Abstract
Should environmental, social, and economic sustainability be of primary concern to engineers? Should social justice be among these concerns? Although the deterioration of our natural environment and the increase in social injustices are among today’s most pressing and important issues, engineering codes of ethics and their paramountcy clause, which contains those values most important to engineering and to what it means to be an engineer, do not yet put either concept on a par with the safety, health, and welfare of the public. This paper addresses a recent proposal by Michelfelder and Jones (2011) to include sustainability in the paramountcy clause as a way of rectifying the current disregard for social justice issues in the engineering codes. That proposal builds on a certain notion of sustainability that includes social justice as one of its dimensions and claims that social justice is a necessary condition for sustainability, not vice versa. The relationship between these concepts is discussed, and the original proposal is rejected. Drawing on insights developed throughout the paper, some suggestions are made as to how one should address the different requirements that theory and practice demand of the value taxonomy of professional codes of ethics.
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Notes
United Nations (2005) World Summit Outcome, p. 11–12, reads “efforts [to reaffirm our commitment to achieve the goal of sustainable development] will also promote the integration of the three components of sustainable development—economic development, social development and environmental protection - as interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars”.
Michelfelder and Jones use a Rawlsian framework and define social justice as “the fair and equitable distribution of social goods and harms, benefits and burdens, across a diversity of communities and populations, including populations underrepresented by virtue of considerations such as economic status, race, age, gender, nationality, or physical capability.”(Michelfelder and Jones 2011:9).
Michelfelder and Jones have tailored their amendment to fit the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)’s code (based on, but substantially extended from, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. (ABET)’s code). Compared to other codes, the ASCE code seems to be the one for which the notion of sustainability comes closest to being in the PC. It reads: “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public and shall strive to comply with the principle of sustainable development in the performance of their professional duties.” (ASCE Code of Ethics, Fundamental Canon 1). Note that although sustainability is in the same sentence with the PC and is conjunctively connected, it does not fall under the ‘hold paramount’ imperative. The ASCE’s code does not mention ‘justice’ anywhere.
It is noteworthy that in their 2010 presentation at the fPET meeting, the suggested reformulation of the PC contained an explicit reference to justice. It read as follows: “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public and the [just] sustainable design of human and industrial systems in the performance of their professional duties.” Michelfelder and Jones (2010:18); emphasis and brackets in the original.
This hierarchy becomes evident when Michelfelder and Jones explain what their notion of sustainability as concept of social justice means. Namely, “that social justice is a necessary condition for the furtherance or development of sustainability, rather than the other way around (as in, for example, Barry 1999).” (Michelfelder and Jones 2011:9). Barry argued that not acting sustainably deprives future generations, thereby disadvantaging them in contrast to the present and creating (intergenerational) social injustice. This issue makes sustainability a necessary condition of social justice. Sensu Barry, sustainability (to maintain some × into the indefinite future) is a means of furthering social justice. Michelfelder and Jones, in contrast, seem to turn this relationship upside down.
Most commonly, definitions of and approaches to sustainability build primarily or exclusively on a notion of intergenerational social justice. In that sense, sustainability or (the principle of) sustainable development refers to the equilibrium between the degree to which present generations (in a timeless sense of present, cf. Barry 1999:107) irreversibly interfere with the entities of our natural environment, and the degree to which similar actions remain possible for generations to come. However, justice is not the only possible normative, justificatory basis for sustainability. Critique of such an approach comes from very different directions and for a multitude of reasons. For example, the ‘deep ecology’ movement criticizes justice-based lines of argumentation for being too anthropocentric and not taking account of the (alleged) intrinsic value of nature (see section IV). Additionally, basically all of the predominant ethical background theories can provide justification for sustainability according to their central values and principles. A utilitarian approach might stress that the gain of utility (or happiness) of a present generation taking more than its share from nature’s provisions is outweighed by the resulting loss of utility (or happiness) in the future (e.g. due to population growth). A deontological approach could focus on the duty of each successive generation towards the next (cf. e.g., Howarth 1995). Virtue ethics has been employed to sustainability in different ways, e.g. by creating a genuine ‘environmental virtue ethics’ or extending values traditionally found in virtue ethics to include nature in a substantial way (cf. e.g., Sandler 2007; for an overview see van Wensveen 2000). However, Michelfelder and Jones explicitly approach sustainability from a justice perspective, or more generally, a Rawlsian social contract theory. Their line of argument builds on sustainability being ‘a justice’. The crucial point here is not that other approaches to justify the normativity of sustainability might (and do) exist, but that Michelfelder and Jones explicitly employ a justice-based approach on the one hand, while on the other hand, they distort the relationship between them by reversing their roles as provider and receiver of normative justification for the respective other. Therefore, the mere possibility of argumentative backup from other ethical background theories does not present any concerns here.
