Before you come to class...

1. Visit the link to the National Institute for Engineering Ethics. Look at the study guide and download the script for the video, "Incident at Morales." You want to have some idea of what happens in the video before you watch it.
2. Read the module. Pay special attention to the section on "What you need to know." Here you will read summaries of three senses of moral responsibility: blame responsibility, sharing responsibility, and responsibility as a virtue. Your goal here is not to understand everything you read but to have a general sense of the nature of moral responsibility, the structure of the responsibility frameworks you will be using in this module, and the difference between moral and legal responsibility. Having this background will get you ready to learn about moral responsibility by actually practicing it.
3. Come to class ready to watch the video and start preparing for your part in the public hearing. It is essential that you attend all four of these classes. Missing out on a class will create a significant gap in your knowledge about and understanding of moral responsibility.

Reactive Senses:

1. Causal Responsibility refers to prior events (called causes) which produce or prevent subsequent events (called effects). Cheap, inacurate sensors (cause) required that Manual be present on the scene (effect) to monitor the high temperatures and pressures required to correctly prepare Phaust's paint stripper.
2. Role Responsibility delineates the obligations individuals create when they commit to a social or professional role. When Fred became an engineer he committed to holding paramount the health, safety and welfare of the public. (See NSPE code of ethics)
3. Capacity Responsibility sets forth those conditions under which someone can be praised or blamed for their actions. Praise and blame associate an agent with an action. Excuses are based on means for separating or disassociating an agent from their actions. Capacity responsibility helps us determine whether there are any legitimate excuses available for those who would disassociate themselves from untoward, harm-causing actions.
4. Blame Responsibility determines when we can legitimately praise or blame individuals for their actions.

Blame Responsibility Framework: To hold Fred responsible for the accident at Morales we need to...

1. Specify his role responsibilities and determine whether he carried them out
2. Identify situation-based factors that limited his ability to execute his role responsibilities (These are factors that compel our actions or contribute to our ignorance of crucial factions about the situation.)
3. Determine if there is any moral fault present in the situation. For example, did Fred act on the basis of wrongful intentions (Did he intend to harm Manuel by sabotaging the plant?), fail to exercise due care, exhibit negligence or recklessness?
4. If Fred (a) failed to carry out any of his role responsibilities, (b) this failure contributed to the accident, and (c) Fred can offer no morally legitimate excuse to get himself off the hook, then Fred is blameworthy.

Proactive Sense 1: Sharing Responsibility

1. Sharing Responsibility identifies situations in which we can legitimately feel pride, shame, or responsibility for actions performed by others. For example, we legitimately feel pride in what our parents did before we were born.
2. We feel pride for what members of our families or groups have done because our relations to these individuals are identity-conferring relations. Because my identity overlaps with them, I also identify myself with what they have done. As you work in teams and groups, you will feel pride in the group's accomplishments and shame in their failures even if you do not directly contribute to these.
3. We should feel pride and shame for what others have done if we share with them certain causally efficacious beliefs. Causally efficacious beliefs are unusually strong. If I share with others the beliefs that cause them to act in such a way in a given situation, then it is possible to imagine myself doing the same thing in a similar kind of situation. My colleague acts on his racist beliefs. Because I share these and because they are unusually strong, I would have acted on these racist beliefs had I been able to do so. The test is that the beliefs are strong enough that I can imagine a contrary-to-fact situation where they would have led me to do the same thing.
4. When we stand in relations of solidarity to others, then we also share pride, shame, and responsibility for the actions of these others.
5. According to Larry May in the Socially Responsive Self, solidarity is signified by one or more of the following: (a) conscious group identification, (b) bonds of sentiment, (c) interest in the group's well-being, (d) shared values and beliefs, (e) readiness to show moral support.
6. The last characteristic of solidarity is most important for sharing responsibility. Responsibility, as we have seen, requires a moral response to what is morally relevant in the situation. But the response in shared responsibility is different from that in blame responsibility. In the latter, we respond to attributions of praise or blame, often by offering excuses or providing explanations. In shared responsibility, we respond by identifying ourselves with the actions of others (under the above conditions) and offer moral support. Part of your work in this module is to determine what constitutes moral support in the various contexts offered by the Incident of Morales.

