Chapt 8 Material Ethics

In chapter five, I discussed virtue ethics as appropriate to the engineer. In chapter

two, I considered process ethics as appropriate to processes enacted by the professional

modern engineer. Among the aims of process ethics was social justice. To be ethical,

engineering must value and pursue social justice, which champions an equitable

distribution of the bountifulness of the enterprise. Social justice, however, is necessary

but not sufficient, because, as Borgmann puts it, “underneath that problem there is a still

deeper issue. What finally is it that we want to see more equally distributed? A life of

hectic and distracting affluence?”1 We would like to see equal distribution of products

that contribute to a good life in a convivial society. I’m not saying everyone should have

a green Lamborghini parked in front of their house, but we should have clean air to

breathe, good public parks, and poison-free water.

In this chapter I will look at an ethics of products brought forth into the world by

the practicing engineer. A given product, as I indicated in the last chapter, may be

equitably distributed, totally safe, and environmentally benign, yet it may still deaden or

disengage us. How do we want to be as we take up ever more eagerly with our

engineered reality? Ethics is fundamentally a matter of persons – engineers who bring the

product into being and end-users who willingly take up with the product – rather than

processes and products. But in an evolving engineering life-event, as mentioned before,

person, product, and process are intimately tied up with each other. We cannot separate

these three elements but we can distinguish them.

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 The product of the engineering project, looked at in the last chapter, will be

considered now from an ethical perspective. How should those products be in order that

we consider them focal? I already said that a focal product must contribute to The Good,

it must be inviting, and it must open up rather than close down the world in which it

comes to be. In this chapter I will make these ideas more explicit by employing a type of

ethics called material ethics, which stem from the work of Albert Borgmann. Material

ethics seeks to assess the focal-ness of those engineered products, which aim to augment

our shared lifeworld. The specific elements I will associate with the material ethics

assessment are the three-fold values of engagement, enlivenment, and resonance.

Now, focal products are always contextually embedded and there are always

humans in the picture. There are the engineers and production people who bring the

product into the world. There are the marketing and sales people who bring it to your

doorstep. But the humans I especially want to look at are the end-users, those who take

up with the product and are engaged by it. Human factors engineers tell us that the

person-product conjunct should be as smooth as possible. Kim Vincente defines human

factors engineering as “the unique area of engineering that tailors the design of

technology to people, rather than expecting people to adapt to technology.”2 There is a

huge and important literature in the human factors area. Part of that area is taken up by

the HCI (human-computer-interface) discipline which is of growing concern in light of

the proliferation of computers.

Generally speaking, the physical and psychological sides of the human person are

major concerns of the human factors engineer. One of the things these engineers do is

document the psychological aspects of people and the design techniques that can be used

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to create a fit with those aspects.3 So, we expect that the human factors engineers will

make sure the relationship of the end-user with the end-product is seamless, in which

case the user finds the product absorbing. But the focal product aims to be engaging

rather than absorbing. The difference is that engagement requires an explicit

attentiveness, absorption only a circumspective awareness. Absorption with my family

sedan, for example, means I drive the car without needing to explicitly think about it.

While cruising down the highway my mind is on automatic pilot as far as the driving is

concerned and is busy composing a poem to a friend on the occasion of his soon-to-be

birthday. But engagement with my sports car is a different story. I am speeding along a

winding mountain road and I and the car are one and I need to be fully present with it. If I

am not being there fully aware, I could plunge off the road into oblivion. I know that the

aim of much of our engineered technology is to disburden us from onerous tasks, but

Borgmann’s point, again, is that a life of total disburdenment is a life of total

disengagement. This is precisely what focal engineering contends with, namely, how can

we engineer products that will be disburdening but at the same time will be engaging as

well as enlivening and resonant?

Focal engineers appreciate what human factors engineers do, but they require a

look at not just user and product, but also world or lifeworld. The user uses the product

always in a world of some kind or other. To achieve a material ethics assessment we

weave around the three-fold of end-user/focal-product/life-world the three-fold value set

of engagement, enlivenment, and resonance.

