Week_3_Reading_Response
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Jan 9, 2024
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Uploaded by DoctorFlowerArmadillo43
Pourin Patel 02/04/2022
Week 3 Response
PHIL-334
In “Introduction to Ethical Reasoning” article by Donaldson and Werhane this week we learned about the 3
approaches to ethical reasonings. The approaches to ethical reasoning were consequentialism, deontology, and human nature ethics. In “Engineering Ethics: Concepts and cases” we learned about how ethics and moral compass should guide you as an engineer through the eyes of an engineer from “Challenger Incident from the 1980s, the Sarajevo incident from the 90s and Hurricane Katrina incident from the 2000s. From both of these articles I did learn about how an engineer should put forth the good of the humankind and helping someone over the profits and other agendas of the business world. The 3 approaches to ethical reasoning and their sub-concepts where what had caught my attention the most.
For example, consequentialism has two sub-concepts where one is about overall good which is utilitarianism vs. ethical egoism which is where my actions would be most beneficial to me and least harmful to me. “Deontological comes from the Greek word for “duty” and what is crucial according to the deontologist are the rules and principles that guide actions.” (Donaldson & Werhane, 1983). While deontologists believe in duty guiding them and their actions, there are some Kantian Deontologists that believe that “reason is the faculty that can aid in the discovery of correct moral principles; thus it is reason, not inclination, that should guide the will.” (Donaldson & Werhane, 1983)
In the final approach to ethical reasoning is human ethics it simply stated that “all humans have inherent capacities that constitute the ultimate basis for all ethical claims.” (Donaldson & Werhane, 1983)
Out of all three I felt like I sided with Kantian Deontologists and the human ethics. The reason that I side with Kantian Deontologists is because the ability to choose between right and wrong should be clear and visible to the person. If I must convince someone else that what they are doing is wrong or they should say something about what they have done, witnessed or have knowledge to, than they fall under the duty deontologists or the regular deontologists. Roger Boisjoly from the “Challenger Incident” knew what he had to do by reporting about the sealing
mechanism, Frederick Cuny knew he had to do something to solve the water issue for the people of Sarajevo. While if you look at the engineers that had known about the levees issues in Louisiana prior to Hurricane Katrina weren’t speaking up because of people having issues with it, or because of their taxes or costs of living going up. As engineers they had to have the calling from within to fix the issues because it was for the greater good of the people. Even organizations such as National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), American Society of Civil
Engineers (ASCE) , American Institute of Chemical Engineers(AICE), American Society of Mechanical Engineers(
ASME) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers(IEEE) whether you belong to them or not, didn’t come up with the their ethical guidelines which are vague until the 1970’s. Works Cited
Donaldson, T., & Werhane, P. H. (1983). Introduction to Ethical Reasoning.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ : Prentice Hall .
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