Ethics Under Pressure: Moral Value Resuscitation for Emerging Computer Scientists

Anthony Wright
Sonoma State University

Stevenson 1301
12:00 PM

New Computer Science graduates entering large technology organizations encounter ethical pressures that are rarely addressed in formal curricula: responsibility without authority, execution without context, performance metrics that reward speed over clarity, and organizational environments that normalize silence under uncertainty. These conditions produce not merely ethical dilemmas but ethical state collapse, in which professional judgment is displaced by compliance and moral agency is fragmented by system design and pressure from management.
This presentation introduces Moral Value Resuscitation as a practical, non-ideological framework for sustaining ethical agency under high-velocity professional conditions. Drawing on complexity science, the talk reframes human consciousness as a non-linear dynamical system whose ethical function degrades predictably under cognitive overload, time compression, and performance threat. Ethical failure is thus understood not as individual weakness but as a systems phenomenon requiring state regulation rather than rule memorization.
Participants are taught concrete methods to restore temporal sovereignty—the capacity to momentarily decouple action from external pressure in order to re-engage judgment—through micro-pauses, professional boundary language, and documentation-based ethical resistance. These tools allow early- career engineers to interrupt unethical momentum compelled by management, preserve clarity, and maintain professional integrity without confrontation or career risk.
The presentation concludes with applied case simulations that demonstrate how ethical agency can be exercised in real time, within ordinary engineering workflows, and under realistic organizational constraints. Moral Value Resuscitation is presented not as moral heroism, but as a core professional competence for engineers operating inside complex, rapidly evolving socio-technical systems.