Functional Decomposition in Philosophy and Engineering

The overall aim of the project is to analyse the decomposition of functions of technical artefacts into subfunctions of their components and processes. This analysis advances philosophical function theories, innovates the theory of parts and wholes, and contributes to our understanding of artefacts and of the relation between structural and intentional descriptions of the world. Some background: Engineers characterise technical artefacts by their functions. Philosophers analysed these functions and produced theories that relate them to the structure of artefacts and to intentional actions with artefacts. These theories thus contributed to understanding the (for philosophy challenging) relation between structural and intentional descriptions. Engineers also decompose artefact functions in subfunctions, which they ascribe to components of and processes within artefacts. This functional decomposition defines part-whole relations that are not yet analysed in philosophy; these functional part-whole relations are different to the structural and temporal part-whole relations that are currently studied in the theory of parts and wholes. Engineers construct, finally, models that represent the structure and (sub)functions of artefacts. They managed to model the structure but the incorporation of functional decomposition is less successful. These facts show that philosophy can learn from engineering, and the project takes up this promise. It reviews engineering models of functional decomposition and arrives at an account that integrates structural and functional descriptions of artefacts, of their components and of the processes within artefacts. This account is constructed with existing function theories and part-whole theories, logical analyses of artefacts and their capacities, and is guided by the results of the mentioned review. This integrated structure-function account furthers our understanding of artefacts and their functions, is used for analysing the (novel) functional part-whole relation, and again advances our understanding of the relation between structural and intentional descriptions. It, moreover, helps engineers with their challenge of modelling functional decomposition.