Editors’ Overview: Moral Responsibility in Technology and Engineering

From its earliest issue back in 1995, responsibility has been a major theme in the Journal of Science and Engineering Ethics. Although the focus of attention and conceptions of responsibility vary considerably over the different articles, the prevalence of responsibility as a topic is remarkable. On a superficial reading, we could see it as the logical corollary of the importance of responsibility for the broader field of applied ethics. However, this can only partly explain why responsibility is such a widely discussed topic in the Journal of Science and Engineering Ethics. If we take, for example, the academic journals for medical ethics, responsibility is not half as frequently mentioned in the title or keywords. Apparently, there is something special about the relation between responsibility and technology and engineering. To see what is special about responsibility in technology and engineering, one should perhaps start with the kind of paradigmatic situation that is usually the focus of attention in philosophical ethics, and even in most of the applied ethics literature. In this paradigmatic situation, there is usually an individual that is confronted with a difficult ethical choice. Although the choice at hand is morally complex, it is usually assumed that what raises ethical concerns are the possible actions of the individual and the direct consequences of these actions. Moreover, it is usually assumed that