Midterm 2 Flashcards
What is Michael Davis’s definition of Ethics?
A set of morally permissible standards of a group that each member of the group (at his/her rational best) wants every other member to follow even if their doing so would mean that he/she must do the same.
What is Michael Bayles consensus view of a profession?
Any profession: -Requires extensive training. -Involves significant intellectual effort. -Provides an important service to society Most professions: -Certification of licensing. -Organization of members. -Autonomy in one's work.
What is the Good Works Project?
It is a large research study at the Harvard Graduate School of Education led by Wendy Fischman. It examines how young people deal with ethical problems in their professions.
What is the Good Works Project’s definition of a Profession?
This is the LEAST RESTRICTIVE definition of profession:
Any career in which the worker is awarded a degree of AUTONOMY in return for services to the public that are performed at a HIGH LEVEL. It is within the power of the individual worker to behave like a professional, should they choose to do so.
What are John Kultgen’s 13 core attributes of a profession?
MOST RESTRICTIVE definition of profession.
1-Involves a skill based on a theoretical foundation.
2-Requires extensive education.
3-Requires passing an exam.
4-Is organized and represented by one or more professional organizations.
5-Adheres to a code of conduct.
6-Provides altruistic (selfless concern for the well-being of others) service.
7-Requires members to assume responsibility for the affairs of others.
8-Is indispensable for the public good.
9-Members are licensed, so their work is sanctioned by the community.
10-Members are independent practitioners, serving individual clients.
11-Members have a fiduciary (involving trust) relationship with their clients.
12-Members do their best to serve their clients impartially without regard to any special relationship
13-Members are compensated by fees or fixed charges.
4 5 6 8 10 11
TEERoCcAs RIp LIp FrIC
Theoretical Education Exam Represented organization Code conduct Altruistic service
Responsibility
Indispensible public
Licensed
Independent practitioner
Fiduciary relationship
Impartially
Compensated
What is Michael Davis’s definition of profession, and how is it different from other definitions?
A profession is a number of individuals in the same occupation VOLUNTARILY organized to earn a living by openly serving a certain MORAL IDEAL in a MORALLY PERMISSIBLE way beyond what law, market and morality would otherwise require.
This is different than other definitions because “profession” is defined in terms of moral issues.
What is the definition of “morally permissible”?
Something that is either explicitly moral or morally neutral.
What is Michael Davis’s definition of “moral ideal”?
A moral ideal is a state off affairs that, though not morally required, everyone (every rational person at his/her rational best) wants everyone else to approach, all else being equal. Everyone wants that so much that they are wiling to reward, assist, or at least praise such conduct if that is the price for others to do the same.
Anyone violating the moral is disproved of, criticized, and discouraged from such behavior.
What are Michael Davis’s necessary requirements of a profession? Do these requirements need to be enforced?
“Profession” cannot be defined without (something like) a code of ethics.
“Professionalism” cannot be taught without teaching the code.
“Professions” cannot be understood without understanding them as bound by such a code.
Without a code of ethics, there are no professions, just honest occupations, and trade associations.
Davis’s definition of profession does NOT require the code of ethics to be enforced.
According to Michael Davis, what does professional put first?
A professional puts profession first. Meaning that if a conflict arises between the professionals code of ethics, and the policy of an employer, or even the law, the professionals code must take precedence.
i.e. A journalist going to jail instead of revealing their sources, or a doctor refusing to violate doctor-patient privilege in a country that does not recognize it.
What are some examples of enforced and non-enforced codes of ethics?
Enforced: Parts of the code of ethics for law and medicine are enforced by laws, and professional organizations. (i.e. You can lose your license to practice, or go to jail).
Non-enforced: Wedding vows, the Hippocratic Oath and the Oath of office taken by certain government officials. These are all forms of a code of ethics meant to influence peoples behavior, but none of the conditions or declarations are directly enforced in any way.
What are the two best known computing codes of ethics in the US?
The ACM/IEEE Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice.
