A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

1. Introduction

Technological artifacts are clear-cut manifestations of technology. Our world is full of material objects made by engineers for practical uses, and through these objects technology affects society and our daily lives. The philosophical characterization of technological artifacts is less clear-cut. Carl Mitcham (1994) singles out technological objects as a separate field of philosophical analysis, beside manifestations of technology as activity, as knowledge and as volition. Yet analyzing technological artifacts will immediately invoke Mitcham’s other fields, since artifacts are made and used, which are activities, and since the demarcation of technological artifacts from artisan products and works of art is related to the types of knowledge and the aims involved in these activities. Moreover, the everyday intuition that technological artifacts are objects made by human agents is in philosophy often loosened to definitions of technological artifacts as objects that are intentionally or less intentionally selected to be used, raising issues about their demarcation from natural objects. We start by discussing those definitions and then broaden our scope to further philosophical analyses of technological artifacts and their social and cultural roles.