Engineering ethics, also known as engineer ethics, is the study of moral principles and codes of conduct of engineering technicians (including technicians, assistant engineers, engineers and senior engineers) in engineering activities, including engineering design and construction, as well as engineering operation and maintenance. This is a new field of applied ethics. It is put forward from the "engineering problem". Raising these problems to the moral level will not only help improve the moral quality and level of engineering and technical personnel; It is also helpful to ensure the engineering quality and avoid the engineering risks to the maximum extent.
Development of engineering ethics
Concerns about the monthly welfare increase in 19 century
With the continuous evolution of19th century, engineering has gradually developed into a specialized profession, and most engineers consider themselves as independent professional practitioners or technical employees of large enterprises. The bosses of large enterprises strive to maintain the inherent relationship between labor and capital, and there is a considerable degree of tension between them.
In the United States, due to the developed industry and prosperous business, more and more people choose to work as engineers, which makes it imperative to establish trade unions. During this period, four engineering associations were mainly developed: American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE, 185 1), American Society of Electrical Engineers (AIEE, 1884), american society of mechanical engineers (ASME, 1880) and American Society of Mining Engineers (AIME,/kloc). Most members of ASCE and AIEE are knowledgeable and professional engineers, while some members of ASME and almost all members of AIME are technical engineers.
At that time, ethics were often considered to be related to personal responsibility and honor, and should not be clearly defined.
The turning point of the 20th century.
1At the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 20th century, a series of major structural damage events occurred, including some amazing bridge damage events, especially the Achta Bula River railway disaster (1876), Taihe Bridge disaster (1879) and Quebec Bridge. These disasters have had a profound impact on engineers, forcing the whole industry to actively face any shortcomings in technology and construction work, and strictly consider whether there are defects in moral standards.
In order to cope with these shocks, three of the four engineers' associations mentioned above have formulated moral standards. AIEE was adopted on 19 12. ASCE and ASME are also implemented in 19 14. AIME has not adopted any moral principles in its academic history.
Due to concerns about professional behavior and public safety, which are usually highlighted from the collapse of these bridges and the Boston molasses disaster (19 19), a movement that has been going on for some time has gained momentum, that is, engineers are required to obtain formal certification before they can work in their professional fields. This certification process includes meeting certain conditions of professional education, practical experience, examination and verification.
In the following decades, most American state governments and Canadian provincial governments have issued laws and regulations requiring engineers to have practice licenses, or authorized trade unions to issue professional titles through special legislation. According to the Canadian model, if an engineer's work field may cause any risk to life, health, property, public welfare and the environment, the engineer must obtain a license. In just a few years after 1950, all provincial governments began to strictly implement this regulation.
The American model usually requires only those engineers who work independently to have licenses, while those engineers who work in large enterprises, educational institutions and government agencies do not need licenses. This continues the division of independent work or work in a large enterprise mentioned above. Professional associations usually adopt conventional moral standards. On the other hand, technical societies generally do not do this, but hold ethical education on time, share ethical resources, and let members participate automatically or compulsorily. If this method is not standardized, should it be more biased towards the public or employers? In large enterprises, sometimes in professional behavior, this question is still unanswered.
Recent development
Efforts to promote ethical behavior continue. In addition to the efforts made by trade unions and chartered organizations for their members, the roots of the "ring of engineers" in Canada and the "order of engineers" in the United States can be traced back to the collapse of the Quebec Bridge in 1907. They all require members to swear to abide by moral behavior and wear symbolic rings to remind them of their commitment to maintain the highest moral standards and professional attitudes.
In the United States, the National Association of Professional Engineers published "Code of Ethics for Engineers" in 1946, and adopted "Rules of Professional Conduct" as an appendix in 1957. The code of ethics formally adopted in 1964 was developed from this document. For different situations, how to correctly implement these rules is a great knowledge. Therefore, 1954 specially set up an ethics review committee to guide members on how to abide by the rules. Ethical cases are usually very complicated, and there are few simple answers. However, the Ethics Review Committee has nearly 500 consultants' opinions stored in files, which can help engineers deal with various ethical issues.
Nowadays, professional associations and enterprise groups all over the world have been able to deal with bribery and corruption directly and effectively. However, new problems need to be discussed and dealt with one after another, such as offshore outsourcing, sustainable development, environmental protection and so on.