How do we make lifeworld more explicitly a part of our deliberations regarding

the ethical assessment of the focally engineered product? World or lifeworld is context

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and focal engineering looks at every particular product as being embedded in contexts of

various sorts. Why questions, which I have mentioned in the last chapter as a key

component of the focal engineering venture, are contextual in that they open up concerns

about “whences and whithers.” Whence-questions inquire about the formal, material, and

efficient causes, whither-questions about the final cause, the goal, the telos. These

questions about causes and purposes, if kept on the table, animate the lifeworld and keep

it alive in our ethical assessments.

A clear, honest, non-coercive, public discourse – a conversation of the lifeworld –

will be required to assess the focally engineered product. A major roadblock to that

discourse is that public policy orientations these days tend to favor a rather limited cost,

risk, benefit analysis that downplays the role of ethics. Engineers, to distinguish

themselves as focal engineers in consort with other life-world deliberators, must extend

their purview beyond the merely pragmatic and efficient. They must develop a better

appreciation of their role as informed citizens who through their works of engineering

can contribute to an embellished lifeworld.

In this chapter, I will discuss a methodology for assessing the focality of an

engineered product. Material ethics assumes that the virtue ethics assessments associated

with the personal ethics of the engineer and the process ethics assessments associated

with the professional ethics of the engineering process have been made with positive

results. Yet, virtue ethics and process ethics assessments are necessary but not sufficient.

Material ethics, which is a kind of public policy ethics, is a different kind of engineering

ethics. Unlike virtue ethics of the individual engineer and conceptual ethics of the

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professional engineer, material ethics requires the contributions not only of engineers,

focal engineers, but also of a variety of other citizens.

Focal Engineering Is Local Engineering

Having become almost a cliché, the expression think globally, act locally is

seldom given a second thought, yet it has definite relevance to the focal engineer in the

conversation of the lifeworld. Global concerns, of course, abound. There remain the

global problems of hunger, pollution, over-population, poverty, and energy depletion,

among others. Most of us feel helpless in the face of these problems. But hope dies hard

and many people are proposing local steps to be taken which, when compounded, have

global ramifications. If more people grew their own vegetables, for example, world

hunger would no doubt diminish. Local issues can be addressed by focal engineering.

Focal engineers, for instance, help in the design and setting up a network of people,

resources, and communication devices to deliver food to sick and home-bound seniors.

As these local incidences proliferate, the global village starts to thrive.

Though global concerns are certainly important, the initial encounter with context

is a local experience. At the center of the material ethics assessment procedure of the

focally engineered product is the requirement that the outcome must be good, do good, or

contribute to the good, within the context of the end-user’s local involvements. Being in a

lifeworld means being bound up with social and political contingencies as well as a wide

range of other patterns of human life-events. Such a lifeworld, in which I dwell and to

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which I am bound, can be thought of as a local habitation or engineering ecology, similar

to what Nardi and O’Day refer to as information ecologies.4

By this we mean settings in which we as individuals have an active role, a

unique and valuable local perspective, and a say in what happens. For

most of us, it means our workplaces, schools, homes, libraries, hospitals,

community centers, churches, clubs, and civic organizations. For some of

us, it means a wider sphere of influence. All of us have local habitations in

which we can reflect on appropriate uses of technology in light of our

local practices, goals, and values.5

The project of focal engineering aims to make the engineered world, the

engineered ecology, engaging, enlivening, and resonant as a result of incorporation of

this or that system, device, organism, service, structure, or network. Even if the

engineered is seemingly immaterial, for example, a virtual reality, it still has material

consequences. These are of concern to material ethics. What kind of prospects does a

focally engineered system or device need if it is to be considered good or at least

contributing to the good? It must be able to provide enrichment and fullness of

contextualized being, conceptual continuities, and community attunements. And, of

course, we avoid rigid interpretations here: these things mean many different things to

many different people. Opening the dialog is the point of departure for focal engineering.

We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly. E.M. Cioran

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 In another example of the local nature of the focal engineering venture, a dialog

involving focal structural engineers, urban planners, architects, environmentalists, social

activists, and concerned citizens must be enjoined if a new park is to be focally

engineered in the center of town. The contemporary modernist engineer ordinarily works

on a team that includes, for example, a test engineer, a design engineer, a manufacturing

engineer, and other kinds of engineers. Focal engineers are inevitably part of a team too,

but their team includes both engineers and non-engineers as well. First of all, a focal

engineer must be part of a focal engineering company. Without company buy-in the focal

engineering venture is doomed. A focal engineering company would bring in voices from

the local community, the voice of a poet or psychologist perhaps, who might have an

opinion about a product at issue, an opinion that is considered valuable. Other

representatives from the human lifeworld would be gathered into the focal engineering

team. Maybe each team member could champion some idea or value, like social justice or

engagement. The team needs to weigh the deadening, disengaging, etc., possibilities out

against the enlivening, engaging, etc., prospects of any proposal for a new network,

service, organism, structure, device, or system. What about, as another example, a new

