Making a Practical Turn: Philosophical Design tools in an Ethical Parallel Track for Innovations

Our research aims to contribute to the mutual and constructive collaboration between philosophy of technology and design research: a practical turn in the philosophy of technology. This means a variation and extension to the ‘empirical turn’ in the philosophy of technology. After the turn from abstract thinking about the essence of technology toward research based on empirical case studies about concrete technologies, we turn further to make philosophy of technology ‘practical’ by collaboration with design. This practical turn follows up on the R&D role for philosophers once proposed by Don Ihde and the notion of ethical accompaniment (cf. Gilbert Hottois) as employed by Peter-Paul Verbeek. A central research question for making such a practical turn is what kind of work plan is needed for the implementation of a collaboration between philosophy and design?