Technology & Global Justice or Ethics Education for the Global Engineer

1. Technology & Global JusticeorEthics Education for the Global Engineer Mini Conference APPE Meeting March 2010

2. Prologue • Quest – ethic for the global engineer • Engineering – “a theory for changing the outer world before all the relevant facts are in..” Praxistics – “heuristic plus argument used to get commitments to some plan that contains it” Taft Broome • Also poeisis • Technology : The framework in which engineering operates

3. Three stages of “history-making” • Articulation • Cross-appropriation • Reconfiguration - Spinosa, Flores and Dreyfus in Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the Cultivation of Solidarity We are in the process of articulation – Vesilind, Riley, Baillie, Catalano

4. Framing : salient aspects • The place of ethics – where are we? • The technological system • Simple, complicated, complex • Engineering as an activity in this system • Engineering as a means to “development” • Space, time and energy • Global justice in the context of technology • The ethic of care in engineering

6. A new imperative “Pre-industrial ethics: tacit premises: > human good was readily determinable > range of human action and, therefore responsibility, was narrowly circumscribed” “nature of human action has changed, and since ethics is concerned with action, calls for a change in ethics” “ new dimension of ethical relevance …no precedent in the standards and canons of traditional ethics.” - Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In search of ethics for a technological age (1983)

7. Engineering ethics • Prolonged nascent stage – 1930’s …1950’s • NSPE Rules of Ethical Conduct 1952 • Rules of professional conduct 1957 Mostly professional behavior in loyalty to the client; but also “Engineers, in the fulfillment of their professional duties, shall: Hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public

8. Teaching engineering ethics Often after design… Kantian vs utilitarian … Case studies of design gone awry Engineer not the decision maker

9. “practical ethics” • “ time of ferment at the frontiers” • Anthony Weston, Toward better Problems (1992) • “how a given value brings together with other values in ways that make social and psychological sense..” - Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Weston >> John Dewey and pragmatism

10. Engaging practical issues - Weston “ethical problems are seldom puzzles,..” “larger and vaguer regions of tension, requiring very different strategies and response,….. concerned with effective and intelligent action in the present and progressive changes in the future…” Ethical teaching: “a process of engagement rather than a more episodic kind of problem solving”

11. Engineer as decision-maker • Rare (exceptions – Admiral Rickover) • Identifying and articulating the problem and its requisites in the original context of human need, rather than puzzle solving after key decisions are made • Full knowledge of capability, reach, human dimensions Task before us

15. Human Ecological Life Cycle Analysis(HELCA) Relevant global system in context: • Local environment, global setting • Identified human need in context • Human dimensions – values, cultures, capacities

16. Human development Development as Freedom (Amartya Sen), Species Survival AND human dignity (Manfred Stanley) Sensitivity to context (David Crocker)

17. Global Justice and indicators Thomas Pogge – Better indices • Population level indices: poverty, development, gender equity • UN Millennium Development Goals, World Bank indices “..indices deeply flawed and therefore distort our moral judgments and misguide resource allocations by governments..” “reflecting critically on how they ought to be measured and tracked across a plurality of diverse natural and social environments.”

18. Systems thinking, complexity and justice • Engineering more than applied science – • Engage the engineer’s agency in problems of global equity and justice ==> sense of agency, creativity and service • Introduce complexity : through ethics, interconnections of space, time, energy • Identity of engineer : “to relieve the condition of mankind” (Bacon)

19. Ethical engineer in the global system Competencies: • Understanding of systems • Ability to ask whether and what technology can answer • Short and long-term consequences Autonomy essential for agency

20. Care: natural affinity with engineering • Respond to need, oriented toward action “A species activity that includes everything we do to maintain, continue and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That would include our bodies, our selves and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web.” - -- Joan Tronto and Berenice Fisher

21. Phases of Care (Tronto) • Attentiveness : Caring about • Responsibility : Taking care of • Competence : Care giving • Responsiveness: Care receiving Cross-appropriation of Care ethic to enhance Justice – to reconfigure an ethic for the global engineer

22. Integrity of Care

23. Care and engineering design

24. Movements in the right direction • Peace engineering – Conference in Bucknell, 2003 • Ethics of Emerging technologies and Ethical Issues in Engineering (NAE, 2003) • Joshua Kardon, “Concept of Care in engineering”, J. of performance of Constructed facilities, August 2005. • Peace Maker (CMU), videogames (Hunter College) • Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace (Union, Smith)

25. Enhanced measures? Technical index Care index Efficiency ------------ Efficacy Economy ---------------------- Ecology Cure ------------------------------ Care