Ethical Scenarios

As I have just finished delivering a pair of lectures on professional ethics I have decided to post up some of the scenarios that I ended the lectures with. I gave these to the students to get them to engage with some moral reasoning. Have a look and tell me what you think. What is correct moral course of action, if any?

Also, tell me if you think they are weighted well, i.e. the answer is not so obvious.

Environment vs. Jobs

You are the CEO of a metal-processing plant. You have recently become aware of the massive negative environmental impact of your business and wish to make the factory cleaner and greener. There is also some consensus amongst the company’s shareholders that greener is better, so long as it does not hurt the bottom line. This consensus is by no means binding (i.e. it’s not imperative that this is done, merely something preferred if it was). Through new technology that can be bought through government subsidies that are calculated to be cost-effective in the long term, you realise that you can cut the factory’s pollution by 35%. However, this will come at a cost. As most of the new equipment is automatic you will only require 40% of the present workforce, meaning that if the company goes green they will have to sack 200 workers (the cost-benefit analysis economically justifying the change-over has taken into account that there will only be 40% of the current employees, to keep all employees will make the company lose money). At the cost of jobs for a cleaner environment should you do it? Why?

Same scenario, however, the move to the new equipment is not for environmental reasons, though there will some environmental benefit, but instead for financial reasons. What should you do? And why?

Bridge Building

You are a civil engineer working to build a much-needed bridge that is to replace a previous bridge that collapsed six months earlier due to a structure failure during an earthquake. A colleague of yours, Jim, also an engineer working on the same project has a confidential conversation with you about his belief that the type of cement your company is using is not strong enough and will likely lead to structural failure sometime in the future. You have no expertises in the area and cannot be sure of Jim’s claim, however, you know that is very sincere in his concern. Jim has asked you not to mention his concern, as he is worried about the repercussions. You nonetheless attempt to make the concern known without ever mentioning Jim’s name. You exhaust the correct channels within the company to highlight the concern about this type of concrete and at every point have been assured that it perfectly safe, however you are not sure whether to believe this or not.

What do you do? And Why? If you wish to take this concern any further you will need to mention Jim’s name and will need to make the concern known outside the company, thereby violating company policy, risking both your job and Jim’s. If nothing is done, and Jim is right, structure failure of the bridge could kill a number of people, or at the very least, cost a lot of taxpayer’s money.

Nuclear Scientist

(an old one that I came across in undergraduate but cannot remember where, if you let me know. I’ve also expanded on what I remember this scenario to be)

You are a Nuclear Physicist and have been offered a job at Nuclear weapons company. This new job offers twice the pay that you are presently receiving at your current job as an underpaid scientist, which doesn’t let you utilise your skills and expertises within nuclear physics, and you know that you and your family will have a much better lifestyle should you take this opportunity. Also you know that the job market is very bad at the moment and that it is likely that you will not be able to get a better job than this one for a long time. The problem is that you know that this company has a particularly bad track record with selling their nuclear arms to ‘failed states’ and that this particular contract you will be employed under is to sell the produced arms to a rather volatile nation already at war with a neighbouring country. You know if you do not take up this job that somebody else will (i.e. the arms will be produced either way). Do you take the job? Why? Is this decision more to do with your own personal well-being than any other concern? (There is no legal precedent to close the operations of this company)

A Fortuitous Meeting Between Kant and Hume

Something I wrote as an undergraduate for the hell of it. Some of you may appreciate it.



Immanuel Kant sits alone at a wooden table in a tavern at noon as he does everyday for lunch. The server has just brought him his meal with each item of food carefully separated from one another on the plate. He places his napkin on his lap and picks up his knife and fork. David Hume quietly sneaks up behind Kant with a large pint of beer in his hand. He grabs Kant’s shoulder with his free hand.

HUME: BAH!

Kant drops his fork and knife.

KANT: Why must you keep pestering me? I have a very strict schedule to maintain and I cannot keep making exceptions for your tomfoolery.

Hume sits down beside Kant in an empty chair at his table. He takes a big swig of beer.

HUME: Oh come on, Manny. You need to lighten up! Stop living your life as if the next moment were absolutely necessary!

KANT: That is easy for you to say; you do not even think we are able to have any kind of knowledge involving cause! The future, essentially, is without necessary determination.

HUME: Blah, blah, blah. You and cause. Why can’t you just let it go?

KANT: You’re the one who brought it up. I was happy in my ignorance when it came to the notion of necessary connection, but you were the one made me question its assumption.

HUME: Of course. It’s all my fault. But since you mentioned it, tell me again that nice little story that you call your proof for the notion of cause being prior to experience.

KANT: First, let me ask you a question. Are we not in possession of truths of pure mathematics and pure natural science?

HUME: I will concede that we believe we have knowledge, but I would question the assertion that we have certain knowledge.

KANT: But are not the propositions of geometry both certain and universal? Is not the physical system of Newton a beacon of truth for the natural sciences?

HUME: What about non-Euclidian geometry and Einsteinian physics?

KANT: What? What are you talking about?

HUME: Huh? What just happened? I kind of just blacked out.

KANT: Nevermind that, you were only speaking nonsense. As I was saying, we are in possession of truths that are universal and necessary. Now, how could that be if all our ideas have their basis in experience?

HUME: How else could we come about them? All we have are sense impressions and from those we abstract ideas, one of them being the notion of causation. It is only through the constant conjunction of one event after another that we may say that events similar to the first event cause events similar to the consequence.

