Matthew Wragg

Thesis title: The Epistemology of Construction Product Certification

Biography

Background

I am a SGSAH CDA funded third year PhD student. My work looks at the philosophical nature of problems in the construction industry that arise through the process of certification of products and systems. My work is very closely tied to industry; to the extent that during the first year of my PhD I spent nine months working with and at the British Board of Agrément head offices in Watford.

Before returning to academia (after an eight year break) I worked in hospitality management and speciality coffee. This (along with close personal ties to the construction industry) helped inform my interest in certification, regulation and standards. I still harbour a deep love of coffee. 

 

If you wish to have a chat about any of my research then please feel free to send me an email!

 

Qualifications

MA Philosophy - University of Kent, 2014

BA (Hons) Philosophy - University of Kent, 2013

Responsibilities & affiliations

Co-organiser of the Philosophy PhD Work in Progress series (2023 - Current)

Ethics Cup Judge (2024 - Current)

Student Session Coordinator of SGSAH's CDA Day (2024 - Current)

Undergraduate teaching

Tutoring:

Morality and Value (2023 - 2024)

Logic 1 (2024 - Current)

Philosophy of Science 1 (2024 - Current)

PPLS Skills Centre (2023 - Present)

In 2024 I was nominated for the Tutor of the Year award. 

Research summary

Philosophy of Engineering:

  • Test and Certification
  • Maintenance 
  • Regulation 
  • Standardisation
  • Operation Principle
  • Normal and Radical Design
  • Form and Function

Epistemology:

  • Of Engineering (in general)
  • Tacit Knowledge
  • Functional Accounts of Knowledge
  • Know-how and Know-that
  • Measuring Knowledge

Current research interests

My work focuses on product certification as an epistemic practice within the construction industry: what does knowledge generation look like in the process of certification, when so much knowledge is already required to be able to correctly use the artefacts that are being certified? Should we be concerned about the epistemic gap between verification of claims of performance, but the lack of (or vaguely implicit at best) acknowledgement of what an artefact cannot do?  Although the majority of my work focuses of certification, test, assessment, and regulation, I am broadly interested in the epistemology and philosophy of engineering in general, expertise, maintenance, the relationship between form and function, standardisation (both of artefacts and practices), and how we use boundary objects in engineering. 

Past research interests

Previously I have worked on paradoxes of rationality (in particular Newcomb's Problem), error theory, and speaker-meaning. I was (and I suppose still am) particularly interested in the relationship between rational decision making and what one can and cannot cause (I am a two-boxer).

Conference details

Forum on Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 2023 -  Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, April 2023  (attendance only)

"The Epistemic Maintenance of Agrément Certificates" at Maintaining Artifacts: Technology, Time and Human Practice - The University of Vienna, Austria, October 2023 

What does the process of maintaining knowledge claims of a product or systems performance look like at an institutional level? How do we juggle the need for accurate knowledge and the requirements  and regulation of products and systems. I present two pictures of epistemic maintenance; that we eschew old claims and move forward, or we move forward with both our out of date claims and our new ones, arguing that both play different roles in different spaces in the regulatory hierachy.

"Learning Function from Form" at Annual Second Year Talks - The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, May 2024

I present the view that we use the regulation of products and system in the construction industry (using the Construction Product Regulation 305/2011 and ISO standards) to attempt to answer epistemic and metaphysical questions about the nature of products that arise from the distinction between artefact form and artefact function.

"Building Bridges Using Boundary Objects" at Forum on Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 2024 - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, September 2024 

Carrying on from "Learning Function from Form" I argue that there is scope to bridge the epistemic gap between those who construct the spaces in which we live and work and those who inhabit the spaces in which we live and work through the use of boundary objects and acknowledging the extent to which failure in construction is already reliant on the experience of "non-industry members". The subsequent issue of how, or even if, this could be done without lose of detail is not address in the talk, but is addressed in the relevant chapter in my thesis.

"Testing to Failure" at The Society for Philosophy and Technology 2025 - Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, June 2025

TBC - I am currently writing this

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