DEBATE #3: Do engineers have Social Responsibilities?

Argument #1
Engineering is not a true profession and so society shouldnt hold the profession of engineering, or
individual engineers, to higher ethical standards as it does other true professions such as medicine, law,
and university professors
1. Professions have social responsibilities but engineering is not a profession like medicine and law
and so it does not have the same, higher, social responsibilities
2. Engineering does not serve a crucial social need and high ends that is the basis of an implicit social
contract
3. Engineering is not given the same privileges other professionals so there is not a social contract
that promotes engineering social responsibility
Counterargument
The professionalization of engineering
Engineering does serve crucial social needs (Material well-being through technological systems and
artifacts)
Argument #2
Engineers maintain a value-free objectivity following a scientific methodology absent of any
subjectivity
To make individual engineers socially responsible is to inject a radical, arbitrary, and precarious
subjectivity based on the whims of individual engineers
"...engineering ethics is not, or should not be a medium for expressing ones personal
opinions about life. Engineers do not have the responsibility, much less the right, to
establish goals for society."
Counterargument
Engineers, because they know the technology at the most intimate level, are aware of its risks and
limits as well as its benefits
Engineers could be educated to become more aware of their ethical responsibilities and how to
make ethically responsible decisions regarding its design, development, and deployment
Argument #3
The individual engineer is not qualified to make judgments as to the ethical acceptability or
unacceptability of technology
The choices as to which technology should be designed or built can only be made on the basis of
systems of human values incapable of validation by the scientific and/or the engineering method
It is not the engineer's job, in his or her daily work, to second-guess prevailing standards of
safety or pollution control, nor to challenge democratically established public policy."
Counterargument
Is this a subterfuge for inaction?
Engineers cannot escape social responsibilities for choice of action by alleging some kind of
objectivity not possessed by the layperson or lay citizenry or by claiming incompetence and/or
ignorance as to the social impact of his/her design, and the corresponding public sentiment about
it.
Whose interests does it serve? Does it serve corporate interests at the expense of the interests of
the public when it comes to risk or harm to the citizenry?
Is this an abdication of responsibility?

Argument #4
The corporate engineer lacks the sufficient autonomy necessary to be responsible and ethical
The engineer is in constant conflict with management who often ends up overriding engineering
judgment concerning engineering designs because of their incessant pursuit of the bottom line
Lack of professional autonomy leaves scant room for ethical decision making (but not ethical
judgment)
Engineers are a captive profession in a highly compartmentalized work environment.
Managers choose what to do, divide work up into small groups, and assign each engineer to a
particular one
Communication between engineers and managers is kept to a minimum to assure management
control
Engineers identify options, test them, and report the work to managers
Managers combine these reports with business information they alone have.
Managers decide, engineers merely advise
Corporate engineers are used as hired hands who develop technology with the sole purpose of
advancing the economic demands of the corporation or client
Engineers are not independent professionalsThey are employees
Counterargument
Instead of rigid hierarchical and compartmentalized decision making process of the received view
There exists a highly fluid process depending heavily on meetings and less formal exchange of
information across departmental boundaries
Managers seemed to have little control over what information would reach the engineers
Managers are anxious to get engineers to hook up with one another for collaboration