Designing in Times of Uncertainty: What Virtue Ethics Can Bring to Engineering Ethics in the Twenty-First Century

Jan Peter Bergen, Zoë Robaey*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterAcademicpeer-review

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Abstract

Our world is changing in rapid and unanticipated ways. Given technology’s central role in those changes, engineers face difficult design decisions. In dominant consequentialist and deontological engineering ethics paradigms, making design choices implies having sufficient information on those choices and their trade-offs, which is often lacking. Some scholars have pointed to virtue ethics as an alternative approach to engineering ethics, but how can virtue ethics support engineers in situations of uncertainty? In this chapter, we explore how virtue ethics is conducive to sound engineering in different conditions of uncertainty.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationValues for a Post-Pandemic Future
PublisherSpringer Nature
Pages163-183
Number of pages21
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-031-08424-9
ISBN (Print)978-3-031-08423-2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 14 Sept 2022

Publication series

NamePhilosophy of Engineering and Technology
Volume40
ISSN (Print)1879-7202
ISSN (Electronic)1879-7210

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