Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
What
should
she
do?
Every profession consists of people from various walks of life, with numerous perspectives, and a
widely ranging set of beliefs. There is much commonality in thinking amongst people practicing in the
same discipline, but there are also substantial differences in perspectives. Some of this divergence lies in
what a professional believes to constitute right and wrong behavior. In fact, each professional discipline
allows a certain degree of latitude on the types of work that an individual must perform. A professional
practitioner may refuse to perform certain tasks, represent certain clients, and take certain ideological
positions that conflict with the individual's conscience. This is known as the right of professional
conscience, which is:
[T]he right of an employee to refuse to partake in unethical conduct when forced to do so by an employer. This
may occur in work or non-work situations and may not necessarily involve breaking the law. Conscientious
refusal may be done by either simply not participating in the activity that one sees as immoral, or it may be
done with the hope of making a public protest that will draw attention to the situation that one believes is
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wrong.
Thus, the idea of conscience-driven morality is difficult. For example, you may completely agree with
Betty about landmines. However, what if you found out that the work she is doing would prevent
landmines from remaining active after their military use? For example, what if the mines could be
remotely destroyed using Betty's device? Is it morally permissible to argue that the mines are going to
be made anyway, so why not make them safer? Or, is it Betty's “duty” to quit the project, no matter the
potential value, simply because the whole warfare scenario is immoral?
To understand the right of conscience, both of the terms are important: right and conscience. Let
us first consider the second term. Theologians spend a lot of time thinking about the conscience, so
that might be a good place to start to find a definition. For example, Richard M. Gula explains that
conscience is:
often used but little understood. Trying to explain conscience is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall,
just when you think you have it pinned down, part of it begins to slip away . We all know we have
a conscience, yet our experiences of conscience are ambiguous. We struggle with conscience when facing
great decisions of life, such as the choice of a career, or of conscientious objection to war, or whether to pay
taxes which support defense projects. Yet we even feel the pangs of conscience over petty matters, such as
jaywalking.
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Gula considers the quandary that even though we hear that “conscience enjoys inviolable freedom,”
society and its institutions have codified formal and informal rules “so absolute in character we wonder
whether conscience matters at all.”
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This uncertainty is at the heart of understanding when an engineer
or other professional may invoke the right of conscience.
Perhaps distinguishing conscience from other human qualities can help, or in engineering parlance,
we can find the solution by difference. Conscience is not the same as personality or even the Freudian
concept of superego. Sigmund Freud
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hypothesized in his structural theory that the human personality
consists of three parts: id; ego; and superego (Figure 4.2). The id is the most primitive component,
seeking maximum pleasure and is oriented toward “primitive desires” (e.g., sex, rage, and hunger). The
superego is the normative part of the personality, which polices behavior and enforces standards of
