An ontology of production, products and by-products

university of neuchâtel

The starting hypothesis of this project is that there exists an important category of entities, widely used in the sciences but rarely studied as such, which we call products and by-products. This category includes cities, books, screwdrivers, waste, contractual claims, medicines, nations, pdf documents, money, laws, acquired skills and NFTs, but not revolutions, global warming, promises, atoms, tennis games, inflation, or eclipses.

This project will have a significant impact within philosophy by defending a novel conception of human-produced continuants which moves away from the prevailing emphasis on individual and collective intentions, and instead assigns a central role to the capacities of agents and their products. Our research promises to yield important new insights concerning a wide range of phenomena which may otherwise appear disconnected, including: material and immaterial (e.g., digital) artifacts; economic goods; as well as human and machine capacities.