Philosophy, Arts and Humanities, History and Philosophy of Science, Multidisciplinary
14
Scopus Publications
Scopus Publications
Finding Function: Exaptation, Maintenance, and Exemplification Ryan Wittingslow and Techne Research in Philosophy and Technology, 2025 This paper proposes a fictionalist theory of proper function based on Nelson Goodman’s work, called ‘function exemplification theory.’ This theory has two features. First, like realist proper function theories, function exemplification theory provides normative benchmarks for evaluating artefact performance. Second, function exemplification theory accommodates how artefact functions can change incrementally over time due to exaptation and maintenance practices.
Building Perfectionist Ethics into Action-theoretic Accounts of Function: A Beginner’s Guide Ryan Mitchell Wittingslow Philosophy and Technology, 2024 In her paper “Human Flourishing and Technology Affordances”, Avigail Ferdman argues that our descriptions and analyses of the relationship between digital technology, and the capacities approach to human flourishing, can be enriched by building ‘affordances’ into those descriptions and analyses. This commentary article serves as a supplement to Ferdman’s paper. Here I argue that, in building affordances into the capacities approach, Ferdman has developed the foundations of a method by which perfectionist ethics can be built into action-theoretic accounts of technical function. However, this is possible only if she is willing to expand the ambit of her theory beyond digital technologies and into technology more generally.
What Art Does: Using Philosophy of Technology to Talk about Art Ryan Mitchell Wittingslow What Art does Using Philosophy of Technology to Talk about Art, 2023 We derive a great deal of cognitive pleasure from asking what artworks mean. And yet, despite the seriousness with which we approach these questions, they all too often rely on theories of art that fail to adequately explain how art conveys meaning. This book proposes a new theory. In contrast to more conventional definitions of art, What Art Does defends the claim that artworks constitute a class of tool. Like other tools, artworks are objects that have functions and that furnish affordances. However, thanks to the particular social and material facts that underpin the creation of artworks, the functions that artworks have and the affordances they furnish are special. It is thanks to these special functions and affordances that artworks obtain their privileged character and status. Because artworks do things that other tools cannot, we take artworks to be meaning-making objects with something to say.
