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Information Ethics: On the Philosophical Foundation of Computer Ethics
Abstract
The essential difficulty about Computer Ethics’ (CE) philosophical status is a methodological problem: standard ethical theories cannot easily be adapted to deal with CE-problems, which appear to strain their conceptual resources, and CE requires a conceptual foundation as an ethical theory. Information Ethics (IE), the philosophical foundational counterpart of CE, can be seen as a particular case of ‘environmental’ ethics or ethics of the infosphere. What is good for an information entity and the infosphere in general? This is the ethical question asked by IE. The answer is provided by a minimalist theory of deserts: IE argues that there is something more elementary and fundamental than life and pain, namely being, understood as information, and entropy, and that any information entity is to be recognised as the centre of a minimal moral claim, which deserves recognition and should help to regulate the implementation of any information process involving it. IE can provide a valuable perspective from which to approach, with insight and adequate discernment, not only moral problems in CE, but also the whole range of conceptual and moral phenomena that form the ethical discourse.
... Tais pressupostos estão relacionados entre si, sendo que a crítica a um deles também reflete na fragilidade de outro.Conforme indicamos, o princípio de igualdade ontológica corresponde ao entendimento segundo o qual todo objeto informacional possui o direito de existir simplesmente pelo fato de ser o que é, ou seja, de sua natureza informacional. Ainda, tal princípio assegura a este objeto o direito a Antecipando possível crítica,Floridi (1999) propõe uma alternativa para solucionar o conflito entre naturezas informacionais e seus respectivos direitos ao florescimento.Floridi (1999, p. 50) considera que agentes capazes de avaliar suas próprias ações possuiriam um "grau maior" de respeito moral: "[estes objetos informacionais] são os únicos capazes de conhecer a infosfera e melhorá-la de acordo com seus projetos autodeterminados" 88 . Neste sentido, embora a teoria ética informacional de Floridi esteja embasada numa perspectiva não-antropocêntrica, a situação da pesca não deveria ser considerada como moralmente errada, uma vez que o ser humano possuiria, segundo as possibilidades de análise, uma capacidade maior que a dos peixes para avaliar suas ações no ambiente de modo a contribuir para a melhora da infosfera. ...
Neste trabalho analisaremos a tese segundo a qual o Paradigma da Complexidade, ilustrado a partir da Teoria dos Sistemas Complexos e da Auto-Organização, contribuiria para a análise de problemas da Ética Informacional. Entendemos que a Teoria dos Sistemas Complexos e da Auto-Organização fornece um método de investigação interdisciplinar e um arcabouço teórico que inclui várias dimensões informacionais no estudo de eventos, situações ou objetos, dentre eles alguns problemas da Ética Informacional. Este é um ramo da Filosofia da Informação que vem se consolidando nos últimos anos e, embora não haja ainda uma definição última, ela é concebida como uma área que visa refletir sobre questões, de cunho moral, relacionadas aos impactos da inserção de tecnologias informacionais na vida cotidiana. Tendo em vista os diversos estudiosos que têm se debruçado para a fundamentação de parâmetros que delimitem as fronteiras dessa nova área de investigação filosófico-interdisciplinar, focalizaremos nosso estudo na teoria Ética Informacional desenvolvida por Luciano Floridi. Julgamos que essa contribuição pode auxiliar na caracterização da Ética Informacional e de seus problemas, colaborando para a compreensão de novos rumos da pesquisa filosófica na sociedade da informação.
... Other recent literature concerns automata moral status generally and in some cases automata rights, if indirectly. Broadly, Floridi (1999Floridi ( , 2008 argues for information ethics (IE) to solve problems in computer ethics. A patient-oriented, Bontocentric^IE's basis of moral status is information, each item of which has dignity and rights. ...
As engineers propose constructing humanlike automata, the question arises as to whether such machines merit human rights. The issue warrants serious and rigorous examination, although it has not yet cohered into a conversation. To put it into a sure direction, this paper proposes phrasing it in terms of whether humans are morally obligated to extend to maximally humanlike automata full human rights, or those set forth in common international rights documents. This paper’s approach is to consider the ontology of humans and of automata and whether ontological difference between them, that pertains to the very bases of human rights, affects the latter’s claims to full human rights. Considering common bases of human rights, can these bases tell us whether a certain ontological distinction of humans from automata—or a de facto distinction about humans tacitly acknowledged by full-rights-recognizing societies—makes a difference in whether humans are morally obligated to assign these entities full rights? Human rights to security also arise. The conclusion is that humans need not be under any moral obligation to confer full human rights on automata. The paper’s ultimate point is not to close the discussion with this ontological cap but to set a solid moral and legal groundwork for opening it up tout court.
