Diane Michelfelder

Starting in 2006, the ethics code of the US National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) states that engineers have professional obligations to encourage sustainable development. The organization continues to emphasize that sustainability is important for ensuring a community’s public health, safety, and welfare. Emphasizing sustainability requires considering impacts to both this generation and future generations. Investigations into the latter need more attention since there are many more studies focusing on the former. In this paper, we show how an ethic of care, particularly as it has been developed by Joan Tronto, can offer support for the engineering profession to practice an intergenerational ethic. At first glance, Tronto’s framing of care ethics might appear to be an unlikely candidate to meet obligations for future generations as this model involves “responsiveness” on the part of the caregiver to feedback offered by the one receiving care. In this paper, we demonstrate an alternative picture, where feedback is provided by proxies for future generations.

This article explores the concept of animal technics, building on the work of Don Ihde to examine the intricate relationships between technology, animals, and human experiences. Drawing from postphenomenology, philosophy of technology and posthumanist thought, the discussion challenges anthropocentric perspectives that frame technology as a purely human domain. Instead, it argues that animals actively shape and are shaped by technics, engaging with tools, environments, and human-mediated technological systems in complex ways. Through a critical engagement with Ihde’s postphenomenology, the article interrogates the co-constitutive interactions between animal life and technology, revealing how nonhuman agency disrupts traditional boundaries between nature and artifact. Case studies illustrate the diverse ways animals participate in technics, from bioengineered species to digital interfaces designed for nonhuman cognition. This analysis highlights the ethical and epistemological stakes of recognizing animals as technological actors, calling for an expanded framework that accounts for their role in shaping technoscientific realities. By situating animal technics within broader debates in philosophy of technology, this article contributes to ongoing discussions about agency, materiality, ecology, and the limits of human-centered technological narratives. It concludes by advocating for a more inclusive and responsive technological ethics—one that acknowledges the entangled futures of humans, animals, and machines.

A persistent challenge in educational technology design is the construction of online environments. How might these spaces be constructed so that, rather than reinforcing socially entrenched but distorted norms and institutional interests, they are spaces of radical openness, centring the voices of all students while preparing them to create social change? This article takes up this challenge by exploring how postphenomenology, assemblage theory, and feminist technoscience could serve as philosophical scaffolding for such design. Postphenomenology contributes to seeing how learning spaces can be spaces of radical openness by fostering embodied vulnerability, allowing students and instructors to see one another as persons, and to be in-humanity-with one another. Assemblage theory calls attention to the materiality of online environments, how these spaces are socially situated and shaped by power relations, letting students see these forces and ask how distortive ones might be overcome. Feminist technoscience takes a step further by opening a way for students to see themselves as change agents in the larger social context outside the classroom. The authors of this article hope this philosophical framework inspires research and practice in educational technology design, a hope made particularly pressing by the growth of artificial intelligence and its influence on higher education learning systems.

In recent years, interest in re-envisioning engineering activities through the lens of an ethics of care has grown. At the same time, several US engineering societies revised the canons for their codes of ethics in ways that raise their commitments to sustainability. The intent of this chapter is to bring these parallel trajectories together and demonstrate the promise their intersection holds for enhancing the codes’ commitments to sustainability even further. Following a brief introduction, we look at the progress made with respect to these two trajectories before turning to the advantages of infusing engineering codes of ethics with the ethics of care. With this in mind, we offer some concrete suggestions for how the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) code might be revised. We then acknowledge and respond to possible objections before concluding with some directions for future research.

This chapter serves to introduce the reader to the purpose and background of Philosophy and Engineering: Exploring Boundaries, Expanding Connections, and to the chapters that make up this work. Section 1.1 describes why, rather than being divided into parts, the book was deliberately organized to be a fluid whole. Section 1.2 addresses how fluidity is reflected in the contribution of the Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology to the development of the philosophy of engineering as a discipline, and in the ongoing debate over what engineering will look like in the future. This discussion points to a new perspective on what it means to do philosophy of engineering in a context of bridge-building between philosophers and engineers. Section 1.3 offers a window into the contents of the volume through brief chapter introductions.

