The role of the emotions in teaching engineering ethics

Since the 1970s, engineering educators and accrediting bodies have endeavored to include more ethics in the engineering curriculum. Most of this education has focused on the use of case studies, and in recent years on questions of public policy and the social impact of engineering. These approaches can be productively supplemented by studying the emotional and aesthetic dimensions of engineering and the way that engineering artifacts induce feelings of what is termed the “technological sublime.” The technological sublime induces multivalent social and psychological effects that are sometimes socially beneficial but sometimes not. Making students cognizant of the multivalent aspects of the technological sublime can train engineers so that they become more aware of the ways that technology, emotions and ethics are mutually entangled.