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

Towards warranted trust in engineers
It will not be easy to formulate these requirements. An argument can be
given for detailed rule-based prescriptive frameworks while another argument
can be given for avoiding detailed rule-based frameworks. In the European
Union there is a trend towards regulation stating only a goal that should be
attained or procedures that should be followed. Questions like whether a good
procedure always leads to good results can be posed. Research into what
requirements a regulative framework should meet needs to involve insights
taken from diverse fields such as moral philosophy, engineering ethics, the
experience of engineers; even aspects of sociology of law and policy research can
be used to gain some interesting ideas. Moral philosophy and professional ethics
can give insights into what actors should be involved in the formulation of
regulative frameworks and in determining the freedom that is necessary for
engineers to act professionally and morally. Sociology of law can be used to give
insight into different forms of self-regulation by professionals. Engineering
practice can help to establish what kinds of rules are applicable and those that
can be used to empower engineers in engineering design practice. Part of the
requirements will probably be procedural, these should answer the question of
which actors should be involved in what way when formulating regulative
frameworks. Some of the requirements will most likely be formal, for example
the regulative framework should be consistent.
9.4 Recommendations for engineering education
It is hoped that the results of this thesis will have an influence on the education
that engineers receive, it is certainly the case that they should have an influence.
First, engineers should be taught to understand the varieties in design
processes and the implications of this for the way in which they must deal with
ethically relevant issues. It is also important that engineers understand the
relationship between normal and radical design and incomplete knowledge. The
uncertainties and incomplete knowledge are larger in radical design. The
difference between normal and radical design could be explained in the existing
engineering ethics courses, for example during sessions where problems
regarding risks and uncertainties in engineering are discussed, or in chapters of
books where these issues could be deliberately introduced and discussed.
Second, attention should be paid in engineering education to the regulative
frameworks that exist in normal design. Engineers should learn who formulates
which parts of the regulative frameworks and what their responsibility is in this.
In the case-studies used for this research, experienced engineers did not always
know the frameworks within which they worked and did not always know to
whom problems should be reported. The engineers in the IJburg bridge case
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