Ethical theories

Ethical theories provide frameworks for systematically reflecting on moral issues. However, their use in teaching engineering students is not without criticism. The abstractness, complexity, and nuances involved may overwhelm students, whereas overly simplistic applications often lead to questionable results. This chapter discusses the use of ethical theories, where developing ethical competence is the main learning goal for teaching ethics to engineering students. After mapping the current landscape of engineering ethics education, the chapter presents an overview of the ethical theories most used in engineering ethics education, namely consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, followed by state-of-the-art aspects of the philosophical debate on these theories. The chapter then outlines underrepresented ethical theories and approaches including contractarianism and contractualism, care ethics, and discourse ethics to paint a picture of what ethical theories could contribute to improving ethical competence among students. After a summary of common problems or barriers that students encounter when learning about ethical theories, the chapter concludes by discussing whether ethical theories are needed when teaching engineering students if one sees ethical competence as the main learning goal.