However, most of the examples I have seen are trivial and silly and amount to "Would you plagiarize?" — ThomasJ

Really? How about under-specification to save money, at the cost of god-knows-what? And it is not engineering students that need education in ethics, it is all students. Indeed, I imagine that in engineering itself there is no such thing as ethics, but that in application and use, very much so.

Imagine all the things that engineers can do. E.g. build a better mouse-trap, maybe even a humane mouse trap that satisfies all, even the mouse. Or a better gas chamber?

Consider Gerald Bull, engineer, maker of gun barrels. You can Google the rest if you're not familiar with him and his purposes, motives, choices, and fate.

Or you might ask if it is ethical for the good engineer to build the bad thing. This is no small or easy topic. It could easily be a coopertaive elective (imo s/b a requirement) between departments, and not usual bed-fellows at that.

But it strikes me that you may be inventing the wheel. See what other schools may be offering or requiring and talk to them.

Tim,

I am aware of what others are doing and I do not intend to trivialize ethics. I am only focused on whether a study in esthetics would do a better job, e.g: if people understood (experienced, studied, etc.) beauty (set aside the fact that such an issue could be subjective), they would be more inclined to act ethically (even though that coudl be subjective, too).

And please do not begin with "really." That sounds dismissive and sarcastic and makes me want to delte the post and go away. I want to understand how to improve the ethical training of engineers, beyond what I see currently done (which, to me, does not seem to be working)

I am only focused on whether a study in esthetics would do a better job, e.g: if people understood (experienced, studied, etc.) beauty (set aside the fact that such an issue could be subjective), they would be more inclined to act ethically (even though that could be subjective, too). — ThomasJ

Fair enough. But the three are each difficult subjects. While they may cross, you may need them to run at least in parallel at least for a while. Does beauty run alongside the good? Is the good the ethical? The bad unethical? By what criteria? It seems to me that your guys, your students, either get this apart from engineering, or after they are already engineers, but probably at the same time as they are becoming engineers only with great difficulty.

And as well to what end? What is an ethical engineer? You will have to have at least some answer for that before you begin. (I'm not asking, but if you answer I'll read.)

OK, now that is exactly the point and what I am trying to understand.

First, on one level: did Aristotle address this? (Yes, I am aware that some dismiss him, and there are others, but did he?)

Second, would it be better to just encourage engineers to appreciate beauty and, in the process, hope/expect, they would act in a good way?

Again, I am NOT a philosopher....

But your comment made the point: "Does beauty run alongside the good? Is the good the ethical? The bad unethical? By what criteria?"

I would love an elaboration on that, and maybe which philosopher to reference so that I can look it up, later. Right now, I just need grasp on the issue. Right now, I think we are failing to teach engineers, ethics. Or, to put it another way, the current classes amount to discussions at the level of "What would Jesus do?" And I don't think that is working.

(If you do respond, I am off the net. I live in Europe now and am going to bed. Later.)

The mediocre chess player looks at his board and says to himself something like, "Where to from here?" The good player sees the board he'd like to get to, and asks himself, "How do I get from there (where I am) to here (where I want to be)?" The chess master (as best I can understand it) generalizes the approach of the good player.

In my own teacher training it was drilled into me that before I started I had to answer the question, "What, exactly, do I want them, my students, to know or be able to do by the time I'm finished?" Whether after an hour, day, week, course, year, or entire course of study. The idea being if the teacher doesn't know, then it - whatever it is - ain't going to happen.

So what exactly, then, do you want your students to know or be able to do when a course in esthetics/ethics completed?

I started this paragraph with the notion that philosophy can help in a general way, while for philosophers the words become terms-of-art, which inevitably makes their subject matter remote. But maybe none of this at all.

With my sincerest apologies:

https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=ethics

https://plato.stanford.edu/search/search?query=esthetics

It would be an heroic effort to read even a small fraction of these. But these are useful to give a sense of the continent that lies behind and beyond the view from the coast.

But I remember from my teacher training a way out! It amounts to engaging the minds of your students in active cooperative participation. Getting them actively hands-on thinking in other words. Shooting here from the hip. A class of twenty divided into four groups of five. A one hour class. On entering they're given an assignment. They are to immediately "group up" and within twenty-or-so minutes develop a list of adjectives to describe the beautiful building, and perhaps to qualify the adjectives. The goal to outline just what a beautiful building is (and time permitting, is not). That's half the class. At thirty minutes, you take over and take an oral report from each group, listing their words on the board, while at the same time facilitating a discussion. Rinse and repeat.

