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Properness and Pluralism in Functional Beauty
Ryan Mitchell Wittingslow
Abstract
In their 2008 monograph, Functional Beauty, Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson develop a theory of functional beauty account based on a selected effects theory of biological function and apply it to human-made artifacts. This paper contends that their selected effects theory falls short in capturing the inherently pluralistic nature of functional beauty (FB). The paper is structured as follows. First, it provides an overview of Parsons and Carlson’s FB argument, focusing on their attribution of proper function in artifacts. Second, it analyzes how aesthetic dysfunction is conceptualized in Functional Beauty, highlighting what I take to be shortcomings in their account. Finally, the paper proposes several strategies that could be pursued in response to the criticisms offered here.
Key Words
design; function; functional beauty; intention technology
1. Introduction
Functional beauty (FB) theories are united by a shared assertion: when we assess the beauty of a functional object, where beauty in this context denotes a feeling of aesthetic appreciation, we are simultaneously evaluating whether that functional object aligns with its intended purpose. Implicit in much of our discourse about the beauty of artifacts is the assumption that aesthetic assessment inherently involves an evaluation of fitness of function. When a designed object is considered beautiful, part of what contributes to its beauty is its effective performance of its intended function. The harmony between an object’s attributes and its function elicits aesthetic pleasure, while a disconnect results in aesthetic displeasure. Advocates of these theories argue that assessments of FB play a substantial role in various types of aesthetic judgements.
Functional beauty sentiments are particularly common in recent work in philosophical aesthetics.[1] This development is thanks in part to increased interest in cognitively rich explanations of aesthetic appreciation, that is, explanations of aesthetic appreciation that acknowledge the enduring and intrinsic connection between aesthetic objects and their social context. Of these FB theories, Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson’s 2008 monograph, Functional Beauty, is probably the best known. In that book, Parsons and Carlson develop an account of FB premised upon a selected effects theory of biological function; a theory that they then apply to human-made artifacts. I argue in this paper that unfortunately their selected effects theory is inadequate to the task of properly taking stock of the inherently pluralistic nature of FB.
This paper is divided into the following parts. In parts 2 and 3, I offer a précis of the FB argument developed by Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson in Functional Beauty, with attention to how they ascribe proper function in artifacts and how proper function relates to aesthetic judgments. In part 4, I furnish an analysis of how aesthetic dysfunction is conceptualized in Functional Beauty. As part of that exercise, I will highlight some of what I see as errors and shortcomings in Parsons and Carlson’s account. I conclude the paper in part 5 with some recommendations about how to improve Parsons and Carlson’s picture of FB.
2. Function
In Functional Beauty (2008), Parsons and Carlson employ a proper function theory of function: that is, a theory of function premised upon the claims that a) objects have functions that are proper to it and b) that these proper functions are metaphysically constitutive of that object. Functions that are improper, meanwhile, are not metaphysical properties of objects. Instead, they are just things that objects do. Parsons and Carlson write, “in many cases, one function in this multiplicity stands out as the proper function of the object. The most basic idea behind the notion of a proper function is the idea that it is the function that belongs to the object itself.”[2]
More precisely, the proper function account they endorse is an example of a selected effects theory of biological function. Selected effect theories, borrowed from contemporary philosophy of biology, claim that the proper function of a given object is both the formal consequence of a given selection history and what makes an object the kind of thing that it is. For philosophers of biology who endorse selected effects theory of proper function—the most influential of whom probably is Ruth Millikan—an item has a proper function if its predecessors with similar characteristics enhanced their fitness by performing that function, leading to the reproduction of such items.[3] This approach emphasizes that proper functional categories are defined not by the actual structure, dispositions, or functions of the organ or system. These actual structures, dispositions, or functions merely are what an object does or can do: what we can call functions simpliciter. Proper functional categories, however, are defined by their historical connections with prior examples of similar kinds that served specific functions or sets of functions. Every organ or system is associated with a proper function that contributed to the survival and proliferation of its ancestors. Parsons and Carlson summarize the position thus:
