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85Imaginary Cases in EthicsInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 26 (1): 1-17. 2012.By “case,” I mean a proxy for some state of affairs, event, sequence of events, or other fact. A case may be as short as a phrase (“a promise to your dying grandfather”) or (in principle, at least) longer than War and Peace. A case may consist of words (as in the typical philosophical example) or have a more dramatic form, such as a movie, stage performance, or computer simulation. Imaginary cases plainly have an important role in contemporary ethics, especially in applied or practical ethics. T…Read more
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149Eighteen rules for writing a code of professional ethicsScience and Engineering Ethics 13 (2): 171-189. 2007.Most professional societies, scientific associations, and the like that undertake to write a code of ethics do so using other codes as models but without much (practical) guidance about how to do the work. The existing literature on codes is much more concerned with content than procedure. This paper adds to guidance already in the literature what I learned from participating in the writing of an important code of ethics. The guidance is given in the form of “rules” each of which is explained an…Read more
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Engineering as Profession: Some Methodological Problems in Its StudyIn Byron Newberry, Carl Mitcham, Martin Meganck, Andrew Jamison, Christelle Didier & Steen Hyldgaard Christensen (eds.), Engineering Identities, Epistemologies and Values: Engineering Education and Practice in Context, Springer Verlag. 2015.
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41Better communication between engineers and managers: Some ways to prevent many ethically hard choicesScience and Engineering Ethics 3 (2): 171-212. 1997.This article is concerned with ways better communication between engineers and their managers might help prevent engineers being faced with some of the ethical problems that make up the typical course in engineering ethics. Beginning with observations concerning the Challenger disaster, the article moves on to report results of empirical research on the way technical communication breaks down, or doesn’t break down, between engineers and managers. The article concludes with nine recommendations …Read more
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47A Plea for JudgmentScience and Engineering Ethics 18 (4): 789-808. 2012.Judgment is central to engineering, medicine, the sciences and many other practical activities. For example, one who otherwise knows what engineers know but lacks engineering judgment may be an expert of sorts, a handy resource much like a reference book or database, but cannot be a competent engineer. Though often overlooked or at least passed over in silence, the central place of judgment in engineering, the sciences, and the like should be obvious once pointed out. It is important here becaus…Read more
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115“Ain’t No One Here But Us Social Forces”: Constructing the Professional Responsibility of Engineers (review)Science and Engineering Ethics 18 (1): 13-34. 2012.There are many ways to avoid responsibility, for example, explaining what happens as the work of the gods, fate, society, or the system. For engineers, “technology” or “the organization” will serve this purpose quite well. We may distinguish at least nine (related) senses of “responsibility”, the most important of which are: (a) responsibility-as-causation (the storm is responsible for flooding), (b) responsibility-as-liability (he is the person responsible and will have to pay), (c) responsibil…Read more
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56Assessing Graduate Student Progress in Engineering EthicsScience and Engineering Ethics 18 (2): 351-367. 2012.Under a grant from the National Science Foundation, the authors (and others) undertook to integrate ethics into graduate engineering classes at three universities—and to assess success in a way allowing comparison across classes (and institutions). This paper describes the attempt to carry out that assessment. Standard methods of assessment turned out to demand too much class time. Under pressure from instructors, the authors developed an alternative method that is both specific in content to in…Read more
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223An historical preface to engineering ethicsScience and Engineering Ethics 1 (1): 33-48. 1995.This article attempts to distinguish between science and technology, on the one hand, and engineering, on the other, offering a brief introduction to engineering values and engineering ethics. The method is (roughly) a philosophical examination of history. Engineering turns out to be a relatively recent enterprise, barely three hundred years old, to have distinctive commitments both technical and moral, and to have changed a good deal both technically and morally during that period. What motivat…Read more
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35The Mysterious Ethics of High-Frequency TradingBusiness Ethics Quarterly 26 (1): 1-22. 2016.ABSTRACT:The ethics of high frequency trading are obscure, due in part to the complexity of the practice. This article contributes to the existing literature of ethics in financial markets by examining a recent trend in regulation in high frequency trading, the prohibition of deception. We argue that in the financial markets almost any regulation, other than the most basic, tends to create a moral hazard and increase information asymmetry. Since the market’s job is, at least in part, price disco…Read more
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60Engineering Ethics: Looking Back, Looking ForwardScience and Engineering Ethics 19 (3): 1395-1404. 2013.The eight pieces constituting this Meeting Report are summaries of presentations made during a panel session at the 2011 Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) annual meeting held between March 3rd and 6th in Cincinnati. Lisa Newton organized the session and served as chair. The panel of eight consisted both of pioneers in the field and more recent arrivals. It covered a range of topics from how the field has developed to where it should be going, from identification of issues …Read more
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28Three Nuclear Disasters and a Hurricane : Some Reflections on Engineering EthicsJournal of Applied Ethics and Philosophy 4 1-10. 2012.The nuclear disaster that Japan suffered at Fukushima in the months following March 11, 2011 has been compared with other major nuclear disasters, especially, Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). It is more like Chernobyl in severity, the only other 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale; more like Three Mile Island in long-term effects. Yet Fukushima is not just another nuclear disaster. In ways important to engineering ethics, it is much more like Katrina’s destruction of New Orl…Read more
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33Avoiding the voter's paradox democraticallyTheory and Decision 5 (3): 295-311. 1974.This paper is concerned with selecting an appropriate perspective from which to understand and evaluate social-decision procedures. Distinguishing between "agent rationality" and "option-rationality", the author argues that a rational agent may choose a social-decision procedure that is not itself agent-rational (but merely option-rational). The argument puts the voter's paradox in a context allowing evaluation of (a) its general import and (b) practical proposals for avoiding it in particular…Read more
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23Introduction: Exigent decision-making in engineeringScience and Engineering Ethics 5 (4): 541-567. 1999.
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62Curricular Design And Assessment In Professional Ethics EducationTeaching Ethics 13 (1): 81-90. 2012.
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169What can we learn by looking for the first code of professional ethics?Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 24 (5): 433-454. 2003.The first code of professional ethics must: (1)be a code of ethics; (2) apply to members of a profession; (3) apply to allmembers of that profession; and (4) apply only to members of that profession. The value of these criteria depends on how we define “code”, “ethics”, and “profession”, terms the literature on professions has defined in many ways. This paper applies one set of definitions of “code”, “ethics”, and “profession” to a part of what we now know of the history of professions, there by…Read more
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36Torture, Terror, and War: Justifying Exceptions to Ordinary Moral DecencyJournal of Military Ethics 11 (3): 264-267. 2012.No abstract
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73What punishment for the murder of 10,000?Res Publica 16 (2): 101-118. 2010.Those who commit crime on a grand scale, numbering their victims in the thousands, seem to pose a special problem both for consequentialist and for non-consequentialist theories of punishment, a problem the International Criminal Court makes practical. This paper argues that at least one non-consequentialist theory of punishment, the fairness theory, can provide a justification of punishment for great crimes. It does so by dividing the question into two parts, the one of proportion which it answ…Read more
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