Ethical Engineering: Definitions, Theories and Techniques - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 22

3. Always act as a member of a community where all the other members of that
community are ends, just as you are.

Kant defi nes the moral value of an action in terms of three principles or
propositions:

1. The moral worth of an action is due solely to it being commanded by rules of
obligation and not due to its consequences.
2. An action's moral value is due to the motivating rule of obligation, not its success
in accomplishing particular goals.
3. Obligation to perform an action derives from respect for the law.

The fi rst two principles can be considered to be statements of what deontological
ethics is. The third principle assumes that there is a strong correspondence between
ethics and law, i.e. all the laws (of a given society) are fully ethical and all ethical
principles are enshrined in law. This is very rarely the case. The main problem
with Kant's approach is the infl exibility of the fi rst statement. Although it has the
advantage of making you consider how the world would be if everyone acted on the
same principles, it takes no account of particular circumstances.
Criticisms of deontological ethics include diffi culties in 'objectively' determining
the moral duties and problems in deciding which moral duty to follow when they are
in confl ict. In addition deontological approaches to ethics have the disadvantage of
ignoring consequences, just as consequentialist approaches have the disadvantage
of ignoring motivation and obligations. It is therefore generally appropriate to
consider deontological and consequentialist approaches together.

2.2.1.2 The Ethics of Experimentation

It has been suggested by Martin and Schinzinger ( 1996 ) that engineering should
be treated as social experimentation. This has the advantage of making explicit the
importance of informed consent. This requires 'subjects' to have suffi cient and
appropriate information to make properly informed decisions and participate
voluntarily without any kind of coercion or deception.
Such experiments may involve complex technologies. Therefore, in the longer
term, informed consent would require improvement in the general level of technical
education to make the arguments and issues more accessible, as well as better com-
munication skills for engineers and scientists so they can clearly explain the issues
to the general public.
Informed consent also requires genuine understanding of the level of risk for
particular benefi ts. In some cases, the general public has a very different attitude
to risks from experts or regulatory bodies. Individuals are generally more willing to
accept the risks from new technologies if they see obvious benefi ts. For instance,
mobile phones are very widely used due to the perceived benefi ts, despite the fact
that there may be health risks, but there is little defi nite information.
This raises the question of how acceptable levels of risk for different activities