Description
University education for engineers often requires an ethics component. But debates arise about what this should look like. Some charge that engineering concerns are political rather than ethical, and that ethical frameworks like utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics are more suited to personal or interpersonal professional ethics contexts, rather than at the remove and scale associated with large-scale technical innovations (Bietti, 2021). At the same time, attentiveness to small-scale and diffuse issues can help capture concerns that might be missed by more institution-focused accounts (Vallor, 2016). Researchers acknowledge the need for both, characterizing them as microethics and macroethics (Ferdman et al, 2024). Some suggest that they engage different cognitive systems, with microethics involving affective engagement and macroethics engaged through abstract cognitive processes (Hess, 2024; van Grunsven et al, 2023). It seems desirable to engage emotionally with remote problems to promote sensitivity to ethical implications and motivate us to address them. But it is unclear how this could work. As van Grunsven et al put it, comparing the particularized, individualist context of nursing ethics to the remote, large-scale impacts of engineers, “The activities of engineers in general are not aimed at the needs of particular others and a ‘vivid rendering’ of their humanity, but at society at large or large cohorts within it. One cannot build or maintain a bridge by ‘awakening [to] and particularizing’ the ‘situational needs’ of everyone who will be crossing it or who will be otherwise affected by its presence.” (p. 6)What could bridge this gap between affective/microethics and cognitive/macroethics concerns? I explore an option from Confucian philosopher Mengzi’s moral psychology. Mengzi advised rulers on large-scale social concerns through development of their affective capacities, initially sparked by small-scale and particularized encounters. He even introduces an example of building a bridge as an extension of a ruler’s emotionally motivated compassion for people’s struggles to ford a difficult river; rather than lend his carriage to ferry individuals across, Mengzi asks, why not use that same compassion to build a bridge? He rejects a divide between emotion and cognition in addressing individual versus structural concerns, while acknowledging that we respond much more easily to individual suffering than remote social concerns. Our moral ‘sprouts’, as he puts it, are unreflectively activated when we witness individualized suffering, but the mature moral agent can respond appropriately to distant and large-scale concerns. Mengzi recommends supporting those initial micro impulses, extending them through reflection and contemplation to apply to harder problems, but without turning away from their affective roots. What does this mean for engineering ethics education? Critics are right that we should not restrict our attention to microethics, nor assume that without effort, concern will naturally arise in more abstract or remote social contexts. However, the solution is not to undermine or replace the ‘sprouts’ of compassion with a political framing, nor substitute ‘cold’ cognition for warm affective engagement. Rather, we should help students to grow their moral sprouts until they can engage affectively with both the small and the large.
| Period | Jun 9 2026 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | College Park, United States, MarylandShow on map |