Week 1 – Shafer-Landau, Fundamentals of Ethics
To identify a valid argument the following test can be done:
1. Identifying all of an argument’s premises
2. Imagine that all of them are true (even if you know some are false)
3. Ask yourself this question: supposing that all of the premises were true, could the conclusion
be false? If yes, the argument is invalid. The premises do not guarantee the conclusion. If no,
the argument is valid. The premises offer perfect logical support for the conclusion
If all premises are also actually true, the argument is sound.
Animals are not moral agents – they can’t control their behavior through moral reasoning. That
explains why they have no moral duties, and why they are immune from moral criticism.
Week 1 – The responsibility of engineers
The responsibility based on the role you play in a certain context is called role responsibility. Since a
person has various roles in life, you can have various role responsibilities. Moral responsibility is your
responsibility based on moral obligations, moral norms or moral duties. Professional responsibility is
the responsibility based on one’s role as professional in as far it stays within the limits of what is
morally allowed.
Typical for passive responsibility is that the person who is held accountable must be able to provide
an account of why he followed a particular course of action and why he made certain choices. It is a
backward-looking responsibility, relevant after something undesirable occurred. Specific forms are
accountability, blameworthiness an liability.
Accountability is backward-looking responsibility in the sense of being held to account for or justify
one’s actions towards others.
Blameworthiness is the backward-looking responsibility in the sense of being a proper target of
blame for one’s actions or their consequences. In order for someone to be blameworthy, usually the
following conditions need to apply:
• Wrong-doing: whenever blaming someone it is a assumed a certain (moral) rule has been
violated
• Causal contribution: the person held responsible must have a causal contribution to the
consequences for which he is held responsible. This can either be an action, or a failure to act
• Foreseeability: the person held responsible must have been able to know the consequences
• Freedom of action: he must not have been coerced the more coercion, the less responsibility
Active responsibility is responsibility before something has happened, referring to a duty or task to
care for certain state-of-affairs or persons. This can be understood by looking at ideals:
ideas/strivings particularly motivating and inspiring for the person having them, and which aim at
achieving an optimum or maximum. There’s also professional ideals: ideals that are closely allied to a
profession or can only be aspired to by carrying out the profession. There’s 3 different professional
ideals of engineers:
1. Technological enthusiasm. The ideal of wanting to develop new technological possibilities
and taking up technological challenges
2. Effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness is the extent to which an established goal is
achieved and efficiency is the ratio between the goal achieved and the effort required.
, 3. Human welfare. The most morally commendable ideal.
There are 3 models of dealing with tension and potential conflict between engineers and managers:
1. Seperatism. The notion that scientists and engineers should apply the technical inputs, but
appropriate management and political organs should make the value decisions. This can be
illustrated by the tripartite model: a model that maintains that engineers can only be held
responsible for the design of products and not for wider social consequences or concerns. In
the tripartite model 3 separate segments are distinguished: politicians, engineers and users.
This model does give way to people like Von Braun, who can be seen as a ‘hired gun’:
someone who is willing to carry out any task/assignment from his employer without moral
scruples.
2. Technocracy. A government by experts: where engineers take over the roles of managers in
companies and politicians in society. This is problematic for a number of reasons:
a. It is not clear what unique expertise engineers possess that permits them to
legitimately claim the role of technocrats
b. It is undemocratic and paternalistic. Paternalism is when a group of individuals make
(moral) decision for others on the assumption that they know better what is good for
them than others for themselves.
3. Whistle-blowing. This term is used if an employee discloses certain abuses in a company in
which he is employed without the consent of his superiors and in order to remedy these
abuses and/or to warn the public about these abuses. There are guidelines for when whistle-
blowing is morally required:
a. The organization to which the would-be whistleblower belongs will do serious harm
to the public
b. The would-be whistleblower has identified that threat of harm, reported it to her
immediate superior and concluded that the superior will do nothing
c. The would-be whistleblower has exhausted other internal procedures within the
organization
d. The would-be whistleblower has evidence that would convince a reasonable
impartial observer that her view of the threat is correct
e. The would-be whistleblower has good reason to believe that revealing the threat will
prevent the harm at reasonable cost
There is a variety of actors with various interests in technological development:
• Developers and producers of technology
• Users of the technology, who may formulate certain wishes or requirements for the
functioning of technology
• Regulators such as the government
Stakeholders are actors that have an interest in the development of technology, but who cannot
influence the direction of the technological development
, Technology Assessment (TA) is a systematic method for exploring future technology developments
and assessing their potential societal consequences. Initially it was directed at early detection of
possible negative side effects. On the other hand it is difficult to change direction if a technology is
already embedded in society > Collingridge dilemma.
