In this paper we disambiguate the design stance as proposed by Daniel C. Dennett, focusing on its application to technical artefacts. Analysing Dennett’s work and developing his approach towards interpreting entities, we show that there are two ways of spelling out the design stance, one that presuppose also adopting Dennett’s intentional stance for describing a designing agent, and a second that does not. We argue against taking one of these ways as giving the correct formulation of the design stance in (...) Dennett’s approach, but propose to replace Dennett’s original design stance by two design stances: an intentional designer stance that incorporates the intentional stance, and a teleological design stance that does not. Our arguments focus on descriptions of technical artefacts: drawing on research in engineering, cognitive psychology and archaeology we show that both design stances are used for describing technical artefacts. A first consequence of this disambiguation is that a design stance, in terms of interpretative assumptions and in terms of the pragmatic considerations for adopting it, stops to be a stance that comes hierarchically between the physical stance and the intentional stance. A second consequence is that a new distinction can be made between types of entities in Dennett’s approach. We call entities to which the intentional designer stance is applied tools and entities to which the teleological design stance is applied instruments, leading to a differentiated understanding of, in particular, technical artefacts. (shrink)

Within the context of the debate between ontological monists and pluralists the paper discusses a number of argumentative strategies that the latter can apply to answer the “there can be only one” argument. I show here that the reply to this argument suggested by J. Turner has its disadvantages and suggest a number of adjustments thereof. In particular, I develop a concept of domain-specific quantifiers that allow the pluralist to elaborate his or her ontological position.

The paper discusses the problem of diachronic criteria of identity for historic localities. We argue that such criteria are needed not just for the sake of ontological clarity but also are indispensable for database management and maintenance. Our survey of the current research in database management and engineering ontology literature found no satisfactory candidates thereof. Therefore we attempt to search for such criteria in the historic-geographical scholarship by exposing the ontological assumptions the researchers made there and by stating them explicitly. (...) This attempt consisted of us presenting a number of brief scenarios taken from the historical studies whereby localities are claimed to maintain their identity through certain types of change or to be destroyed due to other types of change. Generalising these cases we provide a tentative formulation of the criterion and discuss its limitations. (shrink)

I develop in this paper a conception of artefacts based on L. Wittgenstein’s idea of family resemblance. My approach peruses the notion of frame, which was invented in cognitive psychology as an operationisable extension of this philosophical idea. Following the metaphor of life-cycle I show how this schematic notion of frame may be filled with the content relevant for artefacts if we consider them from the point of view of their histories. The resulting conception of artefacts provides a new insight (...) into the current debate on artefact categorisation. (shrink)

The paper contains a first order formal theory pertaining to artefact designs, designs which are construed as the results of designing activities. The theory is based on a minimal ontology of states of affairs and it is inspired by the ideas of the Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden. After differentiating the philosophical notion of design from the engineering notion of design specifications, I then go on to argue that the philosophical category of artefact designs may be compared with Ingarden’s category of (...) intentional states of affairs. At least some artefacts are found to be determined by more than one design. I also show how this ontological framework allows for the distinction between artefact tokens and artefact types. That leads to a proposal on how to define a criterion of identity for artefact types. The proposed theory serves as a basis both for a better understanding of what artefacts are and for the construction of computer-readable models of design specifications. (shrink)

This paper contains a formal theory of functional parthood. Since the relation of functional parthood is defined here by means of the notion of design, the theory of functional parthood turns out to be a theory of design. The formal theory of design I defend here is a result of introducing a number of constraints that are to express the rational aspects of designing practice. The ontological background for the theory is provided by a conception of states of affairs. The (...) theory is accompanied with a formal model. I prove that the theory is sound and complete with respect to this model. (shrink)

The paper presents a logical framework formalising the main insights of the psychological theory of concepts developed by Lawrence Barsalou. The framework is established within the context of Common Logic as a logical theory in the axiomatic manner. Its semantic characterisation is provided and shown to be sound and incomplete with respect to the class of its models.

The paper relates the basic ontological categories defined by Roman Ingarden to an engineering model of function known by the name of Functional Basis. The intended aim of this exercise in applied philosophy is to make this model more consistent and outline some possible extensions thereof.