Interactive Fiat Objects

Juan C.Gonzlez

Review of Philosophy and Psychology ISSN 1878-5158 Rev.Phil.Psych. DOI 10.1007/s13164-012-0121-4

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Rev.Phil.Psych. DOI 10.1007/s13164-012-0121-4

Interactive Fiat Objects

Juan C. Gonzlez

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012

Abstract The initial stage for the discussion is the distinction between bona fide and fiat objects drawn by Barry Smith and collaborators in the context of formal ontology. This paper aims at both producing a rationale for introducing a hitherto unrecognized kind of objecthere called Interactive Fiat Objects (IFOs)into the ontology of objects, and casting light on the relationship between embodied cognition and interactive ontology with the aid of the concepts of affordance and ad hoc category. I conclude that IFOs are similar to fiat objects, affordances and ad hoc categories in a number of ways, yet they differ from these in important respects. Interaction is key to understanding the existence and peculiarities of IFOs. By adopting an embodied perspective on cognition, we can enrich our ontological typologies and highlight relevant features of our physical and symbolic environment that are otherwise overlooked. This should improve our understanding of object ontology and persuade us to include IFOs in our metaphysical inventories. 1 Introduction The concept object is simple, general, highly abstract, and cognitively fundamental; because of this, its definition and precise denotation are a difficult and even controversial matter. In the philosophical and psychological literature we can find some more or less equivalent concepts for object (such as entity, unit, individual, thing) and a wide spectrum of proposals for construing it, whether abstract, concrete, universal, particular, mental or material in character. Think of Aristotles primary substance, Quines continuant or Strawsons individualto take some famous proposals as example. Above and beyond the differences that there may be between these famous construals, one common trait that they seem to share and that prima facie may explain their widespread appeal is their intuitive basis. Indeed, one way or another, these conceptions rely and build on our ordinary knowledge of what
J. C. Gonzlez (*) Filosofa y Ciencias Cognitivas, Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad Autnoma del Estado de Morelos, Av. Universidad 1001, Col. Chamilpa, Cuernavaca CP 62210, Mexico e-mail: entedemente@gmail.com

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an object is. And knowing at a basic level what an object is seems to imply, at least, the notions of spatiotemporal unity and being perceivable by the senses so that, if we know what an object is at all, then we know it is something that endures and that we can make ostensive reference to (Xu 1997). In this paper I will build on this intuitive view and will therefore assume that, on a most basic cognitive level, objects are enduring units perceivable by the senses that can in principle be pointed at. Let us call this assumption (the) Minimal Criterion for Objecthood (MCO). I should note that this is not an endorsement or a plea for concept empiricism, but rather a way to spell out what I (minimally) take objects to be when they fall under empirical concepts.1 Regardless of the concept object and its individuating criteria that we adopt or endorse, or the ontological status of its referent, we may admit that there are many kinds of objects in the world, perhaps as many as there are ways to conceive them. Here we will focus on two kinds of objects that have come to light within the last 10 years in the formal ontology arena. Smith and collaborators (Smith 1999b, 2001; Smith and Varzi 2000; Smith and Mark 2003; Bittner and Smith 2003) have proposedand, in my opinion, successfully establisheda rich typological distinction between two families of objects (which also concerns processes, agglomerations and boundaries) that are epistemically and ontologically relevant for humans: the bona fide and the fiat families. In a nutshell, this proposal holds that the members of the bona fide family have an intrinsic and thus mind-independent existence, whereas the members of the fiat family owe their existence, at least in part, to mind-dependent acts of human decision or demarcationbut are not any less relevant, epistemically and ontologically, than the bona fide members. Some examples belonging in the first family are: a tennis ball, my life, a shoal of fish, the shoreline of an island; whereas belonging in the second family we have: my right cheek, the Renaissance, Mormons in the USA, the equator.2 There are cases nested in both categories, or belonging in both families, and other (more or less subtle) peculiarities concerning the typology proposed, but we need not delve into these matters for our purposes at hand. In this paper we will focus on objects and boundaries (as opposed to processes and agglomerations) of the fiat type. Rich as this typology may be, there appears to be a third kind of object, relevant for human (and probably non-human) cognition, that escapes said distinctions and that, as I will argue, should be taken into account in our epistemological considerations and ontological inventories regarding objects. Since the bona fide/fiat distinction provides an ideal context to capture this hitherto unrecognized kind of object, I will call it Interactive Fiat Object (IFO). Furthermore, I will consider IFOs to be a sub-type of the fiat family insofar as they share important traits with canonical fiat objects, among which stand out their behavioral relevance and incidence on our daily lives in spite of their lack of both intrinsic existence and naturally perceivable boundaries. Finally, I will claim that IFOs are best understood in the light of embodied and situated cognition, which is the view that cognitionat least to the extent that it allows us to deal with the physical environment and gives rise to
In fact, I remain neutral concerning the much larger issues of concept formation and the nature of concepts. 2 Most of these examples are drawn from the above articles and correspond to objects, processes, agglomerations and boundaries, respectively.
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empirical conceptsarises from bodily interactions with the world, in which the agent (including its constitution and internal states), as well as the surrounding environment and the coupling relationship between both across time are key.

