Engineering for Happiness, a dialogue.

Bioethical Reflections: Engineering for Happiness

Albert and John are two engineering students. Their conversation takes place over sushi... Do not join them unless you are willing to think with them.

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Albert: John, why are we engineers?

John: Because we chose to be... because it’s fun. I really enjoy it, don’t you?

Albert: Sure, but I know that you enjoy skiing as well, and boxing, perhaps more than engineering. And I enjoy reading Shakespeare more than anything. Yet we are engineers...

John: Well, making money is a big motivation as well. You couldn’t make a living reading Shakespeare.

A: Not likely, no. But there are lots of other activities besides engineering that we could engage in to make a living. So why engineering?

J: I don’t know about you, but for my part, out of all the professions I could reasonably aspire to, engineering was the most attractive.

A: Why?

J: I like making useful things and engineering skills uniquely equip me to help other people. With my knowledge of electronics, I can make all kinds of helpful medical devices.

A: But is what is useful necessarily also good?

J: Sure!

A: In a way you are right... but something can be useful for a bad reason. A gun can be used in self-defense, but it can also be used for robbing a bank. In that sense, useful is no necessarily good.

J: Well, for one, I do not make weapons. And secondly, the poor use that people make of technology does not make technology bad. You could kill someone with too much of a lifesaving drug...or with a pen! But that’s not really of concern to me anyhow. I just make useful things.

A: But “useful” means “useful for something, for some end...”

J: Well, let’s say that I hope to make only things that will benefit other people, and not harm them. But if some poor use is made of that technology, I don’t think it’s the fault of the one who makes it. Specifically, I hope to make things that are medically beneficial, that will help patient outcome in the long run.

A: So something useful is good if it benefits other people?

J: Obviously.

A: What isn’t so clear to me it what “benefits” means.

J: Well “benefits” comes from bonum facere, meaning “doing good” in Latin. Something benefits other people when it does good to them. For example, promoting health is doing good to people.

A: Is it always true that promoting health is doing good to others?

J: Do you mean that promoting the health of one person could harm the health of another?

A: That’s certainly a possibility. If you take a beating heart from someone’s chest to give it to someone else, it seems you are killing one man to save another. And if you were contributing technology for specifically that kind of procedure, would you not be collaborating in murder?

J: Maybe... I am not sure about that one.

A: Something to think about... But that wasn’t exactly where I was going with my last question. I was asking you whether promoting the health of an individual is always doing good to that individual?

J: I don’t see how it could not. Everybody needs to be healthy, that’s basic.

A: Yes. But it also seems that you can be healthy and unhappy.

J: Well, we could include mental health in the picture as well.

A: I don’t think that is nearly enough. Happiness is not a psychological state or feeling. It’s a mode of being, a way of life, so to speak.

J: That’s not how I or most people would think of happiness, and I am not sure what you mean by “a mode of being.”

A: Well, ignorance is bliss... Do you think we should call someone happy who has a terminal illness and doesn’t even know it?

J: If they don’t know it then I would say yes.

A: And we should tell them and make them unhappy!?

J: No, but I think that especially if the person could do something about it, they would want to know.

A: What if nearly nothing can be done? Should we not tell them?

J: It’s difficult to say. Maybe they wouldn’t want to know.

A: Either way, it seems clear that being happy and being healthy are not the same thing, namely that there are other components to happiness than health or perceived heath.

J: Sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that contributing to someone’s health is contributing to their happiness.

A: Yes, health is an essential component of happiness. From that I would derive two ideas. Firstly, that happiness is not a psychological state or a perception, otherwise we should say that perceived health, not health, is essential to happiness. Secondly, that there is more to being happy than being healthy, otherwise health would be happiness. While health is fundamental, there may be other things of comparable or greater importance to our fulfillment as human beings.

J: Like?

A: Like friendship. Some have gladly and happily given their life to save someone they loved; parents willingly devote themselves to their children often to an extent that is ruinous to their health. It’s just an example.

J: That seems a little extreme and far from the point. What does this have to do with biomedical technology?

A: The point should be further detailed, but what I am trying to get at is this: if we are to be good engineers, we must be concerned with doing good to others, but not simply by blindly making something useful, but rather, by integrating our effort into the pursuit of the whole good of man. It is dangerous to separate human health from human beings. No, if we are to be truly responsible engineers, we must have a vision of the whole of what is good for man. We must engineer for happiness!

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