The basic idea behind the theory is simple: the proper function of a particular animal’s biological part or trait is an effect of that part or trait that, first, achieves a certain kind of success in relation to its environment: namely, enhancing the fitness of its bearers. Second, this success leads to the spread of the trait, via the reproduction of its bearers and the consequent spread of the genes for the trait. Through its selective success, then, this effect explains the current existence of the part or trait in the animal population. Such an effect, on this theory, is the trait or part’s proper function. Thus, the proper function of a heart is to pump blood, since pumping blood is, first of all, what made ancestral hearts successful with respect to their environment. Second, this success caused the spread of hearts, when creatures with hearts lived longer and left more offspring, spreading the genes for hearts. Pumping blood, then, is the effect that explains why our hearts exist today: it is the heart’s proper function. Making heart sounds, though also something that ancestor hearts did, does not explain the existence of hearts today, since there was no natural selection for making heart sounds. Therefore, making heart sounds is not a proper function of our hearts.[4]
The novel bit of Parsons and Carlson’s contribution to this scholarship—and the part of the story with which I have the most sympathy—lies in how they apply their proper function account to artifacts. Given that Parsons and Carlson cannot appeal to the processes outlined in the modern synthesis of Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics upon which Millikan and others rely, they instead propose that by replacing ancestors of X with similar predecessors whose success met a need in the marketplace, and replacing reproduction with manufacture, distribution, or preservation, the proper functions of artifacts are established through a certain level of acceptance in the public marketplace. They write: “X has a proper function F if and only if Xs currently exist because, in the recent past, ancestors of X were successful in meeting some need or want in the marketplace because they performed F, leading to manufacture and distribution of Xs.”[5]
This approach helps establish the proper function of both biological traits and human-made items. Designer intentions are thus irrelevant to Parsons and Carlson’s attribution of function to an object. Instead, a public consensus or uptake, itself the consequence of the artifact’s selection history, is required to determine the proper function of these items. Once a proper function in some functional category is established via a selection history, we are in an appropriate position to ascertain whether there is in fact some fruitful relationship between the aesthetic properties of an artifact and that function. The connection between the perceived function of a thing and how well that thing actually functions can lead us to evaluate its aesthetic value either positively or negatively.
Finally, Parsons and Carlson suggest that if an artifact has a proper function at all, it can only have a single proper function at any given time: again, “one function in this multiplicity stands out as the proper function of the object.”[6] They then use this singular account of proper function to address what they call the ‘problem of indeterminacy’: that is, Roger Scruton’s idea that function is “fundamentally, and perhaps irremediably, obscure.”[7] This purported indeterminacy naturally poses a problem for any robust notion of functional beauty. After all, if a function is indeterminate, then any judgment about whether something is beautiful by virtue of the way it looks in relation to its function must also be indeterminate. However, in developing and endorsing their selection history account, they hope to address Scruton’s critique. By adequately differentiating metaphysically constitutive proper functions from functions simpliciter, they furnish the metaphysical grounds upon which to make robust judgments of functional beauty.[8]
3. Beauty
When Parsons and Carlson talk about beauty, they are not talking about some elevated kind of aesthetic pleasure. Instead, they use the terms ‘beauty,’ ‘aesthetic appreciation,’ ‘aesthetic value,’ and so on basically interchangeably. If something is beautiful, they mean only that it is worthy as an object of aesthetic appreciation, regardless of the tenor or kind of that appreciation; it is a catch-all for lots of different kinds of aesthetic appreciation or pleasure. It thus refers to both conventionally beautiful things (sunsets, for instance) and to phenomena to which we might attribute some other kind of aesthetic appreciation (like a particularly good joke). As they write: “Our concern here is with the wider notion of the aesthetic: our central concept is, really, aesthetic appreciation involving knowledge that concerns function. […] If it is borne in mind that, in this one expression, ‘Beauty’ is used, as philosophers occasionally still use it, to mean ‘aesthetic appeal in general,’ rather than the specific sort of aesthetic appearance it typically suggests, no confusion should result.”[9]
Applying beauty to function, Parson and Carlson argue that artifacts can be judged as beautiful by virtue of the way they look in relation to their functions. Parsons and Carlson thus attribute FB when a thing’s aesthetic features contribute to its functionality: that is, there is an internal relationship between an object’s function and our aesthetic appreciation of that thing. Consider a professional chef’s knife. Its sharp, flexible, slightly curved blade and well-balanced handle are attractive because those features are adapted for the function of quickly and efficiently slicing things. If we look at a different type of knife, like a butcher’s knife, where the stiff, straight blade is not suited to this slicing function, the chef knife’s features would not be considered as attractive: “It is not merely that certain […] features are attractive, and also happen to be functional. Rather, certain of its features are attractive, in part, because they possess a particular function.”[10] Parsons and Carlson’s FB is thus a kind of beauty that emerges from the function of the object; it is premised upon the appropriate appreciation of the singular internal relationship between an object’s function and the degree to which it is beautiful.
