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- Title
- Davis Discussant Remarks - APPE 2010
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2010-05, 2010-03
- Publisher
- National Academy of Engineering
- Description
-
Remarks by Dr. Michael Davis as part of the panel "Engineering and Social Justice: What are the Difficulties, What are the Possibilities? as...
Show moreRemarks by Dr. Michael Davis as part of the panel "Engineering and Social Justice: What are the Difficulties, What are the Possibilities? as part of a mini conference at the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics Annual Meeting entitled, "Engineering Towards a More Just and Sustainable World
Sponsorship: Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, National Academy of Engineering, Center for Engineering, Ethics and Society
Results from APPE Mini-Conference: Engineering towards a More Just and Sustainable World Cincinnati, Ohio March 6 – 7, 2010
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- Title
- Five Kinds of Ethics Across the Curriculum : An Introduction to Four Experiments with One Kind
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2009, 2004
- Publisher
- Philosophy Documentation Center
- Description
-
Since 1991, the National Science Foundation has made three large grants to the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at the...
Show moreSince 1991, the National Science Foundation has made three large grants to the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at the Illinois Institute of Technology to offer workshops to help faculty integrate ethics into technical courses across the curriculum. We called what we were doing "ethics across the curriculum". This paper seeks to to explain what ethics across the curriculum represents, and what it does not represent. Namely, it is not morality across the curriculum, moral theory across the curriculum, social ethics across the curriculum, or professional ethics across the curriculum.
Teaching Ethics, Vol. 4, Issue 2, pp.1-14
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- Title
- Getting an Ethics Charge Out of Current Events : Some Doubts About Katrina
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2006, 2006
- Publisher
- Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
- Description
-
The author discusses why he believes that Hurricane Katrina, which is certainly the biggest engineering disaster in the history of the United...
Show moreThe author discusses why he believes that Hurricane Katrina, which is certainly the biggest engineering disaster in the history of the United States, is not a good case for teaching engineering ethics. This is for three major reasons. First, there is the question of what happened. Second, there is the question of what part engineers had in what happened, which decisions were theirs and which belonged to elected or appointed officials who were not engineers. Third, there is the question of what part engineering ethics had, or should have had, in the decisions engineered did make. We lack any dramatic moment such as the Challenger Disaster provided, a moment when ethics mattered in a way that is both precise and interesting.
resentation at the American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference. Hyatt Regency, Chicago, IL. June 20, 2006.
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- Title
- Philosophy 370 : Moral Issues in Engineering, Engineering Ethics
- Creator
- Weil, Vivian
- Date
- 2009-07, 2009-08
- Description
-
Syllabus of the Fall 2009 undergraduate course, Moral Issues in Engineering, taught by Dr. Vivian Weil.
- Title
- Conflict of Interest: What's to Worry?
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2008, 5/10/1994
- Description
-
Michael Green's "Culture, Self, and Ethical Paradigms" is a daring paper. Though we must finally reject its argument and suspend judgement on...
Show moreMichael Green's "Culture, Self, and Ethical Paradigms" is a daring paper. Though we must finally reject its argument and suspend judgement on its conclusions, it has much to teach us about the possible relationships between business ethics and surrounding culture.
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- Title
- Why Teaching Workplace Ethics Is Not As Hard As You Thought
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2011-11-07, 1988-05-18
- Publisher
- Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology
- Description
-
This presentation for the Illinois Vocational Education Coordinators Association is in three parts. The first seeks to make it easier for you...
Show moreThis presentation for the Illinois Vocational Education Coordinators Association is in three parts. The first seeks to make it easier for you to teach workplace ethics by freeing you from what the author calls "the four fears", namely the fear of not being value neutral, the fear of subjectivism, the fear of relativism, and the fear of impotence. After addressing these fears, Part II presents a classroom situation win which you could discuss workplace ethics, and some suggestions on teaching methods.
Sponsorship: Illinois Cooperative Vocational Education Coordinators Association
Mini-Seminar for the Illinois Cooperative Vocational Education Coordinators Association. Naperville Central High School, Naperville, Illinois. 19 May 1988, 1-5 pm.
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- Title
- The Moral Legislature
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2006, 1985-11-05
- Publisher
- Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
- Description
-
This paper is an experiment in what John Rawls recently called "Kantian constructiivism". It seeks to establish a "suitable connection between...
