The use of moral dilemmas for teaching agricultural engineers

Agricultural engineers’ jobs are especially related to sustainability and earth life issues. They usually work with plants or animals, and the aim of their work is often linked to producing food to allow people to improve their quality of life. Taking into account this dual function, the moral requirements of their day-to-day professional practice are arguably greater than those of other professions. Agricultural engineers can develop their ability to live up to this professional responsibility by receiving ethical training during their university studies, not only by taking courses specifically devoted to ethics, but also by having to deal with moral questions that are integrated into their technical courses through a program of Ethics Across the Curriculum (EAC). The authors feel that a suitable pedagogical technique for achieving this goal is the use of moral dilemmas, following Kohlberg’s theory of levels of morality (1981), with the final objective of attaining a post-conventional level. This paper examines the possibilities and limitations of using moral dilemmas as a pedagogical technique for training agricultural engineers. The cases, discussions, and evaluation used in the Agricultural Engineering Department of the Technical University of Valencia (Spain) are also presented. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005 conference, Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology, Linking Workplace Ethics and Education, co-hosted by Gonzaga University and Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 9–10 June 2005.     

Global challenges as inspiration: A classroom strategy to foster social responsibility

Social responsibility is at the heart of the Engineer’s Creed embodied in the pledge that we will “dedicate [our] professional knowledge and skill to the advancement and betterment of human welfare...[placing] public welfare above all other considerations.” However, half century after the original creed was written, we find ourselves in a world with great technological advances and great global-scale technologically-enabled peril. These issues can be naturally integrated into the engineering curriculum in a way that enhances the development of the technological skill set. We have found that these global challenges create a natural opportunity to foster social responsibility within the engineering students whom we educate. In freshman through senior-level materials engineering courses, we used five guiding principles to shape several different classroom activities and assignments. Upon testing an initial cohort of 28 students had classroom experiences based on these five principles, we saw a shift in attitude: before the experience, 18% of the cohort viewed engineers as playing an active role in solving global problems; after the experiences, 79% recognized the engineer’s role in solving global-scale problems. In this paper, we present how global issues can be used to stimulate thinking for socially-responsible engineering solutions. We set forth five guiding principles that can foster the mindset for socially responsible actions along with examples of how these principles translate into classroom activities. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005 conference, Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology, Linking Workplace Ethics and Education, co-hosted by Gonzaga University and Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 9–10 June 2005.     

Freedom in responsibility: a response.

This paper is a critical response to Elisabeth Gr?b-Schmidt's article "Freedom in responsibility: On the relevance of 'sin' as hermeneutic guiding principle in bioethical decision making." Gr?b-Schmidt's chief contention is that ethics begins with anthropology, and that moral responsibility is thereby grounded within a set of given limits. Freedom is distorted into sin when these limits are transgressed. My principal complaint is that her account of the relationship between freedom and sin is grounded in a tragic ontology. Alternatively, I contend that anthropology is grounded in Christology in which freedom is a gift of the Spirit. Consequently, sin is not so much tragic as it marks a refusal of humans to accept their divine election. The issues of human cloning and embryonic stem-cell research are used to exemplify what difference these respective differences might make in a process of moral deliberation.     

Compensating strategies in collaborative remembering in very old couples

This study investigates collaborative memory performance in very old married couples working in two types of participant constellations, and with two types of memory tasks, i.e. working as couples, or as individuals in episodic or semantic memory tasks. Sixty-two old married couples were a priori classified as high or low on two dimensions suggested to be important for successful collaboration, i.e. responsibility (how division of responsibility was organized) and agreement (how they mutually agreed on each other's view). The episodic memory task was immediate recall of short stories. The semantic memory tasks were to answer questions about names, places, and concepts. The results suggested that: (1) groups outperformed a single individual, but (2) groups in general suffered from collaboration relative to the predicted potential in episodic tasks only, thus replicating earlier results. Nevertheless, (3) the couples scoring high on division of responsibility achieved the same productivity as nominal pairs (i.e. the predicted potential); (4) the couples scoring high on the agreement dimension showed that they were not as affected by collaboration, but then performed less well in "absolute" performance. Finally, the results were discussed in terms of optimal compensation strategies, especially for elderly couples.     

