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1. Ethics in engineering or engineering in ethics?

   Fore, G. A. ; Hess, J. L. ; Katz, A. ( June 2020 , ASEE annual conference exposition)

   This paper explores how the relationship between ethics and engineering has been and could be framed. Specifically, two distinct framings will be conceptualized and explored: ethics in engineering and engineering in ethics. As with other disciplines, engineering typically subsumes ethics, appropriating it as its own unique subfield. As a framing, ethics in engineering produces specialized standards, codes, values, perspectives, and problems distinct to engineering thought and practice. These form an engineering education discourse with which engineers engage. It is epistemological in its focus, meaning that this framing constructs knowledge of proper disciplinary conduct. On the other hand, engineering in ethics as a framing device insists that engineering become a specialized articulation of ethical thought and action. Here, “engineer” and “engineering” are not nouns but verbs, referring to particular processes and technologies for transformation. One is not an “engineer;” rather, one “engineers.” One is first an ethical subject – an historical aggregate of continuous experiences/becomings – concerned with the pursuit of “the good” in the present; then, when contextually relevant, such a subject’s engineering knowledge and skills may be employed as powerful means for the becoming-good of shared worlds. In this paper, engineering in ethics is further conceptualized through a playful intermingling of an ethic of care, via the scholarship of Joan Tronto, and a Deweyian approach to ethical inquiry. Tronto’s four elements of care – attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness – are joined with what are arguably four key components of Dewey’s process of ethical inquiry: awareness, judgment, experimentation, and iteration. This paper argues that 1) being attentive is required to achieve awareness of a given need or problem, 2) taking responsibility is a necessary practice for making and acting on one’s judgements related to the need at hand, 3) competence in a relevant skill is needed to experiment with one’s judgements, and 4) careful consideration of how others respond to how one has addressed a need is essential for the purposes of iteration. While all four contribute to the notion of engineering in ethics, the relationship between competence and experimentation is where engineering is most evidently seized as an ethical expression. How one competently wields engineering knowledge and skillfully performs disciplinary techniques is, here, foremost about actively inquiring into how to provide care for a specific need and, in doing so, creating a world aligned with one’s vision of “the good.” This paper will close with a brief consideration of the educational implications of engineering in ethics. 

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2. Modelling Ethical Algorithms in Autonomous Vehicles Using Crash Data

   https://doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2021.3072792  

   Robinson, Pamela ; Sun, Landy ; Furey, Heidi ; Jenkins, Ryan ; Phillips, Christopher R. ; Powers, Thomas M. ; Ritterson, Ryan S. ; Xie, Yuanchang ; Casagrande, Rocco ; Evans, Nicholas G. ( May 2021 , IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems)

   null (Ed.)

   In this paper we provide a proof of principle of a new method for addressing the ethics of autonomous vehicles (AVs), the Data-Theories Method, in which vehicle crash data is combined with philosophical ethical theory to provide a guide to action for AV algorithm design. We use this method to model three scenarios in which an AV is exposed to risk on the road, and determine possible actions for the AV. We then examine how different philosophical perspectives on agent partiality, or the degree to which one can act in one’s own self-interest, might address each scenario. This method shows why modelling the ethics of AVs using data is essential. First, AVs may sometimes have options that human drivers do not, and designing AVs to mimic the most ethical human driver would not ensure that they do the right thing. Second, while ethical theories can often disagree about what should be done, disagreement can be reduced and compromises found with a more complete understanding of the AV’s choices and their consequences. Finally, framing problems around thought experiments may elicit preferences that are divergent with what individuals might prefer once they are provided with information about the real risks for a scenario. Our method provides a principled and empirical approach to productively address these problems and offers guidance on AV algorithm design. 

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3. Role-based Morality, Ethical Pluralism, and Morally Capable Robots1

   Zhu, Qin ; Williams, Tom ; Wen, Ruchen ( January 2021 , Journal of contemporary Eastern Asia)

   Ess, Charles (Ed.)

