Sharif Digital Repository

Information and communications technologies have affected the human world rapidly, which challenges the facing today’s information society. Extensive use and impact of these technologies in different aspects of human life have led to an information revolution. This revolution, changes in our understanding of the human nature and physical world. The human is an information organism among the other agents which is living in the informational environment, that is called the infosphere. Moreover, the information revolution has caused to emerge of “Bitcoin”; a phenomenon that is changing economic relations. Bitcoin is a “crypto-currency” and “encrypted payment system” that relying on a... 

Social Studies of Science have been taken seriously for some decade recently. The need to these studies after Kuhn is felt in “ The Structure of Scientific Revolution”. One of these approach, allocating to social studies of Scientific Institution, is the so called approach social constructivism. Followers of this approach take Science and scientific discoveris some kind of the Social Constructivism of scintists. Bruno Latour is one of the most famous theorisian of this approach. Studing the laboratory practies, Latour is tring to know about the bihaviour and interaction of scientists. The result of this endivour is “Laboratory Life”, the grand book. Latour is the famous person in the field... 

In the extension of his former developments of the theories of philosophy of mind and language, John Searle (1932- ) proceeded into the realm of social reality by his The Construction of Social Reality and Making the Social World, written in 1995 and 2010 respectively. With his naturalistic background, he placed his new theory on top of his former theories of mind and language already naturalized and fully worked out. As we will see, social reality comes with our three marvelous capacities, not coming together, to the extent we know, in animals other than us: collective intentionality, assignment of function, and language; all of them already being treated by Searle, in a naturalized manner,... 

However “The Social Construction of Technology (SCOT)” is the title of a thesis in the domain of Science and Technology Studies (STS), it has an important effect on the philosophy of technology. In this paper I try to elaborate and criticize SCOT’s approach. For this purpose we need to answer the question “what is Technology exactly?”. So in the first chapter, I defined Technology. After reviewing some of it’s famous definitions, I defined the joint of technologies based on the “Dual nature of technical artefacts” thesis. Because of the wide range of technologies, I have concentrated on “Technical Artefacts”, although I was not inattentive to other meanings of technology, especially... 

One of the most important characteristics of us humans is that we are homofaber beings, and with the help of technology we transform our living conditions, and perceptions of ourselves and the world. Technology, then, plays and important role in all branches of philosophy, and especially in philosophy of science. Without, technological instruments, little scientific research can be found that can be accomplished. Many of the processes involved in scientific researches, such as experimentation and measurement, are rooted in technology. This thesis aims to examine how technology impacts science. Philosophers and historians of science have usually paid little attention to the influence of... 

Hubert Dreyfus other than being a prominent philosopher is amongst early critics of classical artificial intelligence project which was initialized during 1955-1960. Challenging the rationalist presuppositions of this paradigm, he foresaw various situations where mechanical artificial intelligence based upon modeling the world through symbolic representation and mimicking reason by formalized rules would fail to deliver even remotely similar outputs in digital computers as in human though process and problem solving ability.Twenty years later it became obvious for AI researchers that obstacles like frame problem or lack of common sense would follow their projects no matter what computing... 

In this thesis, with the help of a literature review in philosophy of technology including the writings of analytical philosophers, Marcuse, Feenberg & Heidegger & with the help of a definition of Religion provided by Roy Clouser & supplementing it with the additional condition of Non-naturalism, we have tried to develop an all-inclusive theory about the implications of religious beliefs for encountering and coming to a right relation with Technology and its essence in its different layers. For this, after we have obtained in the first chapter, the system of terms and concepts needed for a more precise discussion, from a literature review of the analytical philosophy of technology, in the... 

Science and technology, in current century, has taken an unprecedented step towards human-engineering, in which the enhancement of human capacities, states, emotions, and behaviours is taken under consideration. In search of a better world and a happier life, the enhancement technologies aim at the design and development of a better human being. On the other hand, the nexus between the betterment of human nature and the achievement of happiness in life has roots in the traditional virtue theory as well. Virtue ethics also aims at the cultivation of intellectual, moral, and practical capacities of human being. This dissertation is a compare-contrast analysis of the relationship between the... 

One of the questions which has its origin in science and technology studies and innovation studies, but neglected, is that of how we understand the transition and how the transition processes occur. In recent decades, such questions have fallen into an interdisciplinary field called Transition Studies. The main purpose of transition studies is to identify and solve complex and multilevel issues and challenges (such as climate change). Drawing on the views of theorists such as Roy Bhaskar and Frank Geels, this thesis seeks to critically study the foundations and assumptions of a particular type of transition called socio-technical transitions. Socio-technical transitions refer to the changes... 

