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(A1) If an object is an artifact, it has anauthor.Can (A1) be strengthened to an equivalence? Experimental artifacts areunintended products of the experimenter's plans and actions, butotherwise the word is usually applied only to intended products: notall products of an agent's actions are artifacts. If we restrict theapplication of the expressions ‘author’ and‘authorship’ in a similar way, we might strengthen (A1) to
(A2) An object is an artifact if and only if it has anauthor.According to (A2),artifact andauthor arecorrelative concepts (Hilpinen 1993). It should be observed that (A2)allows the possibility that an artifact has more than one author: suchobjects may be termed ‘collective artifacts’. (A2) makesthe concept of artifact equivalent to that ofwork (as productas opposed to activity); for example, according to (A2), all works ofart, including musical and literary works, should be called‘artifacts’ insofar as they have authors. In aesthetics,the expression ‘artifact’ has been used in this wide sensewhen it has been argued, as many philosophers have done, that works ofart are necessarily artifacts. In a more restricted sense which iscloser to the "archaeological" meaning mentioned above, artifacts arephysical objects or in any case inhabitants of the physical,spatio-temporal world. If we say that an author can create a work onlyby making some artifact (e.g., to write a novel, one has to produce amanuscript), the expression ‘artifact’ is used in thisnarrow (or primary) sense.
An object which is an artifact in this primary sense is usually madefrom some pre-existing object or objects by successive intentionalmodifications; this activity is calledwork. This feature ofartifacts is reflected in the definition of an artifact as an object"showing human workmanship or modification".
When a person intends to make an object, his productive intentionhas as its content some description of the intended object; the agentintends to make an object of a certain kind. An author's intention"ties" to an artifact a number of predicates which determine theintended character of the object. The existence and some ofthe properties of the artifact are dependent on its intended character.This is expressed by the followingDependence Condition:
(DEP) The existence and some of the properties of anartifact depend on an agent's (or author's) intention to make an objectof certain kind.The causal tie between an artifact and its intended character -- or,strictly speaking, between an artifact and the author's productiveintention -- is mediated by the author's actions, that is, by his workon the object. The actual properties of an artifact constitute itsactual character. The success of the author's productiveactivity depends on the degree of fit or agreement between the intendedand the actual character of the object. The actual character of anartifact is of course always much richer than the intended character;the artifact fits the author's intentions if and only if the formerincludes the latter. At least one of the descriptions included in theintended character must be a sortal predicate which determines theidentity of the object and the criteria by which it can bedistinguished from other objects. For example, ‘painting’and ‘chair’ are sortal descriptions, but ‘redthing’ is not: it is possible to give a definite answer to thequestion of how many chairs there are in a given room, but not to thequestion of how many red things there are in the room.
An author's productive activity may beevaluated on thebasis of the relationships among the intended character of an artifact,its actual character, and a purposeF:
(E1) The degree of fit or agreement between the intendedcharacter and the actual character of an object,and(E2) The degree of fit between the intended character of an objectand the purposeF, in other words, the suitability of anobject of the intended kind for the purposeF,
(E3) The degree of fit between the actual character of anobject and the purposeF, that is, the suitability of anartifact forF.(E1) determines whether an artifact is a successful embodiment of theauthor's intentions, (E2) determines whether the character that theauthor intends to give to an artifact is suitable for the purposeF, and (E3) tells whether the author has succeeded in makingan object that is in fact suitable for the purposeF. Thestudy of artifacts (as artifacts) is intrinsically evaluative,since viewing an object as an artifact means viewing it in the light ofintentions and purposes.
The purposeF on which the evaluation of an artifact andits design is based need not be the purpose that the author had inmind; it can be any purpose for which the artifact might be used. Thedirection of evaluation may be reversed so that the maker or owner ofan artifact tries to find new uses for it. In addition, we shoulddistinguish the actual character of an artifact from the author'sconception of it. If the author's conception of an object agrees withits intended character, the artifact is subjectively satisfactory forthe author, but it may fail to fit the author's productive intentionsif he has a mistaken conception of it.
If the author's productive activity is successful, the character ofa completed artifact both depends on and agrees with his productiveintentions so that it can be regarded as an embodiment of theseintentions.If the actual character of an object does not agree with itsintended character, it is unsatisfactory from the author's point ofview, and if the author's conception of an object does not agree withits intended character, the artifact is subjectively unsatisfactoryfrom the author's point of view. In the latter case the author has areason to try to improve the object until it satisfies his productiveintentions. A change in an object which improves the fit between itsactual and intended character is, from the standpoint of the author'sintentions, aprogressive change.
It seems plausible to regard an object as a proper artifact only ifits maker's productive activity has some degree of success, forexample, satisfies some sortal predicate included in his productiveintention. This condition may be termed theSuccessCondition:
(SUC) An object is an artifact made by an author only if itsatisfies some sortal description included in the author's productiveintention.If an agent's activity fails in every respect, the agent does notaccomplish anything, but produces only "scrap". But even if the objectdoes not fit the author's productive intention, but heacceptsit as a satisfactory realization of his intention, it may be regardedas a proper artifact; this is expressed by the followingAcceptanceCondition:
(ACC) An object is an artifact made by an author only ifthe author accepts it as satisfying some sortal description included inhis productive intention.If an artifact has several authors, the Acceptance Condition shouldhold for at least one of them. According to the Acceptance Condition,an object is an artifact only if its maker regards it as such, that is,accepts it as a product of his intentional activity. The SuccessCondition concerns the fit between the actual and the intendedcharacter of an object; the Acceptance Condition the fit between theauthor's conception of an object and its intended character. In thiscontext it should be observed that the author's intention may changeduring his productive activity. In the above conditions,‘productive intention’ should be regarded as referring tothe content of the author's "final" intentions concerning the artifact.
The conditions listed above provide a partial characterization ofthe concept of artifact. We might say that different intentionallymodified objects exhibit different degrees of artifactuality, dependingon how well they satisfy these conditions.
Randall Dipert's (1993) theory of artifacts includes the conditionthat an artifact (in the strict sense) should be intended by its authorto be recognized as having been intentionally modified for a certainpurpose. This is a plausible condition, since anF-object canpresumably be a goodF-object only if its potential usersrecognize it as such. However, this recognizability should not be takento mean general recognizability: a mechanical shark used in making anadventure film is an artifact, but its authors do not wish the audienceto recognize it as such, on the contrary; the condition ofrecognizability concerns only the persons who are using it in themaking of the film.
| Risto Hilpinen hilpinen@miami.edu |
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