Conference Agenda

Experiences of an increase in environmental crises associated with the use of technological objects confront us with the fact that these objects, although developed and used in a local context, have global impacts. Many, if not all, technological objects have become world objects (Serres 1995; Feenberg 2017). This world dimension is embodied, for example, in the different global supply-chains and the many hands across the world necessary to construe and develop technological objects. Current discourses in philosophy of technology, despite their recent focus on sustainability and the idea of the Anthropocene, do not have the conceptual tools to meet this world dimension of technological objects. This conceptual lack, we argue, becomes particular evident when considering the relation between extractivism and technological objects. Here, extractivism is conceived as the exponential acceleration of extracting natural resources to develop technological objects. As such, we make the case that extractivism is an environmental-social condition of the existence of technological objects and their further development and so is also a condition of the existence of the philosophy of technology itself. Despite this intimate relation between technological objects, the philosophy of technology, and extractivism, the latter apparently is not captured by the lens of major philosophy of technology discourses. In this presentation we will lay bare different mechanisms of occlusion within extractivism and the philosophy of technology that make extractivism a blind spot. Extractivism is grounded in a global political-economy which is characterized by processes of appropriating its benefits by a particular group of economically powerful stakeholders and processes of externalizing its harmful impacts by the creation of sacrifice zones and peripheries. The philosophy of technology, especially after its empirical turn, is characterized by a blinding focus on concrete technological objects. Moreover, it takes up a perspective that all issues related to technological objects are technological issues which need to be solved by technological experts. To counter these mechanisms of occlusion, the philosophy of technology is in need of a scale critique (Clark 2012, 2018). We offer such a critique by relying on the relational ontology of Māori philosophy, particularly its temporal and spatial dimensions. Doing so, we confront the current philosophy of technology with its own modes of thinking which from a local perspective seem justified but from a global perspective are incomplete. As such, extractivism is put in philosophy of technology’s spotlight and a rudimentary ground for a de-extracted philosophy of technology is developed.

References

Clark, T. (2012). Scale. Derangements of scale. In T. Cohen (ed.). Telemorphosis. Theory in the era of climate change. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press.

Clark, T. (2018). Scale as a force of deconstruction. In M. Fritsch, P. Lynes & D. Wood (eds.). Eco-deconstruction. Derrida and environmental philosophy (pp. 81-97). New York: Fordham University Press.

Feenberg, A. (2017). Technosystem. The social life of reason. Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press.

Serres, M. (1995). The natural contract (E. MacArthur & W. Paulson Trans.). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

The empirical turn in philosophy of technology is history in the making (Achterhuis, 2001; Botin et al., 2020; Zwier et al., 2016). As such, researchers are constantly navigating how to integrate empirical work into the philosophy of technology, which raises questions such as (1) what “empirical philosophy of technology” exactly signifies and (2) what role empirical research can play in the philosophy of technology, more specifically, towards what ends and purposes empirical data can be leveraged (Bosschaert & Blok, 2023; Botin et al., 2020). The second question reflects the urgency of an “ethical” (Verbeek, 2010) or “political” turn (Feenberg, 2020) within philosophy of technology. Several critics (see, for example, Bosschaert & Blok, 2023; Zwier, 2016) claim that empirical philosophy of technology focuses on concrete technologies and thus fails to be sufficiently critical of the underlying social and political structures. Although these critiques may apply to certain studies, we argue that they rely on a too narrow view of what empirical philosophy of technology post-2020 is and can be. To do so, we empirically study the empirical-philosophical work in the Ethics and Philosophy of Technology section at TU Delft, more specifically, within a recently created Empirical philosophy of technology research cluster, connecting about 20 researchers. We gathered information about the different roles empirical work plays in the research conducted within the cluster, leading to a rich document with research experiences, empirical ambitions, methods, and findings. The results show that “empirical philosophy of technology” refers to a plurality of approaches and perspectives. Therefore, we argue that it should not be defined in a narrow sense; instead, it should be acknowledged that the empirical can play many diverse roles, including social critique. These insights contribute to a more nuanced understanding of empirical philosophy of technology and its opportunities and limitations that is thoroughly grounded in practice and may inspire researchers in philosophy of technology to explore empirical methods themselves.

