Transcript No Slide Title

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
CD5590
LECTURE 3
Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic
Department of Computer Science and
Engineering
Mälardalen University
2004
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Conscience
Egoism (Psychological and Ethical)
Immanuel Kant’s Deontological* Ethics
* ‘deon’ = duty
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Conscience
Based on: Lawrence M. Hinman, Ph.D.
Director, The Values Institute
University of San Diego
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The Seven Essential Virtues
defining “Moral IQ”
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Empathy
Conscience
Self-Control
Respect
Tolerance
Fairness
Kindness
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Wisdom*
Courage*
Temperance*
Justice*
Integrity
Responsibility
Honesty
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*Aristotles cardinal virtues
The Origins of Conscience
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Etymology:
cum + scire = to know with
As science (scire) means knowledge,
conscience etymologically means selfknowledge . . .
But the English word implies a moral
standard of action in the mind as well as
a awareness of our own actions.
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Conscience
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The awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to
one's conduct together with the urge to prefer
right over wrong.
A source of moral or ethical judgment or
pronouncement.
Conformity to one's own sense of right conduct.
The part of the superego in psychoanalysis that
judges the ethical nature of one's actions and
thoughts.
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The Origins of Conscience

Present in most cultures:
– Ancient Egyptians urged not to transgress against
the dictates of the heart, for one "must stand in
fear of departing from its guidance."
– The Hindus considered conscience to be "the
invisible God who dwells within us.”
– The Society of Friends (or Quakers) places
particular emphasis on the role of conscience.
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Function of Conscience
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Conscience is a mechanism which judges
our own actions, as being right or wrong,
good or bad, and punishes us with its
condemnation (disapprobation), or rewards
us with its approval (approbation), according
as these are, or are not, conformed to the
moral standard.

Conscience implies both a knowledge of our
duty and an ability to perform it.
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Characteristics of Conscience
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Conscience is the steering-gear and a
corrective mechanism that forces us to
act in accordance with our ethical norms
Both negative (remorse, guilt, regret)
and positive (good, clear conscience)
Usually only a guide to one’s own
behavior - not oriented toward judging
others
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Medieval Background
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Conscience is the power
of reason and
discernment applied to
moral issues
Develop an informed and
sensitive conscience by
living in a Christian
community (defining the
norm)
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The Central Question
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If conscience represents the urge to
conform to moral principals, what
happens in case of conflicting principles?
How to reconcile
– Loyalty to the friend
– Loyalty to society
in case when there is a conflict between the
two?
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Deadlock in Conscience
The case of Huck and Jim

In The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, Huck is faced
with the dilemma of turning in
his friend Jim, a runaway slave.
– Huck would despise himself if he
turned Jim in
– Huck feels he is going against his
conscience by not turning Jim into
the authorities
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
(born Samuel L Clemens)
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Unity of Virtues?
Responsibly in a professional role
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Aristotle defended a strong “unity of virtue"
thesis - the unity of the four cardinal virtues
(wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice).
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Today most ethicists would agree in sharply
rejecting the unity of virtue.
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Unity of Virtues?
Responsibly in a professional role
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Character is invariably riddled with "moral gaps“.
Character traits are situation-sensitive, moral
virtues are enormously varied (and sometimes
in conflict), and both situations and personalities
vary enormously.
(Owen Flanagan in the Varieties of Moral Personality)
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Unity of Virtues?
Responsibly in a professional role
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Moral gaps arise not only from having
some virtues (for example generosity)
and lacking others (truthfulness), but in
manifesting the same virtues in some
contexts, roles, or dimensions of roles,
but not others.
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Unity of Virtues?
Responsibly in a professional role
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Clearly a person's character is relevant to
their acting responsibly in a professional
role.
The most important of these are
humaneness, self-control, general
responsibility, and honesty (both
trustworthiness and truthfulness).
Professionals generally are placed in
positions of trust, serving an important need
of client or society. The specific importance
of trust is broad-based and in varying
degrees open-ended.
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Conscience in Professional Life
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Issues about private conscience in
professional life are notoriously
complex. How far should we allow
private conscience to guide
professional conduct when it departs
from the moral consensus expressed
in the relevant code of ethics?
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Conscience in Professional Life
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We all agree, for example, that college
professors should have great freedom to
express their views. Academic freedom is
central to what college professors are supposed
to be.
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But what about an atheist philosopher who
grades down a student for defending religion in
an essay? The professor is wrong, of course.
The question is what should we, his colleagues,
do about it?
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Here, I think, a code of ethics is essential in
setting and enforcing standards-even though
codes are always vague and incomplete.
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Conscience in Professional Life
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What does it require by way of setting aside
personal values in order to meet professional
responsibilities, to avoid greed, sexual
dominance, paternalism, or conflicts of
interest, and otherwise to meet minimum
standards for practice of the profession?
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“Jag är inte bara mamma utan även tandläkare”
(I am not only a mother but also a dentist)
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The Freudian Critique of Conscience
Sigmund Freud (1932)
The Anatomy of the Mental
Personality
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– ID (instinctive part, driven by
pleasure and pain, fully
unconscious )
– EGO (mostly conscious, deals
with external reality )
– SUPER-EGO (partly conscious, is
the conscience or the internal
moral judge. )
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The Freudian Critique of Conscience
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Freud’s saw conscience
as the voice of the
superego
– Initially, the internalized
voice of parental restrictions
– Later, the internalization of
societal prohibitions
– Almost exclusively negative,
saying “no” to the id.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
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Egoism
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Two Types of Egoism