2 Fiat Boundaries and Fiat Objects In this section I will briefly delve into what fiat boundaries and objects are, according to Smith and collaboratorswho in my opinion have amply justified the existence and nature of said entities in the aforementioned articles. This should provide a background of contrast to better understand the nature of IFOs. Fiat objects are demarcated and cognitively apprehended through their corresponding fiat boundaries, and the boundaries themselves become especially important when studying the fiat family. These boundaries are boundaries which exist only in virtue of the different sorts of demarcations effected cognitively by human beings (Smith 2001: 134). It follows from this that fiat objects owe their existence, at least in part, to human cognitive acts. Moreover, the cognitive act that establishes a fiat boundary can take the form of a collective, social decree (as when dividing a city or region into postal zip codes), or of an individual act (such as when my line of sight gives rise to the perceived horizon), and it has been argued that there are several other kinds of fiats of perceptual, ecological, geometrical, political, linguistic and conceptual relevance. The recognition or establishment of the boundaries, vague or otherwise, is of crucial importance in the constitution of fiat objects, to the point of being a necessary condition for their existence. However, one could argue that we can cognize (at least certain) fiat objects without a prior recognition/establishment of their boundaries. For example, I know what a cheek (the body part) is, I can recognize one and point at it if asked to, while at the same time claiming that I ignore where the actual boundaries of the cheek are, just as I can unambiguously point at a mountain and a valley without bothering with the question of their joint boundary. Nonetheless, the fact that I can point at the cheek and then to the chin of someones face implicitly indicates that, if required, I am in the position to draw a line somewhere between the cheek and the chin when perceiving someones face or, at least, that I am ready to endorse a principled distinction between them, cast in relevant topographical terms (just as, if required, I am in the position to draw a line somewhere between the mountain and the valley or, at least, ready to endorse a principled distinction between them, cast in relevant topographical terms). In philosophical jargon, this fact would indicate that I possess both concepts (cheek and chin) and that I know their reference and their individuating criteria. The question of whether the possession of a concept of any given object demands knowing precisely and/or explicitly its individuating criteria runs parallel to the question of whether cognizing a fiat object demands a precise and/or explicit recognition or establishment of its boundaries. And the answer to both questions is: it depends. It depends on the kind of concept and fiat object in turn and, above all, on the purpose and situation for asking; in some cases it will be demanded and in other cases it wont. A heart surgeon possesses the concept mitral valve in a much richer and precise way than I do; likewise, the postman needs to know how neighborhoods and zip code areas are partitioned within a city in a way that I do not, although I may

