Technical Artifacts, Engineering Practice, and Emergence 291
combining the view of complete epistemic access to emergent causal powers with the idea of ontological
emergence?
- Kim (1999) makes a similar remark about designing systems with phenomenal experiences: “But it is diffi -
cult to imagine our designing novel devices and structures that will have phenomenal experiences; I don’t think
we have any idea were to begin. The only way we can hope to manufacture a mechanism with phenomenal
consciousness is to produce an appropriate physical duplicate of a system that is known to be conscious. Notice
that this involves inductive prediction, whereas theoretical prediction is what is needed to design new physical
devices with consciousness.” - For the epistemic reduction relation alone, Van Gulick (2001, p. 15) mentions fi ve possibilities.
- Note that the “in principle” clause decouples this type of nonpredictability from a knowing subject or a
knowledge base. For an interesting discussion of various forms of in-principle nonpredictability, see Stephan
(2002). - Can the function of an object be predicted? Here we take the prediction of the function to mean the predic-
tion of the use of that object corresponding to that function. - This example, by the way, makes clear that the two criteria for epistemic emergence, nonpredictability and
nonexplainability, may become intertwined. - There is no generally accepted model for an explanation of the technical function of an object; the notion
of an explanation of a technical function used here is of a rather intuitive kind. - This observation also holds if the following defi nition of weak emergence, one proposed by Chalmers (2002),
is adopted: “Emergence is the phenomenon wherein a system is designed according to certain principles, but
interesting properties arise that are not included in the goals of the designer.” - These two forms of emergent features derive from an ambiguity in the notion of “novel” in the general
characterization of emergence; “novel” may be taken to mean novel in time, or novel with respect to the proper-
ties of the emergence base. - The only exception may be the engineering of sociotechnical systems. The expression “sociotechnical
system” refers to complex, large-scale systems such as air transport systems or electric energy supply
infrastructures. The behavior of these systems is driven in a signifi cant way by their technical elements, but the
functioning of the whole system depends as much on the functioning of these technical components as on
the functioning of the social infrastructure and the behavior of human actors. Sociotechnical systems are
hybrid systems consisting of elements of various kinds, such as natural objects, technical artifacts, and human
actors and social entities (together with the rules and laws governing the behavior of human actors and social
entities). The design and control of sociotechnical systems raises fundamental issues for the traditional control
paradigm, since the system to be designed and/or controlled contains elements that may change the system from
within.
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