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Online Ethics Center: Teaching Engineering Responsibility for Societal and Environmental Consequences

Author(s): Online Ethics Center

Topics
Bibliography and Web Resources

As Herbert Hoover wrote about the engineering profession, it is the privilege of engineers to elevate the standards of living and add to the comforts of life. But with the benefits of technology also come potential pitfalls and drawbacks. Technology has consequences-and not all of those consequences are good. Some bad consequences are the result of negligent, reckless or deceitful behavior and others are unforeseen and unintended. To what extent are engineers responsible for the impact of their creations? If so, what kinds of impacts should be considered? Technology can have impacts on future generations, on people in other remote countries, on animals, plants, or ecosystems. It can have dramatic affects on life-style, jobs, and privacy. Are engineers obligated to consider what might happen if their products are used for sinister reasons? How should consideration of these kinds of impacts affect the way engineers design their products, if at all?

This section focuses on methods for teaching engineers about the social and environmental impacts - both good and bad - of the technology they create. Emphasis is on helping students to take these impacts into consideration when designing technology. Incorporating ethics into design courses enables students to see first hand the ethical implications of design. Students should be taught to expand the questions they ask themselves when designing products or creating new technology so that they ask themselves not only the scientific questions, but social/environmental questions as well.

Topics

Background Concepts

Moral Status Who or what has moral status (future persons, animals, trees)? When and under what conditions are we obligated to those who have moral status? These ideas lie at the basis of assessing the societal and environmental impacts of technology. This page offers pedagogical advice for teaching these background ideas to engineering students.
Negligence, Recklessness, Intended/Unintended Harm We cannot always predict the impact technology might have on society or the environment. In other words, not all bad consequences of technology are intended. This fact affects our assessment of culpability or responsibility for those affects. It also affects our ability to adequately control the technology we create. This page offers pedagogical advice for teaching students the difference between negligence, recklessness, and intended/unintended harm and for thinking about the notion of responsibility or culpability in connection with these.
Environmental Consequences: One approach to environmental ethics is to focus on how human decisions affect the earth's environment. Decisions about things like how to use resources or where resources are taken from have profound long-term and short-term effects on the environment. The processes by which these kinds of choices are made are very important; process effects outcome. Engineers play a central role in the decision-making process; they make or influence major decisions about the final product which, in turn, has environmental effects. Engineers must be taught to make those decisions well. As Stephen Unger writes, "there is flexibility on what directions technology can take and the choices among alternative paths are often significant." This section focuses on teaching students to think about the environmental impact their professional decisions can have.
Societal Consequences: Decisions about what direction technology takes have incredible social impacts. Job displacement and loss of privacy are two examples of societal consequences of technology. This section focuses on teaching engineering students about the profound societal affects of the technology they create and getting them to consider what processes could be built into their designs that will prevent problems or at least provide solutions to them should they arise.

Bibliography and Web Resources

Topics Section: There are a lot of resources at the Online Ethics Center that are of great use for teaching environmental and social consequences of engineering. Look under Issues in Educational and Workplace Settings. This section includes information on Endangered Ecosystems, Design and the Environment and much more. In addition to scenarios and essays on these topics, the topics section has an incredible annotated bibliography.

Recommendations of other Web courses or materials on engineering ethics are most welcome. Cases not already on the web may be sent for inclusion in The Online Ethics Center. These will be subject to editing, if posted. Because the focus of this center is ethics (including policy questions addressed by engineers and scientists) we list only courses in engineering and science ethics. Although courses in the History of Technology or on Technology and Society are not included, we welcome historical cases that raise ethical issues for engineers and scientists.