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Pages
- Title
- Some Paradoxes of Whistleblowing
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2006, 1996
- Publisher
- Philosophy Documentation Center
- Description
-
By "paradox" I mean an apparent- and in this case, real-inconsistency between theory (our systematic understanding of whistleblowing) and the...
Show moreBy "paradox" I mean an apparent- and in this case, real-inconsistency between theory (our systematic understanding of whistleblowing) and the facts (what we actually know, or think we know, about whistleblowing). What concerns me is not a few anomalies, the exceptions that test a rule, but a flood of exceptions that seem to swamp the rule. This paper has four parts. The first states the standard theory of whistleblowing. The second argues that the standard theory is paradoxical, that it is inconsistent with what we know about whistleblowers. The third part sketches what seems to me a less paradoxical theory of whistleblowing. The fourth tests this new theory against one classic case of whistleblowing, Roger Boisjoly's testimony before the presidential commission investigating the Challenger disaster (the "Rogers Commission"). I use that case because the chief facts are both uncontroversial enough and well-known enough to make detailed exposition unnecessary. For the same reasons, I also use that case to illustrate various claims about whistleblowing throughout the paper.
Business and Professional Ethics Journal, Vo. 15, No.1. pp.3-19.
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- Title
- "China's unwritten code of engineering ethics", China's unwritten code of engineering ethics
- Creator
- Davis, Michael, Wei, Lina
- Date
- 2019-08-02, 2019-08-02
- Title
- "China's unwritten code of engineering ethics": effective raw data (191), China's unwritten code of engineering ethics: effective raw data (191)
- Creator
- Davis, Michael, Wei, Lina
- Date
- 2019-08-02, 2019-08-02
- Title
- "China's unwritten code of engineering ethics": total raw data (204), China's unwritten code of engineering ethics: total raw data (204)
- Creator
- Davis, Michael, Wei, Lina
- Date
- 2019-08-02, 2019-08-02
- Title
- "China's unwritten code of engineering ethics": Chinese Questionnaire on the Professional Ethical Awareness of Chinese Engineering Practitioners, China's unwritten code of engineering ethics: Chinese Questionnaire on the Professional Ethical Awareness of Chinese Engineering Practitioners
- Creator
- Davis, Michael, Wei, Lina
- Date
- 2019-08-02, 2019-08-02
- Title
- "China's unwritten code of engineering ethics": English Questionnaire on the Professional Ethical Awareness of Chinese Engineering Practitioners, China's unwritten code of engineering ethics: English Questionnaire on the Professional Ethical Awareness of Chinese Engineering Practitioners
- Creator
- Davis, Michael, Wei, Lina
- Date
- 2019-08-02, 2019-08-02
- Title
- Engineering Ethics in China
- Creator
- Zhang, Hengli, Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2018
- Description
-
This article describes China’s century-long concern...
Show moreThis article describes China’s century-long concern with the professional ethics of engineers, especially a succession of codes of engineering ethics going back at least to 1933. This description is the result both of our own archival research and of “philosophical history”, the application of concepts from the philosophy of professions to the facts historians (or we) have discovered. Engineers, historians, social scientists, and philosophers of technology, as well as students of professional ethics, should find this description interesting. It certainly provides a reason to wonder whether those who write about codes of professional ethics as if they were an Anglo-American export unlikely to put down roots elsewhere might have overlooked many early codes outside English-speaking countries. While code writers in China plainly learned from Western codes, the Chinese codes were not mere copies of their Western counterparts. Indeed, the Chinese codes sometimes differed inventively from Western codes in form (for example, being wholly positive) or content (for example, protecting local culture).
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- Business and Professional Ethics Journal
- Title
- Replacement as a Problem for Justification of Preventative Detention
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2011, 2011-04
- Publisher
- John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New Yor
- Description
-
What makes Don E. Scheid’s article on indefinite detention interesting is that he thinks through many of the moral...
Show moreWhat makes Don E. Scheid’s article on indefinite detention interesting is that he thinks through many of the moral issues inherent in attempting to prevent (or, rather, keep to a minimum) certain kinds of violent crime, an attempt we have come to call (however unwisely) ‘‘the war on terror.’’ Scheid takes ‘‘war’’ as literally as possible, while making the reasonable assumption that this war, unlike wars generally, is not a temporary expedient responding to a moral emergency but an institution that must operate at full power for a long time, decades at least. Scheid’s argument yields a long list of preconditions for justified indefinite preventive detention: a high standard of dangerousness (‘‘mega-terrorism’’), a reasonable standard of proof of dangerousness, as good an investigation as conditions will allow, adequate resources for the defense, a hearing before a fair and independent tribunal, detention under the most comfortable conditions practical, and periodic review of the detainee’s supposed dangerousness. To these preconditions one more should be added: that detaining the persons in question will reduce the danger posed. I take this additional precondition to follow from Scheid’s own defense of indefinite detention, not from an independent argument. Scheid limits his argument to megaterrorists because the scale of destruction they have already achieved (for example, destruction of the World Trade Center) shows them to be dangerous on a scale ordinary crime is not and so to invite measures of prevention beyond what seems necessary (or proper) for ordinary criminals. Scheid explicitly declines to consider the non-consequentialist argument that preventive detention is what a mega-terrorist deserves for his character or for what he has already done. Scheid’s argument for preventive detention is consequentialist throughout: we may, and should, detain to prevent (or at least substantially reduce the probability of) the large-scale destruction of life that mega-terrorists aim at. We may justifiably deny a few, including some innocent persons, their freedom because, and only because, it makes the rest of us, the great majority, considerably safer. My additional precondition can be defended in the same way: where there is no danger posed, any detention is (all else equal) a net loss in happiness, well being, or whatever reasonable measure of consequences we adopt. A precondition of preventative detention must be a net reduction in danger posed. Where what is proposed is an institution of preventative detention, the institution must have that effect overall. What I shall argue here is that preventive detention generally fails to satisfy this condition and Scheid’s indefinite preventive detention of mega-terrorists always does. An institution to prevent terrorism by detaining terrorists cannot, in practice, significantly reduce the danger terrorism poses.
