Question: Is one ethics more important than the others?

My Views:

Ethics is defined as a set of rules that are functional to a situation and to certain perception of a certain
moral and are supported by a complementary ideology [1]. There are three kinds of ethics in the
engineering world; viz. Virtue Ethics (engineer), Conceptual Ethics (engineering) and Material Ethics
(engineered).

Virtue ethics talks of how an engineer can be good in the moral sense. Conceptual ethics asks how
engineers can do good engineering. Material ethics talks of how engineering can make products that
contribute to the common good in a lively society. Being, doing and making are all bound up by the
statement – “the engineer engineers the engineered.” It is difficult separating the three of them from
each other or from the contexts in which they are used; but we can distinguish and associate a different
kind of ethic with each.

In the modern and the post-modern we cannot simply rely on these three ethics for categorization, and
have to orient ourselves and our views towards focal engineering. Focal engineering, as proposed by
Albert Borgmann [2], aims to bring in to the world devices, organisms, structures, systems and networks
that help to gather, focus and orient our lives. It includes the ways of knowing of the modernist and
traditional orientations and is based on knowing-how, what and why.

An engineer is the one who administers a design from its analysis to its implementation. Given that, he
is responsible for the work he does or the products he makes. He is expected to be honest and moral.
Virtue ethics characterizes an engineer based on the visualization (how it is or would be used) of the
product he is making or has made.

Conceptual ethics deals with engineering; i.e. how the product is being made and characterizes an
engineer based on impact that has while in the process of making. Material ethics deals with the final
product and how the end user can resolve the problems with that product and how that impacts the
society, in good or bad.

Taking the example of the first nuclear bomb made by USA, it can be said that none of the three ethics
can be separated from each other, or categorized as more important than the other. When the atom bomb
was being designed, it was for the betterment of sciences, as it was a technical breakthrough, being able
to use the energy from nuclear fission for any other purpose (Virtue ethics). When the atom bomb was
being manufactured during the World War II, it was been seen as a patriotic product, which was to be
used during the war if some country attacked the US (Conceptual ethics). When it was used in 1945
against Japan and dropped in the towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it again had a patriotic look-out to
the use of nuclear bomb, given the Pearl Harbor attacks by Japan (Material ethics).

[1] Unicist Research Institute, “Unicist ontology of ethical intelligence”: http://www.unicist.org/papers/ontology_ei_en.pdf

[2] Gene Moriarty, “3 Kinds of Ethics for three kinds of engineering”, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Fall 2001