utility
-
Theoretical Commitments
I have long thought of myself as something of an agnostic on matters of moral theory. From the beginning I have concerned myself with practical decision-making, first with environmental ethics and policy and more recently with engineering ethics. I am now mainly concerned with how best to teach ethics to undergraduate students in engineering degree… Continue reading
-
Scaffolding: The Utility Template
As previously noted, scaffolding is an important element in problem-based learning: it is an external and somewhat artificial version of a thinking process that is usually carried out internally. The idea is to direct students’ attention from the outside until they learn to direct their own attention themselves, from the inside For drawing students’ attention… Continue reading
-
Hydraulic Fracturing: Risk v. Acceptable Risk
I have said that the first day of our workshop on hydraulic fracturing, in November, brought out a long list of risks related to hydraulic fracturing and, indeed, the engineers and scientists who participated were quite adept at identifying such risks and possibilities for mitigation. Something else came out during those first sessions, though, which… Continue reading
-
A Field Guide: A First Sketch
This blog grew out of an idea I had, sometime last year, to write a Field Guide to Basic Values for use in my ethics courses, building on the idea of attuned awareness to which I referred in my previous post. I once used this analogy with students: There are no doubt some people who… Continue reading
-
An Ethicist Walks to Work
A few months ago, something that happened on my morning commute provided an example of moral perception I could use in class later that day: what it’s like to see the ethical texture of an entirely mundane situation. I was walking along North Avenue on my way from the transit station to my office on… Continue reading
-
The Other End of the Beam
This past semester I presented students in my engineering ethics course with an especially messy problem situation involving the development of a cyclotron for use in proton therapy, an unreliable fellow engineer, a boss playing favorites, the spectacular failure of a control system during a preliminary test, the relative merits of hardware versus software, and… Continue reading
-
An Unlikely Contrast Between Torture and Social Media
Continuing the point about the good and the right in discussions of the CIA torture program, my attention has been drawn to a domain in which arguments from the right seem more easily to yield to arguments from the good, almost to the point of reducing the discussion entirely to terms of benefits and costs.… Continue reading
-
The Torture Report: Further Clarification
Since it is such a sensitive issue, I want to be especially careful in the language I use to discuss torture. Reading over yesterday’s note, it seems I could have drawn the point more precisely. Here’s some of what I wrote: That said, a number of commentators have hastened to say that even if the… Continue reading