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.
The use of light installations in architectural reconstruction: New technological solutions for the public sphere Ryan Mitchell Wittingslow, Sanna Lehtinen Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Architectural Reconstruction, 2024 Much has been written about the deleterious political and social effects of new urban technologies, and not without good reason: the neoliberal ethic that these technologies instantiate sits uneasily with the rich value pluralism that undergirds the Habermasian public sphere. However, while these pessimistic accounts have their place, this chapter adopts a more positive outlook. Here we develop an account of how certain new urban technologies – technologies that afford non-permanent architectural reconstructions of public space – can be used to encourage or foster alternative uses and functions of public spaces, with a particular emphasis on how these technologies can contribute to the formation of the public sphere.
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.
On the Use of Linguistic Concepts in Design Wittingslow, Ryan Technology and Language, 2023 It is conventional to talk about contemporary design norms and practices in linguistic terms, such as in the cases of ‘design language’, ‘pattern language’, and so on. However, the extent to which design is like language is not obvious. Given that observation, my intentions in this paper are to perform an exploratory analysis of the limits of talking about design in terms of its linguistic features. This paper is divided into four parts. The first offers a brief picture of what I take to be the necessary conditions that must be met for something to be properly considered a natural language. In the second part I examine the ways in which design is like language in that design possesses both semanticity and grammaticality. The third part addresses the fundamental question at the heart of this paper: is design literally a natural language, in the sense of satisfying all relevant conditions? To this, I respond in the negative, arguing that design cannot be properly considered a language. Because designed objects are functional, they are necessarily absent the arbitrariness that is integral to natural language. Finally, and given that design is not literally a language, I conclude with a brief discussion of the status of linguistic concepts in design as a productive metaphor.
Provoking thought: A predictive processing account of critical thinking and the effects of education Christopher J. May, Ryan Wittingslow, Merethe Blandhol Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2022 In this paper, we propose that an increasingly regarded theoretical framework in neuroscience—the predictive processing framework—can help to advance an understanding of the foundations of critical thinking as well as provide a mechanistic hypothesis for how education may increase a learner’s subsequent use of critical thinking outside of an educational context. We begin by identifying a lacuna in the understanding of critical thinking: a causal account of the internal triggers to think critically. We then introduce the predictive processing framework to address this lacuna, and unpack the implications of this framework for understanding the deployment of critical thinking skills in situ, in the real world.
