Ethics education as philosophical history for engineers

Abstract

Ethics education in the engineering curriculum is required by ABET. This paper presents an unconventional approach to meeting this requirement as surveyed and tested in the aerospace engineering department of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, with the intention of having a lasting impact on engineering graduates throughout their working career. All professions have common codes of competence, integrity, and intended good will towards humanity. Often these codes presume internal regulation and constraint to guard against human nature's self-serving inclinations and proclivities. Here, in addition to relying on student exposure to and knowledge of a particular code of ethics involving case studies of ethical situations, historical vignettes of philosophy and mathematics are presented as part of a senior engineering class in intermittent bursts of weekly storytelling that last approximately fifteen minutes to show the evolution of the moral basis underlying our ethical codes and practices from antiquity to the present day. The goal of this effort is to complement and enhance exposure to and information about engineering ethics with philosophical history in a way that generates lasting internalized student concern about engineering ethical behavior; that is, in a manner that facilitates the development of what traditionally has been called a conscience, an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide for the rightness or wrongness of one's decisions and actions. Surveys given before and after the class showed that the engineering students appreciated and benefited from the historical mathematical and philosophical focus on ethics, and that they fully appreciated the significant ethical challenges they will encounter. Their comments labelled this approach as both interesting and unique, and they enjoyed the linkage to many subjects normally confined to the humanities. Their recommendations were noted positively during an ABET visit.