Transcript document

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
CD5590
LECTURE 4
Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic
Department of Computer Science and
Engineering
Mälardalen University
2004
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DATE
2 Nov
L1
10:15-12:00
9 Nov
L2
08:15-10:00
L3
10:15-12:00
L4
13:15-15:00
23 Nov
L5
8:15-10:00
L6/P1
10:15-12:00
L7/P2
13:15-15:00
30 Nov
L8/ E3
08:15-10:00
L9
10:15-12:00
L10/E4
13:15-15:00
07 Dec
L11
10:15-12:00
14 Dec
L12/E5
8:15-10:00
L13/E6
10:30-12:15
L14
13:15-15:00
21 Dec
L15
TOPIC
GETTING STARTED. Course Preliminaries.
Introduction. Administrivia.
Identifying Moral Issues
Basic Moral Orientations
L2: METHODS AND TOOLS OF ANALYSIS OF ETHICAL ARGUMENT;
Philosophical Foundations of Ethics
Ethical Relativism, Absolutism and Pluralism
L3: The Ethics of Conscience; The Ethical Egoism
The Ethics of Duty; The Ethics of Respect
L4: The Ethics of Consequences: Utilitarianism
The Ethics of Rights: The Ethics of Justice
The Ethics of Character
The Ethics and Gender
PROFESSIONAL AND ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES
Codes of Ethics. Whistle Blowing
In-class activity: CASE STUDIES BOF
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
In-class activity: CASE STUDIES BOF
COMPUTER GAMES AND ENTERTAINMENT
In-class activity: CASE STUDIES BOF
GUEST LECTURE BY KERSTI MALMSTEN
Nursing and Medical Ethics
PRIVACY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
In-class activity: CASE STUDIES BOF
GUEST LECTURE BY MONIKA EIBORN
Nuclear Non-proliferation and Ethics
Nucleus 02 2003 side 39
RISKS IN TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE
PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE
In-class activity: CASE STUDIES BOF
GUEST LECTURE BY PETER FUNK
AI and Ethics
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
In-class activity: CASE STUDIES BOF
COURSE WRAP-UP
2
10:15-12:00
RESEARCH
PAPER
DEADLINE December 21th
Examination deadlines



Class notes Complete file with class
notes sent by mail before 24 Dec. [Last
lecture is excluded]
Preparing and Leading Discussions
[According to the Lecture schedule]
Research paper - Abstract: 20 Nov.
- First draft: 7 Dec.
- Final version 24 Dec.
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Overview



Utilitarianism
Rights
Justice
Based on: Lawrence M. Hinman, Ph.D.
Director, The Values Institute
University of San Diego
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Utilitarianism
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Basic Insights of Utilitarianism

The purpose of morality is to make the
world a better place.

We should do whatever will bring the
most benefit to all of humanity.
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The Purpose of Morality

The utilitarian has a simple answer to the
question of why morality exists at all:
– The purpose of morality is to guide people’s
actions in such a way as to produce a better
world.

Consequently, the emphasis in
utilitarianism is on consequences, not
intentions.
(At times, the road to hell is pawed with good intentions)
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Fundamental Imperative

The fundamental imperative of
utilitarianism is:
Always act in the way that will produce the
greatest overall amount of good in the
world.
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The Emphasis on the Overall Good

Utilitarianism is a demanding moral
position that often asks us to put aside
self-interest for the sake of the whole.
– It always asks us to do the most, to
maximize utility, not to do the minimum.
– It asks us to set aside personal interest.
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The Dream of Utilitarianism:
Bringing Scientific Certainty to Ethics

Utilitarianism offers a powerful vision of the
moral life, one that promises to reduce or
eliminate moral disagreement.
– If we can agree that the purpose of
morality is to make the world a better
place; and
– If we can scientifically assess various
possible courses of action to determine
which will have the greatest positive effect
on the world; then
– We can provide a scientific answer to the
question of what we ought to do.
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Standards of Utility:
Intrinsic Value



Many things have instrumental value, that is,
they have value as means to an end.
However, there must be some things which
are not merely instrumental, but have value in
themselves. This is what we call intrinsic
value.
What has intrinsic value? Four principal
candidates:
–
–
–
–
Pleasure - Jeremy Bentham
Happiness - John Stuart Mill
Ideals - George Edward Moore
Preferences - Kenneth Arrow
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Jeremy Bentham
1748-1832

