ost engineering reasoning in practice is about how to achieve some predetermined end. Despite its paramount importance, this form of reasoning has hardly been investigated in the literature.a The aim of this paper is therefore to explore the question to what extent technical norms can be said to have a truth-value, and under what conditions practical inferences are deductively valid. We take technical norms to be sentences of the form ‘If you want A, and you are in a situation B, then you ought to do X’. Von Wright’s standard example of making a hut habitable is our paradigm for practical inferences, where an obligation to act is deduced from an intention to realize an end, and an empirical constraint on how this end can be achieved. Our instrument of analysis is dynamic logic (PDL), since actions are aimed at changing the world. PDL already suffices to provide truth-conditions for technical norms. To accommodate the obligation in practical inferences we draw on John Jules Meyer’s deontic version of PDL. By paraphrasing ‘person P wants’ with ‘person P imposes an obligation on herself,’ we can give a plausible definition of the validity of practical inferences. In the discussion section, we address the issues of the reliability instead of truth-value of technical norms, and of the defeasibility of practical inferences as they occur in engineering practice.@en

My aim is to question whether the introduction of new technologies in society may be considered to be genuine experiments. I will argue that they are not, at least not in the sense in which the notion of experiment is being used in the natural and social sciences. If the introduction of a new technology in society is interpreted as an experiment, then we are dealing with a notion of experiment that differs in an important respect from the notion of experiment as used in the natural and social sciences. This difference shows itself most prominently when the functioning of the new technological system is not only dependent on technological hardware but also on social ‘software’, that is, on social institutions such as appropriate laws, and actions of operators of the new technological system. In those cases we are not dealing with ‘simply’ the introduction of a new technology, but with the introduction of a new socio-technical system. I will argue that if the introduction of a new socio-technical system is considered to be an experiment, then the relation between the experimenter and the system on which the experiment is performed differs significantly from the relation in traditional experiments in the natural and social sciences. In the latter experiments it is assumed that the experimenter is not part of the experimental system and is able to intervene in and control the experimental system from the outside. With regard to the introduction of new socio-technical systems the idea that there is an experimenter outside the socio-technical system who intervenes in and controls that system becomes problematic. From that perspective we are dealing with a different kind of experiment.@en

In this paper we discuss a follow-up step of the empirical turn that we refer to as an “axiological turn” in the philosophy of technology. For a clear understanding of this follow-up step it is of crucial importance to distinguish between values at the level of the object of study, that is, values in technology and engineering practice, and values at the meta-level, that is, values in the philosophy of technology. We argue that a study of the role of values in technology and engineering practice may be conducted in line with our original call for an empirical turn. This is what we refer to as a descriptive axiological turn; it focusses on an empirically informed philosophical analysis of all kinds of values and norms in technology and engineering practice. Our call for a descriptive axiological turn is in essence nothing more than an amendment on the call for an empirical turn. By contrast a normative axiological turn in the philosophy of technology goes beyond the empirical turn; it not only describes and analyses but also evaluates the norms and values in technology and engineering practice. In other words, a normative axiological turn involves taking a normative stance at the (meta-)level of the philosophical analysis itself. Two forms of normative axiological turns are discussed, a reflective and a substantive one, as well as some of the problems and challenges that an implementation of a normative axiological turn will have to face. Finally, we also discuss how recent developments in the philosophy of technology that call for an active role of philosophers of technology in technology development fit into this distinction between a descriptive and normative axiological turn and under what conditions a normative axiological turn may be made.@en

About 15 years ago, Peter Kroes and Anthonie Meijers published as editors a collection of papers under the title The empirical turn in the philosophy of technology (Kroes and Meijers 2000). Next to containing several examples of the kind of studies the editors had in mind, the book made an ardent plea for a reorientation of the community of philosophers of technology toward the practice of technology and, more specifically, the practice of engineering, and sketched the likely benefits for the field of pursuing the major questions that characterize it in an empirically informed way.@en