Class #2, same business with the good building. Class #3, same business with the ethical building.

And these exercises extremely flexible. Maybe not building in general, but the good (beautiful, ethical) school house, prison, hospital, museum, factory, bridge, community, & etc. And maybe the groups a friendly competition or activity. Maybe doughnuts for prizes!

Maybe throw in a class on the Riaci Bronzes, their beauty, esthetics, and ethics. No small subject there, them being even a little bit understood. Or on the Acropolis in Athens, there being a good bit more to that building than meets the eye.

Once your students get through their heads it's not paradigmatic memorization or dry exercises they're doing, but instead lighting fires with their own thoughts for fuel, you might get some handsome blazes going. And two other benefits: 1) I can tell you from experience that the learning in such settings can be forever, and 2) your class workload just shrank: they're doing the work!

Caveat: old and conservative teachers may hate you for this. I was going to suggest that the instructors try this out first, but in fact that may be a very bad idea.

Goals: that they should be able to think about what ethics, esthetics, and the good are, and apply those to engineering problems that they might have. Hmm.

Hello I'm currently a senior mechanical engineering student. This thread interested me because I have my own gripes about the ethics courses. Maybe we can discuss particular topics from the perspective of the teacher and the student.

The short answer to your first question seems to be yes, based on this reading here:

MILLIKEN, J. Aristotle’s Aesthetic Ethics. Southern Journal of Philosophy, [s. l.], v. 44, n. 2, p. 319–339, 2006. DOI 10.1111/j.2041-6962.2006.tb00104.x. Disponível em: https://search-ebscohost-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=21698483&site=ehost-live&scope=site . Acesso em: 17 mar. 2021.

I haven't read the entire thing, but it seems that Aristotle believed that moral excellence has a sense of beauty much like beautiful music. Not exactly artistic beauty, but like how an athlete may inspire a sense of beauty through an excellent performance, a virtuous person doing the morally righteous can as well. Asking on r/philosophy on reddit might be more helpful for research inquires like this.

My kneejerk reaction to this proposal of ethics is that, I intuitively see it be accompanied by a realization of disgust for the ugly. I have concerns for it because I believe the reaction of people for disgust is eradication, as opposed to something like avoidance for fear. Hitler, as notorious a germaphobe can get, attempted to eradicate the people who drew about this sense of disgust. Note that I'm definitely not an expert on the life of Hitler. With that said, my understanding is that he believed, perhaps in with a similar aesthetic ethics approach, that genocide of the Jewish people, who he believed were inherently evil, was the righteous course of action.

Not to understate the importance of ethics, I believe ethics doesn't really have a place in Engineering or the sciences for that matter, at least without addressing its relation to the philosophy of science. To my knowledge, the philosophy of science primarily deals with how knowledge is gained and analyzed, and rarely concerns itself with ethics. If they do, it's usually in a collision between the two, for example about unethical behavior in order to further scientific knowledge. I see Engineering as the application of science to create, and so Engineering also has an innate problem when trying to incorporate ethics. If I were a teacher, I would consider separating the ethics from engineering, and just try to challenge all students to be able to critically think for themselves what might be "good or bad."

I am aware of what others are doing and I do not intend to trivialize ethics. I am only focused on whether a study in esthetics would do a better job, e.g: if people understood (experienced, studied, etc.) beauty (set aside the fact that such an issue could be subjective), they would be more inclined to act ethically (even though that coudl be subjective, too). — ThomasJ

It's a very interesting question. It could be argued that every profession would benefit from lessons in aesthetics and ethics. These are often seen as part of every well rounded education. The challenge from my perspective would be where to start and how to tailor it to engage students who are not necessarily interested in these matters to begin with. Someone at the faculty needs to identify what these subjects could add to the worldview of an engineer and how it could be made to relate to the subject more broadly. I think this requires a specialized assessment for cultural fit and development of an appropriate model of delivery.

Thank you, everyone, for your advice, thoughts, words, references, etc.

This has given me a lot of information, and I will now spend time reflecting on this.

This was exactly what I was looking for. I do not know how this will evolve into a proposal, but it will.

(And even though we got off on the wrong foot, Tim, you gave me valuable advice.)