Internet feature: who will prosper from it, how, and why? What kind of local community

life enrichment can be expected as a result of employment of the feature? And these

kinds of questions inevitably invoke others in an on-going and open-ended fashion,

seeking closure only in the neighborhood of consensus.

Consequentialism

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 Material ethics is a form of consequentialism, which claims that the moral

rightness of an act depends on the consequences of the act, that what ultimately matters in

evaluating actions or policies of action are the consequences which result from choosing

one action or policy rather than the alternative. The consequences of choosing the focal

product over the non-focal product is that by doing so we will achieve a more

harmonious lifeworld, a harmony in the day-to-day tasks that make these tasks eventful.

Living in harmony and peace with ourselves and each other within our engineered world,

living the good life, may not be possible in any absolute sense, but it can be a vision

toward which we strive, a vision of the idea of the good or of the splendor of the simple.

With the eyes of a child

You must come out and see

That your world's spinning round

And through life you will be

A small part of a hope of a love that exists

In the eyes of a child you will see. Moody Blues

Is material ethics then just utilitarianism? No. Consequentialism is the broad

category. Utilitarianism is one form of consequentialism. Material ethics – as I envision it

– is another. Utilitarianism, which seeks the greatest happiness for the greatest number, is

the most common form of consequentialism and was considered along with Kantian

ethics when we investigated the process ethics of the modern engineering enterprise.

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Both utilitarianism and Kantian ethics are found more toward the Moralität end of the

Moralität/Sittlichkeit spectrum. As I mentioned in chapter five, Moralität, on the one

hand, is the realm of practical ethical judgments, within which a general notion of duty is

paramount. Within it there is an insistence that the duties which bind agents are based on

pure reason. Sittlichkeit, on the other hand, is the practical realm of moral being and

conduct, the world of our everyday involvements in which we encounter reality directly,

wherein we intuitively sense how to be in accord with ‘the ought’ or ‘the should.’ What

matters to material ethics is the harmony that ought to result from an end-user taking up

with a focal product with both user and product embedded in a contextualizing lifeworld.

A Sittlichkeit is exactly such a lifeworld, a concrete historical community with a common

and shared way of everyday life. Since living in a lifeworld is intrinsic to material ethics,

we find material ethics more toward the Sittlichkeit end of the Moralität/Sittlichkeit

spectrum. At the root of its concerns, material ethics includes, in Borgmann’s words, “a

moral assessment that takes into account the concrete dailiness that channels our

endeavors and aspirations.”6

A primary consequence of the focal engineering venture is to bring into the world

products that go beyond being mere devices, wherein the product is reduced to being just

machinery and commodity. A commodity is meant to be consumed. Borgmann:

To consume in the prevailing contemporary sense is to appropriate or

ingest something in the imperious and unencumbered way that depends on

the sophisticated and powerful machinery of modern technology. The

latter makes the riches of the world available to us as commodities that are

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 entirely subject to our desires. In technology, machinery and commodity

are divided from and related to one another as means and ends in a

radically novel version of this relation. Never before have ends been so

unencumbered by means and hence so conveniently available. Nor have

means ever been so inaccessible and unintelligible to the ordinary citizen.7

Switch on summer from a slot machine.

Get what you want to if you want,

'cause you can get anything. Cat Stevens

We have to look at the consequences of engaging with focal products as opposed

to procuring commodities. Once more and more commodities are procured – I think of

the guy with the tee-shirt that says “he who has the most toys when he dies wins” – we

often come to realize that making consumption the main aspect of our lives does not yield

freedom or enrichment of life. It leads so often to a weakening of spirit because a world

reduced to consumption of goods or commodities no longer engages us in the fullness of

our bodily, mental, and communal capacities. What occurs, Borgmann argues, is a double

and symmetrical loss. “The world, when reduced to consumable commodities, has been

gutted and trivialized. Humans, when reduced to consumers, have become solitary and

passive.”8

Engineered products have consequences. They can function as devices,

commodities that are to be consumed, but by proper tuning they can become focal.

