Abstract
The common notion of artifacts characterizes them as the products of successful activities of their makers, guided by intentions that such objects would instantiate certain features, such as their specific functions. Many counterexamples, however, reveal the unsuitability of the common notion. In the face of this acknowledgment, the paper explores the possibility that features of artifacts, and more specifically, the possession of their functions, may arise, at least partially, from collective assignments. In order to achieve the mentioned goal, the paper critically examines some notions and theses put forward by John Searle (1996; 2010) and others. Its main result, however, consists in offering and elucidating an original thesis, namely, that the functions of many artifacts would be maintained, partially, by forms of continuous collective intentionality, which can involve conscious or unconscious, active or inactive collective intentional states. Keywords: Artifacts, assignment of function, collective intentionality, maintenance of function.
Highlights
RESUMO A noção comum de artefatos os caracteriza como produtos de atividades bem-sucedidas de seus fabricantes, orientadas por intenções de que tais objetos instanciassem determinadas características, tais
One plausible view, which agrees with our pre-philosophical intuitions, conceives the existence of an artifact as depending only on the successful intentions of its maker, an existence that ends with some sort of physical destruction of the object
We believe that hammers have the function of nailing nails and screwdrivers of driving screws, and we attribute these beliefs to a group to which we presumably belong. Such collective beliefs may be irrelevant to the existence of artifacts
Summary
RESUMO A noção comum de artefatos os caracteriza como produtos de atividades bem-sucedidas de seus fabricantes, orientadas por intenções de que tais objetos instanciassem determinadas características, tais. I have proposed the question of whether non-makers’ collective intentional states about the functions of artifacts or artifactual kinds consist in actual cases of assignment of function.
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