1. ENGINEERING ETHICS Gene Moriarty CmpE Dept Week 10
CmpE080E
ENGINEERING ETHICS
Gene Moriarty
CmpE Dept
Week 10

2. • In chapter 8 of the EP text entitled Material Ethics we investigated the third and final kind of ethics to be considered in the course. Earlier we had considered Virtue Ethics in terms of the values (virtues) of fairness, honesty, and caring. And we had considered Process Ethics in terms of the values of health & safety, social justice, and environmental sustainability. Now that we have consider Material Ethics in terms of the values of engagement, enlivenment, and resonance, it is time to move on to the last chapter of the EP text entitled Balance.

3. 1 we need not just HCI but also factor in the world. •
But before we jump into the last chapter in EP consider a summary of 18 points of relevance for Focal Engineering and Focal Products:
1 we need not just HCI but also factor in the world.
2 integration not separation of ends and means
3 integration not separation of machinery and commodity
4 augment QOL
5 focused in Gemeinschaft not Gesellschaft
6 contribute to commanding reality not disposable reality
7 examples include Intranet and C. Alexander
8 come to consensual agreement about focal reality within the conversation of the lifeworld
9 focal thing = thingly thing

4. 10 non-focal things are devices which are either RTH or PAH
11 “why” questions are of the essence
12 follow the precautionary principle
13 the modern product disburdens but disengages, whereas the focal product disburdens and engages
14 not only “do no harm” but also “do good”
15 the good is our goal where GOOD =
Engagement / Enlivenment / Resonance
16 even if Virtue Ethics and Process Ethics are all satisfied we could still have problems with Material Ethics
17 the conversations of the lifeworld about focal reality should be democratic, open, honest, just, and non-coercive
18 promote wealth not affluence

5. • The third section of the text The Focal Engineering Venture features the product, the focally engineered product. Chpts 7/8/9 discuss the product, product ethics (called material ethics), and balance.
• There is a general sense most people have that our modern age is somehow out of balance. Check out the movie "Koyanasquatsi" . It's a Hopi Indian word for "Life out of Balance". The movie basically shows you how we've messed up the world with bombs and pollutants and such. There is NO dialogue...just visuals and a great Phillip Glass music score.

6. • In the metaphysical or conceptual sense, balance is used to mean a point between two opposite forces that is desirable over purely one state or the other, such as a balance between the metaphysical Law and Chaos — law by itself being overly controlling, chaos being overly unmanageable, balance being the point that minimizes the negatives of both.
• Some kinds of balance at issue in the text:
1) the old/the new
2) emotion/order
3) general/particular
4) abstract/concrete
5) one/many

7. Key focus in this CHAPTER will be on the balanced engineer as the focal engineer / balanced engineering as the focal engineering venture / balanced product as the focally engineered product.
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• The balanced focal engineer balances Befindlichkeit with Verstehen, actuality with possibility. The actual way we find ourselves entails having a mood or state of mind that is actually this way or that. In understanding things we project our possibilities onto the world which is always simultaneously projecting its possibilities onto us. We work over this nexus of possibilities, conceptualizing and organizing it into an understandable whole. To understand something is to have conceptualized it to a given measure. An understanding can be said to be the limit of a conceptualization. Actuality may be more real than possibility but possibility is more meaningful than actuality.

8. • Balanced focal engineers exhibit care, fairness, and honesty in the practice of their work. That work is aimed at health & safety, environmental sustainability, and social justice. Their products harmonize with end-users and their world in an engaging, enlivening, and resonant manner.
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• The balanced focal engineering venture balances local and global concerns. At least initially, focal engineering is local engineering. It starts out in local venues, like what we had called information ecologies or engineering ecologies: class rooms/hospitals/libraries/boardrooms, etc. But the modern engineering we are inheriting has become a global enterprise. Emphasizing the local, focal engineering seeks to balance globalizing and localizing forces. The latter tend toward Gemeinschaft (community of intimacy) and the former toward Gesellschaft (community of functionality).

9. • The focal engineering global / local balance requires a long look at contexts. The notion of place becomes crucial to focal engineering. In the example of Permaculture, which stresses diversity in crops, plants, animals, and trees, relative location with everything in its right place is key. Concrete local place of focal engineering balances abstract global space of modern engineering.
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• The balanced focally engineered product balances the forces of colonization and contextualization. Both forces were rather weak in the pre-modern era of the engineering endeavor though contextualization stood out. Then within modernism and the engineering enterprise colonization became dominant. A new stress on context is required within the focal engineering venture in order to achieve a
colonization/contextualization balance.

10. • A quintessential illustration of this balance: Feenberg’s Primary Instrumentalization (decontextualization, reduction, autonomization, positioning) being balanced by the Secondary Instrumentalization (concretion, vocation, mediation, initiative).
• The focal engineering venture is inherently contextualizing because it deals with “why” questions which point into context and bring context to bear on the multiple stages of the engineering process.
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11. • Focal engineering, in particular the focally engineered product, brings about a balance of the forces of colonization and contextualization. In the person, the focal engineer, we see a balance of state-of-mind and understanding. In the process, both local and global concerns are balanced. In ancient Greek philosophy The Good could be seen as the ground or hypokeimenon underlying all beings. I suggest The Good as the fulcrum which grounds all these notions of BALANCE. The Good is the fulcrum, the point of balance, which is not just the origin but also the goal.

12. • All balances achieved imply engineer practices fairness / honesty / care, engineering aimed at values of health & safety / environmental sustainability / social justice, and engineered honors values of engagement / enlivenment / resonance. Diversity of interpretations of these values calls for conversations, debates, negotiations. If the conversations prove to be fruitful, then The Good is served. Good products will contribute to a good life in a convivial society.
• The goal of the good life is happiness or eudaimonia translated as a life that is “flourishing” or “thriving.” A quality life in a convivial society. Focal products will help us not only to achieve a balanced life but will also help “to circumscribe a commonwealth of the good life.” (Borgmann)
• And what again is a good life? A life lived in pursuit of the good life.

13. Portrait of the Good Life (Richard Gula)
• For the person as engineer we recommended a set of three virtues. Now consider the engineer as person. This might be viewed as the engineer as civilian, or as mother or father, or as consumer, or as … How ought such persons be to lead a good life?
Portrait of the Good Life (Richard Gula)
As an integration of moral and spiritual life ----
Friendship
Humility
Gratitude
Self-esteem
Justice (reaches out to “the lost, the least, the last”)
Solidarity
Fidelity
Trust
Hope
Forgiveness
Hospitality (ties all together) .

14. Practicing the above virtues we ground ourselves in the Good.
• The Good is the ground and the goal of the focal engineering venture ---
Practicing the above virtues we ground ourselves in the Good.
The Good as goal inspires the love (Eros) that calls us to excellence.
The Good inspires the love that aspires to the realm of ideas, the home of the Good.