Composite Agency and Artifact Abilities

Abstract

Since we have witnessed the rampant development of technology in recent years and worries concerning the independence of artifacts and potential antagonism between artifacts and human beings are proliferated, a philosophical investigation into the nature of artifacts is especially pressing. This essay invokes the resources from the contemporary philosophy of dispositions and abilities to provide a novel perspective of the metaphysical nature of artifact function (and hence artifacts abilities) with a special focus on the role of human beings in relation to artifacts via the process of their ability-manifestation. By introducing and discussing some interconnected issues in contemporary debates including semantic analysis, intrinsic/extrinsic distinction, and causal basis, this essay is anticipated to establish a sophisticated account of artifacts abilities, which suggests that artifacts abilities must be understood as the composite agency with human beings are an essential constituent. KEYWORDS Disposition; Abilities; ArtifactWe live in a world full of artifacts. One point that stirs philosophical interest in artifacts is the nature of artifact function since our modern life is deeply entangled with artifacts equipped with various functions: a smartphone can record videos; a navigation application can find you the right way; an airplane can fly and carry hundreds of people across the globe. Although these functions are impressive and complicated so that they sometimes go beyond the intellectual grasp of ordinary people, we should not forget the fact that all artifacts are designed, manufactured, and supposed to work only in situations where human operators are available, therefore they are still in some sense dependent on human beings. It is this feature of artifacts that renders the place of artifacts in human society (or put it in another way, the place of human beings in a world of artifacts) an arresting topic of philosophical concern.Facing this issue, philosophical debates on artifact function are mainly the endeavor to account for the embeddedness of artifacts in human society and lay the major part of attention on the history of how artifacts are produced and reproduced (Preston 2020). Inspired by Searle (1995), many hold the view that artifact functions are dependent on and derivative of a collective human intention since their reproduction will not be maintained without the collective human intention. Philosophers on the other side resist the intentionalist picture of artifact functions and emphasize the fact that the collective human intention of artifact production and reproduction has its base in artifact function, which seduce, channel, and reinforce the unfolding of the material and productive culture of human society in a certain direction (Preston 2013). Between these two extremes, there is