The Collingridge dilemma refers to a double-bind problem to control the direction of technological
development. On the one hand, it is often not possible to predict the consequences of new
technologies already in the early phases of technological development. On the other hand, once the
negative consequences materialize it often has become very difficult to change the direction of
technological development. This can be overcome by the Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA)
an approach to TA in which TA-like efforts are carried out parallel to the process of technological
development and are fed back to the development and design process.
Week 1 – Chapter 2, Codes of Conduct
Codes of conduct are codes in which organizations lay down guidelines for responsible behavior of
their members. They are often intended as an addition to the requirements of law. 2 types are
especially important for engineers: professional codes that are formulated by professional
associations of engineers and corporate codes that are formulated by companies. There are 3 types
of codes of conduct:
1. An aspirational code expresses the moral values of a profession or company
2. An advisory code has the objective to help individual professionals or employees to exercise
moral judgements in concrete situations
3. A disciplinary code has the objective to achieve that the behavior of all professionals or
employees meets certain values and norms
A profession is characterized by:
1. The use of specialized knowledge and skills requiring long period of study
2. A monopoly on carrying out the occupation: not everybody can call himself engineer
3. The assessment can only be done by colleague professionals
4. A service orientation to society
5. Ethical standards
All professional codes include the obligation to practice one’s profession with integrity and honesty.
This also includes avoiding conflict of interest: the situation in which one has an interest that, when
pursued, can conflict with meeting one’s professional obligation to an employer or clients.
To identify a valid argument the following test can be done:
1. Identifying all of an argument’s premises
2. Imagine that all of them are true (even if you know some are false)
3. Ask yourself this question: supposing that all of the premises were true, could the conclusion
be false? If yes, the argument is invalid. The premises do not guarantee the conclusion. If no,
the argument is valid. The premises offer perfect logical support for the conclusion
If all premises are also actually true, the argument is sound.
Animals are not moral agents – they can’t control their behavior through moral reasoning. That
explains why they have no moral duties, and why they are immune from moral criticism.
Week 1 – The responsibility of engineers
The responsibility based on the role you play in a certain context is called role responsibility. Since a
person has various roles in life, you can have various role responsibilities. Moral responsibility is your
responsibility based on moral obligations, moral norms or moral duties. Professional responsibility is
the responsibility based on one’s role as professional in as far it stays within the limits of what is
morally allowed.
Typical for passive responsibility is that the person who is held accountable must be able to provide
an account of why he followed a particular course of action and why he made certain choices. It is a
backward-looking responsibility, relevant after something undesirable occurred. Specific forms are
accountability, blameworthiness an liability.
Accountability is backward-looking responsibility in the sense of being held to account for or justify
one’s actions towards others.
Blameworthiness is the backward-looking responsibility in the sense of being a proper target of
blame for one’s actions or their consequences. In order for someone to be blameworthy, usually the
following conditions need to apply:
• Wrong-doing: whenever blaming someone it is a assumed a certain (moral) rule has been
violated
• Causal contribution: the person held responsible must have a causal contribution to the
consequences for which he is held responsible. This can either be an action, or a failure to act
• Foreseeability: the person held responsible must have been able to know the consequences
• Freedom of action: he must not have been coerced the more coercion, the less responsibility
Active responsibility is responsibility before something has happened, referring to a duty or task to
care for certain state-of-affairs or persons. This can be understood by looking at ideals:
ideas/strivings particularly motivating and inspiring for the person having them, and which aim at
achieving an optimum or maximum. There’s also professional ideals: ideals that are closely allied to a
profession or can only be aspired to by carrying out the profession. There’s 3 different professional
ideals of engineers:
1. Technological enthusiasm. The ideal of wanting to develop new technological possibilities
and taking up technological challenges
2. Effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness is the extent to which an established goal is
achieved and efficiency is the ratio between the goal achieved and the effort required.
