Experimental philosophy is a relatively recent discipline that employs experimental methods to investigate the intuitions, concepts, and assumptions behind traditional philosophical arguments, problems, and theories. While experimental philosophy initially served to interrogate the role that intuitions play in philosophy, it has since branched out to bring empirical methods to bear on problems within a variety of traditional areas of philosophy—including metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. To date, no connection has been made between developments in experimental philosophy (...) and philosophy of technology. In this paper, I develop and defend a research program for an experimental philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Public “upstream engagement” and other approaches to the social control of technology are currently receiving international attention in policy discourses around emerging technologies such as nanotechnology. To the extent that such approaches hold implications for research and development (R&D) activities, the distinct participation of scientists and engineers is required. The capacity of technoscientists to broaden the influences on R&D activities, however, implies that they conduct R&D differently. This article discusses the possibility for more reflexive participation by scientists and engineers in (...) the internal governance of technology development. It reviews various historical attempts to govern technoscience and introduces the concept of midstream modulation, through which scientists and engineers, ideally in concert with others, bring societal considerations to bear on their work. (shrink)

The convergence of computing, sensing, and communication technology will soon permit large-scale deployment of self-driving vehicles. This will in turn permit a radical transformation of traffic control technology. This paper makes a case for the importance of addressing questions of social justice in this transformation, and sketches a preliminary framework for doing so. We explain how new forms of traffic control technology have potential implications for several dimensions of social justice, including safety, sustainability, privacy, efficiency, and equal access. Our central (...) focus is on efficiency and equal access as desiderata for traffic control design. We explain the limitations of conventional traffic control in meeting these desiderata, and sketch a preliminary vision for a next-generation traffic control tailored to address better the demands of social justice. One component of this vision is cooperative, hierarchically distributed self-organization among vehicles. Another component of this vision is a priority system enabling selection of priority levels by the user for each vehicle trip in the network, based on the supporting structure of non-monetary credits. (shrink)

This article builds on the hypothesis that theoretical approaches to philosophy of technology are currently stuck in a false alternative: either embrace the “empirical turn” or jump back into the determinism, pessimism, and general ignorance towards specific technologies that characterized the “humanities philosophy of technology.” A third path is however possible, which consists of articulating an empirical point of view with an interest in the symbolic dimension in which technologies and technological mediations are always already embedded. Bourdieu’s sociology of the (...) symbolic forms represents an important and mostly unexplored resource in this respect. In this article, we introduce the notion of technological capital and its tree states—objectified, institutionalized, and embodied. In the first section, we briefly account of the empirical turn in philosophy of technology. Specific attention is then devoted to postphenomenology. We depict three perspectives in postphenomenology: standard postphenomenology, in which one single human-technology-world relation at a time is considered; the attempt of some technological mediation theorists to articulate postphenomenology and actor-network theory ; the original effort in Ihde, which is currently practiced by a minority of postphenomenologists, to combine an interest for the empirical dimension of technological mediations with an attention to the social and cultural conditions of possibility in which these mediations are embedded. In the second section, we consider some recent critiques of the limits of the empirical turn in philosophy of technology, especially related to postphenomenology. Furthermore, we argue that Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology may benefit the philosophy of technology. One might say that according to a Bourdieusian perspective, technologies are, in their invention, implementation, and use, embedded in symbolically organized interactions among social actors or groups. The notion of technological capital is introduced. A specific attention is given to its embodied state, which is related to the habitus. Such concept suggests that, to rephrase the famous sentence by Heidegger, “the essence of technology is not totally technological.” In the conclusion, we consider three risks related to a Bourdieusian approach to technology: transparency, determinism, and absolutism. (shrink)

