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. 1 Apparently, there is something special about the relation between responsibility and technology and engineering.