Transcript Day 3

ENGM 604: Social, Legal and Ethical
Considerations for Engineering
Responding to the Call of Morality:
Identifying Relevant Facts, Principles
and Solutions.
What is Required?
• Read Case 41 on p.
332.
• What are the facts?
• The issues and
principles?
• How should the
situation be resolved?
Moral Decisions: A Common
Context
• Despite the disagreements that even a
situation like that detailed in the case can
produce, we must always remember that we
typically face moral decisions from within a
shared context of ethical agreement.
• We might disagree if a particular case
requires loyalty, but most of us agree that
loyalty is a good thing.
Common Morality
• This common context is what we’ve called
in the past Common Morality: the set of
moral commitments exhibited by a culture
or society.
• When we ask ourselves why we seem to
share these commitments, we can point to
history, cultural forces, or religion, but the
extent of the agreement suggests that all of
these explanations miss something
important.
Sources of Common Morality
•
•
A more successful answer will look to our
shared human condition, for it is there if
anywhere that we will find what truly binds us.
Of the characteristics we all share, the following
seem particularly important to our common
moral commitments:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Vulnerability
Autonomy
Interdependency
Shared Expectations and Traits
Common Moral Traits
So What if it is Common?
• What is the relevance of these sources of common
morality? Haven’t we already emphasized the
uniqueness of professional morality?
• It is true that common morality must be kept
distinct from both personal and professional (role)
morality.
• However, the latter two are incomprehensible
without reference to the first. In particular,
common morality plays an important justifying
role in professional morality.
Appreciating the complexity
• In life, things are rarely as simple as we would
like them to be.
• This is particularly true of our moral experience,
which typically confronts us with challenges that
defy easy or straightforward resolution.
• Acknowledging this requires that we identify the
features of moral decisions that produce the
complications
• These include: Identification of Relevant Facts;
Specifying Relevant Principles; Producing
Appropriate Resolutions.
Just the Facts
• Appropriately responding to morally significant
situations requires appreciation and sensitivity to
the significant facts.
• That this is the case is apparent from three features
of such situations:
• Moral disagreements often boil down to disagreements
over the facts;
• Resolving factual disagreements is not always
straightforward or easy;
• Resolving factual disagreements often clarifies nonfactual disagreements.
What Facts?
• The difficulties attendant upon resolving factual
disagreements is the most challenging of these
features.
• You need to attend to the relevant facts, but it may
be difficult to agree on just what facts are relevant.
• It is also the case that we often don’t have all of
the relevant factual information we need.
• Disagreement can also arise in the decision on
how to weight the relevant factual information.
Just the Principles
• In addition to the range of factual controversy than
can figure in morally controversial situations,
there may be disagreement over principles.
• This disagreement can occur at a number of levels:
• People can disagree about the meaning or significance
of ethical concepts.
• People can disagree about the ethical framework which
should be applied to resolve a particular controversy.
What Does it All Mean?
• If there is disagreement about the meaning
of a term or concept, there are a number of
techniques that can be employed to
minimize the disagreement.
• Minimally, the participants can seek help from
standard reference works.
• More fruitfully, the participants can work
together to develop an understanding of the
overlap and differences between their
understandings of the terms.
Competing Ethical Frameworks
• If the disagreement is more fundamental,
concerning basic ethical perspectives, the situation
is more complex.
• There are a number of common ethical
frameworks that people reflectively or
unreflectively rely on.
• For the most part they are mutually consistent,
however, there are important differences that
being familiar with may be helpful.
Consequentialism
• Many people would agree that the moral value of
an act is somehow connected to the consequences
of the act.
• Consequentialism is an ethical framework which
formalizes this agreement by arguing that the
moral status of an action determined by the 'value'
of its consequences.
• Different species of consequentialism identify
different ‘values,’ but they all insist that the
rightness or wrongness of an action is determined
by its tendency to produce ‘value.’
Counting it all Up
• Value maximizing theories like consequentialist
ones have the apparent advantage of a quantifiable
element.
• Such theories always require us to compare the
‘value’ of competing choices and such comparison
requires calculation.
• All such calculations have a few constraints:
• Everyone counts and they all count the same;
• Overall value is what matters;
• Hierarchy of values.
Problems with Consequentialism
• The apparent virtue of quantification turns
out to be a mixed blessing. Consequentialist
theories have to deal with a number of what
are called “measurement problems.”
• They also have a notoriously bad time with
the issue of Justice.
• Slavery counter-example.
Respect for Persons
• When we think about the consequences of our
actions, we have to admit that in important ways
they are out of our control.
• This recognition is at the heart of a competing
ethical framework that argues that the reasons for
acting are what determine the moral status of an
act.
• The Respect for Persons version of this approach
argues that when we act in a way consistent with
the moral personhood of others we act rightly;
when we don’t, we act wrongly.
Respect?
• Obviously, the weight of the analysis on this
approach is the idea of respect for moral
personhood.
• Different versions of this theory have
emphasized different accounts of
personhood.
• They converge in the recognition that an
appropriate account of personhood is tied to
our capacity for morality.
Problems for RfP Approaches
• Respect for Persons approaches are also
open to criticism.
• Some forms have been accused of too
rigorously or sharply specifying our moral
obligations.
• Another common criticism is that such
theories are insufficiently action guiding.
One or the Other?
• Consequentialism and the Respect for Persons approach
are just two possible ethical frameworks. There are a
number of other popular competitors.
• One question that becomes important is how to adjudicate
the competition.
• Happily, for the most part the theories converge on similar
answers to tough questions.
• When they disagree, we have to make decisions about the
theories themselves.
• Perhaps the best approach is one which attempts to
combine the virtues of a variety of theories.
Moving to Resolution
• When we’ve addressed issues arising from facts
and principles, we are in a position to identify the
appropriate resolution to the situation at hand.
• When the facts and principles are clear and shared,
resolution is typically straightforward.
• In more complex circumstances, techniques can be
employed to help in the resolution process.
Resolution Techniques
• Line-Drawing is helpful when the principles
in question do not unambiguously speak to
the relevant facts.
• Middle Way solutions are desirable when
there is dispute about the relevance of
principles.
• Both approaches require flexibility and
imagination.