Television, for example, is it not a neutral product? It can be tuned into focal practices by

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setting one up, say, in a senior center, where folks can gather and watch the news as a

collective venture and spend time discussing current events. The shallowness of network

news coverage, for instance, might be compared to a BBC broadcast. That could lead to

engaging conversation. Unfortunately, in most cases, TV fails to make good on its

promise of delivering us from our collective ennui. Borgmann considers the moral

assessment of TV and shows how what I am calling virtue ethics and process ethics are

insufficient to get at what perplexes us about TV. TV viewing is not a sin, not a crime. It

does not necessarily lead to social injustice or environmental destruction but, claims

Borgmann, “it disengages us from one another; it reduces us to passivity; it trivializes the

sacred; it replaces celebration with consumption and challenge with commodity; and it

procures for us what we should strive for and come to deserve.”9

To enhance our sensitivities to focally engineered products we need to discuss

positive ways these products can be engaging, enlivening, and resonant. When should the

consequences of engineered products be investigated? The sooner the better in the

sequence of phases which includes the design/production/marketing/user phases. If a

product can be deemed to be focal early on in the design phase, that would seem to be

ideal. Usually that’s not the way things are. Usually a market survey reveals the potential

profitability of a product and there immediately ensues a mad dash to get it out the door

and onto the shelves.

At the very least, before a product is let loose upon the planet, it ought to be

assessed for its focality. Assessment teams, many different kinds and models of which

have been suggested, should be formed. I like the Danish Consensus Conference model,

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about which I will elaborate in a bit. But first, more details on the values I associate with

material ethics and the applicability of these values to the assessment process.

The Triangle

In the material ethics assessment process, as I have mentioned, we need to look at

the product/user/world constellation. All three elements are connected. Then there is the

question of how the three values of material ethics I am proposing

(engagement/enlivenment/resonance) should relate to the three elements of the

product/user/world constellation. An assessment triangle can be laid out which ties these

ideas together:

Engagement

is the value that indicates the harmony between the end-user and the engineered product.

The person/product relationship is at issue. Is there a great deal of harmony between user

and product or is there none? Is there perhaps a discord? These are questions the

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conversation of the lifeworld needs to entertain. Enlivenment is the value that indicates

the harmony between the end-user and the lifeworld that an end-user inhabits. Are people

in their world enlivened as a consequence of taking up with the product at issue? Can

they be? Is that relationship between person and world unaffected? Or does it produce a

deadening affect? Again, these are questions the conversation of the lifeworld needs to

entertain. Finally, resonance is the value that indicates the harmony between the product

and the lifeworld that the product affects. Is the product in its worldly involvement

harmoniously tuned? If there is no resonance here is there actually dissonance? Once

more, these are questions the conversation of the lifeworld needs to entertain.

Bringing It Together a Third Time

How might a conversation about such imprecise terms ensue? I would like to

suggest an idea which I introduced earlier in the text. It helps to pin down a few things. In

the consideration of engagement, for instance, perhaps after a brief time of preliminary

discussion, we could ask all the participants in the conversation of the lifeworld to attach

a number to their notion of engagement. A plus-three indicates a very positive feeling of

engagement, a minus-three a very negative feeling. A neutral feeling gets a zero.

Plus-two is rather positive, plus-one is slightly positive, etc. Then we could

average out everyone’s numbers and, say, we arrive at a 2.22 result. That indicates an

overall very positive sense that the person/product relationship is healthy and strong.

Then the person/world and the product/world relationships can be analyzed in a similar

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fashion. That should not be the end of the conversation but perhaps just another

beginning. Further discussion can now, however, be more focused.

To present these ideas a bit more formally, I will look at the approach I took with

respect to virtue and process ethics. In chapter two I discussed a simple mathematical

approach to initiating the discussion about process ethics. In chapter five I did the same

for virtue ethics. Here in chapter eight I will present an analogous approach for material

ethics. To bring all the pieces of the puzzle together, I will consider all three values of

engagement, enlivenment, and resonance in terms of an example, the same example in

fact that I used in chapters two and five involving the engineering of Radio Frequency

IDentification (RFID) devices. Again, assume the technical aspect of the engineering has

been impeccably done, meeting all the standards of efficiency and productivity. How

might we assess the moral dimension of the engineered, the actual RFID devices? I

suggest we gauge it against the values I have put forth in this chapter to constitute a

material ethics of the engineered. This assessment can be carried out within the

conversation of the lifeworld. Ultimately, assessments of the engineers involved in the

RFID group, the process of engineering, and the engineered itself will need to be done

within the conversation of the lifeworld, with all interested parties involved.

