Engines of Thought

I have an article in Issue 41 of The Philosophers' Magazine, second quarter of 2008. It's all about how actually doing and making things, interacting with the world, is useful for understanding some of things philosophers find puzzling - eg, how we have knowledge of the external world; the nature of mind-body interaction; the link between theory and reality. These are all areas where scepticism creeps up as a philosophical position, but this paper argues that looking from an engineering point of view, where once can successfully engineer bits of the physical world (including making things like prosthetic limbs that function by exploiting the means by which mind and body interact) is hard to be a sceptic.

What Use is Philosophy of Engineering?

The December 2007 Issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (volume 32, number 4) includes a paper by me about The Royal Academy of Engineering's seminar series on philosophy of engineering. The paper, 'What Use is Philosophy of Engineering?' reviews the themes that were developed in the seminars, and argues that philosophy of engineering can bring new perspectives to existing philosophical problems. These problems fall into the areas of epistemology, philosophy of mind, and theories of meaning. The abstract is online here: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/isr/2007/00000032/00000004/art00003

A full version of the paper will be on this site soon.

Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering: 'A World of Things, Not Facts'

In November 2007, the first international Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering was held at the Technical University of Delft. I was fortunate to be asked to speak at the conference, representing The Royal Academy of Engineering. My talk brought out the commonalities between the lessons that can be learned from philosophy of engineering and the lessons that Wittgenstein, in his later philosophy, felt should be drawn from philosophy. My paper will be published in a forthcoming collection of selected papers from the conference.

The second Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering will be held in London at The Royal Academy of Engineering. Information about the workshop and a call for papers is online here: http://www.illigal.uiuc.edu/web/wpe/about/

Philosophy in the Making - Ingenia Magazine

In March 2006 I wrote a piece for The Royal Academy of Engineering's Ingenia magazine, title: "Philosophy in the Making". This article outlines the reasons for engaging in philosphy of engineering, even though engineering is a subject that has enjoyed considerably less attention form philosophers than its sister discipline, science. This piece makes the case that engineering provides significant contributions to knowledge, and thus should be in the sights of epistemologists and philosophers of science; that engineering provides insight on longstanding philosphical problems and that philosophy can actually have an impact on the success of engineering in practice. This article cites the work of Peter Simons at the University of Leeds, and the ideas of Ian Hacking.

A copy of this article is available online here:
http://www.ingenia.org.uk/ingenia/issues/issue26/mccarthy.pdf