IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021 - 45

Values, in general, share a number of qualities in
addition to their quality of being able to give rise to
feelings. Of great importance to VBD is the quality that
values can be ranked as higher or lower. The lower
values are most readily felt but of the least relative
worth. The higher values are difficult to perceive and
discern about but have the highest relative worth.
Scheler classifies broad levels of values. He presents
these from lowest to highest, describing them with
generic values and their opposite disvalues.
Lowest is pleasure versus pain. Next is usefulness
versus uselessness (the most common values encountered
in engineering). Then comes ennobling of human
persons, their spirit, and character versus making these
more base, coarser. The penultimate level is the good,
beautiful, and true versus the evil, ugly, and false.
Scheler identifies the highest level of values as the
sacred versus the profane. This terminology requires
explanation. Sacredness and profanity are not at all
defined by reference to any one notion of god(s),
spiritual practice, or religion and is amenable to
theist or atheist interpretation [10, p. 109]. Rather,
sacredness refers to the values corresponding to the
highest human aspirations such as justice, peace,
and love for others (in the sense of charitable love:
agape or caritas) and to a grasp of what it takes to
realize these highest values even partially and temporarily
[11, Ch. 2]. This grasp requires understanding,
empathy, sympathy, and charity for others. It
is the implicit recognition of the inestimable value
of each human being, by reason of which that person,
as the object of the treatment of others, must be
affirmed by them [16, Ch. 6].
Action and value bearing in P7000
From the perspective of MVE, it is the fact that
values are realized, are borne, by persons, their relationships,
and things, that makes VBD possible. That
is, MVE says that human actions produce results that
bear values. Such actions include design. In general,
the intent of engineering is to act so as to produce
artifacts that bear the value of being useful for certain
purposes. P7000 specifies acts that result in:
* the identification of additional positive values
that the SoI should bear in addition to usefulness
and negative values that it should not bear;
* the determination of requirements (EVRs) and
their satisfaction in the design that result in the
SoI bearing those positive values and not bearing
those negative values.
September 2021
MVE provides an account for how persons act
to create or change which values they, their relationships,
and things in the world bear, how they
are borne, and to what extent [11, Ch. 5.5]. P7000's
stages and their activities, being acts of a group
of persons directed toward creating a value-bearing
SoI, correspond to most of the elements of
that account.
The first of these elements is the presence of the
situation, an object requiring some deed to be done
upon it. There is some aspect of the situation that
does not correspond to what ought to be. The agent
senses this disvalue and wills to do something to
make real that ought-to-be. The first section of P7000
states that P7000 is meant to guide an organization
that, with the support of its management, " seeks to
uncover and address " ethical concerns in an SoI.
That is, the agents (management and other organization
members) have identified a deed to be done
(the building of the SoI) that has resistance to the
ought-to-be (the existence of as yet unidentified
and un-addressed ethical values). The agents will to
make real what ought to be (an SoI that bears values
and does not bear disvalues); otherwise, they would
not choose to engage in a VBD process.
The second element is to picture in the mind the
content to be realized by the deed. This includes
understanding the possible courses of action and
their effects in the world of values. In P7000, this corresponds
first to the identification and description of
relevant values and disvalues and how the SoI can
affect them.
The third element of acting is to will one of the
compossible outcomes in the world of values. This
element corresponds to the ranking of values, resolving
or choosing among conflicting values, and creating
EVRs.
The fourth element is to will and initiate the physical
movements of the necessary members to realize
the chosen outcomes in the world of values. In
P7000, this corresponds to the design of SoI so that
the EVRs are satisfied, followed by the construction
and deployment of the SoI. This element completes
the value-based engineering process envisioned in
that standard.
However, MVE teaches that there are additional
elements of action that do not have corresponding
stages or activities in P7000. These include sensations
and feelings while doing the action, the experience
of performing the alteration of the state of the
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021

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