Plea for the Political Philosophy of Engineering and Technology – Carl Mitcham

Abstract:

My thesis is that discussion of ethical and other issues in the philosophy of technology needs to be complemented with political philosophy. Development of the thesis takes place in three parts. Part one notes the absence of political philosophy in the first, classic European period in the philosophy of technology. Part two reviews developments in the philosophy of technology from 1970s to the 2020s, and how early efforts to think political philosophy of technology were progressively marginalized in favor of ethical, ontological, and epistemological questions. Part three looks at some nascent political philosophical discourse in current philosophy of technology that calls attention to the failure in ethics of technology to address “the problem of many hands” as well as “cultural lag” gaps between technological power, regulation, and political governance.

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