If I assign a value function (Jm1, Jm2, Jm3) to each of the three values I am aiming

at, I can write

Jm = γ1 Jm1 + γ2 Jm2 + γ3 Jm3

with

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γ1 + γ2 + γ3 = 1.0

where the γi terms are weighting factors whose values are to be determined by consensus.

Initially assume all three value functions are equally weighted, so all γi terms will be set

to 1/3. That means the three values I am considering here are all of more or less the same

importance. Again, assume all three value functions can range from -3 to +3, where a

minus number indicates that, say, engagement is weak, and a positive number indicates

that, say, enlivenment is strong.

Assume that as a result of conversations, we can gather a material ethics

assessment of the RFID device. The participants decided that the engagement of the end-

user with the RFID device will be rather minimal. The value of Jm1 = -2.0 seemed

appropriate. The enlivenment of the end-user in his world also turned out to be minimal

so Jm2 = -2.0 was deemed appropriate. The resonance of the RFID product and the human

lifeworld was more tricky to assess. This kind of resonance, impossible to measure,

seemed to depend on the proponents of RFID making a case for how enlightened the

world will be with a proliferation of RFIDs. Much discussion resulted in a value of Jm3 =

1.0. The total value function Jm is computed:

Jm = 1/3(-2) + 1/3(-2) + 1/3(+1) = -1.0

indicating a not very positive material ethics assessment. Again, this number is not the

“answer” to the ethical question about whether or not the RFID device contributes to

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harmonious reality. But the number can provide a point of departure for further

discussion.

Consensus Conference Model

I assume that a conversation within an engineering group has done a virtue ethics

assessment of the engineers involved in a given project, and I assume their assessment

was positive, at least in terms of the personal virtues of fairness, honesty, and care.

Furthermore, I assume that a conversation at the level of the profession has determined

that the values of health and safety, environmental sustainability, and social justice have

been honored by the engineering process. Nevertheless, if a company, for example,

engineers a product about which there is some ambiguity regarding its environmental

sustainability, then what? If the conversation at the level of the profession allows this

product to be produced – perhaps giving it a green light because even though there was

ambiguity regarding environmental sustainability, the other values of social justice and

health & safety received high marks – then the ultimate burden of assessment falls upon

the conversation of the lifeworld. Within that conversation the product is to be assessed

primarily in terms of material ethics and the values of engagement, enlivenment, and

resonance. However, within that conversation the virtue ethics and conceptual ethics

assessments must also be reviewed. The buck stops at the conversation of the lifeworld. It

functions like the Supreme Court of engineering ethics assessments. How might the

conversation of the lifeworld unfold?

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 For example, people can just get together in a neighborhood or town hall meeting,

talk things over, and decide on whether or not to install speed bumps. Take a vote and

that’s it. But what about more complex issues? Especially issues involving controversial

engineered products? Genetically engineered or genetically modified (GM) foods are

widely discussed today. Are the products or policies surrounding the products good or do

they promote the good? Gathering, discussing, voting seem to be necessary but not

sufficient. Many layers of interpretation, for instance, support the notion of GM foods.

The conversation could be more structured. Who, for instance, should be conversing?

This is, I believe, the place where consensus conference models could come in handy.

The consensus conference arrangement of public participation was first instituted by the

Danish Board of Technology in 1987 and has been employed many times since, mostly in

Europe.

A consensus conference can be defined as a method of technology assessment

organized as a meeting between an expert panel and a lay panel consisting of concerned

citizens.10 The lay panel of citizens actually does the assessment after being informed by

the experts. My suggestion is that the lay panel has some focal engineers on it and the

expert panel does too. Focal engineers on the expert panel would, of course, be experts in

the area of engineering from which the product springs. Focal engineers on the lay panel

would be non-experts but would be functioning in their role as citizens. A consensus

conference is analogous to a jury process used in the courts. Sometimes they are called

citizens’ panels. Each panel consists of a representative cross-section of 9 to 15 citizens.