Three philosophical perspectives on the relation between technology and society are distinguished and discussed: 1) technology as an autonomous force that determines society; 2) technology as a human construct that can be shaped by human values, and 3) a co-evolutionary perspective on technology and society where neither of them determines the other. The historical evolution of the three perspectives is discussed and it is argued that all three are still present in current debates about technological change and how it may (...) affect society. This is illustrated for the case of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is argued that each of the three perspectives contributes to the debate of AI but that the third has the strongest potential to uncover blind spots in the current debate. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to encourage participants in the debate about the locus of cognition (e.g., extended mind vs embedded mind) to turn their attention to noteworthy anthropological and sociological considerations typically (but not uniquely) arising from transhumanist and posthumanist research. Such considerations, we claim, promise to potentially give us a way out of the stalemate in which such a debate has fallen. A secondary goal of this paper is to impress trans and post-humanistically inclined readers to embrace (...) (or at least seriously reflect on) the extended mind thesis as a potential gamechanger to the state of play in their own debates. We start off (Sect. 1) by reviewing two crucial ideas (homo faber and plasticity of the body schema) that are instrumental in setting up the dispute between extended and embedded. We then summarise (Sect. 2), the stalemate between these two competing accounts of cognition, and review some of the dialectics underlying it. In Sect. 3, to get out of the stalemate, we propose to focus on a series of important anthropological and sociological considerations derived from and related to trans and posthumanist research. In doing so, we claim (Sect. 4) that an extended approach to cognition becomes anthropologically preferable and morally as well as socially more desirable than an embedded one. (shrink)

Diane Vaughan’s analysis of the causes of the Challenger accident suggests ways to apply science and technology studies to the teaching of engineering ethics. By sensitizing future engineers to the ongoing construction of risk during mundane engineering practice, we can better prepare them to address issues of public health, safety, and welfare before they require heroic intervention. Understanding the importance of precedents, incremental change, and fallible engineering judgment in engineering design may help them anticipate potential threats to public safety arising (...) from routine aspects of workplace culture. We suggest modifications of both detailed case studies on engineering disasters and hypothetical, ethical dilemmas employed in engineering ethics classes. Investigating the sociotechnical aspects of engineering practice can improve the initial recognition of ethical problems in real-world settings and provide an understanding of the role of workplace organization and culture in facilitating or impeding remedial action. (shrink)

In the philosophy of technology after the empirical turn, little attention has been paid to language and its relation to technology. In this programmatic and explorative paper, it is proposed to use the later Wittgenstein, not only to pay more attention to language use in philosophy of technology, but also to rethink technology itself—at least technology in its aspect of tool, technology-in-use. This is done by outlining a working account of Wittgenstein’s view of language and by then applying that account (...) to technology—turning around Wittgenstein’s metaphor of the toolbox. Using Wittgenstein’s concepts of language games and form of life and coining the term ‘technology games’, the paper proposes and argues for a use-oriented, holistic, transcendental, social, and historical approach to technology which is empirically but also normatively sensitive, and which takes into account implicit knowledge and know-how. It gives examples of interaction with social robots to support the relevance of this project for understanding and evaluating today’s technologies, makes comparisons with authors in philosophy of technology such as Winner and Ihde, and sketches the contours of a phenomenology and hermeneutics of technology use that may help us to understand but also to gain a more critical relation to specific uses of concrete technologies in everyday contexts. Ultimately, given the holism argued for, it also promises a more critical relation to the games and forms of life technologies are embedded in—to the ways we do things. (shrink)

Science and technology are so intertwined that technoscience has been argued to more accurately reflect the progress of science and its impact on society, and most socioscientific issues require technoscientific reasoning. Education policy documents have long noted that the general public lacks sufficient understanding of science and technology necessary for informed decision-making regarding socioscientific/technological issues. The science–technology–society movement and scholarship addressing socioscientific issues in science education reflect efforts in the science education community to promote more informed decision-making regarding such issues. (...) Now Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics education has emerged as a major reform movement impacting science education. STEM education efforts emphasize literacy across the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but with rare exceptions, treat issues of technology superficially and uncritically. Informed decision-making regarding many personal and societal issues requires technological literacy beyond merely becoming an enthusiastic designer or skilled user of technology, but the science education community has given little attention to what such literacy entails. Here, we present results of an extensive review of the literature regarding the nature of technology in order to identify key issues among scholars who study technology. We then provide predominant perspectives among those scholars and suggest which identified NOT issues are most essential to address as part of STEM education efforts that seek to promote informed personal and societal decision-making. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of technology after the empirical turn has surprisingly little to say on the relation between language and technology. This essay describes this gap, offers a preliminary discussion of how language and technology may be related to show that there is a rich conceptual space to be gained, and begins to explore some ways in which the gap could be bridged by starting from within specific philosophical subfields and traditions. One route starts from philosophy of language (both ‘‘analytic’’ and (...) ‘‘continental’’: Searle and Heidegger) and discusses some potential implications for thinking about technology; another starts from artefact-oriented approaches in philosophy of technology and STS and shows that these approaches might helpfully be extended by theorizing relationships between language and techno- logical artefacts. The essay concludes by suggesting a research agenda, which invites more work on the relation between language and technology. (shrink)

