Abstract
Though this paper is mostly about a sense of “profession” common in much of the West, it explains how the term might apply in any country (especially how the profession of engineering differs from the function, discipline, and occupation of engineering). To do that, I have to explain the connection between “profession” (in my preferred sense) and another hard-to-translate term, “code of ethics” (in the sense it has in the expression “code of engineering ethics”). To understand engineering (or any other occupation) as a profession is to adopt a certain conception of it, one neither old nor (yet) universal. With that conception in hand, it should be possible for social science to answer the question posed in the title.
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Notes
I examine this history in some detail in the first two chapters of my Thinking like an Engineer (Davis 1998). Of course, one function of engineering (building on a large scale) does go back to the beginnings of recorded history (and, indeed, earlier), but that function is something engineers share with several other disciplines, including architecture and masonry. Indeed, that function is something engineers share with ants, beavers, and coral.
Emile Durkheim (1957) in fact discusses the customs or standards that occupational communities typically subject themselves to (whether morally permissible or not). Durkheim seems to lack any sense of profession as I have defined it. In contrast, Talcott Parsons, the most important representative of this approach in the US, really is a student of professions. See, for example, his “The Professions and Social Structure” (Parsons 1954).
For an attempt to explain the attractions of the various sociological approaches, see Michael Burrage and Rolf Torstendahl (1990), especially the “Introduction”.
John T. Sanders (1993). Often, those using the philosophical approach avoid this conclusion only by adding morality as a side-constraint. See, for example, Asa Kasher (2005). His conceptions, resting on action theory, would justify the same conclusion about the mafia, p. 70, did he not eventually connect profession with democracy, p. 83ff, its morality providing a constraining “envelope”. For another (more plausible) example of the Cartesian approach, see Daryl Koehn (1994). Like Kultgen, Michael Bayles (1981) seems to offer a sociological definition.
A number of occupations seem to have a profession as a subset. For example, financial analysts are divided into those who work as individuals (the non-professionals) and those who claim the status of Certified Financial Analyst (and satisfy the Socratic definition).
Of course, never is a long time. We certainly can imagine two disciplines (law and medicine or engineering and journalism) changing over time until they become enough alike to become one occupation. The point, though, is that such changes would be so radical that neither would be much like the present occupations. We would have the usual problems of distinguishing individuals.
There is no need for the moral ideal to be unique. Several professions may share the same moral ideal. So, for example, osteopaths (O.D.’s) seem to have the same moral ideal as physicians (M.D.’s). What distinguish osteopaths from physicians are their special standards, especially their educational standards and standards of practice.
For an extensive discussion of this mistake in another context, see Davis (1983).
They are, of course, in position to take advantage of the professional practice, in large part at least, precisely because law, morality, market, and public opinion do not enforce those standards (or at least enforce them effectively enough to make following the standards prudent without the additional moral obligation arising from profession).
In licensed professions, expulsion is simply a matter of withdrawing the license. But in unlicensed professions, such a journalism or university teaching, expulsion is more complicated. Members of the profession must cease to treat “expelled” members as members, for example, by refusing to write letters of reference for them or declining to work with them.
While the Netherlands’ Royal Society of Engineers was then working on its first code of ethics, the Dutch engineers I talked to seemed to think of the code as explicating what they already accepted rather than as a new standard.
I am assuming that “serving the state” is not a moral ideal. In political philosophy, there is a recent debate about (in effect) whether patriotism is a moral ideal—or, like loyalty or nationalism, morally suspect. Because I’m inclined to think patriotism (properly understood) is a moral ideal, I’m inclined to think that “serving the state” might be too. What is certain, though, is that “serving the French state” cannot be (since most non-French have no reason to care about that ideal). French philosophers might help us understand how to understand “serving the state” so that we can recognize it as moral ideal.
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Early work on this paper was carried out in part under National Science Foundation grant SES-0117471. Early versions (under various titles and focusing on various professions) were presented to: a workshop, “Toward a Common Goal: Ethics Across the Professions”, Sierra Health Foundation, Sacramento, CA, USA, August 26, 2006; the Research Group of Ethics, Faculty of Letters, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, February 14, 2007; the Second American Society for Philosophical Counseling and Psychotherapy International Conference on Philosophical Practice, Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, Indiana, May 19, 2007; Philosophy Section, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, University of Technology-Delft, The Netherlands, September 24, 2007; Center for Ethics and Technology, University of Technology-Twente, The Netherlands, September 27, 2007; and the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, October 4, 2007. I should like to thank those present at these lectures, as well as two reviewers for this journal, for many improvements in this work.
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Davis, M. Is Engineering a Profession Everywhere?. Philosophia 37, 211–225 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-008-9125-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-008-9125-9