期刊名称:Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology
印刷版ISSN:1091-8264
出版年度:2006
卷号:10
期号:1
出版社:Digital Library and Archives,Virginia Tech
摘要:This paper defends the claim that there are — at least — two kinds of
normativity in technological practice. The first concerns what engineers ought to
do and the second concerns normative statements about artifacts. The claim is
controversial, since the standard approach to normativity, namely normative
realism, actually denies artifacts any kind of normativity; according to the
normative realist, normativity applies exclusively to human agents. In other
words, normative realists hold that only “human agent normativity” is a genuine
form of normativity.
I will argue that normative realism is mistaken on this point. I will mainly draw
on material of Daniel Dennett and Philip Pettit to show that it makes sense to talk
about artifactual normativity. We claim that this approach can also make sense
of human agent normativity — or more specifically “engineer normativity”.
Moreover, it avoids some of the problems formulated by opponents of normative
realism.
Thus I will develop a strategy which: (i) makes sense of artifactual normativity;
and (ii) makes sense of “human agent normativity”, specifically “engineer
normativity”.