Empirical Technoscience Studies in a Comtean World: Too Much Concreteness? [Book Review]

Philosophy and Technology 25 (2):153-177 (2012)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Abstract   No one doubts the radically transformative power of contemporary technologies and technoscientific practices over the material dimensions of our experience. Yet with the coming of all the exciting changes and the promise of ever better material conditions, what kinds of lives are we implicitly being encouraged to live? One would think that current philosophical studies of technology would make this a central question, and indeed, a few have done so. But many do not. Following the lead of thinkers who have made the so-called “empirical turn,” many demur, usually with some remarks about the question being too abstract and general—too likely to suck us into utopian or dystopian speculations—when what is called for are truly informative and “concrete” studies of what it is like to be with actual technologies. My paper considers the good life question—and the philosophical price one pays for not asking it—in light of Auguste Comte’s theory of the three stages of intellectual development. Comte’s depiction of the third, positive scientific stage is much less dated than one might assume. In fact, it is useful to think of our own era as arriving with a Comtean story attached, that is, a story of life in the “developed” world becoming ever better thanks to modern science and technology. Because this story now seems less deserving of the unqualified optimism Comte had about it, I argue that thinking of our own experience as permeated by Comte’s conception of third-stage life gives us a fresh way to consider our misgivings about this default position without either lapsing into utopian or dystopian speculation, or confining one’s focus to purely postphenomenological or pragmatic studies of technoscientific life as it now “appears.” Content Type Journal Article Category Research Article Pages 1-25 DOI 10.1007/s13347-011-0047-2 Authors Robert C. Scharff, Department of Philosophy, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824-3574, USA Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Degenerate epistemology.Luciano Floridi - 2012 - Philosophy and Technology 25 (1):1-3.
Information Warfare: A Response to Taddeo.Tim Stevens - 2013 - Philosophy and Technology 26 (2):221-225.
Should Probabilistic Design Replace Safety Factors?Neelke Doorn & Sven Ove Hansson - 2011 - Philosophy and Technology 24 (2):151-168.
Human Nature: The Very Idea.Tim Lewens - 2012 - Philosophy and Technology 25 (4):459-474.
Ghosts in the Machine: Do the Dead Live on in Facebook?Patrick Stokes - 2012 - Philosophy and Technology 25 (3):363-379.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-09-26

Downloads
31 (#442,895)

6 months
6 (#201,673)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

References found in this work

Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to the Actor-Network Theory.Bruno Latour - 2005 - Oxford, England and New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.
We have never been modern.Bruno Latour - 1993 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

View all 29 references / Add more references