What My Class Taught Me
by Joshua Katz
I presently teach two sections of Engineering Ethics, a course jointly offered at Texas A&M by the Philosophy and Engineering departments. Last Friday, I had my students spend the class time writing essays. To encourage them to think on their feet and to be able to work through a problem with little preparation, they were not aware of the subject until they came into class, although they knew that they would be writing essays. For their essays, I had them analyze a case I found in the CNN archives. This case involved a Grumman engineer who was arrested for selling American defense technology to the governments of eight countries. The technology was a special propulsion system for bombers that allows the plane to not be detected by radar. I gave a general assignment, having them write about the ethical issues raised. I was appalled, although not entirely shocked, by what they wrote. Many students equated this engineer’s actions with murder, for various reasons. One rationale offered was that the governments of the other countries might use this technology to bomb the United States, causing the loss of American lives. True enough, but where were the expressions of outrage over the American government designing these planes, to be used in bombing innocent people in other countries? This is Texas A&M – these students are not hippy anti-war types, to say the least. Although it is correct that dropping bombs on people is murder, I see something obscene in this fact being recognized by war supporters, but only in reference to other nations. When the United States performs these actions, they are "humanitarian" or "liberating." If the war supporters were convinced that such actions are not murder, they would be incorrect. If they understand that they are murder and support them anyway, what exactly are they? Are they still human? Another line of reasoning, equally frightening, claimed that the potential murder victims are not innocent civilians, but instead American pilots. You see, a nation with this technology can reasonably be expected to be able to design radar systems to get around it. Therefore, the militaries of those nations will be able to detect the American bombers, and shoot them down, killing the pilots. The engineer, therefore, has caused the deaths of the pilots. But is this correct? Does the engineer who allows another country to detect the presence of a bomber cause the death of the pilot? Why not hold those who order him to fly over another country responsible for his death? Why, indeed, mourn the fact that his plane was shot down at all? He was on his way to deliver death to innocent civilians in other countries. Presumably, in the first argument above, it was assumed that bombers lacking good stealth technology would be shot down before they could kill American civilians, and this was regarded, quite correctly, as a good thing. Yet now it becomes a bad thing for a bomber to be shot down before delivering death. Most of these students professed a preference for utilitarianism over other moral theories discussed in class earlier this semester, yet now it seems there are circumstances in which they favor the life of one pilot – who most assuredly was destined to become a murderer, if he had not been shot down – over those of hundreds or thousands of civilians, many of them non-murderers. The contradiction is glaring. Worse yet was the chillingly cavalier language in which this idea was expressed. Students referred in a casual way to war, writing such things as "When the United States decides to go to war and attack another country, our pilots will be at risk of being shot down." Franklin Roosevelt had to engineer an attack on Pearl Harbor; now it seems the American people are perfectly willing to accept war as a routine option. I noticed, though, that no student was willing to write "When the American government decides to shower death upon the inhabitants of another country for political reasons, nothing can be allowed to stand in their way." Not all essays, of course, centered on murder. Others argued, presumably from utilitarian assumptions, that this action was bad simply because it reduced the military advantage of the United States. We can only assume, then, that the possession of a single weapon by the government of another country, or a one-dollar reduction in taxation, are bad for similar reasons. Little can be said of this line of reasoning, although shades of Germans in brown shirts cannot be avoided. Interestingly, some essays considered issues related to taxation. Namely, through taxation, "we all have partial ownership of these designs." Therefore, it is aggression against each one of us to sell these plans, since our permission has not been asked. Very well, but then I certainly should be able to see these plans that I own part of, correct? More importantly, if I am to have veto power over their sale, do I not also have veto power over their use? If I am the owner of the plans, I decree that they not be used to cause innocent deaths in other countries. I fail to see why sale of the plans should differ in this way from use; if all owners have veto power over sales, then each owner has veto power over use too. I did not notice many writers embracing this conclusion, though. This partial ownership argument is exceedingly strange. I do not have ownership over my actual property, yet I have partial ownership over a non-tangible design I had no part in planning, no choice in funding, and little knowledge of at all. This is a quite unusual situation, I think. It ignores the common-sense fact that owners generally have a choice in what they own. I only own things because I make them or acquire them; I would be quite surprised at being forced to own something. If someone attempted to force me to own something, he would find that it doesn’t work. I can simply walk away, and any force he uses to prevent that will not accomplish his goal of giving me ownership of the property. He can beat my head into the ground, stick a gun in my ribs, and none of that will give me the property. Yet this writer wants to make me own an airplane design by simple fiat. Conclusion March 13, 2006 Joshua Katz [send him mail] is a graduate student in philosophy at Texas A&M. He has studied philosophy of mind, logic, and epistemology of economics from an Austrian perspective. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, and is presently looking for work after the academic term. He enjoys a glass of port and a wedge of Brie as a way to start his day. Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com |
Besides
poor writing skills, today’s students have poor logical thinking
skills. While I am quite sure that my students can figure out technical
problems in their respective engineering fields quite well, their
poor reasoning skills become apparent when they turn to any larger
field, such as ethics or politics. I believe that they were born
with better ability to reason in these fields than they now have,
and that the government did a fantastic job of taking this ability
away from them through government schooling. Three years at Texas
A&M, the only university in the country with its own military
force, did not hurt.