Making sense of scientists' responsibilities at the interface of science and society. Commentary on "Six Domains of Research Ethics"

As Kenneth Pimple points out, scientists’ responsibilities to the larger society have received less attention than ethical issues internal to the practice of science. Yet scientists and specialists who study science have begun to provide analyses of the foundations and scope of scientsts’ responsibilities to society. An account of contributions from Kristen Shrader-Frechette, Melanie Leitner, Ullica Segerstråle, John Ahearne, Helen Longino, and Carl Cranor offers work on scientists’ social responsibilities upon which to build.     

Informatics and professional responsibility

Many problems in software development can be traced to a narrow understanding of professional responsibility. The author examines ways in which software developers have tried to avoid accepting responsibility for their work. After cataloguing various types of responsibility avoidance, the author introduces an expanded concept of positive responsibility. It is argued that the adoption of this sense of positive responsibility will reduce many problems in software development. An earlier version of this paper was written for inclusion in S. Rogerson and T. W. Bynum, eds., Computer Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Blackwell, (in press). Prepublished here with permission from the author and the editors.     

Epistemic deontology and the Revelatory View of responsibility

According to Universal Epistemic Deontology, all of our doxastic attitudes are open to deontological evaluations of obligation and permissibility. This view thus implies that we are responsible for all of our doxastic attitudes. But many philosophers have puzzled over whether we could be so responsible. This paper explores whether this puzzle can be resolved, and Universal Epistemic Deontology defended, by appealing to a view of responsibility it calls the Revelatory View. On that view, an agent is responsible for something when it reveals the kind of person the agent is. The paper explores four ways of developing the Revelatory View and argues that none of the views ultimately defends Universal Epistemic Deontology.     

Academic entitlement and socially aversive personalities: Does the Dark Triad predict academic entitlement?

Academic entitlement is a well-established problem; however its causes are not well understood. This study (n = 169) investigated the role of the Dark Triad as a predictor of academic entitlement. The Dark Triad, comprised of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy, was measured with Jonason and Webster’s (2010) concise measure, and academic entitlement was assessed with Chowning and Campbell’s (2009) academic entitlement construct (comprised of externalized responsibility and entitled expectations). Gender and psychopathy predicted externalized responsibility and narcissism predicted entitled expectations. Findings are discussed regarding the contribution of psychopathy and narcissism to academic entitlement. Also discussed is the potential learned aspect of entitlement, due to narcissism being a cause of both entitled behavior and resultant uncivil behavior that occurs when entitled behaviors fail to achieve the desired outcome.     

Humanitarian intervention and historical responsibility

Some suggest that the duty of humanitarian intervention should be discharged by states that are historically responsible for the occurrence of violence. A fundamental problem with this suggestion is that historically responsible states might be ill-suited to intervene because they are unlikely to enjoy support from the local population. Cécile Fabre has suggested a way around that problem, arguing that responsible states ought to pay for humanitarian interventions even though they ought not to take part in the military operations. We claim that Fabre’s idea is subject to two concerns. First, the duty to perform might not be appropriately transferrable from the historically responsible state to another state because it would allow the primary duty bearer to escape the worst costs of intervention. Second, an intervention might be as unlikely to generate local support when a historically responsible state pays for an intervention as when it performs it. These problems are enough to cast doubt on Fabre’s idea. However, the idea is helpful because it highlights as yet neglected questions about how the financial and material burden of humanitarian intervention is to be shared.     

New developments in transference focused psychotherapy

This paper will summarize recent clinical developments in the treatment of borderline patients at the Personality Disorders Institute at Cornell. The experiences under review will include the careful, ongoing monitoring of developments in the patient's life outside the sessions, and their consideration in diagnosing affective dominance during the hours. Other issues include the discussion of a ‘second chance’ approach to contract violations; the assessment and concern with the patient's assumption of responsibility for himself; the contradictions between actual behavior patterns and life goals, and between personality potentials and present functioning; the technical implications of particular constellations of regressive narcissistic features; drug dependence and antisocial behavior; and life goals and treatment goals.