Eng'g Ethics

1. Presented by:
PAJA,GLENN P.
Presented to:
NORBERTO DE JESUS
INSTRUCTOR

2. MAKING MORAL CHOICES
The most difficult occasions for moral
reasoning.
Constitute a relatively small
percentage of moral choices,
Decisions involving moral values.
Are routine and straight forward

3. DESIGNING ALUMINUM CANS
 Henry Petroski chronicles the development
of aluminium cans with stay on tab openers.
Aluminium cans are now ubiquitous – about
100 billion produced in the united states
each year. The first aluminium can was
designed in 1958 by Kaiser aluminium, in
the attempt to improve upon heavier and
more expensive tin cans.

4. MORAL DIMENSIONS IN FOUR
GENERAL DIRECTIONS:
 1. Human safety is obviously a moral value, rooted
directly in the moral worth of human beings
 2. Set of moral values concern the environment.
 3. Moral values are masked under terms like
“useful” and “convenient” products.
 4. The economic benefits to stakeholders in the
corporation have moral implications.

5. Design Analogy: Whitbeck
 We have been discussing engineering design as
domain where moral choices are made. Turnings turn
around, some thinkers suggest that engineering
design provides an illuminating model for thinking
about all moral decisions within engineering.
 Thus, John Dewey (1859-1952) used engineering as a
metaphor for thinking about ethics in general, in order
to accent the practical nature of reasoning.

6.  Outlook that emphasized intelligent choices made in
light of both:
 (a). Attention to practical contexts in which moral
issues arise and find their solutions and,
 (b). Imaginative awareness of wider contexts that
illuminate dilemmas.
Caroline Whitbeck suggests that engineering design is
in many respects a model for designing courses of
action in many moral situations, in engineering and
elsewhere.

7.  Moral judgments and criticisms are involved in making
moral choices, of course, but as a part of multifaceted
courses of action, rather than as simple right versus wrong
about another person’s choice.
Whitbeck identifies several aspects of engineering decisions
that highlight important aspects of moral decision.
 1. alternative solutions to design problems.
 2. Multiple moral factors.
 3. some design solutions are clearly unacceptable.
 4. design involves uncertainties and ambiguities, not only
about what is possible and how to achieve it but also the
specific problems that will rise as solutions are developed.
 5. design problems are dynamic.