One of the virtues of Parsons and Carlson’s FB account is their sensitivity to what they call the ‘aesthetics of dysfunction.’ They think that when we encounter things—tools, buildings, animals, whatever—with an apparent function that seem nonfunctional, we are inclined to find those things aesthetically displeasing because of the disconnect between their apparent function and their lack of function. This disconnect is among the reasons why we might find a “diseased, malformed, or damaged organism” aesthetically displeasing; we are bothered by its “apparent dysfunction.”[11] We experience the same kind of aesthetic displeasure when we encounter urban blight or broken bicycles: they too are aesthetically displeasing because they look dysfunctional. As they write:
It does seem plausible to think that, often, we are displeased by the appearance of things that are manifestly non-functional. Bicycles missing their seats, cars with flat tyres, houses with missing shingles: all seem displeasing. Furthermore, it seems plausible to think that someone without functional concepts such as ‘bicycle,’ ‘car,’ and so on might not experience this displeasure: it is hard to see why, without an idea of what a bicycle is for, one would find one without a seat displeasing, for example. Moreover, the view that ‘looking unfit’ is an aesthetically displeasing quality would make sense of a good deal of discussion of the aesthetic value of houses and urban environments, where sites that are ‘rundown’ or contain unfit-looking objects (derelict cars, for instance) are regarded as eyesores, or aesthetic blights.[12]
Of course, none of this means that Parsons and Carlson think that dysfunctional things are necessarily ugly. As they note, FB furnishes only one possible reason for deriving aesthetic pleasure.[13] “Consider, for example,” they write, “a pair of very high-heeled women’s shoes that provide no covering for the top of the foot, and look most ill-suited for walking. Yet imagine that, despite this, people do not find them functionally ugly; they find them aesthetically good.”
The trick here, according to Parsons and Carlson, is that people who do not perceive functional ugliness in cases like these are not paying attention to the item’s functional category, let alone assessing that item’s fitness for that function. “Functional ugliness is not reported because function is not attended to,” they write. Instead, people are paying attention to something else. In the case of the shoe, it might be “the pleasing shape […], or its attractive colours, or […] the look of the foot or leg that it produces”[14]. To ascribe FB in these cases, however, is mistaken, because the high-heeled shoes do not meet the standards of its functional category as set by its selection history. Any positive aesthetic judgements are supposedly made without attending to the function of the object in question and are thus not FB judgements. Meanwhile, if we were to aesthetically evaluate these items considering their functional category, we would be obliged to judge them as aesthetically displeasing because they are hard to walk in and are thus dysfunctional. We cannot derive FB pleasure from functional objects that cannot be used in the appropriate way.