Bentham believed that we
should try to increase the
overall amount of pleasure
in the world.
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Pleasure


Definition: The
enjoyable feeling we
experience when a
state of deprivation is
replaced by
fulfillment.
Advantages
– Easy to quantify
– Short duration
– Bodily

Criticisms
– Came to be known
as “the pig’s
philosophy”
– Ignores spiritual
values
– Could justify living on
a pleasure machine
or “happy pill”
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John Stuart Mill
1806-1873


Bentham’s godson
Believed that happiness,
not pleasure, should be
the standard of utility.
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Happiness

Advantages
– A higher standard,
more specific to
humans
– About realization of
goals

Disadvantages
– More difficult to
measure
– Competing
conceptions of
happiness
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Ideal Values



G. E. Moore suggested that we
should strive to maximize ideal
values such as freedom,
knowledge, justice, and beauty.
The world may not be a better
place with more pleasure in it,
but it certainly will be a better
place with more freedom, more
knowledge, more justice, and
more beauty.
Moore’s candidates for intrinsic
good remain difficult to quantify.
G. E. Moore
1873-1958
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Preferences

Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel Prize
winning Stanford economist,
argued that what has intrinsic
value is preference satisfaction.

The advantage of Arrow’s
approach is that, in effect, it lets
people choose for themselves
what has intrinsic value.
It simply defines intrinsic value as
whatever satisfies an agent’s
preferences. It is elegant and
pluralistic.
KENNETH J. ARROW
Stanford University
Professor of Economics (Emeritus)
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May this help? Lets make everyone
happy!
Happy pill as a universal solution?
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The Utilitarian Calculus


Math and ethics finally merged:
all consequences must be
measured and weighed!
Units of measurement:
– Hedons: positive
– Dolors: negative
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What do we calculate?

Hedons/dolors defined in terms of
– Pleasure
– Happiness
– Ideals
– Preferences
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What do we calculate?

For any given action, we must calculate:
– How many people will be affected,
negatively (dolors) as well as positively
(hedons)
– How intensely they will be affected
– Similar calculations for all available
alternatives
– Choose the action that produces the
greatest overall amount of utility (hedons
minus dolors)
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How much can we quantify?


Pleasure and preference satisfaction are
easier to quantify than happiness or ideals
Two distinct issues:
– Can everything be quantified?
The danger: if it can’t be counted, it doesn’t count.
– Are quantified goods necessarily
commensurable?
Are a fine dinner and a good night’s sleep
commensurable?
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“…the problems of three little people don’t
amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”
Utilitarianism doesn’t
always have a cold and
calculating face—we
perform utilitarian
calculations in everyday
life.
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Criticisms of Utilitarianism
1. Responsibility


Utilitarianism suggests that we are
responsible for all the consequences of our
choices.
The problem is that sometimes we can not
foresee consequences of other people’s
actions that are taken in response to our own
acts. Are we responsible for those actions,
even though we don’t choose them or
approve of them?
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Criticisms of Utilitarianism
2. Integrity


Utilitarianism often demands that we put
aside self-interest. Sometimes this may
mean putting aside our own moral
convictions.
Integrity may involve certain identityconferring commitments, such that the
violation of those commitments entails a
violation of who we are at our core.
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Criticisms of Utilitarianism
3. Intentions

Utilitarianism is concerned almost
exclusively about consequences, not
intentions.
– There is a version of utilitarianism called
“motive utilitarianism,” developed by
Robert Adams, that attempts to correct this.
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Criticisms of Utilitarianism
4. Moral Luck

By concentrating exclusively on
consequences, utilitarianism makes the
moral worth of our actions a matter of
luck. We must await the final
consequences before we find out if our
action was good or bad.

This seems to make the moral life a
matter of chance, which runs counter to
our basic moral intuitions.
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Criticisms of Utilitarianism
5. Who does the calculating?

Historically, this was an issue for the British in
India. The British felt they wanted to do what
was best for India, but that they were the
ones to judge what that was.
– See Ragavan Iyer, Utilitarianism and All That

Typically, the count differs depending on who
does the counting
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Criticisms of Utilitarianism
6. Who is included?