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have an idea of their relative locations. In this paper I am equally concerned by both the reference and the individuating criteria of certain empirical concepts, as one cannot separate these issues when pretending to introduce a novel kind of object into our ontological inventories. Besides the question of the preciseness and/or the explicitness of the boundaries of fiat objects needed for cognizing these, there is a deeper question: is a fiat object (truly) ontologically dependent on the recognition/establishment of its boundaries by human beings and, if so, to what extent? From the literature cited above, the answer appears to be: yes, at least to a large extent3. In that perspective, it seems to matter little whether the recognition/establishment of such boundaries is previous or simultaneous to the cognizing act. What matters is that the existence of fiat objects essentially depend on (the demarcation of) their boundaries, either as a collective or an individual enterprise. A mountain, for example, is considered by Smith and Varzi as a three-dimensional fiat object insofar as it is an object whose boundary is not entirely of the bona fide variety, just as are a bay, the branches of a tree, or the stem of a champagne glass. (2000: 403).4 Fiat objects thus comprise a fairly wide range of degrees and sub-types that are critically determined by the sorts of boundary they have: entirely or partially fiat, static or shifting, vague or crisp. The study of fiat ontology, when supplemented with a theory of partitions, allows us to define fiat objects as objects which exist (and are demarcated from their surroundings) only because ofpartitioning activity (Bittner and Smith 2003: 120). Partitioning activity recognizes/establishes the boundaries on which fiat objects depend for existing. And this activity is said to be the result of decisions or conceptually-guided demarcations (Smith 2001), that seem to demand a symbolic, reflexive or linguistic capacity on the part of the agent: The introduction of the notion of fiat object rests on the idea that they are parts of reality which would not be there (in the absence of) corresponding linguistic and cultural practices (Smith 2001 : 145) From this angle, fiat entities seem to be inextricably linked to conceptual capacities, although it could be argued that al least a subset of them are not (e.g., the territory dominated by a mountain lion that is demarcated through exudationas it was kindly suggested to me by an anonymous reviewer). At any rate, from the above literature it appears that paradigmatic fiat objects: I) populate our everyday world; II) comply with the MCO; III) are in principle as relevant for our behavior as any bona fide object can be; IV) depend on highorder cognitive acts for their existence; V) are describable and communicable through concepts encoded in language; VI) are public and stable through time (with the exception of what Smith and Varzi call individual fiats (2000: 403)); and VII) have a meaningful and sometimes powerful incidence on our lives. With the exception of IV, all other traits are shared by bona fide objects. However, as I will presently argue, there is another kind of object, relevant for human (and probably non-human) cognition and behavior, which is not captured by the bona fide/fiat distinction and which indeed requires a separate treatment in an epistemological and ontological sense.
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Here we are talking of paradigmatic fiat objects: the ones that possess fiat boundaries only. For a full discussion on the ontological status of mountains see (Smith and Mark 2003)

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3 Interactive Fiat Objects Like paradigmatic fiat objects, IFOs are behaviorally relevant and have an instrumentalif not meaningfulincidence in our daily lives, and they too they have no intrinsic existence nor naturally-perceivable boundaries. However, contrary to paradigmatic fiat objects, the existence of an IFO does not essentially depend on the (previous or simultaneous) conceptually-driven demarcation of its boundaries5 and it does not squarely fall into, nor does it derive from, any of the fiat sub-types hitherto evoked. IFOs comply with traits I, II, III, VI, VII (above) and, as I will argue, have an ontological status and an epistemological relevance of their own. Acknowledging the existence of IFOs is facilitated by adopting an embodied6 perspective on cognition, which broadly-speaking runs counter to the Kantian idea that human cognition is eminently a conceptual-linguistic matter. If we adopt the view that cognition is embodied, the conceptual-linguistic grip on the fiat family is relaxed, and the dynamic and interactive character of cognition is vitally underlined, thereby allowing IFOs to surface ontologically and come into full view. True, the constellation of authors propounding or endorsing this perspective is rather vague, and the points of conceptual contact among them even more so (Wilson, 2002); but this is fine as long as we agree that To say that cognition is embodied means that it arises from bodily interactions with the world. From this point of view, cognition depends on the kinds of experiences that come from having a body with particular perceptual and motor capacities that are inseparably linked (Thelen et al. 2001: 20) Again, this view is meant to apply at least to the extent that cognition allows us to deal with the physical environment and gives rise to empirical concepts. Also, in this perspective, aspects of the cognitive processes such as the internal states of the agent, its bodily constitution and movement, the goal-driven tasks, and the situatedness (i.e., the perspectival and contextual nature of our relation with the world) become relevant (Barsalou, 2009). Hence, for instance, whereas cognizing paradigmatic fiat objects requires conceptual-linguistic abilities on the part of the agent that are independent of the particular experience and context of the individual agent, for IFOs the opposite is the case. At any rate, looking at our behavior through the lens of embodied cognition helps us recognize IFOs as part of everyday life. They, like paradigmatic fiat objects, are supported by bona fide objects and satisfy the MCO; if relevant, they can also be conceptualized, named and pointed at. But, unlike other fiat objects, IFOs are constituted on the fly through interaction with the environment, in a goal-driven and ad hoc fashion.7 Think of the part of the chair you would grab if you were to move it or lift it, or the part of the door you push when you want to open it to enter the kitchen, or the part of your friends back if you were to pat him as a sign of sympathy.
5 At least not in the sense in which demarcation is usually understood: as a recognition/establishment of the objects boundaries with the aid of conceptual guidance and linguistic articulation. 6 For a presentation and discussions on embodied cognition see (Clark 1997, 1999; Hutchins 1995; No 2005; Varela et al. 1991). 7 Goal-driven interaction is understood here as purposeful and attentive interaction. As for ad hoc, see Section 4.