AI-enabled State surveillance capabilities are likely to exert chilling effects whereby individuals modify their behavior due to a fear of the potential consequences if that behavior is observed. The risk is that chilling effects drive individuals towards the mainstream, slowly reducing the space for personal and political development. This could prove devastating for individuals’ ability to freely develop their identity and, ultimately, for the evolution and vibrancy of democratic society. As it stands, human rights law cannot effectively conceptualize this cumulative, longer-term, harm, and so cannot accurately evaluate the cost/benefit of AI tools, risking irreparable harm. As chilling effects impact individuals’ ability to live a good, self-determined life, the concept of human flourishing is relevant. This article engages with Aristotelian naturalism, the life-satisfaction approach, and the capabilities approach to determine which best resonates with the concept of identity as relevant to chilling effects and human rights law. It concludes that the capabilities approach may overcome some of the problems associated with the human rights law approach and may provide a framework capable of capturing both the intricate processes of free identity development and of conceptualizing the harm linked to AI surveillance. The challenge, however, is to ‘operationalize’ this approach.
The article seeks to highlight the relation between ontology and communication while considering the role of AI in society and environment. Bioinformationalism is the technical term that foregrounds this relationality. The study reveals instructive consequences for philosophy of technology in general and AI in particular. The first section introduces the bioinformational approach to AI, focusing on three critical features of the current AI debate: ontology of information, property-based vs. relational AI, and ontology vs. constitution of AI. When applied to the themes of relationality and non-anthropocentric communications, bioinformational insights highlight an inclusive and meaningful groundwork for understanding AI by ‘relating’ it with society and the environment through an engagement with the ongoing critique of human supremacy. In the second section, we move from ‘relating’ AI to ‘rewilding’ AI by proposing taxonomical classification for certain technological entities. We situate our proposal in the broader personhood debate with the proposal of taxonomical ranking. In the last section, we show an instance of a relational approach steeped in substantialist ontology by introducing the fourth feature of the AI debate. A broad critique of Floridi’s philosophy of information introduces this fourth feature from the domain of philosophy and sociology to address various theoretical and ecological problems with current relational accounts. In doing so, we argue for ‘communication’ to be the replacement of ‘information’ as the moral unit. A bioinformational understanding of AI advocates taking ontological commitments seriously at all levels of informational and technological processes and products.
In this special issue, we reflect on the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) crisis and the containment measures put in place by formal authorities, combining both theoretically and empirically three different fields of study: crisis management, surveillance studies, and digital ethics. The special issue shows how the intersection of these fields provides a great opportunity to better understand challenges that are of critical importance to today's societies, as well as opening up new avenues for innovation. The focus of this special issue is to unpack and understand the debate on crisis management measures, surveillance, and ethical consequences during the ongoing, enduring COVID‐19 crisis. Building on crisis management literature, surveillance studies, and digital ethics research the articles included in this special issue reflect on issues of governance, space, as well as moral and ethical considerations, which were often overlooked in the public discourse in relation to the COVID‐19 pandemic. The special issue provides a deeper and clearer understanding of intended and unintended ethical and political consequences of crisis management practices, such as a politics of visibility that makes the operation of power invisible and fails to combat inequality, whilst ignoring the potential positive power of digital data and surveillance for empowerment and resilience
In a world that is awash in ubiquitous technology, even the least tech-savvy know that we must take care how that technology affects individuals and society. That governments and organizations around the world now focus on these issues, that universities and research institutes in many different languages dedicate significant resources to study the issues, and that international professional organizations have adopted standards and directed resources toward ethical issues in technology is in no small part the result of the work of Simon Rogerson.
– Chuck Huff, Professor of Social Psychology at Saint Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota
In 1995, Apple launched its first WWW server, Quick Time On-line. It was the year Microsoft released Internet Explorer and sold 7 million copies of Windows 95 in just 2 months. In March 1995, the author Simon Rogerson opened the first ETHICOMP conference with these words:
We live in a turbulent society where there is social, political, economic and technological turbulence … it is causing a vast amount of restructuring within all these organisations which impacts on individuals, which impacts on the way departments are set up, organisational hierarchies, job content, span of control, social interaction and so on and so forth. … Information is very much the fuel of modern technological change. Almost anything now can be represented by the technology and transported to somewhere else. It's a situation where the more information a computer can process, the more of the world it can actually turn into information. That may well be very exciting, but it is also very concerning.
