Engineering Ethics 1 – Ethical Theories & Thoughts

1. Engineering Ethics 1 – Ethical Theories & Thoughts Engr Prof Dr Sam Man Keong 岑文强 CEng, CMath, CSci, CQP, CEnv. Email: sammk@singnet.com.sg ; HP : 96740515 Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

2. Highlights • Introduction. • Why study Engineering Ethics? • Personal vs Professional or Business Ethics • Ethics and the Law. • A Brief History of Ethical Thought. • Ethical Theories. • Questions & Answers. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

3. About the Speaker – Prof Sam Man Keong • Singapore : SP/NUS/NTU. • Australia : MelbU/RMIT/CQU. • Chartered Engineer (UK/Ireland/Australia) • Chartered Builder (UK) • Chartered Mathematician (UK) • Chartered Scientist (UK) • Chartered Environmentalist (UK). Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

4. The Great Wall of China Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

5. Introduction • Why study Engineering Ethics? • Personal vs Professional or Business Ethics • Ethics and the Law. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

6. Why Study Engineering Ethics? • The work of engineers can affect public health and safety and can influence business practices and even politics. • To sensitize you to important ethical issues before you have to confront them. • You will learn techniques for analyzing and resolving ethical problems when they arize. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

7. Personal vs Business or Professional Ethics • Personal ethics : deals with how we treat others in our day-to-day lives. Many of these principles are applicable in business and engineering. • Engineering ethics is the rules and standards governing the conduct of engineers in their role as professionals. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

8. Personal vs Business or Professional Ethics • Engineering ethics encompasses the more general definition of ethics, but applied it more specifically to situations involving engineers in their professional lives. • Engineering ethics often involves choices on an organizational level rather than a personal level. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

9. Thus, engineering ethics is a body of philosophy indicating the ways that engineers should conduct themselves in their professional capacity. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

10. Ethics and the Law • The practice of engineering is governed by many laws. • Many of these laws are based on ethical principles, although many are purely of a practical, rather than a philosophical nature. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

11. Ethics and the Law • There is also a distinction between what is legal and what is ethical. • Many things that are legal could be considered unethical. For example, designing a process that releases a known toxic, but unregulated, substance into the environment is probably unethical, although it is legal. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

12. A Brief History of Ethical Thought • Western : Greek philosophers (e.g. Socrates, Aristotle,…); Jewish – Torahand the Old Testament of the Bible (e.g. the Ten Commandments). • East : Confucius, Lao Zi…. • Ancient religious thinking and writing : Christainity, Buddhism, Hindusism, Islam,…… Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

13. The Ten Commandments[Exodus 20: 2 – 17] • 2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; • 3 Do not have any other gods before me. • 4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. • 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

14. The Ten Commandments[Exodus 20: 2 – 17] • 12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. • 13 You shall not murder. • 14 You shall not commit adultery. • 15 You shall not steal. • 16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. • 17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

15. A Brief History of Ethical Thought • Ethical ideas were continually refined during the course of history. • Great thinkers/philosophers (e.g. Locke, Kant, and Mill) wrote about moral and ethical issues; is especially important for our study of engineering ethics since they do not rely on religion to underpin their moral thinking. Rather, they acknowledged that moral principles are universal, regardless of their origin, and are applicable even in secular settings. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

16. Ethical conduct is fundamentally grounded in a concern for other people. It is not just about law or religion. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

17. Ethical Theories • What is a Moral Theory? • A moral theory defines terms in uniform ways that links ideas and problems together in consistent ways. • Why having multiple theories? • Allowing problems to be looked at from different angles, since each theory stresses different aspects of a problem ( same solution??) • FOUR ethical theories: • Utilitarianism, • Duty ethics, • Right ethics, and • Virtue ethics. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

18. Utilitarianism • Utilitarianism seeks to produce the most utility, defined as a balance between good and bad consequences of an action, taking into account the consequences for everyone affected. • Cost-Benefit Analysis : an application of utilitarianism – maximizing the overall good. But CBA is not really an ethical analysis tool. • John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1973). Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

19. John Stuart Mill • John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873), Englishphilosopher, political theorist, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential British Classical liberal thinker of the 19th century whose works on liberty justified freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's. Hoping to remedy the problems found in an inductive approach to science, such as confirmation bias, he clearly set forth the premises of falsification as the key component in the scientific method. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

20. Duty Ethics • Duty ethics contents that there are duties that should be performed (for example, the duty to treat others fairly or the duty not to injure others) regardless of whether these acts lead to the most good. • Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) : moral duties are fundamental; list of duties – be honest, don’t cause suffering to other people, be fair to others, etc. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

21. Immanuel Kant • Immanuel Kant (German pronunciation: (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg. Kant was the last influential philosopher of modern Europe in the classic sequence of the theory of knowledge during the Enlightenment beginning with thinkers John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

