Engineering as philosophical ethics

This paper is a call to action. The responsibility of engineers in the globalised economy of today goes well beyond the technical and empirical. Engineers must face the value issues that conflict policy makers and offer positive recommendations that are developed as an essential part of the engineering process itself. At present, this is not possible because engineering labours under the false presupposition that its choices are technical and otherwise value neutral. Engineering needs to expand its own discourse to make value deliberations interior to it. This is different than professional ethics and most closely resembles philosophy. Engineering both interprets the world that people find and makes the world that people live in. For this reason, engineering must embrace the questions of human value on a fundamental level. This requires that engineering methods be revised in order to incorporate the human sciences.