Abstract
Experimental philosophy is a relatively recent discipline that employs experimental methods to investigate the intuitions, concepts, and assumptions behind traditional philosophical arguments, problems, and theories. While experimental philosophy initially served to interrogate the role that intuitions play in philosophy, it has since branched out to bring empirical methods to bear on problems within a variety of traditional areas of philosophy—including metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. To date, no connection has been made between developments in experimental philosophy and philosophy of technology. In this paper, I develop and defend a research program for an experimental philosophy of technology.
Highlights
Technology is one of the most distinctive and pervasive features of contemporary life
Emerging Science and Technology (NEST) for Technology Assessment (Swierstra et al, 2009) is a promising way of prompting moral intuitions and judgments on a wide range of relevant issues, which appears closely aligned with the goals of a descriptive experimental philosophy of technology program that uses vignettes and moral dilemmas to elicit intuitions
The field of experimental philosophy has, through its engagement with experimental methods, become an important means of obtaining knowledge about the intuitions, concepts, and assumptions that lie behind philosophical arguments, problems, and theories across a wide variety of philosophical disciplines
Summary
Technology is one of the most distinctive and pervasive features of contemporary life. While research in experimental ethics has witnessed a proliferation of empirically informed normative work on a wide range of subjects (e.g., on the nature of character, well-being, and the good life), the methodologies and findings from these and related studies have rarely been extended to similar issues in ethics of technology. This is perhaps ironic, because new technologies have afforded researchers an increasingly rich arsenal of experimental research methods. Technology, and encourage researchers from all fields with an interest in deep questions about technology to embrace techxphi in a collaborative effort
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