Bono Shih

This article advances the thesis that our values and beliefs about engineering critically impact the teaching of engineering ethics, and our representations and assumptions about engineering are, accordingly, ethical questions we must consider. To illustrate how in broader sociohistorical contexts, different understandings of engineering have shaped expectations of ethics, we provide a historical and contemporary review of the literature. Examining the significance of our thesis for teaching practice, we discuss three case studies of our teaching and critically reflect on how our representation of engineering limited the breadth and depth of ethics. Considering that instruction seemingly unrelated to ethics, in fact, influences how engineering ethics is understood and taught, our conclusion calls for critical examination of our beliefs about engineering. This entails, among others, up-to-date knowledge about the changing values of our rapidly-developing engineering fields and how they raise social, ethical questions of engineering relevant specifically to our teaching situation.

This article calls into question the simplistic identification of modern technology with quantitative efficiency in order to develop three main themes. First, I establish that technology, broadly construed, is the use of knowledge and resources to meet specific human needs. Accordingly, dominant technical practice that favors efficiency and numerical criteria and discriminates against other technologies should more appropriately be called “technology of technology.” Second, I delineate how dominant practice in engineering is an exemplar of technology of technology, when it becomes socially ambitious while remaining technically provincial and bears upon our personal and institutional life. Third, I illustrate what I call the “subjugated technical practice,” which exists under the rule of the dominant technical practice. Recognizing the importance of subjugated technical practices to engineering, I propose the concept of “critical technology of technology,” which is intended to advance technological alternatives and make critique an essential part of our technological world.

This article calls into question the simplistic identification of modern technology with quantitative efficiency in order to develop three main themes. First, I establish that technology, broadly construed, is the use of knowledge and resources to meet specific human needs. Accordingly, dominant technical practice that favors efficiency and numerical criteria and discriminates against other technologies should more appropriately be called “technology of technology.” Second, I delineate how dominant practice in engineering is an exemplar of technology of technology, when it becomes socially ambitious while remaining technically provincial and bears upon our personal and institutional life. Third, I illustrate what I call the “subjugated technical practice,” which exists under the rule of the dominant technical practice. Recognizing the importance of subjugated technical practices to engineering, I propose the concept of “critical technology of technology,” which is intended to advance technological alternatives and make critique an essential part of our technological world.

This chapter engages with one dominant thought in Western engineering ethics: engineering ethics is ethics of professional engineers; when there are no engineers in charge, it is not a substantive issue of engineering ethics. Taking a linguistic philosophical approach to engineering, I start with a brief etymology of “engineering” in English, and describe how its closest equivalent in the Chinese language, gong cheng, despite carrying selected senses of Western “engineering,” has retained in large part its traditional meanings that concern a wide scope of technological activities much broader than the narrow, technical purview of a professional engineer. Based on the interpretations of engineering in the Chinese language, my study demonstrates how engineering ethics in Taiwan encompasses all the relevant participants that have an influence on engineering work. In enlisting non-engineers into the engineering profession, engineering ethics in Taiwan fosters a community of “engineering personnel” that are expected to work collectively to make engineering work better and safer for the public. This inclusive genre of engineering ethics not only reconciles the assumed antagonism between engineers and non-engineers by including what is often a professional engineer’s “environment” in the proper field of engineering and its ethics. It is also inherently aligned with contextual approaches to engineering ethics, presenting a strong case for the relevance of “macroethics” and science and technology studies, which are sometimes played down by engineering ethicists. My hope is that engineering ethics in Taiwan as presented here could serve as one paradigm of engineering ethics for the global engineering community and Western engineering ethics.