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Somehow, you perceptually and spontaneously demarcate certain portions of the supporting bona fide object in order to interact with the chair, the door and your friend, attaining thus your goal.8 Although no one ever tells us where to grab chairs from or where to apply pressure on doors in order to open them (although it may be argued that we learn through imitation), the wearing marks on those objects demonstrate that there are well-established regularities in our interaction with our surroundings. Sure enough, if our friend is constantly in need of sympathy and lives in the relevant cultural milieuand he didnt change his shirt for some significant timehe too would show marks of regular interaction with the (social) environment, just as the right foot of St. Peter s statue in the Vatican (in St. Peter s Basilica) has been nearly worn away from the many pilgrims who kiss it in homage. In any case, these goaloriented behavioral regularities generate visible evidence to the effect that cognitive assessment and demarcation, together with agent-environment interaction, take place. Through perception we both select the relevant parts of the environment that subserve our goals and control our actions. Feed-back between perception and action establishes the sensorimotor coupling that constitutes the interaction with the world, and leads to subsequent cognitive assessment that may or may not result in further demarcating activity. In the case of the chair we want to move, once the bona fide object (i.e., the chair) is detected, the critical region is selected towards that end by a demarcating activity that is embedded in the situation wherein the interaction takes place. And the situation implicitly includes, among other things, the material constitution of the chair (you grab it differently if it is a heavy chair carved out of a wooden trunk, as opposed to a pliable chair made out of fabric), its shape, the distance we want to move it, our own physical condition, our mood,9 etc. Presumably, this specific situation is culture-independent in the sense that moving a chair usually involves the consideration of physical and individual parameters only, whereas the selection of the part of my friends back that I pat as a sign of sympathy would presumably be conventionally-driven and, in this sense, culture-dependent. However, and regardless of the cultural in/dependence of the cognitive assessment and demarcating activity, the fact remains that it is our goal-oriented and situated interaction in the environment that brings about parts of bona fide objects that are differentially valued in an instrumental sense. The cognitive assessment at stake has an obvious incidence on perception and action, as it allows an optimal interaction according to the situation, which in turn develops proficiency over time. This is evident in the domain of professional sports and games: think of the precise part(s) of the tables edge the expert billiards player would have to hit in order to send the ball to the desired spot, or the precise part of the backboard against which the professional basketball player would have to bounce the ball in order to score a basket. There are neither marks on the tables edge or on the basketball backboard, nor pre-defined privileged regions on the table or the backboard, to guide the player s aim: the right place to hit is not given in advance but is constituted online as a function of the player s position, momentum, force of the
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This applies to the visual modality. I leave open the extent to which the perceptual demarcation and cognitive assessment applies to other sensory modalities. 9 I include mood as a relevant factor because we will arguably select different parts according to the emotional status in turn: if angry, I may just want to kick the chair out of my way.

