4.2 Value profile: responsibility  (Page 8/10)

Responsibility as a virtue

• Role-Taking : Projecting into the standpoints of others to assess situations, formulate moral relevance, and outline actions. Requires the ability to explore multpile perspectives (multiple framings) and to move quickly from one to the other.
• Transperspectivity :"unravel or trace back the strands by which our constructions weave our world together." Also, the ability to "imagine how thwe world might be constructed differently." Johnson quotes Winter in Johnson 1993, 241. Steven Winter: "Bull Durham and the Uses of Theory" in Standford Law Journal, 42, 639-693.
• Techno-social Sensitivity : From Harris, SEE 2008: "Critical awareness of the way technology affects society and the way social forces, in turn, affect the evolution of technology."

Exercises

Identify the relevance and response components of the following cases:

• The disciplinary tribunal of the Puerto Rico State Society of Land Surveyors and Professional Engineers has a moral tribunal that investigates violations of the society's code of ethics. Individuals brought before the tribunal and found guilty of code violations are subject to temporary or permanent expulsion from membership of this professional society and from the privileges of attendant upon being a licensed professional engineer. Discuss rule compliance from the standpoint of "response to relevance." What is the relevance component? What is the response component?
• The Puerto Rican government held public hearings to review a private company's petition for permission to build a windmill farm on privately owned land located near a publicly owned nature preserve. (Bosque Seco de Guanica) The public hearings wer held in a distant place, at an expensive and exclusive facility, and at an inconvenient time for many of those opposed to the project. This activity was not well publicized. What aspects of this situation fall under the umbrella of moral salience or moral relevance? What would be morally appropriate responses available to those opposing the project?
• An engineer passes a laminating press room and notices that a fine white powder covers everything in the room, including the operator. The engineer talks with the operator and finds out that he has been working at this position for ten years. The operator says he is not aware of any evidence that this powder is dangerous or hazardous but has not really looked into the matter. He also appears not to be using any safety equipment to avoid exposure to the white powder. What is the moral salience of this situation? What would be some relevantly moral responses to this salience?
• A family is without electricity in the aftermath of a severe hurricane in a tropical country. Neighbors have generators which they run all day and night to keep their houses air conditioned and their appliances continually running. The family without a generator finds that the noise from their neighbors generators prevents them from sleeping at night. They finally give up starying in their house and stay in a hotel for the duration of the time it takes to restore their electricity. What is the moral salience of this situation and what are possible responsive actions that the neighbors with generators could take?
• Nathaniel Borenstein is a pacifist. He is also a computer programmer whose skills are in high demand for those developing military technology. But he has a strong commitment not to collaborate with the military or associated industries. So when NATO contacts him to assist them in building a training program for missile launchers, he politely but firmly refuses their overtures. But when he learns that the training program they have developed so far is embedded, he reconsiders his vow of non-participation. An embedded training program could mistakenly inform trainees that the system was in training mode when it was actually in operational mode. What is the moral salience of this situation and what is it about Borenstein that makes him uniquely qualified to attend to this moral salience? What kind of responsive actions are available to Borenstein? Would continuing his policy of non-participation be considered one of these options?