Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 615 de 957
tool making which has led to population growth which has led to increased risk of
personal and emotional harm due to the dangers of highly dense populations. Along the
way we get a clearer picture of ethical theory and the role it plays in the type of
engineering progress Spier describes.
Similarly, Thinking Like an Engineer (Davis, 1998) is an extended and penetrating look into
the moral mind of the engineer qua engineer. Davis’s approach is decidedly philosophical,
and the book’s point of view––rather than being a practical guide for students––is a
deeper meditation on what it means to be, and what is required by, an engineer in a moral
sense. To give one example: in chapter four, Davis gives an analysis of the decision the
launch the space shuttle Challenger, a case familiar to anyone who has studied engineering
ethics since the late 1980s. But Davis’s analysis is deep, philosophical, and yet centered on
the very essence of the moral stature of engineering. For other work, see (Catalano, 2006).
Since many of the frequently used and frequently cited books are textbooks, our analysis
below examines several of the major features, foci, and methods of these works (and some
of the dangers) as we try to understand how they formulate and communicate the concept
of engineering ethics.
Compartmentalization
What has been both an advantage and a danger of the textbook format is that it allows for
the books’ main topics to broken down to their components. The many books on
engineering ethics composed in this style are organized, surely by a matter of pedagogical
necessity, in a way that separates all the complex considerations that go into
understanding ethically-important situations in engineering into their own sections. The
result of this can be disjointedness, or the sense that these books do not give adequate
attention to what makes each part a necessary component of the integration of ethics and
engineering. During our analysis, while it was often easy to see which pieces authors
seemed to think were part of engineering ethics, it was more difficult to determine exactly
why they thought so. We were often left to infer on our own why they think these pieces,
or these cases, or these particular issues are philosophically important, if we could at all.
For example, in the very commonly used classroom-oriented book Engineering Ethics
(Fleddermann, 2008), a good book in many senses and now appearing in a fourth edition,
the table of contents indicates the following structure: 1) Introduction, 2) Professionalism
and Codes of Ethics, 3) Understanding Ethical Problems, 4) Ethical Problem Solving
Techniques, 5) Risk, Safety, and Accidents, 6) The Rights and Responsibilities of Engineers,
7) Ethical Issues in Engineering Practice, 8) Doing the Right Thing. The book keeps these
sections compartmentalized, without much synthesis among them and without pointing
out what makes these issues philosophically important. In understanding the state of the
art of engineering ethics, it is important to understand this approach and the difference
between this and the type of philosophical rigor applied to engineering problems as seen
in the monographs by Davis, Spier, Catalano, and others.
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011