These are people to be affected by the public policy under consideration. The citizens’

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panel is chosen by a steering committee whose membership includes only those who

have no direct stake in the outcome of the policy recommendations.11

The expert panel is also chosen by the steering or planning committee though the

lay panel has some input as to the selection of the experts. The steering/planning

committee must be as impartial as possible. In a typical Danish consensus conference, the

Danish Board of Technology which is a quasi-independent agency of the state sets up the

steering committee.12 Who controls the controllers is a question that sometimes comes up

here. Striving for as much impartiality as we can on steering committees is the best we

can do. Consensus conference recommendations are, as a matter of fact, seen as

remarkably unbiased. Assuming a well-balanced steering committee is selected to

oversee the consensus conference organization, what kind of constituency might that

committee have? Typically it might include “an academic scientist, an industry

researcher, a trade unionist, a representative of a public-interest group, and a project

manager…”13 And I would, of course, strongly recommend the inclusion of focal

engineers on the steering committee.

Focal engineers, then, should be on the steering committee as well as on the lay

and expert panels. Focal engineers are, after all, citizens as well as engineers and they

have a special attunement to the good works that engineering can bring forth to contribute

to a convivial society. They are schooled in the practical aspects of material ethics as well

as virtue ethics and process ethics. But otherwise they are regular folks like you or I. We

are they and we are The People. Setting aside our differences, we can concentrate on our

common ground.

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I am he

As you are he

As you are me

And we are all together ---------- The Beatles

The theory behind Danish technology panels is that, while experts can help

explain what is the case by providing insight into the issues, mechanics, facts,

possibilities, and problems associated with a particular technology, they do not have any

better sense of what ought to be the case than the average citizen. In a democracy we the

people should have the final say. Those of us whose lives are affected by an issue should

have an effective voice in deciding how to deal with it. The people who have to live with

the results of the technology, should be the judge about how to deal with the inevitable

trade-offs. On these technology panels, people bring up for discussion their feelings, their

values, their humanity, and the experiences of their everyday lives. This is precisely what

is missing from most official dialogue about technical issues.14

The knowledge of the experts and the common sense and popular will of the

people are woven together into a consensus, which may not be a 100% agreement but the

lay panel is encouraged to come as close as possible to 100%. The process is what

matters. The consensus sought here “is not the familiar Beltway political consensus, in

which powerholder A trades favors with powerholder B, or where powerful interest

groups forge lowest-common-denominator compromises at the expense of the rest of

society.”15 What transpires is creative movement in the midst of inevitable differences

and conflicts, seeking to achieve deeper and higher levels of common ground, often with

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unpredictable consequences, wise breakthroughs unforeseen by any of the participants.16

Often in authentic dialog there emerges an inspiration that cannot really be attributed to

any particular speaker, but comes from the connections between participants that the

dialog promotes. This is especially the case in the “I-Thou” rather than “I-It” relationship

of Martin Buber which is foundational to the practice of the virtue of care. The

connection between people is also evident in the ideas of Levinas who insisted that being-

for the other springs from the intrinsic connection we have to those we encounter. How

far we need to extend the obligation we find with those we encounter is an open question,

but we must at least recognize our common humanity.

Now, the lay panel of the consensus conference, in my estimation, needs to

expand its horizon. The ingredient I would like to insert into the mix of their deliberations

is an assessment based on the ideas of material ethics. That would entail looking at any

issue through the lens of the values of engagement, enlivenment, and resonance. I would

think that a numerical value of 1.5 or above on the minus-3 to plus-3 scale mentioned

above should be a requirement to give a project a green light. Of course, these and all

such concerns should be open to discussion in the on-going conversation of the lifeworld.

One more thing: the lay panel should also review the virtue ethics and process

ethics assessments that are presumably done in-plant and at the professional level,

respectively. Integrating the assessments of all three types of ethics, i.e., virtue ethics,

process ethics, and material ethics, can result in an over-all value function of the form

J = α Jc + β Jv + γ Jm

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with

α + β + γ = 1.0

and the J’s are again restricted to a minus-3 to plus-3 scale. Since the notion of “at the

professional level” is somewhat vague, we could have the process ethics assessment in

terms of environmental sustainability, social justice, and health and safety done by

professional engineers who are members of the expert and lay panels. These consensus

conferences, in fact, might be optimal configurations for doing both process ethics and

material ethics assessments. But that would require both the lay panel and expert panel to

include professional engineers as well as focal engineers. They could, of course, be the

same person. By the expression professional engineer I would not necessarily mean an

engineer who has a Professional Engineer’s License, but rather just an engineer who is a

practicing engineering and is recognized as a professional by the society in which he or

she functions.

