Introduction to Ethical Concepts, Part 3 (2024)

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Contents/Introduction
Part 1. Values and Value Judgments
Part 2. Ethical Requirements on Action
Part 3. Moral Character and Responsibility
Part 4. Privacy, Confidentiality, Intellectual Property and the Law
Fine Points
Notes

Part 3. Moral Character and Responsibility

Virtues and Vices
Ethical Responsibility and OfficialResponsibility
Trust and Responsibility

1. Virtues and Vices

In contrast to moral rights, moral rules, and moral obligations, traits of moralcharacter, or virtues and vices, such as honesty, kindness,cowardice and responsibility, are characteristics of people, rather than acts or theconsequences of those acts. As Alasdair MacIntyre has argued traits of moralcharacter are essential in the development of complex cooperative activities. Socialpractices achieve ends and produce results for which their practitioners may receivewhat MacIntyre call "external" rewards: pay, fame or career advancement. For example, epidemiological research produces new knowledge about diseases inpopulations, for which researchers may receive external rewards in addition toknowing that they have succeeded in advancing knowledge. In addition to developingcertain skills engaging in a practice also develops certain virtues in itspractitioners. Practicing epidemiological research, for example, develops not onlyresearch skills, but also virtues such as patience, thoroughness, and diligence. MacIntyre calls these virtues "internal" goods, or rewards of the practice,because they are achieved quite apart from whether the research yields anyparticularly notable results, or advances researchers' careers. The character traitsthat are considered desirable and that are therefore called virtues vary somewhatwith sphere of activity and the relative importance that specific activities areaccorded in particular cultures. For example, the intellectual self-disciplinerequired to rigorously test hypotheses in engineering and other scientific fields maynot be an important character trait in parenting a young child. Nonetheless, manyscholars agree that some virtues, such as honesty and courage, are necessary to thesuccessful conduct of all or most social practices.

To understand a person's character one must understand the whole configuration ofethically relevant considerations that influenced his actions. Knowing that a personoften broke the law might lead one to conclude the person was dishonest. However, ifthe individual habitually hid people from unjust persecution by a tyrannicalgovernment, then the person could well have been an honest person in circ*mstancesthat justified lying to law enforcement officials. If a person's apparent braveryand willingness to risk his life in battle derived mainly from an obsession withkilling and maiming people, then the quality would not be the virtue of bravery, butmerely the successful redirection of a character defect in a socially acceptableway.

The concept of moral integrity is central to the assessments of character, butit is not one more character trait. Roughly, "moral integrity" is theethical coherence of a person's life and actions. People's values may be expected todevelop over the course of their life, so moral integrity is not simple persistencein maintaining value commitments. The coherence of a person's life is a narrativecoherence, that is, to understand a person's character and his moral integrity oneneeds to understand the place of each apparent ideal within that person's life story. Often this requires understanding both the ethical and religious tradition of thatperson and his formative life experiences.

A loss of integrity can be forced upon a person. One example is Sophie, in the bookand film Sophie's Choice. She faces a true dilemma in being forced tochoose, in the presence of her two children, which of the two is to be killed. Beingforced to betray one of her children is fatal to her moral integrity and sense ofself. This is an extreme case but it illustrates that circ*mstances as well aspersonal resolve are factors in maintaining moral integrity.

A more common situation is that in which a person is called upon to respond to asituation in all of the obvious responses threaten to betray some relationship ortrust. This can happen when someone is called upon to make a grave health caredecision on behalf of a family member which the decision maker is unprepared to makein a way that he feels the ill person would have wanted.

In developing or reviewing policies and practices in a work situation, it isimportant to be alert to mismatches--or even conflicts--between the skills, andvirtues of key actors and the skills, and virtues that others need in those keyactors. Even well-meaning people can respond badly when they have not thoughtthrough how they will fulfill potentially conflicting responsibilitiessimultaneously. For example, a devotion to the progress of scientific research mightinterfere with a health care provider's responsibility to secure the best healthoutcome for his patients, or with an engineering faculty member's oversight of hergraduate student's education.

