Teaching & Learning Guide for: “On the Semantics of Artifactual Kind Terms”
Irene Olivero, Massimiliano Carrara · Philosophy Compass · 2022
Artifacts shape our life-world in several significant ways: We rarely (if ever) find ourselves in a situation in which no artifact is around. Most of the time, we are surrounded by a vast number of these objects, such as tables, chairs, pencils, coffee cups, computers, books, paintings, cars, houses, and so on. We use them to communicate, bridge distances, express ourselves, preserve memories and knowledge, gain aesthetic experiences, simplify everyday activities such as cooking and cleaning, as shelters and for protection, but also as weapons and means of destruction. We depend on them to save lives, connect with people at the other end of the world, quickly gather information, and find our way around parts of the world yet unknown to us. Surprisingly, despite artifacts' impact on our lives, their philosophical investigation is still at its early stages. That this is so may depend, to a certain extent, on the fact that they have not been considered as ontologically relevant as the natural objects, namely, as things that exist independently of us, such as tigers, lakes, minerals, and so on. Probably for similar reasons, the semantics of terms for artifacts and artifactual kinds have also not attracted much attention. Yet, given their impact on our lives, it seems crucial to pay attention to why we name artifacts the way we do and whether and how we should keep applying some terms for artifacts to the same objects or cluster of objects (kind). This course is dedicated to giving a general overview of the ongoing debate about the semantics of artifactual kind terms (i.e., terms like 'chair,' 'table,' 'pencil,' etc.), focusing on their differences or similarities with the natural kind terms (e.g., 'water,' 'gold,' 'tiger,' etc.). The debate originated from Hilary Putnam's suggestion of extending the scope of his direct referentialist theory about natural kind terms