Ways of Worldmaking and the Languages of Technology and Art – Symposium on Nelson Goodman and the Philosophy of Technology
Chair(s): Sabine Ammon (Technische Universität Berlin), Alfred Nordmann (Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany), Ryan Wittingslow (University of Groningen)
The fairly slim, yet enormously influential books Ways of Worldmaking (1984) and Languages of Art (1968/76) by Nelson Goodman offer a rich account of processes involved in constructing and creating reality. Pictures, descriptions, and notations; denotation and exemplification; truth and rightness; works and worlds; working and fitting — these notions are discussed with a concrete sensibility for abstract questions: how we do things (not only with words!) and what this implies for ontology and epistemology. Throughout, Goodman chips away at the philosophical prejudice that questions of truth and questions of worldmaking boil down to the problem of picturing, highlighting instead the procedural and creative aspects of worldmaking.
While Goodman discusses works of fine art, he does not — or only incidentally — consider works of technical art. Worldmaking and Goodman’s constructivism are confined to the ways in which one presents (darstellen) and represents (vorstellen) worlds, broadly conceived. It needs to be explored or established how we might extend this to artefactual worldmaking, to making and building and design. How does this implicate codes and notations and principles of composition, how does technology denote or exemplify, anticipate, project, or transform a world?
In short, what if anything does the author of these influential books have to offer to the philosophy of technology?
The organizers of this symposium convened a group of 18 scholars to discuss these questions. We now want to share some of the products of this discussion with the community at large. Three papers explore and extend Goodman’s project. We will conclude with a discussion by three commentators on the contributions and the general question.
Presentations of the Symposium
Ways of Worldmaking – What procedural epistemology can offer for the making of AI technologies: A casuistic exploration of AI knowledge technologies
Sabine Ammon1, Philipp Geyer2
1Technische Universität Berlin, 2Leibniz Universität Hannover
Although there is no explicit connection to the philosophy of technology in the works of Nelson Goodman, his thoughts can and should be made fruitful for reflecting technology. In my talk I will explore to what extend the inherent processualty in Goodman’s epistemology allows us a better understanding of technology as a constantly making and re-making of worlds. I will argue that his stance allows us to get a better grasp of the nature of designing and the emergence of yet-not-existing artefacts. However, there are also blind spots in his approach when it comes to practices and questions of materiality as well as the ontology of things. By exploring constraints and affordances of his conceptual framework, I will show to what extend it can contribute to a better understanding to worlds in the making and where we need to go beyond Goodman when reflecting technology.
Ways of worldmaking - symbolic orders and material compositions
Alfred Nordmann
Technische Unversität Darmstadt
What Goodman calls „rightness of rendering§ governs the symbolic orders of scientific representations as well as those of the arts. It requires knowledge not narrowly in the sense of „true justified belief“ but more importantly knowledge of how symbols can come together so as to achieve a satisfactory or felicitous structure (Catherine Elgin refers to this as „understanding“ rather than knowledge: we need to have an understanding of symbolic orders and how they work). This would be a common denominator not only of art and science in the sphere of (re)presentation, but also of symbolic and material composition in the sphere of building and making - a fruitful vantage point for the philosophy of technology. Thus, while Goodman overtly inhabits the sphere of symbolic orders and expands on the tradition of Kant, Cassirer, and Wittgenstein, Kuhn and Hacking, Lewis and Quine, can we untether him from the „world“ as the subject merely of (re)presentation? For this, the notion of „exemplification“ is on offer, but Goodman and Elgin tend to treat exemplification as a species of representation. By doing so, we may lose out on technological world-making.
Function as Exemplification
Ryan Wittingslow
University of Groningen
In this paper, I use Nelson Goodman’s work to propose a new theory of proper function. This theory—which I call 'function exemplification theory'—grounds functional 'properness' in Goodmanian symbol systems. In doing so, it adopts a fictionalist stance towards function: while it talks about proper functions as if they were real properties of artefacts, it treats them as useful fictions that help us make sense of artefact performance and change. This approach offers two key advantages. First, like other proper function theories, it provides robust normative benchmarks for evaluating artefact performance. Second, it explains how artefact functions can evolve incrementally through exaptation, maintenance strategies, and entrenched habits. While existing accounts acknowledge that artefacts can acquire new proper functions, they struggle to explain how these functions can 'drift' through use and maintenance practices. Function exemplification theory is particularly well-suited to analysing this gradual type of functional change.
Discussion and Commentary
Daria Bylieva1, Sadegh Mirzaei2, Leonie Möck3
1Peter the Great Saint Petersburg Polytechnic University, 2Technical University of Darmstadt, 3University of Vienna
A panel of three discussants will comment on the paper presentations and on the general question regarding Goodman's contribution to the philosophy of technology.
