Read the text below and answer the following question: According to Mike Martin, a positive approach to ethical engineering involves a discretionary element as well as a motivational aspect. What is the role these two elements play in the three character traits that the book mentions in regard to professional character? How relevant do you think these two elements are to aspirational ethics?
Aspirational Ethics and Professional Character: The Good Engineer
Two features of a more aspirational approach to ethics are of special importance. First,as Mike Martin notes, this more positive approach to engineering ethics has an important motivationalaspect (that of doing good) that is not necessarily present in an ethical perspective that focuses primarily on prohibitions and avoiding wrongdoing. Second, as Martin also suggests, there is a discretionaryelement in aspirational ethics. Engineers may have a considerable range of freedom in how they promote public welfare.
Neither of these two features can be conveyed very well in rules that specify arequired course of action. "Hold paramount public welfare" is an important positive moral prescription for engineers, but it gives little direction for conduct. It does not tell engineers whether to devote time to Engineers Without Borders, or to some special projects on which they are willing to work on their own time, or to simply designing a product that is more energy efficient. These decisions are best left to engineers to decide for themselves, given their interests, abilities, commitments, and what is possible for them in their own situations.
For this reason, we suggest that the more appropriate vocabulary for talking aboutaspirational ethics is that of professional character rather than the vocabulary of rules. Rules are appropriate for prohibitions such as "Don't violate confidentiality." Rules are less appropriate for capturing and stimulating motivation to do good. Here the most relevant question is not "What kinds of rules are important in directing the more positive and aspirational elements of engineering work?" Rather, the question is "What types of persons, professionally speaking, will be the most likely to promote the welfare of the public through their engineering work?"
We will use the expression professional character to refer to those character traitsthat serve to define the kind of person one is, professionally speaking. Good engineers are those who have those traits of professional character that make them the best, or ideal, engineers. Here we suggest three such traits, without implying that this is by any means an exhaustive list. The first is professional pride, particularly in one's technical expertise. If engineers want their work to contribute to public welfare, they must make sure that their professional competence is at the highest possible level. This competenceincludes not only the obvious proficiencies in mathematics, physics, and engineering science but also those abilities and sensitivities that only come with a certain level of practical experience.
The second character trait is social awareness and concern, which is an awarenessof and concern for the ways in which technology both affects and is affected by the larger social environment within which engineers work. In other words, engineers need to be alert to what we call in Chapter 4 the "social embeddedness" of technology. Engineers as well as the rest of us are sometimes tempted to view technology as isolated from the larger social context. In the extreme version of this view, technology is seen as governed by considerations internal to technology itself and as neither influencing, nor influenced by, social forces and institutions. In a less extreme view, technology powerfully influences social institutions and forces, but there is little, if any, causal effect in the other direction. However, engineers who are sufficiently aware of the social dimensions of technology understand that there are causal influences in both directions. In any case, engineers are often called on to make design decisions that are not socially neutral. This often requires sensitivities and commitments that cannot be incorporated into rules.
A third professional character trait that can support aspirational ethics is an environmentalconscientiousness. Later in this book, we explore this issue more thoroughly, but here it need only be said that the authors believe that environmental issues will increasingly play a crucial role in almost all aspects of engineering. Increasingly, human welfare will be seen as integral to preserving the integrity of the natural environment that supports human and all other forms of life. Eventually, we believe, being environmentally conscious will be recognized as an important element in professional