Wade L. Robison

Hume on Personal Identity

Brain transplants are now medically feasible, but the whole head would probably have to be grafted at the same time, said David Hume, MD, chief of the department of surgery at the Medical College of Virginia, and a pioneer of organ transplants, during a press conference in Melbourne, Australia. The donor of the brain in such an operation, according to Dr. Hume, would, in fact, be the recipient as the mind would take over the body to which it was grafted. American Medical News 1

Management and ethical decision-making

Every human activity has its characteristic features, the general tendencies that are often difficult to perceive for those engaged in the activity. Such general tendencies are of special concern to those managing in such activities, whether one is coaching soccer or running a corporation, for only with knowledge of such tendencies can one engage in intelligent managing and, more important, intelligent moral action. For the activity of business is not value-neutral, and if one is to manage morally in business, one must come to understand its general tendencies insofar as they affect values.

Hume's Scepticism

Since Norman Kemp Smiths 1905 article on “The Naturalism of Hume,” there have been two competing theories on the general nature and import of Humes philosophy. One is that which Kemp Smith attributes to a long line of English and Scottish philosophers, including his target there, Thomas Hill Green. That theory is that “Hume has no set of positive beliefs, and merely develops to a sceptical conclusion the principles which he inherits from Locke and Berkeley” (S149). The conclusion, to quote the first of the long line, Thomas Reid, is that There is neither matter nor mind in the universe; nothing but impressions and ideas. What we call a body , is only a bundle of sensations; and what we call the mind , is only a bundle of thoughts, passions, and emotions, without any subject.

Rules of Skill: Ethics in Engineering

Rules of skill tell us how to achieve a particular end: to bake a cake, do such-and-such; to buttress a girder, do so-and-so. They are the tools of the trade, so to speak, for any profession. Surgeons learn how to cut out cancerous tissue; software engineers learn how to write code. There are also the norms of the profession, and when failing to follow the right rule of skill leads to significant harm, they carry ethical weight: a professional ought, ethically, to do such-and-such. They also serve in engineering in another way. The intellectual core of engineering is the solution to design problems, and any solution is a rule of skill: to solve this problem, do so-and-so. At a minimum such solutions should not cause unnecessary harm. That is a moral injunction, and so ethics enters into the core of engineering both through its tools, the standing rules, and through design solutions. Engineers are ethically obligated to use the right rule of skill and to provide design solutions that cause no unnecessary harm. We should like them to provide design solutions that produce more benefits than harms as well, but satisfying the minimal condition of causing no unnecessary harm is sufficient to show how ethics enters into the heart of engineering.

Design Problems and Ethics

The intellectual core of engineering is the solution to design problems. Those solutions are embodied in artifacts – software, a bridge, elevators, and so on. An engineer who so designed artifacts as to maximize the harm they bring into the world would be unethical. Ethical considerations are internal to engineering because the introduction of each engineering artifact will produce more or less harm, no matter what the solution may be.

One Consequence of Hume's Nominalism

i t y by i t s b e i n g i n d i f f e r e n t which p a r t i c u l a r among a set of r e l e v a n t l y s imilar p a r t i c u l a r s happens to come t o mind. Were Hume t o a c c e p t such a t h e o r y , he c o u l d claim t h a t o n e comes t o t h i n k t h e second c o n j u n c t b y t h i n k i n g the first and by its b e i n g i n d i f f e r e n t which p a r t i c u l a r c o n j u n c t i o n happens t o come t o mind. B u t , it

Monopoly With Sick Moral Strangers

Engelhardt believes that with the loss of firm foundations for moral theory, the only morally proper ground for public policy can be what we agree to when we meet as moral strangers. The result for health care, he thinks, is at best a multitier system with what is minimally adequate health care being contestable.

Ethical Presentations of Data: Tufte and the Morton-Thiokol Engineers

It seems commonly assumed that presenting data is value-neutral. The data is what it is, and it is for those assessing it to make judgments of value. So a chart of earnings just tells us what a company has earned. The chart does not tell us whether the earnings are a good or bad sign. That valuation is to be made by those looking at the chart and is independent of the chart itself.

The Everlasting Check: Hume on Miracles, by Alexander George

Weinberg’s central argument for these two criteria is Rawlsian. She believes that they would be chosen from behind the appropriate veil of ignorance. For example, if the chance of having Down Syndrome doubles from one percent to two percent when maternal age goes from thirty-six to thirty-nine, we should ask whether a person who did not know if she were a parent or a child would hold that the liberty to procreate during this three-year period is worth the additional risk of Down Syndrome [180]. To whom do these criteria apply? Who is a parent? Weinberg argues that ‘parental responsibility derives from our possession and high degree of control over our gametes, which are a form of hazardous material’ [60]. She draws analogies between having gametes and owning a pet lion or enriched uranium [60]. She thinks that her theory is open to one particularly serious objection. Her theory implies that sperm donors and egg donors are parents. She accepts this conclusion on the grounds that all other theories of parental responsibility have more serious problems. However, her discussion of these opposing theories is not as charitable as one might wish. This is an interesting and useful book, but many will fail to share its pessimistic frame of reference.

Citizens as Artifacts

A citizen is an artifact, a creature of a government, and no rights or any other legal or moral implications follow from the concept of a citizen itself. Only after the concept becomes a conception, after being given content through a government’s law-making powers, do any implications flow from it. So no natural rights are attached to being a citizen.