Conclusions

Focal engineering and its assessment demand that before we decide on any

suggested technological innovation we think seriously about it and talk about it.

Reflection and discussion should precede letting loose upon the planet any new

engineered product. This is not really anything new, but perhaps a re-newel. Since our

engineered world has transformed so rapidly, speed matters most, and many believe

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reflection is a luxury we can ill afford. But unless we make time for that reflection – as

was more common in the days of pre-modern engineering – technological determinism

prevails and the possibility of avoiding colonization of our lifeworlds appears slim. A

slowing down and a step back are the minimal requirements.

There is a story of the Cheyenne Indian priest who consulted their most important

god about whether the tribe should accept the new technology of horses when

neighboring Comanches offered them to the tribe. He reported back to his people:

If you have horses everything will be changed for you forever. You will

have to move around a lot to find pasture for your horses. You will have to

give up gardening and live by hunting and gathering, like the Comanches.

And you will have to come out of your earth houses and live in tents …

You will have fights with other tribes, who will want your pasture lands or

the places where you hunt. You will have to have real soldiers, who can

protect the people. Think, before you decide.17

But, you may insist, the contemporary engineer is thinking all the time, seeking optimal

solutions and "best practices.” Contemporary engineers tend to be typically modern,

which implies that they take on features of pre-modern engineering as well as a scientific

perspective. Many projects, judgments, calculations, and decisions can be carried out in a

pre-modern engineering way. Design in the past has often been a matter of intuitions.

Design these days tends to be science based. Modern engineering, in an explicit manner,

employs science in the service of its methods and processes, particularly the design and

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manufacturing procedures, key ingredients in the production process. But the focus of the

modern engineering enterprise is on means and methods with minimal reference to ends

and goals. The discussion about ends and goals gets foreclosed because it is taken for

granted that we all want to be disburdened and entertained. Most of the discussion around

technology and engineering has to do with means. How to make the optimal means? But

for what? The ends, goals, aims of the engineering project garner scant attention. Why?

Perhaps because they invoke why questions. And within the engineering project, how to

questions triumph over why questions.

Mix in some what questions with the how to questions and the whys get lost in the

swirl. But in order to start promoting a more humane and convivial lifeworld, I suggest a

re-awaking of a questioning and critical attitude. Think before you decide means think

about ends as well as means. Why pursue this aim over that aim or no aim at all?

A discussion of aims of the engineering project, as distinguished from the project

itself and its methodology, brings modern engineering face to face with the possibilities

of focal engineering. The venture can and should be directed toward the big problems of

the day, like global warming, ozone depletion, declines in biodiversity, growing rates of

resource depletion, and exponential population growth. Yet focal engineering seeks most

earnestly to act locally, to embellish local ecologies with systems, services, devices,

organisms, and structures whose prospects are good for advancing the engaged life in a

convivial society. The best practice for a focal engineering enterprise might be not to

bring forth such and such, but rather to decide against letting loose into the world another

product that would lead to disengagement and dislocation. Could the Cheyenne Indians

have not adopted the horse? Could we moderns have not adopted the automobile?

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 To get to the point of seeing the crucial importance of focal engineering requires a

fundamental re-orientation of perspective, a shift in worldview, for both the engineering

project and for our public discourse. In which public arenas might this best occur? Profit-

driven corporations may be too entrenched in a bottom-line modern perspective, valuing

only efficiency and productivity. The university, however, is touted as a place where

students not only prepare for future careers, but also engage with contextualizing

critiques of their lifeworld, putting it in perspective, and adopting a critical attitude

toward it. However much it may have fallen from grace, the university is, I suggest, the

most promising place to begin the conversation of focal engineering. For openers,

without making drastic changes in curriculum, engineering instructors could initiate more

why questions. Opening up the world in which a proposed device will function, why

questions bring context to bear on the deliberations of professional engineering. How

might the precise skills students learn in engineering fields be brought to bear upon the

questions of connections between personal life and the social lifeworld? As Langdon

Winner puts it: “Our moral obligations must now include a willingness to engage others

in the difficult work of defining what the crucial choices are that confront technological

society and how intelligently to confront them."18 Clearly, the crucial choices for the

ideal engineering project, the focal engineering venture, are choices about engineered

products that are to be brought into the world.

