Ethics and the allocation of risk in engineering design

Any engineering design allocates risk among its several constituencies: customers, users, manufacturers, the public at large, and so forth. Techniques for risk management are well known and widely practiced, but the role of virtue in guiding risk allocation is less clear. This essay contrasts two worldviews with contrasting concepts of virtue: that of the naturalist, which holds that the physical universe is all that exists, and that morality derives from human reason alone; and that of the theist, believing the physical universe to be created by divine fiat, and that human reason should be informed by principles set by a high, creator God. Defining a personal worldview is central to the ethics of risk allocation. Persuading students to do this becomes the central issue in teaching ethics in the engineering classroom.