Ethics Summary

1) Purpose of Ethics
a) Right action for personal integrity
b) Social utility
c) God’s will
d) Avoid liability and sanction
2) Sources of Ethics (mostly subjective, ubiquitous)
a) Codes & Laws – application limited by great variation in practice
b) Common Ethics – What most people think. Mostly not codified. It helps to conceptualize into a law-like description
c) Personal Ethics – (Ex: child commits crime. Protect as parent or betray as citizen?)
d) Professional Ethics - Special duties for special roles (e.g. Egr, Doctor, parent, etc.) For engineering:
i) Public Safety (number 1 priority)
ii) Objective, Honest, & Law-abiding – to clients & public (Public distrust would limit progress)
iii) Loyalty to client/employer (else without trust, no egr could be used)
iv) Respect for client confidentiality (IP is integral to progress)
v) Obligation to report violations (special knowledge places high standard on duty)
vi) Do work only where competent
vii) Conflicts of interest must be disclosed and should be avoided
e) Abandoned as impractical: Reason, Religion, Ideology
3) Identifying Facts & Factual Issues (Fact ID & Ethical Issue ID done iteratively)
a) Relevant – Cases have lots of chaff
b) Known & unknown, Ex:
i) EPA rules can seem capricious but are acceptable when backed by data
ii) Resistance to affirmative action might be based on unprovable efficacy rather than racism.
4) Identifying Potential Ethical Issues – aspects of a case that seem to violate was seems to be an ethical standard (2a-
2d). Rest of lecture is on how to identify and resolve key moral issues.
a) Initially just identify “potential” issues. Decide which are real later. Examples of difficulties:
i) “Safe” environment = No risk, No evidence of risk, Reason to suspect risk, Inconclusive evidence of risk, No
risk that can be avoided at low cost, risk comparable to driving a car.
ii) Pay money for favors:
(1) Bribery – voluntary offering of goods, service, or money to secure an unjustified privilege to the briber.
Voluntary? Offering? Goods?, Unjustified? Privilege? (Always illegal)
(2) Extortion – non-voluntary provision of goods, services, or money to the extortioner to secure treatment,
to which the one being extorted is already lawfully and morally entitled from the extortioner. (This can
be legal. Many cases might fall in between Bribery and extortion)
iii) Public (as in public safety) – Everyone who could be affected? (Would render engineering impossible since
someone always endures some risk), People who cannot give free and informed consent?
iv) Egr making a decision about a critical chemical plant valve. Valve salesman invites to a golf game at a
country club. Should he accept?
v) Egr discovers that discharge to river may be carcinogenic but not proven and not govt regulated. Elimination
and cleanup would be costly. Boss says wait until govt control otherwise plant would be uncompetitive with
plants that don't eliminate. Egr is caught between loyalty and public protection.
vi) In-house tool and die shop wants to bid on RFQ to outside vendors and asks Egr for copy of their quotes.
Personal loyalty, same company vs honest bidding.
5) Methods for determining precisely what is ethical for a unique situation (use combination of methods. In case of
divergent conclusions, use best judgment.
a) Utilitarian – choose solutions that maximize good outcomes.
i) Failings:
(1) Since only results count, good ends can justify unjust means
(2) Maximizing overall good can benefit many but unjustly harm some (Example: Factory employs lots of
workers but emits pollution that is absorbed by fish in a river. Poor people eat the fish and get sick.
However, ending the pollution would put many more people out of work.)
(3) Can seem to demand supererogatory unreasonably costly action
(4) Has been used to justify the most outrageous human rights violations: Stalin, Mao Zedong, Hitler, Pol
Pot.
ii) Cost/Benefit – most benefit for most people
iii) Act Utilitarian –choose action that does more good than any other option
(1) Choose car safety designs likely to result in fewest injuries
(2) Road improvements that benefit the most people
iv) Rule Utilitarian – choose law-like rule that has the best consequences for human wellbeing. Then, apply rule
to current situation.
