Beyond the Code

A Philosophical Guide to Engineering Ethics

Heidi Furey, Scott Hill, Sujata K. Bhatia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781138183858
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317287131
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy
• Index: Technology & Engineering

For over 80 years, the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) has been a leader in the promotion of ethical practice within the field of engineering. One of the Society's greatest contributions is the formation and adoption of the NSPE Code of Ethics. But the code, with its six "Fundamental Canons," is only truly instructive if engineers can bridge the gap between principles and action. Here there is no substitute for personal reflection on the ethical and philosophical issues that underlie the code. If done well, such reflection provides an indispensable basis for moral problem solving. Beyond the Code: A Philosophical Guide to Engineering Ethics is designed to complement the NSPE Code of Ethics by helping readers "go beyond" in their understanding of the philosophical issues bound up in the code. Each chapter addresses one of the Fundamental Canons of the NSPE code, and provides a philosophical analysis of the various parts of each canon by employing contemporary and classical texts. This unique approach to engineering ethics guides students and professionals in their readings of the appended selections to refine their understanding of the code in order to apply it to the practical challenges of today's engineers.

Key Features:

• Is the first introduction to engineering ethics that helps students understand and apply the NSPE Code of Ethics to engineering practice
• Includes a Preface from Arthur E. Schwartz, NSPE Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel, and NAFE Executive Director
• As a hybrid text, includes primary philosophical texts with extensive introductions and guided reading questions from the book's three authors
• Offers case studies from the NSPE Board of Ethical Review, allowing students to see a direct connection between the issues discussed in the text and real-world engineering practice
• Includes the following pedagogical aids:

• "Key Terms and Concepts" for each chapter
• "Preparing to Read" sections before each primary source reading
• "Guided Reading Questions" after each primary source reading
• "Going Beyond—Our Questions for a Deep Dive" after each case study.

Chapter 1

Public Wellbeing

“Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.”

While an engineer’s obligation to protect the public is seldom questioned, it is worth pausing to ask what underlies this responsibility. One answer is that the work of engineers has far-reaching consequences with regard to public health, safety, and wellbeing. Technology allows us to transcend many of the limitations nature has placed on us. It brings with it the potential for great good and also great harm. Engineers, as creators of technology, must always keep in mind the people affected by the products they create. This is the basis for an engineer’s professional responsibility. Professional responsibility refers to moral obligations by virtue of being a member of the profession in addition to whatever obligations one has simply in virtue of being a human being. Although protecting the public welfare may appear almost platitudinous, it is not as straightforward as it may seem. In this chapter, we will discuss three potential issues that engineers must address if they hope to meet their professional obligation to safeguard the public. These are paternalism, technological mediation, and distributive justice.

Public Welfare

What is public welfare? The concept itself is rather more complex than it appears. First of all, is there more to wellbeing than just health and safety? Presumably the NSPE’s answer to this question is “yes” if they’ve gone to the trouble of listing it even after pointing out an engineer’s obligation to hold paramount health and safety.

The term “welfare” as it’s used in this context is more or less synonymous with what philosophers call “wellbeing.” Within the philosophical literature, there is a rich and complex discussion of what constitutes human wellbeing. For our purposes, we will make three important assumptions:

1.Human wellbeing is made up of a variety of values.

2.Sometimes these values conflict within another when we attempt to realize them in a given situation. Therefore, these values must be weighed against one another.

3.The way in which these values contribute to individual wellbeing is not the same for every individual. In that case, there is no hard and fast rule for how conflicting values ought to be weighed against one another in a given situation.

The realization of values such as health and safety can certainly contribute to human wellbeing. These values are obviously ones that engineers can have direct influence over, which is perhaps why they are placed front and center in the NSPE’s code of ethics. However, health and safety aren’t the only values relevant to human wellbeing. What other values matter? One value that is particularly relevant to professional ethics is individual autonomy. Autonomy is the ability of an individual to make decisions in accordance with their own values.

What sorts of things might compromise individual autonomy? There are some obvious candidates. For instance, if a doctor were to force a particular treatment on a patient against the patient’s will, this would obviously be a violation of the patient’s autonomy. However, there are other less direct ways of violating a person’s autonomy. For instance, we might compromise someone’s autonomy by interfering with their ability to make an informed choice. Consider the following hypothetical situation:

Imagine you are on an international flight. The attendant asks if you would like chicken or beef for your meal. As a vegetarian, you would prefer not to have either. But your blood sugar is incredibly low, so you opt for the chicken just to make sure you don’t go into hypoglycemic shock on the trip. What if it turned out there was a vegetarian option the flight attendant purposely failed to mention because they had an overstock of chicken and beef meals? Is it true that you freely chose to eat chicken over a vegetarian meal? In one sense of the word “freely” yes, you did choose the chicken. After all, no one forced that choice. You could have eaten nothing and taken your chances that you would go into shock. But in another sense, your choice was compelled because your options were artificially limited.