2. Ethical Responsibility and Official Responsibility

For someone to have a moral responsibility for some matter, means that theperson must exercise judgment and care to achieve or maintain a desirable state ofaffairs. Notice that we speak of people reaching "an age ofresponsibility" or "age of discretion," indicating that althoughchildren may follow moral rules, something more is required in terms of cognitiveability or matured judgment to exercise responsibility appropriately.

The moral sense of responsibility, in which one undertakes to achieve some futurestate of affairs or maintain some present one, should not be confused with thecausal sense of responsibility for some existing or past state of affairs. (Recall the example of the storm which was said to be "responsible for"deaths and property damage. This was causal responsibility not moral responsibility. Attribution of responsibility to the storm means only that the storm causedparticular outcomes. As we saw, storms do not have moral responsibilities and areneither responsible nor irresponsible in the moral sense. They are causal but notmoral agents, so their actions are not subject to moral evaluation.) Moralresponsibilities of a moral agent may derive from their causalresponsibilities, however. If a person has caused a difficulty, there is reason tothink that the person has some moral responsibility for remedying the resultingsituation. If you break something, you have some responsibility for fixing it or forcleaning it up and replacing it. However, people often find themselves faced with aresponsibility not of their own making. If an infant or young child breakssomething, someone else must clean it up. There is much discussion of the fact thatif pollution of the environment is not adequately addressed in one generation,subsequent generations find themselves responsible for cleaning up the contaminantsthat another has left.

Characteristically, the achievement of the desired outcome involves some exercise ofdiscretion or judgment. This is what distinguishes a responsibility from other moralrequirements. An obligation or duty specifies what acts a person is required toperform or refrain from performing. Notice that this difference is reflected in thedifference between the expression "responsible for (some end)"--such asresponsible for the safety of some device, responsible for the welfare of someperson--as contrasted with "obligated to do or refrain from doing certainthings." Often what the obligation states rather specifically the acts one isexpected to perform or refrain from performing. Contrast a professional'sresponsibility for the well-being of her clients with a professional's duty orobligation to be truthful about her qualifications or anyone's obligation to refrainfrom assaulting people.

The relation between an obligation and a responsibility is actually somewhat morecomplex and overlap. To see how, notice that the Code of Ethics of the NationalSociety of Professional Engineers (NSPE) after saying that engineers shall "Holdparamount [that is, take as their primary responsibility] the safety, health andwelfare of the public in the performance of their professional duties" goes onto say "Engineers shall at all times recognize that their primary obligation isto protect the safety, health, property and welfare of the public." Considerthe obligation stated in this last passage. It is stated in the form I described,that is as obligation to do something (in this case protect the safety). Theobligation is stated, not in terms of the precise acts one is to perform or refrainfrom performing but in terms of what one is to protect which specifies morewhat one is to achieve, preservation of the safety etc. of the public. Thisillustrates that an obligation may be specified in terms of what one is toachieve rather than what acts one is expected to perform, in which case theobligation is interdefinable with a responsibility. The obligation to refrain fromtaking bribes specifies what acts are forbidden whereas the obligation toprotect the public safety specifies what you are to achieve rather than whatacts you are to perform. Therefore, the obligation to protect safety may beexpressed as a responsibility for public safety. The terms"obligation" "duty" can be used to some matters ofresponsibility. To emphasize the important distinction between moral requirementsthat can be rather precisely specified in term of what acts one is supposed toperform or refrain from performing and responsibility for achieving some end theterms "obligation" and "duty" will be used only for requirementsthat rather precisely specify the acts one is supposed to perform or refrain fromperforming. The term "responsibility" will always be used when only theoutcome to be achieved is specified and hence considerable discretion and judgment isrequired to figure out just what to do.

Moral responsibilities derive either from one's interpersonal relationship to aperson whose welfare is in question, or from the special knowledge one possesses suchas professional knowledge that is crucial to an aspect of another's well-being. Examples of the first sort include the responsibility of one friend for another andof a parent for a child. Notice that a person can have this first kind ofresponsibility without having any particular knowledge that helps him fulfill theresponsibility. Examples of the second sort are the responsibility of a healthpractitioner to stop and give aid to an injured person who may be a stranger, and theresponsibility of an engineer to ensure public safety and thus safeguard manyindividuals whom the engineer will never meet. One person's responsibility foranother's welfare may combine both elements. For example a healthcare practitionermay have a significant personal relationship with a patient who also is dependent onthe practitioner's knowledge for adequate care. Since few relationships andknowledge are shared by everyone, most moral responsibilities are special moralresponsibilities, that is they belong to some people and not others. The is nogenerally accepted category of "human responsibilities" as there is humanrights or (by derivation from human rights) human obligations.

