Toward an Object-Oriented Philosophy of Technology

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the contemporary “philosophy of technical artifacts” in the Dutch context to open up a discusion. It demonstrates how French philosophy of technology may enrich current debates on ontological and normative issues related to artifacts. In the French tradition, “thing,” “artifact” and “object” are not equivalent terms. Furthermore, French philosophers and anthropologists have paved the way for a “biological philosophy of technology.” They considered technology in a close relationship to biological life. Insofar as contemporary philosophers have to pay attention to puzzling bio-objects and unprecedented arrangements of technology and biology, such as GMO, clones, molecular bio-machines, biomarkers for precision medicine, big data, bio-repositories etc., the paper claims the relevance of both an object-oriented and a biological philosophy of technology for overcoming some limits of the “artifactual turn” in the philosophy of technology.