1. Introduction (Maarten Franssen).- 2. Towards a Constructive Philosophy and Ethics
of Technology (Philip
Brey).- 3. The Policy Turn in the Philosophy of Technology (Adam Briggle).- 4. Function and Meaning (Andrew Feenberg).- 5. How to Situate and Anchor The
Philosophy of Technology in The Landscape of Philosophy? (Maarten Franssen).- 6. Technology as a Practical Art (Sven Ove
Hansson).- 7. Values in
Design: Towards a Further Integration of Empirical and Normative Considerations
(Rafaela Hillerbrand).- 8. Perovskite
Philosophy. A Branch-Formation Model of Application-Oriented Science (Wybo
Houkes).- 9. Toward an Axiological
Turn in the Philosophy of Technology (Peter Kroes) .- 10. Composition and Handoff in Socio-technologies (Deirdre
K. Mulligan).- 11. For the
Benefit of Humanity: Micro-, Meso-, Macro-, and Meta-Values in Engineering (Byron
Newberry).- 12. Science vs. Technology: Difference or Identity? (Ilkka Niiniluoto).- 13. Changing
Perspectives: From the Experimental to the Technological Turn in History and
Philosophy of Science (Alfred Nordmann).- 14. What the Future will Bring (Joseph C. Pitt).- 15. Function and Finitism (Pablo Schyfter).- 16. An Empirical Turn
in Ethics of Technology: On the Possibility of Using Empirical Data in The
Ethics of Technology and Engineering (Benham Taebi).- 17. The Empirical Turn in Ethics (Ibo van de Poel).- 18. The
Engineering Turn in Conceptual Analysis (Pieter E. Vermaas).- 19. An Empirical Based Classification of
Engineering Projects (Sjoerd D. Zwart).
Maarten Franssen is
associate professor at the Section of Philosophy at Delft University of
Technology. His research interests include the relation between philosophy of
technology and philosophy of science, the nature of normativity in relation to
artefacts and their use, the metaphysics of artefacts, the analysis of
technology as concerned with instrumental and sociotechnical systems, and the
analysis of design as decision-making and its problems.
Pieter Vermaas is
associate professor at the Department of Philosophy at Delft University of
Technology. His research in the philosophy of technology includes analyses of
the concepts of technical function and of technical artefacts, and more
recently the study of the structure, aims, and validation of design methods and
design thinking. He co-edits the journal Design Science, and edits two book
series: Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, and Design Research
Foundations. www.pietervermaas.nl
Peter Kroes is full
professor at the Department of Philosophy of Technology at Delft University of
Technology. His main interests in the field of the philosophy of technology are
the dual nature of technical artefacts and the philosophy of engineering
design. He is one of the co-editors of the book on the empirical turn in the
philosophy of technology. http://www.tbm.tudelft.nl/en/about-faculty/departments/values-technology-and-innovation/sections/ethicsphilosophy-of-technology/staff/profdrir-pa-peter-kroes/
Anthonie Meijers is full
professor at the Department of Philosophy and Ethics of Eindhoven University of
Technology. His main interests in the field of the philosophy of technology are
the theory of artefacts, agency and artefacts, and the epistemology of
technology. He is one of the co-editors of the book on the empirical turn in
the philosophy of technology and the editor in chief of the Handbook Philosophy
of Technology and Engineering Sciences (2009).
This volume features 16 essays on the philosophy of technology that discuss its identity, its position in philosophy in general, and the role of empirical studies in philosophical analyses of engineering ethics and engineering practices.
This volume is published about fifteen years after Peter Kroes and Anthonie Meijers published a collection of papers under the title The empirical turn in the philosophy of technology, in which they called for a reorientation toward the practice of engineering, and sketched the likely benefits for philosophy of technology of pursuing its major questions in an empirically informed way.
The essays in this volume fall apart in two different kinds. One kind follows up on The empirical turn discussion about what the philosophy of technology is all about. It continues the search for the identity of the philosophy of technology by asking what comes after the empirical turn. The other kind of essays follows the call for an empirical turn in the philosophy of technology by showing how it may be realized with regard to particular topics. Together these essays offer the reader an overview of the state of the art of an empirically informed philosophy of technology and of various views on the empirical turn as a stepping stone into the future of the philosophy of technology.