Advances in Philosophy of Technology? Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

Advances in philosophy of technology?Addressing the central theme of this volume, I first ask myself whether there have been any advances in North American philosophy of technology in the last fifteen or twenty years.Attempting to answer this question, I discover-and report on-quite a few recent books and a few journal articles.In spite of this seemingly-significant flood of publications, however, critics have questioned whether any significant advances are being made in these admittedly numerous books and articles.Joseph Pitt, past president of the Society for Philosophy and Technology, quotes friends of his in the Society for History of Technology as reacting with horror to a proposal for a joint meeting: "Oh, no!Those SPT people hate technology.Further, they know nothing about technology" (Pitt, 1995).Philosophers of technology, in this view, are certainly not making any advances-at least, not any advances that would mean anything to people outside this would-be field.This raises the obvious question: What counts as a genuine advance in technology studies?And the view or thesis that I want to defend here is this: In all respects except one, advances in the philosophy of technology are approximately equal, in their progressiveness, to progress in the fields with which those advances have been negatively contrasted-namely, the philosophy of science and social studies of science and technology.(The exception is important, since I consider it the most important area of advance.)In my conclusion, I make some comments about all of these fields, including philosophy of technology, contrasting academic with real-world social progress. Advances in North American Philosophy of TechnologyI begin with the best evidence there is to support a claim that there have been advances in the philosophy of technology in the USA and Canada.To support such a claim, I point to the work of the North American philosophers who traveled to the first international conference of the Society for Philosophy and Technology in Bad Homburg in 1981 and whose papers were printed in the proceedings volumes, Technikphilosophie in der Diskussion (1982), and Philosophy and Technology (1983)-both edited by Friedrich Rapp and myself.At least six of the North Americans invited to Bad Homburg can be cited in support of the claim that there are continuing advances, right up to the present.I have in mind Stanley Carpenter, Don Ihde, Alex Michalos, Carl Mitcham, Kristin Shrader-Frechette, and Langdon Winner.(I set aside my own case for now, not out of modesty but because I want to make a separate point at the end.)To these six can be added one other philosopher at Bad Homburg, Bernard Gendron-not in terms of his own later work but viewing his as a springboard to the later development of that part of the environmental ethics movement that has a close relationship to technological issues-and also Albert Borgmann, who was not at Bad Homburg but whose thought has undergone development in ways that have led people to say that his work represents the first real tradition in North American philosophy of technology.

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