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gesture, desired effect, etc. The same goes for all activities that are carried out with expertise and that involve perceptual demarcation and cognitive assessment in the sense already mentioned: the expert rock-climber knows exactly where her fingers and feet will land when moving forward on a wall, a professional soccer player knows exactly where to kick the ball in order to obtain the desired trajectory, the kayak expert knows where and how to paddle in order to ride the rapids effectively, and the sculptor knows what part of the stone to hit with the chisel in order to precisely chip away the desired amount and shape of stone. From this angle, the novice is blind to those precise locations, to those refined IFOs. In these cases, the corresponding IFOs are not conceptually-processed nor linguistically-encoded, yet they are very sensitive to requirements that can be cast in conceptual and linguistic terms. Also, it seems that IFOs are gradient-like in the sense that they admit degrees of cognitive access according to level of expertise. Since both theoretical and practical knowledge are intertwined in an experts trainingconceptual, cognitive, motor and perceptual abilities interacting with one another to refine behavioral performancewe can bring IFOs into existence in accordance with the degree of mastery of those abilities. Hence, if pressed on the issue, I would argue that the vagueness of the boundaries of the IFOs would diminish as the level of expertise increases. Still, contrary to paradigmatic fiat objects, there is not a straightforward sense in which the existence of IFOs depends on the recognition or establishment of their boundaries. In order to further clarify the nature of IFOs we will turn our attention to ecological and cognitive psychology.

4 Affordances and ad hoc Categories It is difficult to exactly pinpoint what an affordance is. The term was coined by J.J. Gibson in the 1960s (Gibson 2000) and can be understood in more or less subtly different ways: as the allowable actions specified by the environment coupled with the properties of the organism (Zhang and Patel 2006: 339), as relations between the abilities of animals and features of the environment (Chemero 2003: 181), as the relation between some feature of the layout and its use or value to ourselves (Gibson 2000: 55), as an invariant combination of properties of substance and surface taken with reference to an animal (Turvey 1992: 174) or, as J. Gibson himself put it: The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill. Regardless of its precise meaning or definition, the concept proves useful in this context because of the prima facie similarities with the concept of IFO. However, as we will see, affordances and IFOs have also key differences. The exercise of distinguishing both concepts should further clarify what IFOs are, together with their epistemological import and ontological status. But before we do this, and out of fairness for Smith and collaborators, I should say that these authors have indeed brought up the notion of affordance in the discussion of fiat objects (Smith 1999a, 2001; Smith and Mark 2003), rightly arguing that we should take ecology and behavior into account in the analysis of the relationship between cognitive agents and fiat objects. But although ecology, behavior and affordances collectively imply interaction between agent and environment, nowhere is the crucial role of goal-driven

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interaction and embodiment for bringing objects into existence made explicit in the referred texts. Smith comes closest to the notion of IFO when he claims that we are confronted in our everyday experiencewith a great wealth ofsupernumerary boundaries of a more transient sort, boundaries created by our acts of perception and by human cognitive processes of other sorts (1999a: 324), but that is as far as he goes: he does not take what could be the next logical step, addressing the case of transient objects that are critically related to goal-driven behavior. In a different vein, Chemero (2003) claims that post-Gibsonian traditional views on affordances can be grouped in terms of their common idea that affordances are (animal-relative) properties of the environment; to this he opposes his own view that affordances are relations between animals and features or aspects of situations. His view is meant to avoid certain metaphysical controversies (e.g., do affordances qua environmental properties exist without animals?) or epistemological ones (e.g., what is the function of affordances for behavior and natural selection?) and to make clear once and for all that the understanding of affordances cannot be divorced from the animal and that affordances must belong to animal-environment systems, not just the environment (2003: 186). Above all, Chemeros view is meant to make affordances ontologically respectable while still doing justice to Gibsons original conception (2003: 182). Attractive as Chemeros view is, the reading of affordances here endorsed is rather traditional: one that is closer to Turveys dispositional interpretation (1992) and to Smiths mereotopological and perspectival realism (1999a, b; 2003) (and, of course, to Gibsons original insights (1979)).10 Thus, the interactions that affordances involve are mainly determined by the physical constitution and the capacities of the organism, by the physical constitution and layout of the corresponding environment and by the nature of the task at hand and the situation in which it is carried out. Hence, we can say that a pair of scissors affords cutting paper if the right sort of interaction between the agent and the world obtains or can obtain. The same (mutatis mutandis) can be said of stepladders, back-country trails, punching bags, mirrors and boulders. Following Chemero in this regard, a physical object or a part thereof is an affordance only if taken as an element of a relational couple that includes an agent, and not as a physical object per se. Even though a physical object has endurance per se, it has not saliency per se: our interests, needs and goals dictate saliency (except in the cases of threatening physical objects). Moreover, affordances seem to imply complementarity and systemic relations: An affordance implies complementarity of the perceiver and the environmentAffordances only make sense from a system point of viewGibsons original affordances are basically those that are specified by the relations between the physical structures of the environment and the physique of the organism (e.g., chairs afford sitting for people) (Zhang and Patel 2006: 3367) There seems to be wide agreement about some of the basic characteristics of affordances, which are also shared by IFOs: a) they are intimately tied to, and enable, action; b) they have a perspectival (in Smiths sense), if not subjective, character; c) they are relative to the ecological niche and situation of the agent; d) they dont
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This notwithstanding, my broader metaphysical outlook is closer to Chemeros than to Turveys Bungean physicalism or to Gibsons direct information pick-up stance (Gibson 2000).

