Abstract
Should engineering ethics be taught? Despite the obvious truism that we all want our students to be moral engineers who practice virtuous professional behavior, I argue, in this article that the question itself obscures several ambiguities that prompt preliminary resolution. Upon clarification of these ambiguities, and an attempt to delineate key issues that make the question a philosophically interesting one, I conclude that engineering ethics not only should not, but cannot, be taught if we understand “teaching engineering ethics” to mean training engineers to be moral individuals (as some advocates seem to have proposed). However, I also conclude that there is a justification to teaching engineering ethics, insofar as we are able to clearly identify the most desirable and efficacious pedagogical approach to the subject area, which I propose to be a case study-based format that utilizes the principle of human cognitive pattern recognition.
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Notes
I do not wish to propose this characterization of “morality” as a formally comprehensive definition of the term. Nothing much of conceptual importance to the main thesis of this paper hangs on one’s inclination to refine or elaborate on the suggested characterization.
Professor Vesilind suggests that students can be taught to “think ethically” in much the same way that they can be taught to “think scientifically.”
The notion of applying paradigm cases to the resolution of moral dilemmas is certainly not a novel idea. Its application was revived, and its practicality defended, by Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin some 20 years ago. While their defense of “casuistry” has not made significant impact among classical moral philosophers, it has been rather positively received in the area of bioethics and, I believe, deserves serious consideration in other areas of applied moral ethics as well.
I have become persuaded of the truth of this conclusion after many years of anecdotal observations in my own digital electronics courses.
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Abaté, C.J. Should Engineering Ethics be Taught?. Sci Eng Ethics 17, 583–596 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-010-9211-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-010-9211-9