Engineering Responsibility for Hazardous Technologies

Abstract

New philosophical viewpoints emerging from the engineering academic community suggest that engineering is not a science (nor an art) of any kind. The motivation for this paper, then, is concern for whether these new ideas about the nature of engineering serve to differentiate any moral responsibilities of engineers from those of scientists. Questions like “What are the moral responsibilities of engineers?’ from the point of view that engineering is not a science are reexamined. The main argument (or thesis) put forward in this paper is that engineers should inform the public of the limits of scientific knowledge residing in engineering judgments, and the degrees to which nonscientific practices influence these judgments. In order to establish a moral basis for this argument, focus is placed on engineering judgments about the fitness of hazardous technologies for public consent of exposure.