In a series of publications in the early 1990s, Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz coined the phrase “post-normal science” and set out its dimensions. Drawing on the framework of their efforts, the reflections assembled in this paper invite the reader to consider the contours of post-normal engineering. These reflections start with overviews of post-normal science and what could be called “normal” engineering. From there, this paper first spells out a picture of features of post-normal engineering directly aligned with post-normal science before going on to look at other conceptual elements which, to some degree, break with this alignment. Together, these can be said to constitute the “new face of post-normal engineering.” This discussion will serve as a lens through which to explore possible on-ramps philosophers may use to engage with engineers and others in an “extended peer community.”

My aim in this dissertation is to suggest a site from which Heidegger's later lectures on language could be read without the suspicion developing that the thought of these later lectures has the structure of a skeptical dialectic. ;The first chapter contains a discussion of Jacques Derrida's and Richard Rorty's claim that criticism of the metaphysical tradition or the "philosophy of presence" must result in such a dialectic, and of the effect that this claim has upon their understanding of Heidegger's later thought; namely, that Heidegger cannot successfully present us with a philosophical alternative to metaphysical reflection. ;In the second chapter I show how a concept of existential necessity: the necessity whose presencing in experience demands an individual response, although serving to assist the presentation of formal necessity in Being and Time, assumes growing importance for Heidegger through his extended study of Nietzsche. ;With the third chapter I turn to argue that the Denkweg which issues from Heidegger's addressing of the question of the essence of language does not have the unity attributable to a presentation but rather to a conversation or dialogue. Since the unity of a dialogue is independent of repetition, my thesis here runs, philosophical understanding can be limited even though ungrounded. In addition, Heidegger's Denkweg is briefly compared to two other forms of back-and-forth philosophical thinking: Platonic dialogue and Hegelian dialectic. ;The fourth chapter follows closely a section from "A Dialogue on Language," in order to show more concretely how the movement of question and answer can promote an experience of the recognition of the past as necessarily belonging to the future, without this recognition being grounded in an always already-present meaning

In this book, which received an honorable mention for the Johnsonian Prize in 1981, the author wants to "make Being and Time more readily accessible to non-Heideggerians". Non-Heideggerians, by whom Guignon means philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition, ought to find here that he has done exactly that. Guignon's strategy is to re-work the metaphysically-rooted vocabulary of Being and Time into the language of beliefs, grounds and justifications familiar to the epistemologist. What emerges from this move is a carefully articulated critique which should be unsettling both to non-Heideggerians and Heideggerians alike.

Solutions to the problem ofprotecting informational privacy in cyberspacetend to fall into one of three categories:technological solutions, self-regulatorysolutions, and legislative solutions. In thispaper, I suggest that the legal protection ofthe right to online privacy within the USshould be strengthened. Traditionally, inidentifying where support can be found in theUS Constitution for a right to informationalprivacy, the point of focus has been on theFourth Amendment; protection in this contextfinds its moral basis in personal liberty,personal dignity, self-esteem, and othervalues. On the other hand, the constitutionalright to privacy first established by Griswoldv. Connecticut finds its moral basis largelyin a single value, the value of autonomy ofdecision-making. I propose that an expandedconstitutional right to informational privacy,responsive to the escalating threats posed toonline privacy by developments in informationaltechnology, would be more likely to find asolid moral basis in the value of autonomyassociated with the constitutional right toprivacy found in Griswold than in the varietyof values forming the moral basis for the rightto privacy backed by the Fourth Amendment.

