Peter Kroes, born in Ubbergen, the Netherlands, in 1950. Ph.D. from the Radboud University Nijmegen. Professor of Philosophy of Technology at Delft University of Technology.
Fellow (1 September 2006 – 30 June 2007)
PHILOSOPHY OF ENGINEERING DESIGN
The aim of my NIAS-research project was to write a book on the philosophy of engineering design. My original plan was to write a broad-ranging book on the philosophy of engineering on the basis of previous publications while filling in some of the gaps. Instead, I narrowed the scope of the book: it now focuses on the nature of technical artefacts. One of the reasons for this was that to understand the nature of technical artefacts it turned out to be necessary to develop a theory of technical functions and of artefacts kinds. A first version of the whole manuscript is nearly completed; the introduction and epilogue still need to be written. I also wrote some contributions to books of which I am co-editor, in particular the book Functions and more; comparative philosophy of technical artifacts and biological organisms (co-edited with Ulrich Krohs), The Vienna series in theoretical biology, MIT Press. In connection with the work on my mongraph I organized a workshop entitled “Moral Agency and Technical Artefacts”, which took place at the NIAS and the TU Centre for Ethics and Technology at The Hague, May 10-12 2007. In total 17 scholars (6 from abroad) attended the workshop.