All of this contributes to Parsons and Carlson’s claim that this account of FB significantly contributes to our aesthetic appreciation of all kinds of things: everyday objects, the natural world, animals, architectural structures, art, whatever. Moreover, the generalizable account of FB they develop in Functional Beauty is useful, they say, because it accounts for what they describe as the continuity of our aesthetic appreciation—what I call here the ‘continuity thesis.’ Parsons and Carlson claim that our aesthetic appreciation of different kinds of things retain phenomenological similarities based upon a) the explanatory role that function plays in how we grasp objects and b) our aesthetic assessment of the object’s fitness to fulfill that function. For example, an FB assessment of a beautiful building is phenomenologically like an FB assessment of a handsome horse in that both are premised upon an assessment of the extent to which their aesthetic features contribute to their function. So too is an assessment of functional ugliness: an assessment of dysfunction leads to an assessment of functional ugliness. Non-FB theories, meanwhile, are ostensibly not well-placed to properly analyze this purported continuity. They write:
The aesthetic appreciation of a wrist watch or a jet fighter does not seem to involve the proximal senses to any greater extent than does, say, the appreciation of an artwork like a statue. Nor does it seem any more ‘subjective’ than such aesthetic appreciation of a statue would be. The existence of Functional Beauty explains this continuity in aesthetic appreciation by providing a common sort of appreciation applicable to a wide variety of different sorts of things. This brand of appreciation has been neglected, due to certain emphases in aesthetic theory […] and because of confusion about the concept of function. By bringing Functional Beauty back into the picture, we can obtain a more accurate view of the character of aesthetic experience as a whole.[15]
4. Dysfunctions
While I think there is much to recommend in Parsons and Carlson’s account, I also think that when it comes to human-made artifacts, their ascription of function is too narrow to properly capture the full and plural texture of FB. Indeed, it seems to me entirely plausible that if we are to accept the purported mechanisms by which Parsons and Carlson attribute function, we should also accept that a single artifact can be host to multiple proper functions because of those self-same mechanisms. Thanks to the social epistemic procedures that Parsons and Carlson describe, artifacts can thus have multiple proper functions amongst a larger set of functions simpliciter. In circumstances when an artifact has multiple proper functions, some of which might even compete, each function is ratified by the public marketplace under different circumstances and conditions.
As an example, let us return to the high-heeled shoe that is the object of Parsons and Carlson’s particular opprobrium. Their argument against a high-heeled shoe having FB is premised upon the notion that objects within the functional category “shoe” only have a single proper function: to facilitate walking. This means that for a shoe to have FB, it must possess features that are attractive (at least in part) because they facilitate walking. This walking-function is the task for which the shoe was selected in the public marketplace; any other job for which the shoe is used is merely a function simpliciter. However, this is not the whole story.
The selection history of the contemporary high-heeled shoe is relatively well-documented. While various high-heeled and platform shoes have been recorded at multiple points in our shared sartorial history, canonical sources pinpoint late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century France as the birthplace of the most recent iteration of these artifacts. A walking-function is obviously part of their selection history even if they are uncomfortable—particularly useful for life in medieval towns and cities where having high-heeled or platform shoes helped users avoid rubbish and street effluence. This is the function for which they were selected and ratified by the public marketplace. To co-opt Parsons and Carlson’s market-driven proper function definition: “high-heeled shoes in the reign of Louis XIV had the proper function of facilitating walking because, earlier in Le Grand Siècle, the ancestors of high-heeled shoes were successful in facilitating walking, leading to the manufacture and distribution of high-heeled shoes.”[16]
What is interesting about this selection history is that contrary to the claims made by Parsons and Carlson, these shoes possess not only a walking-function as their proper function, and it is not only the walking-function that makes the high-heeled shoe the kind of thing that it is. The Sun King Louis XIV, being relatively diminutive, sported high heels to “create an illusion of height.”[17] Although this only constitutes an example of a function simpliciter, Louis’ penchant for precipitous footwear catalyzed the appearance of a new proper function for high heels. This new proper function was a fashion statement to signal power and prestige within French and other European royal courts: what we could call a status-function.[18] This status-function emerged to signal inclusion in a relevant in-group; a signifier of wealth and taste that was subsequently ratified as a proper function by the public marketplace. Just as much as the walking-function, it “belongs to the object itself”[19] and is thus proper to the high-heeled shoe. To claim otherwise is to ignore the shoe’s selection history. This means that we can again enter our variables into Parsons and Carlson’s definition of proper function: “high-heeled shoes in the reign of Louis XIV had the proper function of affirming status because, earlier in Le Grand Siècle, the ancestors of high-heeled shoes were successful in affirming status, leading to the manufacture and distribution of high-heeled shoes.”[20] Or, to quote an English ditty from the period: “Mount on French heels / When you go to a ball / ’Tis the fashion to totter / and show you can fall!”[21]
Importantly, the development and acceptance of this new proper status-function does not obviate the properness of the walking-function, given that both functions are equally constitutive of and proper to high-heeled shoes. Because both proper function ascriptions are apt for high-heeled shoes, and because both proper function ascriptions were ratified by the public marketplace, we can only conclude that high-heeled shoes have, at a minimum, two distinct proper functions. However, that is not the whole story either. When men in the French court wore heels, they did so to demonstrate their wealth and influence not only via a literal elevation in height and a symbolic association with the sovereign but also to make clear that they were of sufficient power and rank that they did not need to walk. Instead, they had someone else to do the walking for them. The force of the proper status-function thus rests, at least in part, upon the fact that the men who sported these shoes could afford to explicitly ignore the proper walking-function of those artifacts. These two proper functions, walking-function and status-function, are simultaneously complementary, constitutive, and at odds.