When we consider the issue of
consequences, we must ask who is included
within that circle.

Classical utilitarianism has often claimed that
we should acknowledge the pain and
suffering of animals and not restrict the
calculus just to human beings.
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Concluding Assessment

Utilitarianism is most appropriate for
policy decisions, as long as a strong
notion of fundamental human rights
guarantees that it will not violate rights
of minorities, otherwise it is possible to
use to justify outvoting minorities.
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Rights
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Rights:
Changing Western History

Many of the great documents of the last
two centuries have centered around the
notion of rights.
– The Bill of Rights
– The Declaration of the Rights of Man and
Citizen
– The United Nation Declaration of Human
Rights
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Human Rights
After the King John of England violated a
number of ancient laws and customs by
which England had been governed, his
subjects forced him to sign the Magna
Carta, or Great Charter, which
enumerates what later came to be
thought of as human rights.
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Human Rights
Among rights of Magna Carta were the right of
the church to be free from governmental
interference, the rights of all free citizens to
own and inherit property and be free from
excessive taxes. It established the right of
widows who owned property to choose not to
remarry, and established principles of due
process and equality before the law. It also
contained provisions forbidding bribery and
official misconduct.
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Rights:
A Base for Moral Change

Many of the great movements of
this century have centered
around the notion of rights.
– The Civil Rights Movement
– Equal rights for women
– Movements for the rights of
indigenous peoples
– Children’s rights
– Gay rights
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Justifications for Rights

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Self-evidence
Divine Foundation
Natural Law
Human Nature
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Self-evidence

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident,
that all Men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of
Happiness.”
Declaration of Independence
July 4, 1776
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Divine Foundation

“We have granted to God, and by
this our present Charter have
confirmed, for us and our Heirs for
ever, That the Church of England
shall be free, and shall have her
whole rights and liberties inviolable.
We have granted also, and given to
all the freemen of our realm, for us
and our Heirs for ever, these liberties
underwritten, to have and to hold to
them and their Heirs, of us and our
Heirs for ever.”
The Magna Carta, 1297
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Universal Declaration of Human
Rights
Article 1.
 All human beings are born free and
equal in dignity and rights. They are
endowed with reason and conscience
and should act towards one another in a
spirit of brotherhood.

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
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Rights-related Questions

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Freedom of Speech
Death Penalty
The Disappeared
Economic & Social Rights
Terrorism & Anti-Terrorism
Corruption
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Natural Law

According to natural law ethical
theory, the moral standards that
govern human behavior are, in some
sense, objectively derived from the
nature of human beings.
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Natural Law
Human Nature

Arguments for natural rights that
appeal to human nature involve
the following steps:
– Establish that some characteristic of
human nature, such as the ability to make
free choices, is essential to human life.
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Natural Law
Human Nature
– Establish
that
certain
empirical
conditions, such as the absence of
physical constraints, are necessary for
the existence or the exercise of that
characteristic;
– Conclude that people have a right to
those empirical conditions.
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Two Concepts of Rights


The distinction depends on the
obligation that is placed on those who
must respect your rights.
Negative Rights
– Obliges others not to interfere with your exercise
of the right.

Positive Rights
– Obligates others to provide you with positive
assistance in the exercise of that right.
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Negative Rights

Negative rights simply impose on others
the duty not to interfere with your rights.
– The right to life, construed as a negative
right, obliges others not to kill you.
– The right to free speech, construed as a
negative right, obliges others not to
interfere with your free speech
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Positive Rights

Positive rights impose on others a
specific obligation to do something to
assist you in the exercise of your right
– The right to life, construed as a positive right,
obliges others to provide you with the basics
necessary to sustain life if you are unable to
provide these for yourself
– The right to free speech, construed as a positive
right, obligates others to provide you with the
necessary conditions for your free speech--e.g.,
air time, newspaper space, etc.
– Welfare rights are typically construed as positive
rights.
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Positive Rights:
Critique

Who is obligated to provide positive
assistance?
– People in general
– Each of us individually
– The state (government)
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The Limitations of Rights Concept

Rights, Community, and Individualism

Rights and Close Relationships
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The Limitations of Rights Concept
Contradicting rights: Athos and Women


Greek public community is indignant at
the decision recently taken by the Dutch
court and at the resolution of European
parliament.
In January, a Greek law that allows
monks from the Athos Monastery not to
let women to the Holy Mount was
officially declared in court as
contradicting human rights.
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The Limitations of Rights Concept
Contradicting rights: Athos and Women
An official response to the declaration
was immediate: governmental
spokesman told European human rights
activists that the right of the Athos
monastery republic not to let women to
the Holy Mount was confirmed in the
treaty of Greece-s incorporation into the
European Union.
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Concluding Evaluation

Rights do not tell the whole story of
ethics, especially in the area of personal
relationships.

