Research On Ethical Responsibility In Engineering Activities

As a basic social activity, engineering activity concerns many complicated ethicalissues. The focus of this thesis is the ethical responsibility in engineering activity, andto bear the responsibilities for human healthy, safety and welfare consciously is themost important subject in engineering ethics. With the increasing influence of scienceand technology upon society, engineering ethics has come into being. The issue ofethical responsibilities occurs when the project subjects’ individual interests are incontradiction with public interests in the process of engineering activities. In that case,they should not only consider individual interests but also the public’s overallinterests, sometimes even sacrifice individual interests for the overall interests.While engineering activity has benefited people’s life and promoted socialdevelopment, however, since it has applied multiple technologies in the process ofsocial practical activities, it also leads to serious safety problems, environmentalproblems, and social problems. The major cause is that project subjects failed to bearthe ethical responsibilities. Correspondingly, the main ethical responsibilities consistsof safety ethical responsibility, environmental ethical responsibility and social ethicalresponsibility. The responsibilities refer to that individuals or groups should takeresponsibilities for the undertaken activities or the accomplished tasks. In other words,they should make explanations for activities they undertake to others or society andtake the corresponding praises or punishments they deserve.Some measures should be taken in order to solve the problems mentioned above.First, we should enhance the construction of engineering ethics. Only then can weimprove the ethical level of project subjects, then they can better take the ethicalresponsibility. Second, responsibility-centered ethical education should bestrengthened, which includes safety ethical education, social ethical education andenvironmental education, to cultivate engineers’ sense of responsibility for others,society and environment in an organized, purposed way. Last, we should constructand perfect a sound publishing system, which includes accountability system,supervisory mechanism and relative laws and regulations.