Study sheet: Engineering Ethics and Professional Codes

📋 Course Outline

1. Gilbane Gold Ethical Case
2. Ill-Structured Moral Problems
3. Ethical Cycle Framework
4. Moral Problem and Dilemmas
5. Analysis and Action Options
6. Ethical Evaluation and Reflection
7. Collective Moral Deliberation
8. Ethical Fallacies
9. Alternate Decision Procedure
10. Professional Codes and Cases
11. Engineering Professional Duties
12. Corporate Responsibility and Codes

📖 1. Gilbane Gold Ethical Case

★ Must-know

• Z-Corp's computer-parts production releases lead and arsenic through wastewater, and its conventional measurement method reports lower concentrations than a newer, more reliable method.

📌 Because the regulation concerns concentrations rather than absolute amounts, Z-Corp can remain within legal limits by diluting its wastewater, creating a major loophole.

• Z-Corp plans to increase production by 500 percent through a contract with a Japanese firm, while engineer David Jackson is told that there is no money to solve the emissions problem.

Further detail

• Gilbane has processed wastewater into agricultural manure called Gilbane Gold for 75 years, producing a tax benefit of $300 per year per household.

💡 Memory Hook

Legal compliance versus broader responsibility

📖 2. Ill-Structured Moral Problems

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Ill-Structured Problem : Has no definitive formulation, may embody inconsistent formulations, and can only be defined during the process of solving it.

★ Must-know

📌 A well-structured problem has clear goals, fixed alternatives, usually at most one correct answer, and rules or methods that generate relatively straightforward solutions, whereas an ill-structured problem lacks a definitive formulation and may have inconsistent formulations.

• 🔄 Practical problem solving involves:
  1. analyzing the problem
  2. choosing and defending a solution
  3. finding a new solution when necessary

Further detail

• Ill-structured problems can have several good or satisfying solutions that are difficult to compare with one another.

💡 Memory Hook

Arithmetic has one answer; moral design problems have competing acceptable solutions

📖 3. Ethical Cycle Framework

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Ethical Cycle : A tool for structuring and improving moral decisions through systematic analysis of a moral problem, moral judgment, and justification of the final decision in moral terms.

📝 Essential Points

• 🔄 The ethical cycle proceeds through:
  1. a moral problem statement
  2. problem analysis
  3. options for action
  4. ethical evaluation
  5. reflection
  6. conclusion and enactment

💡 Memory Hook

State, analyze, choose, evaluate, reflect, enact

📖 4. Moral Problem and Dilemmas

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Moral Problem : A problem in which two or more positive moral values or norms cannot be fully realized at the same time.

★ Must-know

📌 A conventional moral dilemma gives the agent limited options and makes every choice morally wrong, whereas Cooley's moral dilemma allows at least one permissible action but leaves moral residue.

• 🔄 A moral problem statement identifies:
  1. the problem
  2. the person who must act
  3. the moral nature of the problem

Further detail

• In William Styron's Sophie's Choice, Sophie must choose which one of her two children will live because refusing to choose would result in both children being killed.

💡 Memory Hook

A moral problem conflicts with values; a dilemma leaves moral residue

📖 5. Analysis and Action Options

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Stakeholders : Valuable beings that have an interest in the development of a technology.
• Whistle-Blowing : Whistle-blowing is speaking to the media or public about an undesirable situation against the employer's wishes, and it may be internal or external, anonymous or open, and undertaken by a current or former employee.
• Black-and-White Strategy : Considers only two action options: doing the action or not doing it.

📝 Essential Points

• Problem analysis identifies: stakeholders and their interests, relevant moral values, relevant facts including context and historicity

💡 Memory Hook

Stakeholders, values, facts → options → cooperation or whistle-blowing

📖 6. Ethical Evaluation and Reflection

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Intuitivist Framework : Evaluates action options according to what one intuitively considers most acceptable and formulates arguments for that judgment.
• Common Sense Method : Weighs available action options in light of the relevant values.
• Wide Reflective Equilibrium : Wide reflective equilibrium seeks coherence among considered moral judgments, moral principles, and background theories.

💡 Memory Hook

Intuition proposes acceptability; common sense weighs relevant values

📖 7. Collective Moral Deliberation

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Moral Deliberation : An extensive and careful consideration or discussion of moral arguments and reasons for and against certain actions.
• Overlapping Consensus : Agreement on moral judgments even when participants disagree about moral principles and background theories.

★ Must-know

📌 First-order learning improves the achievement of given goals, whereas second-order learning concerns which goals to pursue and which moral values to consider.