Philosophers and others concerned with the moral good of personal privacy most often see threats to privacy raised by the development of pervasive computing as primarily being threats to the loss of control over personal information. Two reasons in particular lend this approach plausibility. One reason is that the parallels between pervasive computing and ordinary networked computing, where everyday transactions over the Internet raise concerns about personal information privacy, appear stronger than their differences. Another reason is that the individual devices which can become linked in a pervasive computing environment: PDAs, GPS sensors, RFID chips/readers, publicly-located video surveillance cameras, Internet-enabled mobile phones, and the like, each raise threats to individual privacy. Without discounting the value of this approach, this paper aims to propose an alternative; and, as a result of recasting the threat to individual privacy from pervasive computing, to identify other, and deeper, moral goods that pervasive computing puts at risk that otherwise might remain concealed. In particular, I argue that pervasive computing threatens to compromise what I call existential autonomy: the right to decide for ourselves at least some of the existential conditions under which we form and develop our ways of life, including our relations to information technology. From this perspective, some moral goods at stake in protecting privacy in an environment of pervasive computing emerge that have less to do with furthering human well-being through the promotion of self-identity and subjectivity, than with stimulating curiosity, receptivity to difference, and, most broadly, openness to the world.

As the development of autonomous vehicles proceeds full-speed ahead, it is often said that this new, disruptive form of transportation will change everything. Such a claim has drawn both philosophical and public attention to what could be called ethical emergencies: imaginary situations ranging from life-or-death trolley-problem conundrums to large-scale cyber-attacks on mobility networks. This perspective puts other important, but less dramatic, ethical dilemmas connected with driverless vehicles at risk of being underexplored or simply ignored. The primary focus of the original essays collected together in this volume shifts to considering these issues, ones arising out of more everyday human-autonomous vehicle relations and encounters. Topics investigated range from how driverless vehicles ethically affect what it is to be a pedestrian to how they could inspire more opportunities for social justice, along with a consideration of the need for policy makers to look at the softer impacts of driverless cars. Overall, this volume contributes to defining a new area of exploration connected to the ethics of driverless vehicles, one that should appeal not only to philosophers of technology but to engineering designers, regulators, and urban planners as well. Contributors: Jason Borenstein, Jeremy Carp, Shane Epting, Sven Ove Hansson, Joseph Herkert, Ike Kamphof, Robert Kirkman, Diane Michelfelder, Keith Miller, Sven Nyholm, Robert Rosenberger, Patrick Schmidt, Tsjalling Swierstra, and Galit Wellner.

Building on the breakthrough text Philosophy and Engineering: An Emerging Agenda, this book offers 30 chapters covering conceptual and substantive developments in the philosophy of engineering, along with a series of critical reflections by engineering practitioners. The volume demonstrates how reflective engineering can contribute to a better understanding of engineering identity and explores how integrating engineering and philosophy could lead to innovation in engineering methods, design and education. The volume is divided into reflections on practice, principles and process, each of which challenges prevalent assumptions and commitments within engineering and philosophy. The volume explores the ontological and epistemological dimensions of engineering and exposes the falsity of the commonly held belief that the field is simply the application of science knowledge to problem solving. Above all, the perspectives collected here demonstrate the value of a constructive dialogue between engineering and philosophy and show how collaboration between the disciplines casts light on longstanding problems from both sides. The chapters in this volume are from a diverse and international body of authors, including philosophers and engineers, and represent a highly select group of papers originally presented in three different conferences. These are the 2008 Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering held at the Royal Academy of Engineering; the 2009 meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Technology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands; and the Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology, held in Golden, Colorado at the Colorado School of Mines.

Philosophical reflections on our ethical responsibilities toward urban wildlife populations have tended to be based on a “parallel planes” framework. This framework is insufficient when it comes to looking after the well-being of city-dwelling wild animals. A different starting-point in thinking about urban wildlife ethics, informed by phenomenology, can bring a number of possible obligations to the fore—for example, an ethics of attentiveness, flexibility, adjustment, and change; virtues associated with an ethic of care from attentiveness through generosity to empathy; and a practice of hospitality. These obligations are moral rather than political; their “ought” is generated from the perspective of an ethic of care.

