Ethical issues in engineering design - 3TU.Centre for Ethics and ...

Ethical issues in engineering design
The first problem with regard to acceptance is that it remains unclear in
Grunwald’s ideas how acceptance by actors has to be established. Can
acceptance be assumed until actors actually state that they think that the
framework is unacceptable? This might be very practical from the point of view
of engineers and other people involved in defining the elements of the
framework because they only need to be open to the signals of actors who do not
accept the framework. Until the moment that there are these kinds of signals
engineers can use the regulative framework. An example of actors voicing their
objections about a regulative framework, taken from the media, was given in the
piping and equipment case with respect to the regulative framework concerning
chemical installations. If the above assumption of acceptance should not be
made then the people defining a framework should seek active acceptance of any
actors affected by a framework. This would require a change in the procedures
used to define elements of a framework. A regulative framework in the EU partly
consists of legislation that is formulated and voted on within the European
Commission and European Parliament or national parliaments. People within
society have, by voting for their representatives, a small and indirect influence on
the legislation contained in regulative frameworks. Other elements of the
regulative framework like codes and standards are formulated without any direct
or indirect influence of the actors that might possibly be affected by the
technology. In some countries there are special governmental agencies that
formulate technical codes. In other countries codes are formulated by industrial
organisations (see section 5.2.2). Ideas on the interpretation of codes and good
design practice are usually learned in practice or during education, so these ideas
may be harder for people outside engineering to influence. One way or another,
active acceptance of the whole regulative framework by all possibly affected
actors requires a different procedure for formulating the elements of a regulative
framework than used at present or an explicit step of accepting the regulative
framework after the formulation of the framework.
The second problem with regard to the requirement that a normative
framework should be accepted is that a regulative or normative framework is not
static. A framework will change over time so it is not enough to accept a
framework once. If the active acceptance of all the actors involved is required
then this should lead to some kind of continuous, active acceptance process. One
way to assure the acceptance of continuously adapted and changing regulative
frameworks is to implement a participatory process for formulating and
adapting such frameworks. I will not go into the problems of implementing such
an approach, or discuss the opportunities for including participatory methods
used in technology development, but requiring the active acceptance of
regulative frameworks could result in some kind of participatory process (for
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