This same general pattern also holds for contemporary high-heeled shoes. Now, of course, they are primarily worn by women in professional, formal, and leisure environments. However, while high-heeled shoes are now worn by different people and in different circumstances than in the gilded heights of Le Grand Siècle, they are still artifacts in possession of at least two distinct sets of proper functions: walking on the one hand, and status on the other.[22]
High-heeled shoes are thus not the simultaneously monofunctional and functionally ugly objects that Parsons and Carlson describe in Functional Beauty. Rather, they are complicated artifacts in possession of multiple and overlapping proper functions. All these proper functions go towards making high-heeled shoes the kinds of things that they are. All these proper functions have been ratified by Parsons and Carlson’s public marketplace. They even perform some of these functions very well. So, what about FB judgments of these kinds of shoes? Judged against the standards of the proper walking-function, they cannot be judged as beautiful by virtue of the way they look in relation to that function. As items with a constitutive walking-function, they are dysfunctional and thus functionally ugly. However, in the same breath, they are very easily judged as FB by virtue of the way they look in relation to their proper status-function: indeed, high-heeled shoes contribute to proper constitutive status-function on the grounds that they make it difficult to walk. They are thus both functionally beautiful and functionally ugly. It is a confusing position in which to find ourselves—a position, moreover, that is more confusing because it is not possible to reconcile with Parsons and Carlson’s description of FB.
The account offered here is generalizable. There is, after all, nothing particularly special about high-heeled shoes. We should, I think, reasonably expect a great many kinds of artifacts with long or complicated histories to be underwritten by a similarly confusing motley of different public ratifications. Consider, by means of another example, the teapot that is a part of the Suprematist Tea Service, by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich. Designed in 1923 and put into production by the Soviet State Porcelain Factory in 1930, the object was ratified as both a teapot and an artwork. These are its proper functions. Per Parsons and Carlson’s definition, “The teapot in Suprematist Tea Service had the proper functions of a) pouring tea and b) being art because, in the recent past, different ancestors of the teapot in Suprematist Tea Service were successful in a) pouring tea and b) being art, leading to the manufacture and distribution of the teapot in Suprematist Tea Service.” And yet, there were problems. “Mr Malevich, your teapot does not pour well,” the factory manager wrote to Malevich in a letter. Malevich’s response? “Mr Director, it is not a teapot but the idea of a teapot.”[23]
Production of the teapots was soon canceled; they did not adequately fulfill their proper pouring-function and so must be considered functionally ugly per this criterion. Nonetheless, the teapots very much succeeded in fulfilling their proper artwork-function. They thus have FB according to their artwork function. These teapots, now considered classics of Modernist design, constitute an example of an artifact that is FB under the aegis of one functional category and functionally ugly under another. Moreover, it might even be argued that the artistic FB of these teapots is somehow premised upon their functional ugliness as teapots: another antagonistic, yet complementary, relationship between one proper function and another.
5. Conclusion
I see two strategies available to Parsons and Carlson. The first is to recommit to the idea that proper function is singular rather than plural. However, to successfully pursue this strategy, Parsons and Carlson would need to significantly restructure their account of how function is attributed to objects: one that moves away from the marketplace as the sole mechanism of ratification. To this end, I suspect a more fruitful avenue would involve developing a function selection account that acknowledges the causal efficacy of the intentions of designers. This is not to say that were Parsons and Carlson to endorse an account of this sort, function should start and end with the intentions of either designers or individual users. After all, this would run afoul of what Don Ihde calls the “designer fallacy.”[24] I am also not suggesting that they should endorse the notion, popular amongst some philosophers of technology, that explanations of artifact function can or should be entirely reduced to something like a designer-determined “use plan.”[25] Instead, while Parsons and Carlson might want to preserve the claims that the social-epistemic processes of the public marketplace are what fundamentally ratify the properness of a given function, they could also take into account that the intentions of designers are also clearly important when it comes to framing how an artifact is marketed to that marketplace. These intentions, appropriately developed and contextualized, could then be entrusted to furnish the normative robustness that a singular account of function requires.
