Re: non-material artifacts

Olli Kuure (okuure who-is-at ktk.oulu.fi)
Fri, 26 Jan 1996 09:19:34 GMT+0300

the ongoing discussion about how to define the nature of artefacts
brought to my mind Evald Ilyenkov's article The concept of ideal.
In: Philosophy in the USSR. Problems of Dialectical Materialism.
Moscow:Progress. 1977. following Marx (Capital, vol 1), Ilyenkov writes:
the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by
the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.

So, the acquisition of the material linguistic sign takes place in
the form of an ideal. the form of existence of an ideal is a process,
which Ilyenkov illustrates with the following chain: phenomenon -
action - word - action - phenomenon. In this process, language
functions as an instrument for regulation, direction and mediation
in human social activity.

It seems to me that the concept of ideal, defined as above, could
help to describe the nature of what is called an artefact.

Olli Kuure
University of Oulu, Finland