Professional responsibility is the most common type of moral responsibilitythat arises from the special knowledge a person possesses. Mastery of a special bodyof advanced knowledge, particularly knowledge which bears directly on the well-beingof others, distinguishes professions from other occupations. In modern times it issimply not possible for a person to master all the knowledge that is relevant even toher own well-being. Because society looks to members of a given profession to masterand develop knowledge in a particular area, the members of a profession bear specialmoral responsibilities in the use of the special knowledge vested in them. A stateenvironmental protection division employs an environmental engineer to decide whetherplans for construction of a power plant meets the regulation requirements of theClean Air Act, that is, whether the plans provide sufficiently for reduction of suchpollutants as sulfur dioxide and the nitrous oxides and thus whether a buildingpermit should be issued. Engineering knowledge is required to be able to make thisassessment. Neither the public nor administrators can make that assessment withoutsuch knowledge.

Although some moral demands on professionals are adequately expressible in rules ofconduct specifying what acts are permissible, obligatory or prohibited, there is moreto acting responsibly. A good consulting engineer not only avoids taking bribes,checks plans before signing off on them, and the like, but also exercises judgmentand discretion and takes care to provide a design or product that is safe and of highquality. Judgment and discretion are necessary to provide such designs and products. Moral agents in general and professional in particular must decide how best toachieve good outcomes in matters entrusted to their care.

Not only does responsible behavior require more than the performing specified acts,but the person with the responsibility need not be the one to perform the acts thatare necessary; this person need only see that someone else does. Thus the question"Who will be responsible for the lead screening program?" does not ask whowill do the screening tests, but rather who will see that the program is carried out.

Now consider the differences between a moral responsibility and an officialresponsibility--that is, a responsibility that someone is charged to carry out aspart of her assigned duties. The description of a job or office specify some ofone's official responsibilities. One could argue that there is a prima facie moralobligation to keep one's promises, and when one takes a job one implicitly promisesto perform the obligations or "duties" that go with that job. One, istherefore, morally obliged to fulfill those responsibilities because one has promisedto do so. In this way official obligations and responsibilities, then, can becomemoral responsibilities and moral obligations to the extent that one freely takes on ajob or office. Moral responsibility, however, does not reduce to officialresponsibility. Indeed some official responsibility or obligation may be immoral. "I was just doing my job," or "I was just doing what I was told"is not a generally valid excuse for unethical behavior on the part of an adult.

The notion of official responsibility is central to the attribution of decisions toorganizations rather than to the people in them. For example, people may say thatthe Ford Motor Company made the decision to rush the Pinto into production, ratherthan that particular people, such as Lee Iacoca, then president of Ford, made thedecision. This way of thinking about decisions turns on the idea that anorganization is a "decision-making structure" and that the actual person orpeople who make a decision act carry out their official responsibilities andobligations according to the values and criteria handed down by the company. Organizational values specify all of the goals to be achieved. The technical skillsand scope of authority are held to specify the scope of actions that the agent is totake in achieving those organizational goals. The agent's own values or the valuesof the agent's profession, religion, or culture are all assumed to be irrelevant towhat the agent will do in "doing her job." Therefore, on this model doingone's job is unaffected by the character and values of the person doing the job. Anydecisions that a person makes in her official capacity are attributable to theorganization rather than the individual.

As John Ladd has argued, official responsibilities differ significantly frommoral responsibilities, in that they attach to job categories and impersonal rolesrather than to particular people in particular circ*mstances, with histories andhuman relationships that are unique to them.

The scope of one's official responsibilities are specified by one's position, one'sjob description, apart from one's larger insights into the situation. One person'sofficial responsibilities exclude another's. This exclusionary feature makesofficial responsibility quite unlike moral responsibility. Two friends of the sameperson may both have a moral responsibility to see that he does not drivewhile intoxicated, for example.

