How Engineers Can Care from a Distance: Promoting Moral Sensitivity in Engineering Ethics Education

Moral (or ethical) sensitivity is widely viewed as a foundational learning goal in engineering ethics education. We have argued in this paper is that this view of moral sensitivity cannot be readily transported from the nursing context to the engineering context on the basis of a care-analogy. The particularized care characteristic of the...

Fostering responsible anticipation in engineering ethics education: how a multi-disciplinary enrichment of the responsible innovation framework can help

It is crucial for engineers to anticipate the socio-ethical impacts of emerging technologies. Such acts of anticipation are thoroughly normative and should be cultivated in engineering ethics education. In this paper we ask: ‘how do we anticipate the socio-ethical implications of emerging technologies responsibly?’ And ‘how can such responsible...

Performing ethics of technology: Using improvisational performance-based techniques in engineering ethics education

The paper explores the potential for improvisational techniques used in ethics tutorials with the aim of fostering moral sensitivity. Recently there has been an increased interest in researching how performance-based techniques can foster certain ethical competencies. In ethics education for engineering, role-playing games have been an example...

Design for values and the city

This paper undertakes a critical and constructive investigation into the applicability of value sensitive design (VSD) and design for values (DfV) methodologies for urban technologies, as a means to envision and enact responsible urban innovations. In particular, this paper focuses on the identification and analysis of values in urban...

How to Teach Engineering Ethics?: A Retrospective and Prospective Sketch of TU Delft’s Approach to Engineering Ethics Education

This paper provides a retrospective and prospective overview of TU Delft’s approach to engineering ethics education. For over twenty years, the Ethics and Philosophy of Technology Section at TU Delft has been at the forefront of engineering ethics education, offering education to a wide range of engineering and design students. The approach...

Reimagining the future of engineering

Reimagining suggests the idea of opening up new, unconventional spaces of possibilities for an activity or an entity that already exists. This chapter sketches some ideas of the future of engineering in various aspects: designing, action, problem framing, professional and disciplinary identity, and the training of future engineers. The thoughts...

Before Responsible Innovation: Teaching Anticipation as a Competency for Engineers

This paper focuses on engineering ethics education utilizing Responsible Innovation (RI). As a forward-looking approach aiming to embed ethics within innovation practices, RI strives to align technology development with societal values. However, when teaching the concepts and methods of RI, we face two intertwined challenges. First, RI...

Legibility as a Design Principle: Surfacing Values in Sensing Technologies

This paper introduces the design principle of legibility as means to examine the epistemic and ethical conditions of sensing technologies. Emerging sensing technologies create new possibilities regarding what to measure, as well as how to analyze, interpret, and communicate said measurements. In doing so, they create ethical challenges for...

LED Lighting Across Borders: Exploring the plea for darkness and value-sensitive design with Libbrecht’s comparative philosophy model

This chapter discusses how a comparative philosophical model can contribute to both substantive and procedural values in energy policy. We discuss the substantive values in the mainstream light-emitting diodes (LEDs) debate and Taylor Stone's alternative plea for darkness. We also explore Value Sensitive Design as a procedural approach. We...

Normative design for society and anticipatory technology development: A double challenge for design research

This paper analyzes the increasing use of design tools and methods towards societal goals, and the interrelated approach to technology development it necessitates. Specifically, we argue that design research can assist in developing an anticipatory approach to technology development, which in turn widens future design possibilities. The paper...

Designing for Darkness: Urban Nighttime Lighting and Environmental Values

Artificial illumination has had profound and far-reaching impacts on the development, use, and perceptions of urban nights, and has brought with it many benefits. However, in recent years its adverse costs and effects – commonly referred to as light pollution – have emerged as a topic of concern. Nighttime lighting uses enormous amounts of...

The Medium of Modernity: Review of Electric Light: An Architectural History by Sandy Isenstadt

Driving in the Dark: Designing Autonomous Vehicles for Reducing Light Pollution

This paper proposes that autonomous vehicles should be designed to reduce light pollution. In support of this specific proposal, a moral assessment of autonomous vehicles more comprehensive than the dilemmatic life-and-death questions of trolley problem-style situations is presented. The paper therefore consists of two interre-lated arguments....

Re-envisioning the Nocturnal Sublime: On the Ethics and Aesthetics of Nighttime Lighting

Grounded in the practical problem of light pollution, this paper examines the aesthetic dimensions of urban and natural darkness, and its impact on how we perceive and evaluate nighttime lighting. It is argued that competing notions of the sublime, manifested through artificial illumination and the natural night sky respectively, reinforce a...

The Value of Darkness: A Moral Framework for Urban Nighttime Lighting

The adverse effects of artificial nighttime lighting, known as light pollution, are emerging as an important environmental issue. To address these effects, current scientific research focuses mainly on identifying what is bad or undesirable about certain types and uses of lighting at night. This paper adopts a value-sensitive approach, focusing...

Light pollution: A case study in framing an environmental problem

Light pollution is a topic gaining importance and acceptance in environmental discourse. This concept provides a framework for categorizing the adverse effects of nighttime lighting, which advocacy groups and regulatory efforts are increasingly utilizing. However, the ethical significance of the concept has, thus far, received little critical...