Who benefits when philosophers and engineers get involved in academic conversations with one another? Such conversations are often one-way streets, with philosophers offering conceptual tools, insights, and modes of inquiry that serve as contributions toward developing the philosophy of engineering and influencing practices of reflective engineering and engineering education. However, philosophers also stand to benefit from closer conversational contact with engineers, as it can bring helpful challenges not only with regard to some of philosophy’s basic assumptions, but also with regard to its common classroom practices. In this paper I take a hard look at one of these practices: the teaching of critical thinking. Long a staple within the philosophy curriculum in the US, critical thinking has in recent years been taken by those in professional engineering communities to play an important role in the formation of future engineers. I suggest that the approach to critical thinking which would be most useful to engineers would be one that underscores the value of heuristics. Such an approach to teaching critical thinking within the context of philosophy, however, is not the norm; in fact, teaching materials associated with critical thinking tend to be deeply suspicious of heuristical reasoning. Philosophy can learn from engineering about the value of heuristical reasoning as a form of critical thinking; here is a case in point, I propose, where engineering knowledge can improve philosophical knowledge.

Some kinds of technological change not only trigger new ethical problems, but also give rise to questions about those very approaches to addressing ethical problems that have been relied upon in the past. Writing in the aftermath of World War II, Hans Jonas called for a new ``ethics of responsibility,'' based on the reasoning that modern technology dramatically divorces our moral condition from the assumptions under which standard ethical theories were first conceived. Can a similar claim be made about the technologies of cyberspace? Do online information technologies so alter our moral condition that standard ethical theories become ineffective in helping us address the moral problems they create? I approach this question from two angles. First, I look at the impact of online information technologies on our powers of causal efficacy. I then go on to consider their impact on self-identity. We have good reasons, I suggest, to be skeptical of any claim that there is a need for a new, cyberspace ethics to address the moral dilemmas arising from these technologies. I conclude by giving a brief sketch of why this suggestion does not imply there is nothing philosophically interesting about the ethical challenges associated with cyberspace.

This chapter appreciates the way focal things may counterbalance devices. It finds that Borgmann's evaluation of the device paradigm does not always bear out for individual devices. Simply because a technological object can be classified as a device does not necessarily mean that it will have the negative effects on engagement and human relationships that Borgmann's theory predicts; some devices actually foster these values, illustrating the chapter's points with a study done on women's use of telephones. “The machinery that clouds the story of a device does not appear to prevent that device from playing a role in relationship building.” If so, devices under some conditions may be more promising than Borgmann thinks; Michelfelder finds that devices can themselves support focal practices if they are used in a context of narrative and tradition.

This volume, the result of an ongoing bridge building effort among engineers and humanists, addresses a variety of philosophical, ethical, and policy issues emanating from engineering and technology. Interwoven through its chapters are two themes, often held in tension with one another: “Exploring Boundaries” and “Expanding Connections.” “Expanding Connections” highlights contributions that look to philosophy for insight into some of the challenges engineers face in working with policy makers, lay designers, and other members of the public. It also speaks to reflections included in this volume on the connections between fact and value, reason and emotion, engineering practice and the social good, and, of course, between engineering and philosophy. “Exploring Boundaries” highlights contributions that focus on some type of demarcation. Public policy sets a boundary between what is regulated from what is not, academic disciplines delimit themselves by their subjects and methods of inquiry, and professions approach problems with unique goals and by using concepts and language in particular ways that create potential obstacles to collaboration with other fields. These and other forms of boundary setting are also addressed in this volume. Contributors explore these two themes in a variety of specific contexts, including engineering epistemology, engineers’ social responsibilities, engineering and public policy-making, engineering innovation, and the affective dimensions of engineering work. The book also includes analyses of social and ethical issues with emerging technologies such as 3-D printing and its use in medical applications, as well as social robots. Initial versions of the invited papers included in this book were first presented at the 2014 meeting of the Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology, held at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. The volume furthers fPET’s intent of extending and developing the philosophy of engineering as an academic field, and encouraging conversation, promoting a sense of shared enterprise, and building community among philosophers and engineers across a diversity of cultural backgrounds and approaches to inquiry.