Department of Philosophy and Ethics, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2013 Sep;19(3):875-91. doi: 10.1007/s11948-012-9421-4. Epub 2012 Dec 7.
Should environmental, social, and economic sustainability be of primary concern to engineers? Should social justice be among these concerns? Although the deterioration of our natural environment and the increase in social injustices are among today's most pressing and important issues, engineering codes of ethics and their paramountcy clause, which contains those values most important to engineering and to what it means to be an engineer, do not yet put either concept on a par with the safety, health, and welfare of the public. This paper addresses a recent proposal by Michelfelder and Jones (2011) to include sustainability in the paramountcy clause as a way of rectifying the current disregard for social justice issues in the engineering codes. That proposal builds on a certain notion of sustainability that includes social justice as one of its dimensions and claims that social justice is a necessary condition for sustainability, not vice versa. The relationship between these concepts is discussed, and the original proposal is rejected. Drawing on insights developed throughout the paper, some suggestions are made as to how one should address the different requirements that theory and practice demand of the value taxonomy of professional codes of ethics.
工程师应该主要关注环境、社会和经济的可持续性吗？社会正义应该是这些关注点之一吗？尽管我们的自然环境恶化和社会不公正现象的增加是当今最紧迫和最重要的问题之一，但工程伦理准则及其首要条款，其中包含对工程和工程师意义最重要的价值观，尚未将这两个概念与公众的安全、健康和福利相提并论。本文探讨了 Michelfelder 和 Jones（2011）最近提出的将可持续性纳入首要条款的建议，以纠正工程规范中当前对社会正义问题的忽视。该提案基于可持续性的某种概念，将社会正义作为其维度之一，并声称社会正义是可持续性的必要条件，而不是反之。本文讨论了这两个概念之间的关系，并拒绝了最初的提案。本文借鉴了整篇文章中提出的观点，就如何满足专业伦理准则的价值分类法在理论和实践方面的不同要求提出了一些建议。