Principles of engineering ethics [1]
No matter how people view ethical conflicts in engineering practice, and whether engineering ethics is practical ethics or applied ethics, engineering ethics always faces ethical conflicts in engineering practice and solves problems. In the face of complex and diverse specific problems and their backgrounds, as well as different morals and values, moral principles play an important role. In short, engineering ethics is the study of the moral principles and behavioral norms of engineering technicians in engineering activities. The main research task of engineering ethics is to explore and formulate the basic principles of engineering ethics. The higher the ethical principle, the less conducive it is to measuring specific issues, such as "engineering benefits mankind". The more specific ethical principles are, the less universal they are, and a specific principle may no longer be applicable after changing the time and space of the scene. The principle of a discipline is to be as universal as possible, and as a practical engineering ethics, it requires to be as targeted as possible, because it has to face fresh engineering practice and solve specific problems. This makes the formulation of engineering ethics principles in an awkward position, and scholars have been trying to find a balance between them.
China's engineering ethics principle was born out of the technical ethics principle. During the period of 1999, when China's engineering ethics was still in the crevice of science and technology ethics, Xu Shaojin saw the independent value of technology ethics, and advocated separating technology ethics from science and technology ethics, taking technology humanitarianism, technology patriotism, technology public welfare, harmony between man and nature and equality and reciprocity within technology subjects as moral principles, norms and moral value goals that people should follow in technology activities. The following year, in Science and Technology Daily on February 15, Gan put forward three basic principles of science and technology ethics, namely, no harm, equality and respect for the right to self-determination, and gave the application scope and order of importance of these three principles with examples. This should be the prelude of China's engineering ethics principle. Deng Xiaoping's "Engineering Ethics" was published in 1999, and Chinese academic circles began to explore the principles of engineering ethics. China's principles of engineering ethics have generally gone through a process from abstraction to concreteness, from unconventional putting forward the principles of engineering ethics to putting forward the principles of engineering ethics. At the same time, the limitations of its use are discussed, and the abstract ethical principles are combined with concrete engineering practice. Generally speaking, China's definition of engineering ethical principles has three types. First, from the project itself. Xiao Ping first regarded humanitarianism as the first principle of engineering ethics. In 200 1 year, the national seminar on ethics of science and technology put forward four ethical norms of engineering ethics: responsibility norms, including the responsibilities of decision makers, designers, engineering contractors and everyone; Fair and standardized, that is, the distribution of benefits should be fair; Safety specifications, including engineering design safety and ecological safety; Risk specification, that is, fully consider all kinds of risks brought by engineering construction and formulate corresponding preventive measures. The following year, Yu Mochang clearly pointed out that the main ethical norms of engineering ethics are responsibility, fairness, safety and risk. Second, it is put forward from the perspective of engineer occupation. Although Zhu did not put forward any engineering ethics principles in a clear-cut manner, he clearly believed that quality, safety, honesty, integrity and justice were the most important professional ethics principles for engineers, and he specially wrote an article to demonstrate them. Third, it is put forward from a certain range of conditions. Ning Xiansheng and others think that engineering ethics should include people-oriented principle, caring for life principle, safe and reliable principle, caring for nature principle, fairness and justice principle, and specify that the above are just some general principles, and engineering ethics should be more specific in some specific engineering technology fields. This shows that the discussion of engineering ethics principles by China scholars has entered the cognitive stage of universality and concreteness. Another scholar thinks about its enlightenment to the construction of engineering ethics in China from the process of formulating ethical norms by the official association of industrial engineers in Valencia, for example, the culture and environment must be analyzed before formulating ethical norms for engineering; Some scholars not only put forward the ethical principles that engineers and technicians should follow & the first principle of human bioethics, the principle of high efficiency and the principle of public interest, but also analyzed the historical process of the formation of these principles. This shows that the construction of engineering ethics principles in China has gone out of the stage of "filling gaps" and "doing something but not doing something" and entered a deeper research stage.
Practical methods of engineering ethics [1]
There is little research on the practical approach of engineering ethics in academic circles. The reason is simple: "reasonable" is easier than "doing". What's more, for engineering ethics, "reasoning" is not easy-the whole discipline is still in its initial development stage in China.
One of the few methods to study the practice of engineering ethics is metaphysics and metaphysics. Metaphysics is what kind of spirit we are required to practice engineering ethics on the spiritual level, while metaphysics is to explore how to apply engineering ethics in different engineering practices. As a discipline introduced from the west, engineering ethics is like a plant, culture is like air and sunshine, and national conditions are like soil and water. On the one hand, soil and water should be used to raise a flower and a tree, and "original soil" should be brought when transplanting, so as to create environmental conditions close to the original growth as much as possible. Zhang Yongqiang and others regard the spirit of contract and humanism as "original soil"-when the project effect affects the public interests or fundamental interests of all mankind, and laws and specific ethical norms cannot restrain these engineering behaviors, the spirit of contract can be regarded as the final spiritual binding force, and the integrity and morality in project implementation can be highlighted in a humanitarian way. Li Bocong took "Absolute Commanding Ethics and Coordination Ethics —— Four Talks on Engineering Ethics" as the topic, and combed the restraint mechanism of China traditional cultural resources similar to Kant's absolute command to human beings in the history of China.