Wenceslao J. Gonzalez Bücher

This book focuses on a key issue today: the role of values in technology, with special emphasis on ethical values. This topic involves the analysis of internal values in technology (as they affect objectives, processes, and outcomes) and the study of external values in technology (social, cultural, economic, ecological, etc.). These values — internal and external — are crucial to the decision making of engineers. In addition, they have increasing relevance for citizens concerned with the present and future state of technology, which gives society a leading position in technological issues. The book follows three main lines of research: 1) new perspectives on technology, values, and ethics; 2) rationality and responsibility in technology; and 3) technology and risks. This volume analyzes the two main sides involved here: the theoretical basis for the role of values in technology and a practical discussion on how to implement them in our society. Thus, the book is of interest for philosophers, engineers, academics of different fields and policy-makers. The style used lends itself to broad audience.​

Contemporary philosophy of science analyzes psychology as a science with special features, because this discipline includes some specific philosophical problems - descriptive and normative, structural and dynamic. Some of these are particularly relevant both theoretically (casual explanation) and practically (the configuration of the psychological subject and its relations with psychiatry). Two central aspects in this book are the role of causality, especially conceived as intervention or manipulation, and the characterization of the psychological subject. This requires a clarification of scientific explanations in terms of causality in psychology, because characterizations of causality are quite different in epistemological and ontological terms. One of the most influential views is James Woodward's approach to causality as intervention, which entails an analysis of its characteristics, new elements and limits. This means taking into account the structural and dynamic aspects included in causal cognition and psychological explanations. Psychology seen as special science also requires us to consider the scientific status of psychology and the psychological subject, which leads to limits of naturalism in psychology.

Philosophico-Methodological Analysis of Prediction and its Role in Economics

Contemporary philosophy of science analyzes psychology as a science with special features, because this discipline includes some specific philosophical problems – descriptive and normative, structural and dynamic. Some of these are particularly relevant both theoretically (casual explanation) and practically (the configuration of the psychological subject and its relations with psychiatry). Two central aspects in this book are the role of causality, especially conceived as intervention or manipulation, and the characterization of the psychological subject. This requires a clarification of scientific explanations in terms of causality in psychology, because characterizations of causality are quite different in epistemological and ontological terms. One of the most influential views is James Woodward’s approach to causality as intervention, which entails an analysis of its characteristics, new elements and limits. This means taking into account the structural and dynamic aspects included in causal cognition and psychological explanations. Psychology seen as special science also requires us to consider the scientific status of psychology and the psychological subject, which leads to limits of naturalism in psychology.