If a supervisor were to say to an engineer, "It is not your job to think aboutsafety questions," this might be true as a statement about officialresponsibilities but would not mean that the engineer lacked any moral responsibilityfor raising safety concerns. Although a person's job description may not includesome matter, she may have a moral responsibility in that matter, especially if it isa responsibility of her profession.

For a case based on real life events and involving an engineer's responsibility forsafety, consider the following:

Clean Air Standards and a Government Engineer
Hillary is an engineer working for the state environmental protection division. Hillary's supervisor, Pat, tells Hillary to quickly draw up a building permit for apower plant and to avoid any delays. Hillary believes that the plans are inadequateto meet clean air regulations, but Pat thinks that these problems can be fixed.Hillary asks the state engineering registration board about the consequences ofissuing a permit that goes against environmental regulations, and finds that one'sengineering license can be suspended for such action. Hillary refuses to issue thepermit, but Hillary's department authorizes it anyway.-- adapted from NSPEBoard of Ethical Review Case 92-4
Did Hillary's actions fulfill her professional responsibilities and obligations? DidPat?
What other information would you like to have and what difference would it make toyour assessments?

The Responsibility for Safety and the Obligation to Preserve ClientConfidentiality
The owners of an apartment building is sued by their tenants to force them torepair defects that result in many annoyances for the tenants. The owner's attorneyhires Lyle, a structural engineer, to inspect the building and testify for the owner. Lyle discovers serious structural problems in the building that are an immediatethreat to the tenants' safety. These problems were not mentioned in the tenants'suit. Lyle reports this information to the attorney who tells Lyle to keep thisinformation confidential because it could affect the lawsuit. Lyle complies with theattorney's decision.
-- adapted from NSPE Board of Ethical Review Case 90-5
What, if any thing, might Lyle have done other than keep this informationconfidential? Which, if any, of those actions would have better fulfilled Lyle'sresponsibilities as an engineer?
What other information may be needed in order to make this decision?

A selection of cases and decisions by the Board of Ethical Review [BER]. of theNational Society of Professional Engineers [NSPE] are on the on the WWW in the WWW Ethics Center for Engineering & Science(2). The NSPE BER descriptions of cases arebased on real events but are shorn of ambiguity, presented as completed storiesrather than as open-ended problem situations and focus only on the actions oflicensed engineers in each case. Moral responsibility, unlike officialresponsibility, cannot be simply transferred to someone else. This feature of moralresponsibility is expressed by saying that it is not alienable. If an engineer incharge of a project assigns to another member of the team the responsibility to makecertain safety checks and the subordinate fails to do so, the engineer in charge willbear some responsibility for the failure, especially if the engineer in charge hadreason to know that the subordinate was not reliable or did not have the relevantcompetence.

There is some danger that in emphasizing the professional responsibility to work forthe well-being of a client--rather than just emphasizing the rights of the client--weencourage paternalism on the part of the professional. Paternalism derivesfrom the Latin word for father (pater). Acting like a parent toward those whoare not your children may or may not be justified in particular circ*mstances.

Paternalism may be roughly defined (following Gert and Culver) as infringing a moralrule of conduct toward someone or infringing that person's rights (such as the rightof self-determination) for what the agent believes is that person's own benefit. Paternalism in the treatment of clients most commonly arises in professional contextswhere the professional have a face to face relationship with those whose well-beingthey seek to ensure and in professions where practitioners are in positions ofgreater power than their clients. The question of paternalism often arises inmedicine and health care with respect to the treatment of patients. Because manyengineers in industry must protect the safety and health of anonymous members of thepublic rather than identified clients, and usually do not occupy positions of greaterpower than the clients they do have, paternalism is not a frequently discussed topicfor engineers in industry. However even for such engineers in industry, the issue ofpaternalism can arise in connection with "idiot-proofing" as we shall seein Chapter 3. Issues of paternalism often do arise for engineers and scientists inconnection relationships among co-workers and educational contexts.

