Doing Philosophy of Technology: Essays in a Pragmatist Spirit

Description

As science becomes more deeply embedded in a complex technological infrastructure, has this changed the relationship between the sciences and the various technologies that support them? As our technologies help shrink our world, can we restrict our ethical concerns or must we find a way to face the fact that we are now one world? What do new forms of architecture say about whom we are? Is the design process the new epistemological paradigm? The answers to all of these is "yes" according to Joseph C. Pitt (VirginaTech). Doing Philosophy of Technology presents an updated and integrated overview of the most important thinking from this prominent philosopher of technology. Throughout his career Joseph C. Pitt has defended the view that to say anything meaningful about the value of a technology one must know something about that technology and how it functions in the world. This starting point leads naturally to a pragmatist philosophical stance, since it is the real world consequences of introducing a technology that must be the basis for any further normative judgements. In the book we find an extended set of arguments that challenge the idea that there are eternal philosophical issues that transcend the impacts that technologies make on human beings and their world. Rather, it is claimed that as our technologies transform our world they transform us and the kinds of questions we find important to answer. Front Matter....Pages i-xviii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Human Beings as Technological Artifacts....Pages 3-10 Technology and the Objectivity of Values....Pages 11-21 Anticipating the Unknown....Pages 23-38 Don’t Talk to Me....Pages 39-42 Front Matter....Pages 43-43 Against the Perennial....Pages 45-53 Philosophical Methodology, Technologies, and the Transformation of Knowledge....Pages 55-71 Working the Natural/Artificial Distinction....Pages 73-83 Discovery, Telescopes, and Progress....Pages 85-94 Explaining Change in Science....Pages 95-102 The Dilemma of Case Studies....Pages 103-110 Technological Explanation....Pages 111-130 Front Matter....Pages 131-131 Successful Design in Engineering and Architecture....Pages 133-146 Design Criteria in Architecture....Pages 147-155 Philosophy, Engineering, and the Sciences....Pages 157-163 What Engineers Know....Pages 165-174 Design Mistakes....Pages 175-186 Front Matter....Pages 187-187 The Epistemology of the Very Small....Pages 189-197 When Is an Image Not an Image?....Pages 199-206 Small Talk: Nanotechnology and Metaphor....Pages 207-214 Back Matter....Pages 215-220