Philosophy of Technology

Gijutsu wa jiyû ni tsûzuru ka — Kasshîrâ ni okeru gendai gijutsu no tetsugakuteki imi to kachi ni tsuite. (“Freiheit durch Technik? — Zur philosophischen Bedeutung und dem Wert moderner Technik bei Ernst Cassirer”), übersetzt ins Japanische von H. Uchida und T. Kurata

by Raji C. Steineck

Published in: Ningen sonzai ron 8 (2002). Kyoto: Kyôto daigaku
daigakuin ningen /kankyô gaku kenkyû ka sôgô ningen gakubu “Ningen sonzai ron” kankôkai, pp. 11-30.

Misyurov D.A. Dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas // Credo New. 2012. №2

by Dmitry Misyurov

The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with... more The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with dominant and the non-dominant elements; universal formula; formula with symbolic weight of elements; tautological formula. For example, it suggests an opportunity to use the dialectical formulas for modeling and artificial intelligence creation, etc.

Biological Interests, Normative Functions, and Synthetic Biology

by Sune Holm

GIS for Marginalization or Empowerment In Environmental Management: a South Indian Example

by Martin Bunch

Bunch, M. J. (2001). "GIS for Marginalization or Empowerment in Environmental Management: A South Indian Example." The Indian Geographical Journal 77(2): 1-17.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) exist to transform data into knowledge and present this knowledge in various... more Geographic Information Systems (GIS) exist to transform data into knowledge and present this knowledge in various formats for the purpose of supporting decisions. In doing so, GIS are portrayed as knowledge-based systems that are free from bias. In fact, GIS is a socially constructed technology. The entire process of GIS production, from software development to data creation, analysis, visualization and interpretation of GIS output, is characterized by political, economic and social motivations. This paper presents a model of communication for GIS that illuminates the potential for GIS to both marginalise and empower vulnerable and excluded groups in environmental management and planning situations at each stage of the GIS production process. Inclusive and empowering uses of GIS in recent research in South India are discussed. In particular, GIS was central to a process of conceptual and environmental modelling intended to support rehabilitation and management of the Cooum River in Chennai. This process incorporated the perspectives of citizens and NGOs into expression of system relationships that were represented in a GIS-based Decision Support System and simulation model. The process led to identification of qualitatively different kinds of system interventions than were tried (and failed) in the past to rehabilitate this extremely stressed system.

Human development or human enhancement? A methodological reflection on capabilities and the evaluation of information technologies

by Mark Coeckelbergh

PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

by Raymond Turner

The Philosophy of Computer Science is concerned with those philosophical issues that surround and underpin the... more The Philosophy of Computer Science is concerned with those philosophical issues that surround and underpin the academic discipline of computer science. In this paper we provide an introduction to some its philosophical concerns.

The Gospel According To Google: The Future of Religious Niches and Technological Spirituality

by Tommaso Bertolotti

Co-authored with Carolina Cinerari, presented at the EPHES-SST conference in Suceava, March 2012, to appear in the European Journal of Science and Theology

This paper deals with the developments of online religiosity and its possible perversion. The first section examines... more This paper deals with the developments of online religiosity and its possible perversion. The first section examines whether the impact of Internet on traditional religions is fundamentally helpful in adding anything new to the world of spirituality and devotion. The second section deals with some instances of religious and spiritual behaviors that are being produced by digitalized lifestyle, even though they are not concerned with traditional religious beliefs. The question underlying this research is whether we are looking “the right way” when we mean to study the link between computers, Internet and religiosity.

L. Magnani (2010), Moral mediators in a technological world

by Lorenzo Magnani

In: R. Feist, C. Beauvais, and R. Shukla (eds.), Technology and the Changing Face of Humanity, University of Ottawa Press, Ottawa, pp. 112-133.

Technology moves us to a better world. We contend that through technology people can simplify and solve moral tasks... more Technology moves us to a better world. We contend that through technology people can simplify and solve moral tasks when they are in presence of incomplete information and possess a diminished capacity to act morally. Many external things, usually inert from the moral point of view, can be transformed into what we call moral mediators. Hence, not all of the moral tools are inside the head, many of them are shared and distributed in “external” objects and structures which function as ethical devices. For example we can use external “tools”, like computer or biotechnology, to reconfigure previously given social orders morally unsatisfactory: two interesting examples we will illustrate are e-democracy projects and their possible role in enhancing human rights or cloning and genetic engineering for enhancing human health.