The material ethics assessment is based on relating the values of engagement,

enlivenment, and resonance to the constellation of product/user/world. The minimum

requirement is the participation of the focal engineer in a conversation of the lifeworld

about the product at issue. Ideally, such assessment should be done as soon as possible in

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the cycle of the product’s design and development, at least before the product is brought

forth into the world and made available for mass consumption.

I emphasized the consensus conference model of the conversation of the lifeworld

because of its democratic, dialogical, and unbiased nature. The growing positive

reputation of such conferences suggests that future techno-scientific assessments, via

such conferences, can incorporate the voice of average citizens, including the

disenfranchised, previously considered unable to understand the intricacies of the techno-

scientific phenomenon at issue. One doesn’t really need to understand the details of

system design and the differential equation solutions which might lay at the foundation

of, for instance, a radar system we may be assessing. But via expert input and intensive

Q&A periods, involving the lay panel and the expert panel members, most average

citizens who are serving on a lay panel member can understand the uses and implications

of the radar system.

Assuming, then, that focal engineering and material ethics, one way or another,

get their say, what might transpire? Focal products, services, policies will be brought into

play. The world will be transformed and life will be transformed toward The Good as

defined in a convivial society. Voices in the human lifeworld will influence focal

engineering practices, which devise products that contribute to focal life practices in the

human lifeworld. There is a circular process involved here. The circle leading from the

engineering venture to the lifeworld and back again need not be vicious. It can be

hermeneutical, with each traversal yielding more clarity of understanding and

interpretation. As Heidegger says, it is not a question of escaping the circle, but of getting

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more fully into it. Being into it, being at its center, a peculiar stillness is found there. Like

in the eye of the hurricane. A balance.

References

1 Albert Borgmann, “Reply to my Critics,” in Technology and the Good Life,

eds., Eric Higgs, Andrew Light, and David Strong (Chicago: The University

of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 346.

2 Kim Vincente, The Human Factor (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 1.

3 Ibid., p.90.

4 Bonnie A. Nardi and Vicki L. O’Day, Information Ecologies: Using

Technology with Heart (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1999.

5 Ibid., p. ix.

6 Albert Borgmann, “The Moral Assessment of Technology,” in Democracy in

a Technological Society, ed. Langdon Winner (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic

Publishers, 1992), p. 211.

7 Ibid., p. 211.

8 Ibid., p. 212.

9 Ibid., p. 212.

10 Johs Grundahl, “The Danish Consensus Conference Model,” from the text

Public Participation in Science: the Role of Consesus Conferences in Europe,

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 eds S. Joss and J. Durant (London: Science Museum, 1995), available on the

WEB at

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~pubconf/Education/grundahl.htm

11 Bob Hudspith and Mike Kim, “Learning from a University-Cosponsored

Regional Consensus Conference,” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society,

vol. 22. no. 3 June 2002, p. 232.

12 Phil Bereano, “Report on Danish ‘Citizen Consensus Conference’ on

Genetically Engineered Foods, March 12-15, 1999,” p. 2, available on the

WEB at

http://www.loka.org/pages/DanishGeneFood.htm

13 Richard E. Sclove, “Town Meetings on Technology,” in Daniel Lee

Kleinman, ed., Science, Technology, and Democracy (Albany, New York:

State University of New York Press, 2000), p. 35.

14 “Danish Citizen Technology Panels,” p. 2, from a report of The Co-

Intelligence Institute, available on the WEB at

http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-DanishTechPanels.html

15 Ibid., p. 2.

16 Ibid., p. 2.

17 W. H. McNeill, "Goodbye to the Bison," The New York Review of Books,

April 27, 2000, vol. XLVII, no. 7, p. 23.

18 Langdon Winner, "Engineering Ethics and Political Imagination," in Paul T.

Durbin, Ed., Broad and Narrow Interpretations of Philosophy of Technology.

Amsterdam: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990, p. 62.

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