At the same time it is descriptive in that it’s a description of how engineering methodology generally presents the issue how to remedy design issues. According to Niiniluoto, the theoretical framework of technology as the follow that’s concerned with what the world should be like quite than is, the framework that forms the counterpoint to the descriptive framework of science, is design science. The content of design science, the counterpoint to the theories and explanations that type the content of descriptive science, would then be formed by technical norms, statements of the shape ‘If one wants to attain X, one ought to doY’. The notion of a technical norm derives from Georg Henrik von Wright’s Norm and Action . Technical norms have to be distinguished from anankastic statements expressing natural necessity, of the shape ‘If X is to be achieved,Y must be carried out’; the latter have a truth value however the former have not.
There may be attention-grabbing connections with the problem of multiple realizability within the philosophy of mind and with accounts of discount in science; an example the place that is explored is Mahner and Bunge 2001. Understanding the method of designing artifacts is the theme in …
