Blackwell Reference Online

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Engineering ethics is an area of practical, or applied, ethics. It is practical in the sense that its aim is to shed light on ethical concerns related to engineering practice. It is applied in the sense that ethical considerations are directed to practice rather than theory. Although theories of ethics come into play in engineering ethics, the aim is to illuminate the ethical dimensions of engineering practice rather than to illustrate the strengths or weaknesses of this or that ethical theory. Thus, engineering ethics is not simply, if at all, the application of ethical theory to practice. Inquiry proceeds best from practice to theory rather than theory to practice, with the first task being that of identifying the basic ethical concerns that arise in engineering practice. Although this does not necessarily require technical engineering knowledge, it does require familiarity with the context of engineering practice, including the kinds of organizational structures within which most engineers operate. However, given their lack of exposure to the formal study of ethics, it is understandable that engineers would turn to philosophers for assistance in conceptualizing engineering ethics. In the late 1970s the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored a series of workshops to assist the engineering faculty in developing ways of ... log in or subscribe to read full text