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This book offers a fusion of philosophy and technology, delineating the normative landscape that informs today´s technologies and tomorrow´s inventions. It examines what is deemed to be the internal norms that govern the ever-expanding technical universe.

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This book is a distinctive fusion of philosophy and technology, delineating the normative landscape that informs today´s technologies and tomorrow´s inventions. The authors examine what we deem to be the internal norms that govern our ever-expanding technical universe. Recognizing that developments in technology and engineering literally create our human future, transforming existing knowledge into tomorrow´s tools and infrastructure, they chart the normative criteria we use to evaluate novel technological artifacts: how, for example, do we judge a ´good´ from a ´bad´ expert system or nuclear power plant? As well as these ´functional´ norms, and the norms that guide technological knowledge and reasoning, the book examines commonly agreed benchmarks in safety and risk reduction, which play a pivotal role in engineering practice.

Informed by the core insight that, in technology and engineering, factual knowledge relating, for example, to the properties of materials or the load-bearing characteristics of differing construction designs is not enough, this analysis follows the often unseen foundations upon which technologies rest-the norms that guide the creative forces shaping the technical landscape to come. The book, a comprehensive survey of these emerging topics in the philosophy of technology, clarifies the role these norms (epistemological, functional, and risk-assessing) play in technological innovation, and the consequences they have for our understanding of technological knowledge.

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Preface.- Introduction.- Part I. Normativity in Technological Knowledge and Action.-Chapter 1. Extending the scope of technological knowledge: Anthonie W.M. Meijers and Peter Kroes.- Chapter 2. Rules, plans and the normativity of technological knowledge: Wybo Houkes.- Chapter 3. Beliefs, acceptances and technological knowledge: Marc J. de Vries and Anthonie W.M. Meijers.- Chapter 4. Policy objectives and the functions of transport systems: Holger Rosencrantz.- Chapter 5. Rational Goals in Engineering Design: The Venice Dams Case: Karin Edvardsson Björnberg.- Part 2. Normativity and Artefact Norms.- Chapter 6. Valuation of Artefacts and the Normativity of Technology: Sven Ove Hansson.- Chapter 7. Artifactual norms: Krist Vaesen.- Chapter 8. Instrumental Artifact Functions and Normativity: Jesse Hughes.- Chapter 9. The goodness and kindness of artefacts: Maarten Franssen.- Part 3. Normativity and Technological Risks.- Chapter 10. The Non-Reductivity of Normativity in Risks: Niklas Möller.- Chapter 11. Risk and Degrees of Rightness: Martin Peterson and Nicolas Espinoza.- Chapter 12. Naturalness, Artifacts, and Value: Per Sandin.- Chapter 13. Trust in Technological Systems: Philip J. Nickel.- Index.
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