A recurrent theme in the characterization of synthetic biology is the role of engineering. This theme is widespread in the accounts of scholars studying this field and the biologists working in it, in those of the biologists themselves, as well as in policy documents. The aim of this article is to open this black-box of engineering that is supposed to influence and change contemporary life sciences. Too often, both synthetic biologists and their critics assume a very narrow understanding of what (...) engineering is about, resulting in an unfruitful debate about whether synthetic biology possesses genuine engineering methodologies or not. By looking in more detail to the diversity of engineering conceptions in debates concerning synthetic biology, a richer perspective can be developed. In this article, I will examine five influential ways in which engineering is understood in these debates, namely engineering as applied science, as rational methodology, context-sensitive practice, cunning activity or design. The claim is first of all thus to argue that engineering must not be seen as something stable or characterized by a fixed essence. It rather has multiple meanings and interpretations. Secondly, the claim is that most of the debates on synthetic biology cannot be indifferent towards the question which conception of engineering is at play, since the specific questions and concerns that pop up depend to a great extent on the precise conception of engineering one has in account. Many of the existing debates around synthetic biology can thus be reinterpreted and readdressed once one is aware of which conception of engineering is at play. (shrink)

Unlike basic sciences, scientific research in advanced technologies aims to explain, predict, and (mathematically) describe not phenomena in nature, but phenomena in technological artefacts, thereby producing knowledge that is utilized in technological design. This article first explains why the covering-law view of applying science is inadequate for characterizing this research practice. Instead, the covering-law approach and causal explanation are integrated in this practice. Ludwig Prandtl's approach to concrete fluid flows is used as an example of scientific research in the engineering (...) sciences. A methodology of distinguishing between regions in space and/or phases in time that show distinct physical behaviours is specific to this research practice. Accordingly, two types of models specific to the engineering sciences are introduced. The diagrammatic model represents the causal explanation of physical behaviour in distinct spatial regions or time phases; the nomo-mathematical model represents the phenomenon in terms of a set of mathematically formulated laws. (shrink)

The study of engineering ethics tends to emphasize professional codes of ethics and, to lesser degrees, business ethics and technology studies. These are all important vantage points, but they neglect personal moral commitments, as well as personal aesthetic, religious, and other values that are not mandatory for all members of engineering. This paper illustrates how personal moral commitments motivate, guide, and give meaning to the work of engineers, contributing to both self-fulfillment and public goods. It also explores some general frameworks (...) for thinking about these commitments and calls for further exploration of them. (shrink)

Ethics education has become essential in modern engineering. Ethics education in engineering has been increasingly implemented worldwide. It can improve ethical behaviors in technology and engineering design under the guidance of the philosophy of technology. Hence, this study aims to compare China-US engineering ethics education in Sino-Western philosophies of technology by using literature studies, online surveys, observational researches, textual analyses, and comparative methods. In my original theoretical framework and model of input and output for education, six primary variables emerge in (...) the pedagogy: disciplinary statuses, educational goals, instructional contents, didactic models, teaching methods, and edificatory effects. I focus on the similarities and differences of engineering ethics educations between China and the US in Chinese and Western philosophies of technology. In the field of engineering, the US tends toward applied ethics training, whereas China inclines toward practical moral education. The US is the leader, particularly in the amount of money invested and engineering results. China has quickened its pace, focusing specifically on engineering labor input and output. Engineering ethics is a multiplayer game effected at various levels among lower level technicians and engineers, engineering associations, and stockholders; middle ranking engineering ethics education, the ministry of education, the academy of engineering, and the philosophy of technology; and top national and international technological policies. I propose that professional engineering ethics education can play many important roles in reforming engineering social responsibility by international cooperation in societies that are becoming increasingly reliant on engineered devices and systems. Significantly, my proposals contribute to improving engineering ethics education and better-solving engineering ethics issues, thereby maximizing engineering sustainability. (shrink)

