Engineering Ethics Studies: From The Perspective Of Practical Effectiveness

Until the late 20th century, engineering ethics was developed along with the professional ethics approach. This approach tends to standardize the ethical ideas in hand, and then considers that how to apply professional norms into engineering practice. This approach has made great contribution in promoting engineering professionalism, enhancing the responsible awareness of engineers, and evoking the consciousness of professional autonomy. However, as science and technology are closely interwoven with society today, this approach encounters certain challenges. For instance, within the sociotechnical contexts, will the given ethical principles continue to be effective and are still able to afford the open, appropriate, and effective interpretations to the engineering ethics issues? Will the existing system of ethical ideas still well keep their effective influences on engineering practice? These questions inevitably make the development trajectory of engineering ethics tend towards the pursuit of practical effectiveness, and such a pursuit attaches great importance to exert the social impacts of engineering ethics.The rises of western philosophical schools as diverse as hermeneutics, practical philosophy, and discourse ethics, as well as the new characteristics unfolded in the assessment orientations, decision making patterns, and risk governance of engineering technologies, both profoundly influence the development of contemporary engineering ethics. Engineering ethics studies from the perspective of practical effectiveness requires adequately using these intellectual resources and building the new theoretical mode in accordance with the new situations and characters in contemporary engineering practice. Through related theoretical analyses, this paper proposes a practical-effective model in engineering ethics studies on the basis of’interpretation’,’operation’, and’dialogue’’Interpretation’in engineering ethics is a process to relate ethical principles to particular situations in engineering practice. Previous efforts in the professional ethics approach insists on an interpretive model from the professional perspective. This model interprets particular ethical issues in the light of not revising the principles and thus enables the interpretative process as the direct application. In contrast, an interpretive model with the social perspective more concerns about the sociocultural contexts and formulates new principles according to the new situations and problems. However, this model only limits at the theoretical level as well as does not have significant impacts on engineers and technologists. Through the dialectic analyses of the two models, this paper proposes a’middle-path’interpretive model which is able not to include the advantages but also prevent the limitations from both of the two models. Above all, it emphasizes the fusion of horizons between professional and social perspectives. On one hand, it can locate the existed ethical principles within the broadened sociocultural contexts and make necessary adjustments according to current circumstances. On the other hand, it relates ethical interpretation to particular engineering professional practice, make ethicists better understand the particular understandings on engineering practice, and thus improve the guiding significances of ethical principles on practical situations.’Operation’in engineering ethics is to connect moral norms with the particular operations in engineering practice. The professional ethics approach emphasizes the impacts of ethical ideas and norms on the minds of engineers, and focuses on propaganda and education. However, it has not been paid enough attention on the particular procedures in engineering practice, and it is only in the particular procedures that the practical effectiveness in engineering ethics is able to be demonstrated. It is only engineers they understand and carry out the ethical requirements in concrete operations that the social functions of engineering ethics can be brought into play. This paper points out that, by using the’stream metaphor’ to conduct social dynamic research on engineering practice, the’midstream stage (R&D process that engineering design is the principle activity)’is the crucial operation section which has become a necessary road to construct the operational effectiveness in engineering ethics. Based on the midstream modulation, operation in engineering ethics initially creatively practice moral norms in engineering practice through the interactive interpretation and thus has positive impacts on engineering practice. Secondly, it strengths the directing function played by moral intuition in engineering practice. Through deep reflections on engineering technologies and ethical principles, it aims at improving moral sensitivities and imaginations and make responsive and effective moral decisions in the new practical situations. Thirdly, based on the interactive interpretations on ethical values, by recognizing the mechanisms of technological mediation, integrating positive ethical values in the midstream stage is hoped to enable artifacts amplify their roles as’mediations’in the use contexts in the’downstream stage’. In this way, the social impacts of engineering ethics could be further extended and perfected.Neither the’interpretation’nor the’operation’could be a’monologic’activity, and both of them are required to be conducted in the effective’dialogue’. The’dialogue’ in engineering ethics evolves the effective dialogues between engineers, ethicists, and the public, and its aim is to deepen the understandings each other, improve the accuracies of interpretation and operation, and coordinate the beneficial interests. However, besides the thoughtful exchanges in interpretation and behavioral interactions in operation, "dialogue’in engineering ethics also includes the one in the societal sense. Based on discourse ethics, dialogue in engineering ethics can be divided into three types:professional, public, and institutional. Professional dialogue aims at ensuring the justice in distribution of interests in engineering projects, public dialogue deals with real-time monitoring on engineering practice, while institutional dialogue is devoted to offering institutional grantees for effectively realizing public interests. Dialogue can help to overcome the information asymmetry and deal with the interests conflicts in the justice way.As China is now at the stage of economic and social transition, many realistic problems that emerge from engineering construction are associated with the issues in engineering ethics, and it makes the project practical effectiveness in engineering ethics more important and urgent. In the tension between tradition and modernity, how to reflect the intellectual resources in engineering ethics in the contexts of contemporary engineering technologies, establish the engineering ethics system concerning to our practical situations, give impacts on engineering practice effectively, and finally accomplish the’unity of knowledge and action’ between ethics and engineering practice is a grand project that is worthwhile to be comprehensively discussed. In regard to the Chinese current situation, this paper also makes some related recommendations additionally.