Professional Engineers

Abstract

Professional ethics refer to the rights and obligations of practitioners within any profession or sector. Engineering ethics can be discussed based on the nature of the engineer profession and its implications for professional morality. This paper takes the virtue ethics lens to discuss engineering ethics and argues that, since human and social good derives from professional virtues, protecting the public interest is a professional virtue of engineers. Further, since the protection of the public interest redounds to human and social good, then engineers are bound by the nature of their professional role to achieve these two interconnected aims, namely, protecting the public interest and promoting human good. The importance of virtues is eminent in the way an engineer improves her professional conduct and this has an impact on the social environment and on human good in general. Given an engineer’s concern with the broad public needs of people, the engineer’s function counts as a morally good role, and therefore can be described as one that can lead to human flourishing.

Virtue Ethics for Responsible Innovation

“…We also found relevant articles in the present journal, e.g., on courage (Harris 1999), love (Harris 2002), inquisitiveness (Harris 2011), on combining Aristotelian and Confucian virtue traditions (Hackett andWang 2012, Shen-bai 2017), and on virtues that promote ethical corporate leadership (Klein 1995), servant leadership (Lanctot and Irving 2010), sustainability , and working towards public interests (Stelios 2020).…”

“…• magnanimity (Vallor 2016), which refers to a disposition that enables and encourages moral ambition and moral leadership (152) and a "willingness to make self-sacrifice" (Pritchard 2001); • generosity, a disposition to "make the world a better place" (Shapin 2008: 312), to promote public interests (Stelios 2020); • and empowerment, "a disposition and a willingness to share power with others, especially with prospective 'users,' and to 'let go of control'" (Steen 2013) or servant leadership (Lanctot and Irving 2010).…”