L. Magnani (2012), Structural and Technology-Mediated Violence

by Lorenzo Magnani

International Journal of Technoethics, 2(4), 1-19, October-December 2011

A kind of common prejudice is the one that tends to assign the attribute “violent” only to physical and possiblymore A kind of common prejudice is the one that tends to assign the attribute “violent” only to physical and possibly
bloody acts – homicides, for example – or physical injuries; but linguistic, structural, and other various aspects of violence – also embedded in artifacts – have to be taken into account. The paper will deal with the so-called “technology-mediated violence” taking advantage of the illustration of the case of profiling. If production of knowledge is important and central, this is not always welcome and so people have to acknowledge
that the motto introduced in the book Morality in a Technological World (Magnani, 2007) “knowledge as a duty” has various limitations. Indeed, a warning has to be formulated regarding the problem of identity and cyberprivacy. The author contends that when too much knowledge about people is incorporated in external artificial things, human beings’ “visibility” can become excessive and dangerous. Two aims are in front of people to counteract this kind of technological violence, which also jeopardizes Rechtsstaat and constitutional democracies: preserving people against the various forms of circulation of knowledge about them and building new suitable “technoknowledge” (also to originate new “embodied” legal institutions) to reach this protective result.

Karl Marx's Theory of History: a defense. Critical Notice of G. A. Cohen's book.

by henry laycock

Jerry Cohen's first major book defending Marx's Historical Materialism. I add an anecdote about Jerry (as he liked to be denoted) - I spoke with him as a friend shortly before his death. He had, it seemed, 'lost faith' in the idea of Capitalism's basic crises. This was during the US banking and financial scandal leading uo to the present very serious Europe-centred crisis.The unrestrained greed of the big banks in the years leading up to the 2008 implosion helped to wreck the American — and global — economy. Their business model: privatizing profit and socializing loss.

In Jstor at http://www.jstor.org/stable/40231151

I also add an important quote: "Capital is moved as much and as little by the degradation and final depopulation of the human race, as by the probable fall of the earth into the sun. Apres moi le deluge! is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation" (Marx, CAPITAL Vol 1, 380-381).

Another helpful discussion is Charles Mills

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00201748908602197

Mills writes: G. A. Cohen's influential ‘technological determinist’ reading of Marx's theory of history rests in part... more Mills writes: G. A. Cohen's influential ‘technological determinist’ reading of Marx's theory of history rests in part on an interpretation of Marx's use of ‘material’ whose idiosyncrasy has been insufficiently noticed. Cohen takes historical materialism to be asserting the determination of the social by the material/asocial, viz. ‘socio‐neutral’ facts about human nature and human rationality which manifest themselves in a historical tendency for the forces of production to develop. This paper reviews Marx's writings to demonstrate the extensive textual evidence in favour of the traditional interpretation ‐ that for Marx, the ‘material’ includes the economic, and is thus ineluctably social in character. Thus those critics of Cohen who have urged the inclusion of the relations of production in historical materialism's explanans do seem to have Marx's terminological and conceptual backing.

Im glücklichen Einklang mit der Natur? Otto Ullrichs Fortschritts- und Wissenschaftskritik

by Dominik Düber

Published in  'Forum Wissenschaft'
Jg. 28, Nr. 2, 2011.

From Seeing to Acting. Rethinking Nishida's Practical Philosophy

by Matteo Cestari

Published in: James W. Heisig & Raquel Bouso (eds.), Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy 6. Confluences and Cross-Currents, Nagoya, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 2009, pp. 273-296.

In reply to critics who summarily dismiss Nishida's philosophy as weakened on the historical front by excessive... more In reply to critics who summarily dismiss Nishida's philosophy as weakened on the historical front by excessive attention to the mind and interiority, in this essay I provide textual proof of a major shift in Nishida's late work based on the attept to overcome the dichotomy between the "within" and the "without". This is accomplished by applying a "dialectic of the historical world" to the mutual self-expression of the world and the things that make it up, including ut not restricted to conscious subjects. I see here the core of Nishida's complementary ideas of praxis and poiesis, and from there discuss the reviesd notions of politics, technology, morality and history. I conclude by displacing a blanket rejection of Nishida's view of history with a particular critique aimed at an overly abstract and optimistic tendency that kept Nishida from recognizing the darker side of technology and the relationships of humans to their natural and social world.

Het transhumanisme. Een inleiding tot het debat over mensverbetering

by Aeneas De Baets

Wanneer wij via media of op onmiddellijke wijze geconfronteerd worden met genetische manipulatie van mensen, met... more Wanneer wij via media of op onmiddellijke wijze geconfronteerd worden met genetische manipulatie van mensen, met artificiële intelligentie, met cyborgs, met nanotechnologie, en andere fantastische maar daarom geen minder realistische ideeën, is onze eerste reactie veelal angst. Houden deze technologieën, die er op uit zijn menselijk lichaam en geest te veranderen, te verbeteren en te overstijgen, geen gevaar in voor de mensheid, voor onze waardigheid, onze persoonlijke vrijheid? Weten wij misschien niet te weinig over wie of wat de mens is, om ons te wagen aan gewaagde experimenten met onze eigen soortgenoten? Zijn de gevolgen wel overzienbaar?
Het is een discussie die al ettelijke eeuwen meegaat. Vooral binnen de literatuur werd het thema al vaak aangesneden; gaande van het oudste epos aller tijden, de Gilgamesj, via literaire klassiekers als Frankenstein en Brave New World, tot hedendaagse sci-fi films en series. Door de komst van verscheidene nieuwe technologieën, in het bijzonder de biotechnologie, heeft het debat nu ook een prominente plaats gekregen binnen de wetenschappen en de filosofie. Maar daarmee is echter de intuïtieve angst, die heel typerend was en is voor de fictie, nog niet verdwenen.
In dit artikel zal ik een schets geven van de heersende discussie omtrent deze technologieën die de menselijke conditie grondig kunnen beïnvloeden. Wat zijn de mogelijkheden van deze nieuwe technologieën en in hoeverre kunnen ze de mensheid bijstaan? Waarom zouden we bang moeten zijn? Welke beslissingen dienen er nu genomen te worden? En met welke problemen zullen we waarschijnlijk in de toekomst nog worden geconfronteerd?
Ik zal het daarbij in het bijzonder hebben over het transhumanisme, een wijsgerige ideologie die de technologieën promoot die onze menselijke conditie helpen overstijgen. Ik zal aan de hand van de standpunten en argumenten van deze beweging aantonen waar de grote knelpunten liggen.