Rights are always defined for groups of
people (humanity, women, indigenous
people, workers etc).
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Personal Integrity vs Public Safety
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Justice
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Introduction

All of us have been the recipients of
demands of justice.
– My 6 year old daughter protesting, “Daddy,
it’s not fair for you to get a cookie at night
and I don’t.”

All of us have also been in the position
of demanding justice.
– I told the builder of my house that, since he
replaced defective windows for a neighbor,
he should replace my defective windows.
54
Conceptions of Justice

Distributive Justice
– Benefits and burdens

Compensatory/Recompensatory Justice
– Criminal justice
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Distributive Justice

The central question of distributive
justice is the question of how the
benefits and burdens of our lives are to
be distributed.
– Justice involves giving each person his or
her due.
– Equals are to be treated equally.
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Goods Subject to Distribution

What is to be distributed?
– Income
– Wealth
– Opportunities
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Subjects of Distribution

To whom are good to be distributed?
– Individual persons
– Groups of persons
– Classes
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Basis for Distribution

On what basis should goods be
distributed?
– Equality
– Individual needs or desires
– Free market transactions
– Ability to make best use of the goods
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Strict Egalitarianism


Basic principle: every person should
have the same level of material goods
and services
Criticisms
– Unduly restricts individual freedom
– May conflict with what people deserve
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The Difference Principle


More wealth may be produced in a
system where those who are more
productive earn greater incomes.
Strict egalitarianism may discourage
maximal production of wealth.
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The Difference Principle

Each person is to have an equal right to
the most extensive total system of
equal basic liberties compatible with a
similar system of liberty for all.
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The Difference Principle

If a system of strict equality maximizes the
absolute position of the least advantaged in
society, then the Difference Principle
advocates strict equality.
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The Difference Principle

If it is possible to raise the position of the
least advantaged further by inequality of
income and wealth, then the Difference
Principle prescribes inequality up to that
point where the absolute position of the
least advantaged can no longer be raised.
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Critics of the Difference Principle (DP)



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Strict egalitarians: DP don’t treat anyone
differently
Utilitarians: DP doesn’t maximize utility
Libertarian: DP infringes on liberty through
taxation, etc.
Desert-based theorists: argue DP to reward
hard work even when it doesn’t help the
disadvantaged. Does not provide sufficient
rewards for ambition
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Welfare-Based Approaches


Seeks to maximize well-being of society
as a whole
Utilitarianism
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Desert*-Based Approaches

Distributive systems are just insofar
as they distribute incomes according
to the different levels earned or
deserved by the individuals in the
society for their productive labors,
efforts or contributions. (Feinberg)
*desert - förtjänst; förtjänt lön, vedergällning
according to one's deserts efter förtjänst
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Desert*-Based Approaches

Distribution is based on:
– Actual contribution to the social product
– Effort one expend in work activity
– Compensation to the costs


Seeks to raise the overall standard of
living by rewarding effort and
achievement
May be applied only to working adults
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Libertarian Principles


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1. People own themselves.
2. The world is initially un-owned.
3. You can acquire absolute rights over a
disproportionate share of the world, if you do
not worsen the condition of others.
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Libertarian Principles

4. It is relatively easy to acquire absolute
rights over a disproportionate share of the
world.

5. Therefore: Once private property has
been appropriated, a free market in capital
and labor is morally required.
Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy
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John Stuart Mill
Early feminist critique of liberal distributive
structures
Mill in The Subjection of Women (1869):

Principles associated with liberalism
require equal political status of women
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Try to run “Wealth Distribution”, a model that simulates the
distribution of wealth.
http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/WealthDistribution
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