期刊名称：Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology
印刷版ISSN：1091-8264
出版年度：2006
卷号：10
期号：1
出版社：Digital Library and Archives,Virginia Tech
摘要：One of the most important tasks of engineering ethics is to give engineers the tools required to act
ethically to prevent possible disastrous accidents which could result from engineers’ decisions
and actions. The space shuttle Challenger disaster is referred to as a typical case in almost every
textbook. This case is seen as one from which engineers can learn important lessons, as it shows
impressively how engineers should act as professionals, to prevent accidents. The Columbia
disaster came seventeen years later in 2003. According to the report of the Columbia accident
investigation board, the main cause of the accident was not individual actions which violated
certain safety rules but rather was to be found in the history and culture of NASA. A culture is
seen as one which desensitized managers and engineers to potential hazards as they dealt with
problems of uncertainty. This view of the disaster is based on Dian Vaughan’s analysis of the
Challenger disaster, where inherent organizational factors and culture within NASA had been
highlighted as contributing to the disaster. Based on the insightful analysis of the Columbia report
and the work of Diane Vaughan, we search for an alternative view of engineering ethics. We
focus on the inherent uncertainty of engineers’ work with respect to hazard precaution. We
discuss claims that the concept of professional responsibility, which plays a central role in
orthodox engineering ethics, is too narrow and that we need a broader and more fundamental
concept of responsibility. Responsibility which should be attributed to every person related to an
organization and therefore given the range of responsible persons, governments, managers,
engineers, etc. might be called “civic virtue”. Only on the basis of this broad concept of
responsibility of civic virtue, we can find a possible way to prevent disasters and reduce the
hazards that seem to be inseparable part of the use of complex technological systems.
关键词：engineering ethics, risk, safety, space shuttle accidents, civic virtue
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