Philosophy

Note: This entry is part of a series where I am blogging chapter-by-chapter through the book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ( TCCL) by Albert Borgmann. If you’re new, you may want to start at the Overview. This chapter is the first of four on the relationship of technology to social and political issues. Borgmann is trying to argue that we should conceive of and judge society and politics in the light of technology, and that it is in social life or politics that the device paradigm must finally be discussed, since these areas of life are those that receive the most attention. Unfortunately, the fundamental modus operandi of technology is not yet recognized in this sphere. ...

Note: This entry is part of a series where I am blogging chapter-by-chapter through the book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ( TCCL) by Albert Borgmann. If you’re new, you may want to start at the Overview. One of the foundational aims of Borgmann’s whole book is the attempt to actually give an explanation for technology. Hence we discussed what counts as an explanation in the scientific realm in earlier chapters. In this middle section of the book, Borgmann is concerned to substantiate the notion of the Device Paradigm, not just as a feature of technology but as a way of explaining technology and everything that goes along with it. ...

Note: This entry is part of a series where I am blogging chapter-by-chapter through the book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ( TCCL) by Albert Borgmann. If you’re new, you may want to start at the Overview. The point of this chapter, according to Borgmann, is to provide more rigor around what has thus far been an intuitive account of the device paradigm. He begins with the question of whether there are any competing analyses of it on offer. In fact, critiques of what might be considered technology have been around since the time of, say, the introduction of the steam engine. For critics of this period, the symbol of technology was the “machine” they saw altering the landscape around them. The steam engine was ambivalent: it was powerful and convenient, but also “ravenous”, consuming land, resources, and quiet. Writers of this persuasion, Borgmann claims, framed their arguments in terms of a means/end imbalance, where the danger was that our technological means (the machines) might unwittingly become our ends. (The solution would then be to correct this balance.) ...

Note: This entry is part of a series where I am blogging chapter-by-chapter through the book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ( TCCL) by Albert Borgmann. If you’re new, you may want to start at the Overview. In this chapter, Borgmann explores what he calls the Foreground of technology. This is essentially the world of the use (i.e., consumption) of technological devices, rather than the world of their construction or operation. As we are all aware, technology results in a large set of commodities, and the “Foreground” is the world of their consumption. The Foreground is invoked, Borgmann says, when conversation turns to the topics of “leisure, consumption, or the standard of living” (48). ...

Note: This entry is part of a series where I am blogging chapter-by-chapter through the book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ( TCCL) by Albert Borgmann. If you’re new, you may want to start at the Overview. At this point in our exploration of the relationship between modern science and technology, what can we say with confidence? First, that modern science shows us that the world exists in a large matrix of possible states of affairs. The space of these possibilities is defined by the world’s initial conditions: given some physical state of affairs in the past, our world is one of its possible subsequent states. Technology can then be seen to “[reflect] a determination to act transformatively on these possibilities” (27). In other words, science tells us what’s physically possible and through technology we decide to act on them in order to change the world. In these roles, both science and technology share a problem: there is no principled way, using only their own resources, to decide what to explain or what to transform. ...

Note: This entry is part of a series where I am blogging chapter-by-chapter through the book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ( TCCL) by Albert Borgmann. If you’re new, you may want to start at the Overview. In this chapter we examine how far the validity of scientific explanation (the style of explanation called deductive-nomological) extends. Can there be any objections to the claim that scientific explanation is the proper mode of explanation for every question? Borgmann discusses such objections to both the necessity and sufficiency of scientific explanation. ...

Note: This entry is part of a series where I am blogging chapter-by-chapter through the book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ( TCCL) by Albert Borgmann. If you’re new, you may want to start at the Overview. Chapter 5 of TCCL is concerned with the validity of scientific explanation. Borgmann contrasts this with the scope of scientific explanation, which will be discussed in the next chapter. The example which runs throughout the chapter is the process of grape juice turning into wine. It’s a great example for discussing scientific explanation since it exemplifies the power of it (how it unlocks an understanding of the chemical and microbiological processes underlying fermentation) in the context of something paradigmatically cultural or taste-oriented. ...

Note: This entry is part of a series where I am blogging chapter-by-chapter through the book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ( TCCL) by Albert Borgmann. If you’re new, you may want to start at the Overview. In this chapter we begin to look at the relationship of science and technology, by initiating an inquiry into the nature of science. Borgmann spends much of this brief chapter painting a rough picture of what people say and think about science. This outline of popular sentiment is important since much of Borgmann’s work is devoted to critically examining common worldviews: “The entire exercise will of course be pointless if no attempt is made to expose today’s normal world citizenship to criticism, to expose its inconsistencies and liabilities, and strengthen its proudest aspirations” (17). ...

Note: This entry is part of a series where I am blogging chapter-by-chapter through the book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ( TCCL) by Albert Borgmann. If you’re new, you may want to start at the Overview. In this chapter, Borgmann is concerned to shore up the validity of the distinction between the substantive, instrumental, and pluralist views of technology. These distinctions carve up the possible theoretical space in a certain way, and Borgmann concedes that any such classification is going to suppress some aspects of reality and highlight others. We therefore need to be mindful of this in selecting a space within which to develop a theory of technology, and it’s open to anyone to ask whether Borgmann’s categorization is the best, or even a good, one. ...

Note: This entry is part of a series where I am blogging chapter-by-chapter through the book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ( TCCL) by Albert Borgmann. If you’re new, you may want to start at the Overview. Chapter 2 of TCCL consists of an overview of several existing theories of technology that Borgmann wants to use as partners in dialogue, in the process of constructing his own theory. The pre-theoretic, simplistic view of technology is pragmatic: science and technology have proven their validity and usefulness through the effective solutions they boast to real problems. Since it is obvious that technology has indeed solved such problems, any more nuanced theory will have to be presented with the utmost precision and care. (Here I think Borgmann is justifying the level of detail he will be going into in this section of the book). ...