Actions as Artifacts

Evnine, Simon J.

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198779674.003.0007

Cited by 9 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…However, very different accounts of parthood, composition, and persistence for material objects can also be fruitfully applied to social groups once those are understood mereologically. To take a recent example that stands in an ancient tradition, Simon Evnine (2016) understands material objects in terms of matter and form, taking a ‘top-down’ approach to the unification of material parts in an organism or artifact. As applied to social groups, this suggests a less abundant picture of the social world, with groups formed out of material persons in ways that are underpinned by functions or intentions.…”

Section: Conclusion and Next Stepsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Mereology

Hawley¹

2017

J. of the Am. Philos. Assoc.

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What kind of entity is a committee, a book group or a band? I argue that committees and other such social groups are concrete, composite particulars, having ordinary human beings amongst their parts. So the committee members are literally parts of the committee. This mereological view of social groups was popular several decades ago, but fell out of favour following influential objections from David-Hillel Ruben. But recent years have seen a tidal wave of work in metaphysics, including the metaphysics of parts and wholes. We now have the resources to rehabilitate the mereological view of social groups. I show how this can be done, and why we should bother.

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Section: Conclusion and Next Stepsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Mereology

Hawley¹

2017

J. of the Am. Philos. Assoc.

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“…16 See also James Dominic Rooney (2022), who argues that anyone committed to some form of restricted composition counts as a hylomorphist. deflationary terms, as 'principles of unity' that bear a non-mereological relation to substances (Johnston 2006), or as mental projections onto matter (Evnine 2016, Goswick 2018, Sattig 2015, or as abstract roles or offices that portions of matter occupy (Shields 2019). And a number of hylomorphists believe that forms exist in some robust sense, but deny that they are parts of substances.…”

Section: Diagnosismentioning

confidence: 99%

Do substances have formal parts?

Renz

2023

Philosophical Books

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Hylomorphism is the Aristotelian theory according to which substances are composed of matter and form. If a house is a substance, then its matter would be a collection of bricks and timbers and its form something like the structure of those bricks and timbers. It is widely agreed that matter bears a mereological relationship to substance; the bricks and timbers are parts of the house.But with form things are more controversial. Is the structure of the bricks and timbers best conceived as a part of the house, or is it related to the house in some non-mereological fashion? Kathrin Koslicki argues that substances have formal parts, that forms are best conceived as bearing a mereological relation to substances. This paper shows that her argument fails, given the traditional and plausible distinction between substances and accidental unities. I close with a brief suggestion for a non-mereological construal of forms.

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“…Finally, note that by appealing to this aspect DAT can account for latent functions: totem poles have the function of reinforcing group identity even if this was not explicitly intended by any participant, because this is the eect that accounts for its reproduction. 13 Therefore, this second aspect of DAT can account for Essential/accidental, Explanation and Normativity. Indeed, note that those who already accept an etiological theory for biological functions and hold that this theory satises Essential/accidental, Explanation and Normativity in the biological domain are probably forced to accept that an analogous process can ground these features in the context of artifacts.…”

Section: Accounting For the Desideratamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is not an assumption of DAT. 13 DAT requires non-intentional functions to be reproduced eects, so the rst token of a new kind that has no intended function cannot have a function (not even a 'latent' one). That seems correct to me.…”

Section: Accounting For the Desideratamentioning

confidence: 99%

A Dual-Aspect Theory of Artifact Function

Artiga

2021

Erkenn

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The goal of this essay is to put forward an original theory of artifact function, which takes on board the results of the debate on the notion of biological function and also accommodates the distinctive aspects of artifacts. More precisely, the paper develops and defends the Dual-Aspect Theory, which is a monist account according to which an artifact's function depends on intentional and reproductive aspects.

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Actions as Artifacts

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Social Mereology

Social Mereology

Do substances have formal parts?

A Dual-Aspect Theory of Artifact Function

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