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

Towards warranted trust in engineers
seems that CTA requires that affected actors should be involved in the design
process, examples of CTA projects include mostly large scale technology
development projects like biotechnology or the Digital City Amsterdam project
[Schot and Rip, 1997]. In such large projects it is feasible to invite actors to
participate. However, the problem remains that there is no clear overview of
what the side-effects and consequences of the new technology development will
be, and therefore it is not clear who the affected actors are going to be. So,
technology development can be broadened by inviting actors to participate but it
will remain uncertain as to which actors will be affected by a technology
development. This might mean that every actor should be represented in one
way or another in the CTA procedure. In cases where new and controversial
technologies are developed like biotechnology and nanotechnology, most of the
public debate centres around which values are at stake, given the empirical
uncertainties on what possibilities nanotechnology and biotechnology will
provide in the future. Engineers cannot know what the affected actors value with
regard to these new technologies because the possibly affected actors might not
know this themselves, in such cases there will be a lot of discussion between
groups of possibly affected actors as to what values are at stake. In these cases of
very radical design it may be necessary to use CTA or informed consent
procedures (see for example [Shrader-Frechette 2002]). I will not elaborate on
these procedures, I only want to indicate that in cases involving the development
of new technologies warranted trust in engineers may require the active
participation of society in one way or another.
In the radical design processes that I have described, some consensus might
be expected between the affected actors on what values are at stake in the design
of a product. The radical designs featured in the case-studies are radical designs
of products that already existed. There is knowledge and experience within
society on the positive and negative consequences of the product type. It is to a
certain extent clear what things, that affected actors value, are at stake in these
radical design processes, although the affected actors may prioritise them
differently. It would be impossible from a practical point of view to include
(representatives of) all the affected actors in all small scale radical design
processes such as the DutchEVO project or the trailer design project. Therefore,
I will propose a way that can be used to allow engineers to identify what affected
actors value without having to ask the affected actors actively to participate in the
design process.
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