Two types of egoism:
– Psychological egoism
• Asserts that as a matter of fact we do always
act selfishly
• Purely descriptive
– Ethical egoism
• Maintains that we should always act selfishly
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Analyzing the psychological egoist’s claim
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The psychological egoist
claims that people
always act selfishly or in
their own self-interest.
One of the earlier
advocates of this view
was Thomas Hobbes,
who saw life as “…nasty,
brutish, and short.”
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
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Psychological Egoism:
A Common and Widespread Belief
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Folk psychology
– There is a widespread belief that people are just out for
themselves
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Social Darwinism: everyone is just trying to survive.
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Social sciences
– Economics: rational agent theory
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Foreign policy
– Belief that other nations will always act solely in terms of
self-interest
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Psychological Egoism
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What exactly does the psychological
egoist maintain? Two possible
interpretations:
– #1: We act selfishly, or
– #2: We act in our self-interest
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What does it mean to be selfish?
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If we are selfish, do we only do
things that are in our genuine
self-interest?
– What about the chain smoker? Is
this person acting out of genuine
self-interest?
– In fact, the smoker may be acting
selfishly (doing what he wants
without regard to others) but not
self-interestedly (doing what will
ultimately benefit him).
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What does it mean to be selfish?
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If we are selfish, do we only do
things we believe are in our selfinterest?
– What about those who believe
that sometimes they act
altruistically?
– Does anyone truly believe
Mother Theresa was completely
selfish?
Think of the actions of parents.
Don’t parents sometimes act for the
sake of their children, even when it
is against their narrow self-interest
to do so?
Mother Theresa (1910-1997)
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Re-conceptualizing Psychological
Egoism, 1
The standard view of human motivation embedded in
discussions of psychological egoism sees egoism and
altruism as opposite poles of a single scale:
Human Motivation
Egoism
Altruism
The premise is that an increase in egoism automatically results in a
decrease in altruism, and vice versa.
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Re-conceptualizing Psychological
Egoism, 2
Instead of seeing this one a single scale, we can see egoism and
altruism as two independent axes:
Conceptualizing the issue in
this way allows some actions
to be done both for the sake of
others and for one’s own sake,
and avoids falling into a false
dichotomy between altruism
and egoism.
However, an additional
distinction remains to be draw.
High
Altruism
Low
Egoism
High
Egoism
Low
Altruism
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Re-conceptualizing Psychological
Egoism, 3
In addition to having two independent axes, we must distinguish
between the intentions of actions and their consequences. Thus
we get two graphs:
Not
intended
to benefit
self
Intentions
Consequences
Strongly intended to help others
High beneficial To others
Strongly
intended
to benefit
self
Strongly intended to harm others
Highly
harmful
to self
Highly
beneficial
to self
Highly harmful to others
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Re-conceptualizing Psychological
Egoism, 4
This double grid suggests that any given action
can be ranked according to both:
– Intentions
– Consequences
And that, for each of these two issues, each act
can be ranked along two independent axes,
concern/consequences for self and
concern/consequences for other.
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Ethical Egoism
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Be My Valentine?
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“Love, we are repeatedly taught, consists of selfsacrifice. Love based on self-interest, we are
admonished, is cheap and sordid. True love, we are
told, is altruistic. But is it?
“Genuine love is the exact opposite. It is the most
selfish experience possible, in the true sense of the
term: it benefits your life in a way that involves no
sacrifice of others to yourself nor of yourself to
others.”
Gary Hull
Valentine’s Day, 1998
Ayn Rand Institute
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Ethical Egoism
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Selfishness is extolled as a virtue
– Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness
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May appeal to psychological
egoism as a foundation
Often very compelling for high
school students
Ayn Rand (1905-1982).
(born Alice Rosenbaum)
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Versions of Ethical Egoism

