28 Mark Perlman
function on the conscious intentions of a Divine Creator, and Searle, who sees functions
as merely intentional human ascriptions. But even if we were attracted to the noninten-
tionalist accounts of biological functions, Vermaas and Houkes argue that an adequate
theory of the functions of artifacts must be intentionalist, based on the intentions of the
designers. In my taxonomy of theories of functions (fi gure 2.1), the reason I do not sepa-
rate these categories of “intentionalist” and “nonintentionalist” is that there is already a
category for them—the Recent Past Backward-looking Reductionist category. Intentions
of a designer do reach back in time, even if they don’t reach back very far in history,
especially when we consider the great time durations involved in evolutionary history. But
they do precede the artifact and its function. Even the name of many of these Recent Past
Backward-looking theories seems taken from the artifact side: “Goal-Contribution”
theories.
However, though the intentionalist approach to artifact function is attractive, I would
like to urge caution, because this approach overlooks crucial insights in psychology, soci-
ology, and anthropology. In studying people, their behavior, and their creation and use of
artifacts, it is tempting, and easy, to rely on their intentions in so behaving and using
objects (insofar as we can discover their intentions). But this is not the end of the story.
Psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists are (or should be) very wary of letting
such intentional ascriptions cloud over the real function of behavior and artifacts and their
uses. Good methodology in social and cognitive science has us study all of what is being
done, including what people say about what they do, and then use all the evidence in
diagnosing the functions of behaviors and artifacts. Good methodology makes room for
the possibility that the best analysis of human practices (including artifact use) may deviate
from what the subjects themselves think of their own practices. Human behavior results
from many different factors, including tradition and habit and routine. People often do not
themselves know exactly why they do the things they do. When they do provide explana-
tions of their behavior and use of objects, an “objective” outsider might ascribe different
functions to behaviors than the practitioners do. Thus some religious ritual might be seen
by those who practice it (i.e., from the intentional side) as involving tribute to a deity, and
the artifactual objects used in the ritual might be said by the adherents of that religion to
have various supernatural functions. But an anthropologist might analyze the situation as
one in which the behaviors serve to reinforce kinship relations, and the object functions
as status indicator and economic vehicle, even if no one in the group has that intention,
and even if no one in the past ever had that intention. So a ceremonial artifact might have
the function of, say, assisting in reinforcement of kinship ties, and that function might not
be based on any intentions at all. Of course enlightened scientists realize the dangers of
imposing outside judgments on cultural practices, and seek to avoid ethnocentrism. It is
a delicate business to balance the descriptions that the practitioners give with such “outside”
analyses, and this balance is extensively examined in the social sciences. But it is clear
that the best explanations of behavior and artifacts may include ecological, environmental,