Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ethics
Ethics
Lecture 1
Philosophy attempts to answer questions that go beyond practicing the discipline.
Non- moral (amoral) oughts actions that dont fall within domain of morality
Moral oughts rules/laws/oughts that hold all persons simply in virtue of being moral people
Lecture 2
Rabins on the motivations for engineering ethics
Moral autonomy the skill and habit of thinking rationally and independently about ethical issues on
the basis of genuine moral concern and the ability to act on the moral convictions that are a results of
that deliberation
Skills
o Understanding, questioning, thinking, developing arguments, making good choices
Content
o
Lecture 3
Martin on categories of professional motivation:
Craft motives desires for goods like technological expertise, creativity, and understanding of
possibility
Compensation motives desires for social rewards (money, power, authority, good reputation,
job stability)
Moral concern moral caring for living beings, to promote their well-being for their sake and
desires to maintain ones moral integrity and self-respect
Engineering ethics is about character (intellectual virtues creativity, critical thinking and personal
integrity and emotional virtues empathy and compassion)
Personal meaning is connected to being the kind of person you want to be and living the life you want to
live.
Week 2
Week 3
Lecture 1
Obligation to follow professional codes of ethics and evaluate and help evolve codes
Code of conduct
o Intended as addition to requirements of law
Code sources
o Professional codes
Formulated by professional association
Most are aspirational and/or advisory
o Corporate codes
Formulated by companies
Most are disciplinary
Types of codes
o Aspirational
Expresses values of profession or company
o Advisory
Has objective to help individual professionals to exercise moral judgement
o Disciplinary
Has objective that behavior of all professionals meets certain values
Three domains of modern codes
1. Conduct profession with integrity and honesty
2. Obligation to employers & clients
3. Responsibility towards public
- Integrity living up to ones own moral codes
- Honestly telling what is believed to be true and disclose all relevant info
- Conflict of interest interest if pursued can conflict with meeting professional obligation to
employer/client
o Solutions: disclosure, recusal, manage
Lecture 2
- Ambiguity can be understood in more than one way
- Loyalty
o Critical loyalty give due regard to interest of employer within constraint of employees
personal/professional ethics
o Uncritical loyalty place interest of employer above other considerations
- Some ideals in engineering
o Technological enthusiasm wanting to develop new possibilities and take up new
challenges
Problem: Wenher Von Braun
o Effectiveness and efficiency
Effective extent goal is achieved
Efficient ratio between goal achieved and effort required
Problem: Frederick W. Taylor
o Human welfare contribute to wellbeing to people
Problem: Animals
Lecture 3
- Three branches of ethics: designed to answer different set of questions
1. Meta ethics Is there even such thing as moral permissibility (moral rightness)? Does
moral truth even exist?
a. Moral Objectivism: there is such thing as moral truth, and it is objective in that
doesnt depend on what people think or believe about it. 2.
b. Moral Relativism: There are no objective moral truths but there are subjective ones.
truths are relative to cultures or societies (to the beliefs of the majority within a
culture or society) 3.
c. Moral Subjectivism: There are no objective moral truths but there are subjective
ones. moral truths are relative to an individual's beliefs 4.
d. Moral Nihilism: there is no moral truth (either objective or subjective). Morality is a
fiction.
What if anything grounds moral value? Is moral value objective or conventional? Is moral value
intrinsic or extrinsic?
2. Ethical theory (normative ethics): we are trying to figure out, What makes an action
morally permissible? A normative theory offers us a criterion for what makes a right
action right and what makes a wrong action wrong. Four popular theories:
Consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, ethics of care
a. Utilitarianism - Says (roughly) that what makes an action right is that it causes more
pleasure than pain for everyone affected by the action.
b. Kantianism - Says (roughly) that what makes an action right is that it conforms with
the moral duties ( rules that we could consistently will to be universal (moral) laws.)
c. Virtue Ethics - (roughly) that what makes a right action right is that it proceeds from
a good (virtuous) character.
d. Ethics of care - Stress that traditional moral theories, principles, practices, and
policies are deficient to the degree they lack, ignore, trivialize, or demean values
and virtues culturally associated with women.
e. Rossianism
f. Divine Command Theory
3. Applied ethics: we are trying to figure out, Under what conditions (if any) is a particular
action morally permissible? Another way of putting it is, applied ethics asks What should I
do in this particular situation?
a. Reproductive Ethics
b. Food Ethics
c. Military Ethics
d. Professional Ethics
i. Medical Ethics
ii. Business Ethics
iii. Engineering Ethics
Principles of applied ethics
1. Non-maleficence: do not harm. 2.
2. Beneficence: act in such a way that the person benefits. 3.
3. Autonomy: honor the persons right to self-determination to
formulate and follow a life plan of her own making. 4.
4. Justice: distribute goods and services in a way that is fair.
Lecture 4
- Ethics: The systematic reflection on Morality (define morality in the normative sense (to refer to
how people should behave)
- Morality: The totality of opinions, decisions, and actions which people express, individually or
collectively, what they think is good or right. (descriptive sense)
o Descriptively
Refer to some code put forth by society or other group
o Normatively
Refer to some code given specific condition, would be put forward by all rational
people
- Moral error: people are mistaken about what they believe is morally right or wrong (no matter
how firmly they believe it.)
o there is a difference between what people do believe about right and wrong, and what
they should believe.
- If talking about shoulds in beliefs, talking about morality in normative sense
Further confusion
Interchangeable terms
- Norms
o Norms are oughts or shoulds of various kinds....as in you ought to ____ or you
should____.
o Moral norms are moral oughts
o Normative judgement - Judgement about weather something is good or bad, desirable
or undesirable right or wrong.
o Non-moral norms
Legal
Sometimes moral norms, sometimes not
Social
Practical (AKA pragmatic)
Aesthetic
Descriptive Statements: concerns what people do in fact do. Descriptive statements offer a description
of peoples actions or character.
Normative Statements (aka Evaluative Statements or Prescriptive Statements): concern what people
ought to do (and this can be different from what they in fact do.) Normative statements offer
evaluations about peoples actions or character.
- Moral judgements - judgment about what you ought (morally) to do or how you (ought) morally
to be as a person.
Conventional norms
- Matter of convention
o No white after labor day
o Rules of etiquette
o No elbows on table
- Values - States of affairs that are worth (or at least thought to be worth) striving for
o Normative judgements are also sometime value judgements or evaluative
judgements.
o Thats because values are what drive normative judgements.
- Values are like goals (or ends)
- Norms are the way to achieve those goal (the means.)
Different Values
- Social Value
- Monetary Value
- Political Value
- Historical Value
- Sentimental Value
- Aesthetic Value
- Pragmatic Value (Practical Value): Pragmatic value can be applied to, objects actions, beliefs,
and situations.
o Money sometimes has pragmatic value. Objects that are worth money can be
pragmatically valuable.
- Moral value: Moral value mostly applies to actions or to peoples character, or lives.
o An act of kindness, for instance, has moral value.
- Epistemic Value: Epistemic value is mostly applied to beliefs and actions regarding beliefs.
o Truth is a kind of epistemic value. True beliefs have epistemic value
Intrinsic value something that has intrinsic value is valuable in and of itself
Evaluative judgements
- Terms
o Good
o Bad
o Better
o Worse
Week 4
Lecture 1
Meta Ethics
Lecture 2
Absolutism rigid objectivism. Moral rules are absolute, no exceptions.
Lecture 3
Lecture 4
Week 5