The main purpose of this article is to provide an in-depth review of Andrew Feenberg’s Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason. To this end, the anal...

The decolonial theory understands that Western Modernity keeps imposing itself through a triple mutually reinforcing and shaping imprisonment: coloniality of power, coloniality of knowledge, and coloniality of being. Technical design has an essential role in either maintaining or overcoming coloniality. In this article, two main approaches to decolonizing the technical design are presented. First is Yuk Hui’s and Ahmed Ansari’s proposals that, revisiting or recovering the different histories and philosophies of technology produced by humankind, intend to decolonize the minds of (...) philosophers and engineers/architects/designers as a pre-condition for such decolonial designs to take place. I call them top-down approaches. Second is some technical design initiatives that, being developed alongside marginalized/subalternate people, intend to co-construct decolonial sociotechnical solutions through a committed, decolonizing, and careful dialog of knowledge. I call them bottom-up approaches. Once that is done, the article’s second half derives ontological, epistemological, and political consequences from the conjugation of top-down and bottom-up approaches. Such consequences challenge some established or not yet entirely overcome understandings in the philosophy of technology and, in so doing, are meant to represent some steps in PT’s decolonization. Even though both top-down and bottom-up approaches are considered, the article’s main contributions are associated with decolonial technical design practices, whose methodologies and outcomes are important study cases for PT and whose practitioners can be taken as inspiring examples for philosophers who want to decolonize/enlarge PT or make it decolonial. (shrink)

This paper aims to propose philosophical criticism toward 'classical' thinking on philosophy of technology. This set of thinking tends to be trapped in the distinction between subject-object and romantic-pessimisms on the existence of technological dominance. The authors objective is to provide comprehensive understanding through contemporary approaches in philosophy concerning technological mediation. The study employs factual historical analysis and philosophical reflection to understand technological mediation patterns. The result maps point of view that develops a metaphysical orientation of technological mediation in terms (...) of several approaches. Postphenomenological approaches technological mediation in a relational and intentional context rather than providing a subject-object distinction. Actor-network theory improves the asymmetrical relation of humans and non-humans. Simondon and Harman provide for ontological analysis of tools and technology in human relationships. Critical theory of technology opens the chance that technological relations are not only neutral-instrumental but have transformative and emancipatory power. Therefore, the technological mediation approach can become a new subject in the metaphysics of technology discourse in overcoming the limitations of the classical philosophy of technology. (shrink)

El artículo afronta un tema novedoso que ha tenido recientemente tratamientos muy diversos. Algunosde sus objetivos podrían ser los siguientes: pretende señalar algunos caminos realizados en el diálogo entreciencia y técnica a lo largo de las últimas décadas y describir sucintamente los hitos que han conducido desde la ciencia clásica (newtoniana) a la tecnociencia actual. En el fondo, ofrecer también unas pinceladas sobre la nueva filosofía de la técnica, que se construye apartando viejos prejuicios humanistas, que cuenta con el desarrollo (...) teórico de la consiliencia y que no quiere estar dirigida ni principalmente ni exclusivamente hacia la ingeniería. En definitiva, una filosofía de la técnica con nueva ‘agenda’. El trabajo tiene cuatro grandes bloques: en el primero se describe el proyecto de la tecnociencia en su perspectiva histórica. En un segundo momento se pretende situar la técnica en la historia de las ciencias y de las técnicas. La tercera parte aborda la posibilidad (también necesidad) de una nueva visión de estos temas, que se ha dado en llamar visión sapiencial y transdisciplinar. Finalmente, en la cuarta parte, se señalan algunos pasos que se están dando en el campo de la filosofía de la técnica bajo esta nueva mirada, lo que podrían ser consideradas como las conclusiones, la nueva agenda: irrupción de enfoques éticos (entre otros, el de la responsabilidad) y nuevas visiones de ciencia-tecnología-sociedad. (shrink)

The philosophy of technology is not influencing technological change because there isn’t a single philosophy of technology. Philosophers of technology should be involved in technological change because we have something valuable to offer. But before we can get involved, we have to be accepted by those effecting the changes. That means we have to acquire the credentials necessary to establish our credibility. We have to get our hands dirty.

This paper introduces the design principle of legibility as means to examine the epistemic and ethical conditions of sensing technologies. Emerging sensing technologies create new possibilities regarding what to measure, as well as how to analyze, interpret, and communicate said measurements. In doing so, they create ethical challenges for designers to navigate, specifically how the interpretation and communication of complex data affect moral values such as autonomy. Contemporary sensing technologies require layers of mediation and exposition to render what they sense (...) as intelligible and constructive to the end user, which is a value-laden design act. Legibility is positioned as both an evaluative lens and a design criterion, making it complimentary to existing frameworks such as value sensitive design. To concretize the notion of legibility, and understand how it could be utilized in both evaluative and anticipatory contexts, the case study of a vest embedded with sensors and an accompanying app for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is analyzed. (shrink)

This article outlines the constitution of a disciplinary field called ‘philosophy of design’. The roots of this philosophical branch can be traced back to the one of the first theoretical consideration about the “sciences of the artificial” (Simon 1996 [1969]) – which in opposition to natural sciences should deal with non-natural entities which populates our world, namely artifacts. These considerations have been extended and discussed starting from a research program aimed at changing the route within philosophy of technology: the so (...) called “empirical turn in philosophy of technology” (Kroes, Meijers 2000). Following this, two issues have been debated in the subsequent years: the first is related to the definition of ‘design’ and to the philosophical questions that arise (like the reference of design terms and their truth-value); the second is a problem of demarcation between science and design (are these two activities different?). The aim of the article is presenting an overview of the debate and showing some possible future developments for the philosophy of design. (shrink)