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require acts of human decision or conceptual identification for being; e) in spite of the (sometimes high) repetition of the interaction that makes them manifest, they are not usually captured or referred to by linguistic compact terms.11 So much for similarities, now the differences: f) IFOs emerge into the realm of being, they become on the go, due to a guided interaction with the environment: they are dynamically constituted by a goal-driven activity and, hence, they depend on action for their very being, their existence being as short or as long as the interaction between agent and environment is sustained. Not so with affordances, for, according to the informational outlook of Gibsons psychology, they are invariant properties of the environment that, although relative to the ecological niche and situation of the agent, exist independently from the (inter)action; g) generally, IFOs are sensitive to the inner states, goals and situation of the agent, and thereby much less determined by first-order survival and practical constraints, than are affordances; h) while not conceptually-generated nor linguisticallydependent, IFOs can be exquisitely sensitive to conceptual guidance and linguistic distinctions (being cognitively penetrablein Pylyshyns terminology (1986)and communicable), demonstrating thus their versatile constitution. Not so with affordances, which are primarily functional entities ensuring survival and interaction in a typically bottom-up fashion; i) IFOs can be arguably concocted through virtual interaction (see below), whereas in the classical Gibsonian reading, it does not make sense to speak of affordances where there is not overt, face-value behavior being subserved by the interaction between animal and environment, where there is no transparently useful action linked to the affordance in turn. But IFOs are far from being constrained in this way. Let us think of the inner region of the bucket into which we need to pour the water without splashing, or the area of the inner side of the glass we should pour the beer on in order to avoid excessive foam. Mastery of these skills is a matter of practical knowledge and, if needed, it could be supplemented with conceptual-linguistic guidance and theoretical knowledge. From this angle, it would be very strange to consider said part of the bucket or the glass an affordance. One last example, certainly of an unusual character, might help in illustrating the peculiar character of IFOs as compared to affordances. Think of the virtual groupings one can effect when idly watching square tiles on a ceramic floor: one can perceptually lump two, four or any number of tiles together, forming aggregate objects of perception with definite shapes. One can make different shapes by mentally varying the outer demarcation lines of the aggregates; in short, one can project or assign virtual contours onto groups of real objects and produce private IFOs. Lets call this virtual interaction. Still, upon request (what are you looking at?), one may easily point at the object of perception and to its corresponding contours, bringing the virtual object into public view, satisfying en passant the MCO. Taking this reasoning to the extreme, we can think of the ultimate IFO as that object whose contours are all
11 There is ongoing work in embodied semantics that closely links language, action and perception so as to include functional and contextual featuresbeyond the merely spatial onesinto the descriptions of objects and persons in ones environment. In this view, prepositions such as at or under (at least in the English language) are linguistic compact-terms that convey not only spatial relations between agent and environment or between objects, but also functional and contextual information corresponding to the situation at hand. See, for instance, (Coventry and Garrod 2004).

