radical reassembly of parts to create an artefact of another kind, artefact classification is problematic when interpreted ontologically. Since the (re)assembly of artefact components is done by people with certain purposes in mind, artefact ontology seems to depend crucially, and from a metaphysical point of view problematically, on the mental states of humans. The chapter then summarizes how the various contributions in the book discuss aspects of these difficulties and explains how contributions that take an epistemological or ethnographic perspective show the common ground between the contributions that address the problem of artefact kinds from a traditional philosophical perspective and the contributions that focus on artefact classification and “ontology engineering” from an engineering perspective.
Published Version
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