Vermaas, dr. P.E. (Pieter)

Dr. Pieter E. Vermaas

Senior Researcher

Department of Philosophy
Room b4.270
Faculty of TPM
Delft University of Technology

Jaffalaan 5
2628 BX Delft
The Netherlands
Tel.: +31-15-27 83323
Fax: +31-15-27 86439
E-mail:  p.e.vermaas@tudelft.nl


Biography

In 1998 Pieter Vermaas joined the Philosophy Department of Delft University of Technology with research on the philosophy of technical artefacts. I helped creating the Dual Nature of Technical Artifacts research program, in which technical artefacts were analysed as having both structural and intentional natures, with functions playing an important role in relating these natures. In this program I participated as a post doc researcher from 2000 to 2004, focussing on determining the relations between the functions and structure of technical artefacts and studying engineering and design methodological sources. The results of this programme have been collected in a special issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 37(1) ; two more general results obtained in collaboration with Wybo Houkes are an action-theoretical analysis of the use and design of artefacts in terms of what we have called use plans of artefacts, and an account of technical functions, dubbed the ICE-function theory. These results are brought together in the joint monograph Technical Functions: On the Use and Design of Artefacts.

From 2006 to 2010 my research focuses in more detail on engineering functional descriptions of technical artefacts. In a five-year project Functional Decomposition in Philosophy and Engineering, made possible by an NWO VIDI fellowship, I analysed the use of functions and functional decompositions in engineering design methods. One key-objective has been to determine whether the subfunctions into which functions are decomposed can be taken as parts of those functions, where part is defined by mereology. This analysis has led to the recognition that engineers use the term function with a number of different meanings, leading to the conclusion that also functional decompositions is not an unambiguous engineering technique. Results are explanations of the advantages and rationality of the ambiguous use of functional descriptions and of functional decompositions in engineering. Moreover, the subfunction-function relation as defined by functional decomposition seems not to give a mereological part-whole relation, when function is represented as operations on flows, as is often done in engineering.

Research in the near future will be focussed on the relations between different design methods, ranging from established rule-based methods and design techniques in engineering to current accounts of design thinking in innovative product designing.

Additional research interests are currently design for values in engineering ethics, the metaphysics of artefacts and artefact kinds, the relation between technical and biological functions, and, in collaboration with Stefano Borgo, Massimiliano Carrara and Pawel Garbacz, the formalisation of functional descriptions.

A special interest is the introduction of quantum-mechanical concepts in technology, which is related with my background in theoretical physics and my Ph.D. in philosophy of physics obtained in 1998 with Prof. Dennis Dieks, at the Institute for History and Foundations of Science of Utrecht University. The topic of my Ph.D, were the modal interpretations of quantum mechanics. The first modal interpretation was launched in the 1970s by Bas van Fraassen; later versions were proposed in the 1980s by Simon Kochen, Dennis Dieks, Richard Healey and Jeffrey Bub. In the 1990s research framed modal interpretations as a general family of interpretations in which quantum mechanics is a theory that both assigns quantum states to physical systems and that singles out probabilistically the physical properties of these systems. The results of my Ph.D. can be found in A Philosopher’s Understanding of Quantum Mechanics , summing up the possibilities and impossibilities of modal interpretations.

Services and editorships

The field of philosophy of technology and engineering is an exciting field that is expanding in the Netherlands and internationally. In addition to doing research I aimed at contributing to the consolidation and academic infrastructure of the field. I chaired the Delft 14th Biennial International Meeting of the Society of Philosophy and Technology . I helped initiating an MSc program Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society (PSTS) at the University of Twente in which my Philosophy Department of Delft University of Technology participates. And I contribute with editorships and by establishing a book series for the field with Springer.

Editor in chief of the Philosophy of Engineering and Technology book series
Editor of Philosophy and Technology
Editor of Nanoethics
Past editor of Techné

Selected publications
(A full list can be found here)

Books

Edited volumes

Special issues

  • Houkes, W., and P.E. Vermaas (2009) Artefacts in Analytic Metaphysics, Techne13(2) (Introduction, Techne13, 74-81).