(1) Ex: Giving bids to in-house factory manager
(2) Ex: let motorists decide when to obey traffic rules
(3) Short-cut in grass
(4) Engineers should not advertise.
 v)
b) Respect for Persons - choose actions or practices that protect and respect the moral agency of human beings.
Moral agency is the capacity to choose goals or purposes of one's own (autonomy). This creates mostly negative
imperatives to leave people free to do what they want. Maximizing utility for the majority must take second priority.
i) Principle of Double Effect: An act that results in both good and bad is permissible only if: a) The act is in
general permissible, b) The bad cannot be avoided, c) the bad is not the means of achieving the good, and d)
the good outweighs the bad.
ii) Failings
(1) Extreme preference for the individual forbids many things accepted in common morality: Abortion to
save mother, wealth leveling, etc.
(2) Ambiguity in meeting criteria of Principle of Double Effect.
(3) Example of Ambiguity: Chemical plant provides lots of employment but emits a suspected carcinogen
that might affect people living nearby. Are deaths due to cancer a means or side effect? (Criterion c)
Do the benefits outweigh the costs? (Criterion d)
(4) Ex: contrasting with Utilitarian ethics: $50k available to fix a light in the city w 2 fatalities/y or one in the
country w 1 fatality/y.
iii) Golden Rule – Reject rules that are not reversible and universalizable.
(1) Example: Manager wants to order subordinate to be silent about a gas leak that could be a minor health
hazard. a) Would he be willing to accept such a command from someone else? (Maybe if everyone at
the plant shared his values about minor hazards otherwise he must honor the values of his subordinate.)
b) Would he (and others in the plant) be willing to work in a plant where such a hazard could be kept
secret?
iv) Self-Defeating criterion – reject rules that would be self-defeating if everyone followed them.
(1) Ex: defaulting on debt – no one would loan money
(2) Ex: exam cheating – no one would get ahead
(3) Ex: mfr w substandard parts. Customers would come to inspect for them
v) Rights – must be prioritized among audience”
(1) Preconditions of life (life, health)
(2) Sustaining Life (Honest, Informed consent to risks, safety, contracts)
(3) Self-Improvement (pursuit of money and property)
6) Methods for resolving ethical ambiguities (conflicting ethical principles)
a) Prioritizing
b) Interpolation from common ethical positions by testing the situation against paradigm cases. It helps to write a
law-like definition.
i) Paradigm Ex: Vendor offers big money to the cognizant engineer to specify its product. The engineer
accepts the money and specified the product even though its quality is low.
ii) Gray Ex: Cognizant engineer specifies a brand of rivets for a large project based on research and testing.
After an order is placed, the supplier gives him an all-expenses paid trip training/pleasure trip to Jamaica. Is
this a bribe? (There could be an appearance of a quid pro quo.)
iii) Relevant facts: Gift size, Timing, & Purpose as well as egr authority, product quality, and product cost.
c) Line Drawing – closest fit to positive or negative paradigms
i) Ex: (p60) Amanda wants to use ideas conceived by not developed at another company.
(1) Negative/Positive: Signed Agreement/Permission Granted; Competitors/Not-competitors; Other
employees involved/Amanda only, Conceived on job/Conceived off-job; Lab-used/Lab not used; Socially
useful idea unlikely to be implemented/Likely to be implemented, etc.
7) Action strategies
a) Just do right action
b) Persuasion – convince skeptics that avoiding an ethical violation is in their interest too. Bosses to workers – all are
culpable.
c) Creative Middle Way escalation
i) ID Ethical Issues->Obligations
ii) Prioritize series of solutions starting with meet as many obligations as possible and finally meeting on the
most important.
iii) Ex1: Student asked to dump hazardous waste case
iv) Ex2: Late delivery vs quality case
8) Responsibility – You can be held responsible if you:
a) fail to do what is reasonable
b) violate a professional standard (even if it is not part of a law)
c) make a principled choice that common ethics does not support
d) do anything unethical, even if ordered to do so by a higher authority
e) even when you try to make the right decision but enough people disagree. Your best defense is to at least show
sound ethical reasoning behind your decision.