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virtual (projected), with no bona fide supporting boundaries whatsoever and no physical interaction to correlate withsomething indeed very far from being an affordance. Think of the area of the blank wall that used to be occupied by your girlfriends photograph and that nowafter breaking-up with her and having taken it downyou are still watching; or think of the part of the blank wall that, after long deliberation and virtual trials, you have chosen to hang your ninja sword on. The IFOs in question are the result of virtual interaction and perceptual demarcation (projection), but they still comply with the MCO and can be objectified if asked to. True, these IFOs will be rather unstable and subject to other cognitive capacities, such as memory or visualization, but that is beside the point. In a different vein, there is another notion arising from cognitive psychology that, together with the notion of affordance, is useful as a background of contrast to better understand the nature of IFOs: ad hoc categories as conceived by Barsalou (1983, 1987, 1991). An ad hoc category is understood as a goal-oriented classification of objects that is formed on the go or on the fly, being sensitive to context, unstable over time, and having a gradient structure. Things to take on a picnic and things to take out of the house in the event of a fire are examples of these categories. What binds these categories together is a common goal toward which elements of the category contribute in one way or another, to a greater or lesser degree. IFOs are like ad hoc categories in the sense that they are goal-derived and are constituted on the move, are typically ephemeral and ontologically unstable, are gradient-like, and are not captured by compact names. But, unlike ad hoc categories, IFOs are perceivable and concrete tokens and, when stabilized over time through repeated interaction, they leave traceswhether physical or linguistic (like the racquets sweet spot Cf. Section 5). To sum up, there are several ways in which bona fide objects, fiat objects and IFOs are interrelated in view of the contrast provided by the notions of embodiement, affordance and ad hoc category, and by ontological and epistemological considerations.

5 The Birth of the Sweet Spot As any experienced tennis player knows, a tennis racquet has a sweet spot (actually, it has two).12 A racquets sweet spot is paradigmatic of what an IFO is, except for the fact that it has already been linguistically-encoded (although only in the sphere of experts). A racquets sweet spot is a good case to reinforce what we have been arguing: like other fiat objects, its existence depends on bona fide objects; it is dynamically-accessed and constituted as such through interaction; the delimitation of its boundaries hinges on degrees of expertise; it is perceivable and concrete.
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A tennis racquet, like a baseball or cricket bat, has two sweet spots. If a ball impacts at either of these spots, the force transmitted to the hand is sufficiently small that the player is almost unaware that the impact has occured. If the ball impacts at a point well away from the sweet spots, the player will feel some jarring and vibration of the handle. One of the sweet spots is the vibration node, located near the centre of the strings. The other sweet spot is called the centre of percussion (COP): http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/ ~cross/tennis.html

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Two ontological questions arise now: a) did the sweet spot exist before it was conceptualized and named as such?; and b) does the sweet spot exist independently of the interaction between tennis racquets and balls? To the first question, the sensible answer is yes: expert tennis players of the past most likely did feel the sweet effect whenever the tennis ball would hit the zones of the racquet we now call sweet spot. And although they did not have a concept or name for the corresponding kinesthetic sensation, they would most likely recognize it again and again in bodily terms (as a somatosensory effect) so as to behaviorally and cognitively, and perhaps non-consciously, cultivate it. This is understandable given the fact that this sensation is pleasurable, together with the fact that sweet-spot shots minimize energy-expenditure and maximize control.13 This metaphysical question is somehow analogous to the question of knowing whether the center of gravity of a given (bona fide) object exists independently of its being conceptualized and named as suchwhose answer is doubtless positive as well. However, we should keep in mind that, from an embodied perspective, the concepts sweet spot and center of gravity differ insofar as the first one is acquired and cognitively rooted in the practical province of interaction and phenomenal experience, whereas the second one although arguably acquired through interaction and phenomenal experience of some objects, and then inductively generalized to all (bona fide) objectsis cognitively rooted in the theoretical province of physics. In short, sweet spot is a concept primarily captured by practical considerations, whose meaning can be fully given in terms of embodiment and ecology. Not so with center of gravity, for the concept demands theoretical considerations that are detached from first-hand experience and that pertain to the natural and formal sciences. As for the second question, the answer is resolutely no: for the sweet spot to exist, as I have been arguing, there must be the right interaction between balls and racquets held by players, so the existence of a tennis racquet does not support in and of itself the existence of the sweet spot. It should be noted that actual individual tennis racquets at restincluding the new ones that have not been used or the old ones buried in my grandpas cellaror those that are used by novice players, can without contradiction be said to host sweet spots, at least potentially, since it is a contingent fact that those racquets are not interacting in the relevant way with the world so as to bring about sweet spots. In this sense it could be said that potential interactions complement the dispositional property of the racquet. Compare this to center of gravity: we do not want to say that (bona fide) objects are required to interact with the world, or have to be appropriately related to other objects, in order for them to host a center of gravity. At any rate, by inquiring into the sweet spots history we may cast light on the sequential stages of an IFOs emergence and development, in general: 1) there is a brute stage where there is only a bona fide entity that potentially hosts an IFO (in this
13

