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Problematic rights claims quoted directly from bill baker, engineering ethics: an overview. claims form a "bill of rights" set forth by murray a. muspratt of chisholm institute of technology, victoria, australia (american society of civil engineers' journal of professional issues in engineering, october 1985)
- "The right to act in according to ethical conscience and to decline assignments where a variance of moral opinion exists.
- The right to express professional judgment, and to make public pronouncements that are consistent with corporate constraints on proprietary information.
- The right to corporate loyalty and freedom from being made a scapegoat for natural catastrophes, administrative ineptitude or other forces beyond the engineer's control.
- The right to seek self-improvement by further education and involvement in professional associations.
- The right to participate in political party activities outside of working hours.
- The right to apply for superior positions with other companies without being blacklisted.
- The right to due process and freedom from arbitrary penalties or dismissal.
- The right to appeal for ethical review by a professional association, ombudsman or independent arbitrator.
- The right to personal privacy."
- Kant's moral philosophy has exercised substantial influence over our notions of right and duty. We begin with a brief summary of this theory based on the work,
The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals .
- Kant states that the only thing in this world that is good without qualification is a good will. He characterizes this will in terms of its motive, "duty for duty's sake."
- Consider the following example. You see a boy drowning. Even though the water is rough and the current strong you are a good enough swimmer to save him. So while your inclination may be to give way to fear and walk away, you are duty-bound to save the drowning boy.
- An action (saving or not saving the drowning boy) has moral worth depending on the correct correlation of right action and right motive. The following table shows this.
Duty for duty's sake
|
Motive = Inclination (desire for reward or fear) |
Motive = Duty |
| Act Conforms to Duty |
You save the drowning boy for the reward. Act conforms to duty but is motivated by inclination. Has no moral worth. |
You save the drowning boy because it is your duty. Act conforms to duty and is for the sake of duty. Your act has moral worth. |
| Act violates a duty. |
You don't save the drowning boy because you are too lazy to jump in. Act violates duty motivated by inclination. |
You drown trying to save the drowning boy. He also dies. Act fails to carry out duty but is motivated by duty anyway. The act miscarries but since the motive is duty it still has moral worth. |
- Kant sees morality as the expression and realization of the rational will. The first formulation of this rational will is to will consistently and universally.
- This leads to the Categorical Imperative:
I should act only on that maxim (=personal rule or rule that I give to myself) that can be converted into a universal law (=a rule that applies to everybody without self-contradiction).
- This formulation is an imperative because it commands the will of all reasonable beings. It is categorical because it commands without exceptions or conditions. The CI tells me unconditionally not to lie. It does not say, do not lie unless it promotes your self interest to do so.
- The following table shows how to use the Categorical Imperative to determine whether I have a duty not to lie.
Source:
OpenStax, Modules linking to computing cases. OpenStax CNX. Jul 26, 2007 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col10423/1.2
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