Ethics, Technology and Engineering

Go to Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/ethics-technology-engineering

Introduction

## Course Review: Ethics, Technology and Engineering In the ever-evolving landscape of engineering, where technology and design intersect with ethical considerations, the course "Ethics, Technology and Engineering" on Coursera emerges as a crucial educational resource for current and aspiring engineers alike. This course navigates the complex relationship between engineering practices and ethical responsibilities, ensuring that students not only hone their technical skills but also develop a keen awareness of the societal implications of their work. ### Course Overview **Ethics, Technology and Engineering** introduces a comprehensive examination of ethical considerations that engineers must grapple with throughout their careers. Understanding that engineering is not merely a technical discipline but one that is deeply intertwined with moral decision-making, the course emphasizes the need for professionals to reflect on the implications of their projects and design choices. The curriculum aligns with the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) standards, mandating that engineers comprehend their professional and ethical responsibilities. ### Syllabus Breakdown 1. **Introduction**: The course kicks off with an insightful introduction featuring Micaela dos Ramos, where students are made aware of the importance of ethics in engineering. This sets the tone for the discussions to follow. 2. **The Responsibility of Engineers**: This module delves into the dual aspects of responsibility—passive and active. It highlights the importance of whistle-blowing and the precautionary principle, encouraging students to think critically about their professional accountability. 3. **Codes of Conduct**: Examining the role of various professional and corporate codes, this section encourages students to reflect on the efficacy of these codes in guiding ethical behavior. 4. **Normative Ethics**: A cornerstone of this course, students explore significant ethical theories—consequentialism, duty ethics, and virtue ethics—equipping them with frameworks to tackle moral dilemmas within their professional practice. 5. **The Ethical Cycle**: Here, students learn to navigate moral complexities through a systematic approach known as the ethical cycle. This methodology aids in analyzing problems and developing ethical solutions. 6. **Ethical Questions in the Design of Technology**: Innovations come with inherent risks. This module tackles how engineers can manage these risks during the design process, emphasizing the importance of trade-offs. 7. **Designing Morality**: The course discusses the moral implications of technological artefacts and addresses how technology can mediate ethical considerations within society. 8. **Ethical Aspects of Technological Risks**: A critical viewpoint on the intrinsic risks posed by technology, this section encourages a thoughtful assessment of moral acceptability in risk management strategies. 9. **Distribution of Responsibility**: Engineering projects often involve multiple stakeholders, complicating the issue of accountability. This module discusses how responsibility is distributed and the ethical implications of this distribution within collaborative environments. 10. **Exam**: The course concludes with an assessment to evaluate the understanding and application of the concepts learned throughout the modules. ### Course Experience The course on Coursera offers a blend of video lectures, readings, and interactive discussions that foster a dynamic learning environment. The materials are thoughtfully organized, making it easier to understand complex ethical issues through real-world case studies and scenarios that highlight the significance of ethical decision-making. ### Recommendation I highly recommend the **Ethics, Technology and Engineering** course for: - **Engineering Students**: It's an essential Course to prepare you for the ethical dilemmas you will face professionally. - **Practicing Engineers**: This course provides a refresher on ethical responsibilities, crucial for career advancement and integrity in engineering practices. - **Policy Makers**: Understanding the ethical framework surrounding engineering and technology can inform better regulatory decisions. This course presents an invaluable opportunity to develop a well-rounded approach to engineering that encompasses not just technical skills but also an ethical lens through which to view and apply those skills. Join the course on Coursera and take the first step toward becoming a responsible engineer aware of the profound impacts of your work on society.

Syllabus

Introduction

This module offers a short introduction to the course. The lecture will show a video in which Micaela dos Ramos, executive director of KIVI (the largest professional association of engineers in the Netherlands), illustrates the relevance of ethics for engineers.

This module discusses the responsibility of engineers. We will investigate what exactly responsibility is, distinguishing between passive responsibility for things that happened in the past and active responsibility for things not yet attained. Furthermore, we will discuss the professional responsibility of engineers, examine the consequences for this responsibility, such as whistle-blowing and the application of the precautionary principle.

In this module, we discuss the role of codes of conduct in engineering. In particular, we focus on professional codes as they have been proposed by professional engineering societies and on corporate codes, as they have been formulated by companies. We discuss these two types of codes, their structure and their content, and a number of common objections that have been levelled against codes of conduct. This includes the problem that someone is acting according to the code, but that it may nevertheless lead to dismissal.

In this module we will discuss some ethical theories that have been developed by various philosophers. Ethical theories help us to sort out our thinking and to develop a coherent and justifiable basis for dealing with moral questions. The role of ethical theories is to provide certain arguments or reasons for a moral judgment. They provide a normative framework for understanding and responding to moral problems, so improving ethical decision-making or, at least, avoiding certain shortcuts, such as neglecting certain relevant features of the problem or just stating an opinion without any justification. In this module we shall therefore introduce three of the most well-known ethical theories: consequentialism, duty ethics and virtue ethics. These theories each have their own criteria with which they determine whether an action is right or wrong. Before we go into these three theories we shall discuss what we mean by morality and ethics, and we shall look into the points of departure of ethics: values, norms, and virtues. These points of departure often recur in ethical theories.

Engineers will encounter in their professional life some difficult moral situations. Such situations call for moral judgment, using the tools we have introduced in the preceding modules. However, moral judgment is not a straightforward or linear process in which you simply apply ethical theories to find out what to do. Instead it is a process in which the formulation of the moral problem, the formulation of possible ‘solutions’, and the ethical judging of these solutions go hand in hand. This messy character of moral problems, however, does not rule out a systematic approach. In this module we describe a systematic approach to problem solving that does justice to the complex nature of moral problems and moral judgment: the ethical cycle. Our goal is to provide a structured method of addressing moral problems which helps to guide a sound analysis of these problems.

Disasters like the Challenger illustrates the importance of design to engineering. In this case, as in other cases, the design phase was crucial for the proper working of a technology and possible risks and other side effects. The example also shows the importance of activities that are closely related to design like testing, certification and inspection. Second, the example shows that most design involves trade-offs. In wheel design for trains, e.g., a trade-off is faced between energy (and cost) efficiency and comfort. We start with a description of what designing is and what type of ethical issues may arise in the various stages of the design process. Next, we shall take a closer look at one aspect of the design: the choice between different conceptual designs in the light of design requirements and trade-offs.

Technological artefacts can be politically or morally charged. This means that ethics is not just a matter of people but also of things. To better understand, the moral role of technological artefacts, we will elaborate this notion of ‘technological mediation’. After this, the implications of this mediation approach for ethics will be investigated, especially to what extent we can moralize technology.

To a certain extent hazards are inherent to technology. In this module, we shall discuss the moral issues that are raised by the risks and hazards of technologies, and how engineers can deal with those issues. We will discuss the current methods for assessing risks, and the moral acceptability of technological risks.

It is often very difficult to pinpoint responsibility and blame in cases in which many people are involved in an activity and in which many causes contributed to a disaster. Dealing with the problem of many hands requires attention for the distribution of responsibility in engineering. In this module we will discuss how responsibilities are actually distributed in engineering, and how the resulting responsibility distribution can be evaluated in terms of moral fairness (are the appropriate persons held responsible?) and in terms of effectiveness (does the responsibility distribution contribute to avoiding harm and in achieving beneficial results?)