Terry Higgins, a good friend of mine and baseball fan from San Francisco, California, tells me that he recalls hearing the announcers of the Giants baseball team (who are former professional players) discuss the sweet spot and mention that they could hear, from the broadcast booth, when a ball was struck off that spot. Some fans wrote a letter to them and told them they had heard so many mentions from these two announcers of this spot that they had drinking parties wherein every time one of these former players said sweet spot, everyone had to drink from their beer. So the sweet spot is real and efficient in more than one sense!

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case, a racquet or baseball); 2) there is the interactive stage, where the IFO emerges and is cognitively consolidated and behaviorally reinforcedthough it is not conceptually-captured (in this case, it is the somatosensory effect that a player experiences, recognizes and fosters when s/he hits the zone called sweet spot); 3) there is the conceptual stage, where the IFO is conceptually individuated in a univocal way, receiving a name (in this case, the concept and term is sweet spot). I suggest that this schematic account of an IFOs birth and development can provide hints for theorizing, if only crudely, on the interrelation between bona fide and fiat entities of the baseline type throughout human cognitive evolution. Indeed, from a cognitive anthropological standpoint, it could be argued that IFOs are a sort of missing link between bona fide and baseline fiat objects, and that fiat objects of this type were once IFOs whose cognitive relevance or material usefulness was so critical for our societal survival and development that they attained the conceptual stage, being individuated and referred to by compact expressions or nouns. In this perspective, the encoding of IFOs in language would be both implicit testimony of their theoretical and/or practical import and their inaugural stage as ordinary or even paradigmatic fiat objects. Furthermore, we could say that current fiat objects have been the most useful and solicited type of IFOs across human cognitive evolution: the ones that have been behaviorally selected and linguistically consecrated, and that are now part of our conceptual landscape, possessing a key instrumental value for fulfilling our needs. As an example of this, an anonymous reviewer of a previous version of this paper has remarked that It is said that the streets of the Beacon Hill district in Boston were laid out following the trails made by cattle, which, whether true or not, is a nice illustration of a case where fiat objects putatively develop from IFOs. I leave up to the reader to envision other cases.

6 Conclusions As we have seen, interactive fiat objects are similar to fiat objects, affordances and ad hoc categories in a number of ways, yet they differ from each other in important respects. Interaction is key to understanding the existence and peculiarities of IFOs. By adopting an embodied and situated perspective on cognition we can highlight relevant features of our physical and symbolic environment that are otherwise easily overlooked, and enrich our ontological typologies. Beyond the pure theoretical interest of IFOs, their study can be useful in certain areas of metaphysics and epistemology, such as object individuation, cognitive saliency, concept formation, non-conceptual content and the nature of concepts. From a practical standpoint, IFOs may prove to be useful in robotics, sport performance, ergonomics, interior design, architecture, rehabilitation, domotics and other domains involving object/space interaction. And methodologically, IFOs can put to test different paradigms in cognitive science so as to reveal strengths and weaknesses of the different methods we use for approaching and modeling cognition. Developing any of these lines of research could prove a worthy future subject. Here I have aimed at improving our understanding of object ontology and at persuading us to welcome IFOs into our metaphysical zoo or, at least, to start getting used to the idea that they are here to stay.

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Interactive Fiat Objects Acknowledgments I express my gratitude to Jess Vega and Fernando Broncano, for their useful commentaries to this text, and for hosting me during my stay in the Universidad Autnoma de Madrid (20112012), where I enjoyed Conacyts (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia) grant #0162621 (Mexico), given as a scholarship for a research stay abroad. Thanks to Terry Higgins and two anonymous reviewers for improving this work with useful comments and proofreading.

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