In this paper, we reflect on current notions of engineering practice by examining some of the motives for engineered solutions to the problem of climate change. We draw on fields such as science and technology studies, the philosophy of technology, and environmental ethics to highlight how dominant notions of apoliticism and ahistoricity are ingrained in contemporary engineering practice. We argue that a solely technological response to climate change does not question the social, political, and cultural tenet of infinite material growth, (...) one of the root causes of climate change. In response to the contemporary engineering practice, we define an activist engineer as someone who not only can provide specific engineered solutions, but who also steps back from their work and tackles the question, What is the real problem and does this problem “require” an engineering intervention? Solving complex problems like climate change requires radical cultural change, and a significant obstacle is educating engineers about how to conceive of and create “authentic alternatives,” that is, solutions that differ from the paradigm of “technologically improving” our way out of problems. As a means to realize radically new solutions, we investigate how engineers might deploy the concept of praxis, which raises awareness in engineers of the inherent politics of technological design. Praxis empowers engineers with a more comprehensive understanding of problems, and thus transforms technologies, when appropriate, into more socially just and ecologically sensitive interventions. Most importantly, praxis also raises a radical alternative rarely considered—not “engineering a solution.” Activist engineering offers a contrasting method to contemporary engineering practice and leads toward social justice and ecological protection through problem solving by asking not, How will we technologize our way out of the problems we face? but instead, What really needs to be done? (shrink)

The integration of technology in care is core business in nursing and this role requires that we must understand and use technology informed by evidence that goes much deeper and broader than actions and behaviours. We need to delve more deeply into its complexity because there is nothing minor or insignificant about technology as a major influence in healthcare outcomes and experiences. Evidence is needed that addresses technology and nursing from perspectives that examine the effects of technology, especially related to (...) increasing demands for efficiency, the relationship of technology to nursing and caring, and a range of philosophical questions associated with empowering people in their healthcare choices. Specifically, there is a need to confront in practice the ways technique influences care. Technique is the creation of a kind of thinking that is necessary for contemporary healthcare technology to develop and be applied in an efficient and rational manner. Technique is not an entity or specific thing, but rather a way of thinking that seeks to shape and organize nursing activity, and manage efficiently individual difference(s) in care. It emphasizes predetermined causal relationships, conformity, and sameness of product, process, and thought. In response is needed a radical vision of nursing that attempts in a real sense to ensure we meet the needs of individuals and their community. Activism and advocacy are needed, and a willingness to create a certain detachment from the imperatives that technique demands. It is argued that our responsibility as nurses is to respond in practice to the errors, advantages, difficulties, and temptations of technology for the benefit of those who most need our assistance and care. (shrink)

This article defends three interconnected premises that together demand for a new way of dealing with moral responsibility in developing and using technological artifacts. The first premise is that humans increasingly make use of dissociated technological delegation. Second, because technologies do not simply fulfill our actions, but rather mediate them, the initial aims alter and outcomes are often different from those intended. Third, since the outcomes are often unforeseen and unintended, we can no longer simply apply the traditional (modernist) models (...) for discussing moral responsibility. We need to reinterpret moral responsibility. A schematic layout of a model on Social Role-Responsibility that incorporates these three premises is presented to allow discussion of a new way of interpreting moral responsibility. (shrink)

Over the past four decades, software engineering has emerged as a discipline in its own right, though it has roots both in computer science and in classical engineering. Its philosophical foundations and premises are not yet well understood. In recent times, members of the software engineering community have started to search for such foundations. In particular, the philosophies of Kuhn and Popper have been used by philosophically-minded software engineers in search of a deeper understanding of their discipline. It seems, however, (...) that professional philosophers of science are not yet aware of this new discourse within the field of software engineering. Therefore, this article aims to reflect critically upon recent software engineers’ attempts towards a philosophy of software engineering and to introduce our own philosophical thoughts in this context. Finally, we invite the professional philosophers of science to participate in this interesting new discourse. (shrink)

Multistability—the plurality of meanings of technological artifacts—is an emancipatory phenomenon insofar as it allows the user to freely appropriate the object according to his or her interests, even against the will of the designer. The objective of this article is to show how the trend to connect physical and digital artifacts to the Internet poses a danger to the freedom that there is in multistability. By reducing the traditional separation between the artifact and the designer, the connection of the artifact (...) to the Internet allows the designer to continually modify the software that governs or constitutes it, which involves a relative loss of power for the user to determine its meaning. This change, in favor of the designer in the correlation of power among the actors—designer, artifact, and user—from whose interplay the meaning of artifacts arises, favors concentric stabilities and hinders eccentric ones with respect to the will of the designer. Thus, we should rethink the truth value of the designer fallacy, that is, the claim that the meaning of artifacts is determined only by the designer. From a political point of view, the remote control of artifacts and their multistability is an effective pedagogical tool to educate human beings in a time in which texts, according to Sloterdijk, no longer serve this function. (shrink)