The second strategy is to properly commit to the plurality of function. And indeed, while pluralism about proper function is not a view that Parsons and Carlson working together seem to endorse, based upon the sentiments expressed in Functional Beauty, it is a possibility that Parsons entertains explicitly in his 2015 book, The Philosophy of Design. There, he writes that “some artefacts may turn out to have multiple proper functions, if they do multiple things that lead to the reproduction of their type.”[26] Of course, pursuing this strategy would significantly complicate Parsons and Carlson’s picture of FB. The picture of function they develop in Functional Beauty is one that “plays a key explanatory role with respect to that object, such that to grasp the function is to grasp something fundamental about the object.” This is why, when we make an FB judgment of a thing—such as “a shark, or an aeroplane, or a courthouse,” to use their examples—it is a judgment that “captures something more significant about the aesthetic character of that object than does appreciation of its colour, its pattern, its shininess, or its imposing grandeur.”[27] However, if an object possesses multiple functions, and there are thus multiple normative standards against which FB can be assessed, it is entirely unclear how all these different functions should inform our appreciation and understanding of the FB of that object.
In any case, there is a hidden cost to committing to either strategy. Whether Parsons and Carlson preserve the singularity of function by appealing to intention (or some other non-marketplace factor), or whether they bite the bullet and commit to being pluralist about proper function—either because they accept the criticisms offered here or because they accept Parsons’ apparent concession in The Philosophy of Design—Parsons and Carlson run into the same problem. As noted earlier, one of the purported virtues of the continuity thesis argument made in Functional Beauty is that it provides an explanation for the intuited continuity of our aesthetic appreciation—a continuity that cuts across not only our FB assessments of human-made artifacts but also our assessments of animals, plants, and other naturally occurring phenomena. The sameness of aesthetic appreciation, Parsons and Carlson claim, is premised upon a sameness of function ascription: we can assess the FB of an artifact when we possess some understanding of the proper function of that artifact. This is a “common sort of appreciation,” in their words, and it is this commonality that guarantees the continuity that Parsons and Carlson claim to be a feature of our aesthetic judgements.
Committing to either strategy throws a spanner into the continuity thesis. In the first case, by making intention a part of the attribution of proper function in artifacts means that Parsons and Carlson cannot use the same method to attribute properness of function in natural versus human-made objects. This difference in attribution potentially causes issues for the continuity of aesthetic appreciation upon which they hang the usefulness of their FB theory. Without that guarantee of foundational sameness, it becomes very difficult to explain the continuity in aesthetic appreciation in terms of “a common sort of appreciation applicable to a wide variety of different sorts of things.”[28] Pluralism about function appears to pose similar problems. If artifacts can have different (and even competing) functions, and if those different functions can have different (and even competing) criteria against which we make judgements of FB, then it is not clear how we can justify the claims that assessments of FB have continuity within the same artifact, let alone between artifacts, or between artifacts and naturally occurring objects. In short, pursuing either strategy might well force us into discarding the proposed continuity of our aesthetic appreciation in favor of a discontinuity of aesthetic appreciation: a discontinuity that would seriously compromise the purported explanatory virtues of Parsons and Carlson’s account of FB.
To conclude, I do not expect nor intend for these criticisms to prove fatal to Parsons and Carlson’s account of FB. However, I do think that the criticisms I have developed here make clear that the account requires further development, whether by complicating their marketplace account to preserve the singularity of proper function or by fully committing to a plural account of proper function and then making better sense of the effect that plural function has on assessments of FB. I also think that the criticisms offered here pose serious questions about the usefulness and tenability of the continuity thesis as described.
Ryan Mitchell Wittingslow, PhD
r.m.wittingslow@rug.nl
Ryan Mitchell Wittingslow is an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Groningen, and formerly a Humboldt research fellow at TU Darmstadt. He writes a lot about cities, technology, and design. He also has devastating opinions about art.
Published on June 11, 2024.
Cite this article: Ryan M. Wittingslow, “Properness and Pluralism in Functional Beauty,” Contemporary Aesthetics, Volume 22 (2024), accessed date.
