Abstract
It is difficult to explain the sense in which a theory of technology constitutes a theory of knowledge or inquiry — the sense in which it is not merely a theory of contingent interests or objectives that an already cognitively competent society applies its powers to. In a large sense, ‘technology’ signifies the conditions of existence (the ‘existential’ conditions) under which human beings minimally function as cognitively competent. In this regard, a theory of technology collects: (1) the empirically specifiable skills humans exhibit in manipulating and altering actual things relative to the tacit conditions of survival as well as to the explicit testing of particular claims; (2) the nesting of these first-order skills within second-order reflections about the matching of cognitive powers and cognized world congruent with man’s empirical achievements; and (3) the nesting of that nesting in further reflections on what kind of existent being man (generic sense) must be in order to accomplish what we take to be accomplished in (1) and (2). A theory of technology seeks to penetrate to an understanding of what in the very nature of man: (a) makes it possible for him to achieve a science vis-à-vis the things of the world, and (b) also accounts for that capacity’s being effective within whatever preformative conditions we suppose it to function. The theory of technology is the theory of how man’s distinctive mode of existence both enables and constrains his effective science. To address the question need not be to pretend to any privileged or hierarchically ordered forms of cognitive access to information about any of the issues (1–3).
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Notes
Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), p. 44.
Roderick M. Chisholm, ‘Events and Propositions,’ Nous, 4 (1970);
Roderick M. Chisholm, ‘State of Affairs Again,’ Nous, 5 (1971). These are cited by Plantinga.
Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), pp. 44–45.
Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), p. 45.
Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), pp. 46–48.
Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), p. 45.
Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), p. 46–47.
Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), p. 137; see also Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), chapter 2. See, further, Joseph Margolis, Knowledge and Existence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), chapter 4.
The most fashionable survey of the current tendency to reject cognitive transparency may be found in Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
W. V. Quine, Methods of Logic (New York: Holt, 1950), p. 200
see also W. V. Quine, ‘Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking,’ Theories and Things (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).
W. V. Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960), p. 27.
W. V. Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960), p. 27. § 15.
W. V. Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960), p. 27. § 56. (There is no question, it should be added, that the thesis needs some adjustment in terms of Quine’s actual statements, because Quine’s formulation may well be incoherent as it stands. But it does not seem to be critical to the possibility at stake.) See, further, Joseph Margolis, ‘The Locus of Coherence,’ Linguistics and Philosophy, 1 (1984).
Nelson Goodman, Of Mind and Other Matters (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), chapter 2.
Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), p. 2.
Of Mind and Other Matters, pp. 7, 13.
Of Mind and Other Matters, pp. 125, 127.
Of Mind and Other Matters, pp. 29, 33, 38. In his brief review of the book, Quine appears to have found this line of thinking either incoherent or hopelessly extravagant See also Hilary Putnam, ‘Reflections on Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking,’ Journal of Philosophy, 76 (1979);
Israel Scheffler, ‘The Wonderful Worlds of Goodman,’ Synthese, 45 (1980);
C. G. Hempel, ‘Comments on Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking,’ Synthese, 45 (1980).
C. G. Hempel, ‘Comments on Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking,’ Synthese , 45 (1980), p.38.
For an alternative to Plantinga’s view of possible worlds, see for instance David Lewis, ‘fCounterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic,’ Journal of Philosophy, 65 (1968); ‘Anselm and Actuality,’ Nous, 4 (1970).
Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (2d ed.; Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), pp. 105–106.
W. V. Quine, The Roots of Reference (La Salle: Open Court, 1973), p. 123.
See Joseph Margolis, ‘Pragmatism without Foundations,’ American Philosophical Quarterly, 21 (1984); this has been incorporated in Pragmatism without Foundations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).
The term ‘pragmatism’ is not inapt as applied to Goodman’s position, in spite of the fact that Goodman had, earlier on, indicated his at least partial opposition to pragmatism. For Goodman had, in developing his theory of projectibility with regard to both undetermined cases and truth, maintained that, ‘Since a hypothesis is true only if true for all its cases, it is true only if true for all its future and all its undetermined cases; but equally, it is true only if true for all its past and all its determined cases,’ Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, p. 91, note 3; this must be read in the context of pp. 89–99. But now, conceding ‘conflicting truths,’ it is no longer clear that the required entrenchment of genuine projectibles can be measured or measured with respect to ‘ultimate acceptability.’
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans, from 7th German ed. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), p. 50. What is offered here, thus far, is of course an extremely abbreviated summary of a sprawling theme. But it is, perhaps not unfairly, offered as the nerve of the Introduction.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans, from 7th German ed. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), p. 34.
Martin Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art,’ in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).
Scientific Revolutions (2d ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970)
Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les choses, translated as The Order of Things (New York: Random House, 1970).
Being and Time, p. 95.
Being and Time, pp. 96–97.
Being and Time, p. 91.
Being and Time, pp. 100, 104.
John Dewey, Experience and Nature (2d ed.; New York: Dover, 1958), pp. 122–123.
John Dewey, Experience and Nature (2d ed.; New York: Dover, 1958), p. 162.
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Margolis, J. (1989). Pragmatism, Praxis, and the Technological. In: Durbin, P.T. (eds) Philosophy of Technology. Philosophy and Technology, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2303-4_7
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