ENGINEERING
EDUCATION AS A MEANS
TO GLOBAL SOCIAL
JUSTICE
PROFESSOR HAROLD P. SJURSEN
NYU – POLYTECHNIC
WEEF October 2012 Buenos Aires
INTRODUCTION
• This paper considers the opinion, associated with the
philosopher Rousseau but still debated today, that technology
is a barrier to human happiness and social justice. Based upon
John Rawls’ theory of distributive economic justice, it is argued
here on the contrary that engineering promotes social justice.
This position is put forth in the context of the urgency
generated by the globalized economies of our time. Since
engineering addresses problems that define the quality of life
it is important to understand that neither technology nor
engineering is value free. Engineering education must foster a
clear grasp of the cultural, ethical and social issues that
proscribe how humans desire and choose to live. In
conclusion it is asserted that how human interest as a metric of
engineering quality is to be incorporated is perhaps the most
important question to be faced in the assessment of
engineering methods and methodology.
WEEF October 2012 Buenos Aires
AGAINST TECHNOLOGY
• Roussseau’s argument is that society and technological
contrivance provide distractions from the purity and tranquility
of human purpose as ordained by nature. This in turn leads to
such undesirable tendencies as selfishness, greed and avarice,
crime, war and murder. According to him, in the state of
nature, before the debilitating influence of civil society,
humankind exhibited “uncorrupted morals.” The nature of
society, he proclaims, distorts our naturally beneficent and
altruistic outlook. Thus Rousseau’s notion of happiness is
related to how just, fair and equitable, society is toward all,
with the conclusion that generally it is an assault upon our
well-being. Were there a just and equitable society Rousseau’s
conclusion might be different. But according to him the
progress we laud associated with society and technology is
actually only “in appearance so many steps toward the
perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of
the species."
WEEF October 2012 Buenos Aires
ENGINEERING AND JUSTICE
• Justice is an evasive concept, difficult to define in
terms acceptable to everyone and especially so in
the context of global pluralism. Whether or not
individuals flourish under the system prevailing in
their societie is often discussed in terms of human
rights. By this measure what an individual is rightfully
entitled to is seen as a measure of both happiness
and justice. Yet a universal consensus of just what
constitutes human rights is not likely to be attained.
How can justice be defined such that traditional
cultural and social differences may still be
respected?
WEEF October 2012 Buenos Aires
RAWLS’ PRINCIPLE
• Distributive justice in the version of John Rawls known as the
difference principle may be a standard acceptable cross
culturally that would address the concerns about society
advanced by Rousseau. Distributive justice is the condition where
all goods and services are distributed equally across all society.
This condition would seem to alleviate the corrupting social
influence, lamented by Rousseau, that leads to avarice, crime
and war and perhaps approximate the state of nature as
preserved in the undeveloped societies of indigenous people in
the Caribbean that he believed resembled the uncorrupted state
of human kind. Rawls realistically recognizes that such complete
equality of the distribution and availability of goods and services
is more than unlikely and so his alternative formulation allows that
so long as the least advantaged in society are materially better
off. Without debating whether this circumstance if achieved
would satisfy Rousseau, it should be clear that it would remove
some of the societal influences he deplores.
WEEF October 2012 Buenos Aires
SOCIAL INCLUSIVITY
• The question at hand is whether engineering promotes an
inclusive global social justice and whether this in turn
contributes to human happiness and the improvement of the
quality of life. It should be beyond debate that the answer to
this question depends upon what engineers actually do.
Surely some applications of engineering skills would do little to
improve the quality of life of the global commonweal. One of
Rousseau’s evils is warfare and obviously engineering has
contributed to the brutal efficiency of that activity. Other
applications of engineering are subject to debate – has the
iPad improved the quality of life or only added to the list of
available diversions that launch us down Rousseau’s slippery
slope of moral weakening. What engineers do, that is what
they are actually able to do, depends on the demands of the
global economy and the type of education that has
prepared them to act in the world.
WEEF October 2012 Buenos Aires
ENGINEERING EDUCATION
• It should go without saying that the core of the
undergraduate engineering curriculum must
include extensive work in mathematics and natural
science (including biology). Certain technology
skills, many of which involve computer
competencies, are likewise essential. These three of
four STEM disciplines together with the technical
aspects of engineering necessarily fill most of the
available time in a typical four year program. How
should the non-technical portion of the engineering
curriculum be structured to optimize the chances
that engineering will contribute to global, social
justice.
WEEF October 2012 Buenos Aires
PRACTICAL DISCOURSE
• Perhaps engineering will become the globe’s
primary practical discourse. For anything like that to
happen, however, engineering must eschew its
uncritical approval of free market capitalism at the
same time that it integrates deliberation on value
questions (without sectarian influences) into its
general approach. This in turn cannot happen
without extensive reflection and discussion, and at
least tacit commitment to the importance of the
endeavor from key elements in the global
engineering community.