This paper outlines the background and significance of philosophy of technology as a focus of inquiry emerging within nursing scholarship and research. The thesis of the paper is that philosophy of technology and nursing is fundamental to discipline development and our role in enhancing health care. It is argued that we must further our responsibility and interest in critiquing current and future health care systems through philosophical inquiry into the experience, meaning and implications of technology. This paper locates nurses as (...) important contributors to the use and integration of health care technology and identifies nursing as a discipline that can provide specific insights into the health experience of individuals, cultures and societies. Nurses are encouraged to undertake further examination of epistemological, ontological and ethical challenges to arise from technology as a focus of philosophical inquiry. The advancement of philosophy of technology and nursing will make a profound contribution to inquiry into the experience of technology, the needs of humanity and the development of appropriate health care. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to diagnose and analyze the gap between philosophy of technology and engineering ethics and to suggest bridging them in a constructive way. In the first section, I will analyze why philosophy of technology and engineering ethics have taken separate paths so far. The following section will deal with the so-called macro-approach in engineering ethics. While appreciating the initiative, I will argue that there are still certain aspects in this approach that can be improved. In (...) the third, fourth, and fifth sections, I will point out three shortcomings of engineering ethics in terms of its macro-level discourse and argue that a number of certain insights taken from the study of philosophy of technology could be employed in overcoming those problems. In the concluding section, a final recommendation is made that topics of philosophy of technology be included in the curriculum of engineering ethics. (shrink)

My dissertation explores the ways in which Rudolf Carnap sought to make philosophy scientific by further developing recent interpretive efforts to explain Carnap’s mature philosophical work as a form of engineering. It does this by looking in detail at his philosophical practice in his most sustained mature project, his work on pure and applied inductive logic. I, first, specify the sort of engineering Carnap is engaged in as involving an engineering design problem and then draw out the complications of design (...) problems from current work in history of engineering and technology studies. I then model Carnap’s practice based on those lessons and uncover ways in which Carnap’s technical work in inductive logic takes some of these lessons on board. This shows ways in which Carnap’s philosophical project subtly changes right through his late work on induction, providing an important corrective to interpretations that ignore the work on inductive logic. Specifically, I show that paying attention to the historical details of Carnap’s attempt to apply his work in inductive logic to decision theory and theoretical statistics in the 1950s and 1960s helps us understand how Carnap develops and rearticulates the philosophical point of the practical/theoretical distinction in his late work, offering thus a new interpretation of Carnap’s technical work within the broader context of philosophy of science and analytical philosophy in general. (shrink)

This second companion volume on engineering studies considers engineering practice including contextual analyses of engineering identity, epistemologies and values. Key overlapping questions examine such issues as an engineering identity, engineering self-understandings enacted in the professional world, distinctive characters of engineering knowledge and how engineering science and engineering design interact in practice. -/- Authors bring with them perspectives from their institutional homes in Europe, North America, Australia\ and Asia. The volume includes 24 contributions by more than 30 authors from engineering, the (...) social sciences and the humanities. Additional issues the chapters scrutinize include prominent norms of engineering, how they interact with the values of efficiency or environmental sustainability. A concluding set of articles considers the meaning of context more generally by asking if engineers create their own contexts or are they created by contexts. -/- Taken as a whole, this collection of original scholarly work is unique in its broad, multidisciplinary consideration of the changing character of engineering practice. (shrink)

