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While I agree with you that ethics is important and that it's not taught sufficiently in STEM, it needs to be taught from a systemic point of view. It's a lie t

While I agree with you that ethics is important and that it's not taught sufficiently in STEM, it needs to be taught from a systemic point of view. It's a lie to teach we can be ethical in our current system where the profit motive is a principal factor in our decisions. From my experience in STEM, the one ethics course I took was taught divorced from the political economy, which makes it sound like you can be ethical while trying to make profit. I think this is a fundamental inaccuracy.

claudiawerner 5y ago
The idea that you can act ethically while still making a profit dates back to the Rennaisance - and I wouldn't say it's necessarily wrong. The idea that massive profits combined with accumulation of capital totally disproportionate to actual labour input when luck plays only a small role is a newer idea (and a newer phenomenon), though there are ethicists who don't see a problem with that either. I think some 19th C. German philosophers correctly decided not to pursue a moral route when they criticized capital accumulation. I think the ethical problem, if there is one, can't lie with the simple fact of making profit (or the profit motive) - rather, it must lie either in how that profit came about, or how that profit is utilized. Most ethicists do not suppose an ethical problem with employment in itself, nor with reinvesting capital in itself.