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74What 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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18Vocational Teachers, Confidentiality And Professional EthicsInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 4 (1): 11-20. 1988.
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42Twenty-Five Years of Ethics Across the CurriculumTeaching Ethics 16 (1): 55-74. 2016.After twenty-five years of integrating ethics across the curriculum at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions conducted a survey of full-time faculty to investigate: a) what ethical topics faculty thought students from their discipline should be aware of when they graduate, b) how widely ethics is currently being taught at the undergraduate and graduate level, c) what ethical topics are being covered in these courses, and d) what teachin…Read more
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45Twenty-Five Years of Ethics Across the CurriculumTeaching Ethics 16 (1): 55-74. 2016.After twenty-five years of integrating ethics across the curriculum at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions conducted a survey of full-time faculty to investigate: a) what ethical topics faculty thought students from their discipline should be aware of when they graduate, b) how widely ethics is currently being taught at the undergraduate and graduate level, c) what ethical topics are being covered in these courses, and d) what teachin…Read more
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40Telling the truth about risk assessments: Commentary on “the ethics of truth telling and the problem of risk”Science and Engineering Ethics 5 (4): 511-513. 1999.
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367Thinking like an engineer: studies in the ethics of a professionOxford University Press. 1998.Michael Davis, a leading figure in the study of professional ethics, offers here both a compelling exploration of engineering ethics and a philosophical analysis of engineering as a profession. After putting engineering in historical perspective, Davis turns to the Challenger space shuttle disaster to consider the complex relationship between engineering ideals and contemporary engineering practice. Here, Davis examines how social organization and technical requirements define how engineers shou…Read more
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78The professional approach to engineering ethics: Five research questionsScience and Engineering Ethics 7 (3): 379-390. 2001.This paper argues that research for engineering ethics should routinely involve philosophers, social scientists, and engineers, and should focus for now on certain basic questions such as: Who is an engineer? What is engineering? What do engineers do? How do they make decisions? And how much control do they actually have over what they do?
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63The Death Penalty, Civilization, and InhumanenessSocial Theory and Practice 16 (2): 245-259. 1990.
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91Setting penalties: What does rape deserve? (review)Law and Philosophy 3 (1). 1984.The paper is an application of the principle of just deserts (that is, retribution) to the setting of statutory penalties. The conclusion is that there should be no separate penalty for rape but that rape should be punished under the ordinary battery statutes. The argument has four parts. First, there is a description of the place of rape in a typical statutory scheme. Second, there is a consideration of possible justifications for giving rape the status it has in such a typical scheme. All just…Read more
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39Sentencing: Must justice be even-handed? (review)Law and Philosophy 1 (1). 1982.The question considered is whether a convicted criminal has been treated unjustly if the only reason he receives a much heavier sentence than another criminal convicted of the same crime is that he came before a different judge. The answer offered is that such a criminal would not be treated unjustly. The principle of equality in punishment, properly understood, does not forbid even such gross disparities in sentence (though it also does not require them). The paper discusses the 1978 Model Sent…Read more
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13Second Thoughts on Multi-CulturalismInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 11 (1): 29-34. 1996.
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7Review of Physicians at War: The Dual-Loyalties Challenge (review)Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology 3 (2). 2009.
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26Revenge, Victim’s Rights, and Criminal JusticeInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 14 (1): 119-128. 2000.Barton’s view in Getting Even: Revenge as a Form of Justice (Open Court Chicago, 19991 is that revenge -- in the form of victim participation in trial. sentencing, and punishment -- should have a large place in criminal justice. I argue that what he suggests in the way of reform has no essential relation with criminal justice.
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40Rewarding WhistleblowersInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 26 (2): 269-277. 2012.Since 2010, Section 922 of the Dodd-Frank Act has required the Securities and Exchange Commission to give a significant financial reward to any whistleblower who voluntarily discloses original information concerning fraud or other unlawful activity. How, if at all, might such “incentives” change our understanding of whistleblowing? My answer is that, while incentives should not change the definition of whistleblowing, it should change our understanding of the justification of whistleblowing. We …Read more
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28Ordinary reasonable care is not the minimum for engineersScience and Engineering Ethics 7 (2): 286-290. 2001.
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34Punishment as language: Misleading analogy for desert theorists (review)Law and Philosophy 10 (3). 1991.
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20Licensing, Philosophical Counselors, and BarbersInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 24 (2): 225-236. 2010.Philosophical counselors are now debating whether they should be licensed in the way psychiatrists, psychologists, and other similar helping professions are. The side favoring licensing claim it is a step on the way to making philosophical counseling “a profession.” In this paper I explain why licensing has nothing to do with making a profession of philosophical counseling—and what does. In particular, I offer a definition of profession, explain its application to philosophical counseling, and d…Read more
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20IIT’s Workshops for Integrating Ethics into Technical CoursesTeaching Ethics 6 (2): 29-42. 2006.
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83Getting Started: Helping a New Profession Develop an Ethics ProgramScience and Engineering Ethics 19 (1): 259-264. 2013.Both of us have been involved with helping professions, especially new scientific or technological professions, develop ethics programs—for undergraduates, graduates, and practitioners. By “ethics program”, we mean any strategy for teaching ethics, including developing materials. Our purpose here is to generalize from that experience to identify the chief elements needed to get an ethics program started in a new profession. We are focusing on new professions for two reasons. First, all the older…Read more
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7Justice in the Shadow of Death: Rethinking Capital and Lesser PunishmentsRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1996.In 1994, Congress established more than sixty new capital crimes with wide public support. Davis argues that, if the U.S. is ever to join the majority of the world in abolishing capital punishment, opponents of the death penalty must make a stronger philosophical case against it. He systematically dissects the arguments in favor of capital punishment and demonstrates why they are philosophically superior to opposing arguments. By connecting the death penalty to a general theory of punishment in …Read more
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128Is there a profession of engineering?Science and Engineering Ethics 3 (4): 407-428. 1997.This article examines three common arguments for the claim that engineering is not a profession: 1) that engineering lacks an ideal internal to its practice; 2) that engineering’s ideal, whether internal or not, is merely technical; and 3) that engineering lacks the social arrangements characteristic of a true profession. All three arguments are shown to rely on one or another definition of profession, each of which is inadequate. An alternative to these definition is offered. It has at least tw…Read more
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37Introduction to a symposium integrating ethics into engineering and science coursesScience and Engineering Ethics 11 (4): 631-634. 2005.
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“Global Engineering Ethics”: Re-inventing the Wheel?In C. Murphy, P. Gardoni, H. Bashir, C. E. Harris Jr & E. Masad (eds.), Engineering Ethics for a Globalized World, Springer International Publishing. 2015.
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