Hans Poser

This co-edited volume compares Chinese and Western experiences of engineering, technology, and development. In doing so, it builds a bridge between the East and West and advances a dialogue in the philosophy of engineering. Divided into three parts, the book starts with studies on epistemological and ontological issues, with a special focus on engineering design, creativity, management, feasibility, and sustainability. Part II considers relationships between the history and philosophy of engineering, and includes a general argument for the necessity of dialogue between history and philosophy. It continues with a general introduction to traditional Chinese attitudes toward engineering and technology, and philosophical case studies of the Chinese steel industry, railroads, and cybernetics in the Soviet Union. Part III focuses on engineering, ethics, and society, with chapters on engineering education and practice in China and the West. The book’s analyses of the interactions of science, engineering, ethics, politics, and policy in different societal contexts are of special interest. The volume as a whole marks a new stage in the emergence of the philosophy of engineering as a new regionalization of philosophy. This carefully edited interdisciplinary volume grew out of an international conference on the philosophy of engineering hosted by the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. It includes 30 contributions by leading philosophers, social scientists, and engineers from Australia, China, Europe, and the United States.

The mind-body problem is a central problem of modern philosophy. Leibniz’s Monadology as a model of a solution is picked up again and again even today. In order to characterize three of these completely different new monadologies of today, the basic difficulty of the mind-body-problem is outlined as a background, followed by a short sketch of the Leibnitian solution. - The first new monadology, here, is the metaphysical solution of U. Meixner, who chooses consciousness as a fundament, seeing a monad as a stream of consciousness. This is contrasted with a second new monadology, namely N. Rescher’s process-theoretical approach, which takes the monad not as a substance, but as a process. The third new monadology is the quantum monadology of T. Nakagomi, where the monad is embedded in a quantum ontological concept that elaborates a reconciliation of the macroscopic, material world with a quantum theoretical world of consciousness, both sides seen as an interpretation. Finally there are some reflections on a merger of elements of these three concepts of monadology for an approach of today.

Technik bestimmt auf die mannigfaltigste Weise unser Leben und Zusammenleben. Obgleich sie von Platon und Aristoteles bis in das zwanzigste Jahrhundert in Einzelaspekten betrachtet worden ist, wurde sie erst in den letzten Jahrzehnten zu einem eigenständigen Gegenstand der Philosophie. Dennoch werden ihre philosophischen Probleme immer noch eher beiläufig behandelt. So geht es um die Klärung ganz zentraler und herausfordernder Aufgaben – von der menschlichen Schöpferkraft über eine Klärung, was ein technisches Artefakt ist, zum technischen Wissen, in all diesen Elementen verknüpft mit dem Verantwortungsproblem. Das Ziel ist eine Darstellung dieser faszinierenden philosophischen Fragen vor dem Hintergrund der Tradition.

Rudolf Carnap había publicado en el año 1928 su obra Pseudoproblemas en la filosofía, donde intentaba mostrar que la lucha entre idealismo y realismo carecía de sentido, al no ser posible de ninguna manera demostrar o refutar una de las dos posiciones. Poco después, en los años cincuenta del pasado siglo XX Ludwig Wittgenstein tuvo una gran repercusión al proponer como “solución” la idea de que los problemas de este tipo descansan sobre un hechizo de la mente, el cual se origina por una mezcolanza de diferentes juegos lingüísticos –descansando el uno sobre objetos físicos, el otro sobre sensaciones y estados anímicos.

Modal concepts as possibility, necessity, contingency and reality belong to the most important means of reflection. They constitute philosophical systems - but they are not used in a systematic way to characterize technology. The central ontological problem consists in the fact that technology is based on new ideas, which at the beginning are a mere possibility, because the intended artifacts and processes never existed up to that moment. Even the blueprint expresses a possibility. But these possibilities must be realizable, since technological artifacts or processes have to work properly in the world following physical andcausal necessity. Moreover, boundary conditions, sometimes seen as feasibility (a very special kind of conditioned possibility), have to take into account conditions of the real world (as material, energy, local conditions), cognitive conditions (theoretical knowledge, know how – i.e. dispositions, which are possibilities, too), social and cultural conditions (norm, values i.e. deontic possibilities). They all constitute the realm of technological possibility. Within this region the development of technology takes place. But at the same time they have influenced our thinking and our culture from the very beginning.