Stefan Koller

This article takes stock of where philosophy of technology is at, and where it has been since the so-called ‘empirical turn’ announced around the millennial turn. The article both discusses recent advances and suggests concrete ways of making progress in specific topics, especially regarding the philosophical study of technical artefacts. The article proposes to pursue philosophy of technology under three headings: the nature of artefacts, the concept of design, and the notion of use. The paper illustrates two specific ways in which philosophical discussion of such notions can and will make progress: one, by bringing a much greater degree of systematicity to answers that philosophers give to individual questions thrown up by these three notions, and two, by drawing in to a greater degree philosophical expertise acquired and developed in current foundational analytic philosophy, above all metaphysics and the philosophy of language. The paper’s two goals are connected: only by enlisting ‘foundational’ philosophy can we bring a degree of systematicity to contemporary analytic philosophy of technology, and its future.