Unit 3

Unit-3

SELF-CONTROL 

It is a virtue of maintaining personal discipline. It means a strong will and motivation and avoidance of fear, hatred, and lack of efforts, temptation, self-deception, and emotional response. It encompasses courage and good judgment also. Self-respect promotes self-control.

SELF-INTEREST

Self-interest is being good and acceptable to oneself. It is pursuing what is good for oneself. It is very ethical to possess self-interest. As per utilitarian theory, this interest should provide for the respect of others also. Duty ethics recognizes this aspect as duties to ourselves. Then only one can help others. Right ethicist stresses our rights to pursue our own good. Virtue ethics also accepts the importance of self-respect as link to social practices.

In Ethical Egoism, the self is conceived in a highly individualistic manner. It says that every one of us should always and only promote one’s own interest. The ethical egoists do not accept the wellbeing of the community or caring for others. However this self-interest should not degenerate into egoism or selfishness, i.e., maximizing only own well in the pursuit of self-interest. The ethical egoists hold that the society benefits to maximum when (a) the individuals pursue their personal good and (b) the individual organizations pursue maximum profit in a competitive enterprise. This is claimed to improve the economy of the country as a whole, besides the individuals. In such pursuits, both individuals and organizations should realize that independence is not the only important value. We are also interdependent, as much as independent. Each of us is vulnerable in the society. Self-respect includes recognition of our vulnerabilities and interdependencies. Hence, it is compatible with caring for ourselves as well as others. Self-interest is necessary initially to begin with. But it should be one of the prime motives for action; the other motive is to show concern for others, in the family as well as society. One’s self-interest should not harm others. The principles of ‘Live and let (others) live’, and ‘reasonably fair competition’ are recommended to professionals by the ethicists.

CUSTOMS

Ethical Pluralism: Various cultures in our pluralistic society lead to tolerance for various customs, beliefs, and outlooks. Accordingly ethical pluralism also exists. Although many moral attitudes appear to be reasonable, the rational and morally concerned people cannot fully accept any one of the moral perspectives. There are many varied moral values, which allow variation in the understanding and application of values by the individuals or groups in their everyday transactions. It means that even reasonable people will not agree on all moral issues and professional ethics. Ethical Relativism: According to this principle, actions are considered morally right when approved by law or custom, and wrong when they violate the laws or customs. The deciding factor is the law or the customs of the society. Should we accept the principle of relativism or not? A few reasons to accept this are explained in the following paragraphs:

1. Laws appear to be objective ways for judging values. The laws and customs tend to be definite, clear and real, but not always. Further moral reasons allow objective criticism of laws, as being morally lacking. For example, the Apartheid laws of South Africa violated the human rights of the native Africans. No legal protection was available for native citizens for a long time. Now, of course, these laws have been repealed.

2. Ethical relativism assumes that the values are subjective at the cultural level. Moral standards also vary from culture to culture. The objectivity is supported by the existing laws of that society. The relative morality accepted, supports the virtue of tolerance of differences among
societies. This argument is also not fully acceptable. As per ethical relativism, the actions and laws of the Nazis and Hitler who vowed on Anti-Semitism and killed several million Jews would be accepted as right.

3. Moral rationalism or moral contextualise: According to this, the moral judgments must be made in relation to certain factors, which may vary from case to case. The morally important factors for making judgments include the customs and laws. The virtue ethicists hold that the practical wisdom should prevail upon assessing the facts and in the judgment.

This principle was accepted by the early anthropologists because they had a specific tendency to over-stress the scope of moral difference between cultures. The human sacrifices and cannibalism were accepted. But the modern anthropologists insist that all cultures shall exhibit the virtue of social welfare and safety against needless death or physical or mental harm. Moral differences were based on the circumstances and facts and not on the difference in moral attitudes. For example, the pharaohs buried the live attendants along with their dead king with the belief that they would continue to serve the king in his afterlife.

RELIGION

Religions have played major roles in shaping moral views and moral values, over geographical regions. Christianity has influenced the Western countries, Islam in the Middle-East countries, Buddhism and Hinduism in Asia, and Confucianism in China. Further, there is a strong psychological link between the moral and religious beliefs of people following various religions and faiths. Religions support moral responsibility. They have set high moral standards. Faith in the religions provides trust and this trust inspires people to be moral. The religions insist on tolerance and moral concern for others. Many professionals who possess religious beliefs are motivated to be morally responsible.

Each religion lays stress on certain high moral standards. For example, Hinduism holds polytheistic (many gods) view, and virtues of devotion and surrender to high order. Christianity believes in one deity and emphasizes on virtues of Love, Faith, and Hope. Buddhism is non-theistic and focuses on compassion and Islam on one deity and adherence of ishan (piety or pursuit of excellence) and prayer. Judaism stresses the virtue of ‘tsedakah’ (righteousness). But many religious sects have adopted poor moral standards, e.g., many religious sects do not recognize equal rights for women. The right to worship is denied for some people. People are killed in the name of or to promote religion. Thus, conflicts exist between the ‘secular’ and religious people and between one religion and another. Hence, religious views have to be morally scrutinized.

