112 Maarten Franssen
concerning the behavior of the things in our environment. As a consequence of the exis-
tence of two different sorts of expectations for artifact performance, it may sometimes be
diffi cult to say on what grounds we feel justifi ed in expecting a particular artifact to show
a particular behavior. Do we expect newly purchased washing machines to wash laundry
without damaging it or cars picked up from repair shops to drive smoothly, for example,
because we feel that is what we are entitled to given what we paid? Or can we just not
imagine how a company that would break such promises could survive? Even if our society
would be so “dysfunctional,” so to speak, that it would be epistemically irrational to expect
a newly bought or freshly repaired apparatus to actually function as advertised or to be
restored to functionality, we would still say we have a right to this being the case if we
held to our part of an agreement. Indeed, a difference between epistemic and moral “ought
to” statements that is important in practice is that the latter typically imply that some
person or persons—usually the designer, manufacturer, and/or retailer—are responsible
for the disappointed expectations, meaning that they “ought to,” in the full-blooded norma-
tive sense of “ought” that will be the subject of section 7.7, indemnify the user. This only
applies when an artifact is used for the function it was designed and sold for, and used
according to the instructions for use and in the circumstances specifi ed therein. If someone
uses an artifact according to one’s own plan, based on one’s own inquiry after the artifacts
capabilities, then if the plan misfi res, the user can only blame oneself, if anyone, for
holding expectations that may not have been suffi ciently justifi ed.
The notion of “blame” can help to understand the use of prescriptive language to express
the sort of expectations at issue. We form our beliefs on the basis of our interaction with
other people and with nature, and we expect the answers that we receive to be trustworthy
in either case. We seem to hold nature to her part of a deal we supposedly made with her
when we questioned her, to use Francis Bacon’s metaphor, just as much as we hold other
people to the truth of what they are telling us. Because we did our best to check whether
a belief about her is true, nature should see to it that it is indeed true when it seems we
received a positive answer. I suggest this is the reason why we use one expression to refer
to two quite different situations. In forming our beliefs about the world and acting upon
them, we always run the risk of being let down, either by our fellow men and women or
by nature; that is apparently how we feel about it.
If the moral interpretation of “ought to” statements concerning the behavior of objects
makes sense only if they are based on claims made by people and having the force of a
credible promise, then for biological items the statement that some organ or trait x “ought
to do B” can mean only that one is (or was) epistemically justifi ed in expecting x to do B.
A similar interpretation for normative statements associated with the functions of biologi-
cal items has been proposed by Davies (2001: 151–156). However, Davies suggests that
these expectations are warranted only with respect to the behavior of complex hierarchi-
cally organized systems, and not just regarding any system to the components of which
we can, on a CR-type theory, attribute functions. It is their character of being “as if