ETHICAL ISSUES IN

GE-E Ethics
ENGINEERING PRACTICES
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

A branch of applied ethics that deals with the

ethical relationship between human beings and the
natural environment.
An engineer’s responsibility for the environment is
denoted which phrases such as:
o Sustainable design
o Green Engineering
Exploring the environmental status:

1. Do we belong to nature, or does nature belong to

us?
2. If animals can suffer and feel pain like humans,
should they have moral standing?
3. If animals have moral standing, how far does this
moral standing then extend to other life forms, such
as tress?
GENERAL APPROACHES TO ETHICAL
PROBLEM SOLVING:

 Cost-Oblivious Approach (Martin And

Schinzinger, 2000)
 Cost-Benefit Analysis
 A basic tenet of professional engineering
code of ethics states that an engineer should not
make decision in areas in which he isn’t
competent.

For many environmental issues, engineers

are not competent to make decisions, but should
instead seek the counsel of others – such as
biologists, public health experts, and physicians.
COMPUTER ETHICS

A field of applied ethics that addresses ethical issues in

the use, design and management of information technology and
in the formulation of ethical policies for its regulation in the
society.

COMPUTER ETHICAL PROBLEMS

Computers as a Tool for Unethical Behavior
Computers as an Engineering Tool
Autonomous Computers
Computer Code of Ethics
COMPUTERS AS A TOOL FOR
UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR
o Hacking/Steal, defraud a bank or clients bank
account
o Breaking the Privacy
o Use of Computer replaces Job Position
o Spreading Virus
o Health Hazard
o Copyright Infringement
COMPUTERS AS AN ENGINEERING TOOLS
Computer are used as an engineering tools for writing
documents using a word-processing software package and keep track
of appointments through scheduling the software, use spreadsheet to
make financial calculation, databases to keep records to our work, use
commercially available software to develop plans for how our projects
will proceed.

TWO UNIQUE USES OF COMPUTER IN ENGINEERING

Computer Design Tools

Integration of Computer into Engineered Systems
AUTONOMOUS COMPUTERS

The ability of the computer to make decisions

without the intervention of human.

Problems related to the Autonomous Nature of

Computer:

o Security Risks
o Loss of Human Value
COMPUTER CODE OF ETHICS

This provides guidance in the proper use of

computer equipment to aid a proper decision
regarding the computer-related ethical issues.
ETHICS AND RESEARCH

There are two major ethical issues related to

research:
1. Honesty in approaching the research problem
2. Honesty in reporting the results
 Robert Millikan, a physicist from the
University of Chicago who won the 1923 Nobel
Prize in physics for experiments that measured the
electrical charge of electron, and have had lapses
of ethical judgement with respect to their research
(Holton, 1978; Franklin, 1981).
Reason: He excluded 49 of the 140 experimental observations and
in the paper, he stated that the published work contained all of the
data.
ANALYZING ETHICAL PROBLEMS IN
RESEARCH

One of the virtues is honesty. It is perhaps the

easiest way to examine research issues using
virtues ethics. Making false claims about the
results of experiment and not giving proper credits
is certainly a form of dishonesty.
PATHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

Irving Langmuir, a well-known

physicist working at General Electric
Research Laboratories, coined a term for
this phenomenon; “pathological science”.
He proposed the ff six characters of pathological
science [Langmuir, 1968]:
THANK YOU FOR
LISTENING!
 PREPARED BY

AYING, STEPHANIE M.
BALIBER, MARY MAE S.
BONTES, JEFFER
PASCUBILLO, FAITH A.
ROLDAN, ROGIE D.
BSCE 2B, 2022