The Section of Philosophy & Ethics, which is part of the School of Innovation Sciences, focuses on the ethical and philosophical problems of modern technology.

Its mission is threefold:

1. to encourage a reflective attitude of engineering students at TU/e by teaching courses in ethics & technology and philosophy of technology at many faculties at TU/e; part of this effort is the certificate program in philosophy;
2. to carry out fundamental and applied research in ethics & technology and philosophy of technology. Our research is embedded in the Eindhoven Center for Innovation Studies (ECIS), the 3TU Centre of Excellence for Ethics and Technology, and the Netherlands School for Research in Practical Philosophy;
3. to initiate and coordinate activities aimed at strengthening academic education at TU/e. This includes the university lectures Big History and Big Images.

Currently about 20 philosophers (including PhD students and postdocs) work at the Section of Philosophy & Ethics. They focus on questions such as: How should norms and values, for example with respect to safety and sustainability, inform engineering design processes? To what extent can agency and responsibility be attributed to technical artifacts and automated systems? Does our notion of knowledge change due to the large influence of computers and other cognitive devices? Are technological developments best understood as a form of evolution? How can we characterize means-ends reasoning as part of technological ratio­nality? What kinds of moral problems are engineers confronted with in their professional practice and how should they deal with these problems? Does modelling in engineering always assume a particular ethical perspective? How can the notion of responsi­bility with regard to the use and performance of technology be maintained, given that technology is so overwhelmingly a product of a collective effort?