Show moreThis paper is an experiment in what John Rawls recently called "Kantian constructiivism". It seeks to establish a "suitable connection between a particular conception of the person and first principles of [morality] by means of a procedure of construction. Yet, it differs from Rawls' similar efforts in a number of ways. The emphasis is morality generally, not justice in particular. The construction attempts to be more "realistic" especially in substituting external procedures for Rawls' "veil of ignorance". These differences are, I hope, at least suggested by substituting "the moral legislature" for Rawls' "original position". Section I of this paper explains further what motivates the sort of construction proposed, sections II-V describe the moral legislature itself, explaining as well why it makes sense to construct it as I do and how it differs from some obvious alternatives. Section VI concludes with an example of how the moral legislature might be used, the sketch of an argument for the claim that positive law cannot in in generally be morally obliging.
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- Title
- Conflict of Interest : What's to Worry?
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2008, 1994-05-10
- Description
-
Michael Green's "Culture, Self, and Ethical Paradigms" is a daring paper. Though we must finally reject its argument and suspend judgement on...
Show moreMichael Green's "Culture, Self, and Ethical Paradigms" is a daring paper. Though we must finally reject its argument and suspend judgement on its conclusions, it has much to teach us about the possible relationships between business ethics and surrounding culture.
Presentation given at Holland Laboratory, Rockville, Maryland, May 10, 1994.
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- Title
- Culture, Social Psychology, and Business Ethics
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2008, 1991-04-05
- Description
-
Michael Green's "Culture, Self, and Ethical Paradigms" is a daring paper. Though we must finally reject its argument and suspend judgement on...
Show moreMichael Green's "Culture, Self, and Ethical Paradigms" is a daring paper. Though we must finally reject its argument and suspend judgement on its conclusions, it has much to teach us about the possible relationships between business ethics and surrounding culture.
Presentation given at the Annual Meeting of the American Business Law Association
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- Title
- Four Kinds of Workplace Ethics for Discussion
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2006, 1988
- Description
-
A collection of four cases illustrating common ethical issues that come up in business settings, covering the topics of managerial ethics,...
Show moreA collection of four cases illustrating common ethical issues that come up in business settings, covering the topics of managerial ethics, drugs in the workplace, stealing from the workplace, and supervisor and worker relationships.
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- Title
- Methodological Missteps: A Response to Brooks' "On Retribution"
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2006, 2006-05-14
- Publisher
- Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
- Description
-
Thom Brooks claims his paper has only one thesis—that, for epistemological reasons (in particular, requiring a “gold standard of desert”), ...
Show moreThom Brooks claims his paper has only one thesis—that, for epistemological reasons (in particular, requiring a “gold standard of desert”), “retributivism is impossible to enact as a practice”. I think the paper has at least two other theses as well, both unacknowledged and more or less independent of the first. One is that there is only one true retributivism (“pure retributivism” or “retributivism strictly speaking”). This claim seems to rest on an unjustified, and (I believe) unjustifiable, Platonism. The second unacknowledged thesis is that this one true retributivism suffers (and must suffer) from certain flaws, in particular: 1) moral rigorism (forbidding the criminal justice system to show mercy or to deviate in any other way from what the criminal deserves for his crime); 2) methodological individualism (requiring that desert be “a particular criminal’s desert” unaffected by “other factors, such as society’s equilibrium”); and 3) methodological absolutism (an inability to “choose punishments on account of how they might be related to each other and various crimes”). What I propose to do here is, first, briefly dispose of Brooks’ epistemological claim, then (at greater length) explain why retributivism is best thought of as a family of loosely related theories no one of which has the privilege of being “true retributivism” (even though some are certainly historically or conceptually closer to the core of retributive thinking than others) and, last, why, so understood, retributivism does not suffer from any of the three flaws Brooks claims true retributivism must suffer from.
Published as part of the Online Philosophy Conference, May 14, 2006.http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/online_philosophy_confere/
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- Title
- Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Workplace : A Philosophical Inquiry
- Creator
- Ladenson, Robert F.
- Date
- 2005, 1979-11-01
- Publisher
- Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
- Description
-
Should the employees of a large private business be free to speak out on any subject without fear of dismissal or other sanctions even when...
Show moreShould the employees of a large private business be free to speak out on any subject without fear of dismissal or other sanctions even when they level harsh criticisms at their employers? In this paper I will argue that they should for reasons that closely parallel one of the fundamental bases for the principle of freedom of expression pertaining to the relation between individuals of the state. An important consequence of this view is that corporate employees should be free to speak without fear of sanction even when they make false allegations that lead to a decline in either productivity or profits.
Paper presented at the Conference on Business Ethics, Western Michigan University, November 1-2, 1979.
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- Title
- General Contractors : Some Ethical Problems
- Creator
- Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2003, 1987-10
- Publisher
- Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
- Description
-
A series of small ethics case studies illustrating ethical dilemmas that general contractors in the construction industry are likely to face.
