Abstract
This chapter discusses ethics and professional responsibility in the computing field. Ethics is a branch of philosophy that deals with moral questions such as what is right or wrong, and computer ethics are a set of principles that guide the behaviour of individuals when using computer resources. Professional ethics are a code of conduct that governs how members of a profession deal with each other and with third parties, and we discuss Parnas’s contributions to professional responsibility as well as a brief discussion of the ACM and BCS code of ethics for their members.
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Rogerian psychotherapy (person-centred therapy) was developed by Carl Rodgers in the 1940s.
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Eliza Doolittle was a working-class character in Shaw’s play Pygmalion. She is taught to speak with an upper-class English accent.
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The concept of accountability for actions dates back thousands of years. The ancient Babylonians employed a code of laws c. 1750 B.C. known as ‘The Hammarabi Code’. This included a law that if a house collapsed and killed the owner then the builder of the house would be executed.
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However, it is unlikely that an individual programmer would be subject to litigation in the case of a flaw in a program causing damage or loss of life. Most software products are accompanied by a comprehensive disclaimer of responsibility for problems (rather than a guarantee of quality).
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Parnas applied this professional responsibility faithfully when he argued against the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), as he believed that the public (i.e. taxpayers) were being misled and that the goals of the project were not achievable.
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These are core values of most mature software companies and many companies today have a code of ethics that employees are required to adhere to.
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O’Regan, G. (2018). Ethics and Professional Responsibility. In: World of Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75844-2_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75844-2_16
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