Sustainable Design and Social Responsibility - Sustainable Design: The Science of Sustainability and Green Engineering - page 201

Ethical responsibility involves more than leading a decent, honest,

truthful life, as important as such lives certainly remain. And it involves
something much more than making wise choices when such choices sud-
denly, unexpectedly present themselves. Our moral obligations must

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include a willingness to engage others in the difficult work of defining
what the crucial choices are that confront technological society and how
intelligently to confront them. *
This engagement necessitates both the bottom-up and top-down approaches.
Most professional ethics texts, including those addressing engineering ethics,
are concerned with what has come to be known as microethics , which is “con-
cerned with individuals and the internal relations of the engineering profes-
sion.” † This is distinguished from macroethics, which is “concerned with the
collective, social responsibility of the engineering profession and societal de-
cisions about technology.” ‡ Green engineering techniques are examples of
microethics. Sustainabilly is an example of macroethics.
Ethical principles are “general norms that leave considerable room for judg-
ment.” ğ Such principles are codified formally into professional codes of prac-
tice. They are also stipulated informally by societal norming, such as by re-
ligious, educational, and community standards. In fact, most principles of
professional practice are derivative from a small core of moral principles, **
which were derived from the lessons learned in biomedical research during
the twentieth century:
1. Respect for autonomy : allowance for meaningful choices to be made. Au-
tonomous actions generally should be taken intentionally, with under-
standing and without controlling influences or duress.
2. Beneficence : promotion of good for others and contribution to their
welfare.

* L. Winner, “Engineering ethics and political imagination,” in Broad and Narrow Interpretations
of Philosophy of Technology, P. T. Durbin, ed., Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, The Netherlands,
1990, pp. 53-64. Reprinted in D. G. Johnson, ed., Ethical Issues in Engineering , Prentice Hall,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1991.
† J. E. Herkert, “Microethics, macroethics, and professional engineering societies,” in Emerg-
ing Technologies and Ethical Issues in Engineering: Papers from a Workshop , National Academy of
Engineering, October 14-15, 2003, p. 107.
‡ Ibid.
ğ N. Naurato and T. J. Smith, “Ethical considerations in bioengineering research,” Biomedical
Sciences Instrumentation , 39, 573-578, 2003.

** These core principles are articulated by T. L. Beauchamp and J. F. Childress, “Moral norms,”
in Principles of Biomedical Ethics , 5th ed., Oxford University Press, New York, 2001.