VALUING TIME

Time is rare resource. Once it is spent, it is lost for ever. It cannot be either stored or recovered. Hence, time is the most perishable and most valuable resource too. This resource is continuously spent, whether any decision or action is taken or not. The history of great reformers and innovators have stressed the importance of time and valuing time. The proverbs, ‘Time and tide wait for nobody’ and ‘Procrastination is the thief of time’ amply illustrate this point. An anecdote to highlight the ‘value of time’ is as follows: To realize the value of one year, ask the student who has failed in the examinations;. To realize the value of one month, ask the mother who has delivered a premature baby; to realize the value of one week, ask the editor of weekly; to realize the value of one day, ask the daily-wage labourer; to realize now the value of one hour, ask the lovers longing to meet; to realize the value of one minute, ask a person who has missed the train; to realize the value of one second, ask the person who has survived an accident; to realize the value one milli second, ask the person who has won the bronze medal in Olympics; to realize the value of one micro second, ask the NASA team of scientists; to realize the value of one Nano-second, ask a Hardware engineer!; If you have still not realized the value of time, wait; are you an Engineer?

COOPERATION

 It is a team-spirit present with every individual engaged in engineering. Co-operation is activity between two persons or sectors that aims at integration of operations (synergy), while not sacrificing the autonomy of either party. Further, working together ensures, coherence, i.e., blending of different skills required, towards common goals. Willingness to understand others, think and act together and putting this into practice, is cooperation. Cooperation promotes collinearity, coherence (blend), co-ordination (activities linked in sequence or priority) and the synergy (maximizing the output, by reinforcement). The whole is more than the sum of the individuals. It helps in minimizing the input resources (including time) and maximizes the outputs, which include quantity, quality, effectiveness, and efficiency.

According to professional ethics, cooperation should exist or be developed, and maintained, at several levels; between the employers and employees, between the superiors and subordinates, among the colleagues, between the producers and the suppliers (spare parts), and between the organisation and its customers.

 The codes of ethics of various professional societies insist on appropriate cooperation to nourish the industry. The absence of cooperation leads to lack of communication, misinformation, void in communication, and undue delay between supply, production, marketing, and consumption. This is likely to demoralize and frustrate the employees, leading to collapse of the industry over time and an economic loss to the society.

 The impediments to successful cooperation are:

1. Clash of ego of individuals.

2. Lack of leadership and motivation.

3. Conflicts of interests, based on region, religion, language, and caste.

4. Ignorance and lack of interest. By careful planning, motivation, leadership, fostering and rewarding team work, professionalism and humanism beyond the ‘divides’, training on appreciation to different cultures, mutual understanding ‘cooperation’ can be developed and also sustained.

A BALANCED OUTLOOK ON LAW

The ‘balanced outlook on law’ in engineering practice stresses the necessity of laws and regulations and also their limitations in directing and controlling the engineering practice. Laws are necessary because, people are not fully responsible by themselves and because of the competitive nature of the free enterprise, which does not encourage moral initiatives. Laws are needed to provide a minimum level of compliance.

The following codes are typical examples of how they were enforced in the past:

Code for Builders by Hammurabi:

Hammurabi the king of Babylon in 1758 framed the following code for the builders: “If a builder has built a house for a man and has not made his work sound and the house which he has built has fallen down and caused the death of the householder, that builder shall be put to death. If it causes the death of the householder’s son, they shall put that builder’s son to death. If it causes the death of the householder’s slave, he shall give slave for slave to the householder. If it destroys property, he shall replace anything it has destroyed; and because he has not made the house sound which he has built and it has fallen down, he shall rebuild the house which has fallen down from his own property. If a builder has built a house for a man and does not make his work perfect and the wall bulges, that builder shall put that wall in sound condition at his own cost”

This code was expected to put in self-regulation seriously in those years.

Steam Boat Code in USA:  Whenever there is crisis we claim that there ought to be law to control this. Whenever there is a fire accident in a factory or fire cracker’s store house or boat capsize we make this claim, and soon forget. Laws are meant to be interpreted for minimal compliance. On the other hand, laws when amended or updated continuously, would be counterproductive. Laws will always lag behind the technological development. The regulatory or inspection agencies such as Environmental authority of India can play a major role by framing rules and enforcing compliance.

In the early 19th century, a law was passed in USA to provide for inspection of the safety of boilers and engines in ships. It was amended many times and now the standards formulated by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers are followed.

Proper Role of Laws: Good laws when enforced effectively produce benefits. They establish minimal standards of professional conduct and provide a motivation to people. Further they serve as moral support and defence for the people who are willing to act ethically. Thus, it is concluded that:

1. The rules which govern engineering practice should be construed as of responsible experimentation rather than rules of a game. This makes the engineer responsible for the safe conduct of the experiment.

2. Precise rules and sanctions are suitable in case of ethical misconduct that involves the violation of established engineering procedures, which are aimed at the safety and the welfare of the public.

3. In situations where the experimentation is large and time consuming, the rules must not try to cover all possible outcomes, and they should not compel the engineers to follow rigid courses of action.

4. The regulation should be broad, but make engineers accountable for their decisions, and

 5. Through their professional societies, the engineers can facilitate framing the rules, amend wherever necessary, and enforce them, but without giving-in for conflicts of interest.