168 Giacomo Romano
My chapter is organized as follows: Section 10.1 introduces the properties that ontolo-
gists consider distinctive of artifacts versus natural entities, and scrutinizes the psychologi-
cal accounts of these features in terms of the Design Stance. Section 10.2 constitutes a
critique of these psychological accounts. In section 10.3 I propose my explanatory hypoth-
esis about those properties by appealing to “functional knowledge” as distinct from
metaintentional capacities. Finally, I summarize my ideas and refer to their relation to
ontological questions.
10.1 Artifacts and the Stance of Design
10.1.1
Generally speaking, philosophical ideas about artifacts, natural entities, and the difference
between the two share the aim and the scope of the following defi nition of artifact by
Peter Simons (1995: 33):
artefact Any object produced to design by skilled action. Artefacts are continuants, that is, objects
persisting in time.... Artefacts are not exclusively human.... Artefacts contrast with natural
objects. Aristotle considered artefacts, defi ned by function rather than an autonomous principle of
unity and persistence, not to be substances.
Simons’s defi nition sets out to grasp the real nature of artifacts by listing the properties
that amount to artifactually essential features.^2 Among these, several theorists (e.g., Rea
1995; Wiggins 2001; Baker 2004) have stressed the feature that marks the opposition
between artifacts and natural objects as a distinctive artifactual property, not a marginal
one. Such a feature in Simons’s defi nition is implied by the notion of being “produced to
design by skilled action” as well as, though less explicitly, by the notion of being “defi ned
by function.” These notions can be explained with the appeal to the dependency of artifacts
on the mind. Baker (2004), for example, recognizes mind-dependency as one of the core
properties of artifacts; one that does not belittle their ontological dignity, contrary to what
other philosophers hold (e.g., Hoffman and Rosenkrantz 1997; Wiggins 2001). Most prob-
ably, philosophers will endorse artifacts as being mind-dependent. Generally speaking, the
relation that determines mind-dependency, and thus also the identity of an artifact, is the
ratio between the intentional perspective of the creator of the artifact and the conformity
of the process of realization of the artifact to such a perspective. The same relation is also
supposed to account for the functional characterization of artifacts because the function
of artifacts is usually taken to be the effect intended by their creators (cf. Baker 2004).
Mind-dependency is therefore identifi ed as the relational property (or set of properties)
that determines the dependency of an artifact on the mind of its creator; but this charac-
terization, if left unspecifi ed, is trivial, because it does not clarify what the relation of
dependency is. Ontologists have also undoubtedly worked on the defi nition establishing