KANT: But that would undermine all our science! Furthermore, if our minds were completely blank upon birth and we had no kind of mental framework to order the sense impressions, as you call them, then we would never be able to say we were experiencing the world. Therefore, we must have certain a priori conditions that make possible experience. If everything we claim to know was the result of mere sense impressions without any kind of a priori forms, then all we would experience is a chaotic play of sensations.

HUME: How do you propose to solve this dilemma?

KANT: Well, if our concepts taken from empirical cognition lack the necessity required of them then they must be a priori. Eine Minuten, bitte.

Kant reaches into his pocket and takes out a piece of paper that he unfolds to display two tables.

KANT: At the top, you can see a table of judgment, which is comprised of the basic judgments we employ in our logical systems. These judgments employ concepts that are of a necessary nature and are therefore a priori. This second table lists the pure categories of the understanding, which enable us to make the above judgments.

HUME: You make such nice charts, Manny.

KANT: Don’t patronize me! I put a lot of time, about ten years, in coming up with these charts! At least give me a chance.

HUME: I’m sorry. Please continue.

KANT: Thank you. Okay, I have metaphysically deduced the pure concepts by showing that they are a priori, but now I must show that they are necessary for experience. This is what I call my Transcendental Deduction and fleshes out the Copernican Revolution that is Transcendental Philosophy.

HUME: That’s a pretty pretentious to name one’s system, isn’t it?

KANT: It would be if the results did not justify such an appellation, but in this case, I believe it is warranted. Now, as I was saying, my Copernican Revolution answers the question, “How do subject conditions of thought (the categories) have objective validity?” You are quite right to say that the content of experience is given to us only through sensibility but this is not enough to achieve experience. Concepts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

HUME: Speaking of blind, there’s your sightless friend over there. Hey, Didi…

KANT: Don’t draw his attention over here! You know how I feel about the blind.

HUME: Are you sure? He’s a pretty cool guy once you…

KANT: Please! I just want to finish explaining my system and then eat my lunch in peace.

HUME: Okay, Okay.

KANT: So, intuitions need concepts so that the content may ordered and present itself to consciousness as experience. Objects are given to us through sensibility and therefore must be subsumed under the pure concepts. Thus, in order for objects as such to be determined as objects, the manifold of intuition must be combined according to necessary rules, which are the categories. Our subjective conditions of thought have objective validity because it is only through our pure concepts that objects are given to us as such in experience. Objects conform to our forms of thought and not the other way around.

HUME: But then aren’t you left with a total idealism where everything exists only in the mind? We could go around making extraordinary metaphysical claims without any kind of checks and balances on our speculations.

KANT: You would be right if it were not for two things. First, as I said earlier, concepts without intuitions are blind. We require sensations for the matter of our cognitions, but matter, in turn, requires the concepts, as functions of unity, as forms of cognition. Knowledge is only possible with the workings of both the faculties of sensibility and understanding in concerto. Second, we are only dealing with appearances and not things as they are in themselves. Our cognitions are supplied by an external source, but we can only know it as it appears to us. This puts a limit on what we can claim to know. So, yes, I am an idealist, but only insofar as I am considered a formal idealist, or a transcendental idealist.

HUME: So you’re a skeptic just like me? If only I would have known then I wouldn’t have given you such a hard time at the Princess’ party the other night.

KANT: Please don’t remind me of that awful experience. I’m still trying to convince everyone that the donkey and I are just friends.

HUME: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You should have seen your face when you woke up. Classic.

KANT: Well, at least I ended up with a top teaching post at an accredited university.

HUME: That’s cold…So cold…

KANT: Look, if you would actually read my Critique of Pure Reason you would see that our projects are not so different. I too believe that reason should be limited in order to make room for faith and that it is extremely important that we make absolutely clear what exactly our terms mean in our system. Ideas like God, the soul, and freedom are concepts that cannot be applied to any object of a possible experience. We cannot then say they constitute reality as we can with the concepts of the understanding. However, we may use them in a regulative fashion and help direct our experience. We may say they are pragmatic suppositions of pure reason.

HUME: That sounds a lot like my mitigated skepticism. I would agree with you that it’s not pragmatic to become a full skeptic like Pyrrho. Society would fall apart and we would be left with utter anarchy. I also believe that we cannot know everything in the world fully, or as you would say, know things as they are in themselves. I think we have similar projects!

KANT: I would agree, but I would stretch our knowledge further than your more minimal skeptical program. For instance, the notion of causation is included in my table of pure concepts. When applied to intuition we may say, without hesitation, that we know that event A caused the proceeding event B.

HUME: On that notion, I will never yield to your subtle reasoning. It is only my belief that event B will follow event A that gives me my concept of necessary connection. Induction, in terms of a certain result, is a lost cause.

KANT: Now who needs to be awoken from their dogmatic slumber?

HUME: On the contrary! I believe I am being much more thoroughly pragmatic and not dogmatic. We can still operate on the assumption that A causes B, but on no occasion can I say I know it for certain. I’m just trying to be a thorough going fallibalist.

KANT: I guess on this point we must agree to disagree. Now I have tried to give the best summation of my position as possible. What I really want to do now is enjoy my now cold meal.

HUME: Alright! Alright! I’ll leave you to your Bratwurst.

KANT: Thank you and good day.

Hume gets up and walks off behind Kant. He quietly turns around and sneaks backup behind Kant.

HUME: BOO!

Kant drops his wine glass in his lap, staining the white linen napkin.

KANT: HUME!

Kant shakes his pale white fists in the air and shoots an evil glare at Hume who is laughing so hard he falls to the floor. Kant turns back around, rings out his napkin, and starts to eat his lunch.