Is an object used as a tool, an artefact? That’s how the discussion begins in Pavlos Lefas’ excellent article on the Greek philosophical magazine “Cogito” (Lefas, 2006). Is the first bone used a club to hit an enemy an artefact? One way is to follow Aristotle and claim that it is not an artefact, as it was not created as such (ποιητικόν αίτιον, efficient cause). This way of thinking most overcome the following problem: the bone once was part of a skeleton, but no someone uses it as a club. What is it now if not an artefact? Does the object change according to its use? Lefas dismisses the last view as anthropocentric. The first view, Aristotle’s, gives primacy to the original use of the object and phenomena like this remain unexplained.

According to Evans humans first began using natural objects as tools rather than crafting them. This presupposes an abstraction of the natural object vis a vis the objective to be reached: before becoming homo faber, he was homo bricoleur.

Intended character of the object rests on the characteristics of the artefact intended for a purpose by the designer. A relevant notion is Hilpinen’s Dependence Condition (1992, p. 65):

    The existence and some of the properties of an artefact depend on an author’s intention to make an object of certain kind.

The intended character lies opposite the actual properties of the artefact that constitute its actual character.

Hilpinen also distinguishes between the significant for a purpose F (F-significant) properties of an object. The object has also other properties insignificant for purpose F.

Artefacts have been extensively researched in Ergonomics, with various approaches. Activity Theory (Nardi, 1996) in particular is concerned with how artefacts change both the object(-ive) to be reached and ourselves. In order to explain situations like the use of objects for uses different than the intended one, Cole (1996)

Phenomena like those of catachresis (i.e. the use of an artefact violating its intented character) can be better explained by substituting the notion of artefact with the notion of instrument. This is a Piagetian concept: the instrument includes both the artefact and the usage schemes employed by the user for the task at hand. So a bone ontologically remains a bone, but when someone uses it with the “club” usage scheme (its actual characteristics of length and hardness make it compatible) it becomes an instrument of type “club”.

Figure 1: An Activity Theory Triangle

Figure 2: From Artefact to Instrument

An object has some inherent qualities that dictate its use: Gibson (1979) introduced the notion of affordance to explain such phenomena. So a flat rock is sit-on-able because it is flat, while a pointy rock is not. But rock is a natural entity: it does not have an intended character.

Lefas reaches to a Heideggerian result: thinking and acting are not separate, but intertwined. The problem is how to analyze this composite entity. Did the hen lay the egg? History, semiosis come to help but these are fuzzy tools…

Bibliography

Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Gibson, J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Hilpinen, R. (1992). Artifacts and Works of Art. Theoria , 58-82.

Lefas, P. (2006, November). The Bone, the Club, the Cave and The House. Cogito , pp. 116-118.

Nardi, B. (1996). Context and Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

 

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