- Title
- On the Need for Ethical Buying and Selling
- Creator
- Parker, Robert C.
- Date
- 2005, 1982-05
- Publisher
- Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
- Description
-
In 1978 the Center for the Study of the Professions at IIT conducted a survey for the National Association of Purchasing Management to...
Show moreIn 1978 the Center for the Study of the Professions at IIT conducted a survey for the National Association of Purchasing Management to determine the real ethical practices of industrial buyers in the United States. This survey started the Ethical Standards Committee thinking about the current ethical practices in the field, and this paper seeks to discuss the roots of some of these practices questions that arose after reviewing the results of this survey.
CSEP Occasional Papers No. 6, May 1982. Remarks Delivered at the Professional Ethics Luncheon Seminar, Americana Congress Hotel, Chicago, March 23, 1982
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- Title
- Ownership of Computer Programs
- Creator
- Snapper, John W.
- Date
- 2006, 1981-12-09
- Publisher
- Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
- Description
-
Discusses reasons for against copyrighting computer software programs. Reasons against include the potential for holding back scientific...
Show moreDiscusses reasons for against copyrighting computer software programs. Reasons against include the potential for holding back scientific discoveries. Though the labor that goes into creating computer programs does seem to create property rights, the principle of free thought seems to override this right. The author discusses some of the problems that exist in copyright, trade secret, and patent law and discusses why these laws should be changed to discourage secrecy so they do not interfere with free thought.
Presented at a meeting of the Collegiate Institute for Values and Science, University of Michigan, December 9, 1981
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- Title
- Engineering Codes of Ethics : Analysis and Applications
- Creator
- Luegenbiehl, Heinz C., Davis, Michael
- Date
- 2008, 1992-07-10
- Publisher
- Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
- Description
-
This paper uses the events leading up to the explosion of the Challenger to begin a discussion about the important role professional codes of...
Show moreThis paper uses the events leading up to the explosion of the Challenger to begin a discussion about the important role professional codes of ethics play in shaping how professionals should respond to ethical questions and issues that come up in daily practice. The paper explores the history of codes of ethics, why different engineering professions, such as computer engineering, and mechanical engineering, have developed their own codes of ethics, and tries to answer the question, why obey your profession's code? The paper also analyzes a case study using the codes of ethics and offers a series of case studies for further discussion.
Manuscript of an unpublished paper originally written to be part of the Exxon Modules for Applied Ethics Series. http://ethics.iit.edu/index1.php/Publications/Modules%20in%20Applied%20Ethics
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- Title
- Critical Attributes of Good Process Decisions: a Guide for Reflective Special Education Hearing Officers
- Creator
- Ladenson, Robert, Ladenson, Robert
- Date
- 2011, 2011
- Description
-
This monograph offers guidance for special education due process hearing officers in their efforts to write good due process decisions. It has...
Show moreThis monograph offers guidance for special education due process hearing officers in their efforts to write good due process decisions. It has four sections dealing respectively with: - Summary and explanation of factual findings; - Justification of legal conclusions; - Framing and determination of rulings and orders; - Writing choices in a special education due process opinion as to word selection, organizational structure, style, rhetoric, and tone. The monograph is not intended to replace, but instead to supplement, the use of comprehensive summaries of substantive and procedural special education law. It aims to address an essential, yet presently unmet need – for an educational approach that helps special education due process hearing officers to focus critical reflection upon processes involved both in thinking through issues in a case and finding words to express the conclusions arrived at in writing a decision.
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- Title
- Limitations Upon Legitimate Authority to Suspend and Expel K-12 Public School Students: A Moral Analysis
- Creator
- Ladenson, Robert
- Date
- 2011, 2011
- Publisher
- Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
- Description
-
This paper presents a moral analysis of the limitations upon legitimate authority to suspend and expel students in K-12 public schools. The...
Show moreThis paper presents a moral analysis of the limitations upon legitimate authority to suspend and expel students in K-12 public schools. The paper has four sections. The first presents two case vignettes that pose difficult moral issues concerning suspensions and expulsions in K-12 public schools. The second section develops an analysis of the moral bases of a child’s right to receive a K-12 public education. Section three extends the analysis in section two, relating it specifically to limitations upon morally legitimate authority to suspend and expel students in K-12 public schools. The fourth section returns to the two case vignettes and discusses the moral issues they pose from the standpoint of the analysis developed in sections two and three. . The analysis, I hope, will benefit educators, parents, and the general public in helping to identify, clarify their understanding of, and gain insight into principles, which, I believe underlie any morally justifiable policy concerning K-12 public school suspensions and expulsions.
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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 graduate engineering classes...
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
- '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, society, or the system. For...
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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