, 3. Human welfare. The most morally commendable ideal.
There are 3 models of dealing with tension and potential conflict between engineers and managers:
1. Seperatism. The notion that scientists and engineers should apply the technical inputs, but
appropriate management and political organs should make the value decisions. This can be
illustrated by the tripartite model: a model that maintains that engineers can only be held
responsible for the design of products and not for wider social consequences or concerns. In
the tripartite model 3 separate segments are distinguished: politicians, engineers and users.
This model does give way to people like Von Braun, who can be seen as a ‘hired gun’:
someone who is willing to carry out any task/assignment from his employer without moral
scruples.
2. Technocracy. A government by experts: where engineers take over the roles of managers in
companies and politicians in society. This is problematic for a number of reasons:
a. It is not clear what unique expertise engineers possess that permits them to
legitimately claim the role of technocrats
b. It is undemocratic and paternalistic. Paternalism is when a group of individuals make
(moral) decision for others on the assumption that they know better what is good for
them than others for themselves.
3. Whistle-blowing. This term is used if an employee discloses certain abuses in a company in
which he is employed without the consent of his superiors and in order to remedy these
abuses and/or to warn the public about these abuses. There are guidelines for when whistle-
blowing is morally required:
a. The organization to which the would-be whistleblower belongs will do serious harm
to the public
b. The would-be whistleblower has identified that threat of harm, reported it to her
immediate superior and concluded that the superior will do nothing
c. The would-be whistleblower has exhausted other internal procedures within the
organization
d. The would-be whistleblower has evidence that would convince a reasonable
impartial observer that her view of the threat is correct
e. The would-be whistleblower has good reason to believe that revealing the threat will
prevent the harm at reasonable cost
There is a variety of actors with various interests in technological development:
• Developers and producers of technology
• Users of the technology, who may formulate certain wishes or requirements for the
functioning of technology
• Regulators such as the government
Stakeholders are actors that have an interest in the development of technology, but who cannot
influence the direction of the technological development
, Technology Assessment (TA) is a systematic method for exploring future technology developments
and assessing their potential societal consequences. Initially it was directed at early detection of
possible negative side effects. On the other hand it is difficult to change direction if a technology is
already embedded in society > Collingridge dilemma.
The Collingridge dilemma refers to a double-bind problem to control the direction of technological
development. On the one hand, it is often not possible to predict the consequences of new
technologies already in the early phases of technological development. On the other hand, once the
negative consequences materialize it often has become very difficult to change the direction of
technological development. This can be overcome by the Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA)
an approach to TA in which TA-like efforts are carried out parallel to the process of technological
development and are fed back to the development and design process.
Week 1 – Chapter 2, Codes of Conduct
Codes of conduct are codes in which organizations lay down guidelines for responsible behavior of
their members. They are often intended as an addition to the requirements of law. 2 types are
especially important for engineers: professional codes that are formulated by professional
associations of engineers and corporate codes that are formulated by companies. There are 3 types
of codes of conduct:
1. An aspirational code expresses the moral values of a profession or company
2. An advisory code has the objective to help individual professionals or employees to exercise
moral judgements in concrete situations
3. A disciplinary code has the objective to achieve that the behavior of all professionals or
employees meets certain values and norms
A profession is characterized by:
1. The use of specialized knowledge and skills requiring long period of study
2. A monopoly on carrying out the occupation: not everybody can call himself engineer
3. The assessment can only be done by colleague professionals
4. A service orientation to society
5. Ethical standards
All professional codes include the obligation to practice one’s profession with integrity and honesty.
This also includes avoiding conflict of interest: the situation in which one has an interest that, when
pursued, can conflict with meeting one’s professional obligation to an employer or clients.