Nanotechnology, the emerging capability of human beings to observe and organize matter at the atomic level, has captured the attention of the federal government, science and engineering communities, and the general public. Some proponents are referring to nanotechnology as “the next technological revolution”. Applications projected for this new evolution in technology span a broad range from the design and fabrication of new membranes, to improved fuel cells, to sophisticated medical prosthesis techniques, to tiny intelligent machines whose impact on humankind is (...) unknowable. As with the appropriation of technological innovation generally, nanotechnology is likely to eventually bring dramatic and unpredictable new capabilities to human material existence, along with resulting ethical challenges and social changes to be reconciled. But as of yet, aside from a few simple new consumer goods, such as paint, rackets and fabric coatings, nanotechnology is undeveloped. Its social and ethical dimensions are not apparent. Even still, given the stated goals of the various nanotechnology initiatives to rearrange matter with increasing atomic precision, the impact of nanotechnology on human life and society is likely be profound. It is very difficult, however, to make accurate predictions about the future impact of nanotechnology development on humanity. At this time, the most important role for ethics analysis is to contribute to a humanitarian, conscientious approach to its development. This paper suggests that such an approach requires that attention be given to the roles of imagination, meaning-making, metaphor, myth and belief. (shrink)

The notion that history is a record of continuous improvement has come to dominate the Western view of the world. This paper examines how nursing has embraced this ‘Enlightenment project’ and continues to be guided by a faith in ‘history as progress’ despite the fact that its structural position remains one of subordination and struggle. Faith in progress is manifested in nursing historiography and contemporary nursing literature, in the basic tenet of nursing orthodoxy, that professionalization is both inevitable and desirable, (...) in the alignment of nursing with medical science and technology and the belief that Western nursing is the model for nursing world wide. It is argued that this uncritical faith in a continuously improving future has obscured nursing's vision for the future and rendered it powerless in the face of rapid global economic and social change. (shrink)

. John Caiazza presents the current technoculture as the latest development in the ongoing conflict of science and religion that began with Tertullian in the third century. I argue that his presentation is historically inaccurate, because for most of Western history science and religion interacted with and cross‐fertilized each other. Contrary to Caiazza's misleading presentation, Western thought did not follow the dichotomous model polemically posed by Tertullian. I take issue with Caiazza's portrayal of postmodernism and his claim that technology is (...) the foundation of an inherently secularist culture. I conclude by highlighting certain ethical challenges engendered by the prevalence of new technologies and present the dialogue of science and religion as uniquely qualified to address these challenges. (shrink)

In this paper, I will focus on the extension theories of technology. I will identify four influential positions that have been put forward: (1) technology as an extension of the human organism, (2) technology as an extension of the lived body and the senses, (3) technology as an extension of our intentions and desires, and (4) technology as an extension of our faculties and capabilities. I will describe and critically assess these positions one by one and highlight their advantages and (...) their shortcomings and limitations. Along the way, I will explicate some of the differences and similarities between the various approaches. I conclude the paper with some suggestions for future research directions that will be beneficial for advancing theory building and that will drive forward the philosophical refinement of extension theory. (shrink)

In this essay we argue that the notion of machine necessarily includes its being designed for a purpose. Therefore, being a mechanical system is not enough for being a machine. Since the experimental scientific method excludes any consideration of finality on methodological grounds, it is then also insufficient to fully understand what machines are. Instead in order to understand a machine it is first required to understand its purpose, along with its structure, in clear parallel with Aristotle’s final and formal (...) causes. Obviously, purpose and structure are not machine components that can physically interact with other components; nonetheless they are essential to understanding their operation. This casts an interesting light on the relationship between mind and body: for just as an artifact’s finality and structure explain its operation, so also consciousness is the explanation—not the efficient cause—of specifically human behavior. What machines and human beings have in common is that, in order to understand them, it is necessary to appeal to the principle of finality. Yet while finality is given and extrinsic in the case of machines, we human beings are characterized by the ability to self-propose our own ends. Since the principle of finality is essential to understanding the production of machines, the traditional view in modern Western philosophy that finality lies beyond the scope of objective/scientific knowledge should be rectified to allow for a genuine science of the artificial. We think a correct understanding of final causality will overcome current resistance to this principle. (shrink)

The program of intervening, manipulating, constructing and creating is central to natural and engineering sciences. A renewed wave of interest in this program has emerged within the recent practices and discourse of nano-technoscience. However, it is striking that, framed from the perspective of well-established epistemologies, the constructed technoscientific objects and engineered things remain invisible. Their ontological and epistemological status is unclear. The purpose of the present paper is to support present-day approaches to techno-objects ( ontology ) insofar as they make (...) these hidden objects epistemologically perceivable. To accomplish this goal, it is inspiring to look back to the origin of the project of modernity and to its founding father: Francis Bacon. The thesis is that everything we need today for an adequate (dialectic-materialist), ontologically well-informed epistemology of technoscience can be found in the works of Bacon—this position will be called epistemological real-constructivism. Rather than describing it as realist or constructivist, empiricist or rationalist, Bacon’s position can best be understood as real-constructivist since it challenges modern dichotomies, including the dichotomy between epistemology and ontology. Such real-constructive turn might serve to promote the acknowledgement that natural and engineering sciences, in particular recent technosciences, are creating and producing the world we live in. Reflection upon the contemporary relevance of Bacon is intended as a contribution to the expanding and critical discussion on nano-technoscience. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Definitions of Technological Artifacts Technological Artifacts in Philosophy References and Further Reading.

