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This chapter focuses on another aspect that divides biological from artifactual functions. It describes how theories that analyze functions of technical artifacts in terms of beliefs of agents can be transposed into theories in which artifacts have functions as properties. The new approach toward understanding malfunctioning is provided. It deals with the constructed theory to a uniform “ICE-like” function theory, and indicates its similarities with Cummins's theory. This chapter shows that in etiological theories, malfunctioning biological items may be items that are irreversibly malformed, whereas in the proposed approach, an artifact may be taken as malfunctioning only if it can reasonably be brought back into a state in which it stops malfunctioning.

This chapter is concerned with the topic of emergent properties of technical artifacts. It suggests that three issues related to the occurrence of emergent features in technical systems are particularly important in engineering practice: emergent causal powers, the tension between emergent features and functional decomposition, and the unexpectedness and/or unpredictability of emergent features. It analyzes the possible effect of weak and strong forms of epistemic emergence for the control paradigm. This chapter argues that it is a mistake to assume that weak epistemic emergence implies unexpectedness and on that ground poses a threat to the control paradigm.

This book tries to elaborate the functionality of biological organisms and of technical artifacts. It also presents proper philosophical analyses of the concept of function from a perspective that embraces both fields of function ascription. It aims at a better understanding of the concept of “function” itself and also much more generally of the similarities and differences between organisms and artifacts insofar as they are related to functionality. It then contributes to the emancipation of the philosophy of technical artifacts. It provides a number of significant results that must be taken into account in future discussions about the possibility of a unified function theory for biology and technology.

This chapter demonstrates that in spite of the importance of the notion of function for engineering practice there is no common interpretation of it. It proposes a device-oriented definition of function that is related to device behaviors. It defines “function” as a role played by a behavior in its use context. It describes the definition of the function of technical artifacts from the device viewpoint. It uses local functions as the base-functions in order to realize composability of device models. This chapter suggests that a generic reference ontology of function can clarify the ontological differences between functional vocabularies and thus enhance the interoperability of functional knowledge.

This chapter evaluates two different approaches of transferring evolutionary concepts to the explanation of technical artifacts. It argues that the “conflict image” of selected and intended functions is an oversimplification and that the boundary between the biological and technological domains is an open border rather than an iron curtain. It states that evolutionary notions are introduced to solve specific problems in establishing artifact lineages and in design heuristics. This chapter shows that although both the fields of evolutionary archaeology (EA) and evolutionary design (ED) involve the transfer of concepts and models from the domain of organisms to that of artifacts, neither appears to involve transfer between frameworks.