Michael Davis defines professions as follows: “A profession is a number of indiv
ID: 3495141 • Letter: M
Question
Michael Davis defines professions as follows: “A profession is a number of individuals in the same occupation voluntarily organized to earn a living by openly serving a certain moral ideal Introduction to Engineering Ethics in a morally permissible way beyond what law, market, and [everyday] morality would otherwise require.” He argues that carpenters, barbers, porters, and other groups who organize their work around a shared code of ethics should be recognized as professionals. Do you agree or disagree, and why? Can this issue be settled by reference to a dictionary?
Explanation / Answer
Back in the nineteenth century, the professions were defined as law, religion, and medicine. Nowadays, the number of professions is much wider and ever-increasing, as occupations become more specialised in nature and more ‘professionalised’ in terms of requiring certain standards of initial and ongoing education – so that anything from automotive technicians to web designers can be defined as professionals.
A profession is something a little more than a job, it is a career for someone that wants to be part of society, who becomes competent in their chosen sector through training; maintains their skills through continuing professional development (CPD); and commits to behaving ethically, to protect the interests of the public.
We all rely on professionals at many points of our lives – from dentists to teachers, from pension managers to careers advisers, from town planners to paramedics. We rely on professionals to be experts and to know what to do when we need them to.
If we look into the various definitions of a professional, we can draw a few characteristics of a professional, which are as follows:
As argued by Michael Davis Carpenters, barbers, porters and other groups who organose their work around a shared code of ethis should be recognised as professionals. I would agree to this statement of that person or group classifies to the above characteristics.
These professionals can be classified as entreprenuers in their fields, as most of the characteristics of the Professionals and Entrepreneurs are similar.
An Entrepreneur has the following characteristics:
As we can see, Cobbles, Potters, carpenters etc. possess most of the above qualities, and being entrepreneurs, can be classified as Professionals too as one of the characteristic of being an entrepreneur is of being a successful Professional.
Hence, i would completely support the statement by Michael Davis.