Does the direct involvement of social values in science, damage the reliability of scientific claims? Using recent debates in the relation between science and value, I will try to answer this question. Over the past few years, it has been shown that values can play a role in justifying scientific knowledge. People like Jeffrey and Betz try to take values out of science using methodological advice; while others, like Douglas, argue that values cannot and should not be excluded from science. If we accept the presence of values, there must be limits to their involvement, or we will fall to chaotic state. One of the concepts that can help us to regulate the behavior of values, is the reliability... 

The role of Technological Human Body is mainly overlooked in the Philosophy of Technology. However as result of diverse bodily technologies (somatechnologies) which are emergent everyday, for either enhancement, rehabilitation, or even recreational activities, the realtion between bodies and technologies are such entangled that no longer could anybody ignor it. Cyborg is an amalgamation of Human and Machine. The philosophical challenges that such an entity brings forth is immense; Agency, Intentionality, Subjectivity, Power relations, Ethics to mention but a few. In this study we try to investigate such issues through a phenomenological and feminist stance by examining Everyday cyborgs, i.e.... 

Bhaskar, one of the pioneers of critical realism, pursues two aspects in his presentation in order to solve complex problems in the philosophy of science. The first aspect is highlighting and emphasizing the need of philosophy of science for ontology and paying attention to intransitive objects. The second aspect is acknowledging the social nature of science and the consideration of transitive objects of science as materials of knowledge, or in other words, the material causes of knowledge. What is done in this thesis, after a detailed description of Bhaskar's critical realism, is to examine the three categories of rationality, progress, and scientific realism in his view. With a layered... 

Some philosophers and thinkers have made serious criticisms of modern technology, considering it the cause of major problems. These critiques and problems have motivated some philosophers to think of alternatives for technology. Andrew Feenberg, one of the scholars seeking alternatives for technology, argues that the modern technical system is derived from the values of capitalism and serves a select few. As a diagnosis, Feenberg considers the capitalistic values to be the root of modern technological crises and as a prescription, he recommends a “democratic technological design system”. Feenberg has proposed no criteria for evaluating the values that could be incorporated into the... 

In this thesis, we will take a more profound study about what technology is and the relationship between technology development and society. We will discuss various theories such as the social construction of technology, the heterogeneous engineerings approach, the system approach, and the co-construction of society and technology. In this way, the relationship between economic and social systems and technological products is explained and based on this, an approach is proposed in relation to the ethical challenges in technology with a focus on social networks. The discussion is about the fact that due to the continuous use of technologies, a challenge may be raised in the technology... 

In this thesis, we will take a more profound study about what technology is and the relationship between technology development and society. We will discuss various theories such as the social construction of technology, the heterogeneous engineerings approach, the system approach, and the co-construction of society and technology. In this way, the relationship between economic and social systems and technological products is explained and based on this, an approach is proposed in relation to the ethical challenges in technology with a focus on social networks. The discussion is about the fact that due to the continuous use of technologies, a challenge may be raised in the technology... 

The long-lasting debate on the value-free ideal of science has cooled down in the past two decades. Many philosophers of science now believe that scientific activity, even in the theory-evaluation phase, cannot be done completely free of social and ethical values. Thus in recent years, science and values literature has been more specific and mostly focused on the role of values in different phases of scientific activity. One of the well-noted topics is the epistemic priority thesis, in which its proponents prioritize epistemic considerations in the evaluation of scientific theories, to preserve the objectivity of science. In contrast, several criticisms have been directed at this thesis. We... 

Scientific realism has always faced continuous criticism from anti-realists. Kyle Stanford's argument based on the problem of "unconceived alternatives" can be seen as a late and troublesome version of these challenges. In this thesis, first in the first chapter, after explaining the main points of conflict in the scientific realism/anti-realism debate, we will list the main positions in these two camps, and then we will mention the arguments in favor of scientific realism. After that, we will list the main challenges that scientific realism has faced. Arguments such as pessimistic meta-induction and underdetermination which are raised against scientific realism. In the second chapter, we... 

What is meant by the scientific progress and how can it be explained? In response to this question, four distinct approaches—epistemic, semantic, problem-solving, and Noetic—have been presented. Each of these approaches defines the goal of science in a specific way: the epistemic approach considers the accumulation of scientific knowledge as the goal; the semantic approach views the goal as nearness to truth; the problem-solving approach sees the goal as solving more problems; and the Noetic approach sets the goal as increasing understanding. In this study, each approach is critically examined, and two central claims are made. The first claim asserts that to explain the scientific progress,...