Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Foreword
- INTRODUCTION TO ETHICAL CONCEPTS
- 1 ETHICS AS DESIGN: DOING JUSTICE TO ETHICAL PROBLEMS
- 2 THE BASIS AND SCOPE OF PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY
- 3 CENTRAL PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF ENGINEERS
- 4 TWO MODELS OF PROFESSIONAL BEHAVIOR: ROGER BOISJOLY AND THE CHALLENGER, WILLIAM LEMESSURIER'S FIFTY-NINE STORY CRISIS
- 5 WORKPLACE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
- 6 RESPONSIBILITY FOR RESEARCH INTEGRITY
- 7 THE RESPONSIBILITY OF INVESTIGATORS FOR EXPERIMENTAL SUBJECTS
- 8 RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
- 9 FAIR CREDIT IN RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION
- 10 CREDIT AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN ENGINEERING PRACTICE
- EPILOG: MAKING A LIFE IN ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE
- Bibliography and References
- Index
1 - ETHICS AS DESIGN: DOING JUSTICE TO ETHICAL PROBLEMS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Foreword
- INTRODUCTION TO ETHICAL CONCEPTS
- 1 ETHICS AS DESIGN: DOING JUSTICE TO ETHICAL PROBLEMS
- 2 THE BASIS AND SCOPE OF PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY
- 3 CENTRAL PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF ENGINEERS
- 4 TWO MODELS OF PROFESSIONAL BEHAVIOR: ROGER BOISJOLY AND THE CHALLENGER, WILLIAM LEMESSURIER'S FIFTY-NINE STORY CRISIS
- 5 WORKPLACE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
- 6 RESPONSIBILITY FOR RESEARCH INTEGRITY
- 7 THE RESPONSIBILITY OF INVESTIGATORS FOR EXPERIMENTAL SUBJECTS
- 8 RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
- 9 FAIR CREDIT IN RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION
- 10 CREDIT AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN ENGINEERING PRACTICE
- EPILOG: MAKING A LIFE IN ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE
- Bibliography and References
- Index
Summary
Suppose I face an ethical problem; how ought I go about figuring out what to do? The question is not simply how should I evaluate proposed courses of action, but how should I go about devising such courses of action.
Ethical judgments are important in devising responses to ethical problems, of course. These judgments come in many forms, from “What is being proposed is morally wrong” to “This safety factor (or margin) is sufficient for the circumstances in which this device (or process or construction) will operate.” This book is at least as concerned with devising good responses as with making ethical judgments.
This is a subject on which, as Stuart Hampshire observed in 1949, ethics has had little to say. Hampshire made his point by saying that courses in ethics only teach students to critique moral actions rather than to resolve ethical problems. Writing Innocence and Experience some forty years later, he found the situation no better.
As Hampshire pointed out, an agent (that is, the person who faces the problem) needs the skills of a judge in weighing alternative courses of action once these are formulated. But the skills of a judge are only part of the skills an agent needs to respond to an ethical problem. The rest of the task is a constructive or synthetic one of devising and refining candidate responses.
People confronted with ethical problems must do more than simply make judgments; they must figure out what to do.
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- Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research , pp. 53 - 73Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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