ENGR 482-930
Short Paper 2
Word Count: 925
The first line of NSPE code section II.1.a reads “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.” Engineers should primarily be concerned with the safety and welfare of the public. Virtue ethics states that a person should make choices that reinforce good character and strive to become a virtuous person because people of good character will ultimately be people who make good decisions. A virtue ethics perspective would endorse the above statement, as engineers of good moral character should always be concerned with the welfare of the public whom they are serving.
Aristotle’s virtues approach was that a virtuous person is someone who has ideal character …show more content…
Intellectual virtue is the result of learning while moral virtue comes as the result of a combination of knowledge, habit, and practice. Human reason is divided into scientific and rationally calculating in which the best state of each is its virtues of thought. Wisdom and intelligence are examples of virtues of human thought. Because of the ultimate realization of one’s rational capacities, the intellectual virtues needed to be contemplated. For Aristotle, the mean was a method of achieving moral virtue between the extremes of excess and deficiency. For example, courage is a mean between feelings of fear and confidence. Not all actions however are a means towards obtaining happiness, while happiness is always an end in itself. It is more like the ultimate value of life measuring how well one has lived up to its full potential as a human …show more content…
As Harris noted “actions are wrong if they violate the moral agency of individuals.” For example, if one takes bribes from a client, he is violating moral virtues as he is just promoting self-interest. Even though it is hard to fight pleasure gained through bribing, one should focus on the good of clients and the wider public. An engineer without integrity or character can directly affect the safety, health, and welfare of the public. Temperance should be used to gain honesty, integrity, and justice among the pubic.
A virtue ethics approach to engineering ethics provides useful insights as well as has a great potential to be able to deal with complex situations. It is necessary for engineers to be virtuous and possess certain attributes in order to be good engineers. Over the course of my career, I believe the virtues that I gained through my studies at Texas A&M University will promote the welfare of the public and prevent them from