Artefacts, essentialism and the identification of artworks and technologies

Abstract While artistic and technological identities are often regarded as context-dependent and non-essential, artworks and technologies are frequently classified as artefacts. Here it is argued that these positions are incompatible with each other, and that the latter position is flawed. Artefactuality is itself an essential property, and identifying an object on the basis of its artefactual status entails a commitment to essentialism. Artefacts cannot represent artworks and technologies and cannot be the defining subject matter of a non-essentialist philosophy. These arguments are built on a detailed analysis of the way in which creators’ intentions are constitutive of artefacts, as well as three key distinctions: between the contexts of creation and use, between the essentialist identification of kinds and that of individual objects and between the intrinsic and relational forms of essentialism.