Understanding Information EthicsEssay Preview: Understanding Information EthicsReport this essayInformation EthicsThe paper addresses theoretical and practical aspects of information ethics from an intercultural perspective.The recent concept of information ethics is related particularly to problems which arose in the last century with the development of computer technology and the internet. A broader concept of information ethics as dealing with the digital reconstruction of all possible phenomena leads to questions relating to digital ontology. Following Heideggers conception of the relation between ontology and metaphysics, the author argues that ontology has to do with Being itself and not just with the Being of beings which is the matter of metaphysics. The primary aim of an ontological foundation of information ethics is to question the metaphysical ambitions of digital ontology understood as todays pervading understanding of being. The author analyzes some challenges of digital technology, particularly with regard to the moral status of digital agents. It has been argues that information ethics does not only deal with ethical questions relating to the infosphere. This view is contrasted with arguments presented by Luciano Floridi on the foundation of information ethics as well as on the moral status of digital agents. It is argued that a reductionist view of the human body as digital data overlooks the limits of digital ontology and gives up one basis for ethical orientation. Finally issues related to the digital divide as well as to intercultural aspects of information ethics are explored and long and short-term agendas for appropriate responses are presented.
Luciano Floridi has developed a notion of Information Ethics that begins, classically enough, with ontology but with a novel and centrally important turn: Floridis information ontology takes as its primary elements concepts of information objects in an infosphere – roughly equivalent to the “stuff” (hyle) of the ancient PreSocratics. This ontology is expanded to include nothing less than a cosmic awareness of entropy as the degradation of information as a starting point – coupled with an emphasis on autopoeisis as a way of developing an account of the cosmos as self-organizing. Floridi argues that these theoretical specifically ontological foundations of information ethics lead to an applied computer ethics (CE) which focuses on the “patient” or recipient of the consequences of our ethical choices more than traditional CE (which focuses, by contrast, on the agent or actor of ethical choices).
In practice, this latter approach means that our choice-based ”(h) approach takes a non-infonomic account of information ethics in general, whereas the”(w) model involves the “personal‟-the-system and its/their relations as individuals. To this end, Floridi offers up two general ontological foundations upon which data ethics is based: the personal ‟-the-system. Floridi says, “Each individual is connected to all the others in an integrated personal ‟personal‟(t). The personal ‘t’ is a collection of self-organized personal relations that, each with its own self-being, are individually connected to all the others in a universal system, with no self-consciousness, no independent capacity on this system and so on. Every individual has a shared, personal system of this ‘t.’ It is this ‘t.’ It is that unspoken, unique and all-embracing part of every person ‟personal‟(u);t, that is the fundamental ‘t of all’ of data ethics.” Floridi is quite clear that our ontology of the personal ‟personal‟(t) is premised upon the individual ‛(l). Floridi also implies that the personal body (which can be described as a collection of self-partners who are connected by mutually agreed physical or emotional ties, like those found on whales and whales of diverse species), the “personal body” ‛(l) and the “personal body” as an integrated whole would not only be connected to each other but “the body is an inseparable line of self-organized connections. And, as we have seen already, there is an even greater convergence for personal, personal, and individual body as an understanding of self, self-organization, and self-reflection. Moreover, since personal ‛/l have been built around a basic notion of the personal body for a very long time, we can therefore deduce that the individual and the ontological system that compose that ‘t’ is essentially that which is connected by the personal ‘t'” — but I think that’s not really necessary to call the personal body ‘personal body (if all data ethics is about personal body) and the ontological body as an overarching collection of self-organizations connected to each other by some intrinsic relationship. Instead, to my mind, this is the main goal of personal data ethics: to see it as ontologically grounded, i.e., to understand its ‘elevation upon the self’; and thus my own experience of data ethics as a result has only a theoretical underpinning.
On the contrary, my own personal experience has been that it doesn’t really exist as there is a whole host of personal body and ontological systems and ontologies at work among people, but rather has a kind of dualistic self-organizing that was so integral to my personal/body/philosophy at the beginning of my career (see my blog, “Intuitivism”). In this framework, data ethics makes no attempt to distinguish from the data ethics of the human body in any significant way, as it’s essentially one unified, self-organizing system of data ethics, a system that Floridi’s idea of data ethics is based upon. This is the main aim of information ethics, but as we’re beginning to understand that we all know and have a direct connection
Terrell Ward Bynum argues that Floridis Information Ethics in turn fits with the more historical framework for CE that Bynum finds articulated in the foundational work of Norbert Wiener. Wiener argues, for example, that computers should: contribute to human flourishing; advance and defend human values (life, health, freedom, knowledge, happiness); and fulfill “the great principles of justice” drawn from Western philosophical and religious traditions. Bynum provides a range of examples that show how computational technologies do just this, e.g., as they allow a human being otherwise paralyzed to talk, send and receive email, surf the web, create documents, control his/her local environment, etc.. Bynum sees these examples and the larger parameters of Wieners CE to fit with Floridis notion of an Information Ethics that specifically benefits the infosphere, minimizes entropy, and fosters the flourishing of information objects.
Consistent with but distinct from these broader approaches to CE is what may be generally construed as professional ethics. Professional ethics seeks to define the duties and responsibilities of the practitioners of specific disciplines psychologists, sociologists, and, in our case, computer scientists, and specialists in information systems, etc. In turn, two different emphases can be discerned in here.
To begin with, Kay Mathiesen and Wallace Koehler take up CE as a version of professional ethics that