Acknowledgment
I would like to extend my thanks to the two anonymous reviewers who reviewed this paper. Their feedback and recommendations were very helpful, and significantly improved the quality and clarity of this manuscript.
Endnotes
[1] For a representative sample of some recent work in this domain, please see Stephen Davies, “Aesthetic Judgements, Artworks and Functional Beauty,” The Philosophical Quarterly (1950-) 56, no. 223 (2006): 224-41; Larry Shiner, “On Aesthetics and Function in Architecture: The Case of the “Spectacle” Art Museum,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69, no. 1 (2011): 31-41; Rafael De Clercq, “Reflections on a Sofa Bed: Functional Beauty and Looking Fit,” The Journal of Aesthetic Education 47, no. 2 (2013): 35-48; Andrea Sauchelli, “Functional Beauty, Perception, and Aesthetic Judgements,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 53, no. 1 (2013): 41-53, and Panos Paris, “Functional Beauty, Pleasure, and Experience,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2020.
[2] Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson, Functional Beauty (Oxford, U.K: Oxford University Press, 2008), 66-67.
[3] Cf. Ruth Garrett Millikan, Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 1984); Ruth Garrett Millikan, “Thoughts Without Laws; Cognitive Science with Content,” The Philosophical Review 95, no. 1 (1986): 47-80; Ruth Garrett Millikan, “In Defence of Proper Functions,” in White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 1995).
[4] Parsons and Carlson, Functional Beauty, 72.
[5] Ibid., 72.
[6] Ibid., 66-67.
[7] Roger Scruton, The Aesthetics of Architecture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 40.
[8] Cf. Parsons and Carlson, Functional Beauty, 84-91.
[9] Ibid., xii-xiii.
[10] Ibid., 123.
[11] Ibid., 132.
[12] Ibid., 107.
[13] Ibid., 228.
[14] Ibid., 109.
[15] Ibid., 231.
[16] Ibid., 72.
[17] Rebecca Shawcross, “High Heels,” in The Berg Companion to Fashion, ed. Valerie Steele (Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers, 2010), 408.
[18] A point of clarification: my use of ‘status-function’ is obviously unrelated to John Searle’s use of the term. Cf. John Searle, “Status Functions,’’ in The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intentionality (London: Routledge, 2017).
[19] Parsons and Carlson, Functional Beauty, 66.
[20] Cf. ibid., 72.
[21] Shawcross, “High Heels,” 408.
[22] I say “at least two,” but I suspect that the full suite of proper functions is rather more extensive, particularly given the ways in which high heels and similar garments contribute to the construction of contemporary conceptions of femininity; as an example, see Naomi Joanna Braithwaite, “Fashion, Fantasy, Power and Mystery: Interpreting Shoes Through the Lens of Visual Culture,” in Engaging with Fashion (Brill, 2019), 205-16.
[23] Gerry Souter, Malevich: Journey to Infinity (Parkstone International, 2008), 197.
[24] Cf. Don Ihde, “The Designer Fallacy and Technological Imagination,” in Philosophy and Design: From Engineering to Architecture, ed. Peter Kroes et al. (Springer Netherlands, 2008), 51-59.
[25] For a representative sample of this scholarship, see Wybo Houkes et al., “Design and Use as Plans: An Action-theoretical Account,” Design Studies 23, no. 3 (2002): 303-20; Pieter E. Vermaas and Wybo Houkes, “Ascribing Functions to Technical Artefacts: A Challenge to Etiological Accounts of Functions,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 54, no. 2 (2003): 261-89; Wybo Houkes and Pieter Vermaas, “Actions Versus Functions: A Plea for an Alternative Metaphysics of Artifacts,” The Monist 87, no. 1 (2004): 52-71; Wybo Houkes, “Knowledge of Artefact Functions,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 37, no. 1 (2006): 102-13; Pieter E. Vermaas and Wybo Houkes, “Technical Functions: A Drawbridge Between the Intentional and Structural Natures of Technical Artefacts,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 37, no. 1 (2006): 5-18.
[26] Glenn Parsons, The Philosophy of Design (Polity Press, 2015), 94.
[27] Parsons and Carlson, Functional Beauty, 234.
[28] Ibid., 231.