WEEF October 2012 Buenos Aires
ENGINEERING VALUES
• Engineering is not a “value-free” discipline. It has
sometimes been casually assumed that since
engineering is applied science, carrying out the
mandates of natural science research, which is ofcourse value independent, that such independence
descends to engineering activity. This is wrong on
several counts. It is naïve to think that science research
is value free even if the pure search for scientific truth
ultimately is. Also, to construe engineering merely as
applied science abstracts from much of what is
importantly engineering. And obviously to think that
engineering, which is our most systematic effort to solve
human problems, is not precisely an expression of value
is absurd.
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ECONOMICS AND GLOBALIZATION
• The Harvard economist Benjamin M. Friedman argues, on the
basis of historically demonstrated econometrics, that
economic growth is the necessary (but not sufficient)
condition for the decent or moral society. A similar point has
been advanced by Amartya Sen based upon his study of
famine and starvation. Both of these distinguished economists
insist that rational economic development tends to undermine
political tendencies toward discrimination and injustice. In his
advocacy of globalization (it should be noted American style
globalization) Thomas Freedman claims that free markets
advance the welfare of all those that participate in them. The
argument, at least in liberal circles, is that rational economics
shows how to expand the availability of goods and services
and this expansion is an objective measure positively
correlated with the quality of life.
WEEF October 2012 Buenos Aires
GLOBALIZATION
• As a historical question Jared Diamond addresses this lucidly in
such books as Guns, Germs and Steel where he describes the
factors that explain the unequal development in various parts
of the world. The differences are all due to the consequences
of technology, at least if we include agriculture and medicine
among technologies. His point is rather straightforward: global
exchange (trade, communications, etc.) for the sake of
economic development does not ensure equitable
technology transfer. Indeed, as is manifest today, economic
globalization is largely a process of seeking out cheap labor
and not one of transferring technology. The case of China
makes the point. Western industry has moved manufacturing
to China because production costs are considerably lower
there than in Europe or the United States but has tried, not
entirely successfully, to prevent the engineering and
management expertise from taking root.
WEEF October 2012 Buenos Aires
ETHICS
• Engineering needs to embrace ethics as part of engineering itself, i.e.,
engineering ethics should find its source within engineering itself and
not accept ethical standards legislated from without. Professional
ethics as promulgated by the professional engineering societies
consist basically of deportment protocols to ensure the integrity of
contract work. Such ethics are vital to professions and certainly
should not be abandoned and perhaps need strengthening in light
of technological advancement. But this level of ethical discourse
accepts the overall legitimacy of engineering projects. It does not
raise the question of whether a new highway or light rail is the better
alternative or whether any new infrastructure is even appropriate
from the standpoint of the social good. Engineering firms make
recommendations regarding preferred engineering solutions in the
narrow sense. What is needed is the broadening of that sense to
include systematic considerations of the common good from all
perspectives.
•
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ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP
• Engineers alone should not run the world. Rather the
startling notion that engineers make life and nature what
it is today must introduce a profound sense of humility
into any deliberations concerning the deployment of
new technology.
• We note that while Plato’s famous philosopher king in
the Republic was in our terms the CEO of an
engineering firm (called the guardian class) and was
hired to manage every detail of human life, the one big
lesson of that book was that such a utopian
technocracy will not succeed in creating justice or
human happiness. This is the case even when the
technologies themselves can be controlled and their
objectives achieved with predictability.
WEEF October 2012 Buenos Aires
DELIBERATIVE COMMUNITY
• The reference to Plato helps us understand the
shortcoming of technocratic society. The world does not
need an engineering king but rather groups of engineers
who resemble Aristotle’s phronemos – leaders who
exhibit practical wisdom. Karl Popper’s philosophical
critique of the decline of European politics in The Open
Society and its Enemies proposes (piecemeal)
engineering as the model of political discourse as an
alternative to Platonism because he believes it respects
human choice and freedom. But what Popper intends
by engineering is not a dogmatic technocracy but
rather a deliberative community that is perpetually
revising itself as matters become clarified. This is all the
more a requirement now in the context of a globalized
economy.
WEEF October 2012 Buenos Aires
CONCLUSION
• The reorientation of engineering education in the direction
that acknowledges the centrality of the ethical imperative is
one that will not come about through the normal process of
curriculum reform. Similarly the challenges of globalization
cannot be addressed adequately by the introduction of new
courses designed to develop international competencies.
What is called for the recognition on the part both of
practicing engineers and engineering educators that most
aspects of engineering work are far from value free but, on
the contrary, are dedicated to a proposition of human interest.
How human interest as a metric of engineering quality is to be
incorporated is perhaps the most important question to be
faced in the assessment of engineering methods and
methodology. An understanding of this will emerge only from
an extensive discussion among engineers and engineering
educators from around the world.
WEEF October 2012 Buenos Aires