Before taking this class I never thought about the topic of ethics and morals in engineering. I always have had a problem solving attitude towards engineering. If someone were to ask me what engineers are I would simply exclaim with the answer “We are problem solvers” and if someone were to ask me “What about ethics in engineering?” I would have almost given a blank stare. The class has taught me a lot of about ethics and values and its importance in the field of engineering. Moreover, I got to learn about various kinds of ethics such as virtue ethics and normative ethics and ethics as described by various modern and old philosophers.

The following were my learning objectives for this class:

• Understand and analyze the overlap between engineering and humanities
• Truly feel the need to be an ethnically responsible engineer
• Understand the importance and relevance of building or providing ethically sound products and services

There is truly a huge overlap between engineering and humanities in the area of ethics. It is imperative of engineers to be ethical in designing their products however, it is experts in the field of humanities who judge our ethical decisions. How do engineers know what’s ethical and what’s not? They obviously use their subjective views however, sometimes it tends be a little unilateral and biased and requires the opinion of non engineers to evaluate it.

Through the EITN presentations and the critical reflections I truly understand the importance of ethics in engineering. Previously my view of engineering was narrowed down to the idea of problem solving however, after having written a critical reflection on Pawley’s paper I understood how ignorant I had been. Furthermore, by speculating an imaginary conversation with philosophers such as Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart, Henry Ford to name a few, I was able to explore their understanding and opinions on the topic of morals and ethics. I previously also thought that ethics was simply the notion or idea of what’s good and what’s bad. Now, when I look back I chuckle at the simplicity of that definition and how it barely covers what ethics truly means. Ethics, previously to me was a humanities concept with little application to engineering. However, after having read the paper by Kaplan and Garrick about risk analysis and having written a critical reflection on it, I realize the importance of ethics even in very mathematical/technical concepts. The risk analysis failed to account for human emotions and how engineers would act under certain ethical dilemmas. Such a glaring oversight could easily cause massive errors in the calculating the risks.

An ethical engineer is someone who doesn’t simply understand the notion of right or wrong but truly holds a philosophical understanding of ethics and morals and is willing to analyze situations objectively. It is of utmost importance for an ethical engineer to be unbiased and not completely driven by emotions. An ethical engineer should be uncompromising of his personal code of ethics and should be consistent in following them in every situation. The following should be engineer’s role in society:

• Solemnly pledge to design ethical products.
• Discourage the use of unethical experiments and research in academia.
• Be morally responsible for products once they are out in the market for public use.
• Proactively fix products to make sure that they uphold society’s ethical standards.
• Aware fellow engineers about the importance of ethics in engineering.
• Report unethical products that could potentially be dangerous to the public.

Such level of commitment is only possible through introducing ethics classes in undergraduate curriculum. If the importance of ethics in engineering is embedded into the future engineers minds then they will have a much better grasp of it in the professional world. For instance, every engineering class could have a mandatory ethics class which in a way would force students to learn about ethics. Personally, I feel very accomplished having learnt a lot about ethics in engineering and such an understanding will always make me consider ethics in any software or hardware I design.

The art museum trip made me realize, we use modeling and mockup designs in engineering all the time. Models enable us to build real products such as the uc berkeley campus or the art museum itself. Every big design is first represented as a model or a mockup. It helps me explain that a mockup or prototype helps engineers determine its ethical credibility. When I design a product I can foresee the ethical problems it might create or it might solve.

Last but not the least my future learning plans for this class is keep abreast with the current debates in the field of technology. The technology section in bbc news, techcrunch and reuters very often contains articles that are very relevant to ethics in engineering. Reading these articles would be a constant reminder to me about the importance of ethics in engineering. I have also been reading this book on ethics called “Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases” which has excellent case studies on the same topic.