La complejidad de nuestro lenguaje normativo sobre los artefactos técnicos

LAWLER, DIEGO

Montevideo

Congreso; VI Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Filosofía e Historia de la Ciencia del Cono Sur (AFHIC); 2008

Asociación de Filosofía e Historia de la Ciencia del Cono Sur (AFHIC)

1. The Aristotelian approach in which we are interested here expresses a general metaphysical position that claims the following: the structure of technical actions fixes the normative properties of the technical world. Or to put it differently: the assessment of a technical artefact as a good one implies a judgment that is not independent of the assessment of the respective technical actions that are involved in the use of such artefact.              On the other hand, a normative claim of this sort would be linked with an ontological approach that promotes a relevant role for the correctness conditions of technical actions in the determination of the identity of technical artefacts. For every culturally selected artefact, a purpose or a set of purposes are chosen. Such purposes are functional properties that intrinsically belong to technical artefacts –pace, for example, social constructivism in technology (Bijker:1995), such properties would be in certain sense independent of the interest and interpretations of different agencies that are linked with the domain of technical artefacts.                 From the ontological perspective, such properties could be seen as constitutive properties of technical artefacts, that is, as properties that demarcate the identity of artefacts, since they were selected given the fact that they explain why the artefact has practical success qua technical artefact. Naturally, the properties that allow agencies to practically access to the use of technical artefacts (i.e. to operate technical artefacts) must be included within those properties. There are artefacts’ properties that are affordances for anybody who operate or use the artefact. If one wishes to explain the technical artefact’s success, these properties have to be “objectively” perceived by the agencies. These properties somehow ground the objectivity of judgments concerning the good or bad achievement of a purpose or function satisfaction. The Aristotelian approach suggests, therefore, that the objectivity of this sort of judgments is not independent of the agencies (producers or users), neither of technical actions nor of how such technical actions are organized in terms of rational plans.[1]  Employing this Aristotelian framework as source of intuitions, the following sections research two questions. On the one hand, the suggestion that technical artefacts have properly technical functions and technical latent functions is explored. Properly technical functions refer to functions of technical artefacts that were originally designed to satisfy previously represented purposes. Latent technical functions refer to functions that are attributed to parts of artefacts taking into account the causal contribution of such parts to the performance (or realization) of properly technical functions. On the other hand, properly technical functions’ evaluative field is explored. It is suggested that the key to interpret that evaluative filed lies in the idea of utility or correct use of technical artefacts. [1] This commitment does not suppose neither a defence of technical essentialism nor of a thesis that claims the autonomy of technology or a defence of technical determinism –the cultural trajectory that selects technical actions and their structures are contingency and historically changing.