Showing papers in "Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology in 1998"

On Structural Differences Between Science and Engineering

Abstract: Philosophers, in most cases, do not deal with such dirty things as technology. They prefer to discuss the rationality of animal rationale instead of the products of homo faber. Scientists, in most cases, look down on technology as a kind of scienceless application of science; only if they need some sophisticated new measuring instruments do they accept technology as an auxiliary science. All this is not only far from Benjamin Franklin’s insight that to be a tool-making animal belongs to the essence of human beings; it is far from the real conditions of human life today. It is not science at all which brought the participants of our conference to Karlsruhe or Mr. Armstrong to the moon; it is technology. And it is technology, too, to which most of us owe our lives—if, for example, we think of our lunch, not to speak of our last sickness. Sciences, on the other hand, are the coddled child at least of philosophers of science, who, up to now, have developed a paradigm of science depending on their fixation on physics.

Sustainability and Common-Pool Resources Alternatives to Tragedy

Abstract: The paradox that individually rational actions collectively can lead to irrational outcomes is exemplified in human appropriation of a class of goods known as "common-pool resources" ("CPR"): natural or humanly created resource systems which are large enough to make it costly to exclude potential beneficiaries Appropriations of common-pool resources for private use tend toward abusive practices that lead to the loss of the resource in question: the tragedy of the commons Prescriptions for escape from tragedy have involved two institutions, each applied largely in isolation from the other: private markets (the "hidden hand") and government coercion (Leviathan) Yet examples exist of local institutions that have utilized mixtures of public and private practices and have survived for hundreds of years Two problems further exacerbate efforts to avoid the tragic nature of commonpool resource use One, given the current level of knowledge, the role of the resource is not recognized for what it is It is, thus, in a fundamental, epistemological sense invisible Two, if the resource is recognized, it may not be considered scarce, thus placing it outside the scrutiny of economic theory Both types of error are addressed by the emerging field of ecological economics This paper discusses common pool resources, locates the ambiguities that make their identification difficult, and argues that avoidance of a CPR loss is inadequately addressed by sharply separated market and state institutions When the resource is recognized for what it is, a common-pool good, which is subject to overexploitation, it may be possible to identify creative combinations of public and private institutions that can combine to save that resource Disparate examples of self-organized enterprises, public/private utilities, and "green" taxes, to name a few, provide empirical content for developing theories of self-organized collective action PHIL & TECH 3:4 Summer 1998 Carpenter, Common-Pool Resources/37

Building on What We Have Learned: The Relations between Science and Technology

Abstract: For purposes of this paper, I will view science very roughly and intuitively as those disciplines concerned with theoretical understanding of what is found out about the world, and technology as the construction of machines or instruments or other material structures designed for whatever purpose. The aim of my analysis will be to throw light on the nature and functioning of science and technology and the relations between them, not to provide essentialist definitions of them. As will be seen, my view is that science, technology, and their relations, far from remaining the same throughout their history, evolve, and do so in intelligible ways.

On the Impact of Deterministic Chaos on Modern Science and the Philosophy of Science: Implications for the Philosophy of Technology?

Abstract: The modern concept of deterministic chaos arises from the mathematical and physical investigation of the topological and dynamical properties of deterministic systems. The notion of deterministic chaos is frequently used in an increasing number of scientific as well as non-scientific contexts, ranging from mathematics and the physics of dynamical systems to all sorts of complicated time evolutions, e.g., in chemistry, biology, physiology, economics, sociology, and even psychology. In this, the central epistemological impact of chaos research is on matters of prediction and computability of most nonlinear deterministic systems, while the various concepts of deterministic chaos in use do not constitute a new science, or a revolutionary change of the scientific world picture. Instead, chaos research provides a sort of toolbox of topological, perturbational, and numerical methods which are certainly useful for a more detailed analysis and understanding of such dynamical systems whose deterministic trajectories are, roughly speaking, endowed with the property of exponential sensitivity on initial conditions. Such a property, then, implies merely one, but a quantitatively strong type of effective or empirical limitation on long-time computability and predictability, respectively. Several reasons are given for why the impact of deterministic chaos research on quantitative modelling in the analysis of social and technological processes seems to be rather limited.

