What the Mona Lisa and a Screwdriver Have in Common

Abstract

In philosophy – especially in philosophy of technology and philosophy of art –, several specific accounts of artifact functionality have been developed. These accounts usually have a restricted scope: they are clearly limited to either technical artifacts or entities of art. In this paper, a contrasting account will be developed, which aims at covering both functions of technical artifacts and functions of art works as well as their instances. The paper is in two parts: In the first part, the method of specifying desiderata that Houkes and Vermaas have introduced to develop their theory of technical functions is adopted. Drawing on exemplary (failed) function ascriptions referring to items of art and technology, four desiderata are presented, all of which an account has to meet to provide a convincing analysis of both function ascriptions to technical artifacts and function ascriptions to art works and their instances. In the second part, an account that meets these desiderata is developed.