Class Discussion Questions and Reading Guide to Chapter 2 HPR and Case 11 Citicorp - Responsibility in Engineering and Virtues

Below you will find a short list of questions for class discussion.  These questions depend on your having read and thought about what is covered in Chapter Two.   Below the short list is a Reading Guide including detailed questions to guide your reading of the chapter.

Class Discussion

1.  How do HPR define obligation responsibility, blame responsibility, and role responsibility?  In the light of the whole chapter, what place do these concepts have in engineering ethics? 

2.  What points do you take away from the case of Carl Lawrence and Emerson Chemical (pp. 23-26)?  Do you read the case any differently than HPR?

3.  Do you see character and virtues fitting in to engineering ethics?  If so, what role should they play?  How do "good works' fit in, if they do?   Moral exemplars (i.e., engineers who serve as role models)?

4.   Are organizations moral agents?  Why or why not?  What is the Problem of Many Hands and why might it be a problem?

5.   Of all the stumbling blocks that HPR cover on pages 37 to 43 which one or two do you anticipate causing the most problems for you or for engineers in general?

6.  Read Case 11 - Citicorp in the light of your reading of the chapter.   What concepts/questions raised in the chapter are helpful in analyzing this case?   Are there issues that Chapter Two doesn't deal with that the case raises?   Going the Extra Mile:  For more information on LeMessurier and the Citicorp case go to http://www.onlineethics.org/moral/lemessurier/index.html   For a dissenting voice about the case, go to http://www.crosscurrents.org/kremer2002.htm   For the original article from the New Yorker that revealed the events in a laudatory way, see http://www.duke.edu/~hpgavin/ce131/citicorp1.htm

Reading Guide with Detailed Questions for Chapter Two

2.1 Introduction

a.  How do HPR define each of the following and why are these distinctions important if they are?

Obligation Responsibility

Blame Responsibility

Role Responsibility

2.2  “Obligation-Responsibility and Reasonable Care”

a.  How should “reasonable” care be defined?  Should Aharm@ and “proportionate care” be the touchstones as Alpern suggests?   ( Note Alpern’s principle:  “When one is in a position to contribute to greater harm or when one is in a position to to play a more critical part in producing harm than is another person, onemust exercise greater care to avoid doing so.” [Alpern qted in HPR 23].)

b.  What does the case of Carl Lawrence and Emerson Chemical (pp. 23-26) suggest to you about these issues?

2.3.  Basic Duties and Good Works –  And Supererogation

a.  What are “good works”?   How do these differ from “basic duties”?  HPR give three examples to illustrate “good works” on p. 27.  Offer one additional example.   Should good works be defined in terms of what other people can “rightfully’ expect?  HPR do not mention it, but another way to think of “good works” is as “supererogatory” acts.  Supererogatory acts are acts that are above and beyond the call of duty.  That is, they are acts that go beyond what duty requires, however, that is defined.  Sometimes the people who are said to do such acts are labeled moral saints or heroes.  Philosophers debate how to define supererogatory acts and indeed whether such a category exists.  Some would argue there are only permitted, obligatory, or prohibited moral acts.  See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supererogation/

b.  Evaluate HPR’s reasons for thinking good works are an important part of professional ethics.

c.  How do you think good works should be treated in an overall conception of engineering ethics?  Why?  

2.4.  Virtues

a.  What are the reasons that May suggests professional ethics should pay attention to the ethics of character and virtue according to HPR? (p. 30)

b.  HPR give an example of Rodney Rocha exhibiting professional virtues in terms of the foam strike on the space shuttle Columbia.  Are “attention to detail; concern for the health, safety, and welfare of the public (which includes the astronauts); and a willingness to press dissenting opinions” (p. 31) virtues?  What is their implicit definition of a virtue?

c.  In your view, how should (or should) character, virtues and moral exemplars fit into an overall conception of engineering ethics?  Why?

2.5 “Blame-responsibility and Causation”

a.  How are the concepts of physical cause, organizational cause, and responsibility related according to HPR?

b.    Can organizations be causes of harm?   Can/should they be held morally responsible in the same way that an individual moral agent is?   HPR cite French’s views that corporations are similar to a moral agent because they make and carry out decisions, have policies that guide them, and have interests that may come into conflict with the interests of the groups that make them up. (p. 33) HPR find the analogies between an organization and a moral agent convincing.  Do you?  Are there differences between a corporation/organization and an individual that weaken the notion that organizations are moral agents?

c.  How do we decide when an individual is morally responsible for harm?  According to HPR how are moral responsibility and legal liability related?  How do the differences between intentional, reckless, and negligent harm play into this according to HPR?  How does strict liability fit into their discussion?

d.  What is the Problem of Many Hands?  How do individual and group responsibility related to this problem according to HPR?  Can you think of any situations, especially in engineering, where the problem of many hands might occur?   How could this problem be reduced?  For example, how might a team of software engineers who often work collaboratively try to limit this problem? 

2.6  “Impediments to Responsible Action” -   Stumbling Blocks - What are each of the following according to HPR and why might they be stumbling blocks?  How does the fact that engineers often work as part of groups play into these?

Self-interest (p. 37)

Fear (pp. 37-38)

Self-deception (38-39)

Ignorance (39)

Egocentric Tendencies (40)

Microscopic Vision (40-41)

Uncritical Acceptance of Authority (41-42)

Groupthink (42-43)