INSTITUTO TECNOLÓGICO Y DE ESTUDIOS SUPERIORES DE MONTERREY

CAMPUS CIUDAD DE MÉXICO

H-95-030. Technology and Philosophy

Proyecto DHCS – DIA

Objetivo: Incorporar una grupo de materias, de índole humanista al curriculum de las carreras de la División de Ingeniería y Arquitectura

2001

Objectives

Technology, as the application of scientific knowledge to various practical purposes in the world, is essentially a means to an end. Its value, consequently, resides in the value of the ends it serves. Clarity about the ends which technology is intended to promote is essential therefore. But technology does not just serve the ends which it is designed to serve; it also has effects on the lives of people which are not intentially aimed at, but which may be equally significant. 

How do we decide on the proper ends of technology and on the true costs of its side effects? Is everything that is technically possible desirable, a question of increasing importance in genetic engineering for instance? Does modern information technology enhance or threaten individual liberty and the democratic process? Are there unacceptable environmental consequences to useful technological innovation? 

The objectives of this course are to give a grounding in those areas of philosophy most relevant to the problems raised by technology and technological development and to allow students to study the application of philosophy to specific aspects of philosophy.

Themes

Philosophy of Technology

The Protest against Progress
Rationality and Dystopia
Radical Critique of Technological Society
The Ontological Critique of Technology

Postmodern Pragmatics
Postmodern Technology
Social Memory

Social Philosophy and Technology

Dialectics of Enlightenment
The Technocracy Thesis
From the System to the Organization
Delegation and Consensus Formation
The Technocratic Technical Code
Action and Consensus Formation
Underdetermination and Operational Autonomy

Aesthetics and Technology

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Aesthetic Implications of Digital technology

Technology, Environment and Development Ethics

Natural Resource Management

Ideas of 'Environment'

Appropriate Technology

Technology in Development

Population Policy

Philosophical Problems of the Internet

The implications of electronic technology in the information media and the arts

Morality and the Media

The Social Control of Information Technology

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence. 

Ethics and Biotechnology

Cyborg Medicine
Caring and Curing
The Revolt Against Ethical Regulation
Participant Interests
The Sociotechnical Ethics of Medical Experimentation
Science and Ethics

Course Text

Andrew Feenberg

Alternative Modernity: The Technical Turn in Philosophy and Social Theory,  Indiana University Press, 1995.

Selected Bibiliography

Martin Heidegger

The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt, NewYork, Harper & Row, 1977.

Contains:
"The Question Concerning Technology";
"The Turning";
"The Word of Nietzsche: 'God Is Dead'";
"The Age of the World Picture";
"Science and Reflection".

Paul Virilio

Open Sky, Verso, 1997

Hubert Dreyfus

What Computers Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason, Harper and Row (1972).

Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuitive Expertise in the Era of the Computer, FreePress (1986).

Daniel Dennett

"Artificial Life as Philosophy", Artificial Life, vol 1, no. 1, 1994

Jaques Ellul

The Technological Society

Ulrich Beck

Ecological Enlightenment (1995)

Walter Benjamin

Illuminations, trans. by H. Zohn, ed. with intro. by Hannah Arendt, NY: Schocken, 1969.

Andrew Feenberg

Questioning Technology, Routledge, 1999.

Supplementary Bibliography

D. Macauley, ed., Minding Nature: The Philosophers of Ecology, Guilford Publications, 1996

E. Higgs, D.Strong, and A. Light, eds., Technology and the Good Life. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2000

Andrew Feenberg, "Marcuse or Habermas: Two Critiques of Technology," Inquiry, 39, 1996, pp. 45-70.

Donna Haraway, The Promises of Monsters: "A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others",
Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, Paula A. Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies (New York; Routledge, 1992) , pp. 295-337.