Personal Ethical Egoism
– “I am going to act only in my own interest, and
everyone else can do whatever they want.”

Individual Ethical Egoism
– “Everyone should act in my own interest.”

Universal Ethical Egoism
– “Each individual should act in his or her own self
interest.”
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Altruism
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Unselfish concern for the welfare of
others; selflessness, charity, generosity.
Zoology. Instinctive cooperative behavior
that is detrimental (harmful) to the
individual but contributes to the survival
of the species.
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Arguments for Ethical Egoism
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Altruism is demeaning.
Acting selfishly creates a better world.
It doesn’t result in such a different world
after all.
demean = degrade oneself
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Argument for Ethical Egoism:
Altruism Is Demeaning
Friedrich Nietzsche argued that
altruism was demeaning because it
meant that an individual was saying
that some other person was more
important than that individual.
Nietzsche saw this as denigrating
oneself, putting oneself down by
valuing oneself less than the other.
Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900)
Comment. Concern for the welfare of
others does not mean no concern for
ones own self!
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Argument for Ethical Egoism: Acting
Selfishly Creates a Better World
Ethical egoists sometimes maintain that if each person
took care of himself/herself, the overall effect would
be to make the world a better place for everyone.
– Epistemological: Each person is best suited to
know his or her own best interests.
– Moral: Helping others makes them dependent,
which ultimately harms them.
Comment. It is rational for people to solve together
their common problems. Building e.g. state
institutions, that exist everywhere in the world means
putting energy in a common societal project that is
not in the first place meant to satisfy my own
personal needs.
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Argument for Ethical Egoism: Ethical
egoism doesn’t result in a different world.

This argument presupposes the people in fact
already act selfishly (i.e, psychological egoism)
and are just pretending to be altruistic.

If psychological egoism is true, then we should
admit its truth and get rid of our hypocrisy.
Comment. It may not make a big difference in a
world of independent, strong and healthy adults,
but in a world with children and people at risk or
in need, they would be put in further jeopardy.
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Criticism of Ethical Egoism
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Cannot be consistently universalized.
(But can work in sports).
Presupposes a world of strangers
indifferent to one another.
Difficult to imagine love or even
friendship between ethical egoists.
Seems to be morally insensitive.
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Universalizing Ethical Egoism

Can the ethical egoist consistently will that
everyone else follow the tenets of ethical
egoism?
– It seems to be in one’s self-interest to be selfish
oneself and yet get everyone else to act
altruistically (especially if they act for your benefit).
This leads to individual ethical egoism.

