Special session — Engineering ethics: Toward a definition

This special session addresses a challenge posed by engineering ethics: What does it mean? Review of the literature shows many competing definitions, each with their own understandings of the term ethics and the role it plays in engineering. Our aim is to review the different uses of the term "engineering ethics," along with several other common terms, such as "professional ethics" and "professional responsibility," and consider what might constitute clearer and more meaningful ways of understanding engineering ethics. As an interdisciplinary field, engineering ethics must represent both of its major parts: engineering and ethics. Examples of engineering ethics in the literature do not always make clear what aspects of ethics — a very large and complex field of philosophy — is being employed in an engineering context. Group activity and discussion will instigate a debate on how we should understand these terms and how we can be better about clarifying the key features of engineering ethics and its role in engineering education.