Criminal Justice Ethics. Vol. 30, No. 1, April 2011, 90-97.
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- Title
- 'Ain't No One Here But Us Social Forces' : Constructing the Social Responsibility of Engineers.
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2011-04, 2011-06
- Publisher
- Springer
- Description
-
There are many ways to avoid responsibility, for example, explaining what happens as the work of the gods, fate,...
Show moreThere 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) responsibility-as-competency (he’s a responsible person, that is, he’s rational), (d) responsibility-as-office (he’s the responsible person, that is, the person in charge), and (e) a responsibility-as-domain-of-tasks (these are her responsibilities, that is, the things she is supposed to do). For all but the causal sense of responsibility, responsibility may be taken (in a relatively straightforward sense)—and generally is. Why then would anyone want to claim that certain technologies make it impossible to attribute responsibility to engineers (or anyone else)? In this paper, I identify seven arguments for that claim and explain why each is fallacious. The most important are: (1) the argument from “many hands”, (2) the argument from individual ignorance, and (3) the argument from blind forces. Each of these arguments makes the same fundamental mistake, the assumption that a certain factual situation, being fixed, settles responsibility, that is, that individuals, either individually or by some group decision, cannot take responsibility. I conclude by pointing out the sort of decisions (and consequences) engineers have explicitly taken responsibility for and why taking responsibility for them is rational, all things considered. There is no technological bar to such responsibility.
Science and Engineering Ethics.
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- Title
- Assessing Graduate Student Progress in Engineering Ethics
- Creator
- Davis, Michael, Feinerman, Alan
- Date
- 2010-11-10, 2011
- Publisher
- Springer
- Description
-
Under a grant from the National Science Foundation, the authors (and others) undertook to integrate ethics into...
Show moreUnder 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 individual classes and allows comparison across classes. Results are statistically significant for ethical sensitivity and knowledge. They show measurable improvement in a single semester.
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- Title
- Engineering Ethics in China
- Creator
- Zhang, Hengli, Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2018
- Description
-
This article describes China’s century-long concern...
Show moreThis article describes China’s century-long concern with the professional ethics of engineers, especially a succession of codes of engineering ethics going back at least to 1933. This description is the result both of our own archival research and of “philosophical history”, the application of concepts from the philosophy of professions to the facts historians (or we) have discovered. Engineers, historians, social scientists, and philosophers of technology, as well as students of professional ethics, should find this description interesting. It certainly provides a reason to wonder whether those who write about codes of professional ethics as if they were an Anglo-American export unlikely to put down roots elsewhere might have overlooked many early codes outside English-speaking countries. While code writers in China plainly learned from Western codes, the Chinese codes were not mere copies of their Western counterparts. Indeed, the Chinese codes sometimes differed inventively from Western codes in form (for example, being wholly positive) or content (for example, protecting local culture).
Show less - Collection
- Business and Professional Ethics Journal
- Title
- Engineering Ethics in China
- Creator
- Zhang, Hengli, Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2018
- Description
-
This article describes China’s century-long concern...
Show moreThis article describes China’s century-long concern with the professional ethics of engineers, especially a succession of codes of engineering ethics going back at least to 1933. This description is the result both of our own archival research and of “philosophical history”, the application of concepts from the philosophy of professions to the facts historians (or we) have discovered. Engineers, historians, social scientists, and philosophers of technology, as well as students of professional ethics, should find this description interesting. It certainly provides a reason to wonder whether those who write about codes of professional ethics as if they were an Anglo-American export unlikely to put down roots elsewhere might have overlooked many early codes outside English-speaking countries. While code writers in China plainly learned from Western codes, the Chinese codes were not mere copies of their Western counterparts. Indeed, the Chinese codes sometimes differed inventively from Western codes in form (for example, being wholly positive) or content (for example, protecting local culture).
Show less - Collection
- Business and Professional Ethics Journal
- Title
- “Broader Impacts” or “Responsible Research and Innovation”? A Comparison of Two Criteria for Funding Research in Science and Engineering
- Creator
- Davis, Michael, Laas, Kelly
- Date
- 2013-10, 2013-10
- Publisher
- Springer
- Description
-
Our subject is how the experience of Americans with a certain funding criterion, “broader impacts” (and some similar criteria) may help in...
Show moreOur subject is how the experience of Americans with a certain funding criterion, “broader impacts” (and some similar criteria) may help in efforts to turn the European concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) into a useful guide to funding Europe’s scientific and technical research. We believe this comparison may also be as enlightening for Americans concerned with revising research policy. We have organized our report around René Von Schomberg’s definition of RRI, since it seems both to cover what the European research group to which we belong is interested in and to be the only widely accepted definition of RRI. According to Von Schomberg, RRI: “… is a transparent, interactive process by which societal actors and innovators become mutually responsive to each other with a view to the (ethical) acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability of the innovation process and its marketable products (in order to allow a proper embedding of scientific and technological advances in our society).” While RRI seeks fundamental changes in the way research is conducted, Broader Impacts is more concerned with more peripheral aspects of research: widening participation of disadvantaged groups, recruiting the next generation of scientists, increasing the speed with which results are used, and so on. Nevertheless, an examination of the broadening of funding criteria over the last four decades suggests that National Science Foundation has been moving in the direction of RRI.
Sponsorship: European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme grant number 321400.
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