That could be describing today. More than 25 years later, these issues are still at the forefront of how ethical digital technology can be developed and utilised.
This book is an anthology of the author’s work over the past of 25 years of pioneering research in digital ethics. It is structured into five themes: Journey, Process, Product, Future and Education. Each theme commences with an introductory explanation of the papers, their relevance and their interrelationship. The anthology finishes with a concluding chapter which summarises the key messages and suggests what might happen in the future. Included in this chapter are insights from some younger leading academics who are part of the community charged with ensuring that ethical digital technology is realised.
[see https://www.routledge.com/The-Evolving-Landscape-of-Ethical-Digital-Technology/Rogerson/p/book/9781032017211]
This chapter introduces a novel perspective on the ethical agency of players, by extending Huizinga’s concept of Homo Ludens with Floridi’s concept of homo poieticus. This shift of perspective allows first for the ethical inquiry on the moral nature of the player; and second, to the inquiry on the ethics of games in the context of the economies of information and entertainment that dominate digital culture. This chapter suggests ethical questions around videogames that focus on the cultural and economic issues around games.
The individualistic lens refers to the understanding of problematic information as something that is clearly identifiable, with objective criteria of measurement. This article argues for adding a non‐individualistic lens for understanding information. The necessity for adding a non‐individualistic lens grows from that the existing individualistic lens appears inadequate to make sense of information phenomenon, in particular when it comes to understanding problematic information. Non‐individualistic is proposed as a complementary perspective, which needs to be further developed conceptually. To begin such development, this article directs information professionals' attention to the promising concept of information ecology. More specifically, this article pulls resources from philosophy of information (Floridi's infosphere) and information ethics (Capurro's Angeletics) to illustrate existing conceptualizations of information ecology. Information ecology appears to align with this sociotechnical view that information researchers have started to develop in the most recent years, though arguably information ecology may have an even broader scope. Lastly, this article also points out that the conceptualization of information ecology needs to be aware of, and cautious of the philosophical assumption that is relied on for understanding information.
This chapter proposes an understanding of the concept of homo ludens from a Philosophy of Information perspective. This chapter argues that players are moral agents who create worlds by playing. The creation of these worlds through play is analogous to what Huizinga described as a ludic drive. Therefore, this chapter proposes a perspective for studying the ethics of play through the lens of homo ludens-as-homo poieticus. The goal of this chapter is to suggest a constructivist ethics approach to the different play activities that have a role in shaping the cultures of the Information Age.
This chapter introduces the third part of the book, devoted to the most delicate aspects of the possible application, so far, of computational modelling and AI to the realm of criminal justice, that is to say, the decision-making process. This chapter sets a general framework for Chaps. 6 and 7, dealing, respectively, with a specific topic. This chapter, indeed, highlights some crucial aspects, that will be fundamental in understanding the following topics: firstly, a brief reconstruction of the general peculiarities of judicial reasoning and decision-making. Such a basic introduction aims to explain why modelling judicial reasoning and decision-making has always been a complicated endeavour; secondly, the attempt to understand the sense of the term ‘predictive justice’, which is often used in relation to AI in criminal matters: it is important, before stepping into the core of the matters related to the risks of automated decision-making processes in criminal justice, to determine the meaning of the words and concepts used for the analysis.
While philosophers have been debating for decades on whether different entities—including severely disabled human beings, embryos, animals, objects of nature, and even works of art—can legitimately be considered as having moral status, this question has gained a new dimension in the wake of artificial intelligence (AI). One of the more imminent concerns in the context of AI is that of the moral rights and status of social robots, such as robotic caregivers and artificial companions, that are built to interact with human beings. In recent years, some approaches to moral consideration have been proposed that would include social robots as proper objects of moral concern, even though it seems unlikely that these machines are conscious beings. In the present paper, I argue against these approaches by advocating the “consciousness criterion,” which proposes phenomenal consciousness as a necessary condition for accrediting moral status. First, I explain why it is generally supposed that consciousness underlies the morally relevant properties (such as sentience) and then, I respond to some of the common objections against this view. Then, I examine three inclusive alternative approaches to moral consideration that could accommodate social robots and point out why they are ultimately implausible. Finally, I conclude that social robots should not be regarded as proper objects of moral concern unless and until they become capable of having conscious experience. While that does not entail that they should be excluded from our moral reasoning and decision-making altogether, it does suggest that humans do not owe direct moral duties to them.
