Abstract

This chapter engages with one dominant thought in Western engineering ethics: engineering ethics is ethics of professional engineers; when there are no engineers in charge, it is not a substantive issue of engineering ethics. Taking a linguistic philosophical approach to engineering, I start with a brief etymology of “engineering” in English, and describe how its closest equivalent in the Chinese language, gong cheng, despite carrying selected senses of Western “engineering,” has retained in large part its traditional meanings that concern a wide scope of technological activities much broader than the narrow, technical purview of a professional engineer. Based on the interpretations of engineering in the Chinese language, my study demonstrates how engineering ethics in Taiwan encompasses all the relevant participants that have an influence on engineering work. In enlisting non-engineers into the engineering profession, engineering ethics in Taiwan fosters a community of “engineering personnel” that are expected to work collectively to make engineering work better and safer for the public. This inclusive genre of engineering ethics not only reconciles the assumed antagonism between engineers and non-engineers by including what is often a professional engineer’s “environment” in the proper field of engineering and its ethics. It is also inherently aligned with contextual approaches to engineering ethics, presenting a strong case for the relevance of “macroethics” and science and technology studies, which are sometimes played down by engineering ethicists. My hope is that engineering ethics in Taiwan as presented here could serve as one paradigm of engineering ethics for the global engineering community and Western engineering ethics.