Pauline Souman

Since the 1970s, the metaphysics of dispositions and causal powers has been a flourishing field, providing accounts of the identity of properties, modality, laws of nature, and causation. In parallel, social ontology is undergoing a “power turn,” seeking to move beyond frameworks built around collective intentionality to capture the variety of power dynamics that structure the social world. This collection brings these two traditions into dialogue through three original contributions. Joel Cox examines a tension internal to Aristotle’s system: if only substances can bear active powers and social entities such as cities or families do not figure among his examples of substance, how can Aristotle nevertheless appear to ascribe such powers to them? Tobias Hansson Wahlberg tackles the puzzle of retroactive institutional declarations in Searle’s framework, proposing an account in terms of modal mere Cambridge change. Finally, Theodore Locke defends the existence of a social modality irreducible to metaphysical modality, grounded in the distribution of social powers, with implications for understanding a form of modal injustice.

Proponents of technical monism argue that artistic functions are technical functions, and that therefore artworks and technical artifacts may be unified under the same theoretical framework. We hold that this view fails because it does not account for the phenomenon of technical malfunction: if artistic functions were technical functions, then artistic malfunctions would be technical malfunctions too. We argue that artistic malfunctions are not technical malfunctions because they cannot meet all the following four criteria: (1) malfunctioning attribution to a technical artifact entails negative evaluation and a reason to avoid use; (2) technical malfunction is caused by a failure of the artifact itself rather than failing circumstances; (3) a malfunctioning technical artifact remains a member of its artifactual kind; (4) malfunctioning technical artifacts are sometimes repaired. Since artistic malfunction cannot meet all these conditions, we claim that artworks and technical artifacts do not share the same type of function and, as such, unification theories based on technical function are untenable. We conclude by suggesting that our account raises broader challenges not only for technical-function-based unification theories, but also for other theories that seek to unify artworks and technical artifacts through a shared notion of function, as well as for accounts of artifact function more broadly.