The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology

697 Pages·2022·284.064 MB·English

by  Shannon Vallor (editor)

The Oxford Handbook of
P H I L O S O P H Y O F
T E C H N O L O G Y

The Oxford Handbook of
PHILOSOPHY OF
TECHNOLOGY
Edited by
SHANNON VALLOR
1
3
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021039934
ISBN 978– 0– 19– 085118– 7

DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190851187.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
Contents
Author Biographies ix
1. Introducing the Philosophy of Technology 1
Shannon Vallor
PART I: HISTORIES AND METHODOLOGIES IN
THE PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY
2. What Is Living and What Is Dead in Classic European Philosophy of
Technology? 19
Carl Mitcham
3. The Empirical Turn 35
Peter- Paul Verbeek
4. Philosophy of Technology and the Continental and
Analytic Traditions 55
Maarten Franssen
5. Whence and W(h)ither Technology Ethics 78
Don Howard
PART II: TECHNOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY
6. Styles of Objectivity in Scientific Instrumentation 103
A. S. Aurora Hoel
7. Engineering Knowledge 128
Wybo Houkes and Anthonie Meijers
8. The Epistemic Role of Technical Functions 152
Beth Preston
vi Contents
9. Revisiting Smartness in the Smart City 169
Sage Cammers- Goodwin
PART III: TECHNOLOGY, POWER, AND POLITICS

10. Philosophy of Technology as Politics 191
Adam Briggle

11. Postcolonialism and Technologies of Identification 211
Alison Adam

12. Rawls, Information Technology, and the Sociotechnical
Bases of Self-R espect 231

Anna Lauren Hoffmann
13. Freedom in an Age of Algocracy 250
John Danaher
14. (Bio)technology, Identity, and the Other 273
Anna Gotlib

PART IV: TECHNOLOGY, METAPHYSICS,
AND LANGUAGE

15. The Technological Uncanny as a Permanent Dimension
of Selfhood 299
Ciano Aydin
16. Technology and the Ontology of the Virtual 318
Massimo Durante
17. Using Philosophy of Language in Philosophy of Technology 341
Mark Coeckelbergh
18. What Is It Like to Be a Bot? 358
D. E. Wittkower
19. Technological Multistability and the Trouble with the Things
Themselves 374
Robert Rosenberger
Contents vii
PART V: TECHNOLOGY, AESTHETICS, AND
DESIGN
20. Understanding Engineering Design and Its Social, Political, and
Moral Dimensions 395
Philip Brey
21. Virtual Reality Media and Aesthetics 417
Grant Tavinor
22. Evaluation, Validation, and Management in Design 434
Pieter E. Vermaas
23. Urban Aesthetics and Technology 449
Sanna Lehtinen
PART VI: TECHNOLOGY, HEALTH AND
THE ENVIRONMENT
24. Science Fiction Futures and (Re)visions of the Anthropocene 473
Julia D. Gibson and Kyle Powys Whyte
25. A Framework for Thawing Value Conflicts in the GMO Debate 496
Samantha Noll
26. The Minded Body in Technology and Disability 516
Ashley Shew
27. Outer Space as a New Frontier for Technology Ethics 535
Keith Abney
PART VII: TECHNOLOGY AND THE GOOD LIFE
28. Technology, Cognitive Enhancement, and Virtue Ethics 563
Barbro Fröding
29. Toward an Existential and Emancipatory Ethic of Technology 588
Charles Ess
viii Contents
30. Why Confucianism Matters for the Ethics of Technology 609
Pak- Hang Wong

31. Care Ethics, Philosophy of Technology, and Robots in
Humanitarian Action 629
Aimee van Wynsberghe
32. Emerging Technology as Promise and Peril 647
Deborah G. Johnson
Index 663
Author Biographies
Keith Abney is Senior Research Fellow of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and senior lecturer in the
Philosophy Department. He is co- editor of Robot Ethics (MIT Press) and Robot Ethics 2.0
(OUP) as well as author/ contributor to numerous other books, journal articles, and
grant- funded reports for the National Science Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation,
and the US Office of Naval Research. His current research ranges through many aspects
of emerging technology ethics and bioethics, from co-e diting a special journal edi-
tion on the ethics of human colonization of other planets to work on military AI, space
war, and cyberethics to problems of abuse in autonomous vehicles, the ethics of human
enhancements, and more.
Alison Adam is Professor Emerita of Science, Technology, and Society at Sheffield
Hallam University, UK. She is the author of Artificial Knowing: Gender and the Thinking
Machine (Routledge, 1998); Gender, Ethics and Information Technology (Palgrave,
2005); and A History of Forensic Science: British Beginnings in the Twentieth Century
(Routledge, 2016). She is co-e ditor of Women, Work, and Computerization: Breaking Old
Boundaries— Building New Forms (Elsevier, 1994); Women in Computing: Progress from
Where to What? (Intellect,1997); Virtual Gender: Technology, Consumption, and Identity
(Routledge, 2001); and editor of Crime and the Construction of Forensic Objectivity from
1850, (Palgrave, 2020). Her current research focuses on the construction of forensic ob-
jectivity in forensic science and is centered on mid- twentieth century Scotland.
Ciano Aydin is Professor of Philosophy of Technology, Head of the Department of
Philosophy, and Vice-D ean of the Faculty of Behavioural, Management, and Social
Sciences at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. His research focuses on “existen-
tial technology”; he investigates how technologies increasingly shape our identity, im-
pact our freedom and responsibility, and influence different facets of our life. His main
areas of interest are philosophy of technology, philosophy of self, phenomenology, phi-
losophy of mind, and ethics. He has published in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce
Society, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy,
Philosophy and Technology, and other journals. In 2021 he published the book Extimate
Technology: Self- Formation in a Technological World (Routledge). See www.cianoaydin.
nl for more information about his current research.
Philip Brey is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Technology at the Department
of Philosophy, University of Twente, the Netherlands. He is a former president of the