References

Achterhuis, H. (Ed.). (2001). American philosophy of technology: The empirical turn. Indiana University Pres.

Bosschaert, M. T., & Blok, V. (2023). The ‘Empirical’ in the Empirical Turn: A Critical Analysis. Foundations of Science, 28(2), 783–804. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-022-09840-6

Botin, L., De Boer, B., & Børsen, T. (2020). Technology in between the individual and the political: Postphenomenology and critical constructivism. Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 24(1–2), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.5840/techne2020241

Feenberg, A. (2020). Critical constructivism, postphenomenology, and the politics of technology. Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 24(1–2), 27–40. https://doi.org/10.5840/techne2020210116

Verbeek, P. P. (2010). Accompanying technology: Philosophy of technology after the ethical turn. Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 14(1 PLISS), 49–54.

Zwier, J., Blok, V., & Lemmens, P. (2016). Phenomenology and the Empirical Turn: a Phenomenological Analysis of Postphenomenology. Philosophy and Technology, 29(4), 313–333. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-016-0221-7

Since the two world wars, philosophers, historians, sociologists and scientists have been reflecting on modern science and its relation to technology, but this interest has intensified as we move into the 21st century. The literature on this topic widely recognizes that science has been in a process of historical transformation since the end of the 20th century. How profound is this transformation? Are there radically new elements that have emerged? What were the structures, interactions or episodes that led to their changes? What have they changed? Developments in the contemporary world that link science and technology include nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, space exploration, microchips, computers, digital networks, lasers, missiles, communication satellites, biotechnology, magnetic resonance imaging, heart-lung machines, artificial organs and nanotechnology, among many other examples. David Channell (2017) is right to say that all those advances cannot be understood solely as products of science or technology. Indeed, it has become increasingly difficult to characterize many of the developments that shape the basis of the contemporary world as exclusively scientific or exclusively technological.

Since the 1980s, the discussion about the relationship among science, technology, and society has intensified and various philosophers and social scientists, regardless of their different perspectives, have used the term ‘technoscience’ to describe and designate the emergence of a type of institution and research whose generic description includes the interconnection between science, technology and engineering, the massive mobilization of resources for the production of practical, industrial and profitable innovations and the commitment to economic growth, market competition and military security. The paper aims to discuss the different understandings given by various key authors. The authors will be drawn not only from the English-speaking philosophy of technology, but also from other sources, including French, German, Spanish and Portuguese. In particular, I will highlight and confront the genealogical research of Gilbert Hottois (2004), the historical works of Channell (2017), the perspective coming from the peculiar phenomenology of Don Ihde (in Ihde and Selinger,2003), the strong rationalist conception of Javier Echeverria (2003), the critical vision of Hermínio Martins (2011) and the debate on the ‘epochal rupture’ that has been conducted in this regard in the work organized by Nordmann, Radder and Schiemann (2011).

References

Channell, David F. (2017) A History of Technoscience Erasing the Boundaries between Science and Technology, Routledge.

Echeverria, Javier (2003) La Revolución Tecnocientífica, Fondo de Cultura Económica de España.

Ihde, Don and Evan Selinger (2003) Chasing Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality, Indiana University Press.

Hottois, Gilbert (2004) Philosophies des sciences, philosophies des techniques, Ed. Odile Jacob.

Martins, Hermínio (2011) Experimentum Humanum. Civilização Tecnológica e Condição Humana, Relógio d’Água.

Nordmann, Alfred, Hans Radder, and Gregor Schiemann (ed.) (2011) Science Transformed? Debating Claims of an Epochal Break, University of Pittsburgh Press.