The ACM Code of Ethics.
Who popularized the definition of privacy as “the right to be left alone”?
Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren popularized the definition of privacy as the “right to be left alone”, or “right to be free from intrusion”.
In their 1890 article for the Harvard Law Review, they stated that advancing technology (newspapers and instant photography) is increasingly invading people’s private and domestic lives, leading to the prediction that “what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house tops.”
What is the definition of a “right”?
A right is a liberty or entitlement owed to a person simply because he or she is a person, and the obligation to respect the rights of others.
What is meant by the “right to be left alone”?
Freedom from intrusion–a conception of privacy that focuses on the grievance felt by the harmed party and on actions that directly make them feel harassed, embarrassed, or exposed.
What is meant by “privacy as concealment”, and who is it’s main proponent?
“Privacy as concealment” asserts that there is no fundamental right to privacy, and that people are interested in privacy only because the want to conceal their own wrongdoing, or prevent embarrassment.
Judge Richard Posner.
“As a social good, I think privacy is greatly overrated because privacy basically means concealment. People conceal things in order to fool other people about them. They want to appear healthier than they are, smarter, more honest and so forth. It is what economists call a superior good; the demand for it rises as people become wealthier. This is because it has instrumental value, you want to control information about yourself; that will enable you to make advantageous transactions personally. professionally, and commercially with other people.”
Who thinks privacy will become obsolete and why? (3 reasons)
Judge Richard Posner argues that in the future, modern notions of privacy will be obsolete. His argument has 3 parts:
1- Pre-modern peoples (living in small villages and tribal cultures) had no real ability to conceal anything about themselves, and therefore no privacy. It is perfectly natural for people to live with little or no privacy.
2- Contemporary people are willing to give up their private information, and become transparent in return for very small financial incentives or improvements in convenience. This proves that we do not value individual privacy.
3- Concealment is most useful to criminals, and least useful to honest people. Therefore privacy is mostly a social harm that reduces safety, not a social good.
List the 5 major Ethical theories and briefly summarize they approach an ethical dilemma. (quick Chapter 1 review)
Kantian: Can I will that the action taken be made in to universal law?
Utilitarian: What’s going to produce the best consequence/the greatest good for the greatest number of people?
The Ethics of Care: Is this action encouraging, or detracting from, one-caring?
Contractarian: Would self interest support entering into this type of contract or cooperative enterprise?
Virtue Ethics: What does the action say about the character of the individual and their relationship to their community?
What is the “traditional method” of defining privacy?
The traditional method of defining privacy is taking a “top-down” approach by defining privacy’s essence or core characteristics.
What is the “bottom-up” approach to defining privacy? Who created this definition and why?
The “bottom-up” approach starts with a list of the common kinds of privacy problems, as to avoid an endless debate of what is or is not “privacy”. With a list of specific problems, it is easier to try and solve each one individually. It also provides technology makers with a checklist of common privacy problems.
Daniel Solove created this approach to avoid the “endless disputes over what falls inside or outside the domain of privacy.” and to assist in decision making.
What are the 4 main categories of the Taxonomy of Privacy Problems, with some examples of each? Who created them?
1-Information Collection: Surveillance, Interrogation.
2-Information Processing: Aggregation, Identification, exclusion.
3- Information Dissemination: Blackmail, Distortion, Disclosure.
4- Invasion: Intrusion, Decisional Interference.
Daniel Solove
How are the major privacy ideas proposed in Chapter 3 different from a typical dictionary entry?
The three major dictionary definitions of contradict each other and lead to different conclusions. They are also not broad enough to capture every problem we think of as a privacy problem.
Define and give an example of Aggregation as a privacy problem.
Aggregation: Collecting many small pieces of information about a person and linking them together to create new information.
The website PleaseRobMe.com collected freely available information from the internet and social media status updates (Facebook, Twitter etc.) and aggregated it all together to find people’s home address’s and when they will not be home. Thus making them vulnerable to burglary.
