Engineering Ethics |
EGUCHI Takeru |
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【Information and Electronics Engineering･1st semester】
16-1-0464-4447 |
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Objectives |
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Why ethics is necessary for engineers? Why “technology” which is regarded as physical, engineering practical wisdom can be related to the humanistic issues such as “ethics”? ― Starting from these questions, students are expected to recognize that ethical issues are not something unrelated to engineers, by examining various instances through their own thinking process. Finally, students will explore “ how engineers should be,” while gaining a deeper understanding of role and responsibilities in the society as a technical expert.
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Outline |
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It cannot be denied that worldwide destruction of nature is caused, or accelerated to say the least, by the progress of technology. It is a historical fact that the idea that human beings are the ruler on the earth, and the nature is the object of human manipulation, i.e. anthropocentrism and mechanistic view of nature, has been leading the current environmental destruction. As a result, human beings are creating things such as industrial waste, nuclear fuel waste, decommissioned reactor, that cause serious problems to dispose beyond human capability.
What is to be asked here is the question “how engineers should be,” i.e., the role of engineers. Technology gain its “social” or “public” meaning, as soon as it is presented to the sociaty as a product from the laboratory or factory. To what extent can we then call engineers to account, when a trouble occurred? Is the “tool” in itself evil? Is it just the matter of self-responsibility of the people who “use” it? Or is the person who “created” it responsible for the accident? What does the “social responsibility” of engineers mean?
Let us think together, in a essential manner, about the relation between technology and human beings from the ethical point of view, before working in the real world. The impotant thing is to notice that the problems which are presented have close relation to the matters we are working on. From there, thinking can start.
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