Ethics

Objectives:
1. What are ethics?
2. What ethical theories and frameworks can impact our analysis of ethical behavior examples to demonstrate these frameworks you are already learning
3. Professional ethics

“Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public in the performance of their professional duties.” ASCE Code of Ethics

1. What are ethics?

Ethics: a set of values or group of moral principles that are right and good a code or principles of behavior or conduct governing an individual or group

Engineering Ethics: activity or discipline aimed at understanding the moral values that should guide engineering practice (only since late 1970s has systematic attention to ethics been devoted by engineers and others, as spurred by a national engineering ethics project sponsored by the U.S. Government (NSF, NEH) in 1978-1980)

Why study ethics? to increase your ability as engineers to responsibly confront moral issues raised by technological activity

not always in short term best interest, and bring long-term into decision making ethics are imprecise, complex, and in a given situation may conflict vague = which moral considerations to apply to a situation and in what “hierarchy” conflicting moral reasons are common, resulting in a moral dilemma disagreement over how to interpret, apply, and balance moral reasons in particular situations

Illustrative “Thinking” Exercise You and your best friend graduate from high school and decide to take a cruise the summer before starting college at Yale University in the fall. While on the boat, tragedy strikes and the boat begins to sink. Your friend is severely injured, but you both manage to get into a life boat. You float in the ocean, with only a little water and sharks circling. Your friends asks you to promise that if for some reason you are