Beever Jonathan, Brightman Andrew O
The Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State University, 131 Sparks Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, Martin Jischke Drive, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2016 Feb;22(1):275-91. doi: 10.1007/s11948-015-9633-5. Epub 2015 Feb 20.
An important goal of teaching ethics to engineering students is to enhance their ability to make well-reasoned ethical decisions in their engineering practice: a goal in line with the stated ethical codes of professional engineering organizations. While engineering educators have explored a wide range of methodologies for teaching ethics, a satisfying model for developing ethical reasoning skills has not been adopted broadly. In this paper we argue that a principlist-based approach to ethical reasoning is uniquely suited to engineering ethics education. Reflexive Principlism is an approach to ethical decision-making that focuses on internalizing a reflective and iterative process of specification, balancing, and justification of four core ethical principles in the context of specific cases. In engineering, that approach provides structure to ethical reasoning while allowing the flexibility for adaptation to varying contexts through specification. Reflexive Principlism integrates well with the prevalent and familiar methodologies of reasoning within the engineering disciplines as well as with the goals of engineering ethics education.
这一目标与专业工程组织既定的伦理准则相一致。虽然工程教育工作者探索了多种传授伦理道德的方法，但尚未广泛采用一种令人满意的培养伦理推理技能的模式。在本文中，我们认为基于原则主义的伦理推理方法特别适合工程伦理教育。反思性原则主义是一种伦理决策方法，它侧重于在特定案例的背景下，将四个核心伦理原则的反思性和迭代性的具体化、平衡和论证过程内化。在工程领域，这种方法为伦理推理提供了框架，同时通过具体化允许灵活适应不同的情境。反思性原则主义与工程学科中普遍且熟悉的推理方法以及工程伦理教育的目标很好地结合在一起。