The recent development of the research field of Computing and Philosophy has triggered investigations into the theoretical foundations of computing and information. This thesis consists of two parts which are the result of studies in two areas of Philosophy of Computing and Philosophy of Information regarding the production of meaning and the value system with applications. The first part develops a unified dual-aspect theory of information and computation, in which information is characterized as structure, and computation is the information dynamics. (...) This enables naturalization of epistemology, based on interactive information representation and communication. In the study of systems modeling, meaning, truth and agency are discussed within the framework of the PI/PC unification. The second part of the thesis addresses the necessity of ethical judgment in rational agency illustrated by the problem of information privacy and surveillance in the networked society. The value grounds and socio-technological solutions for securing trustworthiness of computing are analyzed. Privacy issues clearly show the need for computing professionals to contribute to understanding of the technological mechanisms of Information and Communication Technology. The main original contribution of this thesis is the unified dual-aspect theory of computation/information. Semantics of information is seen as a part of the data-information-knowledge structuring, in which complex structures are self-organized by the computational processing of information. Within the unified model, complexity is a result of computational processes on informational structures. The thesis argues for the necessity of computing beyond the Turing-Church limit, motivated by natural computation, and wider by pancomputationalism and paninformationalism, seen as two complementary views of the same physical reality. Moreover, it follows that pancomputationalism does not depend on the assumption that the physical world on some basic level is digital. Contrary to many believes it is entirely compatible with dual quantum-mechanical computing. (shrink)

Technology is believed to have liberated health care from dogmas, myths and speculations of earlier times. However, we are accused of using technology in an excessive, futile and even detrimental way, as if technology is compelling our actions. It appears to be like the monster threatening Dr. Frankenstein or like the socerer’s broom in the hand of the apprentice. That is, the same technology that should liberate us from myths, appears to be mythical. The objective of this article is to (...) investigate the background for the re-entrance of the myth: How we encounter it and how we can explain it. The main point is that a myth of technology is normative: it relates ‘is’ and ‘ought’ and directs our actions. This becomes particularly clear in health care. Hence, if there is a myth of technology, it is an ethical issue, and should be taken seriously. (shrink)

This paper proposes a framework for a critical philosophy of technology by discussing its practical, theoretical, empirical, normative and political dimensions. I put forward a general account of technology, which includes both similarities and dissimilarities to Andrew Feenberg's instrumentalization theory. This account characterizes a technology as a "(type of) artefactual, functional system with a certain degree of stability and reproducibility". A discussion of how such technologies may be realized discloses five different levels at which alternative choices might be made. On (...) this basis, I argue that a critical philosophy of technology should analyse and assess the choices that have, and have not, been made in actual practice, and contribute to social experiments that aim at more democratic and more desirable alternatives. (shrink)

Is technology value-free or is it value-laden? How does technology affect human autonomy? These questions, viewed within the context of medicine, are the focus of attention in this article. The central argument is that we need neither to subscribe to the value-neutrality dictum nor to the all-encompassing value-ladenness thesis to explain the pertinent position of technology in medicine. Technology is constitutive of and strongly implicated in difficult questions of value. This, however, does not mean that technology is identical to (or (...) neutral to) these value-laden questions. Technology poses issues of value, but only some of these relate to technology qua technology. Hence, it makes a difference whether we discuss general questions of value posed by technology or whether we discuss the value-ladenness of technology. Admitting technological value-ladenness does not imply that we are subject to a technological imperative that reduces our autonomy, on the contrary, it explains how technology increases our responsibility. This is particularly prominent in medicine. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References and Further Reading.

