Technology and Responsibility: (3 Philosophy and Technology)

Since it may seem strange for a new series to begin with volume 3, a word of explanation is in order. The series, Philosophy and Technology, inaugurated in this form with this volume, is the official publication of the Society for Philosophy & Technology. Approximately one volume each year is tobe published, alternating between proceedings volumes - taken from contributions to biennial international conferences of the Society - and miscellaneous volumes, with roughly the character of a professional society journal. The forerunners of the series in its present form were two proceedings volumes: Philosophy and Technology (1983), edited by Paul T. Durbin and Friedrich Rapp, and Philosophy and Technology //: Information Technology and Computers in Theory and Practice (1986), edited by Carl Mitcham and Alois Huning - both published (as volumes 80 and 90, respectively) in the series, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. The Society for Philosophy & Technology, now more than ten years old, is devoted to the promotion of philosophical schalarship that deals in one way or another with technology and technological society. "Philosophical scholarship" is interpreted broadly as including contribu- tions from any and all perspectives; the one requirement is that the schalarship be sound, and all contributions to the series are subject to rigorous blind refereeing. "Technology," the other half of the philos- ophy-and-technology pairing, is also construed broadly.

Table of Contents:
Responsibility and Technology: The Expanding Relationship.- Philosophical Anthropology and the Problem of Responsibility in Technology.- Technoscience: Nihilistic Power versus a New Ethical Consciousness.- Phenomenology and the Autonomy of Technology.- The Autonomy of Technology.- Technique and Responsibility: Think Globally, Act Locally, according to Jacques Ellul.- Increasing Responsibility as Technological Destiny? Human Reproductive Technology and the Problem of Meta-Responsibility.- Commercializing Reproductive Technologies: Ethical Issues.- Incontinence and Biomedicine: Examples from Puyallup Indian Medical Ethnohistory.- Homo Generator: The Challenge of Gene Technology.- The Modern Babylon Culture.- Religion, Technology, and Human Autonomy.- Societal Role of Dutch Freshwater Ecologists in Environmental Policies.- Risk Assessment as Social Research.- Toward a Philosophy of Engineering and Science in R &.D Settings.- Engineers as Social Activists: A Defense.- The Real Risks of RiskCost-Benefit Analysis.- Responsibility and Technology: A Select, Annotated Bibliography.- Index of Names.