Proactive Sense 2: Responsibility as a Virtue

1. Virtues are excellences of the character which are revealed by our actions, perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes. Along these lines, responsibility as a virtue requires that we reformulate responsibility from its reactive, minimalist sense (where it derives much of its content from legal responsibility) to responsibility as an excellence of character.
2. Aristotle situates virtues as means between extremes of excess and defect. Can you think of examples of too much responsibility? (Does Fred try to take on too much responsibility in certain situations?) Can you think of anyone who exhibits too little responsibility. (Does Fred take on too little responsibility or shift responsibility to others?) For Aristotle, we can have too much or too little of a good thing. From the "too much" we derive vices of excess. from the"too little" we derive the vices of defect.
3. Virtues are more than just modes of reasoning and thinking. They also consist of emotions that clue us into aspects of the situation before us that are morally salient and, therefore, worthy of our notice and response. Two emotions important for responsibility are care and compassion. Care clues us into aspects of our situation that could harm those who depend on our actions and vigilance. Do Wally and Fred pay sufficient attention to the early batch leakages in the Morales plant? If not, does this stem from a lack of care ("Let operations handle it") and a lack of compassion ("Manuel can take care of himself")? Care and compassion help to sensitize us to what is morally salient in the situation at hand. They also motivate us to act responsibility on the basis of this sensitivity.
4. Responsibility as a virtue manifests itself in a willingness to pick up where others have left off. After the Bhopal disaster, a worker was asked why, when he saw a cut-off valve open, he didn't immediately close it as safety procedures required. His response was that shutting off the value was not a part of his job but, instead, the job of those working the next shift. This restriction of responsibility to what is one's job creates responsibility gaps through which accidents and other harms rise to the surface. The worker's lack of action may not constitute moral fault but it surely signifies lack of responsibility as a virtue because it indicates a deficiency of care and compassion. Those who practice responsibility as a virtue or excellence move quickly to fill responsibility gaps left by others even if these tasks are not a part of their own role responsibilities strictly defined. Escaping blame requires narrowing the range of one's role responsibilities while practicing responsibility as a virtue often requires effectively expanding it.
5. Finally, responsibility as an excellence requires extending the range of knowledge and control one exercises over a situation. Preventing accidents requires collecting knowledge about a system even after it has left the design and manufacturing stages and has entered its operational life. Responsibility requires that we search out and correct conditions that could, under the right circumstances, produce harmful accidents. Moreover, responsibility is a function of power and control. Extending these and directing them toward the good are clear signs of responsibility as a virtue.

Reponsibility as Virtue

• Incident at Morales provides us a look into a fictionalized disaster. But, if one looks carefully, it also shows opportunities for the exercise of responsibility as a virtue. The following table will help you to identify these "responsibility opportunities" and allow you to imagine counbter-factuals where had individuals acted otherwise the "incident" could have been avoided and moral value could have been realized.

In this module, you will...

1. apply and integrate the concept of moral repsonsibility (blame responsibility, sharing responsibility, responsibility as a virtue) to situations that arise in the video, "Incident at Morales."
2. learn the basic facts, character profiles, and decision-situations portrayed in the video, "Incident at Morales." You will see the video in class and examine the script and Study Guide at the NIEE website.
3. work in groups to develop and play a stakeholder role in a fictional public hearing. Your group's specific tasks are outlined below in one of the group profiles provided. In general, you will prepare a statement advancing your group's interests and points of view. The responsibility frameworks will help you anticipate questions, prepare responses, and defend your role against those in other roles who may try to shift the blame your way. But most important, this module provides tools to help you go beyond the reactive, blame standpoint.
4. participate in a mock public hearing by playing out your group's assigned role.
5. work with the other groups to debrief on this activity. The public hearing will generate a lot of information, ideas, and positions. Debriefing will help you to structure and summarize this material. The objective here is to learn by doing. But to truly learn from what you have done, you need to reflect carefully.

Module Time Line

1. Module Preparation Activities: Read module and visit niee.org to get general orientation to "Incident at Morales"
2. Class One: Watch Video. Receive group role. Begin preparing your group role.
3. Class Two: Work within your group on preparing your group's statement, anticipating questions, and developing responses.
4. Class Three: Participate in the Public Hearing. The group representing the Mexican Commission will convene the public hearing, listen to the group's statements, ask questions, and prepare a brief presentation on the Commission's findings
5. Class four: Class will debrief on the previous class's public hearing. This will begin with the Commission's findings

Mexican Government Commission to Investigate Accident

1. Develop a set of responsibility questions for each Incident at Morales stakeholder
2. Open the Public Hearing. Conduct the hearing so that each group has its say.
3. Debrief the following day by giving a short report on the findings of your group into the accident.

