Ethics as Design: Doing Justice to Moral Problems

Abstract

Suppose I face a moral problem, how ought I go about figuring out what to do? The question is not simply how I should evaluate proposed courses of action, but how I go about devising such courses of action, a subject on which, as Stuart Hampshire observed in 1949 and again in 1989, ethics has had little to say.[1] Ethical judgments are important in devising responses to moral problems, of course. These judgments come in many forms, from is being proposed is morally wrong to safety factor (or margin) is sufficient for the circumstances in which this object or process will operate. Yet people confronted with ethical problems must do more than simply make judgments. They must figure out what to do. This is the reason for calling them agents. Scholars and popular writers alike often confine themselves to the judge's perspective, for example, when philosophers working in professional ethics take the making of moral judgments or criteria for praising and blaming to be the whole of their subject matter, or when the press, reporting on some accident or miscarriage of science or engineering, takes the main question to be Who is to blame? In these cases the restriction of perspective is fairly explicit. However, as I have discussed elsewhere, it is also implicit in the representation of moral problems as dilemmas to which the only solutions are those given with the problem itself, so that the only task is to judge which of the proposed solutions is the best (or least bad).[2] It is not enough to be able to evaluate well-defined actions, motives, etc., because actual moral problems are not multiple-choice problems. One must devise possible courses of action as well as evaluate them. Suppose my supervisor tells me to dispose of some regulated toxic substance by dumping it down the drain. In this case part of my problem is that I have been ordered to do something that is potentially injurious to human health and, furthermore, illegal. Assuming that my supervisor knows, as I do, that the substance is a regulated toxic substance (an assumption that I should--verify), then my supervisor's order is unethical and illegal. This is an example of a moral judgment that I make in describing the situation. In the case I have just described the question is what can and should I do. It is not enough to say that I should not dump the waste down the drain. My problem is not the simple choice of answering yes or no to the question of I should follow the order. I need to figure out what to do about the supervisor's order. Shall I ignore it? Refuse it? Report it to someone? To someone else in the company? To the Environmental Protection Agency? Should I do something else altogether? Is there any place I can go for advice about my options in a situation like this? What are the likely consequences of using those channels (if they exist)? Where could I find out those consequences? Also, what do I do with that toxic waste, at least for the present? These are questions with important implications for fairness to others, including people in my organization, and for the health and safety of the public, as well as for my relationship with my supervisor and for my own position within the company. Answering the question of what to do will depend on a variety of factors. Learning what factors to consider and how to assess them are components of responsible professional behavior. The importance of finding good ways of acting (and not merely the ability to come up with the right answer to a whether question) may be brought home by reflecting on when you or I last poured paint solvents, petroleum wastes, acetone (nail polish remover), motor oil, garden pesticides, or other household hazardous waste down the drain (or put spent batteries in the trash). Was it only before we were in a position to know that these were environmental hazards? That is, was it only before we cotdd answer the whether question correctly? …