PROFESSIONAL ETHICS IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
CD5590
LECTURE 4
Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic
Department of Computer Science and
Engineering
Mälardalen University
2003
1

Examination deadlines
Class notes of the previous class meeting to
be hand in each time.
Complete file with class notes sent by mail
before 15 Dec. [Last lecture is excluded]
Preparing and Leading Beehive
[According to the Lecture schedule]
”White paper” - Abstract: 16 Nov.
- First draft: 28 Nov.
- Final version 15 Dec.
2

A skeleton paper
From: http://www.idt.mdh.se/kurser/ct3340/ht03/slidespdf.pdf
Title, author and affiliations
Abstract
Introduction
Background information
Problem definition
Related work
Method
Results
Summary and conclusions
[Acknowledgements]
References
[Appendix]
3

The title
Must be informative, clear, and meaningful.
Don’t be clever or cryptic.
Get the attention of your readers immediately.
Bad: The effects of stress
Good: Is stress killing you?
Or: Stress: Is it killing you?
Imagine someone searching for your paper.
4

The abstract (read by 87%)
Summarizes problem, result, and uses.
Between 100–250 words.
Avoid references and acronyms.
Try to “sell” the paper!
5

Introduction (read by 43%)
Explains the background/significance of
the paper.
The opening paragraph should be your
best paragraph.
Ended by a summary of the
organization of the paper.
6

Problem definition
A concise statement of the problem you
are discussing
Why it is important to address the
problem?
Justify and argue for your view/solution
to this problem
7

Related work
Identify relevant related work (with
references)
References must bepossible to find
Avoid “personal communication”.
Compare your work with previous work.
You must convince the reader that your work
is original!
Examples and case studies are great for this.
8

Summary and Conclusion
(read by 55%)
Interpretation of your work: pros & cons.
Limitations of your work
Suggestions for future work
Experiences.
Don’t just re-word the abstract!!
9

References
Make sure all references are referenced.
What goes in the reference depends on the
type of of publication.
– Books: author, title, publisher, ISBN, year.
– Journal: author, title, journal, volume,
month, pages.
– Report: author, title, source, year.
10

A Comment on the number of slides
Consider following...
It takes an amazing amount of film to make a
movie! Most movies are shot on 35mm film
stock. You can get 16 frames (individual
pictures) on 30.5 cm (1 foot) of film. Movie
projectors move the film at a speed of 24
frames per second, so it takes 45.7 cm (1.5
feet ) of film to create every single second of
a movie.
We have only 80 OH (frames) today. Less than
in a four seconds of a movie..
11

Utilitarianism
Rights
Justice
Overview
Based on: Lawrence M. Hinman, Ph.D.
Director, The Values Institute
University of San Diego
12

Utilitarianism
13

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.
14

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)
15

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.
16

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.
17

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.
18

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
19

Bentham believed that we
should try to increase the
overall amount of pleasure
in the world.
Jeremy Bentham
1748-1832
20

Definition: The
enjoyable feeling we
experience when a
state of deprivation is
replaced by
fulfillment.
Advantages
– Easy to quantify
– Short duration
– Bodily
Criticisms
Pleasure
– Came to be known
as “the pig’s
philosophy”
– Ignores spiritual
values
– Could justify living on
a pleasure machine
or “happy pill”
21

Bentham’s godson
Believed that happiness,
not pleasure, should be
the standard of utility.
John Stuart Mill
1806-1873
22

Advantages
– A higher standard,
more specific to
humans
– About realization of
goals
Happiness
Disadvantages
– More difficult to
measure
– Competing
conceptions of
happiness
23

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.
Ideal Values
G. E. Moore
1873-1958
24

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.
Preferences
KENNETH J. ARROW
Stanford University
Professor of Economics (Emeritus)
25

May this help? Lets make everyone
happy!
Happy pill as a universal solution?
26

Math and ethics finally merged:
all consequences must be
measured and weighed!
Units of measurement:
– Hedons: positive
– Dolors: negative
The Utilitarian Calculus
27

What do we calculate?
Hedons/dolors defined in terms of
– Pleasure
– Happiness
– Ideals
– Preferences
28

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)
29

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?
30

“…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.
31

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?
32

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.
33

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.
34

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.
35

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
36

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.
37

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.
38

Rights
39

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
40

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.
41

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.
42

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
Rights:
A Base for Moral Change
43

Justifications for Rights
Self-evidence
Divine Foundation
Natural Law
Human Nature
44

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
45

“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
Divine Foundation
46

Article 1.
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights
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
47

Freedom of Speech
Death Penalty
The Disappeared
Economic & Social Rights
Rights-related Questions
Terrorism & Anti-Terrorism
Corruption
48

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.
49

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.
50

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.
51

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.
52

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
53

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.
54

Positive Rights:
Who is obligated to provide positive
assistance?
– People in general
– Each of us individually
– The state (government)
Critique
55

The Limitations of Rights Concept
Rights, Community, and Individualism
Rights and Close Relationships
56

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.
57

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.
58

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).
59

Personal Integrity vs Public Safety
60

Justice
61

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.
62

Distributive Justice
– Benefits and burdens
Conceptions of Justice
Compensatory/Recompensatory Justice
– Criminal justice
63

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.
64

Goods Subject to Distribution
What is to be distributed?
–Income
– Wealth
– Opportunities
65

Subjects of Distribution
To whom are good to be distributed?
– Individual persons
– Groups of persons
– Classes
66

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
67

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
68

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.
69

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.
70

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.
71

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.
72

Critics of the Difference Principle (DP)
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
73

Welfare-Based Approaches
Seeks to maximize well-being of society
as a whole
Utilitarianism
74

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
75

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
76

1. People own themselves.
Libertarian Principles
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.
77

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
78

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
79

Try to run “Wealth Distribution”, a model that simulates the
distribution of wealth.
http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/WealthDistribution
80