[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/igg/jt0000/v12y2021i2p48-59.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

George the Chemist: A Dilemma About Sabotage, Disaster Prevention, and Justification of Duplicity

Author

Listed:
  • Sergei Talanker

    (Western Galilee College, Israel)

Abstract
The present paper is an attempt to answer Bernard Williams' classical dilemma of George the chemist, who is asked by a senior colleague to partake in a CBW research program. Both George and the colleague oppose the research, and George is advised not to publicize his attitude for George to get the job instead of someone more eager. On the one hand, George does not want to be involved in the research, yet on the other hand, he does not want to allow it to be completed faster. The author views George's potential actions as sabotage and argues that since the existing ethical codes demand putting safety ahead of the pressures of the employers, sabotage should not be out of the question. CBW endangers entire communities, and thus secretly sabotaging its research amounts to disaster prevention and should be considered a professional duty by consequentialists and deontologists alike, even if it may involve deception and furthermore deception about deception.

Suggested Citation

  • Sergei Talanker, 2021. "George the Chemist: A Dilemma About Sabotage, Disaster Prevention, and Justification of Duplicity," International Journal of Technoethics (IJT), IGI Global, vol. 12(2), pages 48-59, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:igg:jt0000:v:12:y:2021:i:2:p:48-59
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve.aspx?doi=10.4018/IJT.2021070104
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:igg:jt0000:v:12:y:2021:i:2:p:48-59. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journal Editor (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.igi-global.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.