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.

Technology As a New Condition of the Possibility of Scientific Knowledge

Abstract: The epistemological meaning of technology in scientific research has fully changed in recent decades. At the beginning, the classical relationship between science and technology established a subordination of the latter to the former. Thus technology was considered applied science which helped the scientific process by manipulating the natural conditions of the scientific object. In fact, the influence of technology in the search for scientific objectivity did not imply any important variation of the epistemological framework of scientific knowledge.

On the Growing Complementarity of Science and Technology

Abstract: When the Ebola virus erupted in Zaire in 1995, it caused great local damage. However, the outbreak did not get to be classified as a major threat, at least in part because of a line of analysis that was drawn from the emerging field of "Darwinian medicine." For some time, leading exponents of that field (see Nesse, 1994; Bull, 1994; and Edwald, 1994) had been arguing that a pathogen can survive in a population only if it can easily transmit its progeny from one host to another. One way to do this is to take a long time to disable a human host; that gives the host time to come into contact with other potential victims. But Ebola virus kills usually in less than one week. Another way is to survive for a long time outside the human body, so that the pathogen can wait for new hosts to find it. But Ebola strains are quickly destroyed by sunlight. It was considerations such as this that contributed to the fact that the Ebola virus outbreak was not being classified as a major threat.

The Technical Universe in an Ontological Perspective

Abstract: The question of technology can be approached philosophically according to different perspectives: action, ethics, historicity, relationships with science or between technology and nature. The perspective which will be proposed here is the perspective of ontology, in which reality is considered from the point of view of its relation to Being. That perspective was established already at the beginning of philosophical thinking, such at least as it was constituted in the Western tradition. It gives an answer to the concern for what is radical, which animates and in some measure defines the philosophical project. The problem was to find a point of view from which a radical understanding could be developed. Now the very idea of what is radical can be understood either in the sense of what is absolutely encompassing, in the sense of totalization, or in the sense of what is thoroughly fundamental, primary, originary. But each one of those meanings links to the other: an encompassing point of view must be a principle which permits seeing things in terms of what is in them the most essential. What is most essential links them to one another most tightly and determines their common belonging to the same totality; reciprocally, a point of view which seizes things in their most essential constitution must be a principle which permits seeing them in what is their common sharing, which thereby gathers them in an encompassing view. An absolutely radical point of view, according to the two meanings of the term, must have the character of an ultimate perspective, both in the sense of an encompassing totality, which cannot be included in another one, and in the sense of a foundation which cannot be set on a more fundamental foundation. The concept of principle expresses precisely that double requirement.

Teller’s Technical Nemesis: The American Hydrogen Bomb and Its Development within a Technological Infrastructure

Abstract: In World War II the U.S. Army contracted the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering to develop a new, large electronic computer—among the first of its kind—in hopes that the machine would be able to perform ballistics calculations for the war effort. The machine was not completed before the end of the war, however, and the Army was not even the first group to utilize the machine. The first calculation ever run on the Electronic Numeric Integrator and Calculator (or ENIAC, as it was known), was for the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory. The \"Super problem\" was the first attempt to calculate the feasibility of a thermonuclear bomb. The problem, however, was too complicated for the ENIAC with its 1000 bits of memory and 18,000 vacuum tubes, and only a very simplified version of the calculation was run, revealing very little about how such a weapon might work.

A Formal Theory of Technology

Abstract: It is a very old and serious question in philosophy—not only within the Western context—how knowledge and practice are interrelated. So the basic question of any philosophy of technology is how to analyze the relation between science, technology itself, and practice. Since the beginnings of culture, mankind has acquired knowledge about nature, and our ancestors have talked about knowledge in the form of myths, theogonies, and cosmogonies, as well as stories and ballads, and much later in the form of written manuscripts and philosophical dialogues. In modern times we hand on our knowledge about nature in the form of protocols, based on experiments, observations, and theories. Moreover we use mathematical formalisms as a tool to describe our forecasts and explanations more precisely.

