Imagine the following problem: we are trying to send trash into space to prevent it from accumulating on Earth, but we are not yet able to do so efficiently. How could we solve this?

When I posed this question to my undergraduate engineering students during the Ecodesign course , one of the proposed solutions was to build elevators that could propel waste off Earth. From a strictly technical standpoint, the answer made sense: they had identified a problem and designed a possible solution.

But then I told them that perhaps the problem wasn’t how to better send the trash into space. Perhaps the problem was that we were generating so much trash that we had come to consider it reasonable to expel it from the planet.

The exercise was clearly a trick question. It wasn’t intended to test whether they could imagine better technologies, but rather whether they could question the problem they had been given. And I posed it because they were taking the ecological ethics module of the course.

The limits of design

When we talk about the limits of technology, from an engineering perspective we think of things we are not yet able to build, develop, or optimize. However, from a philosophical perspective, when we talk about the limits of technology, we are referring to things that, although they can be done, perhaps should not be done .

A significant part of technical training teaches how to optimize solutions within given conditions. Philosophy introduces another possibility: pausing, before solving the problem, to analyze whether we should address the problem at its root. Because we can be extraordinarily good at solving a problem and still be solving the wrong problem.

What philosophy contributes to engineering

This is especially relevant at a time in history when technological innovation is advancing at breakneck speed. Faced with artificial intelligence, electric mobility, autonomous cars, and the energy transition, much of the public conversation revolves around how to achieve more efficient, faster, or more powerful technologies, but we don’t always stop to consider whether we are solving, or perhaps exacerbating, the problem.

Technical training also needs philosophy because it provides at least three skills that are especially valuable for those who design and develop technology.

A critical look at the problem

The first step is learning to question the problem before attempting to solve it. In engineering, many tasks arrive already formulated to seek efficiency, speed, or performance. Philosophy teaches us, however, that these approaches are not neutral : it is worth asking who defined the problem, what objectives were assumed, what alternatives were left out, and who will be affected by the solution.

Let’s consider, for example, artificial intelligence: we can ask ourselves how to build faster, more accurate, or more powerful models. But we can also pause for a moment and think: what decisions do we really want to automate ? And who does it affect? ​​[ What resources does it require? ] What uses do we want to prioritize, and which could we do without?

Looking beyond effectiveness

The second lesson is learning to look beyond effectiveness. A solution can work perfectly and, at the same time, violate rights or shift its costs onto people, communities, or ecosystems that are barely considered in the design process. Ethical theories allow us to introduce questions that a technical specification doesn’t always address: Who benefits? Who bears the risks? What harm are we willing to accept? Are there limits we shouldn’t cross?

In our ecodesign classes, we work with the idea that a design should not be evaluated solely on its achievements, but also on how it distributes its effects. Students learn that every decision has consequences beyond the purely technical, and that technology is not separate from the world in which it is implemented, but rather an important part of it because it transforms the social, political, and environmental world of which it is a part.

Who bears the costs of a design?

The third lesson is learning to change perspective . Those who design or use a technology sometimes occupy a very different position from those who will bear its costs, especially environmental ones. We are seeing this, for example, in the implementation of data centers.

Changing perspective means asking ourselves what happens if we stop looking only from the place of those who enjoy the service and also place ourselves in the place of those who live in the territories where these infrastructures are installed, those who provide the energy or materials necessary to maintain them, or those who will assume their long-term environmental consequences.

The question then ceases to be solely how much a technology can do and becomes also how its benefits and costs are distributed.

An essential and constant dialogue

None of this means, however, that philosophy should be placed above engineering. The former also needs the latter to imagine possible futures. The great contemporary challenges can hardly be addressed from a single discipline.

We need engineering professionals who can ask what is worth building, and philosophers who can engage in dialogue with those who can transform alternative visions of the world into real solutions. The convergence of these two disciplines is essential if we want not only to imagine more just societies, but also to build them.

Author Bio: Beatriz Rayón Viña is the Severo Ochoa Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oviedo