Critique,Ethics, and the Apparatus of Experience: A Foucauldian Framework

The paper explores examples of contemporary experience in order to demonstrate the moralisation of new areas of behaviour (especially in relation to environmental issues).It sketches a Foucauldian framework for understanding the historical transformation of experience,in terms of the "apparatus of experience." On that basis,it presents a novel account of critique,in which critique is seen as the potentially transformational,experiential practice of re-experiencing the contemporary apparatuses of experience.In other words,critique is "experience squared." It is this re-experiencing of our everyday experience that permits us,to a certain extent,to "get over ourselves" and thus to reflect critically on the processes of moralisation and de-moralisation in which we participate.     

The Engineering Undergraduate Experience: A Qualitative Perspective

College experience is central to the life of adolescents. Apart from academic tasks, identity development is an important feature of this developmental stage. This paper reports two studies. One study illustrates the qualitative aspects of the college experience. The second study investigates factors affecting the academic performance of undergraduate engineering students. Time management and its links with college experience and academic performance are explored in this paper. The formation of identity emerges as an overarching concept.     

Department of Education,The University of Newcastle,New South Wales,Australia 2308.

We examined the loci of social anxiety in a sample of 385 Australian adult subjects (186 men and 199 women, mean age 30.63 years). Responses to the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale, the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (Watson & Friend, 1969), and the Public and Private Self-Consciousness Scale (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975) were intercorrelated. The results suggested that for some socially anxious people who are privately shy, the locus of their anxiety is cognitive, whereas for others who are more concerned with performance, the locus is behavioral.     

基因工程伦理的核心问题

众所周知 ,过去几十年来在自然科学领域 ,没有任何一门学科像遗传学那样引发了如此巨大的社会震撼 ,以至于没有人能够否认当代最大的伦理挑战来自于基因技术与生物技术。因为这一技术使人类拥有了对人的受孕、出生 ,身体构造、心灵健康、生命历程及预期寿命等加以控制和把握的能力 ,而上述这些重大内容在以往的人类史上一直都被认为是出于造物主或命运的操纵。通过基因技术 ,人类正在实现对自己进化历程的控制 ,从而有可能改变现存的整个人类图景 ,甚至于能够有计划地培育一种崭新的人类类型。这样 ,一种前所未有的生物政治的出现似乎成为不…     

Confronting the Hidden Curriculum: A Four-Year Integrated Course in Ethics and Professionalism Grounded in Virtue Ethics

Journal of Medical Humanities - We describe a virtue ethics approach and its application in a four-year, integrated, longitudinal, and required undergraduate medical education course that attempts...     

Engineering Ethics: Looking Back, Looking Forward

The eight pieces constituting this Meeting Report are summaries of presentations made during a panel session at the 2011 Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) annual meeting held between March 3rd and 6th in Cincinnati. Lisa Newton organized the session and served as chair. The panel of eight consisted both of pioneers in the field and more recent arrivals. It covered a range of topics from how the field has developed to where it should be going, from identification of issues needing further study to problems of training the next generation of engineers and engineering-ethics scholars.     

Hidden in Plain View: Feminists Doing Engineering Ethics, Engineers Doing Feminist Ethics

How has engineering ethics addressed gender concerns to date? How have the ideas of feminist philosophers and feminist ethicists made their way into engineering ethics? What might an explicitly feminist engineering ethics look like? This paper reviews some major themes in feminist ethics and then considers three areas in which these themes have been taken up in engineering ethics to date. First, Caroline Whitbeck’s work in engineering ethics integrates considerations from her own earlier writings and those of other feminist philosophers, but does not use the feminist label. Second, efforts to incorporate the Ethic of Care and principles of Social Justice into engineering have drawn on feminist scholarship and principles, but these commitments can be lost in translation to the broader engineering community. Third, the film Henry’s Daughters brings gender considerations into the mainstream of engineering ethics, but does not draw on feminist ethics per se; despite the best intentions in broaching a difficult subject, the film unfortunately does more harm than good when it comes to sexual harassment education. I seek not only to make the case that engineers should pay attention to feminist ethics and engineering ethicists make more use of feminist ethics traditions in the field, but also to provide some avenues for how to approach integrating feminist ethics in engineering. The literature review and analysis of the three examples point to future work for further developing what might be called feminist engineering ethics.     

崛起与建构——国内工程伦理学研究现状述评

近两三年来,对工程伦理的探讨构成了中国伦理学研究的一大亮点和理论生长点,研讨主要集中于工程伦理学的可能性、内涵、性质、研究对象和研究方法等方面.当前中国工程伦理学的研究还处于崛起的阶段,需要进一步加强跨学科的交流,系统建构起有中国特色的工程伦理学.     