Technical Systems and Technical Progress: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract: After more than twenty years, discussions on the truthlikeness of scientific theories, initiated in the seventies, have not, in my opinion, arrived at final conclusions; but they have contributed positively to improving our comprehension of scientific progress. Niiniluoto s (1984) contribution is especially useful to define what we may call the kernel of the current standard view of scientific progress. This can be summarized in the following thesis:

Symmetry and Asymmetry in Science and Technology

Abstract: Symmetry and asymmetry relate to science and technology in three distinct ways: (1) science and technology possess similarities which are symmetrical and dissimilarities which are asymmetrical; (2) each entity possesses internal mathematical symmetries and asymmetries; and (3) the symmetries and asymmetries found within science and technology arise from symmetries and asymmetries found in the physical world—both natural and human-made. This paper will be divided into five parts, the first being devoted to a description of the nature of symmetry. The next three parts will discuss the three types of relations just mentioned with the final section presenting speculations about how symmetry and asymmetry arise from the operations of mind/brain and find expression in science and technology.

Advances in the philosophy of technology: new structural characteristics of technologies

Abstract: "Advancing" means progressing, taking steps over time or distance toward another, a "better," place, objective, goal or goal state. So the overall topic of these proceedings, on advances in philosophy of technology, would appear to mean one of two things: progress or advances in technology, as seen from the perspectives of the philosophy of technology; or as intellectual steps taken toward achieving a new state of the art within the field of philosophy of technology itself.

Explaining Change in Science

Abstract: Philosophical theories of scientific change abound and, for the most part, they have one thing in common: they are theories of rational justification for changing scientific theories. That is, they are not about science per se, where science is construed as a social process whose main activity is the generation and testing of ideas about the composition and structure of the material universe. The kinds of theories of scientific change I have in mind are exemplified by the work of Popper (1959), Lakatos (1970), Kuhn (1962), and Laudan (1977).

Computer technology and evolution: from artificial intelligence to artificial life

Abstract: There is a traditional belief in the computability of nature and society, but it has run into severe difficulties. Computability is only simple for linear problems. But most problems in the world are nonlinear and complex—from the biological evolution of life to the ecological, economic, and social dynamics of human society. Classical physics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have often been inspired by the linear world view of the Laplacean demon.

Distributability problems and challenges to the future resolution of responsibility conflicts

Abstract: We can understand human beings as normative beings which means that they are morally distinguished from other creatures by the capacity to bear, acknowledge, consciously identify, and accept responsibilities for their individual and group actions and role fulfillments and, beyond this, for the lives, limits, and well-being of other humans and creatures as well as, and increasingly for the state and development of ecosystems. Humans are, so to speak, the moral beings. Yet, moral responsibility is but one sort of responsibility which might be located within a rather complex realm of different responsibilities. For example, those engendered by contracts or some other mutual agreements which might not necessarily be moral in a narrow sense, i.e., they might not affect the life, limbs, psyche, and well-being of other people or living beings in general. These might be called ethically neutral. But they are still normative, and prima facie, to be abided by the respective persons who have taken on these responsibilities. In addition, these ethically neutral responsibilities might conflict with moral duties and ethically relevant obligations.

Encapsulating Knowledge: The Direct Reading Spectrometer

Abstract: The direct reading emission spectrometer was developed during the1940s. By substituting photo-multiplier tubes and electronics forphotographic film spectrograms, the interpretation of special lineswith a densitometer was avoided. Instead, the instrument providedthe desired information concerning percentage concentration ofelements of interest directly on a dial. Such instruments `de-skill' the job of making such measurements. They do this by encapsulatingin the instrument the skills previously employed by the analyst,by `skilling' the instrument. This paper presents a history of thedevelopment of the Dow Chemical/Baird Associates direct reader. Thishistory is used to argue for a materialist conception of knowledge.The instrument is a material form of knowledge, knowledge of aspectsof spectroscopy, analytical spectrochemistry, electronics, instrumentdesign and construction, and metal production industry economics.