Search results

Title: Reflections on the History of Engineering in the United States : A Preface to Engineering Ethics
Creator: Davis, Michael
Date: 2005, 1992-11-19
Publisher: Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
Description: This paper traces the history of the profession of engineering in the United States as a way to gain a better understanding of the field of...
Show moreThis paper traces the history of the profession of engineering in the United States as a way to gain a better understanding of the field of engineering and of engineering ethics.
Lecture at the Center for Academic Ethics and College of Engineering, Wayne State University. Detroit, Michigan. 19 November 1992
Show less

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
Show less

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
Show less

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.
Show less

Title: What Engineering Societies Can Do About Ethics
Creator: Davis, Michael
Date: 2006, 1988-09-27
Publisher: Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
Description: This talk looks at how engineering societies can promote ethical practice and discussion about ethics among their members. After some remarks...
Show moreThis talk looks at how engineering societies can promote ethical practice and discussion about ethics among their members. After some remarks about how engineers commonly handle ethical issues that come up within organizations, especially in instances when raising ethical issues with managers such as the Challenger Shuttle Explosion, the author goes on to discuss how engineering societies can promote continuing education in ethics, hold roundtable discussions between engineers and managers, and promote open communication in workplaces.
Address given at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Chicago Area Combined Section Meeting, 27 September 1988.
Show less

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.
Show less

Title: Technology, Values, and Ethics : A Framework
Creator: Davis, Michael
Date: 2006, 1992-02-01
Publisher: Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
Description: Three words of my title--"technology", "values", and "ethics"--have this in common: they have all been used in enough different ways to be...
Show moreThree words of my title--"technology", "values", and "ethics"--have this in common: they have all been used in enough different ways to be dangerous. To provide the framework my title promises, I shall have to distinguish the most important of those uses, set them in context, and explain how they are (or are not) related. This conceptual housecleaning, rather boring in itself, will give me the opportunity to talk about engineering, both its history and practice. That will not be boring.
GTE Lecture University of Wisconsin Center/Fond du Lac October 13, 199
Show less

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.
Show less

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.
Show less

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/
Show less

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.
Show less

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
Show less

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
Show less

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.
Show less

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.
Show less

Title: Moral Responsibility and Whistleblowing in the Nuclear Industry : Browns Ferry and Three Mile Island
Creator: Weil, Vivian
Date: 2005, 1983
Publisher: Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT
Description: This paper analyzes the actions of a number of Nuclear Engineers at Browns Ferry and Three Mile Island who resigned from their positions in...
Show moreThis paper analyzes the actions of a number of Nuclear Engineers at Browns Ferry and Three Mile Island who resigned from their positions in order to highlight the safety concerns they saw in the U.S. nuclear power program and nuclear power plant safety. The paper includes a description and chronology of events, and an in-depth case study analysis of the moral responsibility of engineers and whistleblowing.
Show less

Title: Conflicts of Interest in Engineering
Creator: Davis, Michael, Wells, Paula, Jones, Hardy
Date: 2009, 1986
Publisher: Kendalll/Hunt Publishing Company
Description: This module begins by examining the Hydrolevel case, and uses this as a way to highlight relevant principles regarding conflict of interest in...
Show moreThis module begins by examining the Hydrolevel case, and uses this as a way to highlight relevant principles regarding conflict of interest in engineering, and to discuss the importance of these principles for engineers as professionals and moral agents. The module then considers four applications of these principles drawn from the “Opinions” of the Board of Ethical Review of the National Society of Professional Engineers. The module also includes ten short cases to be used in classroom discussion. It also includes professional codes from the National Society of Professional Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Sponsorship: Exxon Education Foundation
The Module Series in Applied Ethics was produced by the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions in under a grant from the Exxon Education Foundation. This series is intended for use in a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education programs in such areas as science and/or technology public policy, and professional ethics courses in engineering, business, and computer science.
Show less

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.
Show less

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.
Show less

repository.iit

Search the repository

Pages

Pages

Enabled Filters

Refine Results

Type

Date

Academic status of creator

Subject

Creator

Part of