Civil Ethics and the Validity of Law

This paper aims to clarify the nature and contents of 'civil ethics' and the source of the binding force of its obligations. This ethics should provide the criteria for evaluating the moral validity of social, legal and morally valid law. The article starts with observing that in morally pluralist Western societies civil ethics already exists, and has gradually started to play the role of guiding the law. It is argued that civil ethics should not be conceived as 'civic morals' which is in fact rather 'state ethics', nor as 'public ethics' which is said to reach its perfection when it becomes law, nor as ethics applicable primarily to the basic structure of a society (political liberalism), but instead as a citizens' ethics. Subsequently the paper attempts to show what the contents of this ethics are, and which ethical theory would be able to ground its obligations.     

The Boeing 737 MAX: Lessons for Engineering Ethics

Science and Engineering Ethics - The crash of two 737 MAX passenger aircraft in late 2018 and early 2019, and subsequent grounding of the entire fleet of 737 MAX jets, turned a global spotlight on...     

The Good Engineer: Giving Virtue its Due in Engineering Ethics

During the past few decades, engineering ethics has been oriented towards protecting the public from professional misconduct by engineers and from the harmful effects of technology. This "preventive ethics" project has been accomplished primarily by means of the promulgation of negative rules. However, some aspects of engineering professionalism, such as (1) sensitivity to risk (2) awareness of the social context of technology, (3) respect for nature, and (4) commitment to the public good, cannot be adequately accounted for in terms of rules, certainly not negative rules. Virtue ethics is a more appropriate vehicle for expressing these aspects of engineering professionalism. Some of the unique features of virtue ethics are the greater place it gives for discretion and judgment and also for inner motivation and commitment. Four of the many professional virtues that are important for engineers correspond to the four aspects of engineering professionalism listed above. Finally, the importance of the humanities and social sciences in promoting these virtues suggests that these disciplines are crucial in the professional education of engineers.     

Christian Ethics,Religious Ethics,and Secular Ethics: A Contemporary Reappraisal

In this essay, I argue that Christian ethicists should not think of themselves as religious ethicists. I defend this claim by arguing that the concept of religious ethics, as it has come to be understood as a discipline that is distinct from secular ethics, is incoherent. In part one, I describe the fraught attempts by theologians in the 20th century to identify the distinctiveness of Christian ethics. In part two, I argue that certain accounts of natural law unwittingly reinforce a problematic conception of secular ethics. Part three examines some trends in religious studies and comparative religious ethics to highlight problematic conceptions of religion. Drawing together these strands of inquiry, I contend that that the secular-religious dichotomy in contemporary ethics should be rejected, but by the same token, I suggest that comparative ethics remains a worthwhile enterprise.     

Survival Ethics in the Real World: The Research University and Sustainable Development

We discuss how academically-based interdisciplinary teams can address the extreme challenges of the world’s poorest by increasing access to the basic necessities of life. The essay’s first part illustrates the evolving commitment of research universities to develop ethical solutions for populations whose survival is at risk and whose quality of life is deeply impaired. The second part proposes a rationale for university responsibility to solve the problems of impoverished populations at a geographical remove. It also presents a framework for integrating science, engineering and ethics in the efforts of multidisciplinary teams dedicated to this task. The essay’s third part illustrates the efforts of Howard University researchers to join forces with African university colleagues in fleshing out a model for sustainable and ethical global development.     

Professional Virtue and Professional Self-Awareness: A Case Study in Engineering Ethics

This paper articulates an Aristotelian theory of professional virtue and provides an application of that theory to the subject of engineering ethics. The leading idea is that Aristotle’s analysis of the definitive function of human beings, and of the virtues humans require to fulfill that function, can serve as a model for an analysis of the definitive function or social role of a profession and thus of the virtues professionals must exhibit to fulfill that role. Special attention is given to a virtue of professional self-awareness, an analogue to Aristotle’s phronesis or practical wisdom. In the course of laying out my account I argue that the virtuous professional is the successful professional, just as the virtuous life is the happy life for Aristotle. I close by suggesting that a virtue ethics approach toward professional ethics can enrich the pedagogy of professional ethics courses and help foster a sense of pride and responsibility in young professionals.     

Broadening Ethics Teaching in Engineering: Beyond the Individualistic Approach

There is a widespread approach to the teaching of ethics to engineering students in which the exclusive focus is on engineers as individual agents and the broader context in which they do their work is ignored. Although this approach has frequently been criticised in the literature, it persists on a wide scale, as can be inferred from accounts in the educational literature and from the contents of widely used textbooks in engineering ethics. In this contribution we intend to: (1) Restate why the individualistic approach to the teaching of ethics to engineering students is inadequate in view of preparing them for ethical, professional and social responsibility; (2) Examine the existing literature regarding the possible contribution of Science, Technology and Society (STS) scholarship in addressing the inadequacies of the individualistic approach; and (3) Assess this possible contribution of STS in order to realise desired learning outcomes regarding the preparation of students for ethical and social responsibility.