Major Ethics Case Studies

Focus on the major

technological disasters and
catastrophes in engineering

Module 4 in the “Teaching Engineering Ethics” Series

Outline of Material
 Major Ethical Impact = Macro-ethics
 Micro-ethics (the individual and the situation)
 Macro-ethics (systemic issues)
 Ethics as a “Design Problem”
 Engineer as a Moral Agent
 Analogies: Design and Ethics Decisions
 Case: The Space Shuttle Challenger
Macro-Ethical Issues
 Safety, Loss of Life, Catastrophic Failures
 Typically Newsworthy Items
 The Space Shuttle Challenger*
 Bhopal—Union Carbide*
 The Ford Pinto
 Firestone and Ford Explorer tires
 Three Mile Island / Chernobyl Nuclear Reactors
 Kansas City Hyatt Suspended Walkway
 Boston Molasses Tank Accident*
 Indicative of systemic problems (beyond simple
engineering and day-to-day ethics)
Ethics as a Design Problem
 The engineer as a moral agent
 Moral problems
 …are practical problems (they demand a response)
 …are not multiple-choice problems
 Design Process
 Recognize and Evaluate the Problem
 Devise solutions
 Evaluate solutions
 Choose from the alternatives
 The “devise solutions” phase is typically
shortchanged in the ethics judgment process or
artificially constrained to a limited set of alternatives
Ethics as a Design Problem
 How ethics “sound bites” oversimplify the ethical
reasoning process:
 “Do the right thing”
 Portrays the problem as having an exclusive solution set
 “Should [the agent] do X or Y”
 Portrays the problem as a binary multiple-choice solution set
with no latitude for creating alternatives
 Exploits a limited “win-lose” or “lose-win” paradigm
 “There are no right or wrong answers”
 Indicative of a “moral relativism” philosophy or simply that there
is no uniquely correct solution
 In reality, there can be solutions that are better than others and
which can be prioritized
 Also, solutions can each comprise a unique and special advantage
Ethics as a Design Problem
 What solutions sets exist for a given set of
specifications or ethical constraints?
Solution Set Population Probability

Wrong Solutions Always

No Solution Possible

One Single Exclusive and Acceptable Solution Unlikely

Multiple Solutions: All Equally Acceptable Possible

Multiple Solutions: Orthogonal Acceptability Very Likely

Ethics as a Design Problem
 Lessons from design problems:
 Consider the Uncertainties in the Situation
 Ambiguities often underemphasized in professional ethics
 Decisions to be made:
 Whether to gather additional evidence
 How to address the issues with others
 How to elicit support for the moral concern
 Determining possible solutions is separate from defining
the problem and may require more information
 Time Pressure is real and demands searching for
multiple alternative solutions in parallel
 The ethical situation may be dynamically changing;
decisions should not be made on an old “snapshot” of the
situation