What is it about?
Since the middle of the last century, normative language has been much studied. In particular, the normative function performed by certain sentences and by certain speech acts has been investigated in depth. But another important – and philosophically challenging – dimension of normativity has not yet been thoroughly investigated: that of certain physical artifacts designed and built to regulate human behaviors. When we think about artifacts, we consider objects such as, for example, a nutcracker, a screwdriver, a bicycle, a car, a television, a table, a fountain pen, a toothbrush, a food mixer; that is, material objects designed and constructed to perform a “technical function”. However, there are also artifacts with which we normatively regulate behaviors. We shall call this specific type of artifacts with normative intent “deontic artifacts”.
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Why is it important?
Research on deontic artifacts is of great philosophical importance both because it sheds light on particular symbolic dimensions and roles of certain material objects and because it enlarges the research field and the phenomenology of normativity far beyond the traditional sphere of verbal prescriptions.
Perspectives
This article extends the investigation of normativity from the classic studies on the phenomenon to new regulative phenomena of everyday life that have hitherto remained under-investigated. In particular, this article deals with what we might call the material dimension of certain normative phenomena.
Giuseppe Lorini
University of Cagliari
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Deontic artifacts. Investigating the normativity of objects, Philosophical Explorations, April 2021, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/13869795.2021.1908584.
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