Artifacts

This chapter continues the examination of the special features of artifacts by discussing their place within existing essentialist and anti-essentialist frameworks. It will be argued that prominent essentialist treatments of artifacts, such as those proposed by Amie Thomasson, Simon Evnine, and Lynne Rudder Baker, are susceptible to the concern that they exaggerate the creative and discriminating power of human intentions. Existing anti-essentialist frameworks, however, tend to trace the ascriptions of modal features to objects back to our semantic, inferential, or explanatory practices and are therefore also not particularly well suited to capture the primarily practical and action-based orientation of our engagement with the realm of artifacts. For the time being, the special case of artifacts eludes an entirely satisfactory treatment and must await the further development and refinement of suitable essentialist and anti-essentialist frameworks before the status of artifacts within a hylomorphic ontology can be fully resolved.

Derivative Properties and the Too Many Thinkers Problem

The central objection to the constitution view is the too many thinkers problem – if the animal that constitutes you thinks and you are not it, then there are two thinkers within the region you occupy. Lynne Rudder Baker claims that the animal thinks only derivatively, in virtue of constituting the person that thinks nonderivatively, and this leads to a solution to the too many thinkers problem. This paper offers two objections to Baker’s solution. First, the idea of derivative/nonderivative properties faces a dilemma unacceptable to constitutionalists: either the too many thinkers problem is reinstated or the constitution view is undermined by the idea itself. Further, Baker should concede that the person thinks in virtue of brain functions. This implies,