I agree with the author’s overall conclusions that the emotional component of engineering should be acknowledged and supported. It doesn’t come as a surprise to me that technological design is heavily influenced by the designer’s personal moral and ethical views. While there is generally a “chain of command” involved in most engineering projects, the engineer is the primary decision maker when it comes to how the project is used or designed. This is true for efficiency’s sake, if for nothing else. That is not to say that input from the other parties should be disregarded, but it only emphasizes the need for ethically trained engineers.

Roeser shuns the idea that engineers must be robots just because they build them. She points out that ethical and emotional maturity are just as essential to good engineering and design as quantitative skills. The Dual Process Theory separates reactions into two categories: (1) immediate emotional responses and (2) drawn-out rational responses. Roeser challenges this categorization because it suggests that emotional responses cannot be rational, and vice-versa. She gives the example of “moral emotions” (for example, sympathy for victims of a natural disaster) as a response which is the product of both analysis and empathy. She argues that it is these types of processes that should be implemented by an “emotional engineer”.

Perhaps the title of the paper is somewhat misleading. What the author seems to be calling for is an “ethical” engineer rather than an “emotional” one. Pure, uninformed emotion (such as that would fit into the first category in the Dual Process Theory) can be dangerous to the progress of science and technology. For instance, I don’t believe the public, in most cases, is well informed about risks since much of their information is bound to come from equally biased parties through the media. Therefore, their reactions to several innovations in science and technology are not rooted in facts, but rather sensationalism. The lack of solid, clear boundaries between rationality and emotion only emphasize the need for a well-rounded engineer, who is as adept ethically as he is mathematically.

The moral agenda of an engineer likely has a strong influence on his/her designs. As a final point, Roeser points out that quantitative systems used for risk analysis are not applicable to most situations. For example, should a large risk of a minor failure have the same weight as a small risk of a major failure? The solution, according to the author, is to stop relying on a formalized system, and essentially, to follow one’s instincts. Emotions can serve as a context specific tool during the design process. While I agree that purely quantitative risk systems are not sufficient, Roeser’s suggested system is extremely subjective and rather haphazard. While the designer should be able to design within and according to his own personal moral code, there must be a formal system of “checks and balances” to assure some level of uniformity.