Jeroen de Ridder
Delft
University of Technology
In this paper, I set out to
develop an account of functional explanation that can be used to explain
functions of technical artifacts. I start with a discussion of Ernest Nagel’s
account of functional explanation and argue that, although it can answer some
explanatory questions concerning functions, it does not provide insight in
another interesting type of explanatory questions about functions;
how-questions. I then discuss Robert Cummins’s account of functional
explanation, which can deal with such questions, and show that it may be
extended to include the fact that artifact functions are explained by both
dispositional and categorical properties. The final step is to confront my
extended version of Cummins’s account with an empirical example of artifact
explanation: Thomas Edison’s patent of the first practicable electric lamp.
This will give rise to a further refinement of the account.