Certainly, it is not the case that engineers regularly fail to see all interrelations between the different dimensions; that environmental benefits regularly entail economic costs (or rather, result in lower economic benefits than would have been possible), for example, is rather trivial. At least some interrelations are regularly being missed (e.g. between the environmental and social dimensions). This is a problem in its own right and suggests a lack of understanding of the underlying structure, which is based on the interrelatedness and mutual reinforcement of the dimensions.
Approaches to and definitions of sustainability emphasize how we should treat certain goods, e.g., natural resources or scenery, especially with respect to (distribution over) time and what justifies formal criteria (like equality) and distribution patterns (like leaving enough of the goods in question for satisfaction of future generations’ needs), rather than spelling out in detail what those goods are, what should be counted as ‘need’, etc.
Barry (1999:101). Barry further discusses and dismisses ‘want-satisfaction’ and ‘the chance to live a good life as we perceive it’ as potential candidates for X, and instead suggests to understand X as some form of ‘equal opportunity’ (ibid. 103–4).
A possible option for such a justification might be that resource depletion is a gambit that will lead to, for example, reduced dependency on limited resources in future technology or to technology that is able to restore the effects of prior resource depletion and environmental damage. One could also argue that we cannot foresee future generation’s preferences and that they might value the artificial products and economic (welfare) goods that we gain from depleting resources more highly than unspoiled nature.
As Davis puts it, “Ideally, a code of professional ethics should consist of those standards everyone in the profession, at her rational best, wants everyone else in the profession to follow even if that means having to follow them too.” (Davis 2007:180, emphasis added).
If one were to emphasize theoretical stringency, it is also likely that at least some of the values that already feature in the PC would be eliminated or substituted by others. The huge overlap of the concepts of safety and health (that safety is paramount is owed, to a large degree, to the threat that unsafe designs could pose to human health) would make it unlikely that both values end up still being in the PC. Similarly, welfare is, philosophically speaking, rather a means to promote wellbeing (or ensure a minimal degree of wellbeing, or a precondition to lead a good life/to exercise self-determined agency) than an intrinsic value in its own right. The criterion of theoretical stringency would likely substitute welfare with wellbeing, quality of life, or the like. A strictly philosophical code setup would not lend itself easily to engineers, their professional language, and their take on what it means to be an engineer, and therefore would be less inclusive, less action-guiding, and less binding. To suggest such a fundamental change in the PC’s values would most likely not result in a positive impact on the engineering discourse. .
This argument is certainly a vast oversimplification of what professional codes of ethics are. Much work has been dedicated to define professional codes more clearly (e.g., as soft laws, quasi-contracts between professions and society, intra-professional agreement meant to protect its members, and so on) or to clarify the roles of codes of ethics in detail. For example, by dividing their functions along the lines of aspirational functions, advisory or educational functions, and regulatory or disciplinary functions (Frankel 1989; van de Poel and Royakkers 2010). Still, it can hardly be doubted that they are situated at the transition point between (value) theory and practice. It might be true, as Davis boldly put it, that “a code of professional ethics, whatever it is, is not philosophy” (Davis 2003:10). But, neither can a code of ethics do without philosophy. Without philosophical grounding, the values in the codes would likely become arbitrary or, even worse, distorted and misappropriated.
Since nature would have intrinsic value, but still not be part of our moral community. Injustice can only appear among members of a moral community; therefore, it is not possible to treat nature unjustly or unfairly (or be treated by nature in such a way)—there is no addressee for justice claims. But it would still be possible for actions that have an impact on nature to be wrong, if they conflict with nature’s intrinsic value. Cf. Barry (1999:94).
Norton (1991:237-43) labels this practical synchronization the ‘convergence hypothesis’. Even McShane (2007:170), in addressing the differences between anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism, grants, “they will both recommend the same environmentally responsible behaviours and policies […and] that anthropocentric and nonan-thropocentric ethics will converge when it comes to the policies and behaviours they recommend.”.
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Brauer, C.S. Just Sustainability? Sustainability and Social Justice in Professional Codes of Ethics for Engineers. Sci Eng Ethics 19, 875–891 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-012-9421-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-012-9421-4