Being For 171
involved with the cognitive competence that is provided by the Stance of Design, the
hypotheses about its psychological structure require from the subjects who are supposed
to apply it 1) the capacity to understand causal relations, and 2) the capacity to ascribe
intentional attitudes. Both these components seem necessary to grasp the notion of some-
thing being “intentionally made.” German and Johnson also proposed a controversial
hypothesis about the complex pattern of reasoning (the psychological structure) that
underlies the understanding of artifacts and is based on these two capacities. Such
reasoning
stems from the idea that the notion of “intentionally made for purpose x” involves coordinating two
mental states: fi rstly that of the maker and secondly that of a subsequent user. One way of capturing
the notion of design, therefore, is as a recursive mental state, as in “the maker intends that ‘the user
intends that x.’ ” (German and Johnson 2002: 297)
A debated question is relative to the development of the Stance of Design from more
primitive psychological components. There is in fact some disagreement about when
children can be said to have fully acquired the Design Stance and the solution to this
problem can also defi ne the modalities of its acquisition as well as its basic working.
German and Defeyter (2000) hold that the Stance of Design reaches maturity only
after each gear of the mental apparatus (mechanisms deputed to physical/causal
knowledge, to the recognition of others’ minds, to naïve biological categorization) has
been oiled with some practice. Children would master the Stance through its repeated
application and that would provide reasoning with some progressive constraints only by
the age of seven. To German and Defeyter’s view, therefore, the Stance of Design is a
complex and abstract scheme built on core cognitive structures (probably innate) with
which every human being is endowed from birth. Thus the Design Stance is an acquired
reasoning skill consisting of the application of a useful mental scheme that is acquired
after the development of prior basic competencies. Such a hypothesis implies that the
Stance of Design is neither an innate psychological faculty, nor a cognitive ability that
develops having evolved from the specifi c articulation and combination of certain other
human faculties.
Kelemen and Carey also propose a developmental pattern in the understanding of
design:
... children move from understanding an artifact as a means to an intentional end (thus “for” a
user’s current goal), to viewing it as the embodiment of a goal (thus “for” a privileged, intrinsic,
enduring, function) to fi nally understanding it in terms of a full-blown Design Stance—an explana-
tory structure that is anchored by an understanding of intended function and supports rich inferences
about the artifact’s raison d’étre, kind, properties, and future activity. (2007: 224)
Like German and Johnson, Kelemen and Carey consider the Design Stance to be the result
of attitudes that are more basic, such as the