Research On Mitcham's Thoughts Of Philosophy Of Engineering

The thesis aims at the thoughts of philosophy of engineering which was hold by American scholar Mitcham , the famous technological philosopher. In the background of empirical turn on philosophy of technology, scholars have advocated an in-depth engineering practice and to replace the external criticism by the empirical describe so that overcome traditional research flaws. Mitcham complied with this background and promoted philosophy of technology to experience. He thought that there were two kinds of traditions on the research of philosophy of technology, engineering tradition and humanities tradition. The disintegration of two traditions made the research in plight. Mitcham suggested to integrate both traditions and the channel was engineering practice. Engineering need philosophy, philosophy need to pay attention to engineering practice, they overlapped a new research field. Mitcham was in communication engineering and humanities to aim to explain his own philosophy theory. He defined engineering as a kind of production activity and highlighted the practical essence of engineering. Engineering can be designed because it is a kind of activity and process. Non-technical factors ignored in the design of engineering and the application of computer will cause ethical problems. At the same time, engineers will face some serious difficulties due to the contradiction between some roles and the expansion of responsibility. It is technical evaluation, public participation, particularly education on the engineering ethics that solve ethical problems on engineering design and protect engineers from responsibility plight. The article just used comparison, analysis, integration and other research methods to objectively show Mitcham's thoughts on philosophy of engineering and evaluated it, then drew some conclusions that Mitcham's thoughts on philosophy of engineering was different with that of our country and he advocated to integrate two traditions ,what's more, he attached importance to ethical education on engineering.