Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, 2312 Via Seville Road NW, Albuquerque, NM, 87104, USA.
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan Tech, 1400 Townsend Dr., Houghton, MI, 49931-1295, USA.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2020 Feb;26(1):65-87. doi: 10.1007/s11948-018-0080-y. Epub 2019 Jan 7.
Engineering is a practice that must function in an environment of incomplete and uncertain knowledge. This environment has become even more difficult in an increasingly complex world. Engineering ethics has to be framed and taught in a way that addresses these realities. This paper proposes a combination of the philosophy of pragmatism and the ethic of care as a possible framework for the practice of engineering ethics that can provide flexibility and openness to address engineering ethics problems more realistically within the ethos and culture of engineering. Embedding values into practice, pragmatism and care provide a broad, reflective, and corrective framework for engineering ethics that can accommodate the realities in which engineering operates. It is shown that these two approaches are more consonant with design methodologies and have a natural fit with design thinking, so they mesh well with what engineers do and with the complexities of their work today. As humans more and more try to alter the socio-techno-natural world, e.g., the earth's climate, the combination of pragmatism and care will allow enhanced ethical behavior. Alterations to complex adaptive systems will produce highly uncertain results that require engineers to have a mindset that allows them to act with humility in the face of significant uncertainty and potential catastrophic failures.
工程是一种必须在不完全和不确定知识的环境中运行的实践。在日益复杂的世界中，这种环境变得更加困难。工程伦理必须以一种既能解决这些现实问题，又能体现工程伦理实践的灵活性和开放性的方式来构建和教授。本文提出将实用主义哲学和关怀伦理相结合，作为工程伦理实践的一个可能框架，为工程伦理问题提供一个更现实的解决方案，使工程伦理能够适应工程的精神和文化。将价值观融入实践，实用主义和关怀为工程伦理提供了一个广泛、反思和纠正的框架，可以适应工程运作的现实情况。事实证明，这两种方法与设计方法更为一致，与设计思维自然契合，因此与工程师的工作以及他们今天工作的复杂性非常吻合。随着人类越来越多地试图改变社会-技术-自然世界，例如地球的气候，实用主义和关怀的结合将允许增强道德行为。对复杂自适应系统的改变将产生高度不确定的结果，这要求工程师具有一种心态，使他们能够在面对重大不确定性和潜在灾难性故障时保持谦逊。