Journal articles

  • Vermaas, P.E., Y-H Tan, J. van den Hoven, B. Burgemeestre and J. Hulstijn (2010) Designing for Trust: A Case of Value-Sensitive Design, Knowledge, Technology and Policy 23, 491-505.
  • Borgo, S., M. Carrara, P. Garbacz and P.E. Vermaas (2009) A Formal Ontological Perspective on Behaviors and Functions of Technical Artifacts, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing23, 3-21.
  • Carrara, M., and P.E. Vermaas (2009) The Fine-Grained Metaphysics of Artifactual and Biological Functional Kinds, Synthese169, 125-143, DOI 10.1007/s11229-008-9339-1.
  • Houkes, W., and P.E. Vermaas (2009) Contemporary Engineering and the Metaphysics of Artefacts: Beyond the Artisan Model, Monist92, 403-419.
  • Vermaas, P.E., and K. Dorst (2007) On the Conceptual Framework of John Gero’s FBS-model and the Prescriptive Aims of Design Methodology, Design Studies28, 133-157.
  • Vermaas, P.E., and W. Houkes (2006) Technical Functions: A Drawbridge between the Intentional and Structural Nature of Technical Artefacts, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science37, 5-18.
  • Vermaas, P.E. (2005) Technology and the Conditions on Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science56, 635-661.
  • Houkes, W., and P.E. Vermaas (2004) Actions versus Functions: A Plea For an Alternative Metaphysics of Artifacts, Monist87, 52-71.
  • Vermaas, P.E., and W. Houkes (2003) Ascribing Functions to Technical Artefacts: A Challenge to Etiological Accounts of Functions, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science54, 261-289.
  • Houkes, W., P.E. Vermaas, K. Dorst and M.J. de Vries (2002) Design and Use as Plans: An Action-Theoretical Account, Design Studies23, 303-320.
  • Vermaas, P.E. (1997) A No-Go Theorem for Joint Property Ascriptions in Modal Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, Physical Review Letters78, 2033-2037.
  • Vermaas, P.E., and D. Dieks (1995) The Modal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and Its Generalization to Density Operators, Foundations of Physics25, 145-158.
  • Book and proceedings contributions
  • Vermaas, P.E. (2010) Beyond Expert Design Thinking: On General, Descriptive and Prescriptive Models, in K. Dorst, S. Stewart, I. Staudinger, B. Paton, A. Dong (eds.) Proceedings of the 8th Design Thinking Research Symposium (DTRS8) Sydney, 19-20 October, 2010 (Sydney: DAB documents), pp. 405-413. dab.uts.edu.au/research/conferences/dtrs8
  • Vermaas, P.E. (2009) On Unification: Taking Technical Functions as Objective (and Biological Functions as Subjective), in U. Krohs and P. Kroes (eds.) Functions in Biological and Artificial Worlds: Comparative Philosophical Perspectives, Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press), pp. 69-87.
  • Vermaas, P.E. (2009) The Flexible Meaning of Function in Engineering, in eProceedings of the 17th International Conference on Engineering Design, Stanford, California, USA, August 24-27, 2009, pp. 2.113-2.124 (on CD-ROM).
  • Vermaas, P.E., and P. Garbacz (2009) Functional Decompositions and Mereology in Engineering, in A.W.M. Meijers (ed.) Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences (Amsterdam: Elsevier), pp. 235-271.

Forthcoming

  • Cuevas-Badallo, A., and P.E. Vermaas (2011) A Functional Abc for Biotechnology and the Dissemination of Its Progeny, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences.
  • Carrara, M., P. Garbacz and P.E. Vermaas (2011) If Engineering Function is a Family Resemblance Concept: Assessing Three Formalization Strategies, Applied Ontology.
© 2012 TU Delft

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