PE020IU Engineering Ethics and Professional Skills

LECTURE 3: MORAL FRAMEWORKS

FOR ENGINEERING ETHICS

Instructor: Dr. Huynh Vo Trung Dung

School of Electrical Engineering
International University, VNU-HCM

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 WHY A MORAL FRAMEWORK?

- It illuminates connections between

engineering codes of ethics and everyday
morality
- It helps make moral choices, resolve morel
dilemmas

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 WHY A MORAL FRAMEWORK?

❑ 5 types of ethical theories:

- Rights ethics: human rights
- Duty ethics: individual’s rational autonomy
- Utilitarianism: maximize the overall good, taking into equal account
all those affected by our actions
- Virtue ethics: good character is central to morality
- Self-realization ethics: the moral significance of self-fulfillment

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 RIGHTS ETHICS

• Rights ethics: Human rights is the moral “bottomline” (and human dignity and
respect are fundamental)
– Liberty rights: Rights to exercise one’s liberty that leads to duties of others
not to interfere with one’s freedoms
– Welfare rights: Rights to benefits needed for decent human life
→ Codes? “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the
public in the performance of their professional duties.” (refers to each individual)

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 DUTY ETHICS

• Duty ethics: Right actions are those required by duties to respect the liberty or
autonomy of individuals.
- Autonomy - moral self-determination or self-governance means having the
capacity to govern one’s life in accordance with moral duties. Hence, respect for
persons amounts to respect for their moral autonomy.

Codes?

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 UTILITARIANISM

– Utilitarianism says the sole standard of right action is good

consequences. There is only one general moral requirement: “Produce
the most good for the most people, giving equal consideration to
everyone affected”
– What is “good”? Consider “acts” or “rules”?
– From codes: “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and
welfare of the public in the performance of their professional duties”?
Related?
– “Welfare” is a type of “utility” (so are safety, health)

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 DISCUSS QUESTION

Americans are sometimes criticized for being too individualistic, and in

particular for approaching moral issues with too great an emphasis on
rights. Although we said that rights and duties are usually correlated with
each other, what difference (if any) do you think would occur if Jefferson
had written, “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all people are
created equal; that they owe duties of respect to all other persons, and
are owed these duties in return”?

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 VIRTUE ETHICS
• Virtue ethics emphasizes character (virtues/vices) more than rights and rules.
• Virtues: competence, honesty, courage, fairness, loyalty, and humility (vices
opposites)
✓ Proficiency virtues are the virtues of mastery of one’s profession, in
particular mastery of the technical skills that characterize good
engineering practice
✓ Teamwork virtues are those that are especially important in enabling
professionals to work successfully with other people
✓ Self-governance virtues are those necessary in exercising moral
responsibility
• Relevance to codes? IEEE:
– “… be honest… in stating claims…”
– “…improve our technical competence…”
– “…treat fairly all persons…” 9
 VIRTUES IN ENGINEERING

• Public-spirited virtues:
– Focus on good of clients (“client-focused”)
– Focus on good of public
– Generosity - going beyond minimum requirements in helping:
“engineers who voluntarily give their time, talent, and money to
their professional societies and local communities”

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 VIRTUES IN ENGINEERING

• Proficiency virtues:
– Mastery/competence
– Diligence (e.g., software engineering case study example)
– Creativity (to keep up with technology)
• Teamwork virtues:
– Working together effectively (not a loner)
– Collegiality, cooperation, loyalty, respect for authority

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 C ASE STUDY

Engineer A is employed by a software company and is involved in the design of specialized

software in connection with the operations of facilities affecting the public health and safety (i.e.,
nuclear, air quality control, water quality control). As the part of the design of a particular
software system, Engineer A conducts extensive testing and although the tests demonstrate that
the software is safe to use under existing standards, Engineer A is aware of new draft standards
that are about to be released by a standard setting organization-standards which the newly
designed software may not meet. Testing is extremely costly and the company’s clients are eager
to begin to move forward. The software company is eager to satisfy its clients, protect the
software company’s finances, and protect existing jobs; but at the same time, the management of
the software company wants to be sure that the software is safe to use. A series of tests
proposed by Engineer A will likely result in a decision whether to move forward with the use of
the software. The tests are costly and will delay the use of the software by at least six months,
which will put the company at a competitive disadvantage and cost the company a significant
amount of money. Also, delaying implementation will mean the state public service commission
utility rates will rise significantly during this time. The company requests Engineer A’s
recommendation concerning the need for additional software testing. 12
 SELF-REALIZATION ETHICS

Self-realization ethics, however, gives greater prominence to self-interest

and to personal commitments that individuals develop in pursuing self-
fulfillment. As with the other ethical theories, we will consider two
versions:
- A community-oriented version, the self to be realized is understood in
terms of caring relationships and communities.
- Ethical egoism, the self is conceived in a highly individualistic manner.
The community-oriented version of self-realization

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 SELF-REALIZATION ETHICS

• Engineers:
– Proficiency motives: Challenge self, serve public
– Compensation motives: Make money for self/family, but helps
community
– Moral motives: Desire to do right (“give back”), integrity, feels good
and positively impacts community

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 COMMUNITY-ORIENTED VERSION

The community-oriented version of self-realization ethics says that each

individual ought to pursue self-realization, but it emphasizes the
importance of caring relationships and communities in understanding
self-realization. It emphasizes that we are social beings whose identities
and meaning are linked to the communities in which we participate.

“The ‘individual’ apart from the community is an abstraction. It is not anything

real, and hence not anything that we can realize. . . . I am myself by sharing
with others.”

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F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962)
 ETHIC AL EGOISM

• Ethical egoism is a more individualistic version of self-realization ethics that says

each of us ought always and only to promote our self-interest.
• Ethical egoism sounds like an endorsement of selfishness. It implies that
engineers should think first and last about what is beneficial to themselves, an
implication at odds with the injunction to keep paramount the public health,
safety, and welfare

→ Psychological egoism: All people are always and only motivated by what they
believe is good for them in some respect. Psychological egoism is a theory
about psychology, about what actually motivates human beings, whereas ethical
egoism is a statement about how they ought to act.

There is four arguments for psychological egoism!

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 PSYCHOLOGIC AL EGOISM

• Argument 1. We always act on our own desires; therefore, we always and

only seek something for ourselves, namely the satisfaction of our desires.
• Argument 2. People always seek pleasures; therefore they always and only
seek something for themselves, namely their pleasures.
• Argument 3. We can always imagine there is an ulterior, exclusively self-
seeking motive present whenever a person helps someone else; therefore
people always and only seek goods for themselves.
• Argument 4. When we look closely, we invariably discover an element of self-
interest in any given action; therefore people are solely motivated by self-
interest.

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 DISCUSSION QUESTION

Discuss what morality requires and then what self-interest requires. Is

the answer the same or different?

Bill, a process engineer, learns from a former classmate who is now a regional
compliance officer with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA) that there will be an unannounced inspection of Bill’s plant. Bill
believes that unsafe practices are often tolerated in the plant, especially in the
handling of toxic chemicals. Although there have been small spills, no serious
accidents have occurred in the plant during the past few years. What should
Bill do?
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