THE ETHICAL COMPONENT OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION

1. THE ETHICAL COMPONENT OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION Wojciech Gasparski Business Ethics Center a joint unit ofKozminski University and the Polish Academy of Sciences (Institute of Philosophy & Sociology) Warsaw, Poland wgaspars@alk.edu.pl

2. Ethical dimension of engineer’s activity • Engineer’s activity, as any other professional activities, needs not only technological competence but also observance of the norms based on values characteristic for social roles/duties fulfilled by engineers. • This is the subject of Engineering Ethics. • Engineering Ethics is a discipline that is busy with moral problems related to technology and engineering as well as to the contexts of their impact. • The content of Engineering Ethics is situated in the crossroad of: • Ethics (moral philosophy) • Philosophy of Technology • Engineering Studies (knowledge of engineers’ activities) W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

3. Praxiology and the Philosophy of Technology • Praxiology and Philosophy of Technology are twin disciplines • They were born as successors of the same parents devoted to practical thinking and doing: • Aristotle and his immediate followers – pragma = deed, act • Louis Bourdeau -the science of functions • Alfred Victor Espinas -the science of techniques characteristic for human action • Tadeusz Kotarbinski - a general methodology • Ludwig von Mises –an aprioristicfoundation of economics • Mario Bunge - ahuman action theory W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

4. Praxiology and practical disciplines • For many authors praxiology is a theoretical and/or methodological basis for other disciplines of technological character, e.g. of the sciences of the artificial, as Herbert A. Simon called applied/practical disciplines. • It is necessary to stress that both Kotarbiński and Simon identify design as a characteristic feature of the practical/applied sciences. • American technology philosopher Carl Mitcham suggests that the praxiological aspect is widely present in the practice of technology and in disciplines that serve as its theoretical basis. W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

5. Praxiology speaks... • Praxiologically speaking, technology does not exist merely to satisfy the human need in an effective and efficient way. • It is not possible to want and desire a goal that is met and satisfied simply by the means of “good work.” • The problems of the modern world and the questions we must ask are much more complicated than what the voluntaristic model dictates. • Our preparatory actions are complicated, demanding, and initially mysterious, perhaps even partly subconscious. W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

6. Engineering ethics & management ethics • Although Engineering Ethics is a professional ethics of engineers, it is – according to many authors – related to management/business ethics as well, for engineers are either managers or make decisions of economic importance. • Therefore moral aspects of engineering and business are mutual dependent, especially in relation to the issue of quality, production organization, and social responsibility of the effects of the products and procedures. W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

7. Ethical considerations are imminent • Important questions: • Can we trust the producers of technology? • Can we trust the users? • When technology is commercialized, how are the relevant responsibilities created, distributed, and controlled? • Are the free markets responsible at all, or is this notion already obsolete? • Technology and the market are inseparable now, at the same time responsible behaviour is more important than ever. • Neo-Luddism has a point as long as technology and its commercial applications are not under responsible control. • The free world is free in the sense that excludes responsibility and its ethics. • Can we trust technological players? W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

8. Towards the technology examined • Heraclitus says that unexamined life is not worth living. • In the same way one can claim that unexamined technology is not worth applying. • It creates more harm than benefits. • We have a moral duty to examine our tools and not just assume, naively, that they are neutral and innocent simply because they are tools. W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

9. The importance of an actor/inventor • Praxiology today plays a similar role in the domain of action as logic plays in the domain of cognition; however, logic is not enough. • Efficacy of action depends not only on nature, but also, maybe to a greater degree even, on culture. • Praxiology as such offers an insight into the reality it studies, but the use of its discoveries depends on people, as the actors. • This use is more indirect than direct and needs the actor’s reflection of his or her own practicality. • Therefore the more an actor is a reflective practitioner, the greater is the efficacy of his or her action. W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

10. Engineers as reflective practitioners • The importance of the moral aspects of engineering activity speaks for its presence in engineering education as a part of relevant curricula. • Engineers should be educated as reflective practitioners. W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

