Week 1

Lecture 1
Philosophy attempts to answer questions that go beyond practicing the discipline.

Ethics is branch of philosophy that deals with right and wrong.

Asks questions about what we should do/ought to do (morally speaking)

Non- moral (amoral) oughts actions that dont fall within domain of morality

Conventional norm (social conventions)

o Fashion donts

Moral oughts rules/laws/oughts that hold all persons simply in virtue of being moral people

Lecture 2
Rabins on the motivations for engineering ethics

1. Stimulate ethical imagination

2. Help recognize ethical issues
3. Help analyze key ethical concepts and principles relevant to practice
4. Help deal with disagreements, ambiguity, and vagueness in ethical cases
5. Encourage to take ethical responsibility

Moral autonomy the skill and habit of thinking rationally and independently about ethical issues on
the basis of genuine moral concern and the ability to act on the moral convictions that are a results of
that deliberation

Two kinds of knowledge

Skills
o Understanding, questioning, thinking, developing arguments, making good choices
Content
o

Lecture 3
Martin on categories of professional motivation:

Craft motives desires for goods like technological expertise, creativity, and understanding of
possibility
Compensation motives desires for social rewards (money, power, authority, good reputation,
job stability)
Moral concern moral caring for living beings, to promote their well-being for their sake and
desires to maintain ones moral integrity and self-respect
Engineering ethics is about character (intellectual virtues creativity, critical thinking and personal
integrity and emotional virtues empathy and compassion)

Personal meaning is connected to being the kind of person you want to be and living the life you want to
live.

Meaningful work connecting personal commitments to public goods

Necessary for moral autonomy

Moral awareness - proficiency in recognizing moral problems and issues in engineering

Cogent moral reasoning comprehending, clarifying, and assessing arguments on opposing
sides of moral issues
Moral coherence forming consistent and comprehensive viewpoints based upon a
consideration of relevant facts
Moral imagination discerning alternative responses to moral issues
Moral communication precision in use of common ethical language, express and support
ones moral views adequately to others

Outcomes of skills of moral autonomy

Moral reasonableness willingness and ability to be morally reasonable

Respect for persons genuine concern for well-being of others as well as self
Tolerance respect for ethnic and religious difference and acceptance of reasonable differences
in moral perspectives
Moral hope enriched appreciation of possibilities of using rational dialogue to resolve moral
conflicts
Integrity - maintaining moral integrity and integrating ones professional life and personal
convictions

Week 2

Week 3
Lecture 1
Obligation to follow professional codes of ethics and evaluate and help evolve codes
Code of conduct
o Intended as addition to requirements of law
Code sources
o Professional codes
Formulated by professional association
Most are aspirational and/or advisory
o Corporate codes
Formulated by companies
Most are disciplinary
Types of codes
o Aspirational
 Expresses values of profession or company
o Advisory
Has objective to help individual professionals to exercise moral judgement
o Disciplinary
Has objective that behavior of all professionals meets certain values
Three domains of modern codes
1. Conduct profession with integrity and honesty
2. Obligation to employers & clients
3. Responsibility towards public
- Integrity living up to ones own moral codes
- Honestly telling what is believed to be true and disclose all relevant info
- Conflict of interest interest if pursued can conflict with meeting professional obligation to
employer/client
o Solutions: disclosure, recusal, manage

Lecture 2
- Ambiguity can be understood in more than one way
- Loyalty
o Critical loyalty give due regard to interest of employer within constraint of employees
personal/professional ethics
o Uncritical loyalty place interest of employer above other considerations
- Some ideals in engineering
o Technological enthusiasm wanting to develop new possibilities and take up new
challenges
Problem: Wenher Von Braun
o Effectiveness and efficiency
Effective extent goal is achieved
Efficient ratio between goal achieved and effort required
Problem: Frederick W. Taylor
o Human welfare contribute to wellbeing to people
Problem: Animals

Lecture 3
- Three branches of ethics: designed to answer different set of questions
1. Meta ethics Is there even such thing as moral permissibility (moral rightness)? Does
moral truth even exist?
a. Moral Objectivism: there is such thing as moral truth, and it is objective in that
doesnt depend on what people think or believe about it. 2.
b. Moral Relativism: There are no objective moral truths but there are subjective ones.
truths are relative to cultures or societies (to the beliefs of the majority within a
culture or society) 3.
c. Moral Subjectivism: There are no objective moral truths but there are subjective
ones. moral truths are relative to an individual's beliefs 4.
d. Moral Nihilism: there is no moral truth (either objective or subjective). Morality is a
fiction.
What if anything grounds moral value? Is moral value objective or conventional? Is moral value
intrinsic or extrinsic?

2. Ethical theory (normative ethics): we are trying to figure out, What makes an action
morally permissible? A normative theory offers us a criterion for what makes a right
action right and what makes a wrong action wrong. Four popular theories:
Consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, ethics of care
a. Utilitarianism - Says (roughly) that what makes an action right is that it causes more
pleasure than pain for everyone affected by the action.
b. Kantianism - Says (roughly) that what makes an action right is that it conforms with
the moral duties ( rules that we could consistently will to be universal (moral) laws.)
c. Virtue Ethics - (roughly) that what makes a right action right is that it proceeds from
a good (virtuous) character.
d. Ethics of care - Stress that traditional moral theories, principles, practices, and
policies are deficient to the degree they lack, ignore, trivialize, or demean values
and virtues culturally associated with women.
e. Rossianism
f. Divine Command Theory
3. Applied ethics: we are trying to figure out, Under what conditions (if any) is a particular
action morally permissible? Another way of putting it is, applied ethics asks What should I
do in this particular situation?
a. Reproductive Ethics
b. Food Ethics
c. Military Ethics
d. Professional Ethics
i. Medical Ethics
ii. Business Ethics
iii. Engineering Ethics
Principles of applied ethics
1. Non-maleficence: do not harm. 2.
2. Beneficence: act in such a way that the person benefits. 3.
3. Autonomy: honor the persons right to self-determination to
formulate and follow a life plan of her own making. 4.
4. Justice: distribute goods and services in a way that is fair.