   Dominant approaches to designing morally capable robots have been mainly based on rule-based ethical frameworks such as deontology and consequentialism. These approaches have encountered both philosophical and computational limitations. They often struggle to accommodate remarkably diverse, unstable, and complex contexts of human-robot interaction. Roboticists and philosophers have recently been exploring underrepresented ethical traditions such as virtuous, role-based, and relational ethical frameworks for designing morally capable robots. This paper employs the lens of ethical pluralism to examine the notion of role-based morality in the global context and discuss how such cross-cultural analysis of role ethics can inform the design of morally competent robots. In doing so, it first provides a concise introduction to ethical pluralism and how it has been employed as a method to interpret issues in computer and information ethics. Second, it reviews specific schools of thought in Western ethics that derive morality from role-based obligations. Third, it presents a more recent effort in Confucianism to reconceptualize Confucian ethics as a role-based ethic. This paper then compares the shared norms and irreducible differences between Western and Eastern approaches to role ethics. Finally, it discusses how such examination of pluralist views of role ethics across cultures can be conducive to the design of morally capable robots sensitive to diverse value systems in the global context. 

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4. Evaluating Engineering Students’ Moral Sensitivity in a Natural Disaster Context

   Lapatin, M. ; Barrens, S. ; & Kim, K. ; Padgett Walsh, K. ; Feinstein, S. ; Rutherford, C. ; Nguyen, L. ; Faust, K. ( August 2022 , ASEE PEER)

   Engineered systems are designed to serve societal needs, from bridges providing mobility to communication systems enabling the transfer of information. It is essential that engineers recognize the social impact of their work to ensure they provide equitable benefits across communities when implementing such systems. In times of crisis, such as after natural disasters, these ethical considerations and awareness of community needs are especially important. Ethical development must begin when engineers are still students so that they can be trained to consider ethical issues before they begin working. Ethical development can be observed using James Rest’s Four-Component Model of Morality: moral sensitivity, moral judgement, moral motivation, and moral behavior. Previous work has focused largely on the second stage, moral judgement, which describes the ability to determine which action is morally right when confronted with an ethical issue. Here, however, we focus on the first stage, moral sensitivity, emphasizing one’s ability to recognize a moral issue. Studies show that while moral sensitivity does not always lead to moral behavior; moral sensitivity can help explain variances in moral behavior. Researchers argue that pinpointing students’ gaps in moral sensitivity can help educators identify gaps in engineering ethics curriculum. Towards this goal, we interviewed undergraduate engineering students to evaluate their moral sensitivity, using a current event, the 2021 Hurricane Ida in Southern Louisiana, as background. This natural disaster provided a useful context to evaluate moral sensitivity due to the complex effects of such a crisis on engineered, natural, and social systems. The story is framed using Lind’s Indicators of Ethical Sensitivity, providing the story characteristics, stakeholders, and consequences. We asked interviewees to provide the final indicator—ethical issues. Using a qualitative content analysis, we found that interviewees connected several ethical issues with the primary consequence of socioeconomic inequities. Identified ethical issues included topics of climate change, infrastructure, disaster planning, and corporate/government accountability. Implications of this study include recommendations for future moral sensitivity research and applications to improve classroom learning. 

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5. Complexity, Right Action, and the Engineering Curriculum

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34317  

   Cheville, R. A. ; Heywood, J. ( June 2020 , American Society for Engineering Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exhibition)

   oday’s engineering students face a very different world than their predecessors. As engineering has adapted to a more global and interconnected economy, the issues that face today’s engineers have become more complex. In a highly networked world notions of the impact of an engineer’s actions on others, the basis for moral and ethical behavior, also become more complex. The definition of complex here captures higher-order and emergent behaviors, situations that can change rapidly, limitations to predictability, and behavior arising from interactions rather than innate to components. While ethics has remained central to engineering education and in general has retained its deontological basis, the ideas the serve as the basis for engineering ethics have changed over time and can be expected to change in the future. The fact that the future ethical challenges that engineering students will face will be distributed and complex while most engineering curricula focus on simplified systems and decisions indicates emerging challenges for effectively addressing engineering ethics within the curriculum. Frameworks that distinguish simple and complicated from complex systems—in which outcomes are more uncertain—emphasize that action becomes more important than knowledge. In other words, it is more important to do what is right, even if one’s actions are imperfect, than know what is right to do. This paper explores the intersection of engineering curricula and engineering ethics from the perspective of “right action”, that is being able in act in ways that lead to ethical outcomes. It is argued that by focusing predominately on knowledge and situating learning in academic settings engineering curricula miss opportunities for developing capabilities for action. Through this lens the opportunities to address engineering ethics in the curriculum are seen to lie predominately outside traditional coursework. 

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