Emerging Technologies and Ethical Issues in Engineering Papers from a Workshop (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Responsibility and Creativity in Engineering
Responsibility and Creativity in Engineering
Pages 95-106
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From page 95... ...
The topics addressed in this paper include: professions and professional ethics; the role of engineering experience in the development of ethical guidelines for engineers; the notion of responsibility per se; the role of synthetic or creative reasoning in the fulfillment of professional responsibility; limitations on the foresight necessary for the exercise of responsibility; and bringing engineering knowledge to bear on societal choices about technology. Some of these topics have been discussed in more detail elsewhere (Whitbeck, 1998)
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From page 96... ...
They stand closest to the Aristotelian tradition of philosophical ethics, as contrasted with top-down Enlightenment theories of ethics that attempt to deduce ethical norms from a few general principles. Engineering ethics has paid much closer attention to practical experience than at least one influential wing of biomedical ethics, which early on attempted to formulate a few abstract principles and then fit all problems and issues to those principles.
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From page 97... ...
The exercise of professional responsibility requires both competence and concern. The ethical dimension of practicing competently is highlighted for engineers by the rule in many engineering codes of ethics that forbids engineers to accept assignments beyond their competence.1 Engineers working beyond their 1At the time of this writing, research investigators do not generally recognize a professional obligation to work only within the limits of their competence, and many represent the distinction between incompetent research and unethical research as an absolute distinction.
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From page 98... ...
ngineers have a responsibility for the quality of their products," is responsibility in the ethical or moral sense. As Kathryn Pyne Addelson first observed, moral or ethical responsibility is "prospective" or "forward-looking" in contrast to "blame" and other notions that are backwardlooking in that they are concerned with situations that have already occurred (Kathryn Pyne Addelson, Mary Huggins Gamble Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Smith College, personal communication)
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From page 99... ...
has called "official responsibility," which is limited to what one is charged to do as a result of holding a particular job or office within an organization. As Ladd has argued, official or organizational responsibilities differ significantly from professional responsibilities and other moral responsibilities in that official responsibilities attach to job categories and impersonal roles rather than to particular people in particular circumstances with particular histories and human relationships who are subject to the moral demands that they carry with them.
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From page 100... ...
Just as a designer needs creative abilities that a critic of design does not need, being a responsible professional requires more than judging ethical behavior. Obeying moral rules, fulfilling obligations, and respecting others' rights typically require little professional knowledge because they provide explicit descriptions of the required actions.
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From page 101... ...
I emphasize this point because inexperienced teachers of professional ethics often simplify moral problems and present them as choices between two values -- for example, between loyalty to one's employer and devotion to public safety or between policies that protect the environment and policies that further job growth. Simplifying moral problems encourages stereotypic thinking, rather than critical thinking, and so closes students' minds to the possibility of satisfying multiple moral demands simultaneously.
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From page 102... ...
Experience with the consequences of engineering design decisions has widened the scope of consequences responsible engineers are expected to foresee and the range of factors they are expected to consider in controlling those consequences. Not only the number of factors, but also the range of eventualities has increased.
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From page 103... ...
Another major question is under what circumstances the possible effects of accidents might be so great that we cannot afford to "learn from experience." Normal Accidents in Complex Systems Although expanding the scope of design criteria based on lessons learned from failures and accidents has made the design of devices and components safer, these lessons may be of little use in addressing what Charles Perrow has called "normal accidents" to which technologically sophisticated, complex systems fall prey. Perrow (1984)
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From page 104... ...
The use of an experimental medical treatment is governed by standards of competent care and informed consent for care, rather than the more stringent norms applied to clinical experiments. Because experimental therapies may pose significant unanticipated risks to health and safety or to other major aspects of well-being (such as financial security)
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From page 105... ...
RESPONSIBILITY, CREATIVITY, AND CHANGE Finally, we must consider how engineering knowledge can be brought to bear on societal choices about technology in an age of technological complexity and rapid social and technological change. We have seen that technological innovation requires not only addressing multiple, sometimes competing, design constraints, but also extending foresight into new areas.
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From page 106... ...
Science and Engineering Ethics 4(3)
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