Le flux quadripartite

by Chatonsky Gregory

Il existe quatre types de flux fonctionnant par couple : interne et externe, technologique et artistique. Chacun... more Il existe quatre types de flux fonctionnant par couple : interne et externe, technologique et artistique. Chacun d’entre eux est disposé sur une ligne horizontale allant de la subjectivité interne à l’objectivité externe avec le couple technologique et artistique au milieu qui, selon des cas que nous analyserons, renversent leur polarité. Un axe vertical va quant à lui du continu au discontinu s’appliquant à tous les flux. Ce schéma n’est pas à comprendre comme une cartographie statique définissant des frontières étanches mais comme la mise en place de polarités qui permettent d’aborder des processus dynamiques et des mélanges subtils entre les catégories.

"In the Stocking-Steps of Walter Benjamin: Critical Theory, Television, and the Global Imagination"

by f. scott scribner

Citation: "In the Stocking-Steps of Walter Benjamin: Critical Theory, Television, and the Global Imagination" in Globalizing Critical Theory, Ed. Max Pensky: New York: Roman and Littlefield, 2005, pgs 209-219.

Container/Containment. Die irdischen Grenzen der Globalisierung <2012>

by Joerg Potthast

TUMULT - Schriften zur Verkehrswissenschaft Nr. 38, 140 pp.

Introduction, pp. 8-12

together with Alexander Klose

introduces a collection of essays and art works on containers and containment by Paul Edwards, Benjamin Steininger,... more introduces a collection of essays and art works on containers and containment by Paul Edwards, Benjamin Steininger, Georg Uhlemann, Walter Seitter, Armin Monsorno, Monika Dommann, Jörg Potthast, Lieven de Cauter, Adi Hoesle, Yannick Barthe, Judith Kröll/Michael Guggenheim/Bernd Kräftner, Insa Härtel/Olaf Knellessen

The Tendency the Accident and the Untimely: Paul Virilio's Engagement with the Future

by Patrick Crogan

in Theory, Culture & Society 16:5-6, Dec 1999, 161-176; special issue on Virilio, ed. John Armitage. Also published in Armitage, ed., Paul Virilio: From Modernism to Hypermodernism and Beyond (London: Sage Publications 2000).

Paper drawn from my PhD thesis Paul Virilio and the Aporia of Speed. Paper drawn from my PhD thesis Paul Virilio and the Aporia of Speed.

Objective knowledge in science: dialectical objectivity and the history of sonar technology

by Christine James

Dissertation, defended defended May 5, 2000, directed by Alfred Nordmann and Davis Baird.

Sonar Technology and Shifts in Environmental Ethics

by Christine James

Published in Essays in Philosophy, vol. 6, no.1, January 2005.

Do Medieval and Renaissance Androids Presage the Posthuman?

by Kevin LaGrandeur

Published in the refereed, online journal: CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 12.3 (2010) (Purdue University). Available at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol12/iss3/3/

In his article "Do Medieval and Renaissance Androids Presage the Posthuman?" Kevin LaGrandeur analyzes the... more In his article "Do Medieval and Renaissance Androids Presage the Posthuman?" Kevin LaGrandeur analyzes the relationships between literary images of artificial humans associated with medieval alchemists and alchemy, their modified reemergence in the Renaissance, and how such androids may forecast the idea of a posthuman subjectivity that is connected with their present-day descendents. For example, the talking brass heads in Robert Greene's two Renaissance plays, The Honorable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and Alphonsus, Prince of Aragon have their roots in Arabic sources, and the former derives specifically from legends concerning the thirteenth-century alchemist and philosopher Roger Bacon. These early instances of the artificial anthropoid also anticipate, in a broad sense, the kinds of philosophical issues regarding subjectivity that cyborgs bring up for our "posthuman" society. For instance, the literature of the earlier era represents a fear that humans will be diminished-all of the creators in the fictional literature examined are in danger of losing control of their creations, and thus of having their agency called into dispute.