ENGM 604: Social, Legal and Ethical Considerations for Engineering Specifying the Call of Morality: Engineering Responsibility

Specifying Responsibility This is a photo of the exterior of the Chernobyl power plant shortly after the explosion on April 26th, Up to the present day, a team of scientists and engineers work a the facility to try to contain the massive amount of radioactive material that remains entombed at the site. See Case #3 p. 302.

Specifying Responsibility Why would people voluntarily expose themselves to such risk? Perhaps because the explosion was caused by a mismanaged electrical- engineering experiment. ws/reaction/readings/chernobyl.html Why might other engineers feel responsible for the poor judgment of one of their colleagues?

Different Senses of Responsibility In order to understand where responsibility lies in situations like the Chernobyl incident, we need to be able to make some distinctions in the concept. There are at least three different senses that would be helpful to distinguish: Obligation-Responsibility Blame-Responsibility Leadership-Responsibility

Filling in the Details Obligation-Responsibility is a way of talking about the responsibilities established by assuming professional roles. It is essentially a responsibility to do what is morally required of us as professionals. Blame-Responsibility refers to the capacity to attribute wrongdoing to a person, process or group, or institution. We can talk of being “held responsible.” Leadership-Responsibility highlights the combination of obligation- and blame- responsibility we have when we are supervising the activities of others. Here it is a matter of “taking responsibility.”

Obligation-Responsibility and Reasonable Care For engineers, obligation responsibility is often articulated through the ethical concept of “Reasonable Care.” Typically, reasonable care is understood as exercising due diligence in conforming to the standards and practices of your workplace and profession. The problem is that due diligence is not always sufficient to avoid serious problems and/or failures.

From Reasonable Care to Due Care In many situations, reasonable care does not seem sufficient. Consider Case #31 on p A more robust standard of care would require extending reasonable care beyond the confines of consideration of established standards and practices to include an affirmative consideration of the impact of actions on potentially effected parties: so-called “Due Care.” See Kenneth Alpern’s definition on p. 23.

Principle of Proportionate Care From his definition of due care, Alpern derives what he calls a Principle of Proportionate Care (p. 23). There are a couple of things to recognize about this principle: Principle of proportionality is amount of “harm.” Principle is not just negative or reactive, but requires a positive, forward looking approach.

Obligation-Responsibility and the Law Independent of questions of blame-responsibility, individuals and companies are often held responsible for events that they had an obligation to avoid. The legal remedy for this failure is typically addressed through Tort Law. The standard applied by Tort Law shares much with the standard of Due Care discussed previously (see p. 25). Though we may criticize certain awards under this standard, it is clearly our responsibility as managers to be aware of such liability and to avoid it. It is also clear that the standard is well supported by our common as well as specific role moralities.

Beyond the Limits of Responsibility? Good Works So what does our analysis of obligation- responsibility tell us about the Chernobyl case? Sometimes people do things that seem that go beyond their basic duties. To do so is to act in a commendatory fashion, or to do what are commonly called “Good Works.” Typically, we don’t think that people have an obligation to act in a commendatory fashion. Codes of Ethics embody this by focusing on basic duties.

Fitting Good Works into Engineering The focus of codes on basic duties raises questions about the status of good works. We should note that not only are they relatively common, but that in many situations they are highly desirable. Prevent serious harms not anticipated by basic duties; make up for failures of others. But they are not always desirable, particularly in organizations/businesses which may view them as distractions to their goals. Nonetheless, an adequate account of ethics in engineering seems to require taking them into account.

Engineers and Virtue One way to fit an account of the commendatory in is through a consideration of the moral virtues appropriate to engineers. A virtue, in this sense, is a disposition to act in a certain way, a habit of character. Honesty, reliability, benevolence, civic-mindedness. While the virtues that an engineer should exhibit may not be different from the virtues of anyone else, that they should exhibit them seems to flow directly from a consideration of their responsibilities to human welfare.

Who’s to Blame? When we turn to blame-responsibility, the issues that are most difficult are connected to the problem of correctly specifying the cause of an action. When we are identifying causes in this context, it is not physical causes that are most important, but agency. That raises important questions about who counts as an agent.

Questions of Agency We have a strong moral intuition that agency requires features that limit agency to people. At minimum these features are freedom and knowledge. This analysis, however, leaves out an important causal feature which doesn’t seem reducible to the system of physical causation: institutional or organizational causes. Think about both the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

Organizations as Agents Philosopher named Peter French has an account of agency that would seem to encompass organizations in the way that seems appropriate For French, agents are: 1.Possessed of decision making mechanisms. 2.Possessed of decision guiding policies. 3.Possessed of interests in terms of which they make decisions.  If this analysis holds,then it seems appropriate to speak of organizational agents.

Responsibility and Accountability There are different levels of responsibility, and distinguishing them is aided by consideration of the relevant legal standards or accountability. Three levels: 1.Intentionally causing harm 2.Recklessly causing harm 3.Negligently causing harm See 4 conditions for negligence on p. 34.

An Obstacle to Accountability One way which individuals in organizations try to dodge responsibility is by invoking the “problem of many hands.” Though common, this dodge doesn’t typically stand up to scrutiny: Larry May, “[I]f a harm has resulted from collective inaction, the degree of individual responsibility of each member…[of the collective] should vary based on the role each member could…have played in preventing the inaction” (p. 35). Two coordinate principles: 1.Principle of responsibility for inaction in groups 2.Principle of responsibility for action in groups

Challenges Responsible Agents Overcome When we are faced with choices for which we have obligation- and perhaps blame- responsibility, our leadership-responsibility sometimes requires us to overcome a range of impediments These include: 1.Self-Interest 2.Fear 3.Self-Deception 4.Ignorance 5.Egocentrism 6.Narrowness of Vision 7.Uncritical Acceptance of Authority 8.Groupthink