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

Ethical issues in engineering design
community with moral rights. In using the Brundtland definition a choice was
made for an anthropocentric view on the conservation of nature and resources.
In an anthropocentric vision on nature, only humans have intrinsic value and
moral rights. Nature only has instrumental value for humans. It can help
humans to survive and flourish. In anthropocentric visions, the conservation of
nature is aimed at securing that future human generations can live in
comparable or better conditions than humans do today.
Before I started following the project, discussions had taken place regarding
whether personal transportation can be sustainable. The fact remains that
considering the Brundtland definition it is difficult to justify designing a city car.
In cities there are usually enough other forms of transportation available, such
as bicycles or public transportation that use fewer resources than driving a car.
The DutchEVO team decided that people should be enticed to behave more
sustainable without denying them personal mobility. So a more sustainable car
would lead to a more sustainable world and this can be done using today’s
technology. The design team thought that trying to convince people to use other
modes of transportation was not effective because the number of kilometres
driven in cars is still growing in the Netherlands.
Dave wrote most of the documents on sustainability used within the design
team. He indicated that he only knew of the Brundtland definition of
sustainability and was not aware that there are also non-anthropocentric views
on sustainability. The definition was compatible with the ideas of the team
members. In the interviews it became clear that all the team members embraced
an anthropocentric view on the conservation of nature and included the needs of
future generations.
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Thomas: ‘Well you assume the continuity of humanity.’
Dave: ‘.. base is just the definition from the Brundtland report, to take
care that we can offer future generations the same chances that we
have now.’
One important feature of the Brundtland definition is that a sustainable
development should lead to better conditions in underdeveloped countries and
regions. In designing a family car for Europe this was much more difficult to
implement. This feature of the Brundtland definition was not recognised by all
the team members, perhaps for this reason.
Operationalisation of the definition was done in two ways. The team
distinguished technological sustainability and emotional sustainability. For team