Four hundred seventy-six nuclear power plants are in operation or under construction around the world. Are concepts for designing and operating plants safely sufficient? Conventional approaches are premised on expectations of predictability and control of radiation release and on assumptions that plant operations are closed systems. Field observations in the industry find, however, that the periodic necessity to refuel, test safety equipment, and continuously upgrade plant designs introduces challenges to control not originally calculated. The social and cultural contexts of markets, (...) regulation, and work systems create additional contingencies. In this dynamic environment, reactor operations produce invaluable data about the states of the entire technology and organizational system. Rereading these dynamics as "experiments" suggests an alternative epistemol ogy that synthesizes science's values of doubt, discovery, and documentation with engineering's values of efficiency, optimization, and problem solving. This redefines plant-based risk handlers as ethologists, geologists, and anthropologists of an ecology of visible and invisible hazards. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to provide a discussion of scholarly ‘crisis of modernity’ discourses that have developed in the field of social philosophy. Re-visiting past and present discourses can be illuminating in at least three ways: it can reveal the broader picture of the present financialized and technologized world and the rise of financial technologies; it can provide scholars with new vocabularies, concepts, and metaphors to comprehend present-day phenomena and developments; and it can reveal the variety of commitments (...) that are possible, today, too. This article starts with a discussion of the original ‘crisis of modernity’ discourses, in which the clashing arguments of Comte and Tocqueville are featured, and a discussion of a second ‘crisis of modernity’ that developed in the context of the ‘Great Depression.’ A third ‘crisis of modernity’ discourse emerged in the wake of the financial crises of the 1970s. Such crises are still ongoing and discussed within the boundaries of the third ‘crisis of modernity’ discourse. How financial technologies do and do not fit within this third discourse is discussed in the remainder of this article. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper, I try to clear the ground from frequent misconceptions about the relationship between fact and value by examining some uses of the adjective “natural” in ethical controversies. Such uses bear evidence to our “natural” tendency to regard nature (considered in a descriptive sense, as the complex of physical and biological regularities) as the source of ethical norms. I then try to account for the origin of this tendency by offering three related explanations, the (...) most important of which regards it as the outcome of an adaptation: if any behaviour that favours our equilibrium with the environment is potentially adaptive, nothing can be more effective for this goal than developing an attitude toward the natural world that regards it as a dispenser of sacred norms that must be invariably respected. By referring to the Aristotelian notion of human flourishing illustrated in the first part of the paper, in the second I discuss some ethical problems raised by mini-chips implantable under in our bodies. I conclude by defending the potential beneficial effects of such new technological instruments. (shrink)

For the inaugural Workshop on Philosophy & Engineering (WPE-2007), this abstract asks why engineers are turning now to philosophy. Upon reflection, philosophy and engineering are very different occupations, and engineering has rarely turned to philosophy in the long history of the systematic design and production of complex artifacts. After briefly examining events since World War 2, the extended abstract carries over Kuhn's explanation of the rise of philosophy of science during the intellectual tumult of relativity and quantum physics in the (...) opening moments of the 20th century to the case of engineering in the early moments of the 21st century. Specifically, the paper argues that the crisis of the rapid pace of technological change, reflected in the centripetal forces of the O's (bio, nano, and info) may help explain increased interest in a philosophy of engineering at this time. The abstract concludes by citing a number of ways that philosophy may help clarify what otherwise might be confusing times. (shrink)

This inclusive cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering education and context. In so doing the book offers a reflection on contextual boundaries with an overall boundary crossing ambition and juxtaposes important cases of critical participation within engineering education with sophisticated scholarly reflection on both opportunities and discontents. -/- Whether and in what way engineering education is or ought to be contextualized or de-contextualized is an object of heated debate among engineering educators. The uniqueness of this study is that this (...) debate is given comprehensive coverage – presenting both instrumentally inclined as well as radical positions on transforming engineering education. -/- In contextualizing engineering education, this book offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary, meta- and interdisciplinary perspectives on how cultural, professional, institutional and educational systems contexts shape histories, structural dynamics, ideologies and challenges as well as new pathways in engineering education. Topics addressed include examining engineering education in countries ranging from India to America, to racial and gender equity in engineering education and incorporating social awareness into the area. -/- Using context as “bridge” this book confronts engineering education head on. Contending engineering ideologies and corresponding views on context are juxtaposed with contending discourses of reform. The uniqueness of the book is that it brings together scholars from the humanities, the social sciences and engineering from Europe – both East and West – with the United States, China, Brazil, India and Australia. (shrink)