11. The concept of a reflective practitioner • A reflective practitioner is an actor who, according to Donald A. Schön, has the following skills: • is able to acquire new abilities • is able to acquire new knowledge • is able to prepare an action conceptually (to design) • is able to evaluate an action multidimensionally in the space I have called as the “triple E” for: • effectiveness • efficiency • ethicality W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

12. E-ss The "double E" E-cy • A person carrying out an action (the actor) does it sometimes better, sometimes worse. • Praxiology uses two dimensions to measure the results of actions: effectiveness and efficiency. • Effectivenessrelates the effect attained in action to what was intended – the goal of the action • the action is the more effective the greater the degree in which the goal of the action is realized • Efficiency compares the effect with the resources used in the action • the action is the more efficient the more shrewdly the resources were used in its course • Effectiveness and efficiency together (the “double E”) are called the efficacy of action W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

13. Axiological context of human actions • The praxiological “double E” is not sufficient to explain human action in society, in a community of other people. • Acts of choice made by people are not limited to formal choices alone. • One thing that must not be disregarded when analyzing action is its axiological context, resulting from the fact that action is undertaken by the subject always in a community that is a fragment of a greater whole – society. • Both the community of which the acting subject is a member and the society as a whole have their attitude toward the actions of the subjects constituting these groups, determined by the dominating values • It is due to these values that some actions receive social approval while others do not. • Approved actions are those that serve good as defined on the grounds of the dominating values, while disapproval concerns those actions that cause evil in the sense of the actions’ axiological context. W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

14. Ethical judgment • Apart from its praxiological dimension (effectiveness and efficiency making up an action’s efficacy), engineering & business activity, like any human activity, is subject to ethicaljudgment • It reflects the framework of social acceptance for defining the objectives and using means to achieve them that are typical of the culture of the society whose members are involved in the activity in question. • Ethics adds the third "E" to the praxiological "double E" W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

15. The "triple E" • Analysing business activities according to any of the three dimensions: effectiveness, efficiencyor ethicality, is methodologically justified. • It is methodologically justified to express the dimensions of efficacy (effectiveness and efficiency) in monetary terms. • Meanwhile, it is methodologically improper to carry out business activities, i.e. synthesize it, without taking into account the “triple E”, i.e. all three of these characteristics of action. • It is methodologically improper to reduce ethicality to the measurable space, i.e. to express ethicality in monetary terms. • Ethicality is the qualitative condition sine qua non that allows only for the performance of engineering & business activities that meets this condition. • Ethicality of engineer’s activity, therefore, is a primary norm that defines the endo- and exo-morality of engineering and business, while economic efficacy, i.e. effectiveness and efficiency in monetary terms, is a secondary norm among the norms defining the social order of the activity in question. W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

16. The needs of the design approach • Over a quarter of a century ago I presented a paper “A Designing Human Society: A Chance or a Utopia?” [Gasparski 1984]. • The “Managing as Designing” UN Global Forum (2009) was a good opportunity to revisit the idea expressed in the paper following the proverb that novelty is an old stuff forgotten long enough. Let me, therefore, to punctuate the main issues raised in the paper referred. • It seems that raising the idea of ‘designing society” could be a chance to overcome threats and to slow their rate of increase. […] Acceptance of the proposed policy requires making rather difficult decisions on a global scale, decisions concerning three main problems: • First, the fallacious axiom of unlimited resources available to man must be rejected with all its consequences. • Second, the survival of mankind should be regarded as a supreme goal for all acting members of the species Homo sapiens, living now and in the future. • Third, solving (in the epistemological sense) practical problems has to be regarded as the only method for making decisions concerning the practical behavior of man. • Design conceived as conceptual preparation of action (change) should become a way of solving practical problems; the society accepting this way and acting according to it is suggested to be called the designing society. [Gasparski, W. W., 1984/ 2009, http://connect.case.edu/p84955584/]. W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