Workers at the Morales Plant

1. Manuel, your plant manager, has just died. You and your co-workers are concerned about the safety of this new plant. Can you think of any other issues that may be of concern here?
2. Develop a statement that summarizes your interests, concerns, and rights. Are these being addressed by those at Phaust and the parent company in France?
3. The Mexican Commission established to investigate this "incident" will ask you questions to help determine what cause it and who is to blame. What do you think some of these questions will be? How should you respond to them? Who do you think is to blame for the incident and what should be done in response?

Designing Engineer Standpoint: Fred

1. Examine Fred's actions and participation from the standpoint of the three responsibilty frameworks mentioned above.
2. Develop a two minute position paper summarizing Fred's interests, concerns, and rights.
3. Anticipate questions that the Commission might raise about Fred's position and develop proactive and effective responses..
4. Be sure to use the three responsibility frameworks. Is Fred to blame for what happened? In what way? What can professional societies do to provide moral support to members in difficult situations? How can interested parties provide moral support? Finally, what opportunities arose in the video practicing moral responsibility as a virtue? (Think about what an exemplary engineer would have done differently.)

Phaust Management: Wally and Chuck

1. Chuck and Walley made several decisions reponding to the parent company's budget cuts that placed Fred under tight constraints. Identify these decisions, determine whether there were viable alternatives, and decide whether to justify, excuse,or explain your decisions.
2. Develop a two minute position paper that you will present to the commission.
3. Anticipate Commission questions into your responsibility and develop effective responses to possible attempts by other groups to shift the blame your way.

Top Level Management: Parent French Company

1. You represent the French owners who have recently required Phaust Chemical. You have recently shifted funds from Phaust operations to finance further mergers and acquisitions for your company.
2. What are your supervisory responsibilities in relation to Phaust?
3. Develop a preliminary two minute presentation summarizing your position and interests.
4. Anticipate likely commission questions along with possible attempts by other groups to shift the blame your way.

Professional Society Standpoint

1. You represent the professional engineering society to which Fred belongs.
2. Develop a two minute presentation that outlines your group's interests and position.
3. Anticipate possible Commission questions, develop responses, and anticipate attempts by other groups to shift the blame your way.
4. Respond to whether your professional society should extend moral support to engineers in difficult positions like Fred's. Should they clarify code provisions? Provide legal support and counseling? Make available a professional/ethical support hotline?

Listen to the findings of the Mexican Government Commision. Write a short essay responding to the following questions. Be prepared to read parts of your essay to your professor and to your classmates.

1. Do you agree with the Commissions findings? Why or why not? Be sure to frame your arguments in terms of the responsibility frameworks provided above.
2. Were there any opportunities to offer Fred moral support by those who shared responsibility with him? What were these opportunities. How, in general, can professional societies support their members when they find themselves in ethically difficult situations?
3. What opportunities arise for exercising resonsibility as an excellence? Which were taken advantage of? Which were lost?
4. Finally, quickly list themes and issues that were left out of the public hearing that should have been included?

References

1. F. H. Bradley (1962) Ethical Studies, Essay I. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
2. Herbert Fingarette. (1967) On Responsibility. New York: Basic Books, INC: 3-16.
3. Larry May (1992) Sharing Responsibility. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
4. Larry May (1996) The Socially Responsive Self: Social Theory and Professional Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 28-46.
5. Michael Pritchard (2006) Professional Integrity: Thinking Ethically. Lawrence,KS: University of Kansas Press.
6. Lawrence Blum (1994) Moral Perception and Particularity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press: 30-61
7. Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics, Book 3, Chapters 1-3.
8. Edmund L. Pincoffs (1986) Quandaries and Virtues: Against Reductivism in Ethics. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.
9. W.H. Walsh (1970) "Pride, Shame and Responsibility," The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol 20, no 78, January 1970: 1-13.
10. Albert Flores and Deborah G. Johnson (1983) "Collective Responsibility and Professional Roles" in Ethics April 1983: 537-545.