This example is one in which your autonomy is compromised because the flight attendants are looking out for themselves. Arguably, flight attendants have a responsibility to prioritize the needs of the passengers over, say, a negligible financial gain for the airline. In that case, it was not ethically acceptable for the attendants to mislead their passengers by omitting information that was relevant to the passengers’ needs. There are other cases, however, that are much less clear-cut. In these cases the ethical conflict involves a tradeoff between obligations to another person—for instance a conflict between the duty to inform and the duty to protect.

Paternalism

You’re back on a plane. You’ve just tucked away your laptop in an overhead compartment after finally finishing some important work during the flight. Unknown to you, the pilots have just detected a serious mechanical problem--one that the pilots know will force a crash landing of the plane. The pilots intend to alert the passengers so that they can prepare themselves for the landing. However, in order to avoid the potential chaos of a mass panic, they intend to hold off on alerting passengers until the last possible second. After a successful, though frightening landing, all of the passengers escape the plane—though not with enough time to retrieve their belongings. Here again, you didn’t choose to leave your laptop because you were never offered the choice to retrieve it. And yet the pilots’ decision to withhold information from passengers in this case seems very different than the flight attendants’ decision discussed in the previous case. In this situation, the pilots only compromised passenger autonomy in order to secure passenger safety. Philosophers call this paternalism. A paternalistic action is one that interferes with an individual’s autonomous decisions for that individual’s own good. Although employing paternalistic actions may have clear benefits with regard to health and safety, it is not clear that doing so also “holds paramount” public welfare. Consider the following case submitted to the NSPE BER.

Duty to Report Unsafe Conditions/Client Request for Secrecy

Case 98-9

Year: 1998

Facts:

Engineer A, a structural designer of a large commercial building, incorporates new and innovative design concepts. After construction is complete and the building is occupied, he finds an omission in his calculations that could result in its collapse under severe, but not unusual wind conditions. The collapse would not only jeopardize the occupants and their immediate surroundings but could possibly cause a “domino” effect threatening a much larger area.

Engineer A advises the architect and client of the problem. After consultation with the architect, the client, and the city engineer, all agree upon remedial construction, which can be accomplished over the next few months. A storm monitoring system and contingency evacuation plan for the building and surrounding neighborhood are developed for the time before construction is complete.

Both the client and architect strongly agree that the situation should be kept secret, with construction accomplished during the evening hours when the building is unoccupied. Engineer A is confident that the construction will completely rectify any structural concerns and that the evacuation plan has a reasonable chance of success.

Engineer B, the city engineer, has concern for the public, especially the office workers in the building and their right to know, but the architect and the client maintain that right is superseded by the consequences of a possible public panic resulting from any notification.

In this case, community members weren’t forced to stay despite the danger. However, they did not choose to stay either. And that’s because they weren’t aware that there was a choice to be made. So clearly, members of the public would suffer a violation of autonomy should Engineer B decide to keep the project a secret.

Ordinarily, members of the public have a right to know if they might be at risk. And it would take a great deal to suspend this right. Let’s assume there is a strong possibility that giving them that information may ultimately compromise their safety (for instance, perhaps the instigation of a mass panic could cause injury or delay the remedial construction). Even so, it is difficult to imagine that risks would be grave enough in this case to justify such a serious compromise of autonomy. In that case, the suggestion to employ secrecy, though perhaps driven by paternalistic motivations, is not morally justified. However, it’s not difficult to imagine a case in which acting to fully inform the public could generate serious risks to health and safety. In these cases, it’s an open question, morally, whether paternalistic actions might be justified. There are cases in which paternalistic action seems much more acceptable from a moral point of view. For example, the creation and enforcement of seatbelt laws, though not uncontroversial, are arguably examples of the justifiable use of paternalism.

But “more acceptable” instances of paternalism such as seatbelt laws are, again, not totally uncontroversial. This is particularly true in situations in which the individual or group subject to the paternalistic interventions places a high value on freedom. It’s hardly surprising, for instance, that paternalistic laws requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets face much more pushback than seatbelt laws. Part of the draw of riding a motorcycle for some is the idea of the freedom that comes with it. For some riders, the risk involved with riding a motorcycle itself is part of its appeal. In such cases, it’s not clear whether politicians have the moral authority to restrict autonomy by passing helmet laws.

Engineers, however, are not typically policy makers in the same way politicians or the heads of corporations are. Politicians often directly influence people’s choices via legal directives while, more often than not, engineers indirectly shape the public’s choices through design. How so? It’s not usually within the purview of an engineer (as an engineer) to create a law that restricts an individual’s freedom “for her own sake.” However, an engineer can design a product that accomplishes the same end. Consider, for instance, a cell phone that is designed to block incoming and outgoing texts while inside a moving vehicle. This kind of technology might be more effective at curtailing distracted driving than a law that banned texting on the road. And yet the public, in cases in which their choices are being shaped indirectly through design, are probably far less cognizant that their choices are being “manipulated.” This brings us to the nex...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword by Arthur E. Schwartz, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the NSPE
• Fundamental Canons of the NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers
• Note from the Authors
• Preface
• Introduction: Background
• Chapter 1 Public Wellbeing
• Chapter 2 Competence
• Chapter 3 Objectivity
• Chapter 4 Loyalty
• Chapter 5 Honesty and Deception
• Chapter 6 Professional Honor
• Index