22. Right Ethics • Right ethics emphasizes that we all have moral rights, and any action that violates these rights is ethically unacceptable. Like duty ethics, the ultimate overall good of the actions is not taken into account. • John Jocke (1632 – 1704) : humans have the right to life, liberty, and property. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

23. John Locke • John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704), widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an Englishphilosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. • Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau and Kant. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

24. Duty Ethics vs Right Ethics • Duty ethics and right ethics are really just two different sides of the same coin. • Both of these theories achieve the same end : Individual persons must be respected, and actions are ethical that maintain this respect for the individual. In duty ethics, people have duties, an important one of which is to protect the rights of others. And in right ethics, people have fundamental rights that others have duties to protect. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

25. Virtue Ethics • Virtue ethics regards actions as right that manifest good character traits (virtues) and regards actions as bad that display badcharacter traits (vices); this ethical theory focuses on the type of person we should strive to be. • Virtues : responsibility, honesty, competence, and loyalty; trustworthiness, fairness, caring, citizenship, and respect. • Vices : dishonesty, disloyalty, irresponsibility, or incompetence. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

26. Virtue Ethics • Virtue ethics is closely tied to personal character. • If a behavior is virtuous in the individual’s personal life, the behavior is virtuous in his or her business life as well. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

27. Virtue Ethics • To use virtue ethics in an analysis of an ethical problem, you should first identify the virtues or vices that are applicable to the situations. Then, determine what course of action each of these suggests. • In using virtue ethics, it is important to ensure that the traits you identify as virtues are indeed virtuous and will not lead to negative consequences. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

28. Which Theory to Use? • We can use all of them to analyze a problem from different angles and see which results each of the theories give us. • Frequently, the result will be the same even though the theories are very different. • What happens when the different theories seem to give different answers? ( a balanced judgment) Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

29. Example 1 – Building of Dams • Dams often lead to great benefit to society providing stable supplies of drinking water, flood control, and recreational opportunities. However, these benefits often come at the expense of people who live in areas that will be flooded by the dam and are required to find new homes. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

30. Example 1 – Building of Dams • Some examples of Dams: • China : Three Gorges Dam • India : Narmada Dam • Malaysia : Bakun Dam • Australia : ‘Franklin Dam’ in Tasmania. • Asia : Dams along Mekong River Basin • Africa : Aswan Dam in Egypt Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

31. To build or Not to build? • People have the right to use their property. If their land happens to be in the way of a proposed dam, then right ethics would hold that this property right is paramount and is sufficient to stop the dam project. A single property holder’s objection would require that the project be terminated. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

32. To build or Not to build? • However, there is a need for others living nearby communities to have a reliable water supply and to be safe from continual flooding. Who’s rights are paramount here? Rights and duty ethics don’t resolve this conflict very well; hence, the utilitarian approach of trying to determine the most good is more useful in this case. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

33. Example 2 – Ok Tedi Mine in Papua New Guinea • The Ok Tedi Mine is located near the headwaters of the Ok Tedi River, in the Star Mountains Rural LLG of the North Fly District of the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. • The mine is operated by Ok Tedi Mining Limited (OTML) which is majority owned by the PNG Sustainable Development Program Limited (PNGSDPL). Prior to 2002, it was majority owned by BHP Billiton—the largest mining company in the world since a merger in 2001. • Located in a remote area of PNG, above 2,000 m (6,600 ft) on Mount Fubilan, in a region of high rainfall and frequent earthquakes, mine development posed serious challenges. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

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38. Ok Tedi Mine - Environmental impact • In 1999, BHP reported that the project was the cause of "major environmental damage". The mine operators discharge 80 million tons of contaminated tailings, overburden and mine-induced erosion into the river system each year. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

39. Ok Tedi Mine - Environmental impact • The discharge caused widespread and diverse harm, both environmentally and socially, to the 50,000 people who live in the 120 villages downstream of the mine.Chemicals from the tailings killed or contaminated fish, which subsequently caused harm to all animal species that live in the area as well as the indigenous people. The dumping changed the riverbed, causing a relatively deep and slow river to become shallower and develop rapids thereby disrupting indigenous transportation routes. Flooding caused by the raised riverbed left a thick layer of contaminated mud on the flood plain the plantations of taro, bananas and sago palm that are the staples of the local diet. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

40. Ok Tedi Mine - Environmental impact • About 1300 square kilometers (500 mi²) were damaged in this way. Although the concentration of copper in the water is about 30 times above the standard level, it is still below the World Health Organization (WHO) standards. Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

41. Thank You Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts

42. Questions & Answers Thank You 自强不息, 力求上进 Ethics1-Theories & Thoughts