17. Moral dimensions of designs/innovations etc. • In the domain of designing two types of moral dimensions are identified: • endomorality • egzomorality • Endomorality deals with the moral code of design activity • Egzomorality dels with social responsibility of what is done by professional designers • Both define elements of designer’s accountability: • endomorality in respect of truth and honesty in relation to the designer’s product – a design, innovation etc. • egzomorality in respect to societal benefit and not harm • both in respect to relevancy of what is designed for practical use [Gasparski, W.W., Automation in Construction 12 (2003) 635-640] W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

18. Technological imperative • "Thou shalt design or help implement only projects that will not endanger public welfare, and shalt alert the public against any projects that fail to satisfy this condition.” [Bunge 1985, 310] • Being able to design means being able to make decisions based on the force of argument, not the argument of force, or plus ratio quam vis - to quote the words from the inscription in Jagiellonian University’s Collegium Maius, Cracow. • This is the purpose that should be served by cognitively well-founded knowledge provided to engineers and managers of different specialties by the schools which educate them. W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

19. Conclusions • To remember of the ethical component of engineering education is important for: • Technological changes and major technological innovations often give rise to new value structures or modifications of the existing ones [L. Tondl] • We must always be on guard against becoming slaves to our machines [W.E.Herfel] • [whatever it is, it] has a constant need to know how to solve problems and convert technologies into creative and effective solutions and systems [G. Nadler] • [...]because [...] technology has gained a degree of autonomy alongside with humans [...] we should acknowledge the fact and start thinking on the basis of the facts towards a new ethics of technology [T. Airaksinen] • For more arguments see the pages of this book and other references W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

20. References • E. Agazzi, 1997, Good, Evil and Science (in Polish) with a Forward by W. W. Gasparski, OAK Publishers & -IFiS PAN, Warsaw. • Bunge M., (1985), Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Vol. 7 Part II, Reidel, Dordrecht. • T. Forester, P. Morrison, Computer Ethics, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1995. • W.W. Gasparski, 1984, Understanding Design: The Praxiological-Systemic Perspective, Intersystems Publications, Saside CA; (Revisited for Global UN Forum "Business as an Agent for World Benefit", 2009). • W. W. Gasparski & T. Airaksinenem, eds., 2008, Praxiology and the Philosophy of Technology, Transaction, New Brunswick (USA) – London (UK). • W. W. Gasparski, ed., 2008, Responsible Management Education, 2008, Academic and Professional Publishers, Warsaw. • W. W. Gasparski, 2003, Designer’s Responsibility: Methodological and Ethical Dimensions, Automation in Construction, No 12, pp. 635-640. • W. W. Gasparski, 2002, Good, Evil and Technology: Towards a Design of an Engineering Ethics Course, contr. to XIV European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research. Vienna. • W. W. Gasparski, 2002, Effectiveness, Efficiency and Ethicality in Business and Management, in: L. Zsolnay & W. W. Gasparski, eds., Ethics and the Future of Capitalism, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, N.J. (USA) - London (UK), pp. 117-136. • W.W. Gasparski, L.V.Ryan & S. Kwiatkowski, eds., 2010, Entrepreneurship: Values and Responsibility, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, N.J. (USA) - London (UK). • P. Goujon & B. H. Dubreuil, eds., Technology and Ethics: A European Quest for Responsible Engineering, Peeters, Leuven 2001. • K. K. Humphreys, What Every Engineer Should Know About Ethics, Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York 1999. • A. Siciński, 1995, On Designer’s Responsibility, in: A. Collen & W. W. Gasparski, eds., Design and Systems: General Applications of Methodology, Transaction, New Brunswick (USA) – London (UK), pp. 403-414. • D. A. Schön, 1987, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco. W. Gasparski, The Ethical Component of Engineering Education

21. The door to ethics in engineering education was half-opened only ... ...thank you for that and for your attention