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engineering ethics accepting gifts and amenities department of philosophy and division of mechanical engineering texas a&m university nsf grant number dir-9012252 accepting presents and amenities instructor's guide introduction to the case one of the most challenging and interesting areas of moral reasoning involves deciding where to draw the line between permissible and impermissible actions. even if we know that some actions are clearly right and others are clearly wrong, there may be gray areas where making decisions is difficult. deciding when to accept a gift or amenity illustrates this challenge. in this case, developed from the experiences of a chemical engineer, the students will be asked to decide where they would draw the line between morally permissible and impermissible acts and to justify their decisions. students will be asked to decide,Windows 7 Starter Product Key, in other words, how they would distinguish the perfectly proper acceptance of a business favor from an improper acceptance of a bribe. the topic of bribery has a long history, and bribery seems to be an area in which our moral views are changing. for this reason, a short history lesson may be instructive. john t. noonan, a lawyer and historian of moral ideas, traces the history of thought on bribery from 3000 b.c. to the present. he finds that moral concepts change: "moral concepts found enshrined in traditions do not stay the same. they undergo transformation. they are subject to investigation and criticism. they expand, shrink, or disappear."1 this thesis can be illustrated by comparing the history of the concept of bribery with the history of other moral ideas. until about the sixteenth century, it was considered wrong to take interest on money, and "usury" was a serious sin. it still is in islamic countries, which have simply preserved the old prohibition. due to a number of circumstances which we cannot discuss here, the prohibition of taking interest on money was lifted in the west. today, the term "usury" is reserved for the extraction of excessive interest. slavery and torture were widely accepted in western society until the eighteenth century, and now both are condemned as heinous evils. what is the trend with regard to the concept of bribery? is the idea likely to remain vigorous and even expand its dominance, so that more and more types of behavior will be condemned as contrary to the anti-bribery ethic? or is it likely to shrink and wither as a moral concept? is bribery becoming increasingly tolerated (thus following the pattern of usury), or is it increasingly frowned upon and prohibited, as has been the case with slavery and torture? noonan believes that the evidence shows that bribery is increasingly viewed with intolerance throughout the world. in fact, in virtually every country in the world bribery is a shameful act. those who accept bribes do not speak publicly of their bribes anywhere. noonan claims that only the westerner supposes that a modern asian or african society does not regard the act of bribery as shameful in the way westerners regard it.2 there are good moral reasons for this increasing intolerance, especially as the capitalist system becomes more widely accepted: 1. bribery corrupts the capitalist economic system. the capitalist system is based on competition in an open and free market, where people tend to buy the best product at the best price. bribery corrupts the free-market mechanism by getting people to make purchases that do not reward the most efficient producer. 2. bribery is a sellout to the rich. in any situation ruled only by money,office 2007 Professional Plus keygen, the deeper pocket will prevail. if bribery were universally practiced,windows 7 home basic serial, expert testimony, justice in the courts, and everything else would be up for sale to the highest bidder. 3. bribery produces cynicism and a general distrust of institutions. it destroys people's trust in the integrity of professional services, of government and the courts,office Standard 2010 x64, of law enforcement, religion, and anything it touches. there is good evidence that societies which allow bribery tend to have social unrest and perhaps revolutions. 4. bribery treats people as commodities whose honor can be bought and sold. it thus tends to degrade the respect we owe to other human beings. the method of casuistry even if we agree that bribery is wrong, there is still a problem of determining what is and isn't a bribe and when an action is close enough to a bribe to be morally out of bounds. where, in other words, do we draw the line? one way of dealing with this question is through the method of casuistry. this method has a long history, going back to classical times, but it has recently been revived in medical ethics. it also has a background in common law. in common law a judge decides a case by comparing it with the way previous judges have decided similar cases in the past. her reasoning involves citing analogies and disanalogies between past cases and the present one. if the analogies seem more important than the disanalogies, she decides the case in a way similar to the way the earlier judge decided the case. if the disanalogies seem to be more important than the analogies, she decides the case in a different way. the method of casuistry is similar to the method used by the board of ethical review of the national society of professional engineers when they decide cases involving questions of ethical and professional propriety. here the method of comparing controversial cases with previous decisions is also used. how does this method work? in applying a moral principle, you will often find some circumstances in which it clearly applies, borderline cases in which the application is controversial, and other cases where it clearly does not apply. let's call the cases where the principle clearly does or does not apply paradigm cases and the cases where its application is not clear problematic cases. let us consider an example. most people would probably agree to a moral rule which could be stated in the following form: "people should not steal (or commit theft)." breaking into a store at night and taking several thousand dollars worth of merchandise would be a clear violation of the rule. we could say the same thing of shoplifting, or "borrowing" a friend's car and failing to return it, or taking a bicycle that someone had forgotten to lock. by contrast, it would seem peculiar to say that picking up a quarter on the street is an instance of theft. the same would go for failing to return a sheet of paper or a paper clip someone had given to you. we probably would not say that an engineer-manager was guilty of theft because he used some management techniques that he had developed while working for his old employer. some situations, however,microsoft office Professional Plus 2007 activation, are more problematic. it is not always easy to determine whether a particular action should count as "stealing" (or "theft"). what would we say about an engineer who helped to develop a new chemical process at company a and then moved to company b, where she used some of the same ideas, but applied them in a very different way to a different process? what would we say about an engineer who developed a computer program on company time for his company, and then patented a considerably improved version under his own name? what about borrowing a book from a friend, forgetting about it and then deciding not to return it because the friend has left town? examples such as this could be arranged in a series, beginning with clear examples of "stealing" (or "theft"), then moving into more problematic examples, and finally moving to examples which we would not consider to be instances of "stealing" (or "theft") at all. such a series might look like this: moral rule: "people should not steal (or commit theft)."