Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T20:05:02.624Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Bicentenary of Technology Assessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Tom Settle
Tom Settle*
Affiliation:
Philosophy Department, University of Guelph
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

My thesis in this paper is that because technology assessment has an irreducible moral component it challenges some rather common assumptions among scientists, moral philosophers, democratic theorists and philosophers of science. Quite apart from my sympathy both with technology assessment in general and with its moral component in particular, I think the challenge to established modes of thought is very wholesome. Philosophers of science would be failing in their ordinary jobs, let alone in their moral responsibilities, if, having noticed the social phenomenon of a resurgence of interest in technology assessment, they refrained from inspecting its repercussions upon the ontological, epistemological and axiological presuppositions of science, especially of political science and of economics.

It has sometimes been suggested that technology assessment is a child of the 1960’s, born in North America, weaned in 1972 with the enactment of the Technology Assessment Act by the congress of the U.S.A.

Type
Symposium: Technology Assessment
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1974 , 1974 , pp. 436 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arrow, K. J.: 1950, ‘A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare’, Journal of Political Economy 58, 328-46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arrow, K. J.: 1951, Social Choice and Individual Values, Yale University Press, New Haven.Google Scholar
Gibbons, M. and R., Voyer: 1974, A Technology Assessment System, Information Canada, Ottawa.Google Scholar
Marstrand, P. K. and K., Pavitt: 1974, ‘An Approach to Technology A Assessment’ MS.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, J.: 1942, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Allen and Unwin, London.Google Scholar
Settle, T. W.: 1971a, ‘The Relevance of Philosophy to Physics’, in Bunge, M. (ed.), Problems in the Foundations of Physics, Springer-Verlag, New York, pp. 145-162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Settle, T. W.: 1971b, ‘The Rationality of Science versus the Rationality of Magic’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 1, 173-194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Settle, T. W.: 1974, ‘Induction and Probability Unfused’, in Schilpp, P. A. (ed.), Philosophy of Karl R. Popper, Open Court, Illinois.Google Scholar
Settle, T. W.: 1975, In Search of a Third Way: Is a morally principled political economy possible? McClelland and Stewart, Toronto (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Settle, T. W.: I. C. Jarvie and J. Agassi, 1974, ‘Towards a Theory of Openness to Criticism’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 4, 83-90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, A.: 1776, The Wealth of Nations..Google Scholar
Tullock, G.: 1971, ‘Public Decisions as Public Goods’, Journal of Political Economy 79, 913-918.CrossRefGoogle Scholar