Lecture 4
- Ethics: The systematic reflection on Morality (define morality in the normative sense (to refer to
how people should behave)
- Morality: The totality of opinions, decisions, and actions which people express, individually or
collectively, what they think is good or right. (descriptive sense)
o Descriptively
Refer to some code put forth by society or other group
o Normatively
Refer to some code given specific condition, would be put forward by all rational
people
 - Moral error: people are mistaken about what they believe is morally right or wrong (no matter
how firmly they believe it.)
o there is a difference between what people do believe about right and wrong, and what
they should believe.
- If talking about shoulds in beliefs, talking about morality in normative sense

Further confusion

- moral to refer to peoples beliefs about morality.

- ethical is sometimes used to refer to the moral status of an action or choice rather than the
study of morality
- ethical is sometimes used to refer to someones character (to say that she or she behaves
morally).

Interchangeable terms

- Moral, ethical, morally right, morally good, morally permissible, morally OK

- Immoral, unethical, morally wrong, morally bad, morally impermissible, morally not OK
- Moral rules, moral laws, moral facts

Norms, values, and virtues

- Norms
o Norms are oughts or shoulds of various kinds....as in you ought to ____ or you
should____.
o Moral norms are moral oughts
o Normative judgement - Judgement about weather something is good or bad, desirable
or undesirable right or wrong.
o Non-moral norms
Legal
Sometimes moral norms, sometimes not
Social
Practical (AKA pragmatic)
Aesthetic

Moral and non-moral oughts

- Most often moral and non-moral laws do not overlap

Descriptive Statements: concerns what people do in fact do. Descriptive statements offer a description
of peoples actions or character.

Normative Statements (aka Evaluative Statements or Prescriptive Statements): concern what people
ought to do (and this can be different from what they in fact do.) Normative statements offer
evaluations about peoples actions or character.

- Moral judgements - judgment about what you ought (morally) to do or how you (ought) morally
to be as a person.
Conventional norms

- Matter of convention
o No white after labor day
o Rules of etiquette
o No elbows on table

What drives norms?

- Values - States of affairs that are worth (or at least thought to be worth) striving for
o Normative judgements are also sometime value judgements or evaluative
judgements.
o Thats because values are what drive normative judgements.
- Values are like goals (or ends)
- Norms are the way to achieve those goal (the means.)

Different Values

- Social Value
- Monetary Value
- Political Value
- Historical Value
- Sentimental Value
- Aesthetic Value
- Pragmatic Value (Practical Value): Pragmatic value can be applied to, objects actions, beliefs,
and situations.
o Money sometimes has pragmatic value. Objects that are worth money can be
pragmatically valuable.
- Moral value: Moral value mostly applies to actions or to peoples character, or lives.
o An act of kindness, for instance, has moral value.
- Epistemic Value: Epistemic value is mostly applied to beliefs and actions regarding beliefs.
o Truth is a kind of epistemic value. True beliefs have epistemic value

Intrinsic value something that has intrinsic value is valuable in and of itself

Instrumental value something that is instrumentally valuable is valuable in so far as it is a means to

achieving some other value

Evaluative judgements

- Terms
o Good
o Bad
o Better
o Worse

Moral status of an Action

- Morally Impermissible: not morally ok to do (not morally allowed), morally wrong

 o Kill from boredom
- Morally Permissible: morally ok (morally allowed) to do
o Brush teeth
- Morally Obligatory: morally required to do
o Feed yo kids
- Morally Supererogatory: morally allowed but not required and someone above and beyond
what is morally required.
o Give all your money to charity

Week 4
Lecture 1
Meta Ethics

1. Moral Objectivism (Universalism) Moral truth is objective

a. Allows moral error (people mistaken about whats right and wrong) and substantive
moral debate
b. Moral error - if a person (or a whole culture) believes that murdering innocent people
for sport is morally permissible, then it is possible for that person or culture to be
mistaken about that view
c. Substantive moral debate - allow for useful moral debates because it recognizes the
existence of moral error
d. Worries, being objectivist
i. And still be tolerant?
ii. Morally presumptuous?
iii. And undecided about right/wrong things?
2. Moral Relativism (Cultural Relativism) No objective, only subjective moral truths relative to
cultures/societies
a. Moral error - if a culture believes that genocide is morally permissible, they cant be
mistaken about this
b. Moral error - Individuals could be mistaken on Relativism, if an individual who belongs
to a culture that endorses genocide disagrees with the views of her culture, she is
automatically in the wrong
c. Substantive moral debate - If a person disagrees with the moral views of her culture, it
makes sense to try to persuade her that she is mistaken
d.
3. Moral Subjectivism No objective, only subjective relative to individual
a. Moral error - if a person believes that murdering innocent people for sport is morally
permissible, then it is
b. Substantive moral debate - no use discussing and debating moral issues because each
person is always correct in their views
c.
4. Moral Nihilism No moral truth
 a. Moral error - there is no such thing as moral error for individuals or cultures, but only
because morality does not exist
b. Substantive moral debate - no use discussing and debating moral issues because there is
no fact of the matter about morality

Lecture 2
Absolutism rigid objectivism. Moral rules are absolute, no exceptions.

Lecture 3
Lecture 4

Week 5