Recent advancements in AI have prompted a large number of AI ethics guidelines published by governments and nonprofits. While many of these papers propose concrete or seemingly applicable ideas, few philosophically sound proposals are made. In particular, we observe that the line of questioning has often not been examined critically and underlying conceptual problems not always dealt with at the root. In this paper, we investigate the nature of ethical AI systems and what their moral status might be by first turning to the notions of moral agency and patience. We find that their explication would come at a too high cost which is why we, second, articulate a different approach that avoids vague and ambiguous concepts or the problem of other minds. Third, we explore the impact of our philosophical and conceptual analysis on the regulatory landscape, make this link explicit, and finally propose a set of promising policy steps.
With the rapid development of information technology, the extensive application of information network technology and smart devices in the era of big data has not only brought great convenience to people, but also triggered a series of new ethical issues.College students, as the main group of information activities in the era of big data, are unable to integrate information ethics knowledge with behaviors due to their lack of information screening ability and output ability, resulting in various information anomies. Based on the actual curriculum research, this paper points out the current situation and reasons of information ethics faced by college students, and puts forward the corresponding countermeasures, which has a positive and farreaching significance for coordinating the ethical order of network society and promoting the construction of a harmonious society.
Editor's Summary
Adding contextual information enhances the content and value of communications, yet it can also introduce risk and threaten privacy. A common piece of contextual information is location, but context extends to identity, user profile, e‐mail address, time and more. Understanding context from the standpoint of privacy awareness requires a systematic conceptualization of the concepts of privacy and context, personally identifiable information and the ways information flows, from processing and creation through transfer and acceptance. Numerous examples illustrate the potential chain of connections that could be revealed between a personal subject and context. Such information, made explicit, can undermine privacy policies. Integrating context‐ and location‐aware services in software should be approached cautiously and with full understanding of the implications. Diagrammed scenarios provided can inform considerations and software specification building.
The paper outlines a new interpretation of informational privacy and of its moral value. The main theses defended are: (a)
informational privacy is a function of the ontological friction in the infosphere, that is, of the forces that oppose the
information flow within the space of information; (b) digital ICTs (information and communication technologies) affect the
ontological friction by changing the nature of the infosphere (re-ontologization); (c) digital ICTs can therefore both decrease
and protect informational privacy but, most importantly, they can also alter its nature and hence our understanding and appreciation
of it; (d) a change in our ontological perspective, brought about by digital ICTs, suggests considering each person as being
constituted by his or her information and hence regarding a breach of one’s informational privacy as a form of aggression
towards one’s personal identity.
This essay critically analyzes Luciano Floridi’s ontological theory of informational privacy. Organized into two main parts,
Part I examines some key foundational components of Floridi’s privacy theory and it considers some of the ways in which his
framework purports to be superior to alternative theories of informational privacy. Part II poses two specific challenges
for Floridi’s theory of informational privacy, arguing that an adequate privacy theory should be able to: (i) differentiate
informational privacy from other kinds of privacy, including psychological privacy; and (ii) distinguish between descriptive
and normative aspects of informational privacy in a way that differentiates a (mere) loss of privacy from a violation of privacy.
I argue that Floridi’s privacy theory, in its present form, does not explicitly address either challenge. However, I also
argue that his ontological theory provides us with a novel way of analyzing the impact that digital technologies have had
for informational privacy. I conclude by suggesting that Floridi’s privacy framework can be interpreted as containing the
elements of a “personality theory of privacy,” which would be useful to examine in a separate study.
An important question one can ask of ethical theories is whether and how they aim to raise claims to universality. This refers
to the subject area that they intend to describe or govern and also to the question whether they claim to be binding for all
(moral) agents. This paper discusses the question of universality of Luciano Floridi’s information ethics (IE). This is done
by introducing the theory and discussing its conceptual foundations and applications. The emphasis will be placed on the ontological
grounding of IE. IE’s claims to universality will be contrasted with those raised by discourse ethics. This comparison of
two pertinent ethical theories allows for a critical discussion of areas where IE currently has room for elaboration and development.
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