The Policy Turn in the Philosophy of Technology

Abstract

The empirical turn has been framed far too much in terms of what philosophers say and not to whom they speak. I apply the logic of the empirical turn to the very philosophers who carry its banner. I argue that once we look at them through their own lens, we discover that the empirical turn is not such a revolutionary thing after all. It is a turn within the disciplinary model of knowledge production. In other words, its own material culture and political economy look just the same as so-called classical philosophy of technology. In contrast, I sketch out what a policy turn looks like, which is a turn toward a new model of philosophical research, one that begins with real-world problems as they are debated in public and cashes out its value in real-time with a variety of stakeholders. I conclude by sketching some of the main ramifications of taking a policy turn in the philosophy of technology.