A recent paper by Mitcham considered philosophically "strong" versus "weak" professions depending upon whether a profession aspires to good-in-themselves values such as "health" or "justice" or not. Accordingly medicine and law would be considered strong and computer science, business, and the military would be considered weak. Mitcham goes on to suggest that the "weak" professions would do well to emulate the strong and seek analogous aspirational ideals. This talk takes Mitcham's strong-weak distinction and his ethical urgings seriously, first analyzing the former linguistically and then considering the latter institutionally. The linguistic analysis suggests that the strong-weak distinction is based on too narrow an interpretation of the term "philosophical," and an alternative analysis leads to the conclusion that computer science is philosophically weak, but for reasons different than Mitcham's. The second analysis looks to the institutional setting of Mitcham's classification scheme, suggesting that differences in institutions and the relationship between ethical alignment at local and global levels are largely responsible for the distinction that Mitcham observes more so than the intentions of individual actors. Reframing the problem as one of ethical simplicity or complexity, an analysis of military professionals gives an interesting organizational perspective that casts doubt on the feasibility of Mitcham's urgings to higher aspirations for all ethically complex professions. Even when an aspirational ideal exists, its independent pursuit by an individual member of a cohesive organization such as a military outfit or a company violates the very notion of unit cohesion and cooperative work so important to completing the organization's mission. The conclusion also casts doubt on recent calls for the reform of computer science and engineering education using overly simple calls to professionalism.
David E. Goldberg, a leader in the field of genetic algorithms, is the Jerry S. Dobrovolny Distinguished Professor in Entrepreneurial Engineering and co-director of the Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education (www.ifoundry.illinois.edu) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also co-founder and chief scientist of ShareThis, Inc., a web2.0 startup company. Trained as a civil engineer at the University of Michigan, where he earned his B.S.E. and took his Ph.D. in 1983, Dr. Goldberg has held positions at Michigan, Alabama, and Illinois. The founding chair of the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation and lead author of the proposal that led to the creation of ACM SIGEVO, he is founding and continuing co-chair of the Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering (2007, TUDelft; 2008, Royal Academy of Engineering). His widely acclaimed text, Genetic Algorithms in Search, Organization, and Machine Learning (1989) is the 10-most cited reference on Google Scholar, and an h-index compilation by Palsberg places him among the most cited researchers in computer science.
There will be wine and soft drinks and the opportunity to talk to the speaker after the seminar in the foyer of the Business School South building.