ABSTRACT
Ethical judgments are important in devising responses to ethical problems, of course. Engineers recognize the ability to analyze the designs of others as a useful skill for designers to possess, but not sufficient to make a person a good designer. For this reason, most engineering schools offer courses in engineering design that are markedly different from the engineering theory courses that teach students to apply theory to the solution of problems. The applications problems typically have unique, mathematically exact solutions. Some engineering design and ethical problems may be trivial in that the specification of the problem leaves little leeway in an acceptable solution. Brainstorming requires an uncritical atmosphere in which people can present "half-baked" ideas that may be later refined or combined. Articulation of any half-baked ideas is discouraged in the many ethics classes where adversarial debate comprises the primary method used.
