Being For 173
for the features that mark the Stance of Design as anything more than a simple reasoning
skill. These are the relative quickness and precocity with which humans apply it (cf. Bloom
1998). Finally German and Defeyter do not explain how and why the Design Stance
develops from primitive competencies.
The second hypothesis, by Kelemen and Carey, that hinges on the idea of promiscuous
teleology seems to be more coherent; yet, unfortunately, it lacks an adequate clarifi cation
of “promiscuous teleology.” Such a notion is intuitively perspicuous, but is described as
an innate bias toward purpose: little explanation is provided for it, both in terms of rigor-
ous characterization and in terms of its justifi cation. Kelemen assumes this bias on the
basis of some interesting experimental evidence, but she does not clearly argue her
assumption, making it thus appear rather ad hoc. Moreover, the appeal to a bias toward
purpose runs the risk of being a petitio principii, if no further conceptual analysis of it is
provided. It seems to explain the ascription of purpose or function^9 to things with the bias
or tendency of young humans to ascribe purpose or function to things. Therefore the
explanatory power of promiscuous teleology is limited to a little empirical observation
that young human beings ascribe purpose or function to things, but the notions of “purpose”
and “function” remain unexplained. The justifi cation of the Design Stance on the basis of
promiscuous teleology might be acceptable in common terms but is relatively insignifi cant
from a scientifi c and/or philosophical point of view.
There are other general remarks to make about the two proposals that I have taken into
consideration. Each characterization of the Design Stance includes an appeal both to causal
cognition^10 and to the capacity to identify intentionality and/or agency. However, neither
is the appeal to causal cognition suffi cient, nor is the appeal to the capacity of identifi ca-
tion of intentionality necessary or suffi cient, to capture the entities to which we apply the
Stance of Design. The characteristic feature at stake is the functionality of those entities,
a feature that I will label “for-ness” from now on (cf. Meijers and Kroes 2005: x) because
it underscores those entities in terms of “what they are for.”
Let us now address the problem of characterizing “for-ness” in causal terms. In order
to realize that a certain item X is for Y we need to know more than the simple fact that
X causes Y. Arguably the knowledge that X is for Y also requires the knowledge that X
causes Y. Indeed if one knows that X is for Y, maybe one also knows that in some way
or in some sense X causes Y; but equalizing the two forms of knowledge is inappropriate:
the knowledge of simple causality does not account for the amount of information that is
provided by knowing for-ness. Indeed functional knowledge could be thoroughly scruti-
nized in terms of causal reasoning and the perception of causal relations. However, none
of the cognitive approaches^11 to causal cognition would be able to properly account for
the perception of functionality. Causal cognition consists essentially of the psychological
processes that bring forth knowledge of at least a binary relation between the cause C and
the effect E. For example, one knows that fi re (C) causes smoke (E),^12 but stating that fi re
has the function or is for producing smoke would sound wrong as well as weird, even