Some philosophers such as Jesse Kalin have
argued that in sports we consistently
universalize ethical egoism: we intend to win,
but we want our opponents to try as hard as
they can!
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Ethical Egoism:
A philosophy for a world of strangers

Some philosophers have argued that
ethical egoism is, at best, appropriate to
living in a world of strangers that you do
not care about.
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Egoism, Altruism, and
the Ideal World
Aristotle
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Ideally, we seek a society in
which self-interest and regard for
others converge—the green
zone.
Egoism at the expense of others
and altruism at the expense of
self-interest both create worlds in
which goodness and self-regard
are mutually exclusive—the
yellow zone.
No one want the red zone, which
is against both self-interest and
regard for others.
Tocqueville’s
“Self-interest rightly understood”
High
Altruism
Kant
Self-sacrificing
altruism
Low
Egoism
Not beneficial
either to self
or others
Drug addiction
Alcoholism, etc.
Self-interest
and regard
for others
converge
High
Egoism
Self-interest
at the expense
of others
Low
Altruism
Hobbes’s
State of Nature,
Nietzsche?
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Sinking Titanic: Egoism vs. Altruism
(Even risks in technical systems)
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Immanuel Kant
The Ethics of Duty
(Deontological* Ethics)
* ‘deon’ = duty
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Living by Rules
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Most of us live by rules
much of the time.
Some of these are what
Kant called Categorical
Imperatives.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
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Categorical Imperatives

Always act in such a way that the
maxim of your action can be willed as a
universal law of humanity.
--Immanuel Kant
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The Ethics of Respect (1)
One of Kant’s most lasting contributions to
moral philosophy was his emphasis on the
notion of respect (Achtung).
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The Ethics of Respect (2)

Respect has become a fundamental
moral concept in contemporary West
– There are rituals of respect in almost all
cultures.

Two central questions:
– What is respect?
– Who or what is the proper object of
respect?
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Kant on Respect
“Act in such a way that you always treat
humanity, whether in your own person or in
the person of any other, never simply as a
means, but always at the same time as an
end.”
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Kant on Respecting Persons
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Kant brought the notion of respect (Achtung)
to the center of moral philosophy for the first
time.
To respect people is to treat them as ends in
themselves. He sees people as autonomous,
i.e., as giving the moral law to themselves.
The opposite of respecting people is treating
them as mere means to an end.
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Using People as Mere Means
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The Tuskegee Syphilis
Experiments
– More than four hundred
African American men
infected with syphilis went
untreated for four decades in
a project the government
called the Tuskegee Study of
Untreated Syphilis in the
Negro Male.
– Continued until 1972
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Treating People as Ends in
Themselves
What are the characteristics of treating
people as ends in themselves?
 Not denying them relevant information
 Allowing them freedom of choice
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Additional Cases
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Plant Closing
Firing Long-Time Employees
Medical Experimentation on Prisoners
Medical Donations by Prisoners
Medical Consent Forms
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What Is the Proper Object of
Respect?

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For Kant, the proper object of respect is the
will. Hence, respecting a person involves
issues related to the will--knowledge and
freedom.
Other possible objects of respect:
–
–
–
–
Feelings and emotions
The dead
Animals
The natural world
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Self-Respect

Is lack of proper self-respect a moral failing?
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The Deferential* Wife
– See article by Tom Hill, “Servility and SelfRespect”
*Deferential = Respectful, considerate
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Self-Respect

Aristotle and Self-Love
– What is the difference between self-respect
and self-love? Clearly, there is at least a
difference in the affective element.
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The Kantian Heritage
What Kant Helped Us to See Clearly

The Admirable Side of Acting from Duty
– The person of duty remains committed, not matter
how difficult things become.

The Evenhandedness of Morality
– Kantian morality does not play favorites.

Respecting Other People
– The notion of treating people as ends in
themselves is central to much of modern ethics.
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The Kantian Heritage
Critique of Kant´s Deontology

The Neglect of Moral Integration
– The person of duty can have deep and
conflicting inclinations and this does not
decrease moral worth—indeed, it seems to
increase it in Kant’s eyes.

The Role of Emotions
– For Kant, the emotions are always suspect
because they are changeable.
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The Kantian Heritage
Critique of Kant´s Deontology

The Place of Consequences in the
Moral Life
– In order to protect the moral life from the
changing of moral luck, Kant held a very
strong position that refused to attach moral
blame to individuals who were acting with
good will, even though some indirect bad
consequences could be foreseen.
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The Kantian Heritage
Conclusion
Overall, after two hundred years, Kant
remains an absolutely central figure in
contemporary moral philosophy, one
from whom we can learn much even
when we disagree with him.
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