4.3) Deontological and Rights Ethics Perspective

This post will detail the actions that I believe Emmet should make when acting under Deontological Ethics, and under Rights Ethics

Kant's Deontological Ethics is a framework of ethics which stems from following one's moral honor code with a set of rules. In Kant's Categorical Imperative, the three main rules are:
  1. "Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law."
  2. "Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end."
  3. "Every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in a universal kingdom of ends."

In this situation Emmet should act as he thinks everyone else would/should according to the first rule. This pretty clearly puts him in the position of moving to report the issue, and wait on actually deploying the software. Were Emmet on a flight, it is apparent he would not be overjoyed if said flight were to crash due to the oversight of a contractor (exactly as happens in Scenario B). Thus Emmet should push for letting the FAA know, and not worry about the FAA cracking down on employees resulting in possible loss of jobs. Loss of lives though is far worse than loss of jobs. This pretty clearly transitions to the second categorical imperative: if BiffCo were to phase out their product prematurely they would be treating all possible customers of the erroneous system as a means for keeping their own company afloat by later sneaking in a bug-fix. This again falls outside of the imperative, so we can again conclude that it would be better to be honest and upfront with the FAA with the state of the software. With this we can conclude that Emmet should push to let the FAA know about the bug.

Rights Ethics: Do not violate the rights of others (John Locke, Thomas Jefferson)

Under rights ethics, if BiffCo were to prematurely push their product to the FAA, this could very well result in wrongful deaths as in Scenario B. This would violate the rather basic human right to life. Now, we have to wonder, does being honest with the FAA violate any individual's rights? No, although the contract may be lost along with jobs, this does not violate any rights. No individual has the right to permanent employment at a company, and no company has an entitlement to any specific contract. Additionally, job and contract loss would definitely happen with an accident in the case where BiffCo does not disclose the bug, but in the situation where BiffCo does, it is less likely (even with fears of the FAA cracking down), as searching for a whole new contractor is not especially cost effective. In this case as well then, Emmet should push to let the FAA know about the bug.

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