Technological functions: their conception, manifestation and production

In Technical Functions – On the Use and Design of Artifacts, Wybo Houkes and Pieter Vermaas have developed a theory of technical functions that focuses on the attribution of technical functions to artifacts. They aim at a non-essentialist account of technical functions by reference to use-plans. ‘Use plan’ means, a more or less standardized way of manipulating objects in order to realize a practical goal , which is not only the business of designers but also of users. Houkes and Vermaas develop their theory by starting from the idea that artifact-using can be reconstructed as the execution of a use plan of those artifacts. In their account, they incorporate elements of existing intentional, causalrole and evolutionist function theories, which is why they call it the ICE-theory of technical functions. The theory can be applied for evaluating the use of artifacts because it enables us to reconstruct technical functions by reconstructing the use plan of those artifacts. In other words, the ICE-theory allows for evaluative purposes regarding the justifiable ascription of functions to artifacts relative to their use plans. In general, I am sympathetic about the ICE-theory. Also, I value their methodological approach, in particular because they explicitly articulate the desiderata their theory must meet, and because the authors are very explicit about the scope of their theory.