Engineers as Social Activists: A Defense

Now the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET).Google Scholar

Section 4 of the 1947 Engineers’ Council for Professional Development “Canons of Ethics for Engineers,” reprinted in Albert Flores, ed., Ethical Problems in Engineering, vol. 1 (2d ed.; Troy, N. Y.: Center for the Study of the Human Dimensions of Science and Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1980), p. 64.Google Scholar

Samuel Florman, “Moral Blueprints,” Harper’s,October 1978, p. 31; reprinted in Flores, p. 236.Google Scholar

Robert Baum has responded to Florman by recommending an “informed consent” ethic for engineers under which they would be required to “recognize the right of each individual potentially affected by a project to participate to an appropriate degree in the making of decisions concerning that project.” (See Flores, p. 52.) One problem is that, even if it were possible for engineers to obtain informed consent from all affected parties, their doing so would probably create the same disruptions that Florman is concerned about. See Robert Baum, “The Limits of Professional Responsibility,” Proceedings: Values and The Public Works Professional (Chicago: American Public Works Association, 1979). Reprinted in Flores, pp. 48–53.Google Scholar

See Richard T. DeGeorge, “Ethical Responsibilities of Engineers in Large Organizations,” Business and Professional Ethics Journal (1981): 1–14 for a variation on Florman’s basic argument.Google Scholar

The probabilities are subjective probabilities.Google Scholar

Richard Montgomery noted this objection and brought it to my attention.Google Scholar

I acknowledge that the phrase “hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public” can reasonably be interpreted in ways other than as synonymous with “maximize expected social utility.” Promoting justice, for example, may also be considered to be a component of holding paramount the public welfare. I dwell on utility maximization only because Florman’s criticism of the ECPD code concerns the utility (or disutility) of engineers’ following its first canon. The analysis offered here is claimed to be effective only against Florman’s criticism. I take no position in this paper regarding other criticisms of the code or of consequentialist ethical principles in general. (Questions from Paul Durbin and Heinz Luegenbiehl at the Twente conference prompted me to offer this clarification.)Google Scholar

This case is adapted from one of the cases discussed in “The Limits of Professional Responsibility” by Robert Baum. (See note 4 above.)Google Scholar

Richard Montgomery has observed that my criticism of Florman seems to depend on my supposing that there are various degrees of belief about states of affairs (as opposed to “non-degreed” all-or-none beliefs about the various probabilities of states of affairs) With the latter conception, he argues, I could not use the decision-theoretic model I propose to constrain those who believe one thing to act contrary to those beliefs. However, I did not intend to take any position regarding the nature of belief. I assume only the commonsense view that we have more confidence in some of our beliefs than in others. With respect to our present concern, it does not really matter whether we account for this fact in terms of varying degrees of belief or in terms of varying probabilities as objects of our beliefs. In the latter case we need only interpret statements of the form, “S believes that x” (where x make no reference to probabilities), to be elliptical for statements of the form, “S believes that the probability that x is p,” where the notion of belief occurring in the latter is of the all-or-none variety. Then it is certainly possible for a course of action that one believes would maximize action utility — i.e., that one believes the probability of its leading to consequences C is p (where p > 0.5) and that C would have the greater possible utility — not to be a course of action with the greatest expected utility (as long as p < 1.0). Thus our main result would be preserved.Google Scholar