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Towards a Third ‘Practice Turn’: An Inclusive and Empirically Informed Perspective on Risk

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Philosophy of Technology after the Empirical Turn

Part of the book series: Philosophy of Engineering and Technology ((POET,volume 23))

Abstract

In this chapter we identify three practice turns in the social and philosophical study of technology that we also relate to risk analysis. The first practice turn singled out technology as a topic meriting serious investigation as a social phenomenon, the second turn steered the field towards the consideration of philosophical problems directly relating to what technology is and what engineers do. The third practice turn explicitly aims at changing the field’s practice by close collaboration with the engineers. We argue that given the entanglement of evaluative and descriptive aspects of risk, it is important to develop approaches geared at this third turn, which is only now starting to take place. We propose that phronesis can play an important role in making context-sensitive assessments of evaluative aspects of risks, and that it can be assisted by emotions and art, as sources of moral reflection.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    While these are often referred to as ‘empirical turns’ in technology studies, we prefer the term ‘practice turn’, which brings us into line with other reflective disciplines such as sociology or philosophy of science.

  2. 2.

    Cf. McDowell (1981) and Williams (2006). Though the distinction between thin normative concepts and thick ones may not be a sharp one, it is nonetheless conceptually useful (e.g. Kirchin 2013).

  3. 3.

    Bayesian approaches can be seen as reasoning along these lines; however, they also face the problem that they cannot stop the regress by formal arguments alone (cf. Frisch 2015).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Peter Kroes and Maarten Franssen for their extremely helpful comments on earlier drafts on this chapter, and Veronica Alfano for proofreading and editing our text.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Rafaela Hillerbrand

  2. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Sabine Roeser

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  1. Rafaela Hillerbrand
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Correspondence to Rafaela Hillerbrand .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept of Philosophy, Delft Univ of Technology, Delft, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands

    Maarten Franssen

  2. Department of Philosophy, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Pieter E. Vermaas

  3. Dept of Philosophy, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Peter Kroes

  4. Department of Philosophy and Ethics, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Noord-Brabant, The Netherlands

    Anthonie W.M. Meijers

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Hillerbrand, R., Roeser, S. (2016). Towards a Third ‘Practice Turn’: An Inclusive and Empirically Informed Perspective on Risk. In: Franssen, M., Vermaas, P., Kroes, P., Meijers, A. (eds) Philosophy of Technology after the Empirical Turn. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33717-3_9

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