"Things that went well--no serious injuries or deaths": ethical reasoning in a normal engineering design process.
We argue that considering only a few 'big' ethical decisions in any engineering design process--both in education and practice--only reinforces the mistaken idea of engineering design as a series of independent sub-problems. Using data collected in engineering design organisations over a seven year period, we show how an ethical component to engineering decisions is much more pervasive. We distinguish three types of ethical justification for engineering decisions: (1) consequential, (2) deontological or non-consequential, and (3) virtue-based. We find that although there is some evidence for engineering designers as 'classic' consequentialists, a more egocentric consequentialism would appear more fitting. We also explain how the idea of a 'folk ethics'--a justification in the second category that consciously weighs one thing with another--fits with the idea of the engineering design process as social negotiation rather than as technological progress.
Lloyd
Peter
P
School of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft, Landbergstraat 15, 2628 CE Delft, The Netherlands. p.lloyd@io.tudelft.nl
Busby
Jerry
J
D001108:Architecture / Q000941:ethics; D003643:Death; D003657:Decision Making / Q000941:ethics*; D004738:Engineering / Q000941:ethics*; D006804:Ergonomics / Q000941:ethics; D004995:Ethics, Professional; D005160:Facility Design and Construction / Q000941:ethics; D006801:Humans; D012919:Social Behavior; D006113:United Kingdom; D014947:Wounds and Injuries