Further detail

• According to Jürgen Habermas, moral judgments are legitimized when they result from moral deliberation based on arguments rather than authority or power.

💡 Memory Hook

Inclusive, open deliberation → stronger overlapping consensus

📖 8. Ethical Fallacies

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Ad Hominem : Attacks a person's character rather than that person's argument.
• Naturalistic Fallacy : Assumes that what is the case is the same as what ought to be the case.

★ Must-know

📌 The law-equals-morality fallacy equates legality with morality, whereas legal compliance does not necessarily establish moral acceptability.

Further detail

• Risk fallacies include:
  • the sheer size fallacy
  • the fallacy of naturalness
  • the ostrich's fallacy
  • the delay fallacy or precautionary principle
  • the technocrat fallacy
  • the fallacy of pricing

💡 Memory Hook

Legal is not automatically moral, and absence of evidence is not evidence of safety

📖 9. Alternate Decision Procedure

★ Must-know

📌 Under the Quasi-Categorical Imperative, an act is morally right only if the agent does not treat any valuable being as a mere means.

📌 Under Reasonable Person Utilitarianism, an act is morally right only if a reasonable person would reasonably believe that its consequences will probably have utility at least as great as any alternative available at that time.

• 🔄 The alternate decision procedure:
  1. identifies the moral issue
  2. finds relevant evidence
  3. formulates reasonable solutions
  4. applies RPU and QCI
  5. draws a conclusion
  6. tests it with the Moral Paradigm Test
  7. enacts the approved result

Further detail

• 🔄 The Moral Paradigm Test: constructs an idealized version of a person to emulate, presents the decision and justification to that paradigm, revises the decision if the paradigm would not approve it

💡 Memory Hook

Issue, evidence, solutions, RPU/QCI, conclusion, paradigm test, enactment

📖 10. Professional Codes and Cases

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Code of Conduct : A set of guidelines established by an organization or professional association for responsible behavior by its members.

📝 Essential Points

• In the BART case, Holger Hsortvang, Max Blakenzee, and Robert Bruder raised safety concerns internally from 1969, bypassed management in 1971, were exposed publicly, and were fired without cause or appeal in March 1972.

• The IEEE stated that engineers are responsible for the safety, health, and welfare of the public, and an accident injured passengers three weeks after BART began carrying passengers.

📌 A professional code is formulated by a professional association and is generally advisory, whereas a corporate code is formulated by a company and is generally disciplinary and mandatory.

💡 Memory Hook

Professional codes are generally advisory; corporate codes are generally mandatory

📖 11. Engineering Professional Duties

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Conflict of Interest : A situation in which a personal or professional interest can conflict with professional obligations to an employer or client.

★ Must-know

• Every profession:

  • uses specialized knowledge and skills
  • has a monopoly over its occupational practice
  • evaluates competence internally
  • serves society
  • regulates practice through ethical standards

• Professional codes relate to: conducting the profession with integrity and honesty, obligations toward employers and clients, responsibility toward the public and society

📌 NSPE states that engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public, while FEANI requires preventing avoidable danger to health and safety and avoidable adverse environmental impacts.

Further detail

📌 Engineers should disclose an unavoidable conflict of interest to the interested parties and perform services only in areas of their competence.

💡 Memory Hook

I-C-P: integrity, clients, public

📖 12. Corporate Responsibility and Codes

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Corporate Social Responsibility : The responsibility of companies toward stakeholders and society at large beyond merely obeying the law and serving shareholders' interests.

★ Must-know

• Milton Friedman argues that corporations are responsible only to shareholders and must obey the law, while objections state that ethical conduct can improve profits and that laws may lag behind technological advances.

• Corporate codes may contain:

  • a mission statement
  • core values
  • responsibilities to stakeholders
  • norms and rules for specific situations

• Codes of conduct may be:

  • aspirational
  • advisory
  • disciplinary

Further detail

📌 All shareholders are stakeholders, but not all stakeholders are shareholders.

💡 Memory Hook

Shareholder primacy versus responsibility to stakeholders and society

📊 Synthesis Tables

Types of Professional and Corporate Codes

Code type	Issuer	Main function	Typical force
Professional code	Professional association	Increase moral awareness and support professional judgment	Generally advisory
Corporate code	Company	Set employee guidelines and address moral dilemmas	Generally disciplinary and mandatory
Aspirational code	Profession or company	Express moral values	Value-expressing
Advisory code	Profession or company	Help judgment in concrete situations	Guiding
Disciplinary code	Profession or company	Require conformity with norms	Mandatory