This module discusses the responsibility of engineers. We will investigate what exactly responsibility is, distinguishing between passive responsibility for things that happened in the past and active responsibility for things not yet attained. Furthermore, we will discuss the professional responsibility of engineers, examine the consequences for this responsibility, such as whistle-blowing and the application of the precautionary principle.

In this module, we discuss the role of codes of conduct in engineering. In particular, we focus on professional codes as they have been proposed by professional engineering societies and on corporate codes, as they have been formulated by companies. We discuss these two types of codes, their structure and their content, and a number of common objections that have been levelled against codes of conduct. This includes the problem that someone is acting according to the code, but that it may nevertheless lead to dismissal.

In this module we will discuss some ethical theories that have been developed by various philosophers. Ethical theories help us to sort out our thinking and to develop a coherent and justifiable basis for dealing with moral questions. The role of ethical theories is to provide certain arguments or reasons for a moral judgment. They provide a normative framework for understanding and responding to moral problems, so improving ethical decision-making or, at least, avoiding certain shortcuts, such as neglecting certain relevant features of the problem or just stating an opinion without any justification. In this module we shall therefore introduce three of the most well-known ethical theories: consequentialism, duty ethics and virtue ethics. These theories each have their own criteria with which they determine whether an action is right or wrong. Before we go into these three theories we shall discuss what we mean by morality and ethics, and we shall look into the points of departure of ethics: values, norms, and virtues. These points of departure often recur in ethical theories.

Engineers will encounter in their professional life some difficult moral situations. Such situations call for moral judgment, using the tools we have introduced in the preceding modules. However, moral judgment is not a straightforward or linear process in which you simply apply ethical theories to find out what to do. Instead it is a process in which the formulation of the moral problem, the formulation of possible ‘solutions’, and the ethical judging of these solutions go hand in hand. This messy character of moral problems, however, does not rule out a systematic approach. In this module we describe a systematic approach to problem solving that does justice to the complex nature of moral problems and moral judgment: the ethical cycle. Our goal is to provide a structured method of addressing moral problems which helps to guide a sound analysis of these problems.

Disasters like the Challenger illustrates the importance of design to engineering. In this case, as in other cases, the design phase was crucial for the proper working of a technology and possible risks and other side effects. The example also shows the importance of activities that are closely related to design like testing, certification and inspection. Second, the example shows that most design involves trade-offs. In wheel design for trains, e.g., a trade-off is faced between energy (and cost) efficiency and comfort. We start with a description of what designing is and what type of ethical issues may arise in the various stages of the design process. Next, we shall take a closer look at one aspect of the design: the choice between different conceptual designs in the light of design requirements and trade-offs.

Technological artefacts can be politically or morally charged. This means that ethics is not just a matter of people but also of things. To better understand, the moral role of technological artefacts, we will elaborate this notion of ‘technological mediation’. After this, the implications of this mediation approach for ethics will be investigated, especially to what extent we can moralize technology.

To a certain extent hazards are inherent to technology. In this module, we shall discuss the moral issues that are raised by the risks and hazards of technologies, and how engineers can deal with those issues. We will discuss the current methods for assessing risks, and the moral acceptability of technological risks.

It is often very difficult to pinpoint responsibility and blame in cases in which many people are involved in an activity and in which many causes contributed to a disaster. Dealing with the problem of many hands requires attention for the distribution of responsibility in engineering. In this module we will discuss how responsibilities are actually distributed in engineering, and how the resulting responsibility distribution can be evaluated in terms of moral fairness (are the appropriate persons held responsible?) and in terms of effectiveness (does the responsibility distribution contribute to avoiding harm and in achieving beneficial results?)