THE CASE OF THE Meager FIRST AID SUPPLIES
The first aid kits in some of the teaching laboratories at contain only bandaids. When some members of the engineering faculty tried to have more adequatesupplies put in the kits, they were told that if the kits contained more suppliesthose supplies might be misused in a way that would cause injury. Anyone who isneeds more than band aids, they were told, should go to the health service fortreatment.
This example illustrates that if one is determined not to put anything in peopleshands with which they might harm themselves, they will not be able to do themselvesmuch good either.

To say that some act counts as paternalism does not yet tell us whether it isjustified or unjustified paternalism. However, paternalism does need justification;the burden of proof is on the side of those who claim that a given act of paternalismis morally acceptable. Furthermore, the responsibilities of a professional to lookout for a client's welfare in the area of the professional's expertise need notconflict with any of the client's rights, especially if the professional explains thepro's and con's of the situation to the client rather than simply making a judgmentwhich is left unexplained.

Because paternalism involves the infringement of moral rules, it needs justification. If the rule infringed in a given case was not an absolute moral rule then othermoral considerations may show that the act of paternalism was, on balance,justified--that is, it was right to do it in those circ*mstances.

3. Trust and Responsibility

Trust of many sorts is necessary for ordinary life: trust of technology, trust ofinstitutions, trust of other individuals. Without trust there can be no cooperativeactivities and thus no life in a community or society. (Cooperative activitiesinclude many that are also competitive. Competitive sports is a handy exampleof a competitive activity in which there are standards of "faircompetition" to be mutually upheld.) Trust is confident reliance;confidence and reliance do not always go together. We may rely on someone orsomething, trusting that the thing or person in question will perform as needed andexpected. However, we may also rely on people or things even where we have goodreason not to trust them. If I am told that my well may have been contaminated withtoxic substances, then I will stop using water from the well only if or to the extentthat I have another source of water available. On the other hand we may have greatconfidence in something--say that the automobile of the President of General Motorsis in good repair--but unless we in some way rely on this fact, we do not trust init.

As Annette Baier has argued, trust does not always have an ethically sound basis. Someone may trust another whom she has successfully threatened or otherwise coercedinto doing her bidding. Baier's general account of the morality of trust illuminatesthe strong relation between the trustworthy and the true. A trustrelationship according to Baier is decent if, or to the extent that, it stands thetest of disclosure of the basis for each party's trust. For example, suppose oneparty trusts the other to perform as needed only because the truster believes thetrusted to be too timid or unimaginative to do otherwise. Or suppose the trustedfulfills the truster's expectations only because he fears detection and punishment. Disclosure of these premises will undermine the trust relationship. Knowing thetruth will give the trusted person an incentive to prove the truster wrong, or givethe truster the knowledge that if undetected defection or betrayal becomes feasible,the trusted will likely defect or betray. Telling the truth about the basis fortrust is an operational test of whether the trust is rooted in trustworthiness and aconfidence in the other's trustworthiness. If the trust relationship cannotwithstand having the truth told about it, it is corrupt.

Although explicit discussion of moral trustworthiness is relatively recent, bothprofessional ethics and the philosophy of technology have given considerableattention to concept of responsibility. Being trustworthy is key to actingresponsibly in a professional capacity, or being a responsible person in the virtuesense of "responsible." Therefore, the literature on responsibility, whichhas been extensive in recent discussions of professional ethics, provides at least animplicit discussion of many aspects of the morality of trust in this professionalpractice.

Since being a responsible person means being able to take responsibility for one'sown actions, it is closely connected to rights of self-determination. Foremost amongthese are rights to one's person--body and mind--although property rights have oftenbeen argued (e.g., by John Locke in the seventeenth century) to derive from one'srights to one's body and the fruits of one's labor. If a person's rights to his bodyand mind are not respected, the person's actions are not his own in an importantsense. If, for example, people were to be drugged, it would effectively undercut thefulfillment of their moral responsibilities, personal and professional, and soundercut the rest of moral life.

As we saw earlier human rights reflect moral claims without which it is difficult forpeople to act as moral agents. Often included among these basic rights are rights ofprivacy. However, privacy is a notion that is given more attention inindividualistic cultures than in others. In fact, as was mentioned earlier, somecultures do not have a word for this notion.

pdsarin@mit.edu