Philosophy and Design Pieter E. Vermaas • Peter Kroes Andrew Light • Steven A. Moore Philosophy and Design From Engineering to Architecture Pieter E. Vermaas Peter Kroes Delft University of Technology Delft University of Technology Delft Delft the Netherlands the Netherlands Andrew Light Steven A. Moore University of Washington University of Texas Seattle Austin USA USA ISBN 978-1-4020-6590-3 e-ISBN 978-1-4020-6591-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2007937486 © 2008 Springer Science + Business Media B.V. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written p ermission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 springer.com Contents List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Design in Engineering and Architecture: Towards an Integrated Philosophical Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Peter Kroes, Andrew Light, Steven A. Moore, and Pieter E. Vermaas Part I Engineering Design Design, Use, and the Physical and Intentional Aspects of Technical Artifacts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Maarten Franssen Designing is the Construction of Use Plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Wybo Houkes The Designer Fallacy and Technological Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Don Ihde Technological Design as an Evolutionary Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Philip Brey Deciding on Ethical Issues in Engineering Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Anke Van Gorp and Ibo Van de Poel Morality in Design: Design Ethics and the Morality of Technological Artifacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Peter-Paul Verbeek Thinking about Design: Critical Theory of Technology and the Design Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Patrick Feng and Andrew Feenberg v vi Contents Design Culture and Acceptable Risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Kiyotaka Naoe Alienability, Rivalry, and Exclusion Cost: Three Institutional Factors for Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Paul B. Thompson Part II Emerging Engineering Design Friends by Design: A Design Philosophy for Personal Robotics Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 John P. Sullins Beyond Engineering: Software Design as Bridge over the Culture/Technology Dichotomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Bernhard Rieder and Mirko Tobias Schäfer Technology Naturalized: A Challenge to Design for the Human Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Alfred Nordmann Re-Designing Humankind: The Rise of Cyborgs, a Desirable Goal? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Daniela Cerqui and Kevin Warwick Designing People: A Post-Human Future? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Inmaculada de Melo-Martín Redesigning Man? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 C. T. A. Schmidt Design: Structure, Process, and Function: A Systems Methodology Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 Kristo Miettinen Co-Designing Social Systems by Designing Technical Artifacts: A Conceptual Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Ulrich Krohs Beyond Inevitability: Emphasizing the Role of Intention and Ethical Responsibility in Engineering Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Kathryn A. Neeley and Heinz C. Luegenbiehl Design and Responsibility: The Interdependence of Natural, Artifactual, and Human Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 S. D. Noam Cook Contents vii Part III Architectural Design Form and Process in the Transformation of the Architect’s Role in Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 Howard Davis Expert Culture, Representation, and Public Choice: Architectural Renderings as the Editing of Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Steven A. Moore and Rebecca Webber Diverse Designing: Sorting Out Function and Intention in Artifacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 Ted Cavanagh Design Criteria in Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 Joseph C. Pitt Cities, Aesthetics, and Human Community: Some Thoughts on the Limits of Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 J. Craig Hanks Nature, Aesthetic Values, and Urban Design: Building the Natural City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 Glenn Parsons Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 List of Contributors Philip Brey is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Twente and director of its Centre for Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Science. He is also a member of the board of the Society for Philosophy and Technology and the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology. His research focuses on philosophy of technology, and particularly on the philosophy and ethics of information technology. Ted Cavanagh is an architect with a doctorate in the history of technology and is chair of the School of Architecture at Clemson University, South Carolina. His investigations in the culture of technological innovation focus on historical and contemporary wood construction. His work is both written and built. Daniela Cerqui is a sociocultural anthropologist interested in the relationship between technology and society (and, more fundamentally, humankind). She teaches at the Institute of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) where she is involved in teaching and research on the new information technologies, and on the ‘information society’ they are supposed to create. She recently spent two years conducting research in the Department of Cybernetics of the University of Reading. Noam Cook is a professor of philosophy at San Jose State University. His publica- tions, research and consulting interests focus on social and technological change, the relationship between knowledge and practice, and applied values issues. He was for ten years a consulting researcher at Xerox PARC. Since 1997 he has been a member of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. (B.A., M.A., San Francisco State University, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Howard Davis is Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon and the author of The Culture of Building, concerning the social frameworks of the pro- cesses of architectural design and construction. His current research deals with the typology of urban mixed use buildings, and their role in a diverse economy. Inmaculada de Melo-Martín, Ph.D. Philosophy, M.S. Biology, is a Research Ethicist in the Division of Medical Ethics, Weill Cornell Medical College. She is the author of Making Babies: Biomedical Technologies, Reproductive Ethics, and ix x List of Contributors Public Policy (Kluwer, 1998), and Taking Biology Seriously: What Biology Can and Cannot Tell Us about Moral and Public Policy Issues (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). Her current work focuses on ethical issues related to genetic research. Andrew Feenberg is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, where he directs the Applied Communication and Technology Lab. He has authored or edited over 10 books, including Critical Theory of Technology (Oxford University Press, 1991), Alternative Modernity (University of California Press, 1995), Questioning Technology (Routledge, 1999), and Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History (Routledge 2005). Patrick Feng is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Communication and Culture at The University of Calgary. His research focuses on the social implica- tions of new technologies and the politics of international standards-setting. He has studied the design and use of scientific and technical standards in areas such as information technology, health, and food safety. Maarten Franssen is associate professor at the Section of Philosophy of Delft University of Technology. He has published on the normativity of functions, the modeling of socio-technical systems and decision methods in engineering design. His broad research interests include theories of rationality and action and their application in the design and implementation of technology, and conceptual and foundational issues in technology related to the notions of system and function. Craig Hanks is Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Stevens Institute of Technology for 2006–2007 while on leave from Texas State University. A recipient of six distinguished teaching awards, his publications include work on ethical issues in architecture, biotechnology ethics, philosophy of biology, philoso- phy of technology, philosophy of art, and political philosophy. His new book Technological Musings: Reflections on Technology and Value, and a new edited collection Technology and Values will both be published in 2007. Wybo Houkes is assistant professor at the Subdepartment of History, Philosophy and Technology Studies of Eindhoven University of Technology. He participated in the NWO research program The Dual Nature of Technical Artifacts and pub- lished on function theory and the role of intentions in artifact use and design. His current research interests include the nature of technological knowledge, the ontol- ogy of artifacts and the application of evolutionary theory to technical artifacts. Don Ihde is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Technoscience Research Group at Stony Brook University in New York, USA. He is the author of twenty authored and edited books, most recently, Expanding Hermeneutics: Visualism in Science (1998); Bodies in Technology (2003); and with Evan Selinger, Chasing Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality (2003). His current work includes research on imaging technologies and the application of advanced imaging and analytic technologies to human science disciplines. List of Contributors xi Peter Kroes initiated and helped develop at Delft University of Technology an analytically orientated philosophy of technology that focuses on engineering prac- tices. His main interests are the nature of technical artifacts and socio-technical systems, and theories of functional and artifact kinds. Ulrich Krohs is Privatdozent of philosophy at the University of Hamburg and held a research fellowship at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Altenberg, Austria. His publications include work on the structure of biological theories and on the concepts of function and design. Current research top- ics are the justification of function ascriptions in biology, technology and the social sciences, and the relation between experiment, theory, and models of different kind. Andrew Light is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Affairs at the University of Washington. He is co-author, with John O’Neill and Alan Holland, of Environmental Values (Routledge, 2007) and co-editor of sixteen books including The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (Columbia, 2005) Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice (MIT, 2003), and Technology and the Good Life? (Chicago, 2000). He is currently working on a book on ethics and restoration ecology. Heinz C. Luegenbiehl is Professor of Philosophy and Technology Studies at Rose- Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana. He has published extensively on engi- neering ethics and liberal education in engineering education. His current research interests are in the areas of cross-cultural engineering ethics, especially in relation to Asian countries, and on developments toward an international code of engineer- ing ethics. Kristo Miettinen is a Senior Technical Fellow at ITT Industries Space Systems Division in Rochester, New York. His current technical work in image chain analy- sis focuses on automated image restoration and enhancement, image distortion parameter estimation, and modeling of image utility and interpretability as a func- tion of engineering parameters. Steven Moore is the Bartlett Cocke Professor of Architecture and Planning at the University of Texas at Austin where he is Director of the graduate program in Sustainable Design and Co-director of the University of Texas Center for Sustainable Development. Moore is the author of many articles and four books on sustainable archi- tecture and urbanism. Kiyotaka Naoe is Associate Professor at the Philosophy Department of Tohoku University, Japan. His interests include contemporary continental philosophy and philosophy of science and technology. His recent research is about the phenomeno- logical and ethical aspects of technological actions, especially the relationship between technology and the body. Kathryn A. Neeley is Associate Professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Virginia. She is author